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4 I. THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE.
is 240 feet high, and holds in each hand a stick or club,
on which he seems to rest, so placed, it is said, as to indicate
the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. This may be a figure
of Phol or Balder, a god of light, whose name some would
connect with that of Apollo. Some of you may remember
Rudyard Kipling s lines in his praise of Sussex (in the
Five Nations), which hint at the fact that the figure was
so placed as to catch the light :
"
I will go out against the sun,
Where the rolled scarp retires,
And the Long Man of Wilmington
Looks naked towards the shires."
Another such figure is said to have been cut on the turf
of Shotover Hill, near Oxford.
But if we are to find a name for the Cerne giant and the
tall figures of Swedish rock-gravings, I should conjecture
that they represented Fro or Frey rather than one of the
Aesir, like Balder.
Fro is merely an old Teutonic name for Lord, and
Frauja is so used by Ulphilas to translate the Greek
/cvpios. But, historically, he is a nature god, one of the
Vanir, who are allied with the Anses or Aesir, but on a
lower level than they. The Vanir are the gods of a less
civilized period, possibly of a less civilized race, who have
been accepted into their pantheon by conquerors, or retained
by a nation after they became acquainted with a higher
cult. The Aesir are somewhat more spiritual, and their
name may simply be a word meaning spirits.
9
The Vanir,
whatever may be the origin of the name, which has been
connected conjecturally with the Vendish people, or with
s.n., and Wolfgang Golther : Germanische Mythologie, p. 383
foil., Leipz., 1895. Dr. Soderblom suggests that Phol = Paul,
as in a newly-found text of the Merseburger-spell. But is not
"
Paul" an attempt to give a Christian colour to the spell?
Local tradition asserts that the shining of the sun upon the whole
length of either club marks the equinox.
9
See Golther: G. M., p. 195, but the etymology is
very
obscure,
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