(Newser)
–
The outline of a naked "fertility" giant carved into the chalk of a steep English hillside is being linked to a baby boom in the surrounding community. Folklore has it that women who sleep somewhere on top of the 180-foot-long club-wielding Cerne Abbas giant—also known as the "Rude Man," not because all his junk's hanging out but because he's "rudely" or roughly cut—will be "blessed with fecundity." It's also said that infertility may be cured by having sex on the figure, particularly at the business intersection, reports the Telegraph.
Now it turns out that the women of nearby Dorset have the highest birthrates in the nation with an average of three kids each, twice the rate of the rest of the country. Experts don't know when the huge figure was carved. Some link the giant to a Saxon deity, a Celtic British figure or the Roman Heracles. The earliest known written reference to the nude man was in 1684. The giant shared space in 2007 with a contemporary pal, semi-nude Homer Simpson, painted on the hill to advertise a Simpson movie. Neopagans were infuriated and threatened rain magic to wash Homer away.
