The Giants of Cornwall (Spooner, B.C.)

The Giants of Cornwall
Author(s): B. C. Spooner
Source: Folklore, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Spring, 1965), pp. 16-32
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.
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The Giants of Cornwall
by B. C. SPOONER
A MANcalled Havillan once wrote this - in Latin:'

'With such vile monsterswas the land opprest,
But most the farthestregionsof the West;
Of them thou Cornwalltoo wast plagu'dabovethe rest.'
So Havillan, about giants. But Geoffrey of Monmouth said it
before him.
The Cornish giant population must have been at its very thickest
in the Land's End peninsula, for there is hardly a prehistoric hill -
or cliff-fortification or earthwork thereabouts, whose lordly inhabi-
tants and builders were not thought of as 'giants' by the people of
the countryside. In a simple way, it is the old story of the gaping
wonderers told in 'The Ruin' in the Exeter Book:
'Curiousis this stonework!The Fates destroyedit;
The torn buildingsfalter;mouldersthe workof giants.
... Earthhas the Lord-Builders.'"
And though this association of giants with the old strongholds
thins out up the length of Cornwall, it can still shift to the occa-
sional Norman or mediaeval castle; and the giants are still the
lords in the high places. Or the lords have become giants. It was
the 'giant' at the Norman castle of Launceston in north Cornwall
who exchanged tools with the 'giant' of Warbstowbury earthwork
by throwing them, and accidentally killed him. It was the 'giant'
in the fourteenth-century castle once at Lanihorne near Tregoney,
who threw stones at the 'giant' of the castellated mansion of
Trelonk - and meant it!
The whole life of the neighbourhood spun round the local giant,
whether in games, work, peace or war. It was the giant of Carn
Galva in Morvah (and not any lord of the manor nor king), that
gave Morvah its Fair which was once so popular and crowded that
men used 'riding three on a horse, like going to Morvah Fair' as a
1 Havillan.
2
From the Exeter Book. Translation from Jaquetta Hawke's A Land.
16

THE GIANTS OF CORNWALL
saying, while a quarter-acre field would not contain all the tethered
horses of the riders. The St Levan young men would go to the
great Treryn cliff-castle to play quoits or ninepins with the giant,
who was 'very fond of old-fashioned games'. The giant of Carn
Galva in Morvah favoured 'hide-and-seek'; 'Mop-and-heed', he
called it. These games were amiable affairs, but a giant or so did
sometimes forget how very frail a man is. In the practical busi-
....
ness of life, the giants lived by levies and raids on the cattle of their
neighbours. The giant of Carn Galva was paid a levy of sheep and
oxen by the surrounding giants, while the Mount giant and the
giants of Trencrom got their cattle by raiding the countryside.
When war came the 'locals' would find shelter with their own
giant, fighting beside him. The St Levan women made handy piles
of the Treryn giant's sling-stones when sea-raiders attacked
Treryn, and the young men of St Levan fed the stones to the
giant's huge bull-hide slings as he stood on Carnole. Or so 'old
folk held - and long tradition made it pass for true', says Bottrell.
And everything considered, all this is not an unreasonable picture
of life as it must have been lived in the earthworks.
Very much of a giant's time was spent flinging boulders. When

he hurled them from his own stronghold at some other, in anger -
they were probably his version of sling-stones. He also used them
to play the game of 'Bob-Button' across country with a neighbour,
as the giants of Trencrom and the Mount did. This conveniently
explains, of course, why there are so many loose boulders lying
about.
But sometimes it was tools that got thrown. These would be
shared by the giants of a couple of earthworks and hurled from
one to the other as needed. Thus the giant of Warbstowbury earth-
work shared a hook with the Lord of Launceston Castle until one
day he caught death as well as the hook. And the giants of Trencrom
and the Mount flung a cobbling-hammer to and fro until un-
fortunately the Mount giantess got in the way. From Scotland to
Brittany, there were tales of this sort in which tools were flung
back and forth by giant builders; but the tool in these tales was
nearly always a stone-hammer. Or a hammer of stone.
The giantess, for her part, carried her stones peaceably in her
apron. This was either for building purposes or because she was
B 17

