54 COMMON ORIGIN OF POPULAR FICTIONS. upon these Cretan coins-some representing its passages in circular convolutions, others square, and also different in coins of different times. But Plutarch, in his Life of Theseus, gives a more natural explanation of the object of the Labyrinth than the story of the mythical Minotaur, and says it was a prison for the tributary youths of Athens. That there was, therefore, something of a labyrinth, which might serve as a foundation for that which was attributed to the great master of art, Dædalus, is thus more than simply probable. "What, then, do we find in Crete to explain it? Is there a labyrinth of any kind?” is the natural inquiry. There is; yet not at Gnossus, but at Gortyna; and not a building, but a subterranean excavation resembling a quarry, or more properly the galleries of a mine, and penetrating horizontally, in labyrinthine courses, no one knows how far, into one of the roots of Mount Ida lying behind Gortyna, and in which I myself spent nearly two hours in tracing some of its courses, as far as they are now penetrable; for the Cretans have long since walled or stopped up its inner and unknown extremes, so as not to be lost in its inner intricacies. -Captain Spratt's Crete. THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES. Rhodes was famous of old for its brazen colossal statue, the remains of whose pedestal Mr. Newton thinks he has discovered. Everybody is supposed to know, yet somebody may be glad to be reminded, that the Colossus was one of the Seven Wonders of the World, was 105 feet high, and was thrown down by an earthquake B.C. 224. In the seventh century the Saracens sold it as old brass to a Jew for 36,000l. Dr. C. F. Lüders, professor at the Johanneum at Hamburg, has published a critical and historical treatise on the Colossus. According to his researches, this wonder of the world is reduced to nothing more than a colossal statue, standing on terra firma, like the Bavaria at Munich, but near the harbour, and dedicated to Phoebus Apollo. He insists upon it that its standing open-legged across the mouth of the harbour, and being used as a lighthouse, is a pure invention, and an emanation of fancy from later writers. Rhodes is renowned for its occupation in the Middle Ages by the Knights of St. John, numerous traces of whose handiwork still exist. No European city can show a street so little changed since the 15th century as the Strada dei Cavalieri. COMMON ORIGIN OF POPULAR FICTIONS. Dr. Leyden is inclined to connect the history of popular narrative with ancient romance, as he has overlooked the mythological basis of the system. "In the repetition of an unskilful reciter,” says the Doctor, “the metrical romance or fabliau seems often to have degenerated into a popular story; and it is a curious fact that the subjects of some of the popular stories which I have heard repeated in Scotland, do not difter STORY OF JACK THE GIANT-KILLER. 55 essentially from those of some of the ancient Norman fabliaux, presented to the public in an elegant form by Le Grand. Thus, when I first perused the fabliaux of the 'Poor Scholar,' the Three Thieves,' and the 'Sexton of China,' I was surprised to recognise the popular stories I had often heard repeated in infancy; and which I had often repeated myself when the song or the tale repeated by turns, amused the tedious evening of winter. From this circumstance I am inclined to think that many of the Scottish popular stories may have been common to the Norman-French. Whether these tales be derived immediately from the French during their long and intimate intercourse with the Scottish nation, or whether both nations borrowed them from the Celtic, may admit of some doubt." In ascribing a common origin to the popular fictions of our island and the Continent, we cannot be far from the truth; but since the people of England and the Scottish Lowlands are undoubtedly offsets and grafts from the Teutonic stock, it is probable that our popular fables are chiefly of Teutonic origin. These idle stories boast a higher antiquity than romances and poems of much greater pretensions. Our proud baronial families can trace their line only up to Battle Abbey Roll; whilst the yeomen and franklins of Essex and Sussex and Kent, the Spongs and the Pungs, and the Wapshotts and the Eppses, bear in their names the evidence of their descent from the Saxon and Danish conquerors of Britain; and even the knights of the romance of the Round Table, in their present forms, are mere striplings when compared to the acquaintances of our early childhood, who troop along by the side of the go-cart, and help to rock the cradle. Jack, commonly called the Giant Killer, and Thomas Thumb landed in England from the very same keels and warships which conveyed Hengist and Horsa, and Ebba the Saxon. THE STORY OF JACK THE GIANT-KILLER. In Jack's memoirs may be traced indubitable resemblances to the fictions of the Edda. Jack, as we are told, having got a little money, travelled into Flintshire, and came to a large house in a