Any info about the green man?

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: GUEST,glueman
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 02:34 AM

Green men, Jack-in-the-Green, Wildmen have a history which is summed up by Sir Gawain's adversary: a magical figure, cosmic joker, riddler. He has something in common with Mediterranean quizzical myths and, purely imho, representations of Jesus from the gospels.

I think foliate heads are a more immediate figure, possibly Liz's Seth and the Beans that have fallen from common knowledge, on the basis that diverse church builders are unlikely to popularise paganism (or whatever the contemporary equivalent was) and Devils are shown differently.
There is a tradition of metaphorical heads in the medieval period showing toothache, migraine, lust, plenty, etc., which have no bearing on Rome's teaching and may be have local significance but no dominant transferable motif other than the foliate heads.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 02:31 AM

Which comes from a link provided by Sean in the other thread:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_v108/ai_20438232?tag=artBody;col1


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2386/is_v108/ai_20438232?tag=artBody;col1

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 02:28 AM

Sory, I should have given my source:

The name of the Green Man
Folklore, Annual, 1997 by Brandon S. Centerwall

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 02:25 AM

OK, I have read:

The name of the Green Man
by Brandon S. Centerwall

and he seems to argue that their is enough evidence to connect the foliate heads with the Green Man of plays and pageants. I do not have the academic background to judge how sound this conclusion is.

Since their are so many foliate heads in churches it is tempting to conclude that some foliate heads are bound, by chance, to look like something or other.

If the foliate heads came out of the churches and into the plays what does it suggest? Anything or nothing?

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 13 Aug 08 - 01:40 AM

So, do I have this right? 'The Green Man' and the foliate heads were around at the same time around 15 / 16 C. they are not the same thing but they do look alike.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 07:56 PM

Insane Beard,

I'm not sure we actually disagree. I did not say that they were the same figure, and I certainly never said they were always the same figure, so foliate heads with bodies that aren't covered in leaves don't contradict what I'm saying. Obviously, one of the remarkable things about the "green man/wild man" figure is that he almost never has a foliate head--so obviously, even if there is some overlap between the figures, the overlap was the exception and not the rule.

I have pretty consistently spoken about a "connection" between "two traditions." This does not contradict your statement that "The Green Man / Wildman is a very different creature from the foliate head."

What I have said is that the connection was made in the middle ages between two traditions, that of the foliate head, and that of the combatant, wild, leaf-clad figure. The latter figure was certainly known as "green man" by 1578, and probably considerably earlier. So, there has been a web of connections among all the contemporary items we call "green man" that stretches back into the past, probably about as far as the name "Green Man" itself. These connections did not originate in 1939, or with neo-pagans, although they were repopularized on those two occasions.

Again: the two traditions are associated from an early date, and probably share some of the same meanings, but are not the same thing.

To go back to the symbol of the rabbit, I can offer the following analogy: rabbits and deer. In medieval iconography, they are often shown together. They share some meanings (speed, quarry to be hunted, cowardice). They do not share other meanings (Harts are symbols of love and of the "heart of the matter" (heart/hart). Rabbits are symbols of female sexuality (coney). So, these are two symbols that are associated from an early date, for pretty common-sense reasons (both are tasty woodland creatures), but they are not the same.

I think there are good, common-sense reasons to associate the green man and the foliate head (both are made up of human body parts and leaves), and I see evidence that they were in fact associated in the middle ages. I don't think that means they are the same thing.

This is different from Lady Raglan's claim, which was that they ARE the same thing. And it's also different from Centerwell's, which is that they both were CALLED "green man" in the middle ages.

Raglan's claim was over-generalized, a trait she shared with her whole era of romantic scholarship.

Centerwell's strikes me as overly speculative. We don't know what the "foliate head" was called in English in the Middle ages, and it doesn't make much difference to me, either way.

But what both Raglan and Centerwell seem to have realized is that there was a longstanding connection between these two different figures.

Does this clarify my position at all?

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 07:10 PM

The figure disgorging the greenery can be traced back to the Biblical story of Seth and the seeds - mentioned in the other Green Man thread that's knocking around here, so that at least is in place in a church (note - most of our cathedrals were built before 1534 so were all Catholic - til Henry VIII "invented" the Anglican church, so to call it 'Norwich Anglican Cathedral' when it was rebuilt between 1297 and 1430, is erroneous).