clearingthemoffagricultural land,forhersis notthedestructiveor

idlestone-throwing of the giants,butordered,constructive labour.
Often'ordered'in moresensesthanone, as the giantesseswere
seldomthebettermen.It wasalsooftenfrustrated labour.Forher
apron-strings were given to breaking,and when this happenedshe
wouldfindthespilledstonessimplyforminganotherfeatureof the
landscape.The Mountgiantesswassentto fetchgranitefromthe
mainlandfor her husbandto use in buildingup St Michael's
Mount.She hadgot halfwaybackwithsomegreenstonethathad
happenedto be rathernearerfor her,whenshe waskickedby the
angrygiant.The apron-strings brokeand the 'ChapelRock'of
todaystilllies whereit fell, as a memorialto her.Andthreetimes
Bolster,the St Agnesgiant,senthiswifetoilingup on to St Agnes
Beaconwithan apronfulof stones;as a resultof herlabourthere
arethreecairnsthere- oneforeachapronful.Thismayhavebeen
tiresomefor her but at leastit was not frustration. She was evi-
dentlydumping unwanted stonescleared from a patchof ground
meantforagriculture andshelefttheplacewhenceshehadgotthe
stonesverycleanof them,'thoughthe surrounding farmsareas
stony'we aretold, 'asthe Fourborough Downs.' The placethatshe
cleanedwasthegiant'stenement,stillcalled'Bolster'.
Butthe scatteredstonescalledthe 'ApronStrings'on Rillhead-
landbetweenMullionandthe Lizardin Cornwall,wereto have
formeda smuggler'sbridgeover to France,when the stone-
carrier'sapron-strings broke.Andin this casethe carrierwiththe
apron was a male 'evil spirit'.3Thereis a Welshtalein whichthe
Devil's'lap'playedthepartof a giantess's'apron'.Theremayalso
havebeensomeconfusionbetweenapronandlap becauseof the
smallflat 'lap-stones'used by cobblersto hammerleatheron: a
giant cobblerthrew any numberof them from Godolphinto
Tregonning Hill,wheretheyformeda cairn.
The giantsalsoplayed'quoits'.Thereis apparently no Cornish
wordfor 'quoit',the discusedin the game.Butby the eighteenth
centurythe Cornishcalledthe stone-chamber dolmens,'Quoits',
becausetheircapstones weresupposedto resemblethediscsandto
havebeenusedfor themby giantsor the deputisingDevil. The
capstoneof Lesquitein Lanivetand of Coit nearthe northern
Castle-an-Dinas were Devil-flung;Zennor,Mulfraand Lanyon
3
Male evil spirit: Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folklore.
18

were giants'quoits. Bouldersand the smallcapstonesof cists were

also used. Near the mouth of a St Hilary mine-shaft called the
'Giant's Shaft', lay the 'Giant's Coit', a worked stone with a
sunken boss, said to have been flung at St Hilary church-steeple,
St Michael's Mount and the Land's End; but as the giant's
strength failed him in each case, the so-called quoit remains as
proofof his failure.
One menhiror longstoneis a giant'sstaff.Anothernearthe stone
circlescalledHurlersand now carvedwith a cross,was once a giant
waiting to catch and throw the Hurlers' gold ball over St Cleer
church-tower:this George Borrowwas told. The earthenbarrows
that Dr Borlaseexploredin the Scillies, were calledgiants'graves,
and got him into trouble. The long barrow in Warbstowbury
earthwork,nearBoscastle,is a Giant'sgrave- or Arthur's.
What the giants lookedlike, can be pieced out from the various
stories. The great earthworksthey lived in seemed naturallythe
work of huge men. So they ranged in height from Bolster,who
could stride a double league- down to Tom of Bowjeyheerin
Ludgvan. And he was a mere eight foot. They are said to have
dwindled in size from generationto generation.They often had
other physical peculiaritiesas well. The giants of Trencromand
the Mount had six fingerson each hand and six toes on each foot,
while the Treryngiantwas both deafand dumb.
In characterthey were not bad on the whole - or shall we say,

might have been worse. Bottrellsays of the Land's End, that 'all
traditionalgiant stories, in this district, describethem as amiable
protectorsof the common folk who lived near their castles. They
were, however,invariablystupidandoftendid mischiefunwittingly
by havingmore strengththan sense'. Like the giant of CarnGalva
and the young man with the too-thin skull. '"Oh, my son, my
son" ', bellowed the giant of Carn Galva after 'tapping'a young
man on the head, ' "Why didn't they makethe shell of thy noddle
stronger?A es as plum (soft) as a pie-crust, dough-baked,and
made too thin by the half! How shall I ever pass the time without
thee to playbob andmop-and-heede(Hide and seek)?"'
There were what Bottrell called 'misrepresentations'.For in-
stance,it was said that ghoul-likegiantsused to dig up the deadin
19

