These Legends Were Collected By Robert Hunt, And First
Published Over Half A Century Ago In His Popular Romances Of
The
West of England, and he points out in this work that "devil" in
most of the legends appears to
Be but another name for "giant," that in
many cases the character of the being is practically the same. He
believes that traditions of giants, which probably date back to
prehistoric times, were once common all over the country, that they
were always associated with certain impressive features in the
landscape - grotesque hills, chasms and hollows in the downs and huge
masses of rock; that the early teachers of Christianity, anxious to
kill these traditions, or to blot out a false belief or superstition
with the darker and more terrible image of a powerful being at war with
man, taught that "giant" was but another name for Devil. If this is so,
the teaching was not altogether good policy. The giants, it is true,
were an awesome folk and flung immense rocks about in a reckless manner
and did many other mad things; and there were some that were wholly
bad, just as there are rogue elephants and as there are black sheep in
the human flock, but they were not really bad as a rule, and certainly
not too intelligent. Even little men with their cunning little brains
could get the better of them. The result of such teaching could only be
that the Devil would be regarded as not the unmitigated monster they
had been told that he was, nor without human weaknesses and virtues.
When we say now that he is not "as black as he is painted" we may be
merely repeating what was being said by the common people of England in
the days of St. Augustine and St. Colomb, and of the Irish missionaries
in Cornwall.
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