Beating About The Bush
Beating about the Bush
Jack-in-the-Green is generally referred to these days as a ‘Green Man’ and there are a number of revived May customs featuring this character. The Green Man was, however, a term first used in 1939 to describe the foliated head that we find in many churches on bosses and carvings – a man’s head intertwined with twigs or leaves.
To confuse matters even more, a Jack o’ the Green character is mentioned in the 19th century but is simply described as carrying a walking stick and a floral wreath. Another character regularly associated with the May Day celebrations is Robin Hood. Both these characters are, however, commonly confused with the Jack-in-the-Green and are frequently mistaken for the same.
This tells you something else about folklore; such a perplexing area of research that quite often folklorists, researchers and (especially) newspaper journalists will fail to notice specific local subtleties. It is common for them to simply group all the elements from one particular location or event and associate them with another. In this context, the influence of The Golden Bough by James Frazer (1922) cannot be overlooked with its obsession with vegetation spirits and the ritual death and resurrection cycle.
