The Green Man

by Kathleen Basford

  each side of it, a Masque Feuillu one with vines coming out of the mouth, and other with oak. The oak and vine leaves are carved realistically; not only are the leaves accurately portrayed but the natural habit of growth, the leaf mosaic the pattern formed by the leaves as each turns on its stem to find a place in the light has also been observed. Such careful and sensitive observation of nature is a remarkable innovation of thirteenth century sculpture.

  Drawing of Têtes de Feuilles after Villard de Honnecourt, 1235.

  The Tête de Feuilles was often chosen, as an alternative to pure foliage, to fill the space between or at the sides of arches. The two leaf masks used as "space fillers" on the inner west wall of Reims cathedral are very similar to the Tête de Feuilles in the form of a single leaf drawn by Villard de Honnecourt. A most elegant example of the Tête de Feuilles used as the filling in a spandrel is seen in the choir screen of Poitiers cathedral, and another on the shrine of Saint Étienne, in the Abbey church at Aubazine (Corrèze). But the Tête de Feuilles was used in many other ways: it could be developed as a three-dimensional design, as on a corbel in Auxerre cathedral. This lovely carving shows a head of leaves disturbed by the wind (and perhaps also by some uneasy, restless spirit).

  The Masque Feuillu was used as the source or centre of a spreading, or extended scheme of

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  leaf decoration: the luxurious vines wreathed round capitals in the chancel of Notre Dame, Sémuren-Auxios and the leafy tendrils spiralling on the roof bosses in the Chapter House of Noyon cathedral all rise out the mouths of human heads. (The heads on the roof bosses at Noyon are among the first to look like teasing Jack in the Greens). The demon nature of the motif was not, however, forgotten. A horned leaf demon appears in the corner of the lintel of the portal of Saint-Urbain in Troyes, and is placed immediately beneath a dramatic representation of the Jaws of Hell. But the demonic character is never exaggerated. The foliate heads of the thirteenth century do not stick their tongues out nor expose fierce animal teeth as though about to eat us. The sinister side of their nature is usually expressed with subtlety. It is developed on the basis of the iconography of the antique leaf masks the brooding frown, the glowering expression, and the look of dark foreboding.

  Evidence for the use of the motif in secular ornament in the thirteenth century is scanty. It was engraved on a gold and enamel harness ornament, probably made in Limoges and now in the Cluny Museum in Paris. The Tête de Feuilles on this superb "horse-brass" has leafy eyebrows, moustache and whiskers, and almost squinting eyes.

  Among the earliest of the thirteenth century leaf masks in Germany are the six heads interlaced with acanthus leaves in the border framing the late Romanesque tympanum over the market portal of Mainz cathedral, which dates from 1200 to 1215. The motif is used here in just the same way as in the previous century, but is not represented as a "grotesque". These leaf masks have been recognised as deriving directly from a Roman-provincial monument. 51 Likewise the mask (or masks?) on a capital of the forecourt portal of Maria Laach Abbey (circa 1230). Carved on two adjacent blocks of stone, two leaf masks almost, but not quite in profile, confront each other to become as one, in full face view.

  A quite different type of leaf mask appears on a corbel in the church of St Peter and St Alexander in Aschaffenburg. It was carved in 1220 by the master mason Fingerhaut. Leaves grow on the forehead and on the chin and other leaves, probably vine, come out of the mouth. This face has a little fold or wrinkle of flesh above the bridge of the nose. This feature, also shown in two of Villard de Honnecourt's drawings, is a character "inherited" from antique prototypes (it is seen, for example, in the Okeanos-satyr masks on the Mudanya capital).

  Faces formed wholly of leaves appear in German sculpture during the third decade of the century. Splendid examples of this extreme form of the motif are found in the Marienkirche in Gelnhausen and in Bamberg cathedral.

  The Bamberg leaf mask is carved on one side of the console under the statue of the mounted Knight, known as The Rider. It has been said of this carving: "The foliage comes to life as a huge acanthus leaf is transformed into the features of a man .... The noble expression of the face, the mastery of form and grandeur bring it into relationship with the Knight whose character it reflects",52 yet it is not an exact reflection of the Holy Knight, but rather his dark counterpart. All the darkness and power and mystery of a vast forest seem concentrated in this majestic head of leaves. The Bamberg leaf mask is a Prince of Darkness.

  The magnificent sculpture, dated 1237, is the work of the Bamberg Master. The leaf mask the most beautiful foliate head of the thirteenth century, and perhaps of all time is wholly German in character. The two oak leaf masks on the portal of Kloster Ebrach are, on the other hand, much closer to the French style and are, in fact very similar to the faces changing into leaves drawn by Villard de Honnecourt. Each is used as a substitute for pure foliage, one on the keystone of the arch and the other on one of the three bosses on the inner arches. It is, perhaps, because the motif was a variant form of leaf ornament that it was acceptable on the doorway of this Cistercian church as early as the thirteenth century. The discreet use of the leaf ornament was permitted at this time even in the most austere buildings.

