The Green Man

The Green Man is one of the most enigmatic figures in British folk art — a face formed of or sprouting leaves, foliage trailing from the mouth, nostrils and eyes, carved in stone and wood in churches and cathedrals across these islands and far beyond. Though Christian craftsmen cut him into the bosses and capitals of medieval churches, his roots seem far older, and he is widely read as a symbol of nature's wild vitality, of death and rebirth, and of the green world's stubborn persistence even within the house of God.

The name itself is modern, coined by Lady Raglan in a 1939 article that linked the carvings to older vegetation spirits and to seasonal customs such as the Jack-in-the-Green of the May Day processions. Whether the medieval masons intended a pagan god, a reminder of mortal flesh returning to the earth, or simply a beloved decorative motif is still debated. Either way the Green Man has flourished as a potent emblem of the British landscape and its old, leafy magic — and it is his face that this map takes as its own.