Illustration- John Howe

…In the silence which had fallen upon the company, a loud wailing
from without the Mead-Hall could be heard by all those present.

Into the house that Father Fish built strode a big, uncouth fellow of un-surpassing ugliness.

Twice the height of any of the men of Albion was the horrible apparition. The mantle about him and his hair was like a great spreading bush the size of a winter shed, under which thirty bullocks could easily find shelter. He had ravenous yellow eyes the size of an ox vat, which bulged from his head, and each of his fingers were the width of any normal man’s wrist.

In his left hand he carried a block, a burden for twenty yoke of oxen, and in his right, an axe weighing a hundred and fifty molten masses of metal.

Its handle required a plough team of six to…