Cernunnos
The Gundestrup Cauldron
The cult of Cernunnos was widespread in central France and his depictions are usually accompanied by ram-headed serpents. He wears a torc around his neck and is sometimes represented with bags full of coins. His name literally means “he who has horns” and, evidently, his role is so complex that he could be compared to Dionysus in Greece (see mitologiagrecorromana). He is above all a god of fertility and prosperity, though he is also lord of the underworld.
A coin found in Hampshire presents him as a sun god with a solar disc between his horns. Indeed, in northern Britain he was called “Belatucadros,” meaning “the beautifully radiant one,” whom the Romans associated with Mars, god of war.
The Gundestrup Cauldron
Cernunnos, Gundestrup Cauldron (detail)
Although no legends about Cernunnos have been preserved, it is possible that his stories survived in the figure of popular heroes such as Herne the Hunter, the phantasmagoric antlered rider who leads the spectral Wild Hunt across the sky.
“After the sixth day of February, many were those who saw and heard a group of hunters shouting with all their might. They rode black stallions and black stags and their dogs were black as pitch with eyes of terrible aspect. This could be seen in the very park of the city of Peterborough, and throughout all the forest stretching from that same place to Stamford. Throughout the whole night, the monks heard them blowing their horns.” Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 1127 A.D.