By Philip Bradfield - Belfast News Letter
Statue of Cernunnos located in Hillsborough Forest of the United Kingdom
Local ratepayer David Megarry says there is widespread concern about the “monstrous and grotesque” figure on social media among residents in the town.
“If this character was in a cartoon you would not show it to the kids in case it gave them nightmares’,” he said. “But here it is - five metres tall - on a family walk in a park. I want it removed.”
Dr Bob Curran, a former Ulster University history lecturer and a prolific folklore author, was taken aback.
“It seems a bit strange for a place like Hillsborough,” he said. “Cernnunos is completely pagan. He was a woodland god and he hunted with devil dogs. He is half man and half goat - with cloven hooves. So it seems strange for Hillsborough.” He said Cernunnos goes under various names in various places, and is also associated with Crom Cruach, a pagan deity of pre-Christian Ireland reputedly worshipped with human sacrifice.
“If you go down to Belcoo [in Fermanagh] you will find a stone which is associated with this, known as the Crom Cruach. On the top of the stone, the first born child of the year was placed and beheaded [as a fertility rite].”
There is much local mythology about the site, he said. “It still is considered to be an evil stone.”
Cernunnos is also a central figure of worship for modern Wiccan witches, he said. “This is because he symbolises a force of nature.”
The News Letter reached out to a wide range of Wiccans for comment without success. Asked why he thought Wiccans seem so reluctant to speak about the statue, Bob replied: “Well, he was supposed to be ‘the black man of the covens”. Historically, witches were supposed to greet Cernunnos with a very specific sexual rite, he said.
“At the covens sexual intercourse was supposed to have taken place [as a fertility rite]”.
Lisburn and Castlereagh Borough Council said it consulted widely on 10 new statues in the park over two years, and an App, costing a total of £707,000. Most feedback has been positive but there have been 15 complaints, it added.
Encyclopaedia Britannica says Cernunnos, or ‘Horned One’, was a “powerful deity, widely worshipped as the lord of wild things” who had different names in different parts of the Celtic world....