Folklore: The Green Man

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Sailor Ron
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 11:29 AM

Going back to songs about 'The Green Man' Alan Bell wrote a rather good one years ago.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Peg
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 09:56 PM

"It is, for example, supremely significant that the Green Man is altogether absent from The Wicker Man (1973) - surely the cinematographic watershed of much of today's paganism (and 'Dark Folk')."


Not true. The village's main pub is called The Green Man! The sign (with its odd image) is shown very prominently. I would hardly call that "altogether absent."

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 04:11 AM

Must say I've never bought into the paganisation of the Green Man favoured by fundies. The medieval minster builders, people who weren't averse to the odd Doom painting, never AFAIK elided foliate heads with Old Nick as visual simulacra. Iconoclasts, men you'd assume would have a grudge against this particular idolatry, don't appear to have singled out leaf faces for their ire and big hammers.

The Green Man in pub signage sees him as Robin Hood, Jack in the Green and the Jolly Green Giant of tinned food fame which is also a bit of a presumption IMO. My suspicion is the foliate head in churches had some significance which was fully compatible with a Christian reading to their builders that has been lost. TGM could be a personification of summer (like moons and suns have faces) without implying an extra deity, or the abundant wood the beams are made from, or a visual signifier for all acts of human creation - but we're in the world of guesswork.
Conspiracies are one of the better uses for Occam's razor. There's no need for goblins.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 04:03 PM

The village's main pub is called The Green Man!

Ah yes - this was touched on this elsewhere (where? I've no idea!). Certainly there has always been a folkloric interest in the pub name, (which has nothing to do with the ecclesiastical foliate heads!) and given that the writers of TWM certainly did their researches into such things (mostly through The Golden Bough!) then it's hardly surprising. What is surprising however is that, other than the pub, there is no other mention of The Green Man in TWM. In any case, TWM just might represent the earliest instance of a foliate head in the context of a Green Man pub name. The confusion between the Foliate Head and The Green Man as a pub name is c/o Lady Raglan in 1939 and the modern trend for Green Man pub signs to show foliate heads derived from ecclesiastical carvings, no matter how stylised these have become in recent years.

Okay - what I'm really looking for now are publications which mention The Green Man & Foliate Heads in a pagan / folkloric context prior to 1975....

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 May 15 - 10:31 PM

great thread!

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Ged Fox
Date: 19 May 15 - 06:05 AM

My dad mentioned once that, when he was a lad (circa 1930) living in Walthamstow in the shade of Epping Forest, they used to play a game at grass cutting time wherein one child was buried in cut grass and the rest made a circle dance while chanting "Green man arise-o" until the green man jumped up.