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Green Man: Stay Green
Green Man is a figure whose association with fireworks is rapidly waning amonst the current generation of pyrotechnicians and fireworks practitioners.
For centuries, the traditional salutation amongst the firework fraternity has been 'stay green' but with communications - emails and texting - becoming more informal it is now an expression which is seldom encountered. As the years pass, the connection with fireworks becomes ever more distant and it is at risk of dying out altogether.
Myth, mystery and Medieval pageantry combine in the concept of Green Man. He has no single identity but a number of different forms which are interwoven. Despite appearing frequently as a carving in churches, the character with greenery sprouting from ears, nose and mouth is almost certainly pagan in origin, symbolising the regeneration of Nature in the Spring. Even Robin Hood can be said to be part of the myth with his dress of Lincoln Green as well as Robin Goodfellow, Puck, theSamhain Holly Lord and other similar characters.
The connection with fireworks though is much more mundane and practical, although it may never be known which came first; the greenery as symbol and tradition, or as protection. It is recorded that in the 1600s the firework men of the day wore copious coverings of foliage, mainly about their heads. Working with fireworks at that time involved the handling and manipulation of ignited devices and greenery provided the best defence against showers of sparks. As early as 1838 it was suggested (in The Mirror by Reuben Percy, John Timbs) that this is the origin of the many Green Man pubs which are found throughout the country.
With obscure and mythical origins, 'green men' dressed in foliage and garlands traditionally led processions of fireworkers from medieval times. Their role was in part to maintain order; according to one scholar, 'strewing fire from large clubs, they cleared the way for certain festive processions. The "wild men", "very ugly to behold" are described as having black beards and black hair, with garlands on their heads, and wearing costumes of green ivy.' Julie Gardham, Glasgow University
Green Man is described by Donald J Haarman in the PGI (Pyrotechnics
Guild International) Bulletin No 47, May 1985:
The drawing of this strange apparition appears on the cover of the second of the four books comprising John Bate's The Mysteries of Nature and Art (1635). (The "Second Booke:" Teaching most plainly, and withall most exactly, the composing of all manner of Fire-works for Tryumph and Recreation.) However, the exact origin of the Green Man has been, until now, as Brock puts it, "obscure". For as luck-would-have-it during my never ending search for references about fireworks; in the Sociological Abstracts Backfile data base I came upon a paper by Barbara Widenor Maggs, entitled, "Firework Art and Literature: Eighteenth-Century Pyrotechnical Tradition in Russia and Western Europe", published in the Slavonic and East European Review (Vol. 54), January, 1976), in which during a discussion of similarities between Russian and Western European pyrotechnical tradition, she presents new information about our Green man!
One finds further associations of the 'wild man' with pyrotechnics in Western Europe in John Bate's The Mysteries of Nature and Art (in part a fireworks manual), published in London in 1635, which shows on the title page the traditional figure brandishing a 'fire-club', and again in a Danish engraving, probably of the seventeenth century, portraying several bearded men dressed in loincloths of flowers and wielding flaming sticks.
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