Tylor's Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 231.
Tylor's Early History of Mankind. pp. 130-49; 288-91.
Ibn Batuta, the Moorish traveller, mentions that in his time—about 1347—old men in Cansai, the modern Hangchenfu, were commonly addressed as "Atha," i. e. "Father" in Turkish. Cf. The Travels of Friar Odoric (Hakluyt Soc.), iv. p. 288.
Vide [Giants] in the [Introduction] to this collection.
The incident of finding the giant occurs in many stories, e.g. a Finnish tale relates how some sailors sailing along the coast near Wiborg saw a fire lighted on the shore, and, as they were nearly frozen, landed, and found to their horror a giant laid round it with his feet under his head (cf. Giant in "Fairy Elizabeth," p. [99] of this vol.) The giant awakes and asks where they are from, and hearing that they were from Wiborg, tells them he knows it well, and drinks with great gusto a tun of tar, remarking, "Ah! that's the old Wiborg drink!" Topelius, Boken om vårt Land. Helsingfors, 1875, p. 153.
See also a similar tale, "Glosheds Altare," from Bohuslän, Hofberg, p. 81. It is commonly reported in Bohuslän and Dal that the giants withdrew to Dovre in Norway, or else to some uninhabited island in the North Sea, and that they most anxiously inquired of any travellers they came across how things were going on in their native land. They are said to have left their homes "when modern mankind began to exist," in the Swedish stories. They often declare it was on account of the continued ringing that they left the land.
In "Ulfgrytstenarna," from Närike, the giant hearing the bells for the first time tells his wife to put a stone in her garter and sling it at the grey cow which is tinkling near Hjelmar, meaning the newly-built church at Örebro. The giantess threw the stone thirteen miles too far. The giant threw and missed, and the bells sounded with wondrous clearness. The giant then seized two enormous rocks, and set off to crush the church; on the way an old man who had set out to stop him, showed him a pile of shoes worn out by his journey from Örebro. The giant threw the rocks down and went home. Hofberg, p. 132.
See also the story about the old man and Ragnar Lodbrok, who is said to have delivered Rome from the Norse men, by showing their worn-out iron shoes. Also Gibeonites and Joshua; Joshua, ix. 5.
Giants sometimes built instead of destroying religious houses. See Afzelius, Svenska Folkets Sagohäfder, v. p. 31, where the giant Rise is said to have built Riseberg Monastery and given it his own name; also "Skaluda-Jätten," a story from Vestergötland.
For a giant's appetite, p. [26], see "Vas Péter," a tale quoted by Kozma, in which Glutton eats 366 fat oxen in six hours, and Drunkard empties 366 casks of wine, each holding one hundred buckets, in the same time.