Folklore: The Green Man

Subject: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 12:16 PM

Here's an article on The Green Man that might be of interest to some of you. This was originally written for the Yorkshire based magazine Folk Leads to Song & Custom but I've heard from various people that they messed it up rather (never seen a copy myself!), so this is a PDF of how it shoud be. Click below.

Devil in the Details

Comments welcome.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Bert
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 12:20 PM

I don't open pdf files, they are too slow and I don't have time to mess with them.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 12:57 PM

Then please have a look at my Heads with Leaves page which consist of a brief overview of the Green Man phenomena, plus a plethora still and moving images gathered from around the UK...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 01:03 PM

4.3 MB and it took just 20" to download, not bad for 7 interesting pages.

And a pic of one of the 'pair of lovely knockers' at Durham Cathedral © Simon Groom on Blue Peter (children's TV programme for those Over There), which he swears he didn't say on purpose . . .

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: BK Lick
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 01:18 PM

Gotta mention Folk-Legacy's Green Man logo, explained by Sandy Paton here.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Rumncoke
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 07:38 PM

I forgot to time it - it certainly took this pc less than a minute to download.

I didn't realise there was any sort of problem with the meaning of the face with foliage - having always considered it a reminder of mortality - that our destiny is to return to the earth and be recycled, at least on a physical level. It is, however, not concentrating on the death of the individual but on the vigour of the life it nourishes, which is perpetually renewing and reviving.

I think it is a man thing, something the male psyche resonates to, at least it doesn't seem to give me any thoughts of creating the image.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: rich-joy
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 11:20 PM

Gotta get in a mention of John Thompson's SONG "The Green Man" (he's from the excellent Down Under duo, "Cloudstreet" and who are touring the Yookay just now ....)


Cheers, R-J

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 28 Aug 07 - 11:41 PM

Green Man stuff in this thread, inc. Anderson's poem.
May

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 04:29 AM

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.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 05:55 AM

Just wanted to say I really liked this thread and the PDF.

I first got interested in The Green Man after reading a very downmarket romantic novel call Jack in the Green by Clo Chapman. Loved it! And wasn't there a Kingsley Amis novel called The Green Man?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: GUEST,Georgina Boyes
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 08:12 AM

And, despite its reputation as an ancient custom, there are no records of the tradition of building and displaying Jack-in-the-Green before the late 18th century.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 09:40 AM

It seems to me that the 'paganisation' of folklore is the result of the self-same Victorian paternalism that was used to justify the evils of colonialism. It's there in the cultural condescension that would interpret any given folk custom as being somehow 'vestigial' of something now 'long forgotten'.

When the thoroughly aristocratic Lady Raglan first called her medieval ecclesiastical foliate-head a 'Green Man', she did so fully in the faith that the Jack-in-the-Greens (or should that be Jacks-in-the-Green?) etc. were survivals of pagan fertility rites quaintly perpetuated by an ignorant lower order of society unwittingly preserving (as mere superstition) an ancient belief system that they themselves couldn't possibly understand, either in terms of its 'true' provenance or else its 'real' meaning.

That such thinking still exists today tell us much about the political & cultural agendas of modern pagans and such-like new-agers who think themselves privy to a deeper, sacred knowledge (such as the tripe one finds in most books on the Green Man) which masquerades as ancient wisdom but which is, in actual fact, wholesale invention on the part of the writers.

It occurred to me recently that I love Green Men in the same way that I love the singers in local folk clubs and singarounds. It's these people (in all their stylistic diversity & invariable idiosyncrasy) that give substance and vibrancy to the notion of the 'revival', just as the highly individualistic stylings of (say) Davie Stewart might give us a sense of the wide tradition he himself was but a part of. It is in the singing of traditional song (whatever the hell that might be) that the individual interfaces with the collective; and, no matter what ability the singer, I always feel I gain a far greater appreciation of such a song by hearing it sung than I ever do by seeing it written down.

Empiricism in all things; and the more I experience the corporeal wonders of the univese, so the more wondrously devoid of anything so much as resembling absolute meaning it all becomes...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 10:00 AM

writers who invent things....tut tut!
the spirit of Gradgrind.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Bert
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 10:01 AM

Great website Sedayne, and good scholarship too. Would you mind if I put a link to it on my website?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 10:36 AM

Thanks, Bert - feel free to link. What's your URL so I can return the favour?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Bert
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 01:25 PM

Thanks, I'm at www.newgatesknocker.com.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 02:16 PM

10 secs to open. Very interesting.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: ClaireBear
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 02:53 PM

Sedayne, please share the origin of that wonderful song snippet you quoted. I'm very intrigued.

