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Abstract
As has been made clear by recent inquiries in FLS News (Spittal 1996; Wylie 1966) and the republication of Kathleen Basford's 1978 book The Green Man (1996), there is a great deal of interest in the enigmatic "Green Man," that foliate head which appears so frequently among medieval church carvings. The term itself came into general usage following Lady Raglan's 1939 article in Folklore, "The 'Green Man' in Church Architecture," but examination of her original work reveals that her choice of the term "Green Man" was, on her own evidence, based more upon inspiration than fact. As a means of beginning an inquiry into the nature and meaning of the phenomenon, the present article is an investigation into the true name of the Green Man.
What was the name of the green man? In her seminal article in Folklore, Lady Raglan first drew general attention to the ubiquitous renderings of foliate heads in medieval church architecture, usually done in oak leaves but often ivy, an iconic motif she felicitously termed the "Green Man" (Raglan 1939).1 The term caught on and has since been the standard descriptor for a phenomenon which spans Europe and extends back to the Romans (Basford 1978; Anderson 1990). But by what name did people refer to this entity back then? When we call it the "Green Man," do we impose a set of images and connotations which are ours rather than theirs?
Lady Raglan herself described the naming of the "Green Man" as an intuitive leap:
It is now about eight years ago since my attention was first drawn by the Revd. J. Griffith, then vicar of Llangwm, in Monmouthshire, and himself a folklorist, to a curious carving. It is a man's face, with oak leaves growing from the mouth and ears, and completely encircling the head. Mr. Griffith suggested that it was intended to symbolise the spirit of inspiration, but it seemed to me certain that it was a man and not a spirit, and moreover that it was a "Green Man." So I named it, and the evidence that I have collected to support this title is the reason for this paper (Raglan 1939, 45).
However, as is generally true of intuitions, she did not conjure...