Jack in the Green

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.

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 as, for example, in Cheltenham; there are several explanations thereof, but none has been proven conclusively.

By the turn of the 20th 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, 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 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.

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