On a hillside ages ago, people inscribed a naked man

May 15, 2021 7:48 PM

The Mysterious Origins of the Cerne Abbas Giant (NYer) The Cerne Giant is so imposing that he is best viewed from the opposite crest of the valley, or from the air. He is a hundred and eighty feet tall, about as high as a twenty-story apartment building. Held aloft in his right hand is a large, knobby club; his left arm stretches across the slope. Drawn in an outline formed by trenches packed with chalk, he has primitive but expressive facial features, with a line for a mouth and circles for eyes. His raised eyebrows were perhaps intended to indicate ferocity, but they might equally be taken for a look of confusion. His torso is well defined, with lines for ribs and circles for nipples; a line across his waist has been understood to represent a belt. Most well defined of all is his penis, which is erect, and measures twenty-six feet in length. Were the giant not protectively fenced off, a visitor could comfortably lie down within the member and take in the idyllic vista beyond.
posted by bluesky43 (37 comments total)

Surely no one would ever deface a public image by scribbling a dick on it!
posted by praemunire at 8:19 PM on May 15, 2021 [6 favorites]

Who dost inscribe ye dicke?
posted by fluttering hellfire at 8:32 PM on May 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

Stop trying to make "comfortably lie down within the member" happen! It's not going to happen.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:43 PM on May 15, 2021 [7 favorites]

"The second crudest Hill in British history, after Benny."
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 8:47 PM on May 15, 2021 [16 favorites]

Just give me a Soulslike game which busts out a 3D Cerne Abbas Giant and I will die a happy man. Even if I have to fight through a herd of chalk horses to get to him!
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 8:48 PM on May 15, 2021 [3 favorites]

Anyone seen Wordshore lately?
posted by Ahmad Khani at 8:54 PM on May 15, 2021 [8 favorites]

From a review of historical depictions of the figure, it has been identified that the Giant's current large erection is, in fact, the result of merging a circle representing his navel with a smaller penis during a 1908 re-cut: the navel still appears on a late 1890s picture postcard.[21]

When I saw this in the Wikipedia article, I wondered whether 1908 had been a time of particular British anxiety about immigration, because I think a form of penis panic is at the root of anti-immigrant attitudes far more often than not.

Here's what I found:

1905 Aliens Act and the Immigration Boards
The beginnings of the modern-day UK immigration control can be traced from the final decade of the 19th Century and the political debate that grew surrounding the perceived growth in the numbers of Eastern European Jews coming to the UK. Political alarm was also expressed regarding the rising numbers of foreign national criminals in UK prisons, the growing demands on poor relief within local parishes and fears of degenerating health and housing conditions.[1]

There was particular focus on the large numbers of Russian and Polish Jews who had arrived in the East End of London after fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire. In 1898 the Secretary of the Board of Trade reported a "..stream of Russian and Polish immigration—in other words, the immigration of the most destitute type...increasing in volume year by year". The numbers of arrivals were highly debatable owing to the deficiencies in available statistics. Concerns focussed on perceived overcrowding in the East End of London.[2][3]

The legislation that finally emerged was the Aliens Act 1905 which was considered even at the time a flawed and inconsistent piece of legislation. It was ambivalent in its aims and constructed powers whose ostensible aim was that they should be equally applied but its underlying aim was to control a particular “problem” group. Libertarian opponents of the Act ensured that it only applied to steerage passengers and to ships carrying more than 20 passengers. It was easily evaded,[4] and did not even require Immigration Officers to give written permission to land or stamp a passport – permission to land was given verbally.

It was, however, the first legislation to define some groups of migrants as 'undesirable', thereby making entry to the United Kingdom discretionary, rather than automatic. The Act ensured that leave to land could be withheld if the immigrant was judged to fall into one of four categories:

a) if he cannot show that he has in his possession ... the means of decently supporting himself and his dependents;
b) if he is a lunatic or an idiot or owing to any disease of infirmity liable to become a charge upon the public rates;
c) if he has been sentenced in a foreign country for a crime, not being an offense of a political character; or
d) if an expulsion order under this act has [already] been made.

posted by jamjam at 9:14 PM on May 15, 2021 [7 favorites]

"Sasha Constable, an artist who lives in the village, and with the help of Jig Cochrane, a puppet master. A representation of the giant was fifteen feet tall and featured a bobbing penis.
VIDEO FROM THE NEW YORKER!"

