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.