LTS

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 06:47 PM

But the point is that the connection between this figure (called "Green Man" by the 1570s and maybe before) and foliate heads (whose medieval name, if any, we do not know) was made in the middle ages, not in the 1930s.

I disagree. The Green Man / Wildman is a very different creature from the foliate head. Those few Foliate Heads shown with bodies, certainly aren't in any way wild or green. It is precisely the otherwise normal nature of the heads depicted as being foliate (both disgorging or otherwise) that makes them so compelling.

Norwich Cathedral, Cloister

Southwell Minster, Misericord

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 05:48 PM

Insane Beard:

Indeed, and as we've seen, by the 1600s "wild man" and "green man" were interchangeable terms, applied to the exact same figure. When this came to be the case we have no way of knowing. What the carver of what you call a "Wild Man" at Ripon called his creation, I suspect, is equally unknown, so we may choose to call it "wild man" or "green man." But the point is that the connection between this figure (called "Green Man" by the 1570s and maybe before) and foliate heads (whose medieval name, if any, we do not know) was made in the middle ages, not in the 1930s.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 05:28 PM

As Bill Clinton nearly said, it all depends what the meaning of 'the' is. There's 'the green man' as in 'the conventional figure of a wild man or man of the woods'. Then there's 'The Green Man', a singular personification of the natural world, who our forebears are thought to have actually believed in.

Am I right in thinking that whether the green man had any association with foliate heads is a separate question from whether The Green Man did?

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: akenaton
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 04:37 PM

I have always assumed that the "green man" represented the force or spirit of nature. Perhaps the leaved figure is in fact a representation of that force?
I first encountered a reference in the song, "Gartan mothers lullaby"

Where the "green man's thorn" (gorse or whin), "is wreathed in rings of fog"
There are other references to various Pagan spirits in the song.

I live in an area where in the very early morning the misty wreaths do walk among the whins all of which are decorated by cobwebs glistening with condensation......Ake

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 04:26 PM

Pip has it about right there.

I can try to clarify the Green Man a bit, but I recommend you either get a hard copy of the journal article:

The Name of the Green Man
Brandon S. Centerwall
Folklore, Vol. 108, (1997), pp. 25-33

Or, get yourself to a Library with a subscription to JSTOR and look up the article there. In either case, you'll get to see the pictures, which make it easier to visualize.

To a certain extent you're right that it's a moveable feast. The name "Green Man" has been applied to different figures over the years.

Here goes:

The term "Green Man" has been used since at least the middle 16th century to refer to a man, usually bearded, covered in leaves, and carrying weapons, who functions as part of ritual drama. The functions of the green man in this context seem to have been mock combat and the clearing of space (similar to the whiffer or whiffler and to the "roomer" of traditional mumming). There doesn't necessarily have to be a seasonal meaning, although many of the enactments at which green men performed were themselves annual events held at the same time each year, and it's relatively likely that they derive in some part from seasonal observances. Also, while we only have the name "Green Man" recorded from about 1578 in England, the figure of a hairy man covered in leaves was around long before that. We cannot confirm when he began to be called "green man."

A good visual representation of this kind of "Green Man" would be the so-called Wild Man Finial, which is one of a matched pair belonging to the Cloisters museum in New York.

In the early seventeenth century, we get the first appearance of the "green man and still," an emblem for various distilleries in England. Interestingly, most dictionaries of phrases get this entirely wrong, and claim that the "green man" of the "green man and still" is an herbalist or greengrocer, who provides the herbs made into liquors (such as the juniper for gin, etc.) This is clearly wrong if you look at the early emblem, and the early references to the emblem. The "Green Man" of the early emblem looks exactly like the green man of the pageants, or indeed the wild man finial I linked to above: a bearded man carrying a club and covered in leaves. I can't find a picture to link to but there is one in the article. An early reference to these Green Men in the distilling trade (1680?) says the following:

"They are called woudmen, or wildmen, thou' at thes day we in ye signe [trade] call them Green Men, couered with grene boues: and are used for singes by stiflers of strong watters ... and a fit emblem for those that use that intosticating licker which berefts them of their sennes"

(By the way, anyone who wants to argue that the connection between "The Wild Man," "The Wodewose" and "The Green Man" is a modern invention will be interested to see that it too goes back this far.)

