Titanic reminders of our giant past

[Guest guest]

The Giants seize Freya

Picture: Illustration by Arthur Rackham

 

Titanic reminders of our giant past

BRENDAN O'BRIEN

 

OUR ANCIENT ancestors had much to worry them. They had to find food,

build shelter, protect their offspring and most important of all,

keep a wary eye out for giants. That's right, back in the deep dark

days of yore Scots believed that enormous creatures roamed the land

fighting and causing a stramash whenever they could. And although

we've long ceased to believe in behemoths, their "presence" is still

recorded in the numerous giant place names scattered throughout

Scotland.

 

Long ago, Scots came upon many strange sights in their landscape that

could not be easily accounted for. They also found many unnatural

structures older than the times they lived in, which we now know to

be man-made, that may have seemed beyond their means to build.

Perhaps it is understandable that they sought to explain the

inexplicable in any way they could.

 

 

Samson's putting stone on the slopes of Ben Ledi.

Picture: Explore Scotland

When people discovered huge stones, immovable by normal men, lying

almost abandoned in fields and hills where they obviously did not

belong, the only possible explanation must have been a creature huge

and strong enough to deposit them there. Samson, known in folk tales

as the strongest giant in Scotland, was one such mischievous titan

who delighted in throwing around huge boulders for sport. On the

eastern slope of Ben Ledi, a hill near Callander, a large boulder

known as his "putting stone" is said to be the remnants of one of his

games.

 

Read on

Catch up on part one of our feature on giants.

As well as playthings, boulders were also the weapons of choice for

many giants as they engaged in another of their favourite sports:

feuding. Legend tells of how a trio of giants who lived in the hills

of Torvean, Dunain and Craig Phadrick around Inverness hefted massive

stone hammers at each other from dawn to midday. Boulders, which

still sit in the fields around these hills today, were said to be the

missiles they used to battle with each other. Even more dangerous to

the people who lived beside them, were the Gaelic giants who lived in

the hills around Munlochy Bay in the Ross and Cromarty area of the

Highlands who were said to have thrown gargantuan battle-axes at each

other from their strongholds.

 

Giants did not only heave gigantic missiles at each other in anger

but also at people who provoked their wrath. The giant of Norman's

Law in Fife, known in legend as the Earl of Hell, is said to have

hurled a boulder at the people of Dundee across the River Tay. The

boulder fell short and crashed against the Law Hill where it still

rests.

 

 

The entrance to Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa.

Picture: National Trust for Scotland

However, the most famous story of how giants came to shape the

landscape is found a short distance across the Irish Sea from

Scotland. The legend of the Giant's Causeway in what is now Northern

Ireland recounts the tale of an Irish giant, Finn MacCool, who heard

a Scottish rival, Benandonner, insult his manhood from across the

water and set about building a bridge of stone across the sea to

uphold his honour. Science now tells us that this bridge, which

allegedly spanned the sea from Giant's Causeway to Fingal's Cave, was

formed from volcanic eruptions 65 million years ago. Yet who amongst

us would not prefer the story of fighting giants!

 

Since the people of Scotland once imagined that giants lived in their

country it is natural that they believed these creatures died here

too. At least 20 giants' graves are visible from the far south to the

northernmost outposts of Scotland. They can be found in Stanstig in

Shetland, near Kilchattan on the island of Colonsay, in Sma'glen in

Perthshire, and near Kirkcolm in Dumfries and Galloway.

Archaeological excavation has shown that many of these sites are

indeed burial mounds dating from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age.

Bones have been unearthed at many of these sites, although the

largest have only been of average height.

 

Ancient monuments and ruins were often thought to be the work of

Scottish giants. Those who lived beside the remains of the Neolithic

stone circles of Scotland might have believed that only a giant's

strength could move these huge obelisks. Two such monuments that can

still be visited today are the Giant's Cairn at Old Deer,

Aberdeenshire, and the Giant's Stanes in Eskdalemuir in the Scottish

Borders. Legend also has it that the columns of Scotland's most

famous stone circle, the Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis, are

the bodies of giants turned to stone by St Kieran for disobeying the

teachings of Christianity.

 

 

Aerial view of Edin's Hall, the ruins of an Iron Age hill fort where

a giant was said to have lived.

Picture: Scottish Borders Council

Similarly, hill-forts from the Bronze Age and before, now reduced to

mounds of earth by the passage of time, were thought to be the homes

of giants. A three-headed giant known as the Ettin of Edin's Hall was

said to have lived in an old hill-fort on the north-eastern slopes of

Cockburn Law, a hill near Duns in the Scottish Borders.

 

Today it seems quaint that our forebears imagined the huge presence

of giants in their midst. Yet who's to say that for all our so-called

scientific knowledge, in hundreds of years time, our descendants will

look back at how we made sense of the world and find us just as

ridiculous.

 

http://heritage.scotsman.com/myths.cfm?id=1870532005&20050904235513