The Green Man
(A Green Man at Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh.
Although the Green Man first appeared in the Middle Ages,
his roots can be traced to Roman, Greek, and pagan myths.
Carvings of the ancient god can be found across Britain)
His significance puzzles historians. A pagan symbol of fertility, or of
eternity and rebirth? His image is all around us: like mushrooms and
blackberries, the more you look, the more you find.
Gardens and cathedrals are his most popular haunts - and those locations are
almost a millennium apart. The Green Man first appeared in the Middle Ages. He
was descended from Dionysus (Greek), Bacchus (Roman) and Osiris (Egyptian).
He personified Robin Hood, then the Green Knight in the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawaine, then Dante’s Eternal Gardener. Perhaps he planted Yggdrasil, the ash
tree central to Norse mythology.
The Green Man is immortal. He has had, to date, four distinct lives: in art, in
architecture, in nature and in today’s environmental consciousness.
He is depicted in early illuminated manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells, as a
grinning head surrounded by foliage, usually yew or oak. Later, carvings of the
Green Man appeared in many of the cathedrals of northern Europe. And here is the
mystery. Why is a pagan symbol so prominent in great houses of religion?
Rochester in Kent and Hastings in Sussex stage annual "Jack in the Green"
festivals, spring counterparts to harvest festivals in which a man dressed in
leaves is paraded through the streets, and it is considered lucky to purloin a
leaf or two.
In England, east-coast cathedrals are rich in green men, particularly Ely,
Norwich and Lincoln. Ely, though vandalised by Cromwell, has ten green men,
including one who sprouts foliage from his ears. Southwell Minster has nine men,
including an "unmasked" one.
Most green men spew foliage from their mouths, usually oak or vine leaves.
Historians believe that unmasked faces, without such foliage, have done their
duty and are free to look beyond the mundane. They come out, as it were.
At Lincoln, the Green Man is not free. On a column on the west front of the
cathedral, he is trapped in writhing coils of vegetation. Norwich’s Green Man
looks inscrutable in the east cloisters, his face fringed with gilt oak leaves.
Carlisle cathedral has several. So does Glasgow cathedral, and Melrose Abbey has
a particularly hideous one.
Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh, built around 1446 and with Masonic and Knights
Templar associations, has more than anywhere in the world: over 100. Many are
close to the Gothic windows, where the foliage from the Green Man’s mouth blends
into a fenestral surround.
In his third reincarnation, the Green Man witnessed environmental destruction
and slumbered. In the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian era he went back
to the garden - in the wrought-iron gates of Kew, on urns at Biddulph Grange in
Staffordshire. This was the era when botany became a respectable science. And in
the past 30 years, the Green Man awoke and took charge of our ecological
consciousness. He invented the Green Party, drew our attention to rain forests
and recycling, developed cycle lanes and cheap public transport. And he paved
the way for the Gaia theory, that the planet is a self-regulating organism which
will always survive, despite mankind’s puny attempts to destroy it.
The Green Man, 2,000 years old, is alive and well and living in a garden or
cathedral near you.
Rosslyn’s famous Prentice Pillar, an extravagant representation of the Tree of
Knowledge, cost the mason his life when the master mason found he’d been
upstaged. Carvings of cacti and sweetcorn suggest the chapel’s founder, Sir
William Sinclair, crossed the Atlantic before Columbus.
Adrian Gardiner
Saturday, 19th May 2001
The Scotsman
© The Scotsman Publications Ltd
