Jack-In-The-Green
The figure of Jack-in-the-Green is a comparatively modern image when measured against the Green Man character. However, there are references to him as early as 1583 in the journals of Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
Jack-in-the-Green is a more define and clearer personification of the plant spirit than is the Green Man image. His most common image depicts a multi-foliate head peering out through hedges or bushes.
Jack-in-the-Green is sometimes called the Hidden One who guards the greenwood. In The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer the author associates Jack-in-the-Green with the celebration of the life-force, and links him with the typical leaf-clad mummer found throughout Europe.
Frazer also states that the Jack-in-the-Green is the living May tree and that the May doll figure is an extension of the Jack-in-the-Green character.
The Jack-in-the-Green figure was featured in May Day revels as late as nineteenth century. At this period he was associated with the chimney sweeps who attended the May festival dressed in gaudy tinsel and ribbons, with blackened faces.
In a manner not unlike the morris dancers, they danced around a Jack-in-the-Green figure to the music of drums, sticks, shovels, and whistles. The Jack-in-the-Green figure around which they danced was a framework of wicker covered with leaves.
Inside was a man peering out from a small gap left in structure. Tradition required that the wicker Jack-in-the-Green had to be built by the chimney sweeps themselves.
Some commentators have suggested that the folk hero Robin Hood may be, in part, an evolution of the Jack-in-the-Green character. One of the oldest folk names for Robin Hood is Robin o' the Hood (Robin of the Hood) in the green of the forest.
A once popular British television series featured Robin Hood as a priest of the god Herne. Along with his followers, Robin hid in the depths of Sherwood Forest, keeping alive the ancient pagan cult of Herne.
It has also been suggested that the figure of Robin Hood was grafted onto an older concept. This concept is that of the King of the Woods, and in the case of Robin Hood, we can see a blending of the Lord of Misrule as well.
In such a scenario, Maid Marion becomes the May Queen wed to the Green Man, and the Merry Men become the May Dancers, armed with swords like the morris dancers.
Dusio, The Trickster
One of the most primitive and curious forms of the plant spirit is found in the Etruscan character known as Dusio. In Etruscan art he is depicted very much like the Green Man images later found in other parts of Europe.
Following the decline of the Etruscan Empire, Dusio diminished in nature, becoming a sylvan spirit and a follower of Silvanus, the Roman woodland god. Folklorist Charles Leland encountered Dusio as a spirit that inspired "wanton" behavior in men and women, and he equated Dusio with the French spirits known as Dusii.
In Etruscan Roman Remains (London: T. Fischer Unwin, 1892), Charles Leland speaks of ancient writers such as Livy who spoke of forest demons known as Drusius, which Saint Augustine called "ancient spirits" known as Druten. Leland suggest that the word "Druten" may be related to the word "Druid."
He goes on to say that evidence exists to indicate that the fairy sprite called Robin Goodfellow was of Etruscan origin. In any case, Dusio is clearly a woodland spirit and Leland states that in northern Italy the maiden half fears and half hopes to encounter a handsome elven lover in the deep forest shade. In chapter 9 of Etruscan Roman Remains, Leland links Dusio to the spirit of the fireplace. In Italian lore, spirits of fire and hearth frequently seduce maidservants.
John Barleycorn
As noted earlier, the Green Man appears in various forms including Jack-in-the-Green, the character who dances ahead of the May Queen in many May Day processions such as those at Hastings and Knutsford.
The Green Man also has his counterpart in one of the oldest Scottish and English folk images, the corn or barley god whose beginnings are rooted in the camps of primitive Neolithic farmers.
An old Scottish folk song collected in the early years tells of such a god. He is called John Barleycorn, a mythical figure cut down by three men seeking to prove their prowess.
Some commentators feel that, like the Green Man, the image of John Barleycorn may represent the God of the Woods, the life spirit, and the spirit of death and resurrection.
The traditional ballad of John Barleycorn reveals several key elements of the nature of the plant spirit:
There were three men come out of the west
Their victory to try
And those three men took a solemn vow
John Barleycorn must die
They plowed, they sowed, they harrowed him in
Throwed clods upon his head
And those three men made a solemn vow
John Barleycorn was dead
They let him lie for a very long time
'Til the rains from heaven did fall
And little Sir John sprung up his head
And so amazed them all,
They let him stand til the midsummer's day
'Til he looked both pale and wan
And Little Sir John's grown a long, long beard
And so became a man.
They hired men with the scythes so sharp to cut
him off at the knee
They rolled him and tied him around the waist and
served him barbarously
They hired men with the hard pitchfork
To pierce him through the heart
And the loader he has served him worse than that
For he bound him to a cart
They wheeled him round and around the field 'til
they came unto a barn
And these three men made a solemn oath on poor
John Barleycorn
They hired men with the holly club
To flay him skin from bone
And the miller he served him worse than that
For he ground him between two stones
Here's Little Sir John in a nut brown bowl
And brandy in the glass
And Little Sir John in the nut brown bowl
Proved the stronger man at last
For the huntsman he can't hunt the fox
Nor so loudly blow his horn
And the tinker he can't mend kettle nor pot
Without a little of the Barleycorn.
The ballad of John Barleycorn describes the planning of the seed or bulb in spring, the growth of the plant at the summer solstice, and the harvesting in the fall season.
The ballad speaks of the tenacity of life and the ever-returning cycle within Nature. It tells us that, no matter how much humankind tries to master Nature, Nature will always prevail in the end.
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