Cornish Giants

JACK THE GIANT-KILLER

INTRODUCTION

This story is from the 1898 English Fairy Tales collected by Joseph Jacobs, pages 102-116 in my edition.

Jacobs says in his notes on pages 255-256 that his source is two chapbooks at the British museum (London, 1805; Paisley, 1814? [Jacob's dates]). Jacobs says that he has taken some 'hints' from an 1845 source and ommitted the incident of the giant dragging the lady along by her hair. This is an example of his Victorian morality altering the content of the original.

I have added section headings within the story, which are not in the Jacob's original, in order to break up the story for easier reading on the web.

The Opies have an good version of this tale in their book The Classic Fairy Tales, pages 47-65. The Opies cite their version as dating from chapbooks sold in the period of 1761-1765 and say it is probably similar to stories from the early 1700s. I include the 1898 version only because the Opies' work is in print. The book contains a few illustrations, but the Opies' book contains many fine ones. I have taken the liberty of including these and other illustrations in the text.

The Opies point out that the Jack the Giant-Killer stories landed in England with the Saxon invasion [circa sixth century] and reflect also more northern prototypes [Skandinavian, Norse].

An anti-Celtic bias threads through this disjointed set of tales; certainly it contains several unflattering remarks about the Welsh. I can image Saxons and Angles (the English) portraying British Welshmen and Cornishmen as monsters and themselves as a smaller, wily, and canny 'Jack' that always outwits the giant of greater physical strength. Jack finds and kills giants in Celtic Cornwall and Wales.

This story weaves Jack into the legend of King Arthur in a curious way. Jack sends the heads of these giants to the king. This reflects a typical Celtic fascination with heads, especially separated from its body. King Arthur was a British commander or clan-chief who supposedly fought the last great battles against the Saxons. Arthurian fights a giant at Mont Saint Michel and Jack's first battle is with a giant at the Cornish sister site of Mount Saint Michael.

I have divided this story into two parts because of the many graphic files it contains.

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