Giants

According to a writer in The Daily Telegraph today there is a queer sort of dispute going on in Ireland over the bones of a man named Charles Byrne who was a giant: more than eight feet tall. His skeleton is on display at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgery. The question is, should it be displayed at all since his wish was that his body should be buried at sea in a lead box? Thomas Muinzer, a legal academic from Belfast says "it is now time to honour Byrne's last wish and make retrospective amends for the continued unseemly display which satisfies morbid curiosity without any intellectual or scientific purpose".
I have no views on this except to say that I don't believe Byrne himself feels anything or cares about what happens to his skeleton. But there are others who like to sanctify bones of certain famous people, particularly if they were themselves exceedingly religious.
The man-giant recalled to mind a giant mentioned in a Dickens novel.
Mr Vuffin runs a circus with a giant, a lady with no arms or legs and a man, named Sweet William, who could put small lozenges into his eyes and bring them out of his mouth.
Vuffin is having a chat with a man named Short in a pub.
"How's the giant?" said Short when they all sat smoking round the fire.
"Rather weak upon the legs," returned Vuffin. "I begin to be afraid he's going at the knees
"That's a bad oulook," said Short. "What becomes of old giants?" he asked.
"They're usually kept in caravans to wait upon the dwarfs," said Mr Vuffin.
Isn't it amazing how Dickens can imbue a thoroughly sad state of affairs with a lightness of empathetic touch that lifts the spirits and makes the baleful characters human beings?