the churchyard of Carminow in St Mawgan in Meneage parish,

and as they avoided all the pitfalls made to trap them, the church
had to be moved to the present site in St Mawgan churchtown.4
There was also the wife of the last giant of Tregonning Hill, 'three
generations ago', who would play on the fears of her neighbours
and threaten them. ' "Bee Bo-Bum", she would fiercely cry, "I will
have sumpan to ait. Ef my old man were to come round he wud
kill tha !" '5 That is in the very best tradition of 'Fee Fi Fo Fum', in
spite of initial differences: but on the other hand she always left
money in exchange, and the giant was blind. There is the Nan-
cledry giant. He followed the quite ordinary giant's occupation of
stone-throwing. At Trencrom, in his case. And the boulders he
used still litter Nancledry Bottoms and the fields. There was really
quite a homely touch about him when Bottrell wrote, for he had
lived in a certain thatched house whose cob-walls were still
mouldering away about 1861. Yet twenty years later we hear that
he 'lived principally on little children, whom he is said to have
swallowed whole'.
Or take Trebiggan. About the end of the seventeenth century,
Carew heard that tinners, a little earlier, had found the bones of an
extremely big skeleton in a 'vault' or kist near a Land's End village.
And this village, he said, was called 'Trebegean, in English, the
towne of the giants grave'. Probably the downs and farm of
Trevegean, near St Just airport: Cornish 'Tre' is not necessarily a
'town' in the English sense. Anyhow, this find fully justified the
name of the place to the people - who were no etymologists. And
it evidently justified the making of a giant story too. A story of a
gigantic giant - a proper child-scarer. 'Often', wrote Hunt, 'have
I heard the unruly urchins of this neighbourhood threatened with
"Trebiggan", a vast man, with arms so long that he could take men
out of the ships passing by the Land's End, and place them on the
Longships'. He did this by way of a joke, people said. But his daily
dinner, chicks, was of little children fried on a flat rock near the
cave.
It is like the story told of a Portreath giant who lived in a sea-
washed chasm once known as the Giant's Zawn or Cave, but
marked 'Ralph's' - that is, 'Rafe's' Cupboard, on today's maps.
4 Traditions
- S. Rundle, Penzance Nat. Hist. & Antiq. Soc.,
I885-6.
6 Bee-Bo-Bum: S. Rundle, R.I.C., I888, v. 9.
20

He was the terrorof the St Ives fishermen.If the shipswerein

watertoo deepfor him, he sankthemby slingingrocksfromthe
cliffs above.These formeda reef- as if he had dropped'lap-
stones'.Or he wouldlie in wait,wadinga mileout in orderto tie
the ships to his girdleand dragthem in, like Gulliverwith the
Lilliputians.Thenhe wouldpickout the fat sailorsandeatthem,
throwingthe othersoverboard.But Bottrellsays many people
thoughtthe tale- with its grimflippancyaboutfat sailors,was
largelydue to the fisherman's horrorof the tides that devoured
men,andgrabbedships,andwashedanycorpsesthatfloated,into
the gulping'Cupboard'.If there were such storiesabout the
Giants'CavesnearMouseholeandLamornaCove,theyhavebeen
forgotten.Theroofof theZawnfellin 'whenthegiantdied'.
The giantis spokenof as Wrath,spelledW.R.A.T.H.,andthe
Rafeor Ralphof the Cupboardprobablycamefromthis word.
Wrathwasn'tthegiant'sname:hewasa wrath.About1727Tonkin
refersto a neighbouring 'famouswrathor giant,calledBolster',as
theWrathandsays'theystillcall'thatfatalsea-outletthe 'Wrath's
Hole'.The onlyCornishwordthismightbe,saysanexpert,6is one
which can take the form wrdth;but it means'hag'.The 1928
O.E.D.wordW.R.A.I.T.H.canalsotakethatform- andmean
water-spirit.OnemustjusttakeTonkin'swordforit, thata wrath
was a giant;andthatapparently onlythesetwo giantswiththeir
sea-cavesandholes,wereknownto be calledwrdths.
Bolsterwas at least no ogre, only a bad husband.And his
activitieswereon land;thougha cavewashisend.Hisoddnameis
probablycorruptCornish,and certainlynot whatit seemsto an
Englishear.It is still the nameof the tenementhe owned,but it
wouldbe hardto saywhichof themnamedtheother.A greatlinear
earthwork nearlytwomileslongcrossesa pieceof landfromcoast
to coast,cuttingoff a tractof the richesttin countryin St Agnes
parish.Giant'swork,of course.Bolsterbuiltit. JustastheDevil-
or a giant- builtonerunningfromLerrynto Looeonedaywhen
he hadnothingto do. Bolsterwasso hugehe couldspansix miles
in a stride,one foot on top of the Beaconandthe otheron Carn
Brea,andstoophis greatheaddownto drinkout of ChapelPorth
Well.Andin proofof thisa stonein ChapelPorthValleybearshis
fingerprints.He casthis eyeson the saint,Agnes,or herpredeces-
6 R. Morton Nance.
21

sor. But Agnes was another sort of match for him. He met his end
when she persuaded him just to fill a certain hole on the cliff-top,
in a little healthy blood-letting and he bled to death, for the hole
opened into the sea. Then she tumbled him overcliff. The hole is
not far from her chapel and well; and the sea-washed cave below
'being streak'd all over with bright red streaks like blood' was
probably enough to start the story. A physician got rid of the giant
of the Dodman promontory in Gorran in the same way, and if this
was not coincidence it was the form of flattery we all know of. But
the Dodman giant got buried - in 'an oblong square sunk into the
rock' we are told.
Some of the giants' names are not Cornish. 'Cormelian' or
'Cormoran' was the name of the Mount giant in the chapbook
stories of Jack the Giant Killer printed in Nottingham and
Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It is not local. The name 'Blunderbuss',
given by Robert Hunt to a Lelant giant, comes from the same
source. 'John of Gaunt' was the incredible name of the giant of
Carn Brea Hill near Redruth. His Wheel, Cradle, and Coffin are
among the boulders. He was 'about the last of the giants', it is said;
and he could take the usual huge stride - seven miles, from Carn
Brea Castle to Tucking Mill Stile. He lived in that little 'castle'
perched on the hill. This had served as a hunting-lodge for the
Bassetts of Tehidy in the eighteenth century; for this is Bassett
country. And it was by a grant from John of Gaunt in the form of a
rhymed tenure, that the parent Devon line of the Bassetts was
supposed to have held its family seat of Umberleigh.7 That seems
the only possible explanation of the giant's name.
Bellerus, as a name for a giant, comes from seventeenth-century
England. The 'very fierce' giant of Maen near the Land's End,
Bottrell wrote, was 'proud of his descent from old blustering
Bellerus, who was said to have lived thereabouts in days of yore'.
But the origin of this Bellerus is in Milton's Lycidas -
'Or whetherthou, to our moist vows denied,
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerusold,
Wherethe greatvision of the guardedMount
Looks towardsNamancosand Bayona'shold....
7 Western Antiquary, Vol. I, p. 7. Queries 24: 'I, J. of G.... Bumberlie'. 'I
John of Gaunt; Do give the graunt Of all my land in fee; From me and mine -
To thee and thine - Thou Bassett of Bumberlie.'
22

