Giant

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

a person of unusual height or bulk. In Grecian mythology, the giants were descendants of Uranus and Gaea. They warred against Zeus, but were subdued, and many of them were buried under Mount Aetna and other volcanoes. It is possible that the story of the conflict between gods and giants had its origin in volcanic convulsions. Hercules, Orion, and Polyphemus are famous giants of Grecian legend. In Scandinavian mythology the giant Ymir was the first created being. Jotunheim was the home of the giants, of whom Skrymir was one. He was so enormous that on one occasion Loki, himself of the giant race, Thor, and Thialfi, being lost in a forest, found refuge in Skrymir's glove, thinking it to be a huge cave. The legends and traditions of all nations are full of tales of giants. One of the stories which never loses its charm for children is that of Jack the Giant Killer, which is of Welsh origin. A belief in people of monstrous size and strength seems to be natural to primitive people and to children. We learn that, when the science of fossils was in its infancy, many impostures were passed off on the people. The bones of animals having no similarity whatever to the human form were pieced together under the pretense that they were the remains of giants even sixty feet in height. The account of the Cardiff Giant , which see, shows that even the nineteenth century was not free from people who were willing to believe marvelous stories of giants. A few of the large men whose stature is acknowledged by scientists may be mentioned. Frederick had a Scotchman in his famous Potsdam regiment who was 8 feet 3 inches in height; an Irish skeleton preserved in the museum of Trinity College at Dublin measures 8 feet 6 inches; one in the museum of the College of Surgeons, at London, 8 feet 2 inches. The museum at Bonn, Germany, possesses the skeleton of a giant 8 feet in height. One of the Roman emperors was nearly 9 feet in height. Queen Elizabeth had a porter 7 feet 6 inches high. Among more modern giants may be mentioned Captain Bates, a native of Kentucky, who was 8 feet high; Anna Swan, a native of Nova Scotia , exceeded that height slightly. As a matter of physiology, it may be added that, unlike dwarfs, people of extraordinary height seldom live to an old age. Life insurance experts claim that a man 5 feet 8 inches in height has the greatest physical endurance and is the best risk. In fact, "giantism" has been called a disease. See Height ; Dwarf ; Pygmy