Because the Green Man had become an emblem of liquor (in at least some people's minds because liquor made one wild), it also became associated with inns and pubs where one could drink liquor. Hence the "Green Man and Still" and finally "The Green Man" as traditional names for pubs and inns, still common in the 1930s when Raglan was writing. (The Green Man and Still was a well-known pub in Oxford Street, London, by the way.)

Once again, the direct connections that have been shown between "foliate heads" and "Combatant Green Men," (what I've been describing in this post), are threefold: the bench-end showing two combatant green men emerging from the ears of a foliate head (1534), an engraving showing a combatant green man whose shield is a foliate head (1450), and a combatant green man whose head is a foliate head (1308).

Does this help at all?

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 04:10 PM

Nerd, Les, Phil et al - lovely stuff - keep it coming...

Some 'green men' have been depicted in conjunction with foliate heads

Wild men I'd say...

Wild Man, Misericord, Ripon Cathedral

Disgorging Foliate Head (non-human? inverted!), Misericord, Ripon Cathedral

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 02:24 PM

Interesting Phil,

but those hards in churches and Jack in the Green are easy to identify, describe and so on. the Green Man does not seem to be. It seems to be a mobile feast

Cheers

Les

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 02:16 PM

The Usenet group alt.folklore.urban used to maintain a voluminous FAQ documenting or debunking the various bits of quasi-folkloric trivia that came through the group. The FAQ was (probably still is) in the form of one-line assertions prefixed 'T' and 'F' (plus some elaborations like 'U' for 'unknown' and 'Tb'/'Fb' for stories *believed* to be true or false but not proven). This kind of thing:

F. The songs in _The Wicker Man_ are all Ancient Traditional Music.
T. Smoe of the music is.

It's quite a good device for sorting out your thoughts on a subject.

Splitting the difference between IB and Nerd, I suggest:

F. The title 'green man' is a modern invention.
T. Figures dressed in green and/or in leaves have been called 'green men' for a very long time.
F. All foliate heads are representations of 'the Green Man'.
T. Some 'green men' have been depicted in conjunction with foliate heads, suggesting an association between the two.
Tb. The idea of a (singular) Green Man is a modern invention.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 12:00 PM

I have read these threads a number of ties and I think I have a reasonable grasp of the stone heads in churches - they are part of church stone work.

I have to say I have no real understanding of 'Green man'.Perhaps Nerd you could help with this point?

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 11:11 AM

Insane Beard,

It was Lady Raglan who first called the Ecclesiastical Foliate Heads after the Green Men / Man of folklore, pub names included - this amounts to a fairly significant coining, I'd say.

Sorry, but this is not what "coining" means. To apply an existing word or phrase to a similar but different referent is not the same thing as coining the term. It may seem pedantic to point his out, but I think the difference is significant here because to say Raglan "coined the term" suggests that human figures covered in leaves had never been called "green man" before 1931, eliminating the possibility that the phrase was part of medieval or renaissance consciousness. In fact, we now know that the phrase was certainly part of renaissance consciousness, and quite likely part of medieval consciousness too, and that it referred to a human figure covered in leaves. This in turn suggests that all those thousands of people who saw what you call (but they did not call) "ecclesiastical foliate heads," might very well have said, "hmmm...that's kind of like a green man."

As for the rest, I appreciate what you're saying, and absolutely agree that "profound afflicting horror" is sometimes represented in foliate heads. But not always. Traditional symbols, especially ones that persist over time, are always polysemic. Artists are able to express many ideas using variations on traditional symbols.

It's sort of like asking what rabbits meant in the middle ages. Did they mean fertility? Yes. Rampant and perhaps sinful sexuality? Yes. Timidity and cowardice? Yes. Speed? Yes. Succulence and good eating? certainly.

Fecundity or fertility, I would say, is always part of the meaning of the foliate head. Sometimes, this fecundity is seen as sinful, evil, and a prelude to suffering. Certainly the sexual aspects of fecundity were strongly regulated by the church, so it makes sense that this attitude would be expressed there.