  The face on the boss is extremely emaciated and seems to have been sucked dry by the greedy

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  leaves growing on it. Some of the leaves have oak galls on them an interesting and possibly significant detail. It is difficult to believe that this ornament was entirely devoid of meaning. The expression suggests bitter disillusionment: so might a sinner, near to death, reflect on his wasted life.

  "So here's a thought your teeth should clench

  'All greenness comes to withering'".

  13th century English verse. 53

  There is no hint of withering in the oak leaf that is placed, like a flower, among the prolific vines on the tympanum above the sacristy door in the Liebfrauenkirche in Friedburg. This late thirteenth century carving (dated circa 1290) further illustrates the ornamental value of the motif. The touch of fantasy among the otherwise naturalistic plant forms enhances the decorative quality of the whole design.

  The foliate heads in English sculpture of the mid-thirteenth century are quite unlike any of the contemporary French or German types. The foliage is predominantly "stiff-leaf" (the examples at Much Marcle, Herefordshire, are dated 1260). Some have bizarre characteristics, for example, a mouth in the form of an infinity symbol (or a figure of eight). This weirdly exaggerated feature is seen in foliate heads in Ripon Cathedral and Dorchester Abbey. The head at Dorchester (Oxfordshire) has vines coming from each side of the huge mouth, and the twisted tendrils curve over the brow to frame the face, and although they are represented as growing upward from the stems they nevertheless simulate "hair", growing down from a central parting on the head: this detail can be visualised in two ways.

  It is not until the late thirteenth century that naturalistic carving of native wild plants hawthorn, hops, buttercup, maple, mugwort, bryony and ivy as well as oak appear in English churches. The most beautiful leaf carvings in England are found in the Chapter House of Southwell Minster, Nottinghamshire.54 The foliate head is represented nine times, each time a little differently, in the Southwell Chapter House, but all the carvers' interest and skill is concentrated on the leaves and the heads are treated somewhat perfunctorily. All but one of them is in the form of the Masque Feuillu, preferred perhaps because it could serve so well as a source from which leafy sprays could pour out. More than one kind of plant could be placed in these convenient "vases": buttercup and hops together; bryony and wild apple; ivy and maple.55 One small head simply looks through a bent-over spray of hawthorn. It was probably placed there to give the design a "centre". The heads are used to vary the decoration and perhaps have no specific meaning: if they are leaf demons they are not the aggressive kind, nor are the tiny dragons with linked hawthorn tails.

  The single Tête de Feuilles at Southwell is a ha
wthorn mask. It is placed on the abacus above a capital decorated with flowering hawthorn the may-blossom. The mask has one pair of leaves coming from the centre of the forehead and another pair on the chin. He has a small "fleur de lys" on his head, like a miniature crown. It is, of course, very tempting to interpret him as a May King, but we cannot be sure that this was his meaning.

  The foliate head at Sutton Benger (Wiltshire) is also a hawthorn mask. A whole thicket with birds pecking the berries grows out of the mouth of the very sad face. This lovely carving, probably of the early fourteenth century, is everyone's idea of the Green Man. Comparison with the thirteenth century Masque Feuillu in Noyon Cathedral could indicate that the inspiration is French.

  Such a carving might well suggest the idea of a Jack in the Green to a twentieth century observer, remembering the appearance of this character in May Day processions or recalling illustrations, such as the "Chimneysweeps' Jack o' the Green",56 which show him covered down

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  to his ankles by thick foliage mounted on a conical frame so that he looks like a walking, or dancing bower of leaves, with his beaming face peering out through a little peephole in the branches. But the resemblance could be quite fortuitous. Very little is known about the early history of the Jack in the Green," the name and the leafy structure appear together at the end of the eighteenth century in a context of May Day begging". 57

  The history and development of the Green Man in the Church can, on the other hand, be followed continuously from the fourth or fifth century. Though pagan in origin, the motif evolved within the Church and, during the early Middle Ages, became part of its symbolic language. The Green Man is mainly an ornamental development of the motif. He was developed in the thirteenth century through various modifications of the antique and early medieval forms and the use of foliage deriving from plants growing north of the Alps as well as acanthus. The greatest and most striking change in the motif, the change which particularly distinguishes him from his antique and early medieval prototypes, is the change in the leaves.

  While it is possible that some of these leafy faces might allude to the May King or to the idea of the revival of nature in springtime, the Green Man more often evokes the horrors of the silva daemonium. A Green man who, at first glance, may seem the very personification of springtime, and "summer is i-comen in" may, on closer inspection, reveal himself as a nightmarish spectre. The imagery can be ambivalent. The Green Man can be at once both beautiful and sinister. The most beautiful of all, the thirteenth century acanthus mask in Bamberg cathedral, is also the most sinister.

  The demonic character of the early medieval leaf masks certainly persists in many Green Man carvings. Some are portrayed as though "In gibe of goblin fantasy Grimace unclean diablerie",58 but when the two components of the motif, face and foliage, are represented more naturalistically many new shades and slants of meaning become possible. The despair and anguish expressed in some of the faces is even more disquieting because it is so human. The evil is so much more frightening because it is human as well as diabolical. It is when the fantasy is expressed most naturalistically that it seems most eerie and touches us most powerfully.

