Gog and Magog. The two statues of Guildhall so called are in reality the statues of Gogmagog or Goëmagot and Corineus, referred to in the next article. (See also Corineus.) The Albion giant is known by his pole-axe and spiked ball. Two statues so called stood on the same spot in the reign of Henry V.; but those now seen were made by Richard Saunders, in 1708, and are fourteen feet in height.
In Hone’s time, children and country visitors were told that every day, when the giants heard the clock strike twelve, they came down to dinner.—Old and New London, i. 387.
Another tale was that they then fell foul of each other in angry combat.
Gog´magog, king of the Albion giants, eighteen feet in height, killed by Corin in a wrestling match, and flung by him over the Hoe or Haw of Plymouth. For this achievement, Brute gave his follower all that horn of land now called Cornwall, Cor´n[w]all, a contraction of Corinall. The contest is described by Drayton in his Polyolbion, i. (1612).
E’en thus unmoved
Stood Corineus, the sire of Guendolen,
When, grappling with his monstrous enemy,
He the brute vastness held aloft, and bore,
And headlong hurled, all shattered, to the sea,
Down from the rock’s high summit, since that day