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Folk custom in England

Jack in the Green, also known as Jack o' the Green, is an English folk custom associated with the celebration of May Day. It involves a pyramidal or conical wicker or wooden framework that is decorated with foliage being worn by a person as part of a procession, often accompanied by musicians. The Jack in the Green tradition developed in England during the 18th century. It emerged from an older May Day tradition—first recorded in the 17th century—in which milkmaids carried milk pails that had been decorated with flowers and other objects as part of a procession. Increasingly, the decorated milk pails were replaced with decorated pyramids of objects worn on the head, and by the latter half of the 18th century the tradition had been adopted by other professional groups, such as bunters and chimney sweeps. The earliest known account of a Jack in the Green came from a description of a London May Day procession in 1770. By the 19th century, the Jack in the Green tradition was largely associated with chimney sweeps. The tradition died out in the early 20th century. Later that century, various revivalist groups emerged, continuing the practice of Jack in the Green May Day processions in various parts of England. The Jack in the Green has also been incorporated into various modern Pagan parades and activities. The Jack in the Green tradition has attracted the interest of folklorists and historians since the early 20th century. Lady Raglan – following an interpretive framework influenced by James Frazer and Margaret Murray – suggested that it was a survival of a pre Christian fertility ritual. Although this became the standard interpretation in the mid 20th century, it was rejected by some folklorists and historians following the 1979 publication of Roy Judge's study on the custom, which outlined its historical development in the 18th century.

The Jack in the Green consists of a wooden or wicker frame that is covered in woven foliage, including green branches, leaves, and flowers. It is worn on the upper half of a human body and carried along in May Day processions. There is often a slot in the frame out of which the individual inside of it can see, and the individual's feet can often be seen below the framework.

Jack in the Green emerged within the context of English May Day processions, with the folklorist Roy Judge noting that these celebrations were not "a set, immutable pattern, but rather a fluid, moving process, which combined different elements at various times". Judge thought it unlikely that the Jack in the Green itself existed much before 1770, due to an absence of either the name or the structure itself in any of the written accounts of visual depictions of English May Day processions from before that year. The Jack in the Green developed out of a tradition that was first recorded in the 17th century, which involved milkmaids decorating themselves for May Day. In his diary, Samuel Pepys recorded observing a London May Day parade in 1667 in which milk maids had "garlands upon their pails" and were dancing behind a fiddler. A 1698 account described milk maids carrying not a decorated milk pail, but a silver plate on which they had formed a pyramid shape of objects, decorated with ribbons and flowers, and carried atop their head. The milk maids were accompanied by musicians playing either a fiddle and bag pipe, and went door to door, dancing for the residents, who gave them payment of some form. In 1719, an account in The Tatler described a milk maid "dancing before my door with the plate of half her customers on her head", while a 1712 account in The Spectator referred to "the ruddy Milk Maid exerting herself in a most sprightly style under a Pyramid of Silver Tankards". These and other sources indicate that this tradition was well established by the 18th century. Many accounts from the second half of the 18th century describe chimney sweeps dressing up in costumes for May Day, including in wigs, crowns, and coats. Some cross dressed in women's clothing, and many either blackened or whitened their faces. These chimney sweeps created music by banging together their brushes and shovels. Many of the descriptions of chimney sweeps at May Day make no reference to them carrying garlands, indicating that at this point this was not considered a standard part of their seasonal costume. There were nevertheless examples where sweeps did bear garlands; one of the earliest examples of this is in an illustration from 1769, in which a sweep bears a small garland on his head. This illustration also featured garlands being worn by milkmaids and bunters, implying that the custom was being adopted by various different professional groups at May Day. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there are further accounts of bunters having garlands, although theirs were often made of pewter, on contrast to the milk maid's silver, reflecting their comparative socio economic status. The first known textual account of the Jack in the Green tradition was written in 1770 by a Frenchman who had visited London and observed a May Day procession, Peter Grosley. The earliest known reference to the term "Jack in the Green" comes from 1785, where it was referred to in a report in The Times newspaper that gave an account of a masquerade that was held at the Pantheon in London. The event would have been a largely upper class affair, and was attended by the Prince of Wales. The earliest possible pictorial reference to a Jack in the Green comes from a picture titled "May Day" that was produced between 1775 and 1785. This image featured a procession in which three garlands of metal objects are in the foreground, but in the background of the image is something that resembles a foliate Jack in the Green. A clearer depiction of a Jack in the Green was featured in a 1795 engraving, perhaps by Isaac Cruikshank, which included the foliate figure alongside a fiddler with a wooden leg, a man, and a cross dressed "May Queen"; in the background are dancing chimney sweeps. This evidence reflects that while the Jack in the Green was brought out at May Day events, where chimney sweeps were also regularly present, the Jack in the Green itself was not yet closely associated with the sweeps, as it would become in the following century. Judge suggested that it would have been "neatly appropriate" had the foliate Jack in the Green been developed by greengrocers or members of another trade that worked closely with fauna, however, he noted that there was no evidence for this.

