GIANTS, MYTHICAL AND OTHERWISE.
His other parts besides
Prone on the flood, extended long and large,
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size;
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all His works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.
_Milton._
Amongst the traditionary beings which linger yet in the legends of
nearly every race or tribe, few are more universal than those relating
to giants or men of colossal size and superhuman power. Geoffrey of
Monmouth gravely informs us that, before the arrival of his legendary
Trojan, Brutus, Britain was "called Albion, and was inhabited by none
but a few giants." According to the same authority, Ireland was
originally peopled by a similar race of monsters. He asserts that the
magician Merlin transported the materials for the building of Stonehenge
from the Irish mountain Killaraus, to Salisbury Plain. Merlin assured
Uther Pendragon that the stones were "mystical, and of a medical
virtue," and that "the giants of old brought them from the farthest
coasts of Africa, and placed them in Ireland while they inhabited that
country."
The ancient Britons believed Stonehenge to have been built by giants,
hence its name, in their language, _Choir-gaur_, which signifies the
"Giant's Dance."
The earliest reliable notice of the British Islands is, however, to be
found in the work "De Mundo," section three, attributed to Aristotle
(B.C. 340). The writer says:--"Beyond the Pillars of Hercules is the
ocean which flows round the earth. In it are two very large islands,
called Britiannic; these are Albion and Ierne."
The Ramayana, which is the next Sanscrit work in point of age to the
Vedas, gives a singular account of the conquest of Ceylon, in which some
mythic giants and monsters appear together with monkey warriors. Rama,
by the aid of celestial weapons, conquered demons. He obtained his wife,
Sita, by snapping the bow of her gigantic father. The said bow was
conveyed from place to place by an eight-wheeled carriage, drawn by
eight hundred men! His wife having been carried off through the sky by
the demon monarch of Ceylon, "at whose name heaven's armies flee," Rama
entered into an alliance with Sugriva, king of the monkeys, whose
general, Hanuman, at the head of his monkey army, aided Rama in the
conquest of his enemy's territory. The demon king was slain, and Sita
recovered. The latter successfully underwent the ordeal of walking
through blazing fire, in order to demonstrate her purity.
The confusion which existed in ancient times respecting wild men,
monsters, and some kind of gigantic ape or monkey, has had some little
light thrown upon it by the recent experiences of M. Du Chaillu in
Equatorial Africa. In his "Journey to Ashango-land," he says:--
"After reconsidering the whole subject, I am compelled also to state
that I think it highly probable that gorillas, and not chimpanzees, as I
was formerly inclined to think, were the animals seen and captured by
the Carthaginians under Hanno, as related in the 'Periplus.' Many
circumstances combine in favour of this conclusion. One of the results
of my late journey has been to prove that gorillas are nowhere more
common than on the tract of land between the bend of the Fernand Vaz and
the sea-shore; and, as this land is chiefly of alluvial formation, and
the bed of the river constantly shifting, it is extremely probable that
there were islands here in the time of Hanno. The southerly part of the
land is rather hilly, and, even if it were not then an island, the
Carthaginians, in rambling a short distance from the beach, would see a
broad water (the Fernand Vaz) beyond them, and would conclude that the
land was an island.... The passage in the 'Periplus,' which I mentioned
in 'Equatorial Africa,' is to the following effect:--'On the third day
after sailing from thence, passing the streams of fire, we came to a bay
called the Horn of the South. In the recess was an island like the
first, having a lake, and in this there was another island full of wild
men. But much the greater part of them were women with hairy bodies,
whom the interpreters called gorillas.... But, pursuing them, we were
not able to take the men; they all escaped from us by their great
agility, being _cremnobates_ (that is to say, climbing precipitous rocks
and trees), and defending themselves by throwing stones at us. We took
three women, who bit and tore those who caught them, and were unwilling
to follow. We were obliged, therefore, to kill them, and took their
skins off, which skins were brought to Carthage, for we did not navigate
further, provisions becoming scarce.'" Du Chaillu adds his opinion that
"the hairy men and women met with were males and females of the
_Troglodytes gorilla_. Even the name 'gorilla,' given to the animal in
the 'Periplus,' is not very greatly different from its native name at
the present day, 'ngina' or 'ngilla,' especially in the indistinct way
in which it is sometimes pronounced."
Mr. Robert Hunt seems to regard the giants of "old Cornwall" as
something generically distinct from those depicted in Mr. Dasent's
translation of Asbjörnsen and Moe's collection of "Norse Tales." He
says:--
"May we venture to believe that the Cornish giant is a true Celt, or may
he not belong to an earlier race? He was fond of home, and we have no
record of his ever having passed beyond the wilds of Dartmoor. The
giants of Lancashire, and Cheshire, and Shropshire have a family
likeness, and are no doubt closely related; but if they are cousins to
the Cornish giants, they are cousins far removed."
So far from entertaining a doubt as to the common origin of these
mythical monsters, on account of the diversity of local costume in which
they are presented, I rather feel disposed to express astonishment at
the vast amount of similarity they yet retain, after being subjected for
centuries to so many diverse influences. The Titans and the Cyclops, of
the polished Greeks, some of whom are said to have covered nine acres of
land when laid on the earth; the Goëmagot, who succumbed in the famous
wrestling match to the Trojan chief Corineus, on the cliff at Plymouth,
and who, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, was twelve cubits high, and
tore up huge oak trees as if they were hazel wands; that prince of
pedestrians, Bolster, immortalised by the pencil and burin of George
Cruickshank, who took his six miles at a stride, over a Cornish valley,
without discomfort; the trolls and giants of the Norse, who, like their
Greek cousins, warred with the ascendant gods; the ogres and huge
club-wielding monsters of our nursery days, that in Lancashire, as in
other parts of England (Cornwall included), yielded to the prowess of
the redoubtable "Jack, the Giant-killer," or "Jack, the Tinkeard,"
present too many corresponding family features and mental and physical
coincidences to permit a serious doubt of their common parentage. The
Teutonic giants of the German tales collected by the brothers Grimm,
bear unmistakable relationship both to those of Cornwall and the north
of England. Indeed, "Gogmagog," the very name of the Shropshire colossus
who was located in the ruins of the Roman city Uriconium, is preserved
in that of the Cornish giant wrestler above referred to. There are
Gog-Magog hills, too, near Cambridge; and the Corporation of London yet
retains the huge wooden images which represent this mythic monster split
into two, and converted into the giant warders of the ancient city--the
well-known Gog and Magog. I have seen at Norwich two huge wooden dolls,
which, if they do not actually represent the said Gog and Magog, are
evidently intended as portraits of some very near relatives of those
ponderous misshapen relics of the past.
Much useless discussion has been devoted to the attempt to show that
mankind, or at least some portion thereof, in the "pre-historic time,"
was of Cyclopean or gigantic stature. All known evidence of a reliable
character, however, condemns this hypothesis as untenable. The power of
ignorance and rumour to magnify small facts into monstrous fictions is
aptly illustrated by the story of the famous three black crows. The
deeds of a man of uncommon stature, or extraordinary strength, would
furnish, under certain circumstances, a sufficient modicum of truth to
lay the foundation of a most extravagant myth. We have a modern
illustration of the proneness of ignorant or superstitious persons to
hyperbole in matters of this kind, in the statements of early voyagers
anent the aborigines of Patagonia. Our early school geographies informed
us that this then relatively unknown portion of South America was
peopled by a race of giants. Indeed, I think it was even intimated that
these colossi were most probably the _bonâ fide_ descendants of the
supposed mythical monsters of the days of old. Some Spanish officers, in
1785, measured several of these Patagonian giants, and they reported
that the greatest monster of the lot only reached seven feet one inch
and a quarter! I can never remember England being without two or three
exhibited giants, who would look with contempt upon such pretensions to
the honours of the caravan, to say nothing of the "reception room" of
such "gentlemanly freaks of nature" as Chang, the Chinese Anak, Mons.