But it would be a mistake to assume that the Church was entirely against fecundity, and an even bigger mistake to assume that every stonecarver who ever carved a grotesque or a roof-boss was told by an ecclesiastical authority precisely what to carve and how.

Because churches did not always object to fecundity, and because carvers often put their own spin on things anyway, there are in fact foliate heads that look quite jolly. There are also ones that look threatening, ones that look fierce, and ones that look silly.

So, foliate heads. Fertility? Yes. Sin? Yes. Suffering? yes. Nature? Yes. Fearsome strength and power? Yes.

As to whether stonecarving in churches is folklore...nowadays it is certainly treated as such, and the film on cathedral stonecarvers that won the Oscar for documentary short in 1985 was directed by a folklorist. So whether this is a "non-folklore setting" is open to debate.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 07:57 AM

Les, you may confidently declare that the "small collection of green men" you speak of are of "relatively recent origin," but in fact you don't know when they originated, because nobody knows. What we do know is that they were well-enough known by 1578 that one could instruct a company of players simply to "dress like green men" and they would know what to do.

You may add a hundred exclamation points after "Germany," but in so doing you reveal only your own parochialism. Neither the foliate head nor the combatant green man are native English traditions; both seem to be pan-European. Therefore, evidence about the origin and development of both the foliate head and the combatant Green Man tradition, and of connections between those traditions, may be (indeed must be) legitimately looked for outside of England.

Finally, you may pooh-pooh all this evidence as completely inconsequential and unworthy of consideration. In so doing you claim that you know more than the editors of the journal Folklore, who thought the article revealed enough new evidence to be worthy of publication. I know the editors of Folklore, and have published a paper there myself. They and their reviewers are pretty tough.

Finally, I've read the paper, and I find the evidence interesting myself. I don't know if you've bothered to read it or not. If so, of course you may disagree. But I find the tone of "is that it?" rather combative, as though you have something invested in the belief that there is no connection between these traditions.

I will repeat my position from above, and you can see if you really find it all that objectionable:

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.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 07:26 AM

(Still on holiday, but briefly...)

It was Lady Raglan who first called the Ecclesiastical Foliate Heads after the Green Men / Man of folklore, pub names included - this amounts to a fairly significant coining, I'd say. Not only that, but it introduces a folklorist ideology into a non-folkloric setting. Further, the ideologies of folklorists are not folklore, but a secondary interpretative and entirely academic layer which itself gives rise to a tertiary quasi-religious (wiccan / pagan) layer, which is itself entirely bogus. It is the ideas of this tertiary layer that have coloured (green) our perceptions of The Green Man in every sense - linking the folklore, pub names & Ecclesiastical Foliate Heads to represent a single (and entirely modern) notion of Greenness=Goodness, even to the point where, with a few notable exceptions, Anglican churches & cathedrals heartily promote & encourage a pagan / folkloric / green-as-good interpretation of their Foliate Heads, rather than admit that they are part of the fabric of pre-Reformation Roman Catholic culture and theology (and post-Reformation too if their proliferation in the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Norwich is anything to go by!).

With that idea of Greenness=Goodness in mind, have a look at the examples below:

Salle, Norfolk

Carlise Cathedral

Lincoln Cathedral

Norwich Anglican Cathedral

Chester Cathedral (Davros)

Maybe it's time we got rid of this daft notion of tree worship and fecundity. In the Ecclesiastical Foliate Heads we are not dealing with jolly Jacks-in-the-Green, rather images of a profound afflicting horror of nature at its most invasive & virulent. It is this, btw, that signifies the relationship the events of 1534 to the bench ends at Crowcombe which would certainly appear to be a bitterly Catholic reaction to the circumstances surrounding The Act of Supremacy, rather than some soppy depiction of carnival figures which makes no sense whatsoever in any sort of Ecclesiastical context. It's an interesting article though, which is why I drew attention to it; all articles & books on the so-called Green Man are interesting, often telling us more about the authors than they do about the subject in hand.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 04:52 AM

Nerd,

we have, I guess, thousands of churches with a vast collection of foliate heads and indescribable amounts of other features. We have a small collection of 'Green Men' of relatively recent origin.

What connects them? One feature from the end of a pew, something in Germany!!!!!!!!!!!!! and another feature that looks almost nothing like a 'green Man. Is that it?