And thank you for the scholarship and photographic records you have shared with us -- terrific stuff.

Claire

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 05:22 PM

I wonder, did it ever have a tune as such? For sure I used to sing it to a sort of melody-cum-psalm-tone accompanying myself on a medieval harp, circa 1983. But before that, circa 1980-81, you could catch the author of the piece performing it with West Northumberland's once-premier, much missed & fondly remembered, alt-folk combo Badger in the Bag (the Incredible String Band meets The Grumbleweeds with a healthy dose of Malicorne - & featuring the multi-instrumental talents of Whapweasel's Mike Coleman no less...) as part of their Green Man's Morris sequence.

Here it is in full:

^^
The Green Man's Song - by 'Dancing' Jim Wetherspoon   

Before you laid your tracks or daubed your houses;
or the drove the furrow hard across the wold,
I danced alone beneath the spreading branches,
and sang away the winter's clinging cold;
spelling sap to rise and the buds to quicken,
and lithe green shoots to spring from out the mould.

Wry masons and woodcarvers called me to them,
when spires were raised to match my tallest trees;
they set my leaf-mask leer on arch and lintel,
and grinning out from between the pimply knees,
of dozing friars, on bum-worn misericords
to mock the preacher's dry solemnities.

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...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: ClaireBear
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 06:21 PM

Oh, that is gorgeous. Thank you very much for posting it.

I wish I could have heard it circa 1981. Amazingly, although I'm from California and by rights should not have any idea whom you are speaking of, Malicorne and Whapweasel are both personal favorites of mine -- and less amazingly, I've known Robin Williamson of ISB since the '70s, when his "Merry Band" included two dear friends of mine.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Bert
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 06:57 PM

I liked the website so much that I went back and read all of the pdf file. Great work.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 29 Aug 07 - 07:18 PM

Re the question about the anachronistic camera symbol (which I really didn't expect to find in a discussion of the Green Man) - it's a symbol, and its meaning is recognisable for drivers of vehicles travelling at the relevant speeds, so it's fit for purpose. Ditto the steam engine symbol on railway level crossing signs.

And wld, you're right about the Kingsley Amis novel.

Kitty

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 04:02 AM

The speed camera digression was about the notion of symbolism in general and its role in cultural subversion in particular; as such it really ought to have been in parenthesis.

When I think of Kodak Pocket Juniors, the image is one of innocent sea-side fun with jolly chaps and happy flappers promenading along the front at (say) Lytham St. Anne's, having a spiffing time of it (cue soundtrack of 'Yes Sir, That's my Baby!' as recorded by Ace Brigode and his Fourteen Virginians on April 30th, 1925...). The Pocket Juniors (etc) were the mobile phone cameras of their day, 'kecking' and 'happy-slapping' notwithstanding one would hope, and whilst the photographic archive does bear testimony to a more 'glamorous' purpose, this is surely no less than one would expect given the legacy of photography from its earliest days.

I once knew an old lady who proudly displayed artful (and often 'au naturel') shots of herself as a young girl, taken by her beau with his Pocket Kodak Junior (which was also part of the display) as they roamed the hills and dales of Northumbria in his father's Bentley Vanden Plas in the heady days of the 1920s. No speed cameras back then of course - but such iconic innocence endures even in these most cynical of times, which is why I find it ever-so slightly disconcerting that the speed camera is symbolised in such a way; at least with the train the purpose remains the same.

Badger in Bag were some band that's for sure, though in Whapweasel something of their legacy endures; and 'Dancing' Jim is present on their CDs and website with his superlative graphic designs, ever evocative of the West Northumbrian wilds...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 05:49 AM

"Some of those medieval artisans obviously felt it would be wise to combine a time-honored symbol of their old religion with those of their newly adopted one. They were hedging their bets, apparently, for the Green Man is an ancient fertility symbol of pre-Christian England representing the marvelous death and rebirth of life that occurs annually in the cycle of the seasons. Speirs puts it this way: "Who is the Green Man? He is surely a descendant of the Vegetation or Nature god of almost universal and immemorial tradition (whatever his local name) whose death and resurrection are the myth-and-ritual counterpart of the annual death and rebirth of nature, in the East the dry and rainy seasons, in Europe winter and spring"."

