"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.