Once upon a time there was a large giant who lived in a small castle; at least he didn’t all of him live there, but he managed things in this wise. From his earliest youth up, his legs had been of a surreptitiously small size, unsuited to the rest of his body; so he sat upon the southwest wall of the castle with his legs inside, and his right foot came out of the east gate, and his left foot out of the north gate, while his gloomy but spacious coat tails covered up the south and the west gates; and in this way the castle was defended against all comers, and was deemed impregnable by the military authorities. This, however, as we shall soon see, was not the case, for the giant’s boots were inside as well as his legs, but, as he had neglected to put them on in the giddy days of his youth, he was never afterward able to do so, because there was not enough room. And in this bootless but compact manner he passed his time.

The giant slept for three weeks at a time, and two days after he woke his breakfast was brought to him, consisting of bright brown horses sprinkled on his bread and butter. Besides his boots, the giant had a pair of shoes, and in one of them his wife lived when she was at home; on other occasions she lived in the other shoe. She was a sensible, practical kind of woman, with two wooden legs and a clothes-horse; but in other respects not rich. The wooden legs were kept pointed at the end in order that, if the giant were dissatisfied with his breakfast, he might pick up any stray people that were within reach, using his wife as a fork. This annoyed the inhabitants of the district, so that they built their church in a southwestern direction from the castle behind the giant’s back, that he might not be able to pick them up as they went in. But those who stayed outside to play pitch-and-toss were exposed to great danger and sufferings.

Now, in the village there were two brothers of altogether different tastes and dispositions, and talents, and peculiarities, and accomplishments, and in this way they were discovered not to be the same person. The elder of them was most marvelously good at singing, and could sing the Old Hundredth an old hundred times without stopping. Whenever he did this, he stood on one leg and tied the other round his neck to avoid catching cold and spoiling his voice, but the neighbors fled. And he was also a rare hand at making guava dumplings out of three cats and a shoe-horn, which is an accomplishment seldom met with. But his brother was a more meager, magnanimous person, and his chief accomplishment was to eat a wagon-load of hay overnight, and wake up thatched in the morning.

The whole interest of this story depends upon the fact that the giant’s wife’s clothes-horse broke in consequence of a sudden thaw, being made of organ-pipes. So she took off her wooden legs and stuck them in the ground, tying a string from the top of one to the top of the other, and hung out her clothes to dry on that. Now, this was astutely remarked by the two brothers, who therefore went up in front of the giant after he had had his breakfast. The giant called out, “Fork! fork!” but his wife, trembling, hid herself in the more recondite toe of the second shoe. Then the singing brother began to sing, but he had not taken into account the pious disposition of the giant, who instantly joined in the psalm; and this caused the singing brother to burst his head off, but, as it was tied by the leg, he did not lose it altogether.

But the other brother, being well thatched on account of the quantity of hay he had eaten overnight, lay down between the great toe of the giant and the next, and wriggled. So the giant, being unable to bear tickling in the feet, kicked out in an orthopÆdal manner; whereupon the castle broke, and he fell backward, and was impaled upon the sharp steeple of the church. So they put a label on him on which was written: “Nudipes Gigantens.”

That’s all.