Brice, or Captain Bates, with his colossal wife, _née_ Miss Swan. But
Captain Wallis informs us that, on his carefully measuring several of
these Patagonian prodigies, he found that the stature of the greater
part of them ranged between five feet ten inches and six feet! The
well-known regiment of grenadiers raised by Frederick William the First,
of Prussia, would have completely dwarfed these once celebrated
Patagonian Titans. One of them, a Swede, measured eight feet six inches.
"O'Brien, the Irish giant," who died in 1783, was eight feet four inches
in height. His real name was Byrne. His skeleton is preserved in the
museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London. Chang, at nineteen
years of age, was said to be seven feet nine and a half inches in
height. He stated that a deceased sister was eight inches taller than
himself! The proneness to exaggeration or hyperbole to which I have
referred was shared in even by such men as Julius Cæsar and Tacitus; or,
at the least, they dealt largely in the article at second-hand. They
believed and recorded the then vulgar notion that the German
"barbarians," our own ancestors, were a race of gigantic men.
Indeed the belief in giants and other monsters was almost universal
amongst the more educated section of the Roman people. Pliny speaks of
the existence of men in India whose height exceeded five cubits. He
assures his readers, on the most unimpeachable authority, that "they are
never known to spit, are not troubled with pain in the head or teeth, or
grief of the eyes, and seldom or never complain of any soreness in any
other parts of the body, so hardy are they, and of so strong a
constitution, through the moderate heat of the sun." He likewise talks
of a people who, having no heads, stand on their necks. These monsters
were said to carry their eyes in their shoulders. He describes the
Choromandæ as a savage people, without a distinct speech. Their bodies
were rough and hairy. They gnashed their teeth and made a hideous noise.
Their eyes were red, and their teeth of the canine order. This same
India, according to Pliny, possessed a great variety of other
monstrosities, such as men without noses, men with feet a cubit long,
while those of their wives were so small that they were called
"sparrow-footed."
That such stories were ordinarily accepted as true, even in Shakspere's
days, is attested by the fact that the great poet and dramatist places
in the mouth of Othello, in his eloquent defence before the senate of
Venice, when explaining his method of courtship, the following words:--
Wherein I spoke of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents, by flood and field;
Of hair-breadth scapes i'th imminent deadly breach;
Of being taken by the insolent foe
And sold to slavery; of my redemption thence
And portance in my travel's history;
Wherein of antres vast, and deserts idle,
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills whose heads touch heaven,
It was my hint to speak, such was the process;
And of the Cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
Again, in the Tempest, after the appearance of Prospero's magic repast,
Sebastian says,--
Now I will believe
That there are unicorns; that in Arabia
There is one tree, the Ph[oe]nix' throne; one ph[oe]nix
At this hour reigning there.
And Gonzala adds,--
When we were boys,
Who would believe that there were mountaineers
Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them
Wallets of flesh? or that there were such men,
Whose heads stood in their breasts.
The Amorites, the most important tribe of the aborigines of Palestine,
are described in the Jewish Rabbinical writings as of enormous stature.
Amos indeed, speaks of them, figuratively, as being as high as cedars
and as strong as oaks. It is stated in Deuteronomy that the iron bed of
Og, King of Bashan, was nine cubits long and four in breadth. This bed,
however, by some, is believed to have been really a kind of divan. The
Rabbinical writers were not, however, content with even a literal
interpretation of these passages. In the _Jalkut Shimoni_ we are told
that Moses informed Azräel, the Angel of Death, that the dimensions of
Og and Sihon were so great that they escaped drowning at the great
Deluge, the water of which reached no higher than their ancles!
According to the _Sevachir_, Og placed his feet on the fountains of the
Great Deep, and, by putting his hand on the windows of Heaven, he
stopped the Deluge! On the water being made so hot, however, that the
monster's lower extremities became parboiled, he was compelled to
desist. He nevertheless mounted the ark, and survived the great
catastrophe. He was said to consume daily one thousand oxen, one
thousand head of game, and one thousand measures of wine. He was a
famous hand at uplifting mountains and other objects of similarly
trifling magnitude! He met with a mishap, however, whilst conveying a
rock "three miles in extent," with which he proposed to annihilate the
Israelitish army at one blow! We are further informed that Joshua, who
was ten ells high, perceiving that the rock was crumbling to pieces
around the giant's shoulders, struck him on the ancle with an axe ten
ells in length, and thus lamed him for life. Sihon was so powerful that
no creature on earth could withstand him. It seems, however, that he
derived his strength not altogether from his immense physique, but from
a demon with which he was connected, inasmuch as the Israelites speedily
vanquished both him and his gigantic Amorite followers, after the said
demon had been effectually confined in chains. The Amorites may have
been men of large stature in comparison with the surrounding tribes.
This is by no means improbable. Two recent travellers, Mr. Porter and
the Rev. Cyril Graham, testify to the Cyclopean character of the remains
of some of the ancient cities of Bashan, which they succeeded in
discovering, after infinite toil and fatigue, the former in 1853 and the
latter in 1857. Some of the houses are described as being built of
immense masses of squared stones of the neighbouring basalt rock,
without mortar or other cement, with an enormous basaltic "flag" for the
roof, and a similar one for a door or gateway. Some of the latter Mr.
Graham found still in position, and capable of being turned on the stone
pivots which supplied the place of hinges.
Mr. Gladstone, in his "Juventus Mundi," contends that the "Cyclops, a
godless race," are the children of Poseidon, and that Poseidon (the
Greek Neptune) was the chief god of the Ph[oe]nicians. He adds, "Syria
was inhabited by Canaanites; and it has been observed that the names
given in Scripture to that race indicate great stature and physical
force, which became the basis of a tradition that they were a race of
giants. To the Greek mind this would naturally convey that they were the
children of Poseidon, as the Ph[oe]nician god."
The ruins at Baalbec, and the sites of other ancient Ph[oe]nician
cities, present numerous specimens of colossal masonry, of most
extraordinary dimensions. In a wall at Baalbec three large blocks of
stone are described as still _in situ_, at the height of twenty feet
from the ground, which measure each twelve feet in width, twelve feet in
depth, and sixty feet in length. Mr. John D. Baldwin, in his
"Pre-historic Nations," contends that the ancient Ph[oe]nicians were of
Cushite of Hamite origin. Speaking of their stupendous architectural
remains, he says:--
"The Cushite origin of these cities is so plain that those most
influenced by the strange monomania which transforms the Ph[oe]nicians
into Semites now admit that the Cushites were the first civilisers in
Ph[oe]nicia. These old builders, whose sculpture produced such
astonishing effects in coarse rock, resorted to wood and metal for the
finish and ornamentation of their work. The stone they used was not
Parian marble, therefore they covered it with ornament of another
material, and 'what remains of their monuments is not the monument
itself, but the gross support that served to bear the whole system of
decoration under which the stone was concealed.'"
