Is like to a fish that is waterless;
This is to say, a monk out of his cloister,
This ilkë text held he not worth an oyster,
And I say his opinion was good.”
The Canterbury Tales—Chaucer.
The process through which a man, who has made himself remarkable to his ignorant fellow-men, is passed after death—first, into the hero performing fabulous exploits, and eventually into the giant—is not difficult to understand.
The remembrance of great deeds, and the memory of virtues,—even in modern days, when the exaggerations of votaries are subdued by the influence of education,—ever tends to bring them out in strong contrast with the surrounding objects. The mass of men form the background, as it were, of the picture, and the hero or the saint stands forth in all his brightness of colour in the foreground.
Amidst the uneducated Celtic population who inhabited Old Cornwall, it was the practice, as with the Celts of other countries, to exalt their benefactors with all the adornments of that hyperbole which distinguishes their songs and stories. When the first Christian missionaries dwelt amongst this people, they impressed them with the daring which they exhibited by the persecution which they uncomplainingly endured and the holy lives they led.