Young on an old day June 21, 2007

About this time, and indeed on this very day in the British Isles, all sorts of people look to the light and to the old rocks, especially those arranged in a circle, to give them that extra something. Perhaps belief.

Or babies. It’s a time of ancient ritual.
I met a grandmother this very morning at Castlerigg in Cumbria with a green and flowered laurel on her head and a vivid red dress open to the bosom “my puppies” as she called them. Her eyes were brown and fierce…and kind. She argued with her friend, drunk like the skunk as to whether she should be called grannie or nan, as she found the one term particularly ageing or ageist. Clutching her leg was Phoebe, her daughter who was perhaps only 3. The women demeaned themselves, calling themselves “two unattractive menopausal women” as if I with camera should have been chasing younger more nubile females. Given Phoebe puppied nanny must have only recently had fertility plucked from her.
The topic of at what age a woman can still conceive, is emotive. Men are reckoned to have it easy, having no cut off period. Generally it appears the age for women is going up. An American woman held the record, then an Indian, now a Romanian, at 66. Indeed there are treatments beyond visiting the ancient stones on midsummer’s day.

But this is the Summer Solstice, so let’s dwell…

Cerne Abbas in Dorset. There on a hill is a huge giant, carved into the hillside from chalk rock. He boasts a club and an impressive erection.
It is not known exactly when the giant was carved, or how, but was thought to be somewhere around the Iron Age. There are also speculations as to whether he was meant to represent Hercules, the Greek God who held a club.
Praying or meditating on the hillside prior to trying to conceive is rumoured to increase your chances as is making love on the giant’s member.
The site would have originally been for pagan festivals (the main pre-Christian religion) and for the celebration of events like Beltane, which was a traditional fertility ritual, in which couples would be sent on walks through the woods to gather flowers and fires would be lit to give thanks for the upcoming summer and a good harvest. Many people formed romantic attachments at these ceremonies and marriages were then performed almost immediately. Even the maypole dancing which was popular until the 19th century had intrinsically sexual symbolism.