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 12 Aug 08 - 04:11 AM

There is definately a phrase that mentions 'giants of wicker' but I'm damned if I can find it right now... I may have to open a few boxfiles here and find the hard copy.

LTS

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Peg
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 09:49 PM

XTC also does a song about the Green Man. There are a surprising number of songs about it/him. I wrote a song called "Man in Green."

I've seen the green man carvings in Norwich's cathedrals; beautiful.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 06:16 PM

Pip Radish, you missed my post of "09 Aug 08 - 07:08 PM." In it, I pointed out three points of connection, not one.

1) 1308, Winchester Catherdal: a figure who has both a foliate head and a sword and shield, and is thus both a foliate head and a combatant green man, is carved on a choir stall. See this not so good picture.

2) ca. 1450: a combatant green man on a German engraving carries a shield in the shape of a foliate head. I have seen this image but can't provide it (it's in the original journal article, but not the freely available online version).

3) 1534: Bench-end (link is above).

That gives you a two-hundred-twenty-odd year span.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 06:01 PM

Liz, the accounts featuring Suetonius Paulinus are from Tacitus's Annals. They are not first-hand, but second and third-hand: Tacitus had them from his father-in-law Agricola, who fought with Suetonius and was present at some but not all of the events.

I am not familiar with any passage from the Annals that features wicker men. You're probably thinking of the famous passage about Suetonius's invasion of Anglesey, in which the Britons used fires, torches, and spooky tactics, but no wicker men.

Tacitus does say that Suetonius's men found altars "slaked with human entrails," though!

Suetonius also put down Boudicca's revolt. He does say of the Britons: "it was not on making prisoners and selling them, or on any of the barter of war, that the enemy was bent, but on slaughter, on the gibbet, the fire and the cross." Again, no wicker men are mentioned in that part of the Annals (Book XIV).

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Phil Edwards
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 05:45 PM

For hundreds of years, combatant figures with clubs have been connected to foliate heads.

I'm all in favour of taking new research seriously, but I missed the part where 'two bench ends' turned into 'hundreds of years'.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 04:17 PM

Nerd - the author was Seutonius Paulinus as far as I can find... AD43 invasion.

LTS

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 04:14 PM

I'm on a sort of holiday right now (Rachel & I celebrating our 5th Wedding Anniversary!!), so I'll get back regarding the Crowcombe bench ends in a day or two. Meanwhile, here's a one to ponder:

A Foliate Moor (?), Chester Cathedral (I call this the Foliate Osama! Even had him featured in The Fortean Times...)

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 03:49 PM

They look like people but they don't look much like Green Men of the 18 /19C that appear as sweeps or whatever

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 03:37 PM

Actually, they look exactly like green men. Their lower halves, in fact, appear to be enshrouded in leaves, so that they emerge from horns filled with foliage. Their upper halves look like hairy men with beards, carrying a club in one hand and a shield in the other. This is what combatant Green Men look like when carved out of wood and left unpainted.

For comparison, see the finial here , from just the same period. The legs emerge from greenery, and the figure looks like a hairy man with a club and shield. The green enamel has places where his elbow and knee show through the greenery, making clear that he is attired in green moss or leaves. Although the Cloisters has chosen to identify this as a "Wild Man" rather than a "Green Man," there was of course no such name on the object itself. It looks precisely like the pageant figure known as a "Green Man" in England.

Now imagine what it would look like if it weren't painted green, and you get more or less our bench-end figures. In fact, the bench-end figures have greener attributes than the very green finial figure, to make up for the lack of paint: eg, leaves grow up from their lower midriffs and down from their heads, meeting in the middle, Their shields resemble flowers, etc.

(Hmmm, don't they look like medieval folkies, though?)

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 02:57 PM

Those combatant figures on the bench ends look nothing like Greenmen, isn't that a bit of a problem?

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 01:36 PM

Les and Ruth, my point is that the last person who actually did any research that was peer reviewed for a scholarly journal, came to the conclusion that there IS a connection. And this was in a scholarly environment that was hostile to the idea. I think it should be taken fairly seriously.

The folks who post on Mudcat take a wide range of approaches, from popular to scholarly, and having previous threads come to a particular conclusion is no guarantee that that conclusion is right. Mudcat is basically like Wikipedia: anyone can have a say, and the more popular idea can often win out even if it's not supported by the evidence. There's a place for that, but I will usually take a peer-reviewed journal article more seriously than a Mudcat thread.