In relatively recent times, India appears to have been regarded as
especially the land of giants, marvels, and enchantments. Honest old Sir
John Mandeville, in his quaint, credulous, innocent way, tells us that
there are, in one of the Indian islands, "folks of great stature, as
giants, and they be hideous to look upon, and they have but one eye, and
that is in the middle of the front, and they eat nothing but raw flesh
and raw fish." He further adds that they were clothed in the skins of
beasts, they drank milk, preferred man's flesh to all other food, and
they had no houses to live in. In another Indian island, Sir John tells
us he was informed that giants dwelt "of great stature--some fifty
cubits long;" but he adds, with commendable caution, "I saw none of
these, for I had no lust to go to those parties, because no man cometh
neither into that Isle nor into the other, but he is devoured anon. Men
say that many times the giants take men into the sea out of their ships
and bring them to land, two in one hand and two in another, eating them
going, all raw and all quick."
The extravagance manifested in these giant legends may have arisen from
two distinct sources, besides the one to which I have alluded. In the
first place _giant_ did not originally mean bulk or extraordinary
height. The Hebrew word _nephilim_, used in the Bible, according to Dr.
Derham, is sometimes employed to signify "_violent_ men," and it is
translated by a word carrying such a meaning by several ancient writers.
He considers that "monsters of rapine and wickedness" are referred to
rather than giants in stature. And it is perfectly true that vice and
violence are almost always characteristic of these legendary huge-limbed
gentry; while the conqueror, who represents the better morals of the age
of the myths, is generally of the dimensions of ordinary humanity.
The discovery of certain fossil bones of colossal size for a time seemed
to countenance the belief in the physical existence of this mythic race.
Buffon, indeed, describes and figures large bones as the remains of
giants, which are now well known to pertain to a species of extinct
fossil elephant.
In a letter from Dr. Mather to Dr. Woodward, published in the Royal
Society's Transactions, reference is made to a discovery, at Albany, in
New England, in 1705, of enormous bones and teeth. The doctor calls them
the bones of a giant, and refers to them as corroborative of the
statement in Genesis, c. 6, v. 4. The bones in question, however, turned
out to belong to the great American fossil pachyderm, the _Mastodon
giganteus_. There is a tradition amongst the red Indians, that a race of
men, relatively large in stature, existed contemporaneously with these
animals, and that both were destroyed by the Great Spirit with
thunderbolts. One account says,--that "as a troop of these terrible
quadrupeds were destroying the deer, the bisons, and the other animals
created for the use of the Indians, the 'Great Man,' slew them all with
his thunder, except the Big Bull, who, nothing daunted, presented his
enormous forehead to the bolts, and shook them off as they fell, till,
being at last wounded in the side, he fled towards the great lakes,
where he is to this day."
Dr. Hitchcock, in one of his geological works, informs us that "Felix
Plater, Professor of Anatomy at Basle, referred the bones of an
elephant, found at Lucerne, to a giant at least nineteen feet high, and,
in England, similar bones were regarded as those of the fallen angels!"
The discovery of remains of a fossil elephant beneath the cliff at
Plymouth was not very long ago held by some to furnish demonstrative
evidence not only of the strictly historical character of Geoffrey of
Monmouth's idle romance respecting the landing of Brute and his Trojans
in England, but of the precise locality where the mythic champion
wrestler, Corineus, hurled the equally mythic giant, Gogmagog, from the
cliff into the sea![34]
At Coggeshall, in Essex, similar remains have been found. One of the
earliest notices of these interesting discoveries is by old Norden, who
says that at Coggeshall "ther were to be seene 2 teeth of a monstrous
man or gyant of so great magnitude and weight as 100 of anie men's teeth
in this age cannot countervayle one of them."
White Watson alludes to the discovery, last century, of the skull of a
fossil elephant, at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, which was commonly
believed at the time to be the brain-pan of an enormous giant.
In the second place, it does not appear a difficult matter to recognise
in these giant legends, one form in which the memory of the dethronement
of the gods of the various Aryan myths has been preserved. In fact, the
very feats performed by the giants in Cornwall, such as the hurling of
huge rocks, and striding across valleys, are, as I have previously
shown, attributed in Lancashire and the north of England to the devil. A
tradition yet exists that the Roman highways, which cross each other
not far from Fulwood Barracks, near Preston, extended from the North Sea
to the South Sea, and from the East Sea to the West Sea, and that the
devil made them himself in one night. Indeed in mythical and
traditionary lore, giants and devils are frequently convertible
personages.
Mr. A. Russel Wallace, in his "Malay Archipelago," tells us that the
present inhabitants of the island of Java, "who now only build rude
houses of bamboo and thatch," look upon the ruins of the colossal
edifices, the remarkable examples of ancient sculpture, and other
evidences of the extinct civilisation amidst which they dwell, "with
ignorant amazement," and regard them as "the undoubted productions of
giants or of demons." The mythology of the Southern Aryans presents a
similar confusion; their tribe of demons, the Râkshasas or Atrins
(devourers), Kelly regards as the "earliest originals of the giants and
ogres of our nursery tales. They can take any form at will, but their
natural one is that of a huge misshapen giant 'like a cloud,' with hair
and beard of the colour of red lightning. They go about open-mouthed,
gnashing their monstrous teeth and snuffing after human flesh. Their
strength waxes most terrible in twilight, and they know how to increase
its effect by all sorts of magic. They carry off their human prey
through the air, tear open the living bodies, and with their faces
plunged amongst the entrails they suck up the warm blood as it gushes
from the heart. After they have gorged themselves they dance merrily."
These Râkshasas, certainly look very like the originals of the monsters
described by Sir John Mandeville.
The story of the Titans, overthrown by Zeus, and cast into Tartarus, is
the Hellenic form of this giant myth, which Milton has imitated in his
Paradise Lost, where Satan and his host, formerly angels and archangels,
are hurled from heaven into the bottomless pit. Milton's devils are, in
fact, veritable giants. Speaking of Satan, the poet describes him as
In bulk as huge
As whom the fables name of monstrous size;
Titanian or Earth-born, that warr'd on Jove,
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea beast
Leviathan, which God of all His works
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.
Again, speaking of his ponderous weapon, he says,--
His spear, to equal which the tallest pine
Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast
Of some great admiral, were but a wand.
The "mission" of these Pandemonium giants is precisely analogous to that
of the rest of the fraternity. Satan says to Beelzebub,--
Of this be sure,
To do ought good never will be our task,
But ever to do ill our sole delight,
As being the contrary to His high will
Whom we resist. If then His providence
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,
Our labour must be to pervert that end,
And out of good still to find means of evil.
The trolls and giants of the Norse traditions are evidently but other
forms of the common myth, notwithstanding the metamorphoses which they,
in some respects, seem to have undergone. Dasent points out some kinder
qualities which the giants occasionally exhibit. He says:--"One
sympathises, too, with them, and almost pities them as the
representatives of a simple primitive race, whose day is past and gone,
but who still possessed something of the innocence and virtue of ancient
times, together with a stock of old experience, which, however useful it
might be as an example to others, was quite useless to help themselves."
Yet he regards them as the embodiment of "sheer brute force," which
yields to the "slight and lissom foe" representing virtue and reason.
