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GIANTS.
his figure prints itself on the hard surface/ e.g.
Saxo Gram. 111.
547
Starcather s in
It is not as smiths, like the cyclops, that giants are described
in German legend, and the forging of arms is reserved for dwarfs.
Once in our hero-legend the giant Asprian forges shoes (Roth.
Vade makes his son Velint learn smith-
2029) ; also the giant
then with dwarfs.
work, first with Mimir,
As for smidr in the ON. it language,
does not mean faber, but
artificer in general, and particularly
builder ; and to be accom
plished builders is a main characteristic of giants, the authors of
those colossal structures of antiquity (p. 534). On the nine giantpillars
near Miltenberg the common folk still see the handmarks
of the giants who intended therewith to build a bridge over the
Main (Deut. sag. no. 19).
The most notable instance occurs in the Edda itself. A iotunn
had come to the ases, professing to be a smrcSr, and had pledged
himself to build them a strong castle within a year and a half, if
they would let him have Freyja
with the sun and moon into the
bargain. The gods took counsel, and decided to accept his offer,
if he would undertake to finish the building by himself without
of summer
the aid of man, in one winter ; if on the first day
anything in the castle was left undone, he should forfeit all his
claims. How the smith/ with no help but that of his strong
horse Sva&ilfari, had nearly accomplished the task, but was
hindered by Loki and slain by Thorr, is related in Sn. 46-7.
Well, this myth, obeying that wondrous law of fluctuation so
often observed in genuine popular traditions, lives on, under new
forms, in other times and places. A German fairy tale puts the
devil in the place of the giant (as, in a vast number of tales, it is
the devil now that executes buildings, hurls rocks, and so on,
precisely as the giant did before : him) the devil is to build a
house for a peasant, and get his soul in exchange ; but he must
have done before the cock crows, else the peasant is free, and the
devil has lost his pains. The work is very near completion, one
tile alone is wanting to the roof, when the peasant imitates the
1 Herod. 4, 82 : i%vos Hpa/cX^os (palvovcrt ev Tr^rprj ei>e6v, rb olKe /uv /S^art dvdpbs,
Zen 8 TO /meyaOos diTnjxv, Trapa rbv Tvpyv Trora^toj , in Scythia. (Footprint of
Herakles in stone, like a man s, but two cubits long.)