514 NURSERY RHYMES.

 

latter, desiring to rid himself of his companion, heard the giant snore, he struck the
rock with his tremendous hammer, thinking it was the monster’s head. ‘‘ Hath a leaf
fallen down upon me from the tree?” exclaimed the awakened giant. He went to
sleep again, and snoring louder than ever, Thor gave a blow which he thought must
have cracked his skull. ‘‘ What is the matter?” quoth Skrimner, ‘‘hath an acorn
fallen on my head?” A third time the snore was heard, and a third time the hammer
fell with redoubled force, insomuch that Thor weened the iron had buried itself in
Skrimner’s temples. ‘‘ Methinks,” quoth the giant, rubbing his cheek, ‘‘ some moss
hath fallen on my face!” Jack’s invisible coat, his magic sword, and his shoes of
swiftness, are also undoubtedly borrowed from Northern romance.*

An incident very similar to the blows with the rat’s tail occurs in the story of the
Brave Little Tailor, in Grimm, who outwits a giant in several ingenious ways, one of
which may be described. On one occasion the giant wished to try the strength of the
tailor, by challenging him to carry a tree. The latter said, ‘‘ Very well, you carry the
butt-end, while I will carry all the branches—by far the heaviest part of the tree.” So
the giant lifted the tree up on his shoulders, and the tailor very coolly sat on the
branches while the giant carried the tree. At length he was so tired with his load,
he was obliged to drop it; and the tailor, nimbly jumping off, made belief as if he
had been carrying the branches all the time, and said, ‘* A pretty fellow you are, that
you can’t carry a tree!”

The edition of ‘‘Jack the Giant Killer” here used was printed at Newcastle-on-Tyne
in 1711. The earliest in the British Museum is dated 1809 ; nor does the Bodleian, we
believe, contain a copy of a more ancient type.

‘*Jack and the Bean-stalk” may be added to the series of English nursery tales de-
rived from the Teutonic. The Bean-stalk is a descendant of the wonderful ash in the
Edda, ‘‘The distich put into the mouth of the giant,

Snouk but, snouk ben,
I find the smell of earthly men,

is,” says Scott, ‘‘scarcely inferior to the keen-scented anthropophaginian in ‘Jack the
Giant Killer.’’’]

In the reign of King Arthur, and in the county of Cornwall,
near to the Land’s End of England, there lived a wealthy farmer,
who had an only son named Jack. He was brisk and of a lively
ready wit, so that whatever he could not perform by force and
strength, he accomplished by ingenious wit and policy. Never
was any person heard of that could worst him, and he very often
even baffled the learned by his sharp and ready inventions.

In those days the Mount of Cornwall was kept by a huge and

* The last is also found in the second relation of Saidi Kur, a Calmuck romance.