Brewer's: Giles

(1 syl., g soft). The “farmer's boy” in Bloomfield's poem so called.

Giles

(St.). Patron saint of cripples. The tradition is that the king of France, hunting in the desert, accidentally wounded the hermit in the knee; and the hermit, that he might the better mortify the flesh, refusing to be cured, remained a cripple for life.

The symbol of this saint is a hind, in allusion to the “heaven-directed hind” which went daily to his cave near the mouth of the Rhone to give him milk. He is sometimes represented as an old man with an arrow in his knee and a hind by his side.

St. Giles's parish.

Generally situated in the outskirts of a city, and originally without the walls, cripples and beggars not being permitted to pass the gates.

Hopping

or Hobbling Giles. A lame person; so called from St. Giles, the tutelar saint of cripples. (See Cripplegate.)

Lame as St. Giles', Cripplegate.

(See above.)

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894

Giles Overreach

Gildippe