There's a surprisingly large body of giant folklore in the British Isles - let's take a look at the tall tales of...
- Cormoran, Blunderbore and Jack the Giant Killer
- Jack O' Legs - a Giant Version of Robin Hood?
- The Bewildering History of Gogmagog
- The One-Sided Love Story of Bolster and St. Agnes
- The Tragedy of Bran the Blessed
- Giant's Causeway and Finn McCool
 |
| Giant's Causeway in Ireland - you can see why people thought it had been built! (Korng Sok) |
Cormoran, Blunderbore and Jack the Giant Killer
You've probably heard of Jack and the Beanstalk, but that's not the only time a Jack has brought a giant to ruin!
One story of Jack the Giant Killer begins in Cornwall on St Michael's Mount, around the time of King Arthur. The countryside is being terrorized by an 18ft tall giant named Cormoran with an unquenchable hunger for other people's livestock - something the farm-boy Jack takes umbrage to.
In order to defeat his massive foe, Jack dugs a deep pit under the cover of darkness night and concealed it with straw, twigs and leaf mold. Trap set, he blew a horn to wake the giant... who stumbled into the pit as he tried to grab Jack. After taunting his trapped foe, Jack put a pickaxe through Comoran's skull!
The tale isn't done - another man-eating giant called Blunderbore abducts Jack after hearing of his fame, taking him to a castle filled with other prisoners. After explaining how he will make a meal of Jack (preparing his heart with pepper and vinegar) Blunderbore locks Jack up and goes to find another giant with which to share his upcoming dinner.
The only hope offered to Jack was a pair of ropes left in his makeshift prison overlooking the castle gate. Some people might have used them as a rope and escaped, but Jack's not called "Giant Killer" for nothing. He made a pair of nooses and cast them over the two giant's necks, then fixed the ropes to a ceiling beam and strangled them into submission!
There's plenty more feats attributed to Jack, as well as variations on the original exploits (e.g. some versions have Blunderbore falling into Jack's pit.) Curiously, a 7'8" skeleton was supposedly found in a church vault on St Michael's Mount.
Jack O' Legs - a Giant Version of Robin Hood?
We've had Jack the Giant Killer, but there was also a giant called Jack - and it seems he was a bit of a Robin Hood figure!
The 14" tall Jack O' Legs lived in a cave near the village of Weston in Hertfordshire. Apparently he was a social sort and would talk to his friends through their upstairs windows.
One year the harvest was very poor. Bakers from the nearby town of Baldock bought all the flour and raised the prices dramatically... so Jack ambushed them and stole the flour, distributing it to the villagers of Weston. He repeated this feat several times.
The bakers didn't like this one bit - they captured and blinded Jack before deciding to hang him. They did give him one last consideration though, allowing him to choose where he would be buried. Jack took his oversized bow and shot an arrow in the direction of Weston - a pair of stones 14ft apart supposedly mark his spot in Weston's Holy Trinity church graveyard!
Elements of the story suggest that it is really quite old - the fact that he could be mutilated and hanged by the locals points to "infangenthef" or the old right of a landowner to judge a thief caught red handed.
 |
| No good deed goes unpunished, it seems... (Couleur) |
The Bewildering History of Gogmagog
This one's a bit of a wild ride. It's taken from Historia regum Britanniae, written by Geoffrey of Monmouth sometime in the 12th century... and in what was once considered a historical work, we find the tale of the giant Gogmagog.
The tale starts in Rome, with Emperor Diocletian arranging marriages for his thirty-three daughters. Not happy with this arrangement, his daughters conspired to cut each of their husband's throats in the night.
At his wit's end, Diocletian ordered his daughters exiled. They were put out to sea with half a year's worth of rations, eventually landing on Britain (which they named Albion after the eldest daughter, Alba.) They eventually took demons as partners and populated the island with giants.
When Brutus of Troy (I did say it was a wild ride) and his warriors arrived in Britain, they ended up battling the giants. The mightiest of these creatures was Gogmagog, who squared-off against the Trojan champion Corineus in single combat. Corineus won that fight by hurling Gogmagog from the cliffs, being made the ruler of Cornwall as a result.
In later centuries people would turn a skeptical eye to the story, noting how some dates simply don't add up and how Gogmagog sounds awfully like the biblical giants Gog and Magog. In fact, a pair of giant effigies with those names are still carried as part of the Lord Mayor's Show in London - though in 1605, the pageant-master referred to them as Corineus and Gogmagog. The tradition goes back even further, as carved giants have been guarding the London Guildhall since the reign of Henry V.
The One-Sided Love Story of Bolster and St. Agnes
It seems that Cornwall has an abundance of giant folklore - here's the tale of St. Agnes and Bolster.
