I got pregnant
on a 22´ willie!
On a recent trip to England one of the places I spent the night at is the home of the ‘ancient’ hill figure, the Cerne Abbas Giant. Reclining on the side of Giant Hill, on what appears to be a gentle slope until you actually try to climb it, the ‘ithyphallic and clavigerous’ Giant is a full 180 feet in height, outlined by a 480 foot long trench. Unique among hill figures for its internal detailing the Giant can boast eyebrows, eyes, mouth, nipples, ribs, fingers, ‘belt’, phallus, and the now lost navel. Why lost, you wonder?
Around 1908, when the Giant was being ‘scoured’ (the term used for the cleaning of a hill figure,) either by accident or as a joke the navel was incorporated into the penis, thereby extending it to its present length of 22´. This enlargement only helps to foster the belief in the fertility abilities of the Giant.
It is on Beltane morning that Morris dancers annually visit the Giant to wake up the Earth. At the crest of the hill is an Iron Age enclosure, known as the Frying Pan (no doubt a reference to a Christmas Mummers play), where a May Pole of old used to be erected. So the association between the Giant and fertility rites is an old one.

The great virility given off by this testosterone-laden figure has prompted it to be the focus of what can only be termed a modern fertility rite. First mentioned in 1888 there still lingers the belief that if a couple spends the night on the erect penis then a baby is assured. Not too long ago a local white witch of the area preformed such a rite for a couple, who were left to their own devices thereafter and were able to conceive. Putting total credibility to such a rumor would be close to impossible, but is there a need to? Isn’t it enough for us to see in the papers a headline that reads,
I got pregnant on a 22´ willie!?

—Pattie Lawler

 

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