The "upstart Æsir gods," to whom they are opposed, are described as
endowed with "that diviner wrath which, though burning hot, was still
under the control of reason." The trolls, on the contrary, are subject
to wild paroxysms of merely brutal animal rage, which discloses their
true parentage. The fact that their enemies, the Æsir gods, were
afterwards dethroned, and stigmatised, along with the classical deities,
as cacodæmons, and became associated with the giants as evil spirits,
will perhaps explain why some of the race have been endowed with
attributes which do not pertain to the rest. It appears that they knew
of their common destiny; that they sometimes suspended hostilities, and
even intermarried; and looked forward with joint melancholy gloom to
that, to them, awful day, "the twilight of the gods," when both should
fall before the light of the Christian revelation.
The Venerable Bede, in describing the martyrdom of St. Alban, expressly
states that the magistrate or judge "was standing at the altar, and
offering sacrifice to devils," the said devils being the gods of the
Romans. He afterwards informs us that, when the bishops Germanicus and
Lupus were on a voyage to Britain, "on a sudden they were obstructed by
the malevolence of demons, who were jealous that such men should be sent
to bring back the Britons to the faith. They raised storms and darkened
the sky with clouds." Their efforts were fruitless, nevertheless, as the
piety of the bishops prevailed against them. The Old Nick of the
English, literally the devil, is but one form of Odin dethroned.
Professor Henry Morley, in his "English Writers," says,--"Odin, under
the name of Nikarr, from a root signifying stroke of violence, which
appears in the Greek {nikê} victory; in the Latin _necare_ and
Anglo-Saxon _næcan_, to kill; and in the English Knock; having been
first cut up into Nickers, has become the Old Nick of more recent
times."
Dasent speaks of the trolls "as more systematically malignant than the
giants, and with the term were bound up notions of sorcery and unholy
power." He justly adds,--
"But mythology is a woof of many colours, in which the hues are shot and
blended, so that the various races of supernatural beings are shaded off
and fade away almost imperceptibly into each other; and thus, even in
heathen times, it must have been hard to say exactly where the giant
ended and the troll began. But when Christianity came in and heathendom
fell; when the godlike race of the Æsir became evil demons instead of
good genial powers, then all the objects of the old popular belief,
whether Æsir, giants, or trolls, were mingled together in one
superstition, as 'no canny.' They were all trolls, all malignant, and
thus it is that, in these tales, the traditions about Odin and his
underlings, about the frost giants, and about sorcerers and wizards, are
confused and garbled; and all supernatural agency that plots man's ill
is the work of _trolls_, whether the agent be the arch enemy himself, or
giant, or witch, or wizard."
Mr. Hunt appears to regard some of the giant traditions of Cornwall as
having direct reference to the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.
There may be some truth in this, as the existence of such demi-giants as
his Tom, who defeated giant Blunderbus by the skilful employment of the
wheel and axle of his wagon, would seem to indicate. The wheel and axle,
however, is an Aryan sun emblem, and one type of the "chark" or
"fire-bringing" instrument, invented, according to the Greeks, by
Prometheus. This unquestionably demonstrates its descent from the
ancient solar myths. Conquered men driven to the caves and mountain
fastnesses, and addicted to violence and cruelty, would soon be
described figuratively by language which literally referred to older
superstitions; just as we now designate sanguinary savages as monsters,
fiends, and even "devils incarnate." This, no doubt, offers the most
probable interpretation of the Gog-Magog story, as well as of many
others of its class. Dasent says,--
"Between this outcast nomade race, which wandered from forest to forest,
and from fell to fell, without a fixed place of abode, and the old
natural powers and frost giants, the minds of the race which adored Odin
and the Æsir soon engendered a monstrous man-eating cross-breed of
supernatural beings, who fled from contact with the intruders as soon as
the first great struggle was over, abhorred the light of day, and looked
upon agriculture and tillage as a dangerous innovation which destroyed
their hunting fields, and was destined finally to root them out from off
the face of the earth."
Mackenzie informs us that the Esquimaux with whom he conversed had a
tradition that the English were giants, with wings, who could kill with
a glance of their eye, and swallow at a mouthful an entire beaver.
If the European emigrants who have conquered North America from the Red
Indian, and nearly extirpated his race, had been as superstitious as
their forefathers were some two or three thousand years ago, we should
have had a similar class of mixed myths resulting from their warlike
contact. Indeed, we have, notwithstanding the influence of Christianity,
some faint indications that the superstitious element in this direction
has not yet completely died out.
Many of these mythic giants are little more than degraded forms of the
original Aryan personifications of the forces of Nature. Rivers have
been deified, and so have mountains. Atlas was a giant, who held the
earth on his shoulders. The one-eyed Cyclops, with the deformed Vulcan
at their head, forging thunderbolts in a cave at Mount Etna, personify
volcanic force. Giants were supposed to be buried alive at the base of
such mountains as Etna, Stromboli, and Vesuvius, and their struggles to
free themselves the cause of the earthquakes and other terrestrial
convulsions to which the localities were specially subjected. The
whirlpool and rock in the Straits of Messina, which cause no special
alarm to modern navigators, created so much terror in the minds of
ancient sailors, and made such havoc of their frail craft, that they
became regarded as malicious demons, and were named Scylla and
Charybdis. The noise of the furious waves, dashing upon the rocky
cavernous coast, fancy likened to the howling of dogs and wolves. Hence
the fable that a female monster, surrounded by troops of such animals,
prowled about the neighbourhood, awaiting the opportunity of devouring
mariners wrecked on the coast. The celebrated basaltic rock in the north
of Ireland was called the "Giant's Causeway" simply because the early
inhabitants, knowing nothing of geology, thought it a result of
superhuman or demoniacal labour. The equally celebrated cave in
Derbyshire, doubtless, received the name of the "Devil's Hole" for a
similar reason. Many of Mr. Hunt's Cornish giants live in the violently
upheaved masses of granite which receive the Atlantic tempests in their
wildest fury. Some, indeed, having become more modernised, live in
castles on the rocky mountains. Others of these myths have become
entangled with the Tregeagle traditions, which, I have previously shown,
embody much of the Teutonic "wild hunt" or "furious host" superstitions.
The Rev. George W. Cox, in his "Mythology of the Aryan Nations,"
contends that the beings spoken of as Cyclops in the Iliad and the
Odyssey, are personifications of distinct natural forces. The former he
says "are manifestly the dazzling and scorching flashes which plough up
the storm-clad heavens." In the latter the phenomenal features are of a
very different character. Polyphêmos is "the son of Poseidon (Neptune)
and the nymph Thoôsa; in other words he is emphatically the child of the
waters, and of the waters only--the huge mists which wrap the earth in a
dark cloud." The one-eyed monster, blinded by Odysseus, is the sun
himself, shorn of his beams, glaring ghastly through the blackening
mist. He says:--"This terrible being may be seen drawn with wonderful
fidelity to the spirit of the old myth in Turner's picture of the
overthrow of the troops sent by Cambyses to the shrine of the Lybian
Ammon; and they who see the one-eyed monster glaring down on the devoted
army, where the painter was probably utterly unconscious that he was
doing more than representing the simoom of the desert, will recognise at
once the unconscious accuracy with which the modern painter conveys the
old Homeric conception of Polyphêmos. In this picture, as in the storms
of the desert, the sun becomes the one great eye of an enormous monster,
who devours every living thing that crosses his path, as Polyphêmos
devoured the comrades of Odysseus. The blinding of this monster is the
natural sequel when his mere brute force is pitted against the craft of
his adversary. In his seeming insignificance and his despised estate, in
his wayworn mien and his many sorrows, Odysseus takes the place of the
Boots or Cinderella of Teutonic folk-lore; and as the giant is
manifestly the enemy of the bright being whose splendours are for the
time being hidden beneath a veil, so it is the representative of the sun
himself who pierces out his eye; and thus Odysseus, Boots, and Jack the
Giant-killer alike overcome and escape from the enemy, although they may
be said to escape with the skin of their teeth."
