THE GIANT AND THE MAYPOLE OF CERNE. IOQ 



Forms which possess these five characteristics have been 

 found in the rock carvings of Scandinavia (see Worsaae, Danish 

 Arts, p. 112, for a divinity, cut on a granite rock, in Denmark), 

 and belong only to the Bronze Age, or to its overlap with the 

 Early Age of Iron. 



If the .Cerne maypole that stood away on Trendle Hill, instead 

 of on the village green, had its vicissitudes, its changing fortune 

 in the conflict with a new faith, no less had the Cerne Giant. 



This is revealed in a story told by Gotselin, a French monk of 

 St. Bertin, who died in 1098. He came to this country in 1058, 

 and, as an inmate of various English monasteries, such as 

 Canterbury, Salisbury, St. Bede's, St. Ive's, was chiefly employed 

 in composing lives of the Saints, or " inflated versions of older 

 writers." " His collections of miracles," observes Wright, (29) 

 " are valuable because they contain some curious illustrations of 

 contemporary history." 



Jerome Porter has translated some of these biographies in his 

 Flores Sane forum (30), where Gotselin relates that St. Augustine 

 " coming into the countie of Dorsett allwaies announcing Christ's 

 holy Ghospell, he arrived at a village where the wicked people not 

 only refused to obey his doctrine, but very impiously and oppro- 

 briously beat him and his fellowes out of their village and in 

 mockerie fastened Fish-tayles at their backs : which became 

 a new purchase of eternall glory to the Saincts, but a perpetuall 

 ignominie to the doers. For it is reported that all that genera- 

 tion had that given them by nature which soe contemptibly they 

 fastened on the backs of these holy men. And Saint Augustine 

 having left these wicked people to carrie the markes of their 

 owne shame, and travelled with his holy companie about five 

 miles further through desert and unhabited places, being 

 cruelly oppressed with the three familiar discomodities of 



(29) Bioyraphia Britannica Literaria, I., 520. 



(30) " The Flowers of the Lives of the most renowned Saincts of the three 

 Kingdoms, England, Scotland, and Ireland, by the Rev. Father Hierome Porter, 

 priest and monke of the holy order of Sainct Benedict, of the Congregation of 

 England." Vol. I., p. 515, MDCXXXII. 



