monstrous Giant having 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. This is heavy news indeed, quoth the giant, but I have a large vault under ground, where I will run and hide myself. In the morning, when Jack let his cousin out of the hole, he asked what he should 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. Thou shalt have them with all my heart, said the Giant, as a just reward for thy kindness in protecting me from the king's son, and be sure that thou carefully keepst 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. Every one of these wonderful articles has been stolen out of the great Northern treasury, though we cannot pretend to explain in what manner Jack's cousin, the Giant with three heads, became possessed of them. The coat is, in fact, 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-hut, or hat of darkness,* possessing the same virtue. Velent 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 Velent 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 Velent. Æmilius shook himself, and fell dead into two halves, one on each side of his chair. That the stories of Velent's skill were well 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

6

Wolf Dietrich saves his life by the loan of this hat of darkness.

Mournfully he sighed, for Dame Grel his sword had ta'en,
A dwarf then heard and pitied the heroe's woeful strain,
He saw where she had hid in the dark the noble blade,
Straight he ran where on the sod Wolf Dietrich was laid.
O'er the champion did he cast a tarn cap speedily,
And has led him to the cave where his falchion did lie,
Now with leathern thongs the savage giantess

Ran where the horse he had left bound upon the grass.
But when no more she saw him, back to her cave she came;
Scornfully Wolf Dietrich laughed when he saw the uncouth dame,
Off he throws the tarn cap and in her sight appears.

Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 91.

escaped

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 mere incidental coincidences between the superstitions and fictions of the followers of Buddha and of those of Odin ?

In the history of of the characters is into the mouth of the

mance,

Jack and the Bean-stalk,' the consistency still finely preserved. The awful distich put Jette or Ettin, the principal agent in this ro

'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 Ygdrasil 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.

Before we dismiss the Giganticide, we must remark that most of his giants rest upon good romance authority: or, to speak

* Now the son of the Chan and his trusty servant travelled along a river and arrived in a wood, where they met many children who were quarrelling with each other. Why do you thus dispute?" said they.

We have found a cap in this wood, and each of us wishes to keep it.

What is the use of the cap?.

The cap hath this virtue, he who wears it is seen neither by the gods, nor men, nor the Tchadkurrs.

'Now go all of ye to the end of the forest, and run hither. And I will keep the cap and I will give it to him who first reaches this spot and wins the race.

'So spake the son of the Chan, and the children ran, but when they came back they could not find the cap, for he had placed it on the head of his companion, and they sought for it in vain.

"

And the son of the Chan and his companion travelled onwards, and they came to

a forest wherein they met many Tchadkurrs who were quarrelling with each other. Why do you thus dispute?" said they.

It is I, exclaimed each Tchadkurr, to whom these boots belong.

'What is the use of the boots?

"He who wears these boots," answered the Tchadkurrs, "is conveyed to any country wherein he wishes himself."

"Now," answerred the son of the Chan, " go all of you that way, and he who first runs hither shall obtain the boots."

And the Tchadkurrs ran their race accordingly. But the Chan's son had concealed the boots in the bosom of his companion, who at the same time had the cap upon his head. And the Tchadkurrs sought for the boots, but they found them not, and they went away.'-Second Relation of Ssidi Kur.

more

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 Corinoran, whom Jack dispatched there, and who was eighteen feet high and about three yards round, is the same who figures in the romance of Tristan. It was by killing this Corinoran, (the Corinæus probably of Jeffery of Monmouth and the Brut,) that Jack acquired his triumphal epithet of the Giant-Killer.*

6

In order that students of British gigantology may not be misled in their researches, we think it proper to inform them that they must take great care 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 Goliah 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 Traudello, are, as the Irish bishop observed of Gulliver's travels, exceedingly incredible.

Of rarer occurrence than the heroic narratives to which our attention has hitherto been directed, is the history of FRIAR RUSH the devil's brother.' The friar was known to Reginald Scott before the history of his pranks was published. Scott ranks him in the same category with Robin Goodfellow, so that Robin and the Friar were alike the heroes of popular and traditionary tales. There is an ancient Danish poem, which treats ' of brother Rus, how he did service as cook and monk in the monastery of Esserom.' There is reason to suppose that the English story-book and the Danish history are derived from one common original, well known on the continent in times previous to the reformation, for, as Bruno Seidelius sings,

Quis non legit, quæ Frater Rauschius egit?'

It is worthy of remark that the Danish Rus is made to travel through the air to England, where he possesses the king's daughter.

*Now when the magistrates who employed John heard that the job was over, they sent for him, declaring he should henceforth be called " JACK THE GIANT Killer," and in honour thereof presented him with a sword and embroidered belt, upon which these words were written in letters of gold :—

Here's the valiant Cornish man,

Who slew the giant Corinoran.'

In the last London edition of Jack the Giant Killer, the printer's devil who corrected the sheets has arbitrarily chosen to read Cormoran. We have not scrupled to restore the true reading, although the spurious reading gives a smoother verse. According to the Brut it is Corineus who kills the giant, but as he was a giant himself, tradition has only changed sides,

CORINEUS estoit moult grant
Hardis et grant come yaiant.

