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556 GIANTS.
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it on ,
again (16114) The giants shew more colour as we come
to poems in the cycle of our hero-legend. Kuperan in the Hiirn.
Sifrit (Cuprian of the Heldens. 171) rules over 1000 giants, and
holds in durance the captive daughter of a king. The Kother
brings before us, all alive, the giants Asprian, Grimme, Widolt,
the last straining like a lion at his leash, till he is let loose for
in the steel bar that two men could
the fight (744. 2744. 4079) ;
not lift he buries his teeth till fire starts out of it (650. 4653-74),
and he smites with it like a thunderbolt (2734) ; the noise of his
moving makes the earth to quake (5051), his hauberk rings
when he leaps over bushes (4201) ; he pitches one man over the
heads of four, so that his feet do not touch the ground (1718),
smashes a lion against the wall (1144-53), rubs fire out of mill
stones (1040), wades in mould (646. 678) up to the knee (935),
a feature preserved in Vilk. saga, cap. 60, and also Oriental
(Hammer s Rosenol 1, 36). Asprian sets his foot on the mouth
of the wounded (4275). And some good giant traits come out in
Sigenot: when he breathes in his sleep, the boughs bend (60), 2
he plucks up trees in the fir-wood (73-4), prepares lint-plugs
(schiibel) of a pound weight to stuff into his wounds (113), takes
the hero under his armpit and carries him off (110. 158. Hag. 9,
Lassb.). A giantess in the Wolfdiet. picks up horse and hero,
and, bounding like a squirrel, takes them 350 miles over the
mountains to her giant cell; another in the folk-song (Aw. 1,
161) carries man and horse up a mountain five miles high, where
are two ready boiled and one on the spit (a vestige of androphagi
after all) ; she offers her daughter to the hero, and when he
escapes, she beats her with a club, so that all the flowers and
leaves in the wood quiver. Giant Welle s sister Riitze in the
Heldenbuch takes for her staff a whole tree, root and branch,
that two waggons could not have carried; another woman of
wild kin walks over all the trees, and requires two bullocks
hides for a pair of shoes, Wolfd. 1513. Giant Langbein (Danske
viser 1, 26) is asleep in the wood, when the heroes wake him up
(see Suppl.).
A good many giant-stories not yet discovered and collected
1 The Romance giants are often porters and bridge-keepers, conf. the dorper in
Fergftt (supra, p. 535) ; yet also in Nib. 457, 4. 458, 1 : rise portencere. 1
The same token of gianthood is in Vilk. saga, cap. 176, and in a Servian lay.