Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning; With Some Account of Dwellers in FairylandBunce, John Thackray
History
Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning; With Some Account of Dwellers in Fairyland
Bunce, John Thackray
Fairy tales -- History and criticism
Now this legend of Polyphemos is to be found everywhere; in the oldest
Hindu books, in Teutonic, and Norse, and Slav stories; and everywhere
also the great giant, stormy, angry, and one-eyed, is always very
stupid, and is always overthrown or outwitted by the hero, Odysseus,
when he is shut up in the cavern of Polyphemos, cheats the monster by
tying himself under the belly of the largest and oldest ram, and so
passes out while the blind giant feels the fleece, and thinks that all
is safe. Almost exactly the same trick is told in an old Gaelic story,
that of Conall Cra Bhuidhe.[6] A great Giant with only one eye seized
upon Conall, who was hunting on the Giant's lands. Conall himself is
made to tell the story:
"I hear a great clattering coming, and what was there but a great Giant
and his dozen of goats with him, and a buck at their head. And when the
Giant had tied the goats, he came up, and he said to me, 'Hao O! Conall,
it's long since my knife is rusting in my pouch waiting for thy tender
flesh.' 'Och!' said I, 'it's not much thou wilt be bettered by me,
though thou shouldst tear me asunder; I will make but one meal for thee.
But I see that thou art one-eyed. I am a good leech, and I will give
thee the sight of the other eye.' The Giant went and he drew the great
caldron on the site of the fire. I was telling him how he should heat
the water, so that I should give its sight to the other eye. I got
leather and I made a rubber of it, and I set him upright in the caldron.
I began at the eye that was well, till I left them as bad as each other.
When he saw that he could not see a glimpse, and when I myself said to
him that I would get out in spite of him, he gave that spring out of the
water, and he stood in the mouth of the cave, and he said that he would
have revenge for the sight of his eye. I had but to stay there crouched
the length of the night, holding in my breath in such a way that he
might not feel where I was. When he felt the birds calling in the
morning, and knew that the day was, he said, 'Art thou sleeping? Awake,
and let out my lot of goats!' I killed the buck. He cried, 'I will not
believe that thou art not killing my buck.' 'I am not,' I said, 'but the
ropes are so tight that I take long to loose them.' I let out one of the
goats, and he was caressing her, and he said to her, 'There thou art,
thou shaggy hairy white goat; and thou seest me, but I see thee not.'
I was letting them out, by way of one by one, as I flayed the buck, and
before the last one was out I had him flayed, bag-wise. Then I went and
put my legs in the place of his legs, and my hands in the place of his
fore-legs, and my head in the place of his head, and the horns on top of
my head, so that the brute might think it was the buck. I went out. When
I was going out the Giant laid his hand on me, and said, 'There thou
art, thou pretty buck; thou seest me, but I see thee not.' When I myself
got out, and I saw the world about me, surely joy was on me. When I was
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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