As recorded in regional folklore and later chapbook accounts, Cormoran is presented as a local giant tied to St. Michael's Mount. Folklore attributes the construction of the Mount to his carrying of white granite from the mainland at low tide; the personal name "Cormoran" is first attested in chapbook versions of the "Jack the Giant Killer" cycle rather than in the earliest local traditions.
Folklore describes Cormoran as an enormous humanoid giant: Joseph Jacobs's retelling gives dimensions of approximately 5.5 m (18 ft) tall and about 2.75 m (9 ft) around the waist. Variant local accounts say he lived in a cave on St. Michael's Mount and used ebb tides to walk to the mainland; some local traditions attribute six digits on each hand and foot. Reports that a skeleton "over seven feet tall" was found during an excavation at the Mount are recorded as local lore rather than verified archaeology.
In the tales Cormoran performs etiological landscape-labor—carrying and placing large stones to form St. Michael's Mount (sometimes aided by a wife, Cormelian, whose dropped stones form nearby rocks). He is also portrayed as a powerful raider: walking to the mainland at low tide to steal cattle and livestock, reputedly able to carry multiple oxen and bind sheep and hogs about his waist, and in some accounts described as eating people. In some narrative variants (Tom the Tinkeard material) an enchanter is said to immobilize him by magical means as the sea rises, indicating interactions with human magic in the regional cycle. Recreationally, stories pair him with the giant of Trencrom who exchange thrown boulders, explaining scattered stones in the landscape.
Weaknesses
- conditiontrap pit
- otherimmobilization by an enchanter (magical intervention)
Wards
- ritualcommunal reward-and-dispatch decision (councillors convene)
- otherlure-and-trap tactic (digging a deep pit, sounding a horn, then killing with a mattock/pickaxe)
Blunderbore
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Cormac mac Airt
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Cornelius Stirk
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Cornflower Wraith
A Slavic field spirit associated with midday who enforces proper conduct in cultivated grain. Described as a young woman in azure with cornflowers in her hair, she punishes workers who trample crops or use sharp tools at the wrong time, often by inducing sleep followed by pain or by causing broken limbs.
Community Record
- [1]Cormoran - Wikipedia. Wikipedia: Cormoranwiki
- [2]Joseph Jacobs, retellings of 'Jack the Giant-Killer' (on Cormoran). Joseph Jacobs cited within Wikipedia summary of Cormoranliterary
- [3]Notes on Cornish traditions (Tom the Tinkeard variants, Mary Williams reporting). Summary of regional variants and folklorist reports as presented in Wikipedia entry on Cormoranfolk