Jess the Giant Killer

Atlantic breeze whips up the sands

Around the skirts of Cornish lands

Where lives the Giant our tale narrates –

A foul thing born of spleens and hates.

Cormoran the Giant is on the prowl,

His face fixed in a cursing scowl.

Astride the bubbling Tamar stream

He stoops to drink it dry.

Atop the moor on Bodmin high

He scoops up sheep that bleat and scream

And back and forth in search of meats

He scours the Marazion streets

Until good people cower away –

The Giant’s power no hand can stay.

Blood red the dipping, dripping sun.

Blood red the tor and quay and field.

O what on earth is to be done?!

O who will stop him, make him yield?!

Such anguished questions wracked the Mayor

Addressing townsfolk in the Square.

Across the strand from the Giant’s Rock

As the tower bell struck 12 o’clock.

And there beneath the legs of men

A small girl planned her stratagem

To halt the Giant’s anarchy

Restoring peace and amity.

Off slipped this wily Jess-the-lass

Quick home to where her mother had

The tools young Jess knew she would need

To end old Cormoran’s fit of greed

And in the early morning light

On gleaming sands resplendent white,

Jill blew aloud the precious horn

Her birthday gift when just new born.

The blast was heard in every town

From Sharpnose Point to Plymouth Sound.

It shook the Giant from his bed

And cracked the walls about his head.

It split his pipe and broke his pot.

Blind fury fixed him to the spot.

Again the blast came as before

And ripped the hinges from the door.

Ere long they came and spied each other –

Jess and the Giant one another. 

And crashed the feet of Cormoran

Toward the girl whose task was done.

And came he forward to the slaughter

Just ten feet short of Cornwall’s daughter

When all at once the sands gave way

And down fell he, down, down beneath the clay

Who never more would blight the day.

Copyright Andy Nuttall June 2017