Jack The Giant Killer - British Giants

British Giants

John Matthews writes in Taliessin, Shamanism and the Bardic Mysteries of Britain & Ireland (1992) that giants are very common throughout British folklore, and often represent the 'original' inhabitants, ancestors, or gods of the island before the coming of 'civilised man', their gigantic stature reflecting their 'otherwordly' nature. Giants figure prominently in Cornish and Welsh folklore, and in common with many animist belief systems, they represent the force of nature. The Welsh word is Caur singular (mutating to Gawr), Cewri plural, transcribed into Late Cornish as Gor or similar. They are often responsible for the creation of the natural landscape, and are often petrified in death, a particularly recurrent theme in Celtic myth and folklore.

The foundation myth of Cornwall originates with the early Brythonic chronicler Nennius in the Historia Brittonum and made its way, via Geoffrey of Monmouth into Early Modern English cannon where it was absorbed by the Elizabethans as the tale of King Leir alongside that of Cymbeline and King Arthur, other mythical British kings. Carol Rose reports in Giants, Monsters, and Dragons that the tale of Jack the Giant Killer may be a development of the Corineus and Gogmagog legend. The motifs are echoed in the Hunting of Twrch Trwyth.

In 1136, Geoffrey of Monmouth reported in the first book of The History of the Kings of Britain that the indigenous giants of Cornwall were slaughtered by Brutus, the (eponymous founder of Great Britain), his son Corineus (eponymous founder of Cornwall) and his brothers who had settled in Britain after the Trojan War. Following the defeat of the giants, their leader Gogmagog wrestled with the warrior Corineus, and was killed when Corineus threw him from a cliff into the sea:

For it was a diversion to him (Corineus) to encounter the said giants, which were in greater numbers there than in all the other provinces that fell to the share of his companions. Among the rest was one detestable monster, named Goëmagot (Gogmagog), in stature twelve cubits, and of such prodigious strength that at one shake he pulled up an oak as if it had been a hazel wand. On a certain day, when Brutus (founder of Britain and Corineus' overlord) was holding a solemn festival to the gods, in the port where they at first landed, this giant with twenty more of his companions came in upon the Britons, among whom he made a dreadful slaughter. But the Britons at last assembling together in a body, put them to the rout, and killed them every one but Goëmagot. Brutus had given orders to have him preserved alive, out of a desire to see a combat between him and Corineus, who took a great pleasure in such encounters. Corineus, overjoyed at this, prepared himself, and throwing aside his arms, challenged him to wrestle with him. At the beginning of the encounter, Corineus and the giant, standing, front to front, held each other strongly in their arms, and panted aloud for breath, but Goëmagot presently grasping Corineus with all his might, broke three of his ribs, two on his right side and one on his left. At which Corineus, highly enraged, roused up his whole strength, and snatching him upon his shoulders, ran with him, as fast as the weight would allow him, to the next shore, and there getting upon the top of a high rock, hurled down the savage monster into the sea; where falling on the sides of craggy rocks, he was torn to pieces, and coloured the waves with his blood. The place where he fell, taking its name from the giant's fall, is called Lam Goëmagot, that is, Goëmagot's Leap, to this day.

The match is traditionally presumed to have occurred at Plymouth Hoe on the Cornish-Devon border, although Rame Head is a nearby alternative location. In the early seventeenth century, Richard Carew reported a carved chalk figure of a giant at the site in the first book of The Survey of Cornwall:

Againe, the actiuitie of Deuon and Cornishmen, in this facultie of wrastling, beyond those of other Shires, dooth seeme to deriue them a speciall pedigree, from that graund wrastler Corineus. Moreouer, vpon the Hawe at Plymmouth, there is cut out in the ground, the pourtrayture of two men, the one bigger, the other lesser, with Clubbes in their hands, (whom they terme Gog-Magog) and (as I haue learned) it is renewed by order of the Townesmen, when cause requireth, which should inferre the same to bee a monument of some moment. And lastly the place, hauing a steepe cliffe adioyning, affordeth an oportunitie to the fact.

Cormoran (sometimes Cormilan, Cormelian, Gormillan, or Gourmaillon) is the first giant slain by Jack. Cormoran and his wife, the giantess Cormelian, are particularly associated with St Michael's Mount, apparently an ancient pre-Christian site of worship. According to Cornish legend, the couple were responsible for its construction by carrying granite from the West Penwith Moors to the current location of the Mount. When Cormoran fell asleep from exhaustion, his wife tried to sneak a greenschist slab from a shorter distance away. Cormoran awoke and kicked the stone out of her apron, where it fell to form the island of Chapel Rock. Trecobben, the giant of Trencrom Hill (near St Ives), accidentally killed Cormelian when he threw a hammer over to the Mount for Cormoran's use. The giantess was buried beneath Chapel Rock.

Blunderbore (sometimes Blunderboar, Thunderbore, Blunderbus, or Blunderbuss) is usually associated with the area of Penwith, and was living in Ludgvan Lese (a manor in Ludgvan), where he terrorized travelers heading north to St Ives. The Anglo-Germanic name 'Blunderbore' is sometimes appropriated by other giants, as in "Tom the Tinkeard" and in some versions of "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Molly Whuppie".

In the version of "Jack the Giant Killer" recorded by Joseph Jacobs, Blunderbore lives in Penwith, where he kidnaps three lords and ladies, planning to eat the men and make the women his wives. When the women refuse to consume their husbands in company with the giant, he hangs them by their hair in his dungeon and leaves them to starve. Shortly, Jack stops along the highway from Penwith to Wales. He drinks from a fountain and takes a nap ( a device common in Brythonic Celtic stories, such as the Mabinogion). Blunderbore discovers the sleeping Jack, and recognizing him by his labeled belt, carries him to his castle and locks him in a cell. While Blunderbore is off inviting a fellow giant to come help him eat Jack, Jack creates nooses from some rope. When the giants arrive, he drops the nooses around their necks, ties the rope to a beam, slides down the rope, and slits their throats.

A giant named Blunderbore appears in the similar Cornish fairy tale "Tom the Tinkeard" (or "Tom the Tinkard"), a local variant of "Tom Hickathrift". Here, Blunderbore has built a hedge over the King's Highway between St Ives and Marazion, claiming the land as his own. The motif of the abduction of women appears in this version, as Blunderbore has kidnapped at least twenty women to be his wives. The hero Tom rouses the giant from a nap while taking a wagon and oxen back from St Ives to Marazion. Blunderbore tears up an elm to swat Tom off his property, but Tom slides one of the axles from the wagon and uses it to fight and eventually fatally wound the giant. The dying giant confers all his wealth to Tom and requests a proper burial.