1. A man or boy inclosed in a wooden or wicker pyramidal framework covered with leaves, in the May-day sports of chimney-sweepers, etc.
1801. Strutt, Sports & Past., IV. iii. § 20. Jack in the Green … consists of a hollow frame of wood or wicker work, made in the form of a sugar loaf, but open at the bottom, and sufficiently large and high to receive a man … who dances with his companions.
a. 1845. Hood, Sweep’s Complaint, 63.
| Next year there won’t be any May-day at all, we shan’t have no heart to dance, | |
| And Jack in the Green will go in black like mourning for our mischance. |
1855. Dickens, Dorrit, I. xxi. If so low a simile may be admitted, the dress went down the staircase like a richly brocaded Jack in the Green.
1895. H. B. Wheatley, Pepys’ Diary, VI. 296, note. The editor saw a jack-in-the-green with men dressed as milkmaids dancing round it on May 1st of the present year.
attrib. 1897. Mary Kingsley, W. Africa, 529. The heads of his society … go out to meet him in their canoes, and bring him in his Jack-in-the-Green dress ashore.
2. ‘A variety of Primula vulgaris [the primrose], in which the calyx is transformed into leaves’ (Britten & Holland, Eng. Plant-n.).
1876. Gard. Chron., 8 April, 472/2.
