Giants and Dwarfs.—Duel between Efthesim and Grommelund.—Court Dwarfs and Little Dwarfs.—Ymer’s Solis.—The Invisible Reapers.—Story of the Dwarf Kreiss and the Giant Quadragant.—How the Giants came to serve the Dwarfs.
If legendary tradition is only a distant vibration of the bell of history, where must we go and look for traces of the real existence of giants? Must we believe the Edda or Holy writ itself? Afterwards the great fossil skeletons of mammoths, mastodons, and other antediluvian animals only revived the memory of gigantic men. The Apocryphal Books tell us that in the days of Enoch, a number of angels, amounting to two hundred, had conceived a desire for the daughters of men and came down to Mount Hermon in order to be near them. Some of the principal ones are even mentioned by name; there were Urakabaramiel, Sanyaza, Tamiel, and Akibiel. Is it a wonder, then, that credulous people should have believed that devils also, who after all are but fallen angels, have acted in the same way towards the descendants of Eve. The Killecroffs, we have seen, were the offspring of a union between devils and earthborn women; in like manner giants were the offspring of marriages between women and angels. Women are evidently capable of setting heaven, earth, and hell on fire.
Germany, which was the last part of Europe to enter the great Catholic Church, and was to be the first to leave it again at the time of the Reformation, kept up the belief in giants longer than any other country. Perhaps this was one of the results of the right of free inquiry.
The giant Einheer lived in the days of Charlemagne and even served in his army. Several centuries later there were gigantic burgraves (Burggra-fen), living all along the banks of the Rhine. They have a well known story there of a young and ingenious giant’s daughter, who had been jealously guarded in her father’s castle, and when she got out into the fields for the first time in her life, brought back in her apron a peasant with his plough and his two horses, whom she had picked up on the way. She showed them to her father as being all three little animals of very curious shape.
357s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
After a while, however, the giants became smaller and smaller, until there were only a few left in the highest mountains, in dark forests, and in the romances of chivalry. After that they disappeared altogether.
The report is, however, that a single couple, man and wife, are kept alive by magic art in an isolated part of the Hartz Mountains, to serve as a specimen of the lost race. At first the giants had produced universal terror. The god Thor was blessed because he had driven them, armed as he was with his famous iron mace, all across the Hercynian forest. But as people became better acquainted with them, their fears subsided. They turned out to be far from cruel, to eat human flesh only in cases of dire necessity, and to act generally not only kindly, but even like simpletons—a misfortune common to most men, who are too fully developed in length or in breadth. This latter weakness is well supported by a popular German tale.
An old duke of Bavaria had at his court a dwarf, called Ephesim, and a giant, called Grommelund. The latter laughed at the dwarf, and Ephesim threatened to box his ears. Grommelund laughed only the more heartily and challenged Ephesim to carry out his threat. The dwarf accepted the challenge, and the duke, having been a witness of the whole scene, ordered at once that a field for single combat should be prepared.
Everybody expected to do as the giant did and laugh at the pigmy; as the poor little fellow was hardly two feet high and would have had to climb a long way before reaching the giant’s ears. But it turned out very differently.
The dwarf began by walking all around the giant as if to take his measure. The good-natured giant, standing up immovable, looks down upon him and laughs till his sides shake; but while he is holding his hands to his sides, the dwarf unties his shoestrings and then worries him by kicking and pinching his calves.
Grommelund laughs more loudly than ever, thanks to the tickling, takes a few strides, steps on his loose shoestrings, nearly stumbles, and at last, with a thoughtful presence of mind, characteristic of his race, he stoops down to tie the strings.
Ephesim has foreseen this, he avails himself of the opportunity, and slaps the giant’s cheek with his little hand, so heartily that the sound reaches the ears of the duke and the lords of his court, who applaud Ephesim’s skill enthusiastically.
The poor giant, humiliated and overcome, left the town, it is said, and sought refuge in the mountains, where he died of shame.
The people were thus beginning to have a very humble opinion of giants, when a rumor was spread that they had entered the service of the dwarfs; not of court dwarfs, but of little dwarfs, who are so small that, by their size, the others appear as giants.
360s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
These little dwarfs appear in the popular tales of Germany, under different names, as Wichtelman-ner, Metallarii, or Homunculi, and evidently, at one time, were found in great numbers throughout all the mountainous parts of the North. In Bretagne they were also known as Couribes, Parulpiquets or Cornicouets, but as they are ugly and evil disposed, I presume they are not of the same race with our good little dwarfs. These latter appear in the evening at the foot of large oak trees, or in old ruins, where they come by the thousand out of every crack and crevice and gambol and frolic, but vanish at the smallest noise.
