The Probert Encyclopaedia of Other Mythology

GIANT

Giants are people of extraordinary stature. History, both sacred and profane, makes mention of giants, and even of races of giants, but this in general occurs only at an early stage of civilization when the national mind is apt to exaggerate anything unusual. Hence the Cyclopes and Laestrygones of the ancients and the Cornish and Welsh giants of English folk-lore.

The first mention of giants in Jewish mythology is in the Bible in Genesis VI 4, where the Hebrew word used is nephilim, a word which occurs in only one other passage, where it is applied to the sons of Anab, who dwelt about Hebron, and who were described by the terrified spies as of such size that compared with them they appeared in their own sight as grasshoppers. A race of giants called the Rephaim is frequently mentioned in the Bible, and in Genesis XIV and XV appear as a distinct tribe, of whom Og, king of Bashan, is said to have been the last. Other races of giants are mentioned, such as the Emim, the Zuzim, and the Zamzummim.

The giants of old Greek or of Norse mythology similarly of course, have merely a symbolic existence, representing benignant or adverse forces of nature on which man might count in his struggle to reduce the world around him into some kind of order.

The tales of old writers regarding gigantic human skeletons have no importance, it being known from the late 19th century that these bones do not belong to giants, but to animals of the primitive world which, from ignorance of anatomy, were formerly taken for human bones.

Notable deviations from average height are not at all uncommon, especially among the Teutonic peoples. The following are amongst some celebrated authentic instances, ancient and modern, of persons who attained to the stature of giants: The Toman Emperor Maximin, a Thracian, nearly 9 feet high; Queen Elizabeth's Flemish porter, 7 feet 6 inches; C. Munster, a yeoman of the guard in Hanover, who died in 1676, 8 feet 6 inches high; Cajanus, a Swedish giant, about 9 feet high, exhibited in London in 1742; Byrne, who died in 1783, attained the height of 8 feet 4 inches; Patrick Cotter O'Brien, who lived about the same time, was 8 feet 7.75 inches; a Swede in the celebrated grenadier guard of Frederick William I of Prussia stood 8.5 feet. In 1884 died Pauline Wedde (called Marian), over 8 feet 2 inches at the age of eighteen. Anna Swan, a native of Nova Scotia, stood above 8 feet high; her husband, Captain Bates, a native of Kentucky, of the same height; Chang-wu-gon, the Chinese giant, 7 feet 9 inches high, Zeng Jinlian, a Chinese woman who was 8 feet 1 inch tall when she died in 1982, Jane Bunford, an English woman who was 7 feet 7 inches tall when she died, despite having curvature of the spine, Robert Wadlow who stood 8 feet 11.1 inches in 1940. Until the 20th century very tall people were frequently displayed in freak shows.
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