There was no such name as Bellerus 'in the catalogue of the Cornish
giants', wrote Wharton, the eighteenth-century commentator on
Milton; and Halliwell and Bottrell admit that it was 'now unknown
to oral tradition'. Milton had apparently made Bellerus up for
himself out of Belerium, the old name the Roman geographers gave
to the Land's End promontory. For the Cambridge Ms. of the
Lycidas shows what that second line had originally been:
'Sleep'st by the fable of Corineus old' .. .8
And there was a Corineus 'fable'. Geoffrey of Monmouth took
the name from the Aeneid for the companion of Trojan Brute, to
whom, he said, Cornwall was given. Cornwall itself was named
after Corineus. 'And naught', said Geoffrey, 'gave him greater
pleasure than to wrestle with the giants, of whom was greater plenty
there than in any of the provinces that had been shared amongst his
old comrades.' One of the giants Corineus wrestled with, was
Goemagog,9 and they called the high cliff Corineus flung him over,
'Goemagot's Leap' - or Lamgoemagot. It was on Plymouth Hoe
that this wrestling-match was supposed to have taken place, and in
1494 and later, figures of Goemagot and Corineus were re-cut in
the turf on the supposed site.1' I do not propose to enter into the
vexed question of Gog and Magog, Gogmagog-Goemagot - but
only wish to remark that as Geoffrey evidently knew something of
the fame of Cornish wrestling, he may also have had some Cornish
evidence for that 'plenty' of giants he speaks of.
Possibly the earliest recorded Cornish name for a giant, is the one
we owe to Leland, who was King's Antiquary to Henry the Eighth
in 1533. He visited the 'ruines' of 'Tredine Castel', that is,
Treryn cliff-castle in St Levan, and there he 'hard say that one
Myendu was lord of it. Myendu, blak mouth or chimme', he
explains. Read 'chinne' for the last word, and you get the name
myn-du or 'black-muzzle'.'1 And Miendu, that is, 'Black Face' the
8 David Masson, M.A., Ll.D., Poetical Works of John Milton, etc. with
Memoir, I89o, Vol. 3: Notes on Lycidas.
''Goemagog' in Griscolm's and Faral's editions of Geoffrey's Historia, says
Prof. R. S. Loomis in correspondence. '.... the Welsh redaction of Geoffrey
(Jesus Coll. Ms. LCI) and Ross's Historia Regum Angliae etc. by Hearne, 1745,
have 'Gogmagog.'
10 Records of the Corporation of Plymouth - from an old Audit Book; quoted
in detail in White Horses and other Hill Figures, M. Marples, 1949.
11 Min Du, 'Black Muzzle', is a modern dog's name in Brittany; R. M. Nance.
The Victoria History, suggests Pednmendu - Nance differs: Tredine is Treryn.
23

name was 'according to an old tradition' in 1861. Poised on a cliff

edge between Treryn and Porthcurno, was a Giant's Quoit or
boulder flung by this Miendu.
But nineteenth-century Bottrell first said there was no name for
the Treryn giant. Then he said it was Dan Dynas. And then he said
it was 'Den an Dynas', the 'man of the Castle'. So in his version of
the tales this giant is mostly nameless, as well as deaf and dumb.
He hurled boulders at ships from Carnole on Treryn, and at his
neighbour, the giant who lived in Maen cliff-castle on the other
side of the Land's End. Skewjack Moor, where their lands met, was
littered with flung boulders. Not to speak of the stones in a field
behind Sennen church and in the neighbourhood of Mayon, dented
by the Maen giant's great foot, or his back, or used as his ladle and
basin. It was this Maen giant's child, a great thing as big as a man
when it was still wearing a bib, that Dan Dynas stole to pacify his
own childless and tetchy wife, An' or Aunt Venna. But it grew up
to be her lover. She pushed the old giant, her husband, over a
precipice and he cursed her as he died; so she became stone. She
got confused with the great Logan Rock, and was called the Logan
Rock's 'Lady': 'When tempests rage, or anything else excites her'
Bottrell wrote, 'she rocks to and fro, but her movements are
languid with age or sorrow .. '
But in the words of a man in his eighties, who evidently believed
what he said, wrote Halliwell, one of the giants ' "stabbed the
other in the belly with a knife" '; and the two who remained lived
happily and guiltily ' "for many years" '- at Treryn. The great
jagged headland still stands as it did when the old giant first willed
it up out of the sea. And the egg-shaped stone, the 'key' of the
castle, is still safe where the dying giant put it in a hollow it cannot
be got out of. Though the waves wash it round.
Holiburn is the name of the giant of Carn Galva in Morvah parish
- when he is given one. With Bottrell he is nameless; he is that
simple and unmarried great thing, who died of grief 'seven years or
so' after he had cracked the too-thin skull of the young man in
play: 'Oh, my son, my son...' - you will remember. Hunt's
Holiburn, also, mourned the killed boy. But he married a far-
mer's daughter and fathered, says Hunt, a 'very fine race, still
bearing a name not very dissimilar'. This was probably the sur-
name Honney, which is short for 'Hannibal': Hannibal's Carn,
24

