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540 GIANTS.
and his pussy-cats. The mother angrily bade her carry man,
beast and plough directly back to where she found them : they
belong to a people that may do the hiines much mischief/ And
they both left the neighbourhood soon after. 1 Yet : again when
the Griingrund and the country round about were still inhabited
by giants, two of them fell in with an
ordinary man : what sort
of groundivorm 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 2 there lived at Rouwwanjemi an old woman named
Caisa, who told this tale : A
giant maiden (kalewan tyttaren)
took up horse and ploughman and plough (bewosen ja kyntajan
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 agri
cultural 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
K. Mm: Sir, the folk
say that here a hiine cleared out his shoe,
and that s how this hill arose/ The book
<
Die kluge trodelfrau
by E. J. C. P. N. 1682, p. 14, mentions a large stone in the
<
t, and : says Once a great giant came this way with a
pebble m his shoe that hurt him, and when he untied the shoe,
this stone fell out/ The story is still told of a smooth rock near
ar, how the great Christopher carried it in his shoe, till he
** Eudolst. 1788, p. 52. ,