Chapter Godinez to Gold Hair of G by Brewer's Readers Handbook

by his pole-axe and spiked ball. Two statues so called stood on the same spot in the reign of Henry V.; but those now seen were made by Richard Saunders, in 1708, and are fourteen feet in height.

In Hone’s time, children and country visitors were told that every day, when the giants heard the clock strike twelve, they came down to dinner.—Old and New London, i. 387.

Another tale was that they then fell foul of each other in angry combat.

Gogmagog, king of the Albion giants, eighteen feet in height, killed by Corin in a wrestling-match, and flung by him over the Hoe or Haw of Plymouth. For this achievement, Brute gave his follower all that horn of land now called Cornwall, Cor’n[w]all, a contraction of Corinall. The contest is described by Drayton in his Polyolbion, i. (1612).

E’en thus unmoved
Stood Corineus, the sire of Guendolen,
When, grappling with his monstrous enemy,
He the brute vastness held aloft, and bore,
And headlong hurled, all shattered to the sea,
Down from the rock’s high summit, since that day
Called Lan-gæmagog.
   —Southey: Joan of Arc, viii. 395.

Spenser throws the accent of Corineus on the second syllable, Southey on the first, while Drayton makes it a word of four syllables, and accents the third.

Gogmagog Hill, the higher of the two hills some three miles south-east of Cambridge. It once belonged to the Balsham Hills, but “being rude and bearish, regarding neither God nor man,” it was named in reproach Gogmagog. The legend is that this Gogmagog Hill was once a huge giant, who fell in love with the nymph Granta, and, meeting her alone, told her all his heart, saying—

“Sweeting mine, if thou mine own wilt be, I’ve many a pretty gaud I keep in store for thee: A nest of broad- faced owls, and goodly urchins too (Nay, nymph, take heed of me, when I begin to woo) And better far than that, a bulchin two years old, A curled-pate calf it is, and oft could have been sold: And yet besides all this, I’ve goodly bear-whelps tway, Full dainty for my joy when she’s disposed to play; And twenty sows of lead to make our wedding ring;”

but the saucy nymph only mocked the giant, and told his love-story to the Muses, and all made him their jest and sport and laughter.—Drayton: Polyolbion, xxi. (1622).

Goitre.

When we were boys,
Who would believe that there were mountaineers
Dew-lapp’d like bulls, whose throats had hanging at ’em
Wallets of flesh?
   —Shakespeare: The Tempest, act iii. sc. 3 (1609).

Gold Hair, a true story of Pornic. A young girl died there in the odour of sanctity, and was buried near the high altar of the church of St. Gilles. Years after, the pavement was taken up over her grave, and thirty double louis were found, which had been buried in her gold hair at her own request.—Browning: Poems (1864).