A relic from our pagan past; a fertility symbol; the spirit of vegetation; Jack-in-the-Green, Herne the Hunter or Robin Hood-all of these descriptions and many more have been advanced to explain the identity of the strange and often outlandish image which glares so balefully from rood screen and roof boss in so many places of Christian worship throughout Western Europe. Invariably depicting a male human head, it is by any reckoning a most unusual image and while exhibiting countless variations, the predominant feature common to all is the vegetation issuing in luxuriant profusion from the...