This should really be posted on Dirty Girl Gardening. But gotta say, I had no idea the millions of ceramic gnomes populating gardens throughout the world are associated with the lineage of Priapus (at least, according to some unidentified scholars, as told on several other websites). This is the deity for whom the infamous priapism — the medical term for an erection lasting four or more hours — is named, which prompts me to assume garden gnomes exist to pay homage to a long-lasting hard on. Makes me see my mother’s garden in a whole new way.
The modern incarnation of Priapus?
I wonder if one should approach these kitschy little statues in the same way ancient travelers would appease those of Priapus common in the gardens or at crossroads in ancient Greece and Rome, by stroking its giant member?
In Greek and Roman myth, Priapus was a fertility god, a protector of fruit plants, gardens, livestock, and male genitals. He was the son of the juicy Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, and in some stories, of Dionysus, the god of wine. Hardly surprising.
what is this gnome trying to do here, exactly?
The impotency and lecherousness that perpetually frustrated Priapus was the result of a curse from Hera, wife of the philandering Zeus, king of the gods. When Paris, a legendary Greek who helped cause the Trojan War, deemed Aphrodite more lovely than she, Hera’s revenge for this slight was an in utero hex upon the embryonic Priapus. In art and sculpture, Priapus is usually portrayed as a deformed gnome with a huge cock.
Lotus, by Samir Bharadwaj
A major theme in Greek mythology has the gods turning a maiden into a plant when she’s being pursued by a potential rapist. Just make her sessile, the reasoning goes, and then the thwarted man can honor his near victim by wearing wreaths from her boughs or having her flower be his token symbol. The story of Priapus is no exception. In Ovid’s Fasti, a nymph named Lotus blacked out at a feast, and the horny god saw this as his opportunity to have his way with her. But just before he could embrace her, a donkey began to loudly bray, awakening the sodden nymph who pushed Priapus away. But she only really escaped danger by being transformed into a magnificent lotus tree. To punish the donkey for cock-blocking, Priapus beat it to death with his ginormous phallus.
Fast-forward to 19th century Germany, where garden gnomes became popular in the yards of the working class (Wikipedia claims Germany alone has an estimated 25 million) based on local tales that they can awaken from their ceramic immobility and become willing little garden helpers during the witching hour. From one myth to another, the lineage makes sense — beginning with the ancient god of gardens, the common source of earthly fertility, and morphing into a tiny man of stone with altruistic gardening tendencies. And though I’ve yet to come across a garden gnome with even a bulge sculpted in his trousers, they are rather phallic shaped, with pointy hats and often a bulbous mushroom in hand.
contemplative gnome: to help in the garden, or not to help in the garden...?
If you worry about the labor rights of these stoney creatures, forced to languish in human gardens by day and toil by night, you can always join the Garden Gnome Liberation Front, a decentralized organization dedicated to freeing enslaved garden gnomes. Regardless of your political perspective, I can no longer encounter one of these denizens of the garden without thinking of Priapus and his awesome, eternal endowment.
no bulge here
