The Sorcerer's Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter (33 page)

Such a long history of bad behavior surely can’t be attributed to just a few rotten apples, so it’s hard to blame Hogwarts parents if they worry about their children taking lessons from a half-giant. But as Albus Dumbledore seems to know, judging an individual on the reputation of his or her kin can be misleading. In many modern stories, giants are actually kind beings who befriend and protect normal-size humans, especially children. They may suffer from painful physical ailments as result of their size, or feel isolated, awkward, or embarrassed because of it. We already know of some good giants, and there may well be more out there.

THE CYCLOPES:
The Cyclopes (from the Greek meaning “circular eye”) were the first generation of Greek mythological giants—preceding even the gigantes, the Titans, and the Gods of Olympus. Enormously powerful, with a single eye in the middle of their foreheads, they were so despised and feared by their father, Uranus, that he imprisoned them in Tartarus, the lowest level of the underworld. There they learned the art of metalworking and eventually forged weapons for the gods, providing Zeus with his thunderbolt, Hades with his Hat of Invisibility, and Poseidon with his trident.

A later generation of Cyclopes, equally grotesque, were known to be cannibals. The most famous was Polyphemus, who was tricked by his captive Odysseus into thinking the hero’s name was “No man.” When blinded by the escaping hero, Polyphemus went around screaming “No man did this to me,” and was thought mad by his fellow giants.

GARGANTUA:
A giant of medieval folk literature, Gargantua was immortalized by the French satirist François Rabelais in his comic novels
Gargantua
and
Pantagruel
(1532–1534). The offspring of giant parents who were created by the wizard Merlin, Gargantua was a creature of insatiable appetites; he was born screaming the words “Drink, drink, drink.” In the course of many adventures, Gargantua battled rival giants, kept prisoners in the hollow of one of his teeth (which also contained a tennis court), and stole the bells of Notre Dame Cathedral to hang around the neck of his giant mare. The English word “gargantuan” is derived from his name.

GOLIATH:
The best known of all biblical giants, Goliath was the champion of the Philistine army that invaded the land of the Israelites in the time of King Saul. A terrifying figure at “six cubits and a span” (nine and a half feet), Goliath challenged any warrior of the Israelite army to meet him in single combat. “If he be able to fight with me, and kill me, then will we be your servants; but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants” (I Samuel 17:9). The challenge was famously answered by the shepherd David, who felled the giant with a single stone hurled from a slingshot, cut off his head, and sent the enemy fleeing.

GOGMAGOG:
A villainous giant whose name combines those of two other giants—Gog and Magog—Gogmagog was the greatest of the many legendary giants inhabiting ancient Britain. In a tale recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the twelve-foot giant was bested by the hero Corneieus, whose habit it was to overcome giants by wrestling with them. Corneieus hoisted Gogmagog over his head, raced to the edge of a cliff, and hurled the giant into the sea (to this day, the area is known as Giant’s Leap). As a reward, Corneieus was given a part of Britain that he called Cornwall, in his own honor. Some say that more tales about giants are told in Cornwall than any other English county, owing to the great number of large rock formations in the area, said to have been built by giants like Gogmagog.

PAUL BUNYAN:
The best loved giant of American folklore, Paul Bunyan was a legendary lumberjack who was known as much for his cleverness and kindness as for his immense strength and logging know-how. With the help of his friends Johnny Inkslinger, Sourdough Sam, and Babe the Blue Ox, Bunyan was said to have carved out many features of the American landscape, including the Grand Canyon, Puget Sound, and the Black Hills of South Dakota. His cookstove covered an acre, and his pancake griddle was so large that it had to be greased by men who skated across it with sides of bacon strapped to their feet! Stories of his exploits and prodigious appetites originated in the lumber camps of the northern United States during the 1800s, but were eventually known throughout North America.

THE GIANT OF CARDIFF:
In the fall of 1869, crewmen digging a well in the town of Cardiff, New York, unearthed what appeared to be the remains of an authentic, petrified giant. Ten feet tall and weighing nearly 3,000 pounds, the creature became national news. Experts debated its origins, while the public eagerly paid a fifty-cent admission charge to view the discovery firsthand. After paleontologist Othniel Marsh exposed the giant as a hoax, the true story emerged. The creature was the get-rich-quick scheme of cigar manufacturer George Hull. Hull purchased a massive block of gypsum, had it secretly carved by stonemasons—who were told it was to be a statue—and then buried it on a farm belonging to his brother-in-law. There it remained for a year before being “accidentally” discovered by the well diggers. The Cardiff Giant made a fortune for Hull. It now resides at the Farmer’s Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

REAL GIANTS:
While we can’t vouch for the size of the giants of antiquity, there is little doubt that the tallest person in modern history was Robert Waldow, who towered over everyone else from the astonishing height of 8’11”. Born in 1918 in Alton, Illinois, of normal-sized parents, Waldow never stopped growing. The earliest recorded measurement of his height showed him standing 5’6½” tall. There would have been nothing remarkable about that, except he was only five years old and just entering kindergarten. At the age of thirteen, when he was declared the World’s Largest Boy Scout, he stood 7’4” and weighed 270 pounds. Throughout his brief life (he died at the age of twenty), Waldow was known as a sweet-natured, gentle person. He toured most of the United States as a representative of a shoe company, attracting large crowds wherever he went.

The record for the world’s tallest woman belongs to Zeng Jinlian (1964–1982), a native of Hunan province, China, who reached a height of 8’1”.

The ancient Greeks and Romans had every reason to believe that giants once walked the earth. Not only were the giants’ triumphs and defeats recorded in myth and legend, but their bones remained for all to see. Plowed out of the ground by farmers, or emerging from the earth after flooding, earthquakes, or mudslides, enormous femurs (thigh bones), colossal kneecaps, and spectacular scapulae (shoulder blades) all testified to the past existence of giants, heroes, and monsters.

Today we recognize those bones as the fossil remains of mastodons, giant giraffes, woolly mammoths, cave bears, and other prehistoric mammals that lived millions of years ago. In antiquity, however, the true age of the earth was not known, and fossils were believed to be of relatively recent origin (perhaps thousands, but not millions of years old). When giant-sized bones were found, it seemed most reasonable to conclude that they were what they appeared to be, the bones of dead giants—often the very giants mentioned in myth and legend.

The Greeks and Romans were avid fossil collectors, and their most spectacular discoveries were displayed in shrines, temples, and other public places, where they were regarded as evidence of the mythic past. (The first-century Roman emperor Caesar Augustus built what is probably the world’s first paleontology museum, where he exhibited his personal collection of giant bones and other artifacts.) Some relics were identified as the remains of a particular giant, such as Geryon, a three-headed monster slain by Heracles; other bones were said to belong to legendary warriors such as Ajax and Achilles, heroes of the Trojan War (the Greeks imagined their folk heroes to be vastly larger than ordinary humans). Even the remains of the fallen Gigantes were identified.