This from "Gotta mention Folk-Legacy's Green Man logo, explained by Sandy Paton here." the post above suggest how these strange, almost totally unsubstansiated ideas are regenerated!

Best wishes

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Azizi
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 05:46 PM

Fwiw, if you asked most Americans who are aged thirty years and over what they thought "the green man" meant, I think they'd mention The Jolly Green Giant .

I'm curious if the people who thought up this ad concept based it on the folklore Green Man.

It's interesting how many commercial product names or ads used to promote those products have some folkloric association.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Aug 07 - 08:40 PM

Academic articles on such subjects can be pretty dull, but this one is fun.

Tom E. Sullenberger, "Ajax Meets the Jolly Green Giant," Jour. American Folklore, 1974, vol. 87, no, 343, pp. 53-65.

The Chicago-based agency that handles the Green Giant campaign, drew this comment from J. D. Femina, a competitor:

"Burnet is the agency that figured out a way to sell vegetables: they invented this green eunuch called the Jolly Green Giant. The giant stands for good quality, and he comes from the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant and the people look at this big green guy and figure, "Gee, it's got to be good stuff." And they Buy. Who knows what the Green Giant stands for? Maybe because he's so big he means quality... That big green son of a bitch, the Jolly Green Giant, is fantastic. He sells beans, corn, peas, everything. When you watch the Jolly Green Giant, you know it's fantasy and yet you buy the product. Do you know what other food advertising is? Most food advertising is like gone by the boards, you don't even see it. But the Jolly Green Giant, it's been automatic success when he's on that screen."

Whether "there exists a more than coincidental similarity between the Jolly Green Giant and the fertility figures compiled by Frazier* is a tempting conjecture, but what or how much to make of this apparent similarity is a knotty issue indeed."
*"The Golden Bough."

....."The related question of whether the Jolly Green Giant was knowingly produced by people who consciously set about to revive a latter day spirit of vegetation with friends and relatives back in the old country, whether he was born from the collective unconcious of the parties involved, or whether he was merely the accidental offspring of an agency "skull session" also invite imaginative surmise."

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Giant Folk Eyeball (inactive)
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 04:37 AM

Nice to see your Green Man writings and photos getting an appreciative new audience, Sean. However, I'd like to go a little bit off-topic and ask you to tell more about Badgerin the Bag, who sound very intriguing. Did they ever release any records?

Cheers

Nigel

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Billy Weeks
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 05:35 AM

Most 'green men' one sees in churches are fantastic, dreamlike, sometimes nightmarish inventions, but a minority have strikingly 'real' faces, suggesting they could be portraits. Of whom? The stone carvers themselves?

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Giant Folk Eyeball (inactive)
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 05:46 AM

"Of whom? The stone carvers themselves?"

Wouldn't fancy meeting a group of them on a dark night, then!

Nigel

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: GUEST,Jonny Sunshine
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 05:58 AM

I've always thought the Green Man on pedestrian crossings must be a vestigial remnant of an ancient symbol of protection. Mind you I also think that archaeologists will view Tesco and Nike as gods that us supersticious consumers worshipped (and who's to say they'll be wrong?)

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: GUEST,Vin2
Date: 31 Aug 07 - 06:11 PM

Roy Harper's last cd (i think) was entitled 'The Green Man' with a cracking song of the same name, check it out (as they say)..innit..

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 01 Sep 07 - 06:37 AM

Having fun at Fylde right now (despite a blocked ear, which at least saves me the bother of finger-insertion during singarounds...). Further to the Badger in the Bag legacy : do check out Kate Green's very splendid My Space page. Whilst the Badger's never made an album (though they came close in 1983) Kate's 'Unkindness of Ravens' CD is very much part of that family, along with Whapweasel & The Half-Remarkable Questionnaires (very occasional Incredible String Band tribute band with whom I once appeared myself supporting Dr Strangely Strange at the Be Glad ISB convention in Leeds circa 1995...).