Grimm relates a Norwegian legend, which clearly indicates that many of
these gigantic monsters of the old mythologies were simply
impersonations of elemental strife or powerful natural forces. Olaf, the
saint and king, being anxious to build a very large church without
taxing heavily his people, bargained with a giant or troll, who
undertook the labour on condition that he should receive as his reward
the sun and the moon, or, in default, the royal saint himself. When the
immense structure was nearly completed, Olaf wandered about in sore
dismay, wondering how the giant's demand could be met. Suddenly he heard
a child crying in the inside of a hill or small mountain. On listening
attentively, he overheard a giantess say to the child these
words:--"Hush! hush! to-morrow, _Wind and Weather_, your father, will
come home and bring with him the sun and the moon, or St. Olaf himself."
It appears that the simply calling an evil spirit by his name was
sufficient to utterly annihilate him. So Olaf marched up with a bold
front to the giant, and said,--"_Wind and Weather_, you have set the
spire awry!" The giant suddenly fell from the top of the edifice, and
was smashed to pieces. And further, each piece was found to have become
converted into a flint stone!
Giants were introduced pretty freely, especially during the earlier
period of modern English literature, into allegorical works both in
prose and poetry. There is a forcible illustration of this in Stephen
Hawe's "Pastime of Pleasure." Prince Graunde Amour, goes forth in search
of adventures. False Report, a dwarf, deceives him, but he slays a giant
with three heads, named Imagination, Falsehood, and Perjury. John
Bunyan, too, has his Giant Despair, etc., and others will readily occur
to the reader's mind. In the Arthurian romance of Sir Gawayne, that hero
is said to have been endowed with "supernatural increase and decline of
strength that _corresponded to the movement of the sun_." This is not
without significance, as a personification of natural force. It
corresponds, too, in a remarkable degree, with Mr. Cox's interpretations
of some of the elder Greek myths.
Lord Bacon, in his "Wisdom of the Ancients," referring to what is called
the allegorical theory, as a method of interpreting the ancient
mythology, says,--"I freely and willingly confess that I am inclined to
the opinion, that not a few of the fables of the antient poets contained
from their very origin a hidden mystery and allegory, for who can be so
obstinately blind to evidence, that, when he hears that after the
extermination of the giants, Fame was brought forth as a posthumous
sister to them, he does not immediately apply the story to these party
murmurs and seditious rumours which are wont to spread themselves
amongst a people for a while after the suppression of rebellions? Or
when he hears that the giant Typhon cut away and carried off the sinews
of Jupiter, and that they were stolen from him, and restored to Jupiter
by Mercury; how can he but perceive immediately that this is to be
referred to powerful rebellions, by which the sinews of kings, their
revenue and authority, are cut out; yet not so but by mildness of
address and wisdom of edicts, as it were by stolen means, the minds of
subjects within a short time are reconciled, and the power of kings
restored to them. Or when he hears that in that memorable expedition of
the gods against the giants, the ass of Silenus became by his braying an
instrument of great value in dispersing these giants; must he not
clearly see that this was imagined of those vast projects of rebels,
which are mostly dissipated by light rumours and vain consternation?
There is also another not unimportant an indication of the existence of
a hidden and involved sense; namely, that some of the fables are so
absurd and senseless in their outward narration, that they seem to show
their nature at first sight, and cry for exposition by means of a
parable. Above all, one consideration has been of great weight and
importance with me--that most of the fables of mythology appear by no
means to have been invented by those who relate them, such as Homer,
Hesiod, and the rest; for where it clearly made manifest to us that they
proceeded from that age and those authors by whom they are celebrated,
and thence transmitted to us, we should surely, I conjecture, not have
been induced to expect anything great or lofty from such an origin as
this. But he who considers the subject more attentively will discover
that they are related to posterity as things already received and
believed, not then for the first time imagined and offered to mankind.
And this it is which has increased their estimation in my eyes, as being
neither discovered by the poets themselves nor belonging to their age,
but a kind of sacred relics, the light air of better ages, which,
_passing through the traditions of earlier nations_, have been breathed
into the trumpets and pipes of these Grecians."
The passage of these giant traditions into the romances of modern
chivalry may easily be traced. King Arthur himself was a hero of
colossal proportions. He is still thought, as we have already seen, like
Barbarossa and others, to lie entranced in the recesses of more than one
mountain. He was attended by the magician Merlin, and he and his
followers performed superhuman feats. He slew many giants of prodigious
size, including Ritho, who had clothed himself in furs made from the
beards of vanquished kings, and the Spanish giant, who had borne away
Helena, the niece of Hoel, and fled with her to the top of St. Michael's
Mount.
In Pulci's "Morgante Maggiore," Orlando, one of Charlemagne's Paladins,
slays the two giants, Passamont and Alabaster, and converts, or rather
accepts of the miraculous conversion of, a third, Morgante, to
Christianity.
The hero, Beowulf, the Geát, in the oldest Anglo-Saxon poem extant, is
believed by Kemble and others to be a personified warrior form of Gautr,
Odin's name in the Edda, as the god of abundance. The giant Grendel,
whom he slew, was a malignant demon that carried desolation around. He
is described as holding "the moors, the fen, and fastnesses." Professor
Morley, in his English summary of the poem, says,--"Forbidden the homes
of mankind, the daughters of Cain brought forth in darkness misshapen
giants, elves, and orkens, such giants as warred long with God, and he
was one of these." This giant is believed to have had his haunt at
Hartlepool, on the coast of Durham. His mother, who was a kind of
aquatic demon, was thought to occupy a "bottomless" pool, from which the
town, in part, takes its name.
The King Arthur legend, which the Rev. John Whitaker locates at
Manchester, notwithstanding its relatively modern Norman-French
externals, still exhibits a strong flavour of the older traditions.