361s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
As to their origin there are different opinions entertained. One theory alone is worthy of belief, because it is mentioned already in the Edda.
According to the Scandinavian Bible, when Odin had killed the giant Ymer, his decaying body produced an innumerable quantity of small worms. By a law of natural order which had already become operative with insects, each worm changed into a chrysalis, and out of each chrysalis came forth a little man, resembling, with a few trifling differences, the race of full sized men, whom Odin had created.
Like ourselves, they also are subject to all the infirmities of age, to disease and death; like ourselves, they are at times capable of reasoning with fairness. Skillful metallurgists, they are at work in the mines, where we have already met them; they are not without imagination, and even know what piety is.
What religion do they profess?
For a long time, we are told, the majority, having been converted to Christianity, were under its benign influence, in a far higher degree than we, for they did not carry on war among themselves, and all authors, legends, and ballads agree, that they were gentle and peaceful, loving each other, kindly disposed towards others, laborious, and very obliging. Hence they were universally known as the Peaceful People,—das stille Volk.
“In ancient times,” says Wyss, “men lived in the valleys, and around their dwellings, in the cavities of the rocks, dwelt the little dwarf people, keeping always on very good terms with them, and helping them even at times in their work in the fields. They took great delight in doing good in this way; for generally they were very busy mining in the mountains, and digging in the ground to collect the tiny particles of gold and silver that could be obtained.”
Sometimes field laborers coming out to plant or to weed, found their work already done, and heard the dwarfs, hid behind the bushes, break out into loud laughter, when they showed their amazement.
It happened one day, early in the morning, that some peasants in passing a cornfield, saw that the stalks were falling in long rows, as if by their own will; they were most cunningly cut off below, and now they were ranging themselves, also to all appearance by their own act, in long sheaves. The peasants had no doubt that the good little dwarfs were there, working away stealthily, but of the tiny workmen not a trace could be seen.
The dwarfs possessed, in common with all these mysterious races, the power of making themselves invisible. They had nothing to do, for that purpose, but merely to draw a little hood over their ears, which formed part of their costume.
Our countrymen, seeing that the wheat was not ripe enough to be cut, became exceedingly angry against these injudicious friends, and arming themselves with twigs, went to work striking right and left in the hope of hurting one or the other by chance. They really heard some faint cries of distress in the furrows, and soon the first rows of wheat which had been left standing were thrown into violent disorder, thus testifying to the flight of the little ones.
Several of the dwarfs became even visible, as the twigs suddenly tore the hoods from their heads. Thereupon the men became furious and tried to strike all the harder; but suddenly a violent storm broke forth and the hail came down in torrents, cutting the whole standing crop to pieces and sparing only the rows that had been reaped.
The rude countrymen now saw clearly that the Quiet People had foreseen the hailstorm and anticipated the harvest on that account. They repented their brutality, but the dwarfs, disgusted by their ingratitude, never again appeared in that region of country. Similar occurrences took place in other countries. Now let us see, by what perseverance, by what skill, and especially by what audacious conceptions these tiny beings, not much more than a few inches high, succeeded in making themselves masters of the giants.
366s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
They were running about quite bewildered, pushing and jostling each other in their anxiety to regain their little mole-hill, he stood at first with his mouth wide open, lost in amazement. Then, to amuse himself in true lordly fashion, he crushed a few dozen with his foot.
But he was not without curiosity, and hence he tried in the next place to find out something about their manners. The moment was not very well chosen, it must be confessed. Men do not usually choose a city that has just been taken by storm and given up to pillage, for the purpose of studying the manners and customs of its citizens. But we have seen before this, that giants are not remarkably bright.
Our giant, whose name I have never been able to ascertain and whom I will call for convenience sake, Quadragant (“Quadragant was rather colossal,” I once read in “Amadis of Gaul;” our giant was really colossal, for he measured thirty feet in height), our giant, I say, stretched himself out at full length and fixed his eyes upon the hole out of which he had pulled the oak tree. He heard a low humming noise underground, but he could see nothing.
He thought he would wait patiently, and in waiting he fell quietly asleep, turning over so as to lie on his back, his usual position when he was sleeping.
After a few hours’ sound and heavy sleep, such as all giants are said to enjoy, he awoke. Finding that the sun had in the mean time followed his example and gone to sleep, he remembered that it was supper time, and as he thought of the delights in store for him he uttered a long and deep sigh of satisfaction. But something that his long drawn breath had brought up, suddenly jumped out of his mouth.
