Gravier de Gargantua (Port-Mort)
The Gravier de Gargantua (also Caillou de Gargantua ; German Gargantuas Kiesel ) is a 3.5 m high, 2.5 m wide, 0.7 m thick menhir made of Senonian limestone , which is located in a small enclosure next to the road D 313 ( Grande Rue ) to the northwest of Port-Mort near the Seine in the Eure department in Normandy , France , where he was moved when the road was widened. It was higher, but it was broken during its transfer in the 19th century. The missing lower part was one meter high.
The menhir dates from the Neolithic and has been a monument historique since 1923 .
Auguste Le Prévost (1789-1859) was the first to mention the monument in 1832. In 1879 Félix Leclerc de Pulligny (1821-1893) reported on the mutilation of the megalith when it was moved.
Legends
As the name suggests, several legends attribute the creation of this menhir to the giant Gargantua. Gargantua is the name of a mythical giant that François Rabelais made famous in his novel cycle Gargantua and Pantagruel in the 16th century. There are dozens of menhirs and a dolmen named Les Palets de Gargantua in the Indre-et-Loire department . Tradition has it that Gargantua shaped the landscape long before Rabelais recorded the story.
In 1832, Auguste Le Prévost reported in his historical and archaeological report on the Eure department of the first version he heard on the spot. When Gargantua was building the Côte Frileuse hill nearby, he was bothered by a pebble that slipped into his shoe and was nothing more than this huge stone. After being forced to stop his work in order to get it out, he found it convenient to deposit it in the place where it can still be seen today.
The version handed down by de Pulligny is somewhat different: when Gargantua and his father Grangousier were sitting in the “tant yolie ville” inn in Mantes, thieves stole their horses. Gargantua and his father set out to track down the thieves. When they got to Port-Mort, not far from Pressagny-l'Orgueilleux, Gargantua was suddenly exhausted. He sat down on the side of the road and, after taking off his shoe, pulled the stone out and threw it there, to the amazement of the people of Panilleuse who were returning from the market.
Surroundings
Nearby, in Les Andelys , is the Tombeau de Saint-Ethbin , built in 1870 on the site of a dolmen. According to De Pulligny, before it was destroyed, the dolmen was shaped like a trilith consisting of two pillars connected by a stone slab.
literature
- Vincent Carpentier, Emmanuel Ghesquiére, Cyril Marcigny: Archéologie en Normandie. Edition Quest-France, Rennes 2007, ISBN 978-2-7373-4164-9 .
Web links
- Menhir dit Gravier de Gargantua in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
Coordinates: 49 ° 10 ′ 23.5 " N , 1 ° 23 ′ 48.8" E