In the last entry in our series on the Green Man, we look at this figure from folklore as people encounter it in the modern world, including its appearances in art, music, performance, and spiritual practice. We especially look at enactments of the Green Man as they occur in the folk revival, renaissance faires, and faerie festivals. Following other scholars, we suggest that the Green Man in modern contexts often suggests creative resistance to environmental destruction, the modern, and the mundane. The post includes many photos of Green Man enactments and artworks.
This post is part of an occasional series about the Green Man, a figure from European folklore. In this post we approach the Green Man through the lens of vernacular religion, suggesting that in the Middle Ages he was an element of vernacular Christianity. We suggest the folk saint as a frame of reference for understanding the Green Man. This allows us to understand how a figure rooted in paganism, which once appeared on pagan temples, could become, for medieval Christians, a focal point of religious ideals.
In this sixth post about the Green Man, a figure of British and European folklore, we suggest the figure, while it had roots in pagan belief and iconography, had by the Middle Ages become a Christian image. In this post we look at pagan antecedents, including the Roman god Silvanus and foliate heads found on Roman temples. We also carefully examine the 1939 statements of folklorist Lady Raglan concerning the Green Man's status as an old pagan image with a new meaning in its Christian context.
This is an entry in our occasional series on the Green Man, a figure from traditional folk culture. Among the traditional meanings shared by the figures of the Foliate Head and the Wild Man or Green Man seems to have been that humanity, like vegetation, must follow and adapt to the changing seasons. This traditional meaning could well have given rise to a connection between the Green Man and calendar customs, which goes back to some of the earliest appearances of the figure. In this post we’ll look more closely at the Green Man as an element of seasonal celebration.
For many years, people have drawn connections among several figures in traditional art: the traditional English Green Man (a wild man clad in leaves who was part of pageants from the mid-sixteenth century); the drawings and carvings of faces covered in leaves (sometimes also called Green Men but previously known as the Foliate Head); the Jack-in-the-Green of Mayday celebrations; the similar figure known as the Garland; and the popular folk hero Robin Hood. This post looks at the history of these connections, from the late Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, illustrated with pictures of the Foliate Head and Jack-in-the-Green.
In this post about the Green Man, a figure from traditional folk culture, we look at connections between the Wild Man figure known as a Green Man in sixteenth-century England and the Foliate Head, a carved image of a face surrounded by or disgorging leaves. We demonstrate that this connection was made by artists in the Middle Ages and Renaissance before it was suggested by scholars.