Actual portraiture in the Green Man carvings is something naturally avoided by The Raglanite Orthodoxy, but it's certainly there. Also of interest are the various racial stereotypes one finds portrayed as 'Green Men' - like the 'Foliate Osama Bin Laden' in the cloisters of Chester Cathedral (see the Chester section of my Heads-with-Leaves page.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Bee
Date: 01 Sep 07 - 09:40 AM

Green Men in Canada: here's a page from my friend Colin's online stained glass portfolio (loads slow). I work with Colin on larger commisssions, so some of the foliage and almost all floral work is mine. Colin was deluged with requests for Green Man images for a while about ten-twelve years ago, when 'Celtic' and 'Druid' themes were something of a fad here.

The main image I've linked to was commissioned by an American tattoo parlour.

http://caileansglassworks.ca/gallery.htm

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: GUEST,Sam
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 09:34 PM

Those who say that the green man image didn't appear before the 18th century are wrong. Look up Rosslyn Chapel outside of Edinborough, Scotland, and you'll see images all over- and it was built in the 15th century

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 10:08 PM

Nobody has said that here. You are probably confusing the holiday 'Jack in the Green' tradition (see Georgina's post) with the unrelated 'foliate head' carvings that have appeared in churches since the Norman period. Nobody called them 'Green Men' until Lady Raglan in 1939 (Folk-Lore 50, 45-47), but ever since then the romantics have been imagining all sorts of extravagant things involving pagan fertility rites and the like.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 10:17 PM

Let us try a THIRD Time without HTML (clones don't vex me) much shorter this time.

THANK You Sedayne and Q!!!

Sedayne - obviously YOU are knowledgable on the subject. Could/would you post two "primary sources" for your fount of information.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

MC needs more of your kindred

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Sep 07 - 11:31 PM

Pretty potent stuff those stone carvers were drinking.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 02:25 AM

Yes you're right Malcolm, I'm confused as well. I've always imagined jack in the green and the green man to be out of the same drawer. GS Fraser and The Golden Bough and all that.

A woodland sprite. A personification of natures ability to regenerate, but with great destructive power and the will to do humankind mischief as part of that.

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: folk_radio_uk
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 03:19 AM

Re: Kate Greens'Unkindness of Ravens' mentioned by Sedayne. It's a great album. Kate recently sent me a copy for airplay and it sounds great. She has also, along with her daughter, Eleanor, been recording with Clive Palmer of the Incredible String Band for his new album.

Her myspace is here: http://www.myspace.com/kategreenmusic

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 03:27 AM

WLD - 'The Green Man' by Kingsley Amis was adapted by Michael Bradbury into a BBC TV 3 part drama way back in 1990. Oddly enough, I was transferring it to DVD only this weekend! It starred Albert Finney, Michael Hordern, Nikolas Grace (as a very "hip and trendy" vicar!), Michael Culver and Josie Lawrence amongst others. I'd forgotten how raunchy and creepy it was!

The comment about not being traceable further back than the 17th Century was made about Jacks in the Green (plural rules as for courts martial and mothers in law), rather than foliate heads/extruding foliage. There is more than enough evidence to show that the 3 commonest forms (foliate head, the face in the leaves and the face emitting foliage) can date back to near Roman times - I found one in Denmark last month on an early mediaeval font that looked like a Lewis chessman.

Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) wrote a damned good song about Jack in the Green...

Have you seen Jack-In-The-Green?
With his long tail hanging down.
He quietly sits under every tree
in the folds of his velvet gown.

He drinks from the empty acorn cup
the dew that dawn sweetly bestows.
And taps his cane upon the ground
signals the snowdrops it's time to grow.

It's no fun being Jack-In-The-Green
no place to dance, no time for song.
He wears the colours of the summer soldier
carries the green flag all the winter long.

Jack, do you never sleep
does the green still run deep in your heart?
Or will these changing times,
motorways, powerlines,
keep us apart?
Well, I don't think so
I saw some grass growing through the pavements today.

The rowan, the oak and the holly tree
are the charges left for you to groom.
Each blade of grass whispers Jack-In-The-Green.
Oh Jack, please help me through my winter's night.
And we are the berries on the holly tree.
Oh, the mistlethrush is coming.
Jack, put out the light.

LTS

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 04:14 AM

Very busy just now - meanwhile, Liz the Sqeauk, do you have any pictures of the Danish font GM?? If so, I'd love to see them...

