Chapter 18

Similar anecdotes from the Harz and the Odenwald are given in Deut. sag. nos. 319. 324. In Hesse the giant's daughter is placed on the Hippersberg (betw. Kölbe, Wehrda and Gossfelden): her father rates her soundly, and set the ploughman at liberty again with commendations. The same story is told at Dittersdorf near Blankenburg (betw. Rudolstadt and Saalfeld). Again, a hünin with her daughter dwelt on Hünenkoppe at the entrance of the Black Forest. The daughter found a peasant ploughing on the common, and put him in her apron, oxen, plough and all, then went and showed her mother 'the little fellow and his pussy-cats.' The mother angrily bades her carry man, beast and plough directly back to where she found them: 'they belong to a people that may do the hünes much mischief.' And they both left the neighbourhood soon after. (41) Yet again: when the Grüngrund and the country round about were still inhabited by giants, two of them fell in with an ordinary man: 'what sort of groundworm is this?' asked one, and the other answered, 'these groundworms will make a finish of us yet!' (Mone's Anz. 8, 64). Now sentiments like these savour more of antiquity than the fair reasons of the Alsatian giant, and they harmonize with a Finnish folk-tale. Giants dwelt in Kemisocken, and twenty years ago (42) there lived at Rouwwanjemi an old woman named Caisa, who told this tale: A giant maiden (kalewan tyttären) took up horse and ploughman and plough (bewosen ja kyntäjän ja auran) on her lap, carried them to her mother and asked, 'what kind of beetle (sontiainen) can this be, mother, that I found rooting up the ground there?' The mother said, 'put them away, child; we have to leave this country, and they are to live here instead.' The old giant race have to give way to agricultural man, agriculture is an eye-sore to them, as it is to dwarfs (p. 459). The honest coarse grain of gianthood, which looks upon man as a tiny little beast, a beetle burrowing in the mud, but yet is secretly afraid of him, could not be hit off more happily than in these few touches. I believe this tradition is domiciled in many other parts as well (see Suppl.).

Not less popular or naive is the story of the giant on a journey being troubled with a little stone in his shoe: when at last he shakes it out, there is a rock or hill left on the ground. The Brunswick Anzeigen for 1759 inform us on p. 1636: 'A peasant said to me once, as I travelled in his company past a hill on the R. Elm: Sir, the folk say that here a hüne cleared out his shoe, and that's how this hill arose.' The book 'Die kluge trödelfrau' by E. J. C. P. N. 1682, p. 14, mentions a large stone in the forest, and says: 'Once a great giant came this way with a pebble in his shoe that hurt him, and when he untied his shoe, this stone fell out.' The story is still told of a smooth rock near Goslar, how the great Christopher carried it in his shoe, till he felt something gall his foot; he pulled off the shoe and turned it down, when the stone fell where it now lies. Such stones are also called crumb-stones. On the Solling near Uslar lie some large boundary-stones, 16 to 20 feet long, and 6 to 8 feet thick: time out of mind two giants were jaunting across country; says the one to the other, 'this shoe hurts me, some bits of gravel I think it must be,' with that he pulled off the shoe and shook these stones out. In the valley above Ilfeld, close to the Bähr, stands a huge mass of rock, which a giant once shook out of his shoe, because the grain of sand galled him. I am confident this myth also has a wide circulation, it has even come to be related to a mere set of men: 'The men of Sauerland in Westphalia are fine sturdy fellows; they say one of them walked to Cologne once, and on arriving at the gate, asked his fellow-traveller to wait a moment, while he looked in his shoe to see what had been teazing him so all the while. "Nay," said the other, "hold out now till we get to the inn." The Sauerlander said very well, and they trudged up and down the long streets. But at the market-place he could stand it no longer, he took the shoe off and threw out a great lump of stone, and there it has lain this long while to prove my words.' A Norwegian folk-tale is given by Hammerich (om Ragnaröksmythen, p. 93): a jutel had got something into his eye, that pricked him; he tried to ferret it out with his finger, but that was too bulky, so he took a sheaf of corn, and with that he managed the business. It was a fir-cone, which the giant felt between his fingers, and said: 'who'd have thought a little thing like that would hurt you so?' (see Suppl.).

