A Jack in the Green (also Jack in the green, Jack-in-the-green, Jack i' the Green, Jack o' the Green etc.) is a participant in traditional English May Day parades and other May celebrations, who wears a large, foliage-covered, garland-like framework, usually pyramidal or conical in shape, which covers his body from head to foot. The name is also applied to the garland itself.
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In the 16th and 17th centuries in England, people would make garlands of flowers and leaves for the May Day celebration. After becoming a source of competition between Works Guilds, these garlands became increasingly elaborate, to the extent that it covered the entire man. This became known as Jack in the Green. For some reason the figure became particularly associated with chimney sweeps[1] as, for example, in Cheltenham[2]; there are several explanations thereof, but none has been proven conclusively.[3]
By the turn of the 19th century the custom had started to wane as a result of the Victorian disapproval of bawdy and anarchic behaviour. The Lord and Lady of the May[1], with their practical jokes, were replaced by a pretty May Queen, while the noisy, drunken Jack in the Green vanished altogether from the parades.
Jack in the Green was revived in Whitstable, Kent in 1976 and continues to lead an annual procession of Morris dancers through the town on the May Bank Holiday. Rochester, also in Kent, revived the May Day Jack tradition in 1980, as the Rochester Sweeps Festival[4] with an associated awakening of Jack-in-the-Green ceremony held on Blue Bell Hill at sunrise.
Another revival occurred in Hastings in 1983 and has become a major event in Hastings Old Town calendar. Ilfracombe in North Devon has had a Jack in the Green procession and celebration since 2000. It is supported by local schoolchildren, dancing around the May Pole on the sea front, and by local morris men and dance groups from in and around the district.
Jack is a colourful figure, almost 3m (nine feet) tall, covered in greenery and flowers. In Whitstable, he is accompanied by two attendants, representing the legendary figures of Robin Hood and Maid Marian. In Hastings, he is also accompanied by attendants, here known as Bogies, who are completely disguised in green rags, vegetation, and face paint. The attendants play music, dance and sing as they guide Jack through the streets to celebrate the coming of Summer.
Revivals of the custom have occurred in various parts of England; Jacks in the Green have been seen in Bristol, Oxford and Knutsford, among other places. Jacks also appear at May Fairs in North America. In Deptford the Fowler's Troop and Blackheath Morris have been parading the tallest and heaviest modern Jack for many decades, either in Greenwich, Bermondsey and the Borough or at Deptford itself, and at the end of May a Jack is an essential part of the Pagan Pride parade in Holborn.
Amongst modern "folkies" and neo-pagans the Jack in the Green has become identified with the mysterious Green Man depicted in mediaeval church carvings and is widely felt to be an embodiment of natural fertility, a spirit of the primeval greenwood and a trickster; by extension he is linked to such mythological characters as Puck, Robin Goodfellow, Robin Hood, the wild man, and the Green Knight, among others such as the folklore behind the legend of Robin Hood.
Similar characters to the English Jack in the Green were known in parts of Europe and Russia, and may be still. Some were involved in mock sacrifice, where the leafy framework was thrown or ducked into a pond or river (sometimes with the person still inside it). These festivities were variously associated with Easter Monday, St George's Day (23 April), May Day, and Whitsuntide. Occasionally the disguise was straw rather than leaves, a link with the straw bears of German Carnival (and the sole English example, the Whittlesea Straw Bear), suggesting these particular figures personified Winter rather than Spring or Summer. Folklorist Sir James Frazer cited many examples in The Golden Bough.
Other related figures in Britain include the Burry Man of South Queensferry and the Garland King of Castleton, Derbyshire, who parades on Oak Apple Day.
British progressive rock group Jethro Tull recorded a song called "Jack-in-the-Green" on their 1977 album Songs From The Wood.
Oxford folk band Magpie Lane's fourth CD, Jack-in-the-Green (1998), includes a song of the same name, written in the traditional style by Martin Graebe.
Pianist Jools Holland wrote a track called "Jack O The Green" in conjunction with Suggs of Madness after Suggs witnessed the ceremony in Whitstable, mentioned above, where the coming of Spring is celebrated with the Jack in the Green parading through the streets to an old English folk melody. Having heard this each year Suggs was captivated by it. On holiday in Tuscany he saw a band of local musicians gather with traditional Tuscan instruments in a small village square. Their own Jack in the Green appeared and much to Suggs' surprise they played the same tune. Their collaboration takes the folk melody, creates a variation on it, and sets them to ska rhythms.
"Jack in the Green" is the name of Painting No. 10 in the Masquerade by Kit Williams. The main character, Jack Hare, appears in disguise on each page of the story: in this picture he is a transparent green jelly in a shop window; this is a pun on Jack in the Green and the moulded shape of the jelly itself bears a vague resemblance to a Jack in the Green.
A character called Jack in the Green has appeared in a number of comic books, including Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days, Swamp Thing Vol.2 #47 and Hellblazer: Lady Constantine #s 1, 2 and 3, as an early incarnation of the Swamp Thing character.
The woodland character, Jack o' the Green, was played by Tom Cruise in the film Legend.
In episode four of Cranford (2007), Jack-in-the-Green appears in the May Day celebrations, portrayed by the character Jem Hearne.
Neil Gaiman wrote a story about Swamp Thing entitled "Jack in the Green."