The Jack in the Green tradition is well recorded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Between 1806 and 1883, the Jack in the Green came to gain a central part in the English May Day processions. The Jack in the Green tradition came to be associated especially with chimney sweeps. In the mid 19th century, many London chimney sweep families migrated to other towns in the south east and brought the tradition with them; Jack in the Green practices are for instance recorded from the Kentish towns of Lewisham, Deptford, Greenwich, Bromley, and Orpington. By the beginning of the 20th century the custom had started to wane as a result of disapproval of bawdy and anarchic behaviour. The Lord and Lady of the May, with their practical jokes, were replaced by a pretty May Queen, while the noisy, drunken Jack in the Green vanished altogether from the parades. The Jack in the Green custom practiced at Whitstable in Kent for instance died out around 1912.

In a 1939 article, Lady Raglan proposed that the Jack in the Green tradition was linked to the medieval church carvings which she described as the "Green Man". She further interpreted both the Jack in the Green and the Green Men as pre Christian spirits of nature and fertility. Her interpretation was an extension of the ideas about fertility deities which had been promoted by the anthropologist James Frazer in his influential book, The Golden Bough. Raglan's linking of the Jack in the Green to the Green Man and pre Christian belief systems took "direct inspiration"—in the words of historian Ronald Hutton—from the 1934 suggestion by folklorist Margaret Murray that the Sheela na Gig carvings found in medieval churches represented pre Christian fertility goddesses. According to Hutton, Raglan's presentation of the Jack in the Green as a pre Christian survival "so perfectly reflected what mid 20th century folklorists wished to believe that it became an orthodoxy". In her 1976 overview of British folk customs, for instance, the folklorist Christina Hole suggested that Jack in the Green was a "very ancient figure" who represented "the Summer itself, the very old bringer in of the time of plenty". This interpretation would be rejected by folklorists after the 1979 publication of a historical study on the Jack in the Green tradition written by the folklorist Roy Judge and published by the Folklore Society. This monograph had been based on Judge's doctoral research, carried out at the University of Leeds' Folklife Studies Institute. Hutton described Judge's book as "a turning point in folklore studies which showed how much could be learned from a systematic investigation of historical evidence". It was, in his view, "one of the first triumphs" of a movement within British folkloristics that sought "to reintroduce a scholarly rigour to their field". Writing Judge's obituary for The Guardian, Derek Schofield stated that Judge's book "set new standards of meticulous research in a discipline that has frequently attracted shoddy and fanciful scholarship".

In the 1970s, Gordon Newton and his Motley Morris troupe revived the custom in Rochester, Kent. This grew in popularity, and was expanded into the broader May Day Rochester Sweeps Festival. Another revival took place in Whitstable. Another revival occurred in Hastings during 1983 and has become a major event of the Hastings Old Town calendar. Ilfracombe in North Devon has had a Jack in the Green procession and celebration since 2000. It is participated with by local schoolchildren, dancing around the maypole on the sea front, and by local Morris men and dance groups from in and around the district. Jack is a colourful figure, almost 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. Evercreech Jack in the Green takes place in early May at The Old Stores Studio in the village of Evercreech near Bruton in Somerset. 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.