The Edda tells wonderful things of giant Skrýmir, (43) in the thumb of whose glove the god Thôrr found a night's lodging. Skrýmir goes to sleep under an oak, and snores; when Thôrr with his hammer strikes him on the head, he wakes up and asks if a leaf has fallen on him. The giant lies down under another oak, and snores so that the forest roars; Thôrr hits him a harder blow than before, and the giant awaking cries, 'did an acorn fall on my face?' He falls asleep a third time, and Thôrr repeats his blow, making a yet deeper dint, but the giant merely strokes his cheek, and remarks, 'there must be birds roosting in those boughs; I fancied, when I woke, they dropt something on my head.' Sn. 51-53. These are touches of genuine gianthood, and are to be met with in quite different regions as well. A Bohemian story makes the giant Scharmak sleep under a tower, which his enemies undermine, so that it tumbles about his ears; he shakes himself up and cries: 'this is a bad place to rest in, the birds drop things on your head.' After that, three men drag a large beel up the oaktree under which Scharmak is asleep, snoring so hard that the leaves shake; the bell is cut down, and comes crashing on the giant, but he does not even wake. A German nursery-tale (1, 307) has something very similar; in another one, millstones are dropt on a giant in the well, and he calls out, 'drive those hens away, they scratch the sand up there, and make the grains come in my eyes' (2, 29).
(44)

A giantess (gýgr) named Hyrrokin (igne fumata) is mentioned in the Edda, Sn. 66 on occasion of Balder's funeral: nothing could set the ship Hrînghorn, in which the body lay, in motion; they sent to the giants, and Hyrrokin came riding on a wolf, with a snake for bridle and rein; she no sooner stept up to the vessel and touched it with her foot, than fire darted out of the beams, and the firm land quaked. I also find in a Norwegian folk-tale (Faye, p. 14), that a giantess (djurre) by merely kicking the shore with her foot threw a ship into the most violent agitation.

Rabelais (45) and Fischart have glorified the fable of Gargantua. It was, to begin with, an old, perhaps even a Celtic, giant-story, whose genuine simple form may even yet be recoverable from unexpired popular traditions. (46) Gargantua, an enormous eater and drinker, who as a babe had, like St. Christopher, taxed the resources of ten wetnurses, stands with each foot on a high mountain, and stooping down drinks up the river that runs between (see Suppl.). A Westphalian legend of the Weser has much the same tale to tell: On the R. Solling, near Mt. Eberstein, stands the Hünenbrink, a detached conical hill [brink = grassy knoll]. When the hüne who dwelt there of old wanted to wash his face of a morning, he would plant one foot on his own hill, and with the other stride over to the Eichholz a mile and a half away, and draw from the brook that flows through the valley. If his neck ached with stooping and was like to break, he stretched one arm over the Burgberg and laid hold of Lobach, Negenborn and Holenberg to support himself.

We are often told of two giant comrades or neighbours, living on adjacent heights, or on two sides of a river, and holding converse. In Ostergötland, near Tumbo in Ydre-härad, there was a jätte named Tumme; when he wished to speak to his chum Oden at Hersmåla two or three miles off, he went up a neighbouring hill Högatoft, from which you can see all over Ydre (Widegren's Ostergötland 2, 397). The first of the two names is apparently the ON. þumbi [[?]] (stultus, inconcinnus, conf. p. 528), but the other is that of the highest god, and was, I suppose, introduced in later legend by way of disparagement. German folktales make such giants throw stone hammers and axes to each other (Deut. sag. no. 20), which reminds one of the thundergod's hammer. Two hünes living, one on the Eberstein, the other on Homburg, had but one axe between them to split their wood with. When the Eberstein hüne was going to work, he shouted across to Homburg four miles off, and his friend immediately threw the axe over; and the contrary, when the axe happened to be on the Eberstein. The same thing is told in a tradition, likewise Westphalian, of the hünes on the Hünenkeller and the Porta throwing their one hatchet. (47) The hünes of the Brunsberg and Wiltberg, between Godelheim and Amelunxen, played at bowls together across the Weser (Deut. sag. no. 16). Good neighbours too were the giants on Weissenstein and Remberg in Upper Hesse; they had a baking-oven in common, that stood midway in the field, and when one was kneading his dough, he threw a stone over as a sign that wood was to be fetched from his neighbour's fort to heat the oven. Once they both happened to be throwing at the same time, the stones met in the air, (48) and fell where they now lie in the middle of the field above Michelbach, each with the marks of a big giant hand stamped on it. Another way of signalling was for the giant to scratch his body, which was done so loud that the other heard it distinctly. The three very ancient chapels by Sachsenheim, Oberwittighausen and Grünfeldhausen were built by giants, who fetched the great heavy stones in their aprons. When the first little church was finished, the giant flung his hammer through the air: wherever it alighted, the next building was to begin. It came to the ground five miles off, and there was erected the second church, on completing which the giant flung the hammer once more, and where it fell, at the same distance of five miles, he built the third chapel. In the one at Sachsenheim a huge rib of the builder is preserved (Mone's Anz. 8, 63). The following legends come from Westphalia: Above Nettelstädt-on-the-hill stands the Hünenbrink, where hünes lived of old, and kept on friendly terms with their fellows on the Stell (2 1/2 miles farther). When the one set were baking, and the other wanted a loaf done at the same time, they just pitched it over (see Suppl.). A hüne living at Hilverdingsen on the south side of the Schwarze lake, and another living at Hille on the north side, used to bake their bread together. One morning the one at Hilverdingsen thought he heard his neighbour emptying his kneading-trough, all ready for baking; he sprang from his lair, snatched up his dough, and leapt over the lake. But it was no such thing, the noise he had heard was only his neighbour scratching his leg. At Altehüffen there lived hünen, who had but one knife at their service; this they kept stuck in the trunk of a tree that stood in the middle of the village, and whoever wanted it fetched it thence, and then put it back in its place. The spot is still shown where the tree stood. These hünes, who were also called duttes, were a people exceedingly scant of wit, and to them is due the proverb 'Altehüffen dumme dutten.' As the surrounding country came more and more under cultivation, the hünen felt no longer at ease among the new settlers, and they retired. It was then that the duttes of Altehüffen also made up their minds to emigrate; but what they wanted was to go and find the entance to heaven. How they fared on the way was never known, but the joke is made upon them, that after a long march they came to a great calm, clear sheet of water, in which the bright sky was reflected; here they thought they could plunge into heaven, so they jumped in and were drowned. (49) From so remarkable a consensus (50) we cannot but draw the conclusion, that the giants held together as a people, and were settled in the mountains of a country, but that they gradually gave way to the human race, which may be regarded as a nation of invaders. Legend converts their stone weapons into the woodman's axe or the knife, their martial profession into the peaceable pursuit of baking bread. It was an ancient custom to stick swords or knives into a tree standing in the middle of the yard (Fornald. sög. 1, 120-1); a man's strength was proved by the depth to which he drove the hatchet into a stem, RA. 97. The jumping into the blue lake savours of the fairy-tale, and comes before us in some other narratives (Kinderm. 1, 343. 3, 112).

