celebrations to mark the spring equinox at Stonehenge. Photograph: Rufus Cox/Getty Images
Your article says that “the Green Man [is] an ancient figure from British folklore, symbolic of spring and rebirth” (King Charles’s coronation invitation confirms use of title of ‘Queen Camilla’, 4 April). Whether the heraldic artist Andrew Jamieson, who created the coronation invitation, is aware of it or not, the Green Man appellation is a term misapplied by the amateur historian Lady Raglan in her 1939 article The “Green Man” in Church Architecture, for the journal Folklore. The more accurately named “disgorging foliate head motif” was part of a new repertoire imported into England from northern France after the Norman conquest.
It is a Christian/Judaic-derived motif relating to the legends and medieval hagiographies of the Quest of Seth – the three twigs/seeds/kernels planted below the tongue of post-fall Adam by his son Seth (provided by the angel of mercy responsible for guarding Eden) shoot forth, bringing new life to humankind. So, a Christian motif for the head of the Church of England.
Stephen Miller
Author, The Green Man in Medieval England: Christian Shoots from Pagan Roots
