The farmer saw the maiden one more time, years later, when a break in the
Alpine mists revealed a large broadly smiling face in the shadows of a mountain crevasse, watching the humans live out their little lives.

Curiosity tinged with sadness was what brought the giantess back to observe
the mortals doings. The giants were in decline by then.  Some were still charged with the potent magic of the first world, they served as birds and protectors of the puny humans. 

But, unfortunately, others like the Alpine giants, were reclusive and conservative retreating always from the spread of mortal civilization, clinging to their old ways in the melancholy knowledge that their race was in their twilight an that a smaller and new world was now approaching its noon. 
Many had grown brutish and feeble-minded and these ogres preyed on men and woman whenever they could.  And all were doomed to fall before the irresistible tide of human intelligence and human will, leaving nothing to mark their passage but legends and signs on the terrain - The rivers, mountains and
plains.  Yet enough men and woman had seen them, talked to them and fought with them to understand what the giants once had been - a race that walked among the gods.....