According to an episode in the "_Morte Darthur_," this Saxon champion,
Sir Tarquin, or Torquin, was giant enough to conquer and capture three
knights in one encounter. Indeed, he is sometimes described as the
"Giant." There is a tradition yet extant in the neighbourhood, that the
said Tarquin threw the huge stone, which lies by the roadside near
Longford Bridge, from his residence at Knot Mill, to its present
location, a distance of nearly two miles. The stone really is the
pedestal of an ancient cross, similar to the many yet to be seen in
various parts of Lancashire and Cheshire. It presents, however, the
peculiarity of two square mortise holes for the support of the upright
shaft. These, popular tradition says, Tarquin expressly made for the
insertion of his thumb and finger when engaged in hurling the ponderous
mass as a "quoit" or plaything. It is likewise said to have been used,
at some distant period, as a "plague-stone," and that the two holes were
filled with vinegar or some other disinfectant. This story is not
improbable. The sacred character of such a relic would add to the faith
of the neighbouring inhabitants in the efficacy of the means adopted to
avoid infection. It is said that provisions, etc., were left on or near
the stone by the country people, and that the towns-folk deposited the
understood price in one of the holes containing the vinegar, which was
believed to render the coins innocuous as plague conductors. Sir Lionel
of Liones, the first of the brothers of Sir Lancelot of the Lake, who
succumbed to Tarquin's prowess whilst endeavouring to rescue the three
captives referred to, tells us, "He never beheld so stout a knight, so
handsome a man, and so well accoutered a hero." He lived in a plain,
surrounded by a dense forest. His castle, John Whitaker says, was formed
out of the ruins of the Roman fortress at Castlefield, Manchester. Sir
Ector de Maris, another brother of Sir Lancelot, rambling in search of
adventures, and hearing that "within a mile was a castle, strong and
well ditched, and by it, upon the left hand, a ford; and that over this
grew a fair tree, on the branches of which were hung the shields of the
many gallant knights who had been overcome by the owner of the castle;
and at the stem was a basin of copper, with a Latin inscription, which
challenged any knight to strike it, and summon the castellans to a
contest. Ector came to the place, saw the shields, recognised many that
belonged to his associates at the Round Table, and particularly noticed
his brother's. Fired at the sight, he beat violently on the basin, and
then gave his horse drink at the ford. And immediately a knight appeared
on horseback behind him, and called him to come out of the water. He
turned himself directly. He engaged the knight, was conquered, and taken
prisoner by him." The story goes on to relate that--"The brother of both
these unfortunate heroes, Sir Lancelot, whom we left sleeping before, in
the forest adjoining to the castle, _had been carried from thence by
enchantment_, and confined for some time." He, however, recovered his
liberty, and "in the midst of a highway he heard that a knight dwelt
very near, _who was the most redoubted champion that ever existed_, and
had conquered, and now kept in prison, no less than sixty-four of King
Arthur's knights. He hastened to the place. He came to the ford and
tree, and let his horse drink at the ford, and then beat upon the basin
with the end of his spear. This he did so long and so heartily, that he
drove the bottom out; and yet no one answered. He then rode along the
gates of the castle almost half an hour. At last he descried Sir Torquin
coming upon the road with a captive knight. He advanced and challenged
him. The other gallantly accepted the challenge, defying him and all his
fellowship of the Round Table. They fought. The encounter lasted no less
than four hours. Sir Lancelot at last slew his antagonist, took the keys
of his castle, and released all the prisoners within it, who instantly
repaired to the armoury there, and furnished themselves completely."
In a succeeding adventure, a few days afterwards, Sir Lancelot
encountered in the forest, at the entrance of a village, what the
romance terms a "foul churl," who "dashed at him with a great club, full
of iron spikes." Sir Lancelot, in return, drew his sword, and "smote him
dead upon the earth." He proved to be the porter of a neighbouring
castle, inhabited by "two great giants, well armed save their heads, and
with two horrible clubs in their hands." Lancelot, nothing daunted, with
his shield, "warded off one giant's stroke, and clove the other with his
sword from the head downward to the chest. When the first giant saw that
he ran away mad with fear; but Sir Lancelot ran after him, and smote him
through the shoulder, and shove him down his back, so that he fell
dead." This victory released "a band of sixty ladies and young damsels,"
some of whom had been imprisoned by the giants during seven years.
A correspondent of the _Irish Times_, in a recent paper on "Legends of
the Tichborne Family," says,--"The preservation of the Round Table, or
what was shown as such by Henry VIII. to Charles of France, is due to
them. This table is, I believe, shown in what are the remains of the
ancient chapel or church of St. Stephen, Winchester. It is now riddled
with Cromwell's bullets, having been unsuccessfully defended against him
by one of the Tichbornes and Lord Ogle. Whether at such a table ever sat
The faultless king,
That passionate perfection,
matters little. Who would not now say with the bard,
I know the Round Table, my friend of old.
We know it through its offsprings, 'Elaine,' 'Enid,' 'Guinevere,' and a
host of others. The table, with its twenty-four names, is the origin of
our romance of romances--_la creme de la creme_--of legends!"
Mr. Timbs, in "Historic Ninepins," says, "the existing representative
Round Table is of wood, and is preserved at Winchester, and hangs upon
the interior eastern wall of the County Hall. The decorations of the
table indicate a date not later nor much earlier than the reign of Henry
VIII., and the figure of Arthur has been repainted within the time of
living memory." King Edward III. founded an order in commemoration of
the British warrior, and in 1344 entertained the knights at Windsor
Castle at a Round Table two hundred feet in diameter.
Several circular mounds in various parts of England, including a
remarkable one near Penrith, are by traditionary wisdom each honoured
with the name of "King Arthur's Round Table." Bishop Percy tells us that
the term "round table" is not a speciality of the King Arthur legends,
but that it is common to all the ages of chivalry. In support of this he
refers to Dugdale's description of a grand tournament given by Roger de
Mortimer, at Kenilworth, in the reign of Edward the First. Dugdale
says,--"Then began the Round Table, so called by reason that the place
wherein they practised those feats was environed with a strong wall made
in a round form." This is confirmed by an expression common with Matthew
Paris, when describing jousts and tournaments. He styles them
"_Hastiludia Mensæ Rotundæ_." Wace makes mention of the Round Table of
Arthur in his metrical romance, but Geoffrey of Monmouth has no
reference to it, either in his pretended "History," or in his "Life of
Merlin." Nevertheless in the romance, the "Morte Darthur," it is
expressly stated that Merlin made it "in token of the roundness of the
world." It is evidently, like other circular forms, a sun type, or
phallic symbol. Ellis, in his "Specimens of the Early English Romances,"
on the authority of the metrical one of which Merlin is the hero,
says,--"The Round Table was intended to assemble the best knights in the
world. High birth, great strength, activity and skill, fearless valour,
and firm fidelity to their suzerain were indispensably requisite for an
admission into this order. They were bound by oath to assist each other
at the hazard of their own lives; to attempt singly the most perilous
adventures; to lead, when necessary, a life of monastic solitude; to fly
to arms on the first summons; and never to retire from battle till they
had defeated the enemy, unless when night interfered and separated the
combatants." The number of knights belonging to the order appears to
have varied at different times; but one hundred or upwards is most
generally referred to. The table was originally constructed by the
magician Merlin for Uther Pendragon, Arthur's father. It passed from him
to Leodigan, King of Carmalide, the father of Guenevere, the wife of
Arthur. The famous round table formed part of the dower of the queen on
her marriage with the popular hero.
The manner in which traditions sometimes become interwoven with legends
of more modern date is aptly illustrated by the fact recorded in the
"Vetus Ceremoniale" MS., and endorsed by Du Cange, "that the chivalrous
order of the Knights of the Round Table was instituted by King Arthur
and the Duke of Lancaster." If Arthur ever lived at all, he lived in
the fifth and sixth centuries. Geoffrey of Monmouth says, after being
mortally wounded, "he gave up the crown of Britain to his kinsman,
Constantine, the son of Cader, Duke of Cornwall, in the five hundred and
forty-second year of our Lord's incarnation." Roger de Poictou, the
first _Earl_ of Lancaster, flourished in the twelfth; and Henry, the
first _Duke_, about a couple of centuries afterwards! But dates are
little regarded by those who traffic in the "mythic lore" of the
mysterious "olden time."
