" At Chester the annual
pageant on Midsummer Eve included the effigies of four giants, with
animals, hobby-horses, and other figures. At Coventry it appears
that the giant's wife figured beside the giant. At Burford, in
Oxfordshire, Midsummer Eve used to be celebrated with great jollity
by the carrying of a giant and a dragon up and down the town. The
last survivor of these perambulating English giants lingered at
Salisbury, where an antiquary found him mouldering to decay in the
neglected hall of the Tailors' Company about the year 1844. His
bodily framework was a lath and hoop, like the one which used to be
worn by Jack-in-the-Green on May Day.
In these cases the giants merely figured in the processions. But
sometimes they were burned in the summer bonfires. Thus the people
of the Rue aux Ours in Paris used annually to make a great
wicker-work figure, dressed as a soldier, which they promenaded up
and down the streets for several days, and solemnly burned on the
third of July, the crowd of spectators singing _Salve Regina.
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