The Green Man in Cumbria

Folklore, Annual, 1999 by John Satchell

With a few exceptions, the very numerous examples of Green Man carvings are benign, vigorous, cheerful and even noble (see Anderson 1990). Exceptions noted by Anderson include those on the west front at Chartres and Lincoln, where the human figures trapped by writhing vegetation suggest an analogy with the dangers of human sexuality.

Little attention appears to have been paid, however, to some carvings in Cumbria where the Green Man is portrayed as a figure of unmitigated evil. Sculpture of any sort is relatively sparse in Cumbrian churches, and Green Man carvings are few. There are examples at Crosby Garret, Cartmel and Gosforth, and an interesting set on the capitals of pillars in the nave of Carlisle Cathedral which Thirlie Grundy has interpreted as tree gods breathing life into the foliage issuing from their mouths (Grundy 1998).

There is, however, another example in the Treasury of Carlisle Cathedral where a former roof boss, dated to the early-fifteenth century, is displayed. It depicts a malevolent-looking Green Man with a squint (Figure 1). A squint, a drooping eyelid or any other malformation of the eyes or eyelids was regarded at one time as the "evil eye," an unquestionable proof of the possession of the witch-powers of "overlooking" or casting spells. According to tradition, the Lancashire witches all possessed a definite squint (see Wickwar n.d. [c. 1926], 41). Wickwar doubtless refers to Thomas Potts's Discoverie of Witches (1612), in which he describes one of the women executed for witchcraft as having "a preposterous mark in Nature ... her left eye standing lower than the other, the one looking downe, the other looking up" (Peel and Southern 1969, 59). Ethel Rudkin quotes a Lincolnshire saying: "She has a winkersome eye--said of a witch with a `power' in her eye" (Rudkin 1934, 249)--presumably a twitching eyelid. More generally, Hughes writes that: "The evil eye was merely the physical sign of bewitchment ... The squint was abnormal, and evil ..." (Hughes 1952, 137; see also Campion-Vincent, this volume). The intention in creating a squinting Green Man must surely have been to portray him as an ally of the devil.

Another example of the Green Man as fiend is at Preston Patrick, a few miles south of Kendal (Figure 2). Inside the east wall of the parish church is an empty niche, presumably once occupied by a saint, its base formed partly from a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century corbel. Carved on the corbel is a humanoid Green Man with prominent brow ridges and cheek bones, a "bruiser's" nose and thick lips. On one side, emerging from its tail is a fiend with its tongue extended (a symbol of lying). On the other side, a spray of foliage comes out of the mouth and on the end of it there is an owl with a cloven hoof (clearly another indication of the devil).

In a third example in Lowther church, a few miles south of Penrith, a Green Man on the capital of a twelfth-century pier has lost all semblance to humanity, and is depicted as a fiend with stubby horns and extended tongue, with a vine and foliage issuing from its mouth.

If the Green Man was a pagan fertility symbol, as is often suggested--the old pagan forest god of regeneration and renewal accommodated by the Christian church and reinterpreted as a symbol of resurrection--perhaps we should conclude that, in this part of Britain, paganism was too firmly entrenched for Christianity to permit much accommodation with its symbols and motifs.

Comment from Green Man specialists would be welcome.

Birds Park Cottage, Kendal (Correspondents please reply care of the Editor of Folklore)

References Cited

Anderson, W. Green Man. London and San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1990.

Hughes, P. Witchcraft. London, Toronto and New York: Longmans, Green, 1952.

Peel, E. and P. Southern. The Trials of the Lancashire Witches. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1969.

Rudkin, Ethel H. "Lincolnshire Folklore: Witches and Devils." Folk-Lore 45 (1934):249-67.

Wickwar, J.W. Witchcraft and the Black Art. London: Herbert Jenkins, n.d. [1926?].