1

There

There has been a fair exchange of nursery tales between the two countries, for in return for Brother Russ, we gave them the 'history of the lucky Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor of London,' whose life has been translated into Danish, and whose good fortune is now as well known in Bergen and Drontheim as in his own native land of Cockney. Puss has thus sailed half round the world, from the Gulf of Persia to the Northern Sea.

HOWLEGLASS stands as the leader of a merry troop; Toм TRAM, the son-in-law of Mother Winter, TOM STITCH, the tailor, and TOM LONG, the carrier of the Men of Gotham, follow in his train, whose penny histories,' all imitated from his 'merrye jeste,' are now introuvables. They all belong to the ancient and noble and widely dispersed family of TOM FOOL, which has obtained such pre-eminence and dignity in church and state throughout all Christendom. Yn the land of Sassen,' says old Copland, in the village of Keeling,' there dwelled a man that was named Nicholas Howleglass, that had a wyfe named Wyneke, that laye a child bed in the same village, and that childe was borne to Christening and named Tyell Howleglass.' It were long to detail his fearful jokes which sometimes brought him to the gallows, yet saved him from the halter. He was buried with his coffin standing on one end, as the visitants at the Abbey believe of Ben Jonson, at Mollen, near Lubeck: and you may see his grave-stone under the great lime tree in the church-yard; and his rebus, to wit an owl and a looking glass, cut upon the stone. Ulenspiegel, as he is called in German, has almost made the tour of Europe: his life was first published in the Nether Saxon dialect in 1483. Our English translation of the merrye jeste of a man that was called Howleglass, and of many marveylous thinges and jestes that he did in his lyfe in Eastland,' was Imprinted at London in Tamestreete, at the Vintre, in Three Craned Warfe, by Wyllyam Copland.' According to the technical phrase, it was done into English from the High Dutch. There is also a Flemish translation, which, well purified from all aspersions on holy church, is now a chap book in Flanders. The Flemish faithful are earnestly warned not to purchase the 'shameful edition printed at Amsterdam, by Brother Jansz, in the Burgwal, at the sign of the "Silver Can," the same being calculated to vex and scandalize all good Catholics.'

'SIMPLE SIMON's misfortunes' are such as are incident to all the human race, since they arose from his wife Margery's cruelty, which began the very morning after their marriage,' and we therefore do not know whether it is necessary to seek out for a Teutonic or Northern original of this once popular book. 'The Fifteen Joys of Matrimony'* being also diffused pretty equally

*It is not translated from the 'Quinze Joyes du Mariage;' the titles only agreeing.

over the wide world, we cannot presume to confine the origin of the tractate concerning them to our island.

. Now that we have fairly entered into the matrimonial chapter we must needs speak of MOTHER BUNCH, not the Mother Bunch whose fairy tales are repeated to the little ones, but she whose cabinet,' when broken open, reveals so many powerful love-spells: it is Mother Bunch who teaches the blooming damsel to recal the fickle lover, or to fix the wandering gaze of the cautious swain, attracted by her charms, yet scorning the fetters of the parson, and dreading the still more fearful vision of the churchwarden, the constable, the justice, the warrant, and the jail. We dare not venture to unfold the incantations of the sapient beldam; but perhaps there may be equal efficacy in the Academy of Compliments, or Whole Art of Courtship, being the rarest and most exact way of wooing a maid or widow by the way of dialogue and complimentul expressions, and which used to be sold by Mr. Hollis in Shoemaker-row near Doctor's Commons: and in the metrical magic of the Posies for rings and other things,' given in this same Academy; posies in no small request on the feast of good St. Valentine, however ill the saint may view the celebration of his festival.

Bishop Valentine

Left us examples to do deeds of charity,
To feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit
The weak and sick, to entertain the poor,
And give the dead a Christian burial.

These were the works of piety he did practise,
And bade us imitate, not seek for lovers.

The Academy of Compliments' is abridged from the 'Jardin d'Amour,' the last edition of which is augmented by 'plusieurs lettres familières pour l'utilité de la jeunesse;' and, as our good friend Madame Garnier informs us, there is not a peasant in Champague who will attempt to woo, in an honourable way, except according to the established forms and precedents contained in this useful manual. And even the boors in the Low Countries are equally obedient to the lessons of its Flemish translation, the Konst der Minnen,' when they sidle into the spinning-room, or try to drop upon one knee before the Juffrow, as their fathers did before them. Like its ambitious prototype, the Roman de la Rose,' the Garden of Love' has borrowed the principles of the great master Ovid: its author had more morality than the heathen poet, and less learning than Jean de Meung and Guillaume de Loris, his elaborate followers, who thought it necessary to invoke Reason' and the seven sciences her handmaids, merely to aid the lover in winning a woman's heart! Alas! many a year has flown since

Mother