{34} Of Turf-Monuments other than horses the best {35} known is probably the Giant, on Trendle Hill, near Cerne Abbas, in Dorsetshire. (Fig. 10, p. 36). This is a figure roughly representing a man, undraped, and with a club in his right hand; the height is 180 feet, and the outlines are marked out by a trench two feet wide, and of about the same depth. It covers nearly an acre of ground. Hutchins imagines this figure to represent the Saxon God, Heil, and plans its date as anterior to a.d. 600. Heil certainly appears to have been a popular deity in this neighbourhood, for Camden speaks of St. Augustine as building Cerne Abbey to commemorate his having “broken there in pieces Heil, the idol of the heathen English-Saxons, and chased away the fog of paganish superstition.” Britannia, 212 B.) Stukeley calls the figure “A memorial of the Phoenician Hercules, or Melicartus.” The former of these conjectures seems not improbable, as Helios (whom Nonnus, in his Dionysiaca, tells us to have been the same as Hercules) was a great object of the adoration of the Phoenicians; and that this people visited the southern coast of Britain is almost certain. What, however, “Melicartus” (Melicertus?) can have done in Dorsetshire does not appear to be so clear. The account of the Gallic Hercules, given by Lucian, is that he “had a club in his right hand and a bow in his left.” (See the Præfatio.) Britton, on the other hand, tells us that “Vulgar tradition makes this figure commemorate the destruction of a giant, who, having feasted on some sheep in Blackmoor, and laid himself to sleep on this hill, was pinioned down, like another Gulliver, and killed by the enraged peasants, who {36}{Figs. 10–11}{37} immediately traced his dimensions for the information of posterity.” There were formerly discernible some markings between the legs of the figure, rather above the level of the ancles, which the country-folk took for the numerals 748 and imagined to indicate the date! We need, perhaps, scarcely remark that Arabic numerals were unknown in Europe until at least six centuries later than this period.
For many years the Cerne Giant stood alone in Great Britain; but within quite a recent period, a brother of his has been brought to light at Wilmington, in Sussex. (Fig. 11, p. 36.) This figure had long been known to the neighbouring rustics by the name of the Long Man, and appears to have been carved upon the chalk on Winddoor Hill. It had, however, become entirely grown over with grass, and was, consequently, only visible under certain atmospheric conditions, viz., on bright sunny mornings in the summer, and during frosty weather in the winter time. At these periods the different hue of the grass caused the outline to be distinctly traceable from the village of Wilmington, which is about half a mile off; but on a nearer approach it entirely disappeared. The height of the figure is 240 feet; extreme width from hand to hand 148 feet. (It is in our woodcut represented as entirely white, for the sake of more convenient comparison; but there seems to be no reason to suppose that it was ever actually denuded of grass). The outline was in 1871 rendered more permanent and more easily discernible by the insertion of white bricks, at the expense of the Duke of Devonshire, who owns the land upon which {38} the figure stands. Mr. Phené, F.S.A., who first called attention to it in 1873, imagines it to represent Andreas, the embodiment of the powers of Nature; and he points out the curious fact that “it is close to the neighbourhood of Caesar’s landing place, and if fenced round would form an arena exactly answering to the ancient British deity of sacrifice, mentioned by both Caesar and Strabo, and in which it is supposed human victims were enclosed and burnt.” The words of Caesar are as follows:—“They have images of enormous size, whose bodies, made of woven osiers, they fill with living men (simulacra, quorum contexta viminibus membra vivis hominibus complent), and these being set on fire, the victims perish in the surrounding flames.” B. VI., Ch. 15. The account of Strabo is much the same; only he says that it was of hay or straw that the image was constructed (cataskeuasantes colosson chortou). Here, then, the question arises whether the theory to which Mr. Phené appears to point, that these “images” were simply spaces marked out by a sort of paling within which the victims were confined is a permissible explanation of the passage. It must be admitted, on the one hand, that the two different modes of making an enclosure, which according