368s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
This something was one of the dwarfs; and this dwarf, the boldest and most intelligent among them all, was called Kreiss.
But in order to make it clear how Kreiss happened to be almost in the giant’s throat, which was of course only accidentally his home for a time, we must go back and see what had happened while Quadragant was asleep.
When the little pigmies found their tree uprooted and their people scattered in all directions, escaping through every crack and crevice in the soil, they had rushed into a long subterranean passage, excavated in days long gone by, by their forefathers. Here they had uttered their well known cries of distress, resembling the chirp of crickets, and thus they had finally reached the ruins of an old castle, inhabited by vast numbers of their people, and chosen as the place of meeting of the General Council of the dwarfs.
Kreiss happened to have arrived the night before, as one of a numerous deputation, and he at once suggested the propriety of burying the dead with all due honors, before anything else was done. After that, they might go to work stopping up all the holes and openings made by the tearing up of the sapling, and filling the excavation which it had produced, so that the rain might not come and inundate their long gallery, which was their only safe means of communication.
The two resolutions offered by Kreiss were carried by acclamation, and all, loaded with brush and with stakes, went immediately to work. There were some ten thousand of them. They thought the giant had left, but they found him lying full length on the ground and snoring most fiercely. Their first impulse was to escape, but Kreiss held them back. He had conceived a bold plan; he proposed to capture the giant. Were they not already provided with ropes and with stakes? Was there not strength in numbers? They immediately went to work, and in less than an hour the murderer, unable as he was to make the slightest motion, was bound to the soil which he had soaked with their blood.
“What do you say?.... Yes, sir, you are undoubtedly right. This looks very much like the manner in which Gulliver was treated in the island of Lilliput. How can we help that? Besides, we must remember that there have been dwarfs in Germany from time immemorial. If Jonathan Swift undertook to transfer them to imaginary countries, whose business is that and who is liable to be charged with plagiarism, I ask you?”
We will not stop to discuss this trifling matter, which is of little importance. We have weightier matters than that in hand.
When the work was done and with the excitement of the efforts the first enthusiasm also had somewhat passed away, the question arose what was to be done with their capture. They looked at each other in great perplexity. The dwarfs are kind hearted people, who have a great horror of blood. Besides, it would have been more difficult even, to dispose of the giant after death than to kill him. Still, if they did not kill Quadragant he would, as soon as he was awake, go to work and cry for help lustily; then the other giants would, no doubt, hasten to his assistance. The disgrace inflicted upon one of their brethren would in all probability render them furious, and they would proceed at once to uproot all the trees and to pursue the poor little people of dwarfs down into the very bowels of the earth.
While these and similar observations were passing in the crowd from one group to another, Kreiss remained silent and thoughtful, supporting his head in his hand and his hand on his elbow.
In the mean time the crowd passed from simple talk to grumbling and from grumbling to threats. There was nothing left but to undo what was done as promptly as possible, to abandon this ridiculous enterprise and to restore the giant to liberty in the same way in which he had been deprived of it—during his sleep. If he should awake before the operation was over, why, then they might try to appease his wrath by handing over to him the authors of this fatal project.
Ah! one can see at a glance, that these dwarfs, small as they were, were nevertheless men, and that it is better not to venture upon attacking giants!
They were utterly discouraged and demoralized. Calm in spite of all this excitement around him, Kreiss was still meditating, apparently quite unmindful of all the invectives that were hurled at him and the little hands that were threatening him. But when some of them actually began to loosen the ropes, he suddenly dropped his hands from his elbow and his brow, and turning sharply upon his aggressors, he said:—
“I acknowledge my mistake and I am ready to atone for it. Go,—my seven brothers and myself, we will alone set the giant free again. If he awakes, he shall have to do with us and with us only. Go!”
The former conspirators were well content to accept the proposition, and without bestowing a thought upon their murdered brethren, they escaped as fast as they could. In the dim twilight of the last hour of the day one might have seen them running nimbly through the tall grass and under the cupolas of mushroom, arousing in their hurry the beetles and moths, or even mounting upon their backs in order to reach by their aid all the more quickly their safe retreat in the ruins of the old castle.
When all were gone save Kreiss and his seven brothers, he said to them: “Now that we are alone, we alone shall reap the glory of the enterprise! So far from regretting what I have done, I mean on the contrary, to enlarge our project in a manner which shall redound to the eternal glory of our race.”
373s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
The dwarfs are not only skillful metallurgists, but they are also most expert carpenters and builders.