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Crowdercref
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 05:13 AM

One origin of the 'green man' images of the high medieval period is medieval religious folklore. Several 'mystery play' texts, including the Cornish Ordinalia, contain the story of Seth and Adam, which is the first part of the Tale of the Rood. At the conclusion of Seth & Adam, Seth places on his dead father's tongue three seeds taken from the (stolen) fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Straight away the seeds flourished and Adams face was surrounded by shoots and leaves. With other foliate decotations that image was placed i the roofs of medieval churches and catedrals to remind us that the seed of knowledge of good and evil lie within us all.

This Christian tale, which is not in the Bible, was well known in those days. It has its origins in a pre-Christian Judaic tale that can be found in the Midrash and started in oral tradition.

Sedayne's remarks about Lady Raglan are spot on.

The above is the most credible origi I've come across.

Oll an gwella

Crowdercref

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 06:39 AM

Sedayne - if Flickr ever let me back into my account, I'll post one but if you PM me an email address I'll send you a copy.

If you want to visit yourself, the church is St Catherines in Hjoerring, just north of Aalborg.

LTS

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 06:41 AM

Crowderchef - I'd heard that tale long ago but with different names - and never connected it with the Green Man image before. Now, the penny has dropped with a resounding clang. Do you have any bibliography or MS references for the play or the story please?

LTS

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Marc Bernier
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 11:09 AM

All very interesting. I see repeated denials that this "green man" has any relation to pre christian religion. Although I know little of the pre-Christian history in the British Isles, or anywhere else for that matter, I always thought that these "green men" looked strikingly similar to the Wild Maa of the Vogel Gryph Festival in Basle, Switzerland. It has been explained to me that the Wild Maa was a pre-christian fertility symbol which became adopted as the symbol of one of KlienBasle's trade guilds in the 13th century, along with Vogel Gryph, and Leu. It had been my assumption that these grotesques found thru-out Europe actually were signatures by the mason which included the recognized symbol of his trade guild, which may or may not have come from pagan idolatry.

Any Comments
Marc Bernier

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 01:39 PM

"It has been explained to me that the Wild Maa was a pre-christian fertility symbol which became adopted as the symbol of one of KlienBasle's trade guilds in the 13th century, along with Vogel Gryph, and Leu."

All sounds sort of plausible but who explained it and what was the evidence?

Pardon my cheek but as Malcolm pointed out above:

"You are probably confusing the holiday 'Jack in the Green' tradition (see Georgina's post) with the unrelated 'foliate head' carvings that have appeared in churches since the Norman period. Nobody called them 'Green Men' until Lady Raglan in 1939 (Folk-Lore 50, 45-47), but ever since then the romantics have been imagining all sorts of extravagant things involving pagan fertility rites and the like."

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 02:01 PM

"but ever since then the romantics have been imagining all sorts of extravagant things involving pagan fertility rites and the like."

well I think the thing is: with The Black Death, The Plague, the Hundred years War - it would be nice to think they did have a BIT of fun, now and again.

I like to think of them running round the glades of Sherwood, in Lincoln green daubed in Wattle and woad, little green mini skirts and showing each other their nuts and waving round their hazel wands in an extravagant fashion. In fact it sounds like decent sort of night out.....

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 02:03 PM

This is the kind of forum I am not really allowed on! Have a good time drummer

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 02:33 PM

Er... can you actually daub yourself with wattle? It's either the branches you slap daub onto to make walls or the fleshy bit that hangs down from the head and neck of some birds.

Or it's a flower.

LTS

Subject: RE: Folklore: The Green Man
From: Art Thieme
Date: 10 Sep 07 - 05:57 PM

Is there a connection to "Sir Gawain And The Green Knight"---a favorite of mine.

I've always seen Woody Guthrie's song "EAST TEXAS RED" as an inadvertent (probably) more modern incarnation of "Gawain and the Green Knight."

At least, there is a similarity in the plot line. The encounter, a wrong done, a declaration of ultimate revenge with a year delay, the return a year later---the culminating retribution and death.

An aside: Gordon Bok did a very nice carving of The Green Man. He gave it to Sandy and Caroline Paton, and I photographed it at their place in Connecticut. Once again, it can be seen in my photos collection at
http://rudegnu.com/art_thieme.html

Art Thieme