Insane Beard,

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the foliate head carvings have "nothing to do" with the Green Man. An article you yourself pointed out in the other thread you link to above has found that such a connection is in fact very likely.

"The Green Man," it turns out, was well-known as a name for "whiffers" [men dressed in green attire carrying clubs, torches, and brooms, who cleared a space in the crowd for actors] at pageants in sixteenth-century England. These figures sometimes engaged in play combat, and are called by the article's author "combatant green men." The author further shows that this type of figure, and the name "green man," went on to become popular as business emblems for several kinds of businesses, including distilleries and inns. So the inn "Green Man" is related to the combatant green man.

Is the combatant green man connected to the foliate head? Turns out, yes. There is one "foliate head" carving from 1534 England that has such whiffers attached to the head, and one ca. 1450 engraving from Germany (where such pageant figures were also known as "green man") that has such a whiffer bearing a shield with a foliate head on it. I'll quote from the article for the next part:

"The connection is made yet again in the spandrel of a choir stall in Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire, where one William Lyngwode carved the image of a combatant Green Man in 1308. Here the "Green Man" of church architecture and the combatant are a single figure. Unlike the later representations, this one is dressed in conventional clothing and carries a sword and buckler.

It appears that Lady Raglan was right. The name of the foliate head - labelled the "Green Man" by Lady Raglan - was the Green Man."

I think this connection is rather tenuous for suggesting that the two figures were always and everywhere equated...but it does show that as early as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and possibly even the early 14th, SOME people thought of the whiffer figure and the foliate head as connected. Since the whiffer figure was in some times and places called "The Green Man," and since the Green Man as a pub sign did come from this figure, there was already a web of connections among all the meanings of Green Man, including the foliate head, in the late middle ages and Renaissance. The idea did not originate with Lady Raglan. She merely was the first to directly apply the name "Green Man" to the foliate head and have it recorded for posterity.

It is possible, of course, that many people in olden times did NOT perceive a connection among these figures, but this is the kind of thing that tends not to leave much evidence.