Hence the good people of the Rheingau are convinced that they have built all those ruins of solid old castles, in which they are still living and which they have so cunningly repaired and propped up that they will last forever.
374s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
Now Quadragant was sleeping with his mouth wide open, as all large people are apt to’ do. Kreiss slipped boldly into this vast and spacious cavity, armed with a long spear which was equally sharp and pointed at both ends. He took care to rest at first most cautiously only upon the projections of the teeth, which formed, so to say, a double row of parallel battlements. By such assistance he passed from one end of the abyss to the other, without troubling the slumbers of the giant by the slightest awkwardness in his movements. For a case of emergency Kreiss held his spear firmly in his hands, ready to fasten it so between the two jaws as to prevent their closing upon him.
375s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
His brothers were in the meantime busily engaged in preparing posts, pins, and rafters, which they handed to him as he needed them. One of them even went with him to assist him.
They fixed strong piles between the two rows of teeth, and strengthened the piles by beams, which secured them to each other. The work was by no means an easy one, for in the mouth of the giant it was as dark as night, and there reigned in it a heat equal to that of an oven. Moreover Quadragant had dined that day on a deer and several hares, and as he liked his game high, like every good judge of fine dinners, the perfumes of his breath increased the inconvenience caused by the heat and the darkness.
Kreiss’s brother was all of a sudden taken ill, and had to leave to join the others outside. They, however, continued work on the scaffolding, and watched the giant carefully.
Quadragant was absolutely in the hands of the eight dwarf brothers.
They had passed up a lantern to Kreiss, which he hung upon one of the transverse beams, and he now continued his work alone resolutely, although he was every now and then compelled to stop his nose.
His work was at last completed, and he was just about to leave this damp, pestiferous abyss, when the giant awoke, and his first sigh carried off the brave pigmy, as a gust of wind would have carried off a dry leaf from a branch, and hurled him senseless into space. He fell heavily upon the chest of the colossus.
As soon as he recovered from the shock, he looked around carefully, and saw, to his great satisfaction, that the bonds which held the giant were beyond doubt strong enough to hold him a prisoner. Then he crept cautiously all along the neck as far as his ear, and by its aid climbed up the chin, after having crossed the cheek in its whole length. When he had found a convenient restingplace, he drew himself up to his full height, and raising his feeble voice as loud as he could, he said to the giant:—
“Murderer of our brethren, you are our prisoner, and you must die! Commend your soul to God.”
377s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
The giant tried to see the tiny being who was speaking to him so boldly, and cast down his eyes. At first he could distinguish nothing but a feeble glimmering light at the extremity of his nose; but the nose itself completely concealed the speaker.
Kreiss then advanced a few steps from the chin towards the mouth of the colossus, and the latter now perceived a kind of little man, dressed in a cloak of mouse skin, which he grandly wrapped around him, as Hercules did with the skin of the Nemean lion.
In his hand, however, he held not a club, but a lantern, in which a firefly did service as candle.
Thanks to this phosphorescent sheen, which seemed to surround Kreiss as with a halo, Quadragant could examine him at leisure, and he asked himself how such an embryo could have flown out of his mouth, and how he, Quadragant, could have become his prisoner? The contemptuous glance which he threw at the dwarf made Kreiss aware of what he was discussing in his mind.
“You think you are not captured yet,” he said. “Very well, try to get up and walk, if you can!” Quadragant did try, and found that he was firmly fastened to the ground by ropes and chains, by each single hair of his head, by every hair on his body. He tried to speak to the pigmy, and he could not, by any effort of his, move his jaws in the slightest way.
“As to the manner of your death,” Kreiss went on, “if the wolves and the vultures do not hasten your end, hunger will do the work.”
At this thought of dying of hunger, a mode of death which he had always looked upon as the most terrible of all, Quadragant’s heart gave way, and he began to cry piteously. Two torrents of tears flowed down his cheeks, and after turning around the prominence of his lips, ran over from his chin.
Kreiss was compelled to leave his position, so as to avoid the double current.
Although quite firm in his resolution, he was naturally kind-hearted. These many tears of such unwonted size finally touched ‘him, but his sympathy made him only the more determined to render his vengeance as useful as it was complete. "Listen to me, giant. You can buy your life, if you choose.” Quadragant’s tears ceased to flow. Here was life offered to him, and with that life he saw first of all a good supper in store for him, and if his mouth had not been held so tight by the scaffolding erected in it by Kreiss, his big face would have grinned from ear to ear.
