A more instructed opinion is that the figure represents Heil, a god of the pagan Saxons, and that it was cut before A.D. 600. Fearful legends belong to it: tales of horror narrating how the border enclosing the effigy is the ground plan of a stout wicker-work cage in which the pagan priests imprisoned many victims, whom they offered up as burnt sacrifices to their god.
Looked upon with awe and wonder by the peasantry of old, who cleaned him once every seven years, the Giant is now regarded by them with indifference and left alone, and it is only the stranger who finds himself obsessed with a strange awe as he gazes upon this mystic relic of a prehistoric age. His minatory and uncouth appearance—for the relation of his head to his body is that of a pea to a melon—perhaps even more than his size, impresses the beholder. It should be said that he is merely traced in outline on the turf, in lines two feet broad and one foot deep, and not laid bare, a huge white shape, to the sky. The club he wields is 120 feet long, and from seven to twenty-four feet broad.
CHAPTER XIX
SHERBORNE TO CERNE ABBAS AND WEYMOUTH
(continued)
Past Nether Cerne and Godmanstone, the road leads, consistently straight and on a down gradient, to Charminster, where, in consonance with the place-name, a minster-like church stands. It is rich in monuments of the Trenchards—bearing their motto, Nosce Teipsum, Know Thyself—of the neighbouring historic mansion of Wolveton, one of whom—a Sir Thomas—built the tower, in or about the year 1500, as duly attested on the building itself, which displays his cypher of two T’s.
Wolveton, standing in the rich level water-meadows where the rivers Cerne and Frome come to a confluence, is, as the Man of Family narrates in the story of The Lady Penelope, in A Group of Noble Dames, “an ivied manor-house, flanked by battlemented towers, and more than usually distinguished by the size of its mullioned windows. Though still of good capacity, the building is much reduced from its original grand proportions; it has, moreover, been shorn of the fair estate which once appertained to its lord, with the exception of a few acres of park-land immediately around the mansion. This was formerly the seat of the ancient and knightly Drenghards, or Drenkhards, now extinct in the male line, whose name, according to the local chronicles, was interpreted to mean Strenuus Miles, vel Potator, though certain members of the family were averse to the latter signification, and a duel was fought by one of them on that account, as is well known.”
The Lady Penelope, who jestingly promised to marry all three of her lovers in turn, and by that jest earned such misery when Fate ordained that her words should come true, was an actual living character. A daughter of Lord Darcy, she in turn married George Trenchard, Sir John Gage, and Sir William Hervey. As the story truly tells, the Drenghards, or rather Trenchards, are extinct in the male line.
Passing by Poundbury, the “Pummery” of Dorset speech, we enter Dorchester, already described at considerable length, and, passing down South Street and by the Amphitheatre, of gloomy associations, come out upon the Weymouth—or, as Mr. Hardy would say the “Budmouth”—road.