lonesome place; here, by reason of his present necessity, he took courage to knock at the gate, when, to his amazement, there came forth a monstrous Giant with two heads, yet he did not seem so fiery as the former Giants, for he was a Welsh Giant, rendered less fiery than he would naturally have been, in consequence of "breakfasting," as the story says, on a great bowl of hasty pudding," instead of keeping to the warm, invigorating national diet, toasted cheese. To this low feeding we also attribute the want of sagacity which enabled Jack "to outwit him," notwithstanding his two heads. The history states that Jack undressed himself, and as the Giant was walking towards another apartment, Jack heard him say to himself 66 Though here you lodge with me this night, 56 STORY OF JACK THE GIANT-KILLER. "Say you so," says Jack; "is that one of your Welsh tricks? I hope to be as cunning as you." Then, getting out of bed, he found a thick billet, and laid it in the bed in his stead, and hid himself in a dark corner of the room. In the dead of the night came the Giant with his club, and struck several blows with his club on the bed where Jack had laid the billet, and then returned to his own room, supposing that "he had broken all Jack's bones." In the morning early, came Jack to thank him for his lodging. "Oh!" said the Giant, "how have you rested? did you see anything last night?" "No," said Jack, “but a rat gave me three or four slaps with his tail." 66 Although the locus in quo is placed in Flintshire by the English writer, we find a parallel in the device practised by the Giant Skrimner, when he and Thor journeyed to Skrimner's Castle of Utgaard, as related in the Edda of Snorro. At midnight, the mighty son of earth laid himself to sleep beneath an oak, and snored aloud. Thor, the giant-killer, resolved to rid himself of his unsuspicious companion, and struck him with his tremendous hammer. "Hath a leaf fallen upon me from the tree?" exclaimed the awakened Giant. The Giant soon slept again, and "snored," the Edda says, as loudly as if it had thundered in the forest." Thor struck the Giant again, and, as he thought, the hammer made a mortal indentation in his forehead. "What is the matter?" quoth Skrimner; "bath an acorn fallen on my head?" A third time the potent Giant snored, and a third time did the hammer descend "with huge two-handed sway," and with such force that Thor believed the iron had buried itself in Skrimner's temple. Methinks," quoth Skrimner, rubbing his cheek, some moss has fallen on my face." Thor might be well amazed at the escape of the Giant, but Skrimner, acting exactly like Jack, had outwitted his enemy by placing an immense rock on the leafy couch where Thor supposed he was sleeping, and which received the blows of the hammer in his stead. 66 66 66 Next, we have, in the fictions of the North and East, Jack's robbery of his cousin, a Giant with three heads, and who would beat five hundred men in armour. Jack terrified his three-headed cousin out of all his wits, by telling him that the king's son was coming. The Giant hid himself in a large vault underground; and in the morning, when Jack let his cousin out, the Giant asked what he would give him for his care, seeing that his castle was not demolished. Why," answered Jack, "I desire nothing but your old rusty sword, the coat in the closet, and the cap and the shoes which you keep at the bed's-head." "With all my heart," said the Giant, "and be sure to keep them for my sake, for they are things of excellent use: the coat will keep you invisible, the cap will furnish you with knowledge, the sword cuts asunder whatever you strike, and the shoes are of extraordinary swiftness." These wonderful articles have been stolen out of the Great Northern treasury. The coat is the magic garment known in ancient German by the equivalent denomination of the " Nebel Kappe," or cloud cloak, fabled to belong to King Alberich, and the other dwarfs of the Teutonic cycle of romance, who, clad therein, could walk invisible. To them also belongs the Tarn hat, or hat of darkness, possessing the same virtue. Veleut, STORY OF JACK THE GIANT-KILLER. 57 the cunning smith of the Edda of Sæmund, wrought Jack's "sword of sharpness," which, in the Wilkina Saga bears the name of Balmung. So keen was its edge, that when Veleut cleft his rival Æmilius through the middle with the wondrous weapon, it merely seemed to Æmilius as though cold water had glided down him. "Shake thyself," said Veleut. Æmilius shook himself, and fell dead into two halves, one on each side of his chair. That the story of Veleut's skill was known in this country is evinced by the Auchinleck text of the Geste of King Horn, where he is called Weland. Jack's shoes of swiftness were once worn by Loke when he escaped from Valhalla. In the Calmuck romance of Ssidi Kur, the Chan steals a similar pair of seven-league boots from the Tchadkurrs, or evil spirits, by means of the cap which made him invisible, which he won from certain quarrelling children, or dwarfs, whom he encounters