The Rev. G. W. Cox successfully shows that the principal materials of
the Arthurian legends are identical with those which underlie the
Hindoo, Grecian, Teutonic, and other Aryan myths. He contends that
Arthur is another phase of Achilleus, or Sigurd, or Perseus. He
says,--"Round him are other brave knights, and these not less than
himself must have their adventures; and thus Arthur and Balin answer
respectively to Achilleus and Odysseus in the Achaian hosts. A new
element is brought into the story with the Round Table, which forms part
of the dowery of Guinevere." This dowery he regards as the equivalent
of, and as fatal to him as the treasures of the Argive Helen were to
Menelaus. Referring to the "San Græal," he says,--"This mystic vessel is
at once a storehouse of food as inexhaustible as the table of the
Ethiopians, and a talismanic test as effectual as the goblets of Oberon
and Tristram. The good Joseph of Arimathea, who had gathered up in it
the drops of blood which fell from the side of Jesus when pierced by the
centurion's spear, was nourished by it alone through his weary
imprisonment of two and forty years; and when, at length, having either
been brought by him to Britain, or preserved in heaven, it was carried
by angels to the pure Titurel, and shrined in a magnificent temple, it
supplied to its worshippers the most delicious food, and preserved them
in perpetual youth. As such it differs in no way from the horn of
Amaltheia, or any other of the oval vessels which can be traced back to
the emblem of the Hindu Sacti." He afterwards adds,--"The myth which
corrupted the worshippers of Tammuz in the Jewish temple has supplied
the beautiful picture of unselfish devotion which sheds a marvellous
glory on the career of the pure Sir Galahad."
The Arthur of romance is in fact the creation of writers of a later age,
or later ages, than the conquest of Britain by the Angles and Saxons,
and not of contemporary bardic historians. The British chieftain, who
fought against Ida and his Angles in the North of England, and whose
territory is believed to have extended from the Clyde to the Ribble,
with a varying boundary on the east, is named Urien. He is the great
hero of the bard Taliesin. Amongst his other great qualities, the poet
enumerates the following:--"Protector of the land, usual with thee is
headlong activity and the drinking of ale, and ale for drinking, and
fair dwelling and beautiful raiment." Llywarch Hen, or the old, another
Keltic poet, born about the year 490, incidentally mentions Arthur as
chief of the Cymry of the south, or, as Professor Morley puts it, "what
Urien was in the north, Arthur was in the south." Llywarch Hen was
present at the bloody battle in which his lord Geraint (one of the
knights introduced into the succeeding romances), and a whole host of
British warriors perished. The said bard likewise brought away the head
of Urien in his mantle, after his decapitation by the sword of an
assassin.
Amongst the kings and lords who attended Arthur's first feast at
"Carlion," in Wales, was, according to Sir Thomas Malory's "Morte
Darthur," "King Uriens of Gore, with four hundred knights with him."
The earliest of the written Arthurian romances are to be found in the
History of the Britons ascribed to Nennius, but who he was, or when the
work was compiled, is not known. Some ascribe it to the end of the
eighth, others to the end of the tenth century. Geoffrey of Monmouth
published his historical romance in the twelfth century. He, however, in
his dedicatory epistle to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, acknowledges,
somewhat regretfully, that he "found nothing said" about Arthur and
several other of his mythical Kings in either Gildas or Bede. William of
Malmesbury, in the first part of his history, speaks of this semi-mythic
warrior in the following terms: "That Arthur, about whom the idle tales
of the Bretons (nugæ Britonum) craze to this day, one worthy not to have
misleading fables dreamed about him, but to be celebrated in true
history, since he sustained for a long time his tottering country, and
sharpened for war the broken spirits of his people." This was most
probably written a few years before the appearance of Geoffrey's work.
About forty years afterwards, his countryman, Gerald, condemned
Geoffrey's history as spurious. He had arrived at this conclusion in the
following singular manner. One Melerius, a Welshman of Caerleon, had "an
extraordinary familiarity with unclean spirits," and he was enabled, by
"their assistance, to fortel future events.... He knew when anyone spoke
falsely in his presence, for he saw the devil; as it were, leaping and
exulting on the tongue of the liar.... If the evil spirits oppressed him
too much the Gospel of St. John was placed on his bosom, when, like
birds, they immediately vanished; but when that book was removed, and
the History of the Britons by Geoffry Arthur was substituted in its
place, they instantly reappeared in great numbers, and remained a longer
time than usual on his body and on the book!!" William of Newbury, too,
some half a century after the publication of Geoffrey's work, repudiated
it in the following emphatic manner:--"A certain writer has come up in
our times to wipe out the blots on the Britons, weaving together
ridiculous figments about them, and raising them with impudent vanity
high above the virtue of the Macedonians and the Romans. This man is
named Geoffrey, and has the by-name of Arturus, because he cloaked with
the honest name of History, coloured in Latin phrase, the fables about
Arthur, taken from the old tales of the Bretons, with increase of his
own.... Moreover, in his book, that he calls the History of the Britons,
how saucily and how shamelessly he lies almost throughout, no one,
unless ignorant of the old histories, when he falls upon that book, can
doubt." William concludes with the following emphatic sentence:
"Therefore, as in all things we trust Bede, whose wisdom and sincerity
are beyond doubt, so that fabler with his fables shall be straightway
spat out by us all." Geoffrey's work was, as Professor Morley observes,
"a natural issue of its time, and is, indeed, the source of one of the
purest streams of English poetry." It was afterwards abridged,
translated, versified, and paraphrased. New fancies were added,
sometimes from Breton traditions, and sometimes from the fertile brains
of more modern poets and writers of romance. The "Mort Artus," "The
Quest of the Sangreal," and the "Lancelot of the Lake" stories were
written by Archdean Walter Map, the friend of Gerald de Barri, commonly
called Giraldus Cambrensis. Map flourished during the latter portion of
the twelfth century. In 1485, Caxton printed a complete collection of
the Arthur legends, "after a copy," as he says, "unto me delivered,
which copy Sir Thomas Malorye did take out of certain books of French
and reduced it into English." It is entitled, "A Book of the noble
Hystoryes of King Arthur, and of certen of his Knyghtes, which book was
reduced in to Englysshe by Sir Thomas Malory, Knight."
Some other giant traditions yet hold their ground in Lancashire and the
neighbourhood. One at Worsley, near Manchester, the seat of the Earl of
Ellesmere, appears to be but a duplication of the Tarquin legend.
Perhaps the immense tunneling, and the miles of underground canal in
connection with the Bridgewater Trust collieries, and other results of
Brindley's engineering skill, may have influenced the relatively modern
vulgar mind in the transference of the locality of Tarquin's stronghold
from Castlefield to Worsley. Or perhaps the second adventure of Sir
Lancelot, when he encountered the "foul churl" and his giant masters,
may have fastened itself upon this locality.
Dorning Rasbotham, 1787, visited the township of Turton, in Lancashire,
for the purpose of inspecting what he described as the "_Hanging_ or
_Giant's Stone_." He says:--
"The tradition of the common people is that it was thrown by a certain
giant, upon a certain occasion (the nature of which they do not
specify), from Winter Hill, on the opposite range, to this place; and
they whimsically fancy that certain little hollows in the stone are the
impression made by the giant's hand at the time he threw it; but I own I
could not find out the resemblance which was noticed to me. It appears,
however, to have long excited attention; for, though it is a hard grey
moor-stone, a rude mark of a cross, of about seven inches by six, hath,
apparently, at a very distant period of time, been cut upon the top of
it. It is elevated upon another piece of rock; and its greatest length
is fourteen feet, its depth in the thickest part five feet eight inches,
and its greatest breadth upon the top, which is nearly flat, about nine
feet. A thorough-going antiquarian would call this a Druidical remain."
