Giant of Carn Galva

Also Known As: also the Giant of the Carn; named Holiburn by J. O. Halliwell in 1861 and after him by Robert Hunt; the hill appears as Carn Galva, Cairn Galva and Carn Galver
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Celtic Mythology, English Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: Strength enough to set logan stones and scatter boulders across a range of hills, with no capacity whatever to moderate it.
Role in Mythos: He is the guardian giant of the Morvah and Zennor hills, standing between the farming people and the raiding giants of Trink and Trecrobben.
Relation to Humans: The farmers sent him sheep and oxen and he defended their cattle and their tin, which makes him close to unique among Cornish giants in being wanted rather than endured. The only human he ever harmed was the one friend he had, and he killed him by touching him.

Whortleberries ripen on Carn Galva in late summer, and between the granite stacks the turf goes soft as velvet underfoot. This is West Penwith, the last spine of high ground before Cornwall runs out into the Atlantic, and the tors here are split into gaps and passages that the local people called crellas. Something could live in those. The people of Morvah and Zennor said something did, and that he was the best neighbour they ever had.

He asked for very little. Farmers sent up sheep and oxen, and in exchange he stood between them and the giants of Trink and Trecrobben, who lived close by in strongholds on the Lelant hills and had no scruples at all about cattle or tin. Once the Trecrobben giant got a herd inside his walls he would defy the whole country to come and take it back. The Carn Galva giant fought him over it more than once. But the Morvah tradition is insistent that he was playful rather than warlike, and it keeps returning to what he did on the days when nobody needed defending.

He built. Near his favourite seat there is a heap of roughly cubical blocks, and the story is that he stacked them up and kicked them down again, over and over, for exercise, because he had nothing else to do with his afternoons. On the westernmost carn of the range he set a logan stone at the height he liked, so that when the sun went into the water and the sea birds went back to the cleaves he could rock himself to sleep on it. The Morvah people measured him by that rock. Seated on it, feet flat on the turf below, comfortable. That is the only physical description the tradition gives him. No source says what his face looked like, what he wore, or what colour his hair was. He is a size, a habit and a voice, and the voice comes later.

Then the young man from Choon started walking over.

Choon is Chun, the next place along in Morvah parish, under its Iron Age castle and its dolmen. The young fellow came up to the carn every now and then to see how the old giant was getting on and to cheer him up, and they played. Quoits, mostly, and a game the drolls call bob, and mop-and-heede, which is hide and seek, played through the crellas by a man and a creature who could not both fit down the same gap. The hiding must have been a very uneven business. It went on for a while, and by the tellers’ account the giant was happier in those afternoons than he had been in his whole solitary life.

One afternoon the game went particularly well. The young man threw down his quoit and turned to go home, and the giant, pleased with him, reached out and tapped him on the head with the tips of his fingers. He was already saying be sure to come again tomorrow and we will have a capital game of bob. The word bob was not out of his mouth before the young man dropped at his feet. The fingers had gone straight through his skull.

He was not trying to hurt anyone. That is the entire point of the story.

What follows is the part that sets this tale apart from every other Cornish giant story. He did not run. He knelt down and tried to repair the damage, working at the inside of the young man’s head with hands the size of the body he was working on, plugging the finger holes, attempting to put the workings back in order. He kept at it long after there was anything left to save. Then he picked the body up, carried it to the big square rock at the foot of the carn, sat down with it against his chest and rocked, and began to howl. They said he was louder than the sea breaking on the rocks below. What he howled was a question about anatomy: why nobody had made the shell of the boy’s skull stronger, when it was as soft as an underbaked pie crust and half as thick as it should have been. And after that, how he was supposed to pass the time now, with nobody left to play bob and hide and seek with.

He never enjoyed anything again. In seven years or so he pined away and died.

The name is a separate problem, and it needs saying plainly. William Bottrell, who set the fullest version down in Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall in 1870, never gives him one. He is simply the Giant of Carn Galva, or the good old giant of the carn. The name Holiburn enters through J. O. Halliwell, whose Rambles in Western Cornwall by the Footsteps of the Giants of 1861 reports a Giant’s Cave among the rocks once inhabited by a giant of that name. Robert Hunt repeated it in Popular Romances of the West of England, then printed a footnote admitting the awkward truth: Halliwell had been lucky to get a name, because Hunt had heard about this giant many times from Cornish mouths and had never once heard him called anything. So Holiburn is attached rather than inherited. The being underneath it is genuinely traditional; the label is one antiquarian’s catch.

Hunt’s own telling differs in its details, as drolls do. There the accident happens in the excitement of a good game and scatters the young man’s brains on the grass, and there is a stray line, which Hunt says he heard only once, that the giant married a farmer’s daughter and left descendants in the district still carrying a name not far off his own. That claim goes nowhere and Hunt plainly did not believe it. The line survives anyway, because it shows the giant being pulled toward the human end of the scale rather than away from it.

His powers are the ordinary powers of his kind. He could throw rock a long way, shift blocks no gang of men could move, and hold a hillside against other giants for the length of a lifetime. The quoits and boulders scattered across that stretch of moor were his, according to the people who lived among them, either flung in anger or left lying after a game. Cornwall is full of such objects, and full of giants who are stupid, greedy and fond of eating children. Trebiggan fried them on a flat rock. The Nancledry giant swallowed them whole. Bolster was tricked into bleeding himself to death by a saint who could not stand the sight of him.

The Carn Galva giant has none of that, and the thing that kills him is the same thing that made him useful. His strength has no low setting. He cannot be gentle, only less violent, and the one time he tries affection at the scale of an ordinary man he puts his fingers through a skull. There is no enemy in the story, no trick and no giant killer. The loneliness that made him want a friend and the body that made a friend impossible are the same body. Seven years is a short grief for something that size, and the tellers seem to have thought it about right.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was the Giant of Carn Galva?

The Giant of Carn Galva was a kindly giant said to have lived among the granite tors of Carn Galva in West Penwith, Cornwall. He protected the farming people of Morvah and Zennor from the raiding giants of Trink and Trecrobben, and took gifts of sheep and oxen in return. Cornish tradition remembers him as playful rather than warlike, which is unusual for a Cornish giant.

How did the Giant of Carn Galva kill his friend?

He patted him on the head. After an afternoon of quoits, the giant tapped his young playmate from Choon with his fingertips as the man turned to go home, and the fingers went through his skull. The giant tried to plug the holes and repair the damage, but the young man was dead before he stopped.

Is the Giant of Carn Galva called Holiburn?

The name Holiburn is attached to him, but it does not come from Cornish oral tradition as it was collected. J. O. Halliwell recorded it in 1861, and Robert Hunt repeated it while admitting in a footnote that he had heard the giant’s story many times and had never heard him given a name. William Bottrell’s fuller version calls him only the Giant of Carn Galva.

How did the Giant of Carn Galva die?

He died of grief. After killing his only friend he never took pleasure in anything again, and in about seven years he pined away. No giant killer, saint or rival giant has any part in his death, which is rare in Cornish giant tales.

How big was the Giant of Carn Galva?

Cornish tradition gives his size by a single measurement rather than a description. He set a logan stone on the westernmost carn at exactly the height where he could sit and rock himself while resting his feet flat on the turf below. Beyond that, no source describes his face, his build or his clothing.