in the middle of a forest. Are these merely incidental coincidences between the superstitions and fictions of the followers of Buddha, and those of Odin ? In the history of Jack and the Bean Stalk, the consistency of the character is still finely preserved. The awful distich put into the mouth of the Jette or Ettin, the principal agent in this romance, Snouk but, snouk ben, I find the smell of earthly men, is scarcely inferior to the "fee-faw-fum" of the keen-scented anthropophaginian of the other. The bean-stalk, "the top whereof, when Jack looked upwards he could not discern, as it appeared lost in the clouds," has grown in fanciful imitation of the ash Yadraid, reaching, according to the Edda, from hell to heaven. As to the beautiful harp, which played of its own accord," and which Jack stole from the Giant, we must find a parallel for it in the wonderful harp made of the breast-bone of the King's daughter, and which sang so sweetly to the miller, "Binnorie, oh, Binnorie," and in old Dunstan's harp, which sounded without hands, when hanging in the vale. 66 Most of these Giants rest upon good romance authority; or, to speak more correctly, Jack's history is a popular and degraded version of the traditions upon which our earliest romances are founded. "The Mount of Cornwall," which was kept by a large and monstrous Giant, is St. Michael's Mount; and the Giant Cormoran, whom Jack despatched there, and who was eighteen feet high, and about three yards round, is the same who figures in the romance of Tristem. It was by killing this Cormoran (the Corinæus, probably, of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the Brut), that Jack acquired his triumphal epithet of the Giantkiller. Care should be taken not to confound "the History of Jack and the Giants," with "The History of the Giants." These works differ essentially in merit; and although the latter begins with the history of Goliath, the champion of the Philistines, yet the adventures contained in the remainder of the work, and particularly all those which relate to the Giants Trapsaca and Trandello, are, as the Irish Bishop observed of Gulliver's Travels, exceedingly incredible.-Abridged from the Quarterly Review, No. 41. 58 STORY OF TOM THUMB. THE STORY OF TOM HICKATHRIFT. Hearne has identified Sir Thomas Hickathrift, "the famous champion," with the far less celebrated Sir Frederick de Tylney, Baron of Tylney, in Norfolk, the ancestor of the Tylney family, who was killed at Acon, in Syria, in the reign of Richard Cœur de Lion: “Hycophric, or Hycothrift," as the mister-wight observes, "being a corruption of Frederick;"-Hearne having here adopted a hint from Le Neve, of the College of Arms. Their conjectures, however, accord but slightly with the traditions given by the accurate Spelman, in his Icenia. From the most remote antiquity the fables and achievements of Hickifric have been obstinately credited by the inhabitants of the township of Tylney. "Hickifric" is venerated by them as the asserter of the rights and liberties of their ancestors. The "monstrous giant" who guarded the March, was, in truth, no other than the tyrannical lord of the manor, who attempted to keep his copy-holders out of the common field, called Tylney Smeeth; but who was driven away, with his retainers, by the prowess of Tom, armed with only his axletree and cart-wheel. Spelman tells the story in good Latin. The pranks which Tom performed when his "natural strength, which exceeded twenty common men," became manifest, were correctly Scandinavian. Similar were the achievements of the great northern champion, Greter, when he kept geese upon the common, as told in his Saga. Tom's youth retraces the tales of the prowess of the youthful Siegfrid, detailed in the Niflunga Saga, and in the Book of Heroes. The supposed axtletree, with the superincumbent wheel, was represented on "Hycothrift's "grave-stone, in Tylney churchyard, in the shape of a cross. This is the form in which all the Runic monuments represent the celebrated hammer, or thunderbolt of the son of Odin, which shattered the skulls and scattered the brains of so many luckless giants. How far this surmise may be supported by Tom's skill in throwing the hammer, we will not pretend to decide. The common people have a faculty of seeing whatever they choose to believe, and of refusing to see things in which they disbelieve. It may, therefore, be supposed that the rude sculpture which the Tylneyites used to call the offensive and defensive arms of their champion, was nothing more than a cross, of which the upper part is inscribed in a circle, a figure often found on ancient sepulchres. THE STORY OF TOM THUMB. Tom Hearne would almost have sworn that Tom Thumb, the fairy knight, was "King Edgar's page." On ballad authority, we learn that "Tomalyn was a Scotsman born." Now Tom Hearne and the ballad are both in the wrong; for Tomaline, otherwise Tamlane, is no other than Tom Thumb himself, who was originally a dwarf or droergar of Scandinavian descent, being the Thum Lin-i.e., Little Thumb-of the |