The Fertility Giant

If you happen to travel in the beautiful county of Dorset in Southern England, you are likely to hear of the Cerne Abbas giant.

No less than 180 feet (55 metres) high, and thought to date from the seventeenth century, this giant is carved into the hillside from the chalk underneath, and is a compelling figure, not least because he wields two things: a huge club, and an astounding representation of his manhood!

Because of his remarkable endowment, young women who wished to conceive slept on his outline overnight, and couples wishing to have children made love on his contours.  Understandably, one of his nicknames was ‘the Rude Giant’.  Furthermore, in July 2010, the Daily Telegraph reported that the area around the giant was reporting around double the national birthrate!

There is speculation that the giant’s left arm once held some kind of cloak that has been eroded over time.  If so, then the figure’s identification with the Greek hero Heracles, who used a club to great effect, and who also sported a cloak, is given validation.  Alternatively, the Independent newspaper in 1994 cited a study that suggested that the giant’s free arm had in fact held a severed head; his cloak flew from his shoulders.

In contrast to the identification with Heracles, there is a legend that the outline was created by drawing around the dead body of an invading Danish giant.

The prudish Victorians did not like such a colossal and public display of genitalia, and so allowed shrubs to grow over the giant’s nether regions.  That foliage has certainly not endured.  Nevertheless, so distinct is the Cerne Abbas hillside giant that during World War 2, he was disguised from aerial view in order to hinder any German Luftwaffe planes from using him as a reference point in their navigation over England.

The story I find most intriguing in the explanations of the giant’s origins is that he was a living creator – the invader from Denmark – who met his fate on an English countryside, but was then re-created in chalk.  Giants can be fearsome and deadly, but as in the case of the Cerne Abbas figure, they can also be vital symbols of life.