We have been out-bobbled!
posted by clavdivs at 9:16 PM on May 15, 2021

Ferry from Twatt in the Orkneys to Scotland, and then you can drive south down through Cock Bridge, Dick Place, Cockermouth, move through Penistone and Cock Alley, slide east into Slutshole Lane, down through Fingringhoe, and end up on the south coast at Ass Hill and Shitterton.
posted by kliuless at 9:33 PM on May 15, 2021 [7 favorites]

Held aloft in his right hand is a large, knobby club, which is less frequently commented upon than his large, clubby knob.
posted by biogeo at 9:59 PM on May 15, 2021 [15 favorites]

Papworth flabbergasted.
posted by Phanx at 10:56 PM on May 15, 2021 [2 favorites]

a visitor could comfortably lie down within the member

Couples having difficulty conceiving would once do exactly that - though they didn't just lie there if you know what I mean. The hope was that the giant's own impressive virility would boost the baby-making power of both parties.

I think a form of penis panic is at the root of anti-immigrant attitudes far more often than not.

He'll be picking his nose with the thing by the time Boris Johnson's finished.
posted by Paul Slade at 12:37 AM on May 16, 2021 [7 favorites]

kliuless, when I was in Dorset in 2019 to see this I stopped here on the way.
posted by essexjan at 2:38 AM on May 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Archive version of the article
posted by chavenet at 2:50 AM on May 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

Seems to me QI once briefly talked about how during WWII he was painted green, so as to deny the Luftwaffe a landmark. I guess there is little mistaking a 55–metre tall naked man with a hard-on and a cudgel.

I suppose the alternate method would be to produce dozens of these across the landscape to confuse navigation, which is an amusing concept.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:12 AM on May 16, 2021 [12 favorites]

I suppose the alternate method would be to produce dozens of these across the landscape to confuse navigation, which is an amusing concept.


imagine if this worked in history. then for the 2021 british green new deal they'd have to set up the

ccccccc (cerne chalk cock copy civilian conservation corps)
posted by lalochezia at 5:33 AM on May 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Anyone seen Wordshore lately?

Wordshore has, of course, already posted about this important subject: Sweatily working hard on his balls.
posted by zamboni at 5:40 AM on May 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

a visitor could comfortably lie down within the member and take in the idyllic vista beyond.

So, a banana hammock?
posted by Bee'sWing at 6:18 AM on May 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

Stop trying to make "comfortably lie down within the member" happen! It's not going to happen.

Or at least use the correct term for getting inside a member: sounding.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:19 AM on May 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

His raised eyebrows were perhaps intended to indicate ferocity, but they might equally be taken for a look of confusion.

Who among us, on discovering that they had a two story tall erection, would not share this sentiment, I ask you.
posted by mhoye at 6:45 AM on May 16, 2021 [7 favorites]

There seems a missed opportunity here to help remedy MetaFilter's woeful lack of 432InchesOfCock tags.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 7:00 AM on May 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

The giant was borrowed for Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, of course, where he described him as being very definitely male and very definitely missing his trousers.
posted by emjaybee at 7:11 AM on May 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Here is a set of pictures from the National Trust which owns the land, including one in which his Muppet nose is clearly visible.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 7:24 AM on May 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

"If you have an erection that persists for more than ten centuries, consult your doctor."
posted by Paul Slade at 7:59 AM on May 16, 2021 [10 favorites]

On a hillside ages ago, people inscribed a naked man with a twenty-six-foot-long erect penis. Why did they do it?

...said nobody who's ever set foot in a public toilet used by men.

Evidently there's a line, somewhere between 1ft and 26ft in length, and between last week & four centuries ago in age, at which a graffiti dong becomes a historic landmark to be preserved rather than a nuisance to be removed.

Further studies are needed to more accurately determine the boundary conditions.
posted by automatronic at 8:00 AM on May 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

...said nobody who's ever set foot in a public toilet used by men.

I often wonder how many constructions we've ascribed to some sort of macro-scale cultural exercise, like religions or powerful early nation-states or multi-generational cults or whatever, that were actually just one extremely determined, persistent crank.
posted by mhoye at 8:18 AM on May 16, 2021 [9 favorites]

Pompeii is full of phallic signs. Some say they point the way to the nearest brothel, some say they are really good luck emblems. Mary Beard says (quoting from memory) well, they may be those things too, but a picture of a dick is still a picture of a dick.
posted by Phanx at 8:25 AM on May 16, 2021 [4 favorites]

Lord Holles is havin’ a laugh.
posted by ecorrocio at 8:29 AM on May 16, 2021

In folks' rush to comment on the earthwork with the giant dong most of the comments here seem uninformed by the Fine Article. It's worth actually reading, it has many interesting details including a surprising archaeological twist of trying to date the thing. I won't spoil it for you.

