On a recent visit to Ġgantija Temples, now under the responsibility of Heritage Malta, in the new interpretation centre inaugurated not long ago I came across a section dedicated to folktales by Fr Manwel Magri.

The legend depicted on one of the boards, The children of the Giantess, or the ancestry of Gozo and Mosta, reads: “There was once a giantess who had two children, a girl and a boy. One day, her children were kidnapped and taken to Malta by boat. When the children grew up the daughter married a Gozitan, and from her originated the Gozitan population, whilst the son married a woman from Mosta and from him derived the population of Mosta.”

I asked myself why Mosta of all places. Decades ago, a seven-footer friend of my father by the name of ‘Big John’ every year used to bring him a sack full of winter melons (how delicious). Then I remembered my father used to narrate that, long ago, in Mosta, in the vicinity of were Mosta Fort now stands, there lived a generation of tall and very strong men who, it was rumoured, at the end of their spine had a small tail.

It is also rumoured that before Mosta Fort was built there was a colossal wall on this high ridge, maybe some sort of a temple.