379s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
“But,” continued the dwarf, “you will Tiave to devote your life and your liberty, if we restore both to you, to the service of our decimated people; do you hear? You must understand me clearly; you will not be our protector, but our servant; you will unhesitatingly perform every kind of work which may be required of you for our safety or our comfort. First of all you will replant that oak tree, under which the dwarfs of this district were living in peace, and you will water it every morning until it has taken root again. Now, close your eyes, if you mean to accept our conditions!”
Quadragant opened and shut his eyes quickly ten times in succession.
Kreiss made with his lamp a kind of telegraphic signal; his brothers, all seven dressed in garments of mouse skin or mole skin, and carrying each one a lantern with a firefly inside, climbed in an instant upon the face of the giant, which now looked quite brightly illuminated.
Three of them took their station on his forehead; two others by the side of each eye. The last two held each a long thorn in their hands, which they seemed to use as a dagger.
Kreiss, who had remained at his place, said again to the giant:—
“If, after you have been set free, you dare utter a sound to call for help, you lose both of your eyes instantly. Mind the warning!”
Armed with his double pointed spear, he then went once more into Quadragant’s mouth, and loosened one of the transverse beams which formed the ceiling. The giant assisted him with his tongue in the work of demolition; then, after drawing a long sigh of relief, he closed his mouth and crushed between his formidable jaws all the timber, posts, and beams, as if they had been a bundle of matches, and swallowed the whole in anticipation of his supper.
381s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
After that he swore an oath which binds the giants as firmly as the invocation of the Styx pledged the s of Greece.
“By the earth, which is my mother, by the mountains, which are her bones, by the woods and forests, which are her hair, by the brooks, the streams, and the rivers, which are the blood of her veins, I, the giant Quadragant, declare that I am the slave of the dwarfs.”
At sunrise Quadragant was up again, carrying his new masters between his fingers, which he twisted together in the shape of a cradle. In less than five minutes he reached, in obedience to their orders, the old castle in ruins, where a ‘solemn meeting was held, not only by the fugitives of the day before, but also by the principal representatives of all the dwarfs of that part of Germany.
When the sentinels announced the arrival of the giant, all thought their last hour had come and endeavored to escape, hoping to find a refuge in the lowest depths of the old building. Kreiss, however, had ordered the giant to put him down in front of the cellars of the castle, and now entered the great Meeting Hall, assuming like all great conquerors, an air of extreme modesty.
Then he informed them that the giant was their slave!
They at once threw themselves at his feet and expressed their desire to proclaim him Emperor of the Dwarfs.
Kreiss, however, having heard of a recent experiment of that kind, was far from believing such sudden enthusiasm to be either deep or permanent.
383s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
From that day the giant abandoned his old name of Quadragant, and assumed that of Ptitskuchen, which at that time meant Friend of the Dwarfs, but which, translated into modern German, represents our omelette soufflee.
385s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
At first all went well; but at the end of three weeks Putskuchen looked sad and melancholy; Putskuchen only took half a dozen meals a day; Putskuchen was slowly fading away; Putskuchen was in love, in love with a young giantess, who taunted him with having become the servant of these wretched pygmies and reproached him with his poverty. The unhappy creature fell off more and more, the omelette soufflee fell down flat, and Putskuchen was a mere lath of thirty feet in length.
Kreiss had always felt a certain tenderness for him, and hence, after having asked the consent of all the other chieftains, he placed in the giant’s hands a large heap of gold scales such as the dwarfs were in the habit of collecting in the neighboring mountains.
It was enough to buy three wives, instead of one.
The fact had no sooner become known than all the happy giant fathers of the country desired him as a son-in-law, and when they saw how liberally his services had been rewarded by his new masters, they were all eager to become the serfs of the dwarfs.
Thus, thanks to Kreiss, the giants gradually came all, one by one, and entered the service of the dwarfs.
Certain skeptics have maintained that the whole story is symbolic.
According to their interpretation the giant fastened to the ground and muzzled by the dwarfs, is the people, the people always kept down and always held in subjection, in spite of its gigantic strength. The dwarfs, who lived under the oak, the sacred tree of all nations of Celtic origin, are the priests.
We say: Shame upon people, who would change a legend into an apologue and our friend Kreiss into a Druid!
When the dwarfs became reconciled again to men, they compelled the giants to execute for them great works of public utility, such as bridges and highroads, which were afterwards generally ascribed to the Romans.
The belief in little dwarfs continues to this day to exist in most of the Northern countries. They still live in myriads in the subterranean regions and in the rocks in Westphalia, in Sweden, and in Norway, and they are still hard at work amassing vast treasures.
387s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
391s
Full Page Image -- Medium-Size