The hero of the article is local vicar Jonathan Still. Who in two paragraphs admits to tresspassing, participating in drunken pagan rituals, believing in those pagan rituals and describing the giant coming to life, explaining that monks would have been OK with the giant erect man because it is "frank and honest about what we are", and then talks nonchalantly about the giants-eating-people figures carved into his church's walls. That's my kind of vicar.

Also going a bit deeper than the article, the Wikipedia article has the 1764 drawing that's supposed evidence of a bellybutton. I dunno, there's two circles below for balls it seems equally likely to me the connected circle is just the glans. The dude's skinned back. Another 1764 sketch shows a separated bellybutton (and also a glans penis) but the whole diagram is so poorly drawn it looks less authoritative.

I love how so many folks celebrate the giant erect cock. Like normally it's not a thing we talk about in polite society but since this is just so present and historical and artistic, well, it's OK to like this dick.
posted by Nelson at 8:57 AM on May 16, 2021 [11 favorites]

I often wonder how many constructions we've ascribed to some sort of macro-scale cultural exercise, like religions or powerful early nation-states or multi-generational cults or whatever, that were actually just one extremely determined, persistent crank.

Yeah, sometimes I'll read some anthropologist's hypothesized complex cultural/religious explanation for pre-historic Venus figurines. And I can't help thinking maybe they'd been mostly stuck in a rock shelter for a three days because of a storm, and the prehistoric men were amusing themselves by making and firing Stone Age pornographic figurines out of the clay soil, while the prehistoric women were vaguely annoyed by the whole thing. "That's an unrealistic body standard, Zog! Real women are skin and bones, with their bellies protruding from chronic parasite infections!"
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:38 AM on May 16, 2021 [3 favorites]

It wasn't fenced off when I was young, and we ran all around the chalk paths, laughing a lot.
posted by mdoar at 10:37 AM on May 16, 2021 [9 favorites]

MetaFilter: prodigious though not unknown
posted by doctornemo at 12:33 PM on May 16, 2021 [1 favorite]

Also going a bit deeper than the article, the Wikipedia article has the 1764 drawing that's supposed evidence of a bellybutton. I dunno, there's two circles below for balls it seems equally likely to me the connected circle is just the glans. The dude's skinned back. Another 1764 sketch shows a separated bellybutton (and also a glans penis) but the whole diagram is so poorly drawn it looks less authoritative.

1764 was an incredible year for glans.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 1:21 PM on May 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

Pompeii is full of phallic signs. Some say they point the way to the nearest brothel, some say

I don’t understand; how would a phallic sign point the way to... oh.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:00 AM on May 17, 2021

The vicar had experienced the giant’s strange potency one night, he said, when he and a house guest—a naval-chaplain friend—climbed up the hill in the company of Vic Irvine and Jodie Moore, the brewers, in whose business Still holds the role of spiritual director. Irvine and Moore had brought plastic jugs filled with their latest brews—an offering for the giant. “It was a clear night, about half past twelve, and we could see the whole valley in the blue moonlight,” Still recalled. “It was freezing cold, with the smoke curling up from the chimneys below. We sat up around the giant’s head—which is totally illegal—and we tasted this one, and that one, and we poured some into the giant’s mouth.” After about an hour of sitting and drinking, Still said, an extraordinary thing happened: “We poured this beer into the giant’s mouth, and we saw his Adam’s apple go up and down as he swallowed it.”

"Approximately twenty minutes later, when the giant finally broke the seal, we watched in abject horror as the village below was inundated," Still said, adding, "As we slunk and slipped back down the now-steaming, muddy hillside, we agreed that it was probably for the best that none of us speak of this again, lest the now-sodden villagers place a bounty on all our heads."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 2:19 PM on May 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

How does "it" line up as a Solstice marker? Asking for a fiend.
posted by Oyéah at 8:47 PM on May 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

At the risk of spoiling the article, I was really surprised that the centuries’ old debate whether the giant was an early modern creation or had been there since antiquity came down to “neither”. It says something about how off the mark perceptions of the Middle Ages have been for centuries that not a single person seems ever to have entertained that possibility.

Humanity wasn’t fundamentally different from the collapse of the western half of the Roman Empire to the first stirrings of the Renaissance. We were just as variegated and weird back then as we are now, or indeed during the height of imperial Rome.
posted by Kattullus at 10:37 PM on May 27, 2021 [1 favorite]