The Great Causeway Giant: Part II

In this second part of "The Causeway Giant," the Whig’s correspondent gets a closer look at the giant and has a word with Mr Dyer.

The body is evidently composed of limestone. A little below the knee both legs are broken across, and this injury it was first stated was inflicted in the disinterment, while afterwards the explanation was that the accident took place during the carriage of the body up to the Causeway Hotel.

Ross-shire Journal, 11 September 1903

At the sides of both legs there is a quantity of plaster of Paris, &c., placed there by a workman shortly before the body started from the Causeway yesterday. 

A resident of Portrush having feasted his eyes on the strange spectacle last night thought he would make a more minute investigation, and having seen that Mr. Dyer was engaged in another part of the yard, he pulled out a knife and commenced to scrape the Giant’s brow. In an instant Mr. Dyer was on the scene and demanded to know what the gentleman was doing. “Are you,” says he, “a scientific man; if so get your proper appliances and make a proper examination, but I cannot allow any person to be scratching and scraping at the figure in such a manner.” The snow-white mark caused by the knife in the Giant’s forehead was soon afterwards rubber over with red clay, and rendered almost imperceptible. 

After gazing for some time at the novel spectacle I asked Mr. Dyer where he had made the interesting discovery, and his reply was that that was a thing he never told to any person; that he was boring for iron, and found the Giant about four feet from the surface. In reply to my question if he had explored much of the country in search of minerals, he said that he had been over the greater portion of Ireland north of Dublin. “How long is it since you found the Giant?” I asked, and he replied that it was in December last; that many anxious hour he passed from that time until the Giant was safely under lock and key; that at length, on the 20^thJanuary, 1876 – note the date, ye Lilliputians of the present age – he managed to get him housed, but even then, horrible to relate, his anxiety did not cease nor his troubles end, for on a Sunday afternoon soon afterwards he caught no less than five youths try to effect an entrance through the roof of the edifice in which the Giant slumbered. “Were they going to steal him?” innocently asked the Portrush gentleman who had been using the penknife. “Well I don’t know what they were going to do,” replied the artless Mr. Dyer; “but I pointed at them a little two-eyed machine, and I guess they soon disappeared.” 

Mr Dyer went on to say that altogether the Giant as he lay before them had cost him £87; but how that amount was expended he gave no explanation whatever. It was now close upon ten o’clock, and, after some further explanations of an unimportant character, the company separated in twos and threes, shaking their heads knowingly. Soon the Giant was swathed in horse-rugs to protect him from the midnight air, and the séance concluded. 

Source:

• The Northern Whig, 3 June 1876