  The association between the human and plant elements is often suggested as an uneasy or actually hostile relationship rather than a balanced symbiosis. Sometimes the leaves appear parasitic, drawing their strength from the wretched head which bears them. A fifteenth century head from Melrose Abbey, now in the Abbey Museum is there labelled as a mask with "blood-suckers" at the eyes and mouth. I think the "blood-suckers" are vegetable: bloated leaf stalks. The carving may be compared with weird heads at Spreyton and at Sampford Courtenay in Devon, where the leaves seem like a morbid growth and blind the Green Man's eyes with a cataract-like membrane. Sometimes, even more horribly, leaves sprout from the pupils of the eyes. An example of this macabre feature is seen at Ottery St Mary, also in Devon.

  Devon is one of the best of all the English counties for studying variations on the Green Man theme. There are at least seventeen Green Men in Exeter cathedral, but it is in the country churches that some of the strangest mutants appear. The craftsmen who carved these heads in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries improvised very freely on the theme, drawing on all the resources of the iconography, not only the frown, the baleful glare, the unfocused eyes but also the tongue sticking out and the fierce teeth (these features, occasionally attributes of leaf demons, but seldom if ever seen in foliate heads of the thirteenth century, became common again in the later Middle Ages). The carvings sometimes reflect limitations of technique but any crudity is more than compensated for by the liveliness and originality of the ideas expressed in the details. At South Tawton, for example, where foliate heads appear on many of the roof bosses, the leafy stem encircling one Green Man's head bifurcates just as it comes out of his mouth, and the short branch is developed as his tongue. The making of Green Man was almost a folk art in these parts, and to observe

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  many variations is like hearing an old folk song sung, not in unison, but by different singers, one after the other, each adding a new verse as he makes it up on the spot.

  It is obvious that these Green Men do not all have precisely the same meaning. Some are demons; some probably represent lost souls or sinners. (The leaves coming from the eyes, ears and mouth may sometimes allude to sins committed by these sensory organs particularly the tongue). Very few of them, however, could be interpreted as the May King, unless perhaps with reference to abuses associated with May Games (?): some of the Green Men look cross-eyed and crapulous and others might well be suffering from a hang-over.

  On the fourteenth century sedilia at Weston Longville (Norfolk) two Green Men, one with branches coming out of his mouth, the other with his huge tongue sticking out and his branches growing from the sides of his head, just above his ears, like horns, are placed either side of a little man carrying sprays of foliage vine and oak. This figure probably represents the Rogationtide processions for the blessing of the fields 59 and the marking of the parish boundaries, when a band of boys carrying green boughs "beat the boundaries". The association of the Rogationtide figure (or, possibly, he is a calendar image: the vines he carries bear grapes, perhaps pointing to September rather than to May?) and the Green Man is probably a decorative association. The two motifs may have no more in common that their leafy sprays.

  It can be difficult to distinguish between what is a purely decorative association and what may be a significant association of ideas. Likewise it is often difficult to be sure whether a variation in the image was made for the sake of diversifying the ornament or was intended to give the motif a new twist of meaning. Two very different versions of the Green Man appear in the choir screen in Winchester cathedral: one is represented as an entire figure carrying a sword and buckler (a small round shield used for parrying) and the other is a head in profile with a thick branch held between his teeth. Are these differences wholly explained as decorative variations?

  The decorative possibilities of the motif were certainly explored no less imaginatively than its possibilities of meaning. In the Elisabethkirche in Marburg, Lahn, Green Men bloom like exotic flowers among the luxurious leaves of the rood screen. This delightful blossoming is purely decorative. Likewise the remarkably imaginative (and almost imaginary) "Green Man" in the porch of St Mary's, Great Shelford, near Cambridge. It is just, but only just possible to recognise a "face" in the configuration of two large oak leaves. The "mouth" is represented by the space between the proximal leaf lobes and the crossed leaf stalks, and the "nose" by a single acorn. The narrow eye slits appear in the sinuses of the leaf lobes.

  Although the Green Man was a much loved motif I think it is very unlikely that he was revered as a symbol of the renewal of life in springtime. The suggestion60 that the crowned, impish Green Man is the fourteenth century stained glass in a window in St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, was venerated equally with the Virgin, whose image appears in the same reconstructed win
dow, seems to me highly improbable.

  The Green Man's place in the scheme of things may perhaps be better understood from the imagery of the joyous Incarnation group in Exeter Cathedral. The Virgin treads on the Green Man as she might tread on the head of the old serpent, the tempter himself, lurking in the Tree of Life. The leaves rise up out of the wide open mouth as from the abyss: they frame and form the background for the Mother with her smiling Child and the incensing angels hovering above them, but the eye is drawn from the springtime of nature to contemplate the more radiant springtime of grace. I think the association of imagery may well be significant here. The relationship of the Green Man to the Virgin corresponds with his relationship to The Rider in the Bamberg sculpture. He represents the darkness of unredeemed nature as opposed to the shimmering light of Christian revelation.

  The dark side of the Green Man's character was never forgotten. He was portrayed as a devil