Though it be hard at times to see of what usefulness were those troublesome monsters of the world’s younger days,—there is no such difficulty with the thronging giants of the age of chivalry. For some seven centuries (that is from the institution of this order by Charlemagne till it was shot to death by firearms and gunpowder), the giant’s reason for existence was to furnish a large enough measure of the knight’s prowess.

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” says the modern “bruiser”; the old romancers would have added—“and the more resounding los to him who fells them."

Little did their vast size and muscles avail them against these hot thirsters after fame. The magic net of Caligorant, Ferragus’s prophetic brazen head, Galafer’s magic armor rendering the sinless wearer invulnerable, Mugillo’s prodigious mace with its whirling balls—weapons, strength, craft and magic were alike impotent before a Roland, an Arthur, an Amadis, or a Guy of Warwick. Of a list of two hundred giants collected by a curious biographer, well-nigh half came to an untimely end through the sword of some knight-errant. Small wonder that after several hundred years of such eager reaping, these heroes should have left not one live specimen for us of later times to gape at.

Read but the following few tales of such adventures as comprised almost the regular “day’s work” of knighthood; and, however much you may bewail the loss, you must speedily comprehend why these Tall Ones, once so plentiful, are today extinct.