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4- BRONZE AGE (B.C. 1500500). ROCK-GRAVINGS. 13
found till the Iron Age. This agrees with what will pre
sently be said as to the date of the worship of Thor.
No buildings of any sort are represented on these rock-
gravings.
The only suggestion as to religion which these monu
ments afford is in their frequent representation of a
gigantic elongated figure, of a very coarse description,
usually with a tail, holding an upraised battle-axe or club,
or more rarely two clubs. His weapon is sometimes
stretched towards or over the heads of combatants, or at
the stern of a ship over the mariners. But he is rarely
himself engaged in fight. This can hardly be anything
else than a figure of the battle-god of the Bronze Age pro
tecting or inspiring his heroes, as in later days Odin was
supposed to do, down to the great Battle of Bravalla.6
Similar gigantic figures, standing, however, alone, and
stout of body, were found cut on the chalk or other downs
of Southern England, and two still exist. One of them,
the "Cerne giant,"
7
180 feet high, and covering about
half an acre of ground, is cut on the side of a beautiful
valley in one of the counties in my own diocese, that of
Dorset. Near to it, well away from the village, a May
pole used to be erected.
Another, the
"
Long Man of Wilmington,"
8
in Sussex,
6
In East Gothland, when he appeared for the last time in
the fight between Sigurd Ring, of Sweden, and old Harald
Hildetand, of Denmark, probably in the eighth century (see
Geijer, H. of the Swedes, p. n, E. T., and Otte, I.e., p. 26).
7
See Hutchings Dorset, Vol. iv., pp. 35-6, ed. 1870, where
the figure is somewhat imperfectly represented, and a paper by
Dr. H. Colley March in Dorset N. H. and Antiq. Field Club,
Vol. xxii., pp. 101-18.
8
It is figured in Rev. W. C. Plenderleath s White Horses
and other Turf Monuments, p. 36, London, and Calne (1885),
and in Victoria County History (Sussex], Vol. i., p. 325, 1905.
A hoard of Bronze Age antiquities was found at Wilmington in
1861 (ibid. 320). I am indebted to a clerical friend for an in
teresting and exact account of this figure. The names of
Polhill Farm and Polegate close by suggest the connection with
Phol, on whose personality see Grimm ; Deutsche Mythologie,
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