The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #113369   Message #2498643
Posted By: Nerd
20-Nov-08 - 02:13 PM
Thread Name: Any info about the green man?
Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
In my haste yesterday (I had to run to a rehearsal), I forgot to explain WHY I didn't think the bottoms of the wild men/green men on one Crowcombe bench-end looked like the dolphins' tails on the other bench-end. For some reason, the medieval European idea of the dolphin usually gave its whole body a kind of saw-shaped character, with sawtooth fins all along the body, as visible here.   These sawtooth fins are clearly visible in the dolphin bench-end here. But the tails or tubes on the "wild man/green man" bench end, here, are completely smooth, until you come to the leafy sheath around the midriffs of the figures, which as I pointed out, are purposely made identical to the leaves on the foliate head.

Furthermore, in the dolphin bench-end, the dolphins are not, as Insane Beard said, emerging from the Foliate Head's ears. They are, rather, positioned above the head, so that they appear to be sitting atop it. Thus, the tails' flukes are plainly visible in the center above the head, and the tails appear to be bound together below the flukes (in the center above the foliate head), with a human figure arising out of the tails.

Note that the Foliate head that has dolphins on it, however, does have SOMETHING coming out of its ears, which is unconnected to the dolphins. That something looks like a leaf, trumpet or seed-pod, and is essentially smooth. THAT's what the human figures seem to be growing out of in the wild man/green man bench-end, a smooth-sided leaf, trumpet or seed-pod that emerges from the Foliate Head's ears, just as one does in the dolphin bench-end.

I agree that these are all matters of interpretation. Both the dolphins' tails and what I am calling a leaf or seed-pod have an abstract design of circles and lines on them that is very similar, which I am sure is one of the things that made Insane Beard see them as identical. But, as I've pointed out, there are other reasons to think the tubes on the wild man/green man bench end are neither dolphins' tails nor fish tails. The fact that they don't look like the medieval idea of a dolphin's tail (as do the tails on the other bench-end), or have scales like a fish tail, is one reason. The fact that they are growing OUT of the foliate head's ears, like the leaves on the other bench-end, is the other. That makes me think they are meant to represent vegetation, not an animal feature.