GIANTS OF LEGEND

Evening Star, Issue 19637, 17 August 1927, Page 5

GIANTS OF LEGEND

MONS7ERS WHEN THE WORLD WAS YOUNG Men of supernormal size are found ill most legendary tales; “ there were giants in the earth in those days, says the Book of Genesis The heroes of mythology arc often of great stature, like Ossian, tho Irish hero, who, alter spending 300 years in Tirnan-og, the Land Beneath the Waves, returned to Erin to find it inhabited by a pigmy race, a crowd of whom could hardly move a huge stone which ho raised single-handed. But more often the giant is tho villain, not tho hero, of tho story (says ‘John o’ London’s Weekly’). . There are famous giants in Greek mythology. The Titans were a race of giants who made war on the gods. Tho one-eyed Cyclops were another group; they constituted, so the Greeks thought, the “ Cyclopean ” buildings whoso ruins can stiil b© seen. Polyphemus, whom Ulysses outwitted and blinded in tho Odyssey, waa s Cyclops. ATLAS, WHO SUPPORTS THE EARTH. Atlas, who' eternally tears the heavens upon Ins shoulders, gave his name to bouks of maps because Mercator, who published a collection of maps in tho sixteenth century, put on his title page a ligure of Atlas with the world upon his back. Orion, the handsome hunter, who was slain by Diana and transformed into a constellation, was a giant. A less familiar giant was Antonis, a sou of Mother Earth, unconquerable so long as he was touching the ground, because he could draw upon his mother’s inexhaustible strength. Hercules slow him by holding him in his arms off the ground and squeezing him to death. . Medieval romance teems with giants, but onlv a few arc remembered, like Rabelais’s Gargantua of tho enormous appetite; among other exploits of guzzling, ho swallowed live pdgriins with their staves and all in a salad. Shakespeare mentions him in ‘ As You Like It.’ The Northern sagas have a whole race of giants, the evil Jotuns, who lived in Jotunhcini, and were the deadly foes of Odin and Hie other gods. Bkryniir, their lord, had a terrific fight with Thor, who used his hammer as a weapon so vigorously that he razed the mountains and ploughed new valSOME BRITISH GIANTS. But there are wonderful tales of British origin which contain giants whom all our boys ought to meet. Cornual (pronounced “Cool”), the lather of tho great Gaelic hero 1* inn, could plant his feet on two mountains and then stoop and drink from a river in the valley beneath. The Gil la Dacker was a hideous giant who visited Finn and kidnapped a dozen or more of lug Fenian warriors, securing them by magical spells to the back of his horse, which was as big and ugly as himself, lu tho ‘Voyage of Maelduiu a sort or Irish Odyssey, the hero and his crew approached an island inhabited by giant blacksmiths, one of whom hurled an immense lump of red-hot iron at the seafarers’ boat. The giants of our nursery tales have made countless generations of children quake with delicious fear. Wo all remember Jack the Giant Killer s foe, Blunderhore, who came in io .ihe house shouting:— Fc-Fi-Fo-Fum! ~ , 1 smell the blood of an Englishman! He calmed down sufficiently to offer Jack a, night’s lodging, but came into his room in the night and struck the lied a terrific blow with a club. But Jack had put a lug of wood m tho bed, and himself crept under the bedstead. He finally fooled the giant into cutting his own throat, and later got rid also of Blunderborc’s brother, Cormoran, by digging a pit for him. Grumbo is an old acquaintance, although wo may forget his name, for ho is the giant into whoso sleeve Tom Tim mb crept. Some of our favorite giants are the inventions of authors, like Swift s Brobdingnagians, whom Gulliver visited. Tho last wc have space to mention are those in Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’* Progress,’ Giants Grim and Bloodyman, and the most famous of all, Giant Despair.