Note 115 — NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS REFERRED TO IN THE FOREGOING LIFE.

This seems the established size of an ancient hero. The grave of Gawin, King Arthur’s nephew, discovered in the time of William the Conqueror, was, according to Malmesbury, “quatuor decim pedes longum” (De gestis regum, l. 3). Bois, from the above circumstance, conceives our “Litil Jhon” to have been so called “per ironiam.” See his original work, fo. ix.