Gayant

It is carried through the city for three days each year at the beginning of July as part of an eponymous festival alongside its "wife", Marie Cagenon, and their three "children", Jacquot, Fillon, and Binbin.

Gayant is included in UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage List as an example of processional giants and dragons in Belgium and France.

According to local legend, at the end of the ninth century, the townsmen of Scarpe asked for Jehan Gelon to help them if the city were attacked by barbarians.

An episode of La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, a famous epic of the 14th century, takes place between Douai and Cantin.

[3] Morant and his army ineffectively besiege the tower of the Giant, the perfidious and heathen vassal situated in Douai.

But Morant takes bulwarks[clarification needed], kills the Giant, and releases Douai and Cantin from the heathen.

Many historians reject the legend of Jean Gelon and prefer to see it as the city's homage to Saint Maurand.

[5] In the 19th century, several accounts in the form of tales or plays take a Gayant-like character and reinvent his history.

The earliest description dates to 1530,[6] and describes the character as twenty-two feet tall, wearing the costume of a feudal man of war in medieval armor with gloved hands.

In 1703, during the construction of the new Gayant, the painter Martin Saint Leger was charged to paint specific colors for each giant.