to this hypothesis the Latin and Greek authors would respectively indicate, may still be seen in use in the country. The fence of woven twigs is, of course, the more common of the two; but it is by no means unknown for a quantity of straw to be built up into a winter fold for sheep, to afford them a temporary protection, until such time as the straw is wanted for {39} other purposes. On the other hand there appears to be no adducible example of the use of the word “colossus” in any other sense than that of a statue; while the idea of a large image, to which, and in which, human victims were sacrificed is one of the most familiar in the rites of heathen nations. Archbishop Thomson, in his Bampton Lectures, speaks of the Statue of Chronos, at Carthage, “in a bending posture, with hands stretched out and raised upwards. It was heated till it glowed; into its arms were placed the children destined for sacrifice ; they fell into the gulf of fire beneath.” (Cf. Leviticus xviii. 21 and 2 Kings xxiii. 10; also Milton’s Paradise Lost, I. 392–6.) Hesus, we may add, is mentioned by Lactantius, B. I. Ch. 21, as one of the Gods to whom human sacrifices were offered, and the same thing is also said by Lucan, Pharsalia, I. 444–6. Of the somewhat unmeaning sticks in the hands of the Wilmington Giant, one may very possibly have been originally a club, and the other a bow. The bulges at the top of the right-hand stick look very much like the commencement of a club, while the production of the line to the bottom may have been due in the first instance to a line of chalk carried down by the rain, suggesting to some restorers of the figure that it was a stick similar to that in the other hand. If this suggestion were correct, the description of Lucian quoted on page 35 would apply with absolute exactitude.
The last Turf-Monument that we shall take occasion to mention is the Cross cut upon the chalk hill, at Whiteleaf, in Buckinghamshire. (Fig. 8, p. 26.) This is a right-angled figure, standing upon a triangular base. {40} The height is 230 feet, of which the Cross itself takes up 55 feet; width of base 340 feet. Mr. Francis Wise, in his Observations on the Antiquities of Berkshire, supposes it to be a memorial of some victory of the Saxons or the Danes, and imagines that the name of the neighbouring village of Bledlow is derived from Blodlaw, the bloody hill. He adds that it is a memorial analogous to the White Horse, but of later date, when the heathen device upon the banner of the Saxons had been exchanged for a Christian one after their conversion to Christianity. Mr. Wise quotes the Saxon Chronicle as relating a predatory excursion of the Danes into Buckinghamshire, between Ailesbury and Bernwood Forest, in a.d. 921, where he conjectures that the battle which led to the erection of the trophy was fought under the banner of King Edward, the son and successor of Alfred.
Lipscombe, in his history of Buckinghamshire, takes quite a different view. He points out that the parish of Risborough, in which the Cross is situated, belonged at the time of Domesday Book to Archbishop Lanfranc, and was held at the conquest by Algar Stalre, standard-bearer of Christ Church, Canterbury. And he thinks that if the ancestors of Stalre held Risborough under the monks of Canterbury at an earlier period, and exercised his office, the setting up the standard of Christianity immediately after the conversion of the Britons to that faith must appear appropriate. He adds that the cross being the armorial bearing of the Church and Priory, might have been a memorial of the property acquired here by the monastery.
{41} Another local authority, the Rev. A. Baker, in a paper in Vol. I. of the Records of Buckinghamshire, speaks of the existence of “a second cross, traditionally coeval, incised on a still more prominent hill in the parish of Bledlow.” This he describes as “of the Greek form, with four equal limbs, each 30 feet by 15 feet. No base. Near the brow of the hill. Now overgrown with weeds.” And, he adds, “may not this have been the original memorial, and have suggested the position of the other, as on a more conspicuous spot, where it would have served the further purpose of a wayside cross, the monks being the authors of this monument? A right of sanctuary, or demarcation of Church lands, may have been included in the intention.”
We have now come to the end of the Turf-Monuments of this country. We are unaware of the existence of any similar memorials in any other of the countries of Europe.
Alfred Heath, Printer, 38, Park Street, Bristol.