Despite already being married, Bolster developed a crush on Agnes. The giant would follow the saint around, harassing her with declarations of love - eventually annoying her to the point that she enlisted the knight Sir Constantine to drive him away. Unfortunately a giant doesn't need to be highly skilled to be a fearsome fighter, and the knight's efforts came to naught.
Turning to cunning, Agnes pretended to be coming around to Bolster's suit. She told him that she just wanted a little deed to prove his sincerity - and that if he could fill a small hole in the Chapel Porth valley cliff face with his blood, she would be his.
Bolster jabbed a knife in his arm, but failed to grasp how deep the hole was. By the time he realized his mistake, he was too weak from blood loss to staunch the now-mortal wound!
 |
| Could a giant king's head be buried beneath the Tower of London? () |
The Tragedy of Bran the Blessed
This tale comes from The Mabinogion, a 12-13th century anthology of Welsh folk tales transcribed from the older, oral tradition. In it we find the tale of Bendigeidfran or Bran the Blessed, a giant king that ruled Britain.
The story begins with Bran's sister Branwen marrying King Matholwch of Ireland - but there's a fly in the ointment. Bran and Branwen's half brother Efnisien felt slighted that he wasn't consulted on the marriage, and took his anger out by mutilating Matholwch's horses.
Bran gave Matholwch new horses and a magical cauldron to make up for the incident, but the members of Matholwch's court convinced him to take revenge by spurning Branwen. He demoted her from queen to kitchen slave... until she befriended a starling and it carried a message to Bran.
Bran brought an army to Ireland (though he himself simply waded through the sea) to rescue his sister. The Irish destroyed a bridge over the River Shannon to stop him, but Bran simply stood in the water and acted as a bridge for his men to cross. Matholwch soon realized that he couldn't stop or prevail against Bran, so he offered to make peace and abdicate in favor of Branwen's son Gwern.
With a solution in hand, Matholwch arranged a feast for the Bran and his men... but hid warriors in deerskin gift bags hanging in the hallway, hoping to reverse his fortunes with treachery. His plan failed miserably thanks to the ever-spiteful Efnisien, who took his anger out on the bags (killing the soldiers inside) and threw Gwern into a fire.
Unsurprisingly a massive fight broke out, and it looked like Matholwch had the upper hand thanks to a stream of reinforcements - the Irish were reviving their dead with the magic cauldron. Ironically it was Efnisien who turned the tide - he hid in a pile of Irish bodies and broke the cauldron apart from inside (albeit at the cost of his own life.)
Bran himself was mortally wounded in the struggle, but gave his men one last command - they were to cut off his head and bury it beneath London, where might offer protection to Britain. It's said that his head was buried where the Tower of London now stands.
Bran the Blessed was associated with ravens (his name can be translated as Blessed Raven or Blessed Crow) which may explain why the Tower of London keeps a flock of the birds to this day.
Giant's Causeway and Finn McCool
Most of these tales have been about giants and humans in conflict, but this is a case of giant vs. giant... with an intriguing alternative explanation for a geological feature to boot!
Fionn Mac Cumhaill (or Finn McCool) was an Irish giant who got into a rivalry with the Scottish giant Benandonner. In order to cross the sea and give Benandonner a good drubbing, McCool built a causeway of interlocking basalt pillars... but as he got closer, he realized his rival was a fair bit bigger than him.
McCool ran back home and hid, but Benandonner crossed the causeway and demanded a bout - that's where McCool's canny wife Oonagh stepped in. She told Finn to pretend he was a sleeping baby, then told Benandonner that Finn was out and the "baby" was his son. Naturally this was concerning to the Scottish challenger, who had to wonder how big Finn was to have sired such a huge child.
Depending on the telling, Oonagh deployed a few other ruses to convince Benandonner he was outmatched. She baked griddlecakes for her "guest" but included the metal griddle in some of the food... which she served to Benandonner. When he broke a tooth on the hidden iron, Oonagh apologized and claimed that was how Finn liked his cakes. She gave the "baby" one as well (without iron in it) which Finn gobbled without any problems.
Faced with an enormous metal-chomping baby, Benandonner fled back to Scotland rather than wait for Finn to get home. He tore up the path as he went and what remains is the Giant's Causeway (a "path" of basalt columns that look like stepping stones.) Some tales also say the feud created Lough Neagh when Fionn scooped up earth, then the Isle of Man and Ailsa Craig when he threw it at Benandonner. I can tell you from experience that photos don't do the Giant's Causeway justice - in person it really does look like something a giant would build!
Thanks for reading - for more tall tales, try...