Ascapart

Ascapart enters the Bevis romance as an adversary: a giant standing thirty feet tall, with a face a foot wide and a foot between his eyes, employed as guard to the Saracen king. He is the kind of figure who could carry Bevis, his horse Arundel, and his wife Josian all under one arm and stride away with them, which he eventually does.

But the most interesting thing about Ascapart is what comes next. After Bevis defeats him in single combat, Ascapart does not die — he becomes Bevis's follower and companion, the loyal giant-servant who carries out tasks too large for any human knight. He is, in his way, the most human character in the story: petulant, devoted, occasionally treacherous, and capable of being persuaded back from betrayal by the right words.

Southampton kept him as a civic monument: a figure of Ascapart was carved on the Bargate — the old town gate — alongside Bevis himself, and giant effigy figures of both were paraded in processions until the seventeenth century. A giant figure of Ascapart carrying Bevis under his arm is recorded in the heraldry of the Southampton area. He is one of the few giants in English legend to have a personality rather than merely a size.