flanking Carn Galva, is said to have been named after Holiburn.

Both Bottrell and Hunt had another giant in Morvah besides
Holiburn. He, too, was inoffensive, remarked Bottrell, and said
nothing else about him. But with Hunt, he was a 'very savage old
creature' who lived on a hill and had twenty sons. What later
became Morvah's Fair originated with him. Each year on the first
day of August, he would get all his family round him; and vast
crowds of onlookers sitting on the rough stone walls of the fields - for
he was harmless that day - would drink his health and watch while
he carried out on the slopes of Carn Galva, mysterious rites either
never known or now forgotten; or walked to Bosporthennis Croft
to perform them. A field on Carn Galva slopes is still called the
Giant's Field. When he died, the jollifications were simply shifted
from the first day of August to the first Sunday in August, which
was the parish 'Feast Day'. And it lost nothing in vigour. They
celebrated it to the point of the vicar's public remonstrance, in
1750. But the change had its influence on the story, and the giant
(being dead) was now made to visit Parc-an-Chapel Well on that
day, and go to church at Morvah, 'by way of countenancing the
feast.'12
The giant met a violent end. A character called Tom wanted his
hill and told another character called Jack the Tinner or of the
Hammer, to get rid of him - or there would be no marriage
between Jack and Tom's daughter, Jennifer. So Jack started
'pitching quoits' at the giant's house during the games played at a
local wedding - having already weakened the roof of an adit
driven into the hill the giant lived on. Out came the giant, like
thunder; charged down the hill at Jack's taunts and disappeared
through the ground. For ever. Just to make sure they hurled
boulders down after him. And the anniversaries of the wedding of
Jack and his Jennifer - and of Tom's son and a Morvah girl -
were celebrated until their descendants were so many, that the
celebration became like a fair - 'and the remembrance of this fair
is observed in Morvah down to the present time.'
As late as 1889 the members of a Cornish antiquarian society
went down a lane east of Morvah church. To the west of this lane
was a stone of about a ton weight. They were told this was the
Giant's Grave by tradition, and the ' "old people" used to hear
12
Penzance Nat. Hist., 1888-89, Annual Excursion to Morvah.
25

voices from beneath it'. They were also told it marked the pit-fall
made of an old mine-adit by Jack, and how when the giant came
storming down the hill and fell in they piled stones on him and
crushed him. If one walked three times round the stone and threw
stones at it, even now one might still hear him roar .... It was this
'happy event' - the giant's death --said the guide, that was
commemorated by Morvah Feast.13So even the credit for the Fair,
shifted from the giant.
Next comes the story of Jack the Giant Killer, known everywhere.
It was being sold by travelling sellers of chapbooks as the 'Pleasant
and Delightful History of Jack and the Giants', at the beginning of
the eighteenth century. Its Jack was a farmer's son, born near the
Land's End in the reign of King Arthur - which for one thing is
only another way of saying 'a long while ago', though it is capable
of another interpretation. Hearing of the desperate reward offered
for killing the Mount giant, who was wading to the mainland and
carrying off cattle wholesale on his back or strung from his belt,
Jack dug a deep pit, covered it with long sticks and straw and blew
his horn, Tantivee, Tantivee! Out rushed the giant - and the
whole Mount shook with his fall into the pit. There Jack finished
him off. And for this he was given the giant's treasure, the title of
'Giantkiller' and a sword with an embroidered belt that bore the
words we all know from our nursery-days:
'Here's the right valiant Cornishman
Who slew the giant Cormelian.'
Jack went on into Wales, giant-killing; but that is only of Welsh
interest. What does interest Cornwall is that Jack in his further
chapbook adventures kills no giant but the Cornish one by using a
pitfall - which is evidently quite a Cornish method of dealing with
giants, when one thinks of the Carminow ones and the one at
Morvah as well as the one at the Mount. Also, there are two
Cornishisms: the way the Welsh giant addresses the Giant-killer
with the now world-wide nickname for all Cornishmen- 'Cousin
Jack'; and that other one by which Jack respectfully addressed the
giant as 'Uncle', regardless of relationship.
Halliwell, speaking of the Cornish incident, thought it not likely
13 Ibid.
26

