The problem is that the 'Green Man' as we have come to understand 'him' today is a totally modern & entirely bogus construct founded on a fundamental misinterpretation (and misnaming)of a very particular type of carving unique to the architecture and theology of Pre-Reformation Roman Catholicism.

I'm not pushing any particular religion here, rather calling into question why this should be the case - like calling into question the 'mythconception' of Ring-a-Roses being a reportage on the symptoms of the Black Plague. There was no 'Green Man' before Lady Raglan named him so in 1939, thus linking such carvings to the various green men & Jacks-in-the-Green of British folklore & custom (none of which can be shown to be any older than the 17th century). And it's only in recent years that this Ancient / Celtic / Druidic / Pagan / Tree Spirit / Archetype of Our Oneness with the Earth (call it what you will) has emerged as a largely unquestioned orthodoxy, so much that this is the line invariably taken in most church & cathedral guide books.

Take away the name, and what we are left with are visages of a profound and elemental horror entirely in keeping with certain key aspects of the human experience. As I say, no jolly Jacks-in-the-Green these...

That said, I was initially drawn to such carvings because I perceived them as being pagan, as pagan as I in fact, though largely because of the books I was devouring at the time. One of my favourite songs on the subject concluded with the lines:

But I'll fetch home the summer from the green-wood;
the trees & flowers unfolding to my song;
leaf-canopied; ablaze with twisting ribbons;
I'll call from hearth and plough the merry throng.
And on the winding green, with pipe and tabor,
I'll lead you all a fine dance, the summer long...

(segue into Idbury Hill, aka London Pride, which is also my beer of choice at The Shakespeare in Durham. How sad is that? Choosing a beer because it shares a name with ones favourite Morris Tune... I might add that I've lately been singing the verses of Kipling's Puck's Song to the tune of London Pride & it works a treat.)