Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/398

384 was not entirely without rearfear [sic]. See Sigurdrifas Lied.) The giant appears quite in the fashion described by ancient poems; his weapon is an iron bar, and he tests strength by tearing up trees (see note to the ''Altdän. Lieder, p. 493). We find a hero of the same kind in Tschurilo, in a Russian ballad in Fürst Wladimir und dessen Tafelrunde'', and the Persian Guschtasp is rather like him (Görres' Firdusi, 2. 246, and following). Rustem also tears up a tree by the roots, and carries it as a stick (ibid. 1. 186). The throwing down the mill-stone without doing any injury, strongly reminds us of Thor's adventure with Skrimnir (Dämis, 38), and this again of the Bohemian saga, Giant Scharmack. Being educated by a giant is likewise an ancient and important incident; all heroes were trained by giants, or skilful dwarfs, as Sigurd was by Reigen, and Widga (Wittich), in the Wilkinasage. The giant's suckling the child himself is likewise an old incident; it appears also in No. 92. We are told in the Floamanna Sage, that in order to feed his delicate child whose mother had been murdered, Thorgil had his breast cut. First came blood, then whey, and finally milk, wherewith the child was suckled (see a Danish translation by B. Thorlacius, p. 94). See Humboldt's Relation Historique, 3, chap. 4, for the account of a man who himself suckled his child. Siegfried and Eulenspiegel have some points of contact and agreement with each other, which fact our story proves to a certainty; and we may just as much call the young hero of it a nobler giant Eulenspiegel, as a more waggish Horny Siegfried. (Simson and Morolf are heroes of the same sort, and, according to the genuine popular traditions, Gargantua is still more like. See Mémoires de l'Académie Celtique, 5. 392). Both Eulenspiegel and Siegfried go forth into the world, take service, and in their arrogance, ill-treat the merely human handicraftsmen; it is specially noteworthy that Eulenspiegel destroys the smith's utensils, and is set as a scullion to watch the roast meat, which he eats as Sigurd eats the heart of the dragon which he is to roast for Reigen. He goes on the Hartz Mountains and catches wolves, as Siegfried caught bears, to terrify people with them. Nibel. 888-89. The servant is a wag in speech, and the court-servant coincides with the court-fool. Soini, the Finnish Giant Eulenspiegel, was actually called Kalkki (servant) as well. When he was three nights old, he trampled on his swaddling-clothes, and as it was evident that he could not be trusted, he was discharged. A smith took him into his service, to look after his child, but he clawed the child's eyes out, then killed it, and burnt the cradle. The smith then set him to a fence, which he was to weave together, but he brought pines from the