British folklore included dozens of accounts of local giants who once dominated the region only to be defeated by someone who brings the enormous entity to his knees, humiliating him or - more often - killing him. This time-honored motif appears in the encounters of Thor with giants or of Odysseus with the cyclopes (not to make a direct link between any of these!). It makes for a good story to have a regular man outwitting or somehow overcoming a giant. Because giants dwell in past times, these stories are cast in the past. Sometimes they are used to describe heroic men - who were much more formidable "back then." Or the hero is simply clever - playing the time-honored role of the trickster.

One of the odd things about many of these depictions of the giant is that he is sympathetic. He is not merely a ghastly monster that must be purged. Often he seems dangerous because of his size and strength, but he is often simple and he can be kind, offering to host the hero.

I've never studied Yorkshire's Jack-in-Irons, but this appears to be more large ghost than classic giant. Jack-in-Irons is described in Patricia Monaghan's The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore (New York: Facts on File, 2004) as a frightening "looming figure," a ghost that haunts dark roads, terrifying travelers. Is he a cultural reference to the stories of giants? It seems to me that this is not likely. Giants do not generally appear after their deaths as ghosts. It seems more likely that this is merely a really big ghost, making something inherently terrifying all the more so because of his size. He is not really a giant; he is a ghost. As a ghost, it doesn't seem particularly strange to me, even though he is larger than most.