Hurtaly

Hurtaly or Hurtali is a legendary giant. He appears in "Gargantua and Pantagruel" by Rabelais, as an ancestor of Gargantua. [ [http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Pantagruel_-_Chapitre_1] Text at French Wikisource.] Hurtaly is there said to have survived Noah's Flood, by sitting astride Noah's Ark. [ibid., "il estoit dessus à cheval, jambe de sà, jambe de là"] He is characterised as "beau mangeur des souppes" [A fine eater of soup.] , and as the son of Faribroth, father of Nembroth.

The name is not original to Rabelais. It is commented in "Rabelais and His Critics" [By Natalie Zemon Davis and Timothy Hampton; [http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/pubs/OP10_Rabelais.pdf this PDF] ] that the ancestors are "biblical Jewish giants such as Hurtaly of rabbinic legend; his name in Hebrew means “he who has survived.” " Another biography ["Rabelais", by M. A. Screech (1979), p.45] states that Hurtaly is based on the Biblical Og, King of Bashan, and that Rabelais was paraphrasing the "Pirkei of Rabbi Eliezar of Hyracanus". [Printed a few years later (1544). Screech p.46 calls the derivation of "Hurtaly" from "ha-palit", 'he who survived' "just possible". He comments on the 'Jewish dimension' as an example of the 'erudition' of Rabelais, and non-'destructive' comic approach (p.47).]

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