All this happened before Jack the Giant-Killer came to Cornwall.
There once lived, you know, a mighty race of Giants among the Cornish rocks and caves. The biggest of these Giants were like towers. One of them could stand with one foot on a mountain-top and place his other foot on a mountain six miles off. When the Giants played ball, they hurled great fragments of rock at one another.
There were fierce Giants who ate boys for dinner, and also kind and friendly ones. There were Gogmagog the Giant Captain, twelve cubits high; Blunderbuss and Thunderbore; Cormelian and Cormoran; the enormous Bolster; and Trebiggan, vast with long snake-like arms.
Now one of the Cornish Giants, a horrid monster, had but a single eye and that in the middle of his huge forehead. But he could see far with it, and as he liked veal and parsley pies better than pies made of boys, he kept a sharp watch-out with that one eye for calves.
He lived on an island, and no sooner did he spy a calf frisking along the shore opposite, than he waded through the deep sea, slung the calf over his shoulder, and strode back through the sea to his island. Then what a luscious veal and parsley pie he had for supper!
It happened one day while the hungry Giant was chasing a calf, an Enchanter looked out from his tower. He saw that the calf was his, and he did not intend to have it made into a pie. He began to work spells.
Instantly the Giant found himself stuck fast to a rock, with the calf on his shoulder. He twisted this way and that, he pulled and struggled, it was of no use. There he stuck and there he had to stay all night with the calf bleating in his ears.
The next morning the Enchanter set him free, and flogged him till he dropped the calf. The Enchanter kept on flogging him, till the Giant with a howl leaped into the sea and bellowing madly waded back to his island.
He was starving, and there was no veal and parsley pie that night. Day after day he stayed in his cave and was afraid to venture out to look for food. And he would have starved to death, if a good-natured young Giant, who lived nearby, had not brought him food and sold it to him for much gold. The horrible monster, you see, had his cave stuffed with gold and silver treasures, and he had to pay them all to the young Giant.
This happened before the days of Jack the Giant Killer. And since his time there have been no Giants in Cornwall. But, you know, there are the Spriggans. Funny impish little Fairies are they!
You may see them on a summer night along the cliffs, thousands and thousands, whole swarms of Spriggans. They have charge of the Giants' buried treasures. And some old Grannies say, that when the Giants left their bodies they became Spriggans.
Watch out for the Spriggans!