Meet the man who Reintroduced a dead tradition to the UK
Updated: Jun 29, 2020
Whenever asking people participating in the celebrations about the tradition, the answer would always be: ‘it’s about releasing the spirit of the summer’, and would usually finish their sentence with: ‘Keith is the man to talk about that”.
“I had no choice. It had to come back.”
The Jack in the Green celebrations are centuries old, but it has died out in most of England. There are very few pockets of places where the Jack in the Green tradition is kept alive. The person who brought back this tradition in Hastings is Keith Leech.
Keith is a semi-retired producer, who is involved in the three major events in Hastings: The Bonfire, the carnival and of course, the Jack in the Green; and has become the ‘go-to man’ for anyone wanting to know about this ancient tradition.
So where did this tradition come from?
“If you go back in time, this time of the year, the May-time of the year is a fairly significant time in the agricultural year. It’s when, after the long hard winter, you’ve definitely got flowers, you’ve definitely got blossom.
“You know, if you’ve got blossom you’re going to have fruits, you’re going to have apples… you’re going to have food, it’s going to happen. You’re going to get it again and you’re going to get a harvest. That becomes a significant time in people’s lives.
“Therefore, [that becomes] a time to celebrate that in fact, this is going to happen; it’s been winter, and everything is going to be alright.”
Over time, people started to celebrate this start of a new season by parading with flowers, celebrating the month of May. These celebrations merged with the traditional May Games, also known as the May Ales because of the amount of beer that was consumed.
People would go to these festivals with floral garlands, flowery decorations which would also be worn on some occasions. These people would have garland competitions and May queens, as well as enjoy Morris dancing groups and other types of games.
“As society started becoming industrialised, there were work guilds and various guilds in London would take out garlands around May-time.
“The Chimney sweeps made garlands that were so big that you could climb inside. And these garlands became known as Jacks in the Green.”
Keith Leech – Man on the left
Why did it stop?
Keith, who researched this for his book ‘The Hastings traditional Jack in the Green’, told me the last known Jack in the Green that went out was in 1912 in Deptford, south of London, mainly because society evolved.
“Chimney sweeping trade changed from sending boys and people up chimneys to having brushes.
“There was also a change in society. People, particularly in the late Victorian times, had an idea about what ‘Merry England’ should be. And that was pretty girls dancing around maypoles, ribbons and singing cute folk songs.
“It certainly wasn’t loud, raucous, banging drums and drinking lots of beer. It wasn’t what people wanted. Society had become very puritan, for want of a better word, therefore, it ceased to be popular.”
“We could find ourselves without it again because people think it’s too raucous.”
Keith Leech
Keith introduced the tradition back to Hastings around 1983 because the town had the biggest wealth of information on Jacks in the Green in anywhere in the country – “I had no choice. It had to come back” he says.
But Keith has always had a soft spot for lost traditions and Hastings isn’t the only place where he revived one. He used to do so in London with other people who shared the same interest as he did.
An example of this is when, him and a friend who came from St Ives, a little town by the coast in Cornwall, decided to revive a tradition in the town called ‘Hurling the Silver Ball’.
At the time it looked like the tradition wasn’t going to happen, so him and his friend took a few people from London to continue the tradition, and in Keith’s words: “The locals were so upset that people had come in from London and do it for them, that they started doing it again” – he said while grinning.
“So when we got back to London we continued, trying to see what else was around […] we brought dancing giants back into London, into England and we brought Jacks in the Green back into England.”
In terms of the tradition in Hastings, it’s clear Keith is happy with how engaged people are but he shares his worries about society drifting towards a change much like the changes to the tradition during the Victorian times.
“One of my concerns for the future is that society sometimes seems to be swinging that way again. Lots of Tuttutters and moaners, and we could find ourselves without it again because people think it’s too raucous.”
“It’s going to change, I don’t know how it’s going to change and that change has to be managed, but it’ll happen.”
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