[Stones] Cerne Abbas Giant

[Ric]

Hi,

how old is the Cerne Abbas Giant? is it not time
someone did an Uffington on the Giant? Uffington White
Horse has now been reliably dated to 3000BP?

the Cernunnos / Kernunnos-type doesn't have to have
horns: Kernunnos - 'horned one' - is just the Roman
name for a god-form of which we are basically
ignorant. There is unlikely to have been a single
equivalent Brythonic name, per se, since Celtic
religion was tribal, localised, and not centralised:
in contrast to Roman paganism and the subsequent Roman
Church.

a hornless giant, reminiscent of the CAG, appears in
the Mabinogion, where he - presumably significantly? -
beats a stag who bellows out, thus summoning all the
creatures of the forest, who gather around the giant.

the giant is black, but note the CAG is in outline
only. a man-in-black figure features in the British
16th century 'witch trials' ...

however, the local river name seems to mitigate
against a Cerne/Cernunnos reading?

nevertheless, Ellis seems pretty certain of the
Kernunnos reading for the Cerne; i can't find any
pictures of the Corbridge figure? Anne Ross mentions a
'horned head on a janiform stone' at this site [Pagan
Celtic Britain, p116, 1967, 1992]. 

our hard/soft 'c' is apparently another boon of Roman
civilisation: it has and will cause insuperable
confusion for students of language, place-name and
history generally, and down the centuries?

Ric


--- Thelma Wilcox <thelmawilcox at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Something not mentioned about his name though, is
> the fact that he has also been attributed to
> Cernunnos, though of course that could be purely
> coincidental....For a start he does'nt have antlers,
> the similarity is compared because Cernunnos is the
> British celtic equivalent of The Dagda. who was also
> well endowed.  Reading Peter Ellis (The Celts)on the
> subject he says that the Giant is "almost a replica
> of a carving found at Costopitum (Corbridge,
> Northumberland)"  there's an illustration in Ann
> Ross - Pagan Celtic Britain.....
>   The club of course can destroy at one end and
> restore life at the other, in true celtic
> tradition..
>   Just a thought.
>   Thelma