that the 'printed story was founded on the traditions of the county'.
Though he added that 'aged people' did have their own versions of
the tale. I think he is right. There are local accounts of the giant's
end which are more or less in keeping with the printed tale; Jack
dug the pit under a large stone with a cross on it, that stood on the
shore opposite Marazion and immediately the giant put foot on the
stone it tilted, throwing him violently into the pit. Some added that
the pit was filled with water, and the giant drowned. Local
tradition may therefore have absorbed some of the printed version.
But it was not the tradition of the County. The Cornish had their
own Jack, the Tinner or the Tinkeard, or Tinker. In the long
Cornish drolls or tales about Tom of Bowjeyheer and Lelant, and
his friend, Jack the Tinner, for example, Tom is kind to the Mount
giant. And Jack does not even meet him. That he does kill that
rather out-of-character 'bad' giant at Morvah under circumstances
very like those of the Mount affair in the 'Pleasant History', makes
it look as if the Morvah version itself had not always belonged to
the droll of Tom and Jack in which it appears, but had wandered
from the Mount of the 'Pleasant History' in the wake of the name
'Jack'.
The Mount giant of the drolls lives to get old and toothless. In
the story of his last cattle raid, which was told to Bottrell by an old
Lelant tinner as part of the Tom and Jack droll, the hungry old
creature on the Mount wades across to steal a bullock belonging to
the enchanter of Pengersec on the mainland, and is made to spend
the night spell-bound in the rising sea unable to move until
morning, with the bellowing bullock tied round his neck. It is the
last time he ventures to leave the Mount. Kind Tom of Lelant
visits the old giant, finds him starving, and brings over his own
Aunt Nancy from Gulval with all her butter and eggs, which the
giant buys. As giants eat a lot, and this one paid for it, Aunt
Nancy's family became the wealthiest in the parish of Gulval. And
that story of an immobilized thief is quite popular in these parts; it
is told twice, each time of a different eighteenth-century Mr
Williams of Sennen and an old woman stealing furze bundles.
These drolls about Tom and Jack were recorded by Bottrell and
Hunt about the middle of the nineteenth century. They heard from
'a miner, on the floor of Ding-Dong Mine', from a 'farmer living in
27

Lelant' - and so on. The districts covered are Lelant, Morvah,

and Ludgvan parishes.... The drolls begin with an eight-foot
Tom the Hedger, of Bowjeyheer in Ludgvan, leaving his widowed
mother in order to drive an ox-drawn wain-load of beer to St Ives
for Honney Chyngwens. Honney was a famous tin-dealer and
brewer, and also mayor of Marketjew or Marazion - according to
the drolls, that is, the nearest approach to his name among the
real mayors, being William Chirgwin, mayor in 1611. At Crowlas
Tom stopped to load single-handed on to a dray, a tree that twelve
men couldn't shift. A little farther on he found his way barred by a
giant's 'castle-court', but as the road - he said to himself, 'belongs
to go straight through here', he went right through the gate and in.
Out came old Denbras, fifteen foot of giant, with an elm-tree. So
Tom overturned the wain and took the axle-tree and the wheel it
was fixed in: but the giant was old, and got his death-blow in spite
of every consideration on Tom's part. His last words, in recogni-
tion of the fair play of the distressed Tom, were to tell him of the
gold, silver and tin-filled caves that lay under the castle, watched
over by two dogs who were called Standby and Holdfast - or
Catchem and Tearem, according to whether you prefer Bottrell or
Hunt. This was on Midsummer Eve. By Midsummer Night Tom
had buried the giant, got a wife called Joan, and taken up residence
in the castle - which appears to have been in the Towednack hills
or else in Ludgvan, near Crowlas.14And it was now Tom's turn to
be challenged. The challenger was a travelling tinker, tool-bag on
back and hammer in hand, by name Jack 'the Tinkard', Tinker, or
Tinner, alias Jack of the Hammer.15He was not only a tinker but a
tinner, attracted West from his own hilly tin-streaming country,
far east of the Tamar, by tales of tin and of rich giants. So he said,
i' Crowlas. O. G. S. Crawford, 'The Work of Giants', Antiquity, June 1936,

suggests the earthen bank near Ludgvan Lees, called 'Giant's Grave' on the
maps as the obstructing castle. Hunt places it near Ludgvan Lees. Others differ.
15 Tinkeard: Hunt: 'Staen, or ystaen cerdd; a worker in tin'. Mr Nance: 'The
Celtic derivation of "tinkeard" is very unsatisfactory. In Welsh ystaen = "tin",
but cerdd "art", "craft", the noun from which, cerddor, doesn't mean "crafts-
man", but "singer", "musician". In Welsh a "tinker" is tincer from English;
"tinman" is alcaydd from another word for "tin", alcan. In Irish stdn is "tin" and
cdard is a "workman", "craftsman", etc., but for "tinker", ceard alone is used or
else stdnadoir or possibly cdardstain, but never stdncdard. "Tinkeard" has a "d"
added to "Tinker", just as "Tinkler" has an "1" and "Tinker" itself has nothing
to do with "tin", anyway.' Corres. R.M.N.
Skeat: Tudor English (Levine) - Tinkler.
28

