Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/303

 Rh quite foreign to the philosophy which the Játákás teach. The nearest approach is when in one or two isolated cases the karma of a human being is spoken of as immediately transferred to an animal.

Turning to the Norseland tales, the one in most striking correspondence with the Punchkin group is that of "The Giant who had no heart in his body." This monster turns six princes and their wives into stone, whereupon the seventh and only surviving son, Boots, sets out to avenge their fate. On his journey he saves the lives of a raven, a salmon, and a wolf; and the wolf, having eaten his horse, compensates Boots by carrying him to the giant's castle, where the lovely princess who is to be his bride is confined. She promises to find out where the giant keeps his heart; and by blandishments and divers arts known to the fair sex both before and since the time of Delilah she worms out the secret. He tells her that "far, far away, in a lake lies an island, on that island stands a church, in that church is a well, in that well swims a duck, in that duck is an egg, and in that egg lies my heart, you darling!" Boots, taking fond farewell of the princess, rides on the wolf's back to the island. Then the raven he had befriended flies to the steeple and fetches the key of the church; the salmon, in like return for kindness, brings him the egg from the well where the duck had dropped it. Then the wolf told him to squeeze the egg, and as soon as ever he did so the giant screamed out. "Squeeze it again," said the wolf; and when the prince did so the giant screamed still more piteously, and begged and prayed so prettily to be spared, saying he would do all that the prince wished if he would only not squeeze his heart in two. "Tell him if he will restore to life again your six brothers and their brides you will spare his life," said the wolf. Yes, the giant was ready to do that, and he turned the six brothers into king's sons again and their brides into king's daughters. "Now squeeze the egg in two," said the wolf. With questionable morality, doing evil that good might come. Boots squeezed the egg to pieces, and the giant burst at once.

Asbjörnsen's "New Series" gives a variant in which a troll who has seized a princess tells her that he and all his companions will burst, as did the Heartless Giant, when there passes above them "the grain of sand that lies under the ninth tongue in the ninth head" of