This interpretation is also given as the origin of the Green Man by Bagford:—
“They are called woudmen, or wildmen, thou’ at thes day we in ye signe call them Green Men, couered with grene bones: and are used for singes by stillers of strong watters and if I mistake not are ye sopourters of ye king of Deanmarks armes at thes day; and I am abpt to beleve that ye Daynes learned us hear in England the use of those tosticatein lickers [intoxicating] as well as ye breweing of Aele and a fit emblem for those that use that intosticating licker which berefts them of their sennes.”[531]
The Wild Man, therefore, on a sign at Quarry Hill, Ladybridge, Leeds, is the same as the Green Man.
2o. The second version of this sign is, that it is intended for a forester, and in that garb the [Green Man] is now invariably represented; even as far back as the seventeenth century, it is evident from the trades tokens that the Green Man was generally a forester, and, in many cases, Robin Hood himself, which may be inferred from the small figure frequently introduced beside him, and meant for Little John. The ballads always described Robin and his merry men as dressed in green, “Lincoln green.” When Robin meets the page who brings him presents from Queen Katherine:—
“Robin took his mantle from his backe,
It was of the Lincoln greene
And sent that by this lovely page
For a present unto the queene.”[532]
And in the same ballad, when he is going to court, “he clothed his men in Lincolne greene,” &c. Drayton, in his “Polyolbion,” says:—
“An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood
Still ready at his call, that bowmen were right good,
All clad in Lincoln green which caps of red and blue.”
Sometimes it is called Kendal green:—
“All the woods
Are full of outlaws, that in Kendal green
[368] Follow the outlawed Earl of Huntingdon.”
Richard, Earl of Huntingdon, 1601, (i.e., Robin Hood)