One thing that tends to happen is that people make up their minds about something at a certain point, and if further scholarly research comes out, they more or less ignore it. I think that's been the case with this article. Furthermore, in the best of instances, most scholarly articles take decades before becoming part of popular awareness. The article we're discussing is only about 10 years old, and therefore most people are working in the previous scholarly atmosphere, which was very hostile to Lady Raglan.

Case in point: early on in this thread, we had the idea expressed that Lady Raglan had "coined" the term Green Man, which you will find stated with much authority on Wikipedia as well. As I pointed out, it is not true. In 1578, a stage direction in a play calls for "Two men, apparrelled lyke greene men at the Mayors feast, with clubbes of fyre worke." The term thus goes back hundreds of years before Lady Raglan's birth, in English and other Germanic languages, and refers to a traditional character in pageantry and drama (the Mayor's Feast included a pageant). In 1578, the term was considered well enough known that all one had to do was direct that actors be "dressed like Green Men," and the company would know what to do.

The next question is when the term became associated with foliate heads, and the answer is "we don't know." Sadly, people in previous centuries just didn't mention foliate heads much in English, so we don't have any English name for them that is particularly old. The term "foliate head" is a translation of the French term "tete feuille," not a native name for this phenomenon. (Don't know how to make accents on Mudcat, sorry!)

However, we do know there is an association between the character that was called "Green Man" and foliate heads. The connection is not necessarily one of origin; all we can prove for sure is an association in the minds of some people. Nevertheless, this association is far older than the historians who wish to discredit Lady Raglan give it credit for--14th Century perhaps, 15th with more certainty, 16th without doubt.

So, for hundreds of years, the term "Green Man" has been connected to combatant figures with clubs. For hundreds of years, combatant figures with clubs have been connected to foliate heads. I haven't "decided" there is such a connection, it's been shown by the evidence.

Because of all this, I think Les's "nothing really to do with it" and Ruth's "indeedio" show a breezy lack of concern for the evidence that's been presented--it's just a knee-jerk response, "we've talked about this before." Perhaps, but the last time we talked about it, the discussion ENDED with Insane Beard bringing up this article, and no one seems to have read or addressed it in the further discussion, except me and Insane Beard. I await his response to my last, which I suspect will be interesting and well-informed!

Liz: I believe it was only Caesar who attested to the "wicker man," and that no one in antiquity ever said they saw it firsthand. I'd be happy to have my memory proven faulty, if you can find the reference you remember. You are correct that the putative "wicker man" has nothing to do with "Green Man" figures. It was not green, for one thing, and there is a very good reason it would be made out of twigs that is more practical than symbolic: it had to catch fire.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 04:46 AM

Indeed. I don't think anything is the case just because I say it, but this is a subject which has been discussed in detail in the past by people who have done a fair old bit of scholarly research, and it seems a bit silly to have to go over the arguments again (although that is a favourite Mudcat sport).

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 04:21 AM

If you have decided that their must be a connection between what ever you think the 'Green Man' is and foliate heads in churches then eventually you may find some evidence.

But a scholarly search of a wide range of evidence seems to show the two to be different phenomena and I think that's what previous threads have concluded.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 02:47 AM

Well it's mentioned in the writings of one of his Generals then... I recall a definate mention of wicker men burning on the cliffs. I'll try and dig out the reference but I don't want to go off at a tangent here. The Wicker Man (either in fact or film) has nothing to do with the foliate head or 'green man' that we're discussing here, except perhaps, as part of a fertility ritual. I would put forward the supposition that they became the more acceptable face of fertility, rather than toasting the local farm animals and the odd roving constable.

LTS

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:27 AM

Liz...it was Julius Caesar who mentioned the "effigies of twigs" with living men inside, which led to the idea of a "wicker man." Caesar was governor of Gaul from 58-50 BC, but he never claims to have witnessed such a wicker man himself....

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:19 AM

Les and Ruth...You are only wasting your time if you assume everyone will agree with you merely because you say it. The latest research at least suggests there may be a connection. It was InsaneBeard, not me, who linked to the article in question, which was published in the oldest and most prestigious folklore journal in the world.