having taken Tom for the late giant's son. When he had beaten him
at singlesticks, the two settled down into partnership. Jack taught
Tom how to use a bow and arrows instead of sling-stones and how
to make leather coats like his own. These soon became the fashion-
able wear of the district. For it was not the chapbook giant-killer's
coat of invisibility Cornish Jack had, but one made of black bull's
hide, shaped on the wearer's back till it became iron hard and
roared like thunder at a blow. Jack it was who rediscovered the balls
of richest tin, that made up the neglected grass-covered mounds in
the castle-court. It was he who sold this tin to Honney Chyngwens.
There was a great feast at Marketjew in celebration of this.
And now the droll annexes from the borders of Mount's Bay,
part of another tale-cycle, that of Pengersec. They met him at the
feast: Pengersec, the enchanter, tall, swarthy, crafty, beguiling, all
that an enchanter should be. He enchanted Tom, literally; but not
Jack. Pengersec visited Tom. What he came after, was to ride off
with Tom's daughter - says Bottrell, or to find where Tom hid his
tin - says Hunt. What he did do, was to make them all helpless
under his spells. Then came Jack, and with a blow of his hammer,
routed him.
Finally the droll moves to Morvah. Jack was to marry Tom's
daughter, Jennifer, and they had built themselves a house there.
They called it 'Choon', which means the House on the Down. But
Ch in is the name of an Iron Age hill-castle on the edge of Morvah
parish. And as what Bottrell says implies that this was supposed to
be the Tinner's home, it is not surprising that attempts to make a
'house' of it vary between the prehistoric and the merely rough
and old. For instance, the building is described as ordinary in
appearance and measurements, with a door, flanked by windows,
set in the middle of the front. There is the usual Cornish talfat or
half-upper-floor inside. But the proposed bed, a flat slab of stone
about twelve feet by eight and raised by other stones four feet from
the ground, has more resemblance to those dolmens of the dead
which are sometimes called 'beds' - and small wonder: Chin
Quoit was its model. There was also a nice prehistoric fogou or
artificial 'cave' in addition to the spence and dairy.
And with the already-related death of the bad giant of Morvah,
and the wedding celebration which was the beginning of Morvah
Fair, the droll ends.
29

With regard to Jack: It was a good idea to give the Tinner Chin
for his home, Chin hill-castle, with its smelting-furnace and the
iron and the tin slag that archaeologists in our century have dis-
covered there. He comes into Tom of Bowjeyheer's Cornwall as the
Tinner - with a capital T. He is the skilled worker in metals and
'had also', says Bottrell, 'acquired many of the stone-workers'
mysteries among the rest.' He rediscovers the old forgotten wealth
of Tin and is skilled in so many things new to the stupid Tom, it is
clear he must represent the introduction of at least some advance
in the tinners' art into Cornwall. This is a very different Jack from
the one in the 'Pleasant History'.
Whatever his origin, 'Tinner' might be only a Cornish naming
of him: he is also called Jack of the Hammer. Morvah people can
never have ceased telling how he used his hammer not only as a tool
but as a weapon for 'killing wolves and smashing the skulls of sea-
robbers who landed on the shore to steal the tin'. But a hammer is
not in particular a tinner's tool. And this one had more potency
than a mere weapon. In his encounter with the enchanter Penger-
sec, one blow of the Hammer smashes Pengersec's circlet, which is
'set with seven precious stones, for the planetary signs'. And with
the signs he himself makes 'in the air with his hammer, the mode
and use of which', says Bottrell, 'are only revealed to the brethren
of certain ancient Mysteries', Jack breaks Pengersec's spells. These
signs of course may be simple Bottrell. But in the northern
countries the sign of the Hammer was as potent as the Cross against
evil - and the Tau cross itself, very like a hammer.6. ... And it is
quite possible Jack's story was once independent of Tom of
Bowjeyheer's.
Now for Tom. One of the most interesting things about this
droll is the remarkable similarity between the Tom-Denbras part
of it - and the tale of Tom Hickathrift of the Isle of Ely, told in a
seventeenth-century chapbook; though the Tom-Denbras part
has naturally developed along Cornish lines. Both Toms had
widowed mothers. Both were exceptionally strong. Both wrestled.
Both startled onlookers by a show of strength on some particular
occasion. Finally their mothers drove them to work. Cornish Tom
got a job driving a wainload of beer from Marketjew to St Ives, for
16 Johannes Brondsted, The Vikings, p. 273.
30