But, what deserves some attention, Swedish folktales make the divine foe of giants, him that hurls thunderbolts and throws hammers, himself play with stones as with balls. Once, as Thor was going past Linneryd in Småland with his henchmen (the Thiâlfi of the Edda), he came upon a giant to whom he was not known, and opened a conversation: 'Whither goes thy way?' 'I go to heaven to fight Thor, who has set my stable on fire.' 'Thou presumest too much; why, thou hast not even the strength to lift this little stone and set it on the great one.' The giant clutched the stone with all his might, but could not lift it off the ground, so much weight had Thor imparted to it. Thor's servant tried it next, and lifted it lightly as he would a glove. Then the giant knew it was the god, and fell upon him so lustily that he sank on his knees, but Thor swung his hammer and laid the enemy prostrate.




ENDNOTES:

41. L. A. Walther's Einl. in die thür. schwarzb. gesch., Rudolst. 1788, p. 52. Back

42. In Ganander's time (Finn. myth. p. 30). Back

43. In the Faröe dialect Skrujmsli (Lyngbye, p. 480). ON. skraumr [[?]] blatero, babbler. Back

44. Conf. the story of the giant Audsch in Hammer's Rosenmöl 1, 114. Back

45. Rabelais took his subject matter from an older book, printed already in the 15^th century, and published more than once in the 16^th: Les chroniques admirables du puissant roi Gargantua s. l. et a. (gothique) 8; Lyon 1532. 4; La plaisante et joyeuse histoire du grand Gargantua. Valence 1547. 8; at last as a chap-book: La vie du fameux gargantua, le plus terrible géant qui ait amais paru sur la terre. Conf. Notice sur les chroniques de Garg., par l'auteur des nouv. rech. bibl. Paris 1834. Back

46. A beginning has been made in Traditions de l'ancien duché de Retz, sur Garg. (Mém. de l'acad. celt. 5, 392-5), and in Volkssagen aus dem Greyersland (Alpenrosen 1824, pp. 57-8). From the latter I know what stands in the text. Back

47. Redeker's Westfälische sagen, no. 36. Back

48. Like Hrûngni's hein and Thôr's hammer, p. 533. Back

49. The last four tales from Redeker, nos. 37 to 40. Dutten means stulti, and is further intensified by the adj. In the Teutonist dod = gawk, conf. Richthofen sub v. dud, and supra. p. 528 on tumbo. Similar tales on the Rhön mts., only with everything giant-like effaced, about the tollen dittisser (Bechstein pp. 81-91). Back

50. I do not know that any tract in Germany is richer in giant-stories than Westphalia and Hesse. Conf. also Kuhn's Märkische sagen, nos. 22. 47. 107. 132. 141. 149. 158. 202. Temme's Pommersche sagen, nos. 175-184. 187. Back