The monks come to an
island whereon they find the barrow of some giant of old time. St.
Malo, seized with pity for the lost soul of the heathen, opens the
mound and raises the dead to life. Then follows a strange
conversation between the giant and the saint. He was slain, he
says, by his kinsmen, and ever since has been tormented in the other
world. In that nether pit they know (he says) of the Holy Trinity:
but that knowledge is rather harm than gain to them, because they
did not choose to know it when alive on earth. Therefore he begs to
be baptized, and so delivered from his pain. He is therefore
instructed, catechised, and in due time baptized, and admitted to
the Holy Communion. For fifteen days more he remains alive: and
then, dying once more, is again placed in his sepulchre, and left in
peace.
From fragmentary recollections of such tales as these (it may be
observed in passing) may have sprung the strange fancy of the modern
Cornishmen, which identifies these very Celtic saints of their own
race with the giants who, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth,
inhabited the land before Brutus and his Trojans founded the
Arthuric dynasty. St. Just, for instance, who is one of the
guardian saints of the Land's End, and St. Kevern, one of the
guardian saints of the Lizard, are both giants; and Cornishmen a few
years since would tell how St. Just came from his hermitage by Cape
Cornwall to visit St. Kevern in his cave on the east side of
Goonhilly Downs; and how they took the Holy Communion together; and
how St.
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