Honney Chyngwens; Cambridgeshire Tom got a job with a Lynn

brewer, taking beer for him to the Marsh and to Wisbech. The
direct way of each Tom was blocked by the fastness of a giant and
each decided to take the direct way through. Out, in each case,
came the giant. Each Tom took the axle-tree of his cart with one
wheel fixed, and with that killed his giant - Cornish Tom, with
becoming reluctance. Hickathrift built himself and his mother,
Jane, a fine house with his giant's treasure; Cornish Tom took up
residence in his killed giant's castle with his wife, Joan. And to each
came a lusty Tinker .... each Tinker with a coat of leather so hard
that it roared under a blow. . . . Here, with the first and oldest part
of the chapbook version, the similarity between droll and chapbook
tale ends.
But how did Cornwall come by its version? Through the chap-
books? Orally? It was being related as traditional by Cornishmen
who were already old at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
but was confined, says Hunt, to Lelant, St Ives, Sancreed, Towed-
nack, Morvah and Zennor, a small cluster of parishes in the Land's
End district. The oldest of the chapbooks on Hickathrift appears
to be that in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene, Cambridge,
printed between i66o and i69o according to Gomme; and well into
the nineteenth century they were still being printed .... Yet why
should chapbooks make such an impact on so small an area?
Where else have they made it? It is the same question with oral
tradition - why here and where else?
There was an oral Fenland Hickathrift tradition in existence
before and after the chapbooks, and independent of them. The
earliest reference to it is that made by Spelman in his Icenia in
I640. He writes of a certain Hickifric of Marshland and Tylney
near Wisbech. He says he does not know who this Hickifric may
be; but that there is a story derived from ages long past, that he
defended his land and fought off his enemies successfully with the
axle-tree of his cart for sword, and the wheel as a shield. By the
time of the earliest chapbook he is already that plain Tom Hicka-
thrift, so strangely paralleled by our Cornish Tom. And like our
Tom, from fighting a giant, he has in his own homeland folklore
gradually become one himself, with his stones and his stone-
throwing. Even his supposed grave in Tylney All Saints church-
3'

yard is the exact length Cornish Tom would require: eight foot, six
inches.... .~ Where chapbook and droll similarity ended, each
county developed its own Tom and Tinker in its own way. ... But
what contact gave Cornwall and the Fenland the same tale?
Cornwall did not react to the tales of that other Fenman, Hereward.
I can only suggest that all this is the wreck of something large
and once generally understood, now lying in pockets of the land
that had remembered it whole .... The crux of the Hickifric-
Hickathrift tale is the wheel and axle-tree episode: Spelman saw a
Scottish parallel to it in the story of Haii, winning the tenth-century
battle of Luncarty with his plough-yoke. And at least one writer
has suspected a god behind Hickifric.18 There are possibilities:
statuettes from the Marne district now in the Musee du Louvre,
hold thunderbolts and a wheel.... In Cornwall the emphasis is
on the Tinker. He is Jack of the Giants; he has the Hammer. And
'Kettle-vendor', was the name the South Germans gave Thor
because of the overhead racket of his thunder-chariot ....
But this is dangerous ground. And my concern is simply with
Cornish giants. Those simple giants... our Tom and our Jack,
who began as giant-killers, and themselves ended their careers as
the 'Giants of Towednack'. ....
Tom stepped quietly into Denbras's shoes: he was after all eight
foot high on his own merit. And when people tell of the Giant of
Morvah and of his twenty sons and of the Fair that resulted from
their meetings, it is Jack, of wlkom they speak, says Bottrell. For
his descendants, 'for more glory, made him out to be a giant. ....'
'Many of the ancient families of Morvah and the adjacent parishes
had their rise' in Jack of the Hammer and An' Jennifer his wife.
And among the descendants of Tom were the Trewhellas, and the
Tregarthens, the Trenwiths, the Curnows and the Hoskins....
The Cornish have a fellow-feeling for their giants.
But not all the giants were peaceably represented after death by
the Trewhellas, etcetera. . ... For the most part their spirits very
actively guarded their old haunts - as spriggans, the goblins of the
fairy tribes. But that is another tale.
"1 Miss E. M. Porter, 'Folk Life and Traditions of the Fens', Folklore, Vol. 72,
December 1961, pp. 590-I.
8i T. C. Lethbridge, 'Gogmagog: The Buried Gods'.
19E. Hull, Folklore of the British Isles, p. I86. Statuettes in the Musee du
Louvre, carrying thunderbolt and wheel.
32


The Giants of Cornwall (Spooner, B.C.)

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The Giants of Cornwall

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A MANcalled Havillan once wrote this - in Latin:'

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Very much of a giant's time was spent flinging boulders. When

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clearingthemoffagricultural land,forhersis notthedestructiveor

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were giants'quoits. Bouldersand the smallcapstonesof cists were

In characterthey were not bad on the whole - or shall we say,

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the churchyard of Carminow in St Mawgan in Meneage parish,

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He was the terrorof the St Ives fishermen.If the shipswerein

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name was 'according to an old tradition' in 1861. Poised on a cliff

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flanking Carn Galva, is said to have been named after Holiburn.

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Lelant' - and so on. The districts covered are Lelant, Morvah,

i' Crowlas. O. G. S. Crawford, 'The Work of Giants', Antiquity, June 1936,

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Honney Chyngwens; Cambridgeshire Tom got a job with a Lynn

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