CHAPTER X.
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:—