Traditions of this class are very common, especially in districts were
huge rocks lay apparently unconnected with the general mountain masses.
As I have previously observed, striated boulders, brought from a great
distance by what geologists term the "glacial drift," are especially
regarded as _débris_ resulting from giant warfare or amusement. Many
rocks of this class lying to the south of Pendle Hill, near Great
Harwood, I am informed, are still looked upon by the vulgar as stones
which have been hurled by giants from the surrounding hills. If we
regard them as the "frost giants" of the Scandinavian myths, it is by no
means an inapt personification of the gigantic force exhibited by
iceberg or glacier action.
A tradition in the neighbourhood of Stockport yet asserts that on the
site of a ruined building, with the remains of a moat, called "Arden or
Hardon Hall," on the southern bank of the river Tame, an ancient castle
once existed. John O'Gaunt is said to have slept in it. The tradition,
moreover, further informs us that at some very remote period a huge
giant occupied the same fortress, and that he and a colossal rival, on
the Rother or Mersey at Stockport, carried on a long desultory warfare
by throwing stones and shooting arrows at each other. The Arden
monster, at length becoming disgusted at the tediousness of this
ineffectual style of combat, assembled his retainers, attacked the
Stockport giant in his stronghold, slew him, and utterly exterminated
his followers.
May not this tradition have some remote connection with the struggles
between the Christian Northumbrians and the Mercian pagans in the
seventh century? The Mersey formed then the boundary line between the
Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, as it now separates Lancashire from Cheshire. Or,
as John O'Gaunt is mixed up in some way with it, may not an old legend
have become confounded with events attendant upon some of the
insurrectionary movements of the early Norman barons, or of the Wars of
the Roses? Stockport was once a strongly fortified position, and is yet
considered one of the "keys of the county of Lancaster."
The giant and the ogre seem to have eventually passed into the tyrant
lord, who imprisoned in the dungeons of his strong castle captive
knights who succumbed to his prowess, and fair maidens whom he had
abducted. The magical or sorcery element, likewise, is still to be found
clinging to similar modern stories; and, notwithstanding the more
polished manners and elegant costume in which they are presented, they
quite as much partake of the character of the nursery tales about
champions and ogres of the "Jack, the Giant-killer" type, as modern
gentlemen do of their savage aboriginal ancestry. Hallam, referring to
the plundering barons of the "middle ages," and the legends engrafted
upon their ferocious deeds, says:--"Germany appears to have been, upon
the whole, the country where downright robbery was most unscrupulously
practised by the great. Their castles, erected on almost inaccessible
heights among the woods, became the secure receptacles of predatory
bands, who spread terror over the country. From these barbarian lords of
the dark ages, as from a living model, the romances are said to have
drawn their giants and other disloyal enemies of true chivalry."
The giants, as I have shown, are evidently of an age much earlier than
the mediæval barons, but they and their doings may have furnished
_nuclei_ around which the older myths may be said to have
re-crystallised themselves. Hallam, again, when discussing the question
of chivalry, refers to the connection of the relatively modern romances
and the older traditions. He says:--
"The real condition of society, it has sometimes been thought, might
suggest stories of knight errantry, which were wrought up into the
popular romances of the middle ages. A baron, abusing the advantage of
an inaccessible castle in the fastnesses of the Black Forest or the
Alps, to pillage the neighbourhood and confine travellers in his
dungeon, though neither a giant nor a Saracen, was a monster not less
formidable, and could, perhaps, as little be destroyed without the aid
of disinterested bravery. Knight errantry, indeed, as a profession,
cannot rationally be conceived to have had any existence, beyond the
precincts of romance. Yet there seems no improbability in supposing that
a knight, journeying through uncivilised regions in his way to the Holy
Land, or to the court of a foreign sovereign, might find himself engaged
in adventures not very dissimilar to those which are the theme of
romance. We cannot indeed expect to find any historical evidence of such
incidents."
The disinterested chivalrous motive of the knight-errants of mediæval
romance appears to have intimate relationship to the unselfishness of
the heroes of the Greek solar myths, whose toil was always undergone for
the benefit of others rather than themselves. The knight-errants'
devotion to their "lady-loves," especially in some of its features,
seems allied to the solar heroes' love for the dawn-goddesses.
If "giants" represent so many mythical characteristics it is not
unlikely that something of the kind may be found in connection with
their corporeal antitheses, the dwarfs. Timbs, in his "Historic
Ninepins," has the following pertinent remarks on this subject:--
"Tom Thumb, it is conjectured, if the truth should be discovered, would
be found to be a mythological personage. His adventure bears a near
analogy to the rite of adoption into the Brahminical order, a ceremony
which still exists in India, and to which the Raja of Tanjore submitted
many years ago. In Dubois's work there is an account of a diminutive
deity, whose person and character are analogous to those of Tom Thumb.
He, too, was not originally a Brahmin, but became one by adoption, like
some of the worthies in the Ramayana. Compare the multiplicity of Tom
Thumb's metamorphoses with those of Taliesin, as quoted by Davies, we
shall then see that this diminutive personage is a slender but distinct
thread of communication between the Brahminical and Druidical
superstitions.[35] Even independent of the analogy between his
transformations and those of Taliesin, his station in the court of King
Arthur (evidently the mythological Arthur), marks him as a person of the
highest fabulous antiquity in this island; while the adventure of the
cow, to which there is nothing analogous in Celtic mythology, appears to
connect him with India."
In the mythology of the southern Aryans, there are demon dwarfs, as well
as the demon giants previously referred to. The former are termed Panis.
Vishnu, at the request of Indra, assumed the form of a dwarf, and
obtained the famous boon of three paces from Bali, the conqueror of the
gods. According to the Ramayana, then "the thrice-stepping Vishnu
assumed a miraculous form, and with three paces took possession of the
worlds. For with one step he occupied the whole earth, with a second the
eternal atmosphere, and with a third the sky. Having then assigned to
the Asura Bali an abode in Patala (the infernal region), he gave the
empire of the three worlds to Indra."
FOOTNOTES:
[34] Since the above was written, I have cut from a newspaper the
following astounding paragraph:--"A story is told of a large cave just
discovered near St. Josephs, Mo., in which was a human skeleton,
thirty-eight feet six inches long, with a head six feet in
circumference. Where is Barnum?" I suspect, however, that even Barnum
would fancy this story is a little "too good to be true." The mendacious
Falstaff regretted that "the world was given to lying," and yet his
mythical one hour's conflict (by Shrewsbury clock) with the valiant
Hotspur, was a rational hoax in comparison to the above.
[35] At page 34, reference is made to the so-called "Druid temple at
Bramham, near Harrowgate, Yorkshire." These huge rocks, locally termed
"Bramham Crags," are not situated in either a parish, township, or
hamlet of that name. Does the appellation Bramha-m throw any additional
light on Mr. Timbs's suggestion? If it be merely an accidental
coincidence, it is certainly a remarkable one, and deserves further
consideration.