InsaneBeard: I presume you're speaking of Henry VIII's ecclesiastical reforms, certainly the biggest change to hit England in 1534. Why would these naturally lead to foliate heads connected to combatants? (BTW, you can see the bench-end here)

Do you care to elaborate? And what of the other two connections between foliate heads and combatant green men before Lady Raglan?

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 06:01 PM

The wicker man was mentioned by Claudius (or was it another Caesar?) when the Romans invaded Britain in the early first century (possibly AD43?). It has nothing to do with green men unless there is a link in fertility festivals and rites. Even that is dubious and probably modern in origin (where modern is 20th Century).

LTS

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 04:01 PM

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

A consideration of the Crowcombe bench end carvings in their historical context reveals a rather startling syncronicity completely overlooked by the author of the article, and one which certainly overshadows the somewhat tenuous notions expressed therein. 1534 - there's the key!

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 03:49 PM

who - Sam Pirt?

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Helen Jocys
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 03:28 PM

I've just written a poem about him.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 02:26 PM

True enough Ruth, the heads and other things in churches are truly amazing - Sean /Insane Beard has lots of photos of them on his MySpace well worth a look.

Cheers

L in C

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 01:56 PM

Hi, Sam! Good to see you here.
I know a song about the Green Man that my friend Kayti Gilbert wrote; I'd have to dig it out and send it to you somehow. My email addy is animaterra321(at)gmail.com if you want to remind me to get it for you!

Allison

PS- I can't wait to tell you all about my new PA!

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Ruth Archer
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 01:27 PM

Les:

Indeedio. It's a topic which has been covered pretty comprehensively here.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 01:23 PM

I know I am wasting my time here but all those amazing heads in churches have nothing really to do with what ever the Green Man is. That's it really

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: GUEST,Sam Pirt
Date: 10 Aug 08 - 01:20 PM

Excellent I knew you would come up with some answers.

If I am right in thinking then the 'green man' has existed for many years but only became known as the 'green man' upon Lady Raglan giving it this title.
What did this face represent before this time? was it the spirit of the forest?
What was the significance of the carving on the churches?

Nerd - the whiffers you refer to are these related to the wickerman or was that born out of a film and taken on to become a festival due to its cult popularity?

Does anybody know any sort verses about the green man? and what role it had?

Thanks a lot, it seems to have opened up more questions rather than answered them but thankyou all.

Cheers, Sam

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Nerd
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 07:08 PM

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.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Jack Blandiver
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 06:22 PM

As has been discussed above, The Green Man has nothing to do the Foliate Head carvings as found in mediaeval churches, and Lady Raglan's somewhat Frazerian approach to the pagan origins of such folklore further compounds such associations, especially as a lot of pubs called The Green Man now sport stylised Foliate Heads on their signs.

The Green Man as we understand the concept today is essentially a modern construct (in academia no older than 1939, in popular culture circa 1970) based on the above confusions and consequent pagan propagandising.

For more see thread http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=104331

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 06:04 PM

I've seen folk tales refer to any man who lived in the woods as a 'Green Man', particularly the 'bad man gets lost in the forest, has to wear leaves, turns into a good man with deeply moral story' variety.

Gawain fought a Green Knight who is always portrayed as being actually green, rather than foliate. This is probably where the confusion starts.

LTS

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: My guru always said
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 05:17 PM

The Green man song I generally sing is 'When the Green Man Walks the Forest' by Graeme Miles (Martyn Wyndham-Read has recorded it), but I also sing a harmony to John Thompson's 'Green Man' song. Maybe one day I'll get to sing Anne Reader's 'Sing to Welcome back the Green Man' too, it's wonderful, but Anne sings it so well!! They're all fabulous songs and of course whatever belief a person holds, Mother Nature has us all in her hands.

Subject: RE: Any info about the green man?
From: greg stephens
Date: 09 Aug 08 - 05:09 PM

Obviously plenty of contemporary song-writers have tried to remedy the deficiency, but there are no folksongs in the British tradition that seem to shed any light on this subject, so far as anyone has been able to discover. It would be great if someone could could come up with anything, however tewnuous, to suggest otherwise. The poem Gawain and the Green Knight is obviously of relevance to any discussion of the subject.