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GIANTS 



GIANTS CAUSEWAY 



Cyclopes, giants, Polyphemus, and like legendary 

 races or persons, Plutarch relates that Sertorius 

 had the grave of Antaeus, at Tingis in Mauretania, 

 opened, and ' finding there his body, full 60 cubits 

 long, was infinitely astonished, ordered the tomb to 

 be closed, gave his confirmation to the story, and 

 added new honours to the memory of the giant.' 

 Pliny reports that an earthquake in Crete disclosed 

 the bones of a giant 46 cubits in length, who was 

 held by some to be Orion, and by others Otus. 

 Descending to more certain evidence, there is no 

 doubt that a height of between 8 and 9 feet, and 

 probably of more than 9 feet, has been attained. 

 There is a skeleton in the Museum of Trinity 

 College, Dublin, 8 feet 6 inches in height ; that of 

 Charles Byrne (1761-83), in the museum of the 

 College of Surgeons of England, is 8 feet 2 inches ; 

 and that of a giant in the museum at Bonn is 8 

 feet ; and the actual body with the soft parts 

 attached was probably two or three inches longer 

 than the skeleton. Byrne, for example, measured 

 8 feet 4 inches after his death, as we find recorded 

 in the Annual Register, vol. xxvi. p. 209. He has 

 often been confounded with Patrick Cotter or 

 O'Brien (1761-1806), whose height is variously 



iven at 7 feet 10 inches, and 8 feet 7 inches. The 

 cottish giant in the service of Frederick William 

 I. of Prussia measured 8 feet 3 inches, and was 

 notable in his regiment of giants. The Chinese 

 giant Chang claimed to have grown from 7 feet 8 

 inches to 8 feet between his first appearance in 

 London ( 1865 ) and his second ( 1880 ). The Austrian 

 Josef Winkelinaier (1865-87) was 8 feet 9 inches. 

 Popular belief seems right in treat- 

 ing the Patagonians as the tallest 

 race of men ; the mean height being 

 ascertained to be about 5 feet 11 

 inches. 



It appears ( 1 ) that giants are of 

 rarer occurrence than dwarfs; (2) 

 that giants are usually of a lym- 

 phatic temperament, and of a very 

 delicate complexion, often de- 

 formed, and almost always badly 

 proportioned ; that their muscles 

 are flabby, and their voice weak ; 

 while dwarfs are often perfectly 

 well proportioned, and are strong 

 for their size ; ( 3 ) that giants are 

 never long-lived Byrne died at 

 twenty- two, Magrath at twenty, 

 Winkelmaier at twenty-two while 

 dwarfs seem to attain the full 

 ordinary period of human exist- 

 ence ; ( 4 ) that while giants usu- 

 ally exhibit a want of activity 

 and energy, and are feeble both 

 in body and mind, dwarfs are in 

 general lively, active, and irascible. We know 

 little of the causes which occasion the excessive 

 development or the arrested growth on which 

 the production of giants and dwarfs depends. See 

 DEFORMITIES. 



Mythological Giants and Dwarfs. Giants play a 

 part in the mythology of almost all nations of Aryan 

 descent. The Greeks, who represented them as 

 beings of monstrous size, with hideous counten- 

 ances, and having the tails ot dragons, placed their 

 abode in volcanic districts, whither they were fabled 

 to have been banished after their unsuccessful 

 attempt upon heaven, when the gods, with the 

 assistance of Hercules, imprisoned them under 

 yEtna and other volcanoes. Their reputed origin, 

 like the pla.ces of their abode, points to the idea of 

 the mysterious electrical and volcanic convulsions 

 of nature, which they obviously typify ; and, in 

 accordance with this view, they are said to have 

 been of mingled heavenly and earthly descent, and 



to have sprung from the blood that fell from the 

 slain Ouranos upon the earth, Ge, which was their 

 mother. In the cosmogony of the northern nations, 

 giants occupy a far more important place than the 

 Greeks assigned to them, for here the first created 

 being was the giant Ymir, called also ' Aurgelmir * 

 or ' the ancient Chaos,' the progenitor of the Frost- 

 giants (Hrimthursar), among whom dwelt the All- 

 Father before the creation of heaven and earth. 

 How Ymir the first giant arose, and what came of 

 the giants and their home Jotunheim, is an integral 

 part of Scandinavian Mythology ( q. v. ). The giants 

 have been held to be personifications of the powers 

 of nature, of barbarism in conflict with a more 

 civilised regime, and of heathen powers in conflict 

 with Christianity. Even the boys' tale of Jack the 

 Giant-killer has been held to have originated in the 

 struggle of the Christian Welsh with the pagan 

 Anglo-Saxons. Swift's Brobdingnagians are the 

 best known of modern imaginary giants. See 

 Wood's Giants and Dwarfs (1868) ; Tylor's Primi- 

 tive Culture (1871) ; Bollinger, Zwerg- und Riesen- 

 wuchs ( 1884) ; and Max. Mayer, Die Giganten und 

 Titanen in der Antiken Sage und Kunst ( 1889). 



Giants' Causeway (deriving its name from a 

 legend that it was the commencement of a road to- 

 be constructed by giants across the channel to 

 Scotland) is a sort of natural pier or mole, of 

 columnar basalt, projecting from the northern 

 coast - of Antrim, Ireland, into the North Channel, 

 7 miles NE. of Portrush by an electric tramway 

 (1883). It is part of an overlying mass of basalt, 

 from 300 to 500 feet in thickness, which covers- 



The Honeycomb, Giants' Causeway. 



almost the whole county of Antrim, and the 

 eastern part of Londonderry. The basalt occurs 

 in several beds, interstratified with protrusions 

 of whin-dyke. Several of these beds are more 

 or less columnar, but three layers are remark- 

 ably so. The first appears at the bold promon- 

 tory of Fair Head ; its columns exceed 200 feet 

 in height. The other two are seen together 

 rising above the sea-level at Bengore Head, the 

 lower one forming the Giants' Causeway. It is 

 exposed for 300 yards, and exhibits an unequal 

 pavement, formed of the tops of 40,000 vertical 

 closely-fitting polygonal columns, which in shape 

 are chiefly hexagonal, though examples may be 

 found with 5, 7, 8, or 9 sides. There is a single 

 instance of a triangular prism. The diameter of 

 the pillars varies from 15 to 20 inches. Each pillar 

 is divided into joints of unequal length, the concave 

 hollow at the end of one division fitting exactly 

 into the convex projection of the other. The rock 



