While it is generally true that the bigger the cheese the better, (much the same as a magnum bottle of champagne is better than a pint), there is a limit to the obesity of a block, ball or brick of almost any kinds of cheese.  When they pass a certain limit, they lack homogeneity and are not nearly so good as the smaller ones.  Today a good magnum size for an exhibition Cheddar is 560 pounds; for a prize Provolone, 280 pounds; while a Swiss wheel of only 210 will draw crowds to any food-shop window.

Yet by and large it’s the monsters that get into the Cheese Hall of Fame and come down to us in song and story.  For example, that four-ton Toronto affair inspired a cheese poet, James McIntyre, who doubled as the local undertaker.

    We have thee, mammoth cheese,
    Lying quietly at your ease;
    Gently fanned by evening breeze,
    Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

    All gaily dressed soon you’ll go
    To the greatest provincial show,
    To be admired by many a beau
    In the city of Toronto.

    May you not receive a scar as
    We have heard that Mr. Harris
    Intends to send you off as far as
    The great world’s show at Paris.

    Of the youth beware of these,
    For some of them might rudely squeeze
    And bite your cheek; then song or glees
    We could not sing, oh, Queen of Cheese.

An ode to a one hundred percent American mammoth was inspired by “The Ultra-Democratic, Anti-Federalist Cheese of Cheshire.”  This was in the summer of 1801 when the patriotic people of Cheshire, Massachusetts, turned out en masse to concoct a mammoth cheese on the village green for presentation to their beloved President Jefferson.  The unique demonstration occurred spontaneously in jubilant commemoration of the greatest political triumph of a new country in a new century—­the victory of the Democrats over the Federalists.  Its collective making was heralded in Boston’s Mercury and New England Palladium, September 8, 1801: 

    The Mammoth Cheese

    An EPICO-LYRICO ballad

    From meadows rich, with clover red,
      A thousand heifers come;
    The tinkling bells the tidings spread,
    The milkmaid muffles up her head,
      And wakes the village hum.

    In shining pans the snowy flood
      Through whitened canvas pours;
    The dyeing pots of otter good
    And rennet tinged with madder blood
      Are sought among their stores.

    The quivering curd, in panniers stowed,
      Is loaded on the jade,
    The stumbling beast supports the load,
    While trickling whey bedews the road
      Along the dusty glade.

    As Cairo’s slaves, to bondage bred,
      The arid deserts roam,
    Through trackless sands undaunted tread,
    With skins of water on their head
      To cheer their masters home,