The name of the Green Man

Folklore, Annual, 1997 by Brandon S. Centerwall

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 [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 6 OMITTED]. 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.

These three portrayals of the combatant [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURES 4, 5 AND 6 OMITTED] capture the evolution of the figure from foliate head to pageant Green Man, entities that otherwise bear little physical resemblance to one another. In the earliest portrayals of the foliate head, the player's goal was to replicate it as represented in church carvings. As shown in Figure 6, this entailed clenching branches of foliage in his teeth, the rest of the costume being conventional since it did not contribute to the mimetic effect. As can be imagined, this role would have been difficult to maintain with any comfort. In addition, the foliage precluded the player from having any speaking lines.

Given these considerations, the natural course of evolution was to shift the burden of symbolic representation away from branches clamped in jaws to clothing, body coverings and other emblems. The German engraving shows the process in transition: the combatant wears green, foliate clothing but continues to display the foliate head, conveniently emblazoned upon his shield. In Figure 4 the transition is complete: the imagery of the foliate head has been dispensed with and the pageant Green Men are adequately defined by their leaf-covered bodies.

The change in visual representation was accompanied by a change in meaning. Whatever the original significance of the Combatant Green Man [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 6 OMITTED], he was clearly not a Wild Man nor even related. The tailored clothing, the sword, the buckler, the styled hair, all speak decisively against any such interpretation. Over the centuries, however, as the representation of the Green Man shifted from foliate head to foliate body, the portrayed entity came to be increasingly conceptualised as similar to the Wild Man. In the German engraving, the Combatant Green Man is placed within a typical Wild Man tableau, wielding a club to defend his naked mate and child from the incursions of a lion.

The earliest representation I have encountered of the leaf-covered Green man is a German engraving by the Master of the Housebook, c. 1465, in which he appears as half of a matched pair of engravings [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 7 OMITTED], the other being a representation of a Wild Woman.(6) Note the bare knee, permitting the costume to flex comfortably at the joint. That both engravings are by a single artist permits us the unusual opportunity to compare and contrast the Wild and the Green as they were once conceived by a single mind. They are not the same. The stag was an emblem of brute lust and the Wild Woman riding the stag is the embodiment of uncontrolled sexuality and its hairy consequences. The unicorn was also an emblem of erotic passion, but of erotic passion tamed by right behaviour as exemplified by the virgin who is traditionally the only one who can capture the unicorn. The Green Man riding the unicorn wears the crown of leaves customarily worn by young men and women of that time who were engaged to be married. Thus, in contrast to the Wild Woman, the Green Man is the embodiment of a disciplined erotic passion. Whatever else the Green Man may have meant to the Master of the Housebook, he was envisaged as occupying a higher mental and spiritual place than the Wild Man.