The Green Man: which came first, the pagan deity or the pub?

If you ask most people they’ll tell you that pubs called The Green Man are named after a pagan deity and are vestiges of an Old Religion. Well, probably not, it turns out. We’ll admit that if you’d asked us about this a month or two ago, we’d have said the same thing, albeit with a question mark or two. When we’ve mentioned The Green Man in passing over the years, we have taken note of pushback from Phil Edwards in particular, who has said things like… You still hear a lot about The Whole Pagan Thing on the folk scene, and it’s something of an article of faith for me that it’s almost entirely bollocks (the ‘green man’ was made up by Lady Raglan, the ‘old religion’ in this country is Christianity, the old ‘oss is just an old horse, etc, etc). This has been enough to flag for us that there was a debate to be had, even if we hadn’t joined that debate. We’re not folklorists. Of the two of us, Ray has the strongest interest in the subject, and that’s more from the point of view of fiction…