Part 11

Father Thames here paused, and took a deep draught of ale; whilst he was engaged with which, his brother of the Rhine calmly and gravely put to him the singular question: “And what became of the pigs, Brother Thames?”

The potentate of our English river hastily put down his {138}glass, choked violently as he did so, and then answered with a laugh, “Confound your jokes, Brother Rhine, you made my liquor go the wrong way, which is a very unpleasant thing, let me tell you. But, after all, the rebuke was deserved, for my cross-questioning you so closely after your last legend. I own that legends are things which should be received with much faith and no questions, or the beauty of them is lost at once.”

“I quite agree with you,” responded he of the Rhine, “and it was with the object of bringing you to express your concurrence in this view that I asked the remarkably stupid question about the pigs. There are some people who always want to know a great deal more than is good for them, and who insist upon asking what became of each and every character of whom mention has been made in a legend. This is simply ridiculous, and very disagreeable to the teller of the story, who is obliged to introduce many minor characters into his tale, in order to fill up gaps, and illustrate the position of the principal personages, but who cannot be expected to know the final history and eventual fate of them all. Since, then, you agree with me, Brother Thames, I shall ask you to be good enough to listen to my next legend with a sincere determination to believe it if you can, and in any case to demand no explanation of circumstances which may seem strange, or with regard to persons who may appear to be unusual in name or character, or in both the two together.”

“I promise to do as you wish,” replied Father Thames to this request, upon which the other commenced at once as follows:—

THE GIANT BRAMBLE-BUFFER

“There {139}was once a Daddyroarer—”

“What the deuce is a Daddyroarer?” hastily interposed Father Thames.

The monarch of the Rhine gave him an indignant glance. “Is this the way you keep your promise?” he inquired, in a tone of some severity. “Another such interruption and I shall decline to continue the amusement of legend-telling. I have no objection, however, to inform you that the word Daddyroarer signifies a giant, though whence its derivation I am unable to tell you with any degree of certainty. It probably comes from two Teutonic words, but I should be sorry to attempt to give them in the original. There is something about the name, however, which conveys the idea of a giant. ‘Daddy,’ indeed, being the familiar appellation by which children occasionally designate their male parent, points, not so much to the paternal relationship of a giant with mankind, as to his size and proportions, which are as much larger than those of man as are the proportions and size of a father to those of his young children. I presume that the term ‘roarer’ is not intended to convey, as in the case of a horse, the notion of broken wind, but has rather reference to the gruff and deep-toned voice which usually characterizes the giant.

“But, be this as it may, I repeat the fact that there was once a certain Daddyroarer, or giant, who lived among the mountains near a certain part of my beautiful river. For many years, indeed, in the old, old times, the men of Rhineland were grievously troubled with giants {140}of different sorts and sizes. Tradition tells us that they all sprang from the mighty giant Senoj, who, as is well known, was born, nobody knows how or where, among the loftiest peaks of the Alps, and is down to this day popularly known in Rhineland as the father of all giants.

“Certain it is that his descendants, if such they were, proved exceedingly troublesome to mankind in general, and Rhenish mankind in particular. These creatures were, indeed, a plague and a pest to the country. They ate voraciously, and were not particular as to the food with which they satisfied their appetites. I am not prepared to say whether or no they were actually cannibals, and will therefore give them the benefit of the doubt; nevertheless, they were exceedingly unpleasant neighbours. The quantity of food which they required was alone sufficient to have placed this fact beyond question, for if you recollect the feats performed in the way of swallowing by your own old giant—

‘Robin-a-bobbin-a-Bilberry Ben, Who ate more victuals than three-score men,’

and consider what would have been the effect upon your country of half-a-dozen Robins, you will have no trouble in understanding the difficulty which Rhineland experienced in supporting these worthies.

“What made it much worse, too, was the exceedingly loose notions which these beings entertained upon the subject of the rights of property. They apparently laboured under the delusion that the world was made for giants, and for giants alone—a theory exceedingly convenient for those who happened to be giants, but the reverse {141}of agreeable to those who did not come within that somewhat limited category. These excellent individuals took exactly what they pleased from its owner, without so much as ‘by your leave’ or ‘with your leave,’ and never for a moment dreamed of paying the value of the article in question. This was not a comfortable state of things for the people of the land, who saw their sheep and oxen, pigs and poultry, and other possessions which they prized, taken away by the great bullies against whom they dared not lift a voice nor wag a finger.

“But this was not all. It is bad enough to be robbed by another person, and not pleasant to be assaulted, but I am not sure whether to be utterly ignored and despised is not worse than either, especially when accompanied by such aggravating circumstances as those to which I am now going to allude. These huge creatures used to go walking about just as if there were no such things as men and women in the world. They would kick over a cottage for fun, sit down upon a barn or outhouse and crush its roof with their weight, out of mere ignorance or wanton folly; and even now and then set their foot on a human being and crush him into the earth, as if he were a snake, taking no account whatever of his prayers and struggles. In fact, they got into the habit of treating people as if they were merely an inferior part of creation placed upon the earth to cultivate and make it more useful for giants, and intended to be robbed, maltreated, trodden under foot, and put out of the way, just when and how it suited their imperious masters, for whom, and for whose sake alone, the universe had been created.

“You {142}may well imagine, Brother Thames, that this state of affairs was pre-eminently unsatisfactory to my poor people. No man’s life or property was secure, and all improvement was entirely prevented. Indeed, what was the use of building a house which was liable to be knocked down or kicked over by a giant at any moment? Of what avail would it have been to plant a field with wheat, oats, or barley, when at any and every period of the year all might be trodden down by the ruthless foot of the same monster, and the reapers possibly be stamped into the ground, together with the crops which they were gathering? Who would rear sheep and oxen of which he was sure to be robbed? and who would spend time, labour, and money upon anything when all was so insecure and uncertain? So it came about that the population diminished, no houses were built, few fields were sown, lands went out of cultivation, and it seemed as if, in a little time longer, the country would be neither more nor less than a dreary wilderness. Indeed, the whole face of the country was changed by the strange freaks of the Daddyroarers.

“Sometimes they would amuse themselves by lifting huge masses of rock, and therewith building a mountain; at another time they would fling enormous stones at each other in sport, which was pastime anything but delightful to their neighbours, whose lives and property were thereby grievously imperilled. And not the least part of the mischief they did was when they took a fancy to snowball each other, which the survivors of them still practise, especially in some parts of Switzerland, where the avalanche, which occasionally overwhelms the unhappy traveller, although mistakenly attributed to natural {143}causes, is in reality nothing more than the fall of a larger snowball than usual, hurled by the mighty arm of one of those mountain giants.

“At the time I speak of there was one particular giant who had for a long while been remarkably troublesome. Not only was his appetite more insatiable than that of his brethren, but he was endowed with a spirit of mischief, which rendered him an especially disagreeable neighbour. If he met a man he generally gave him a kick, which sent him off fifty yards up in the air, and in most instances proved fatal. He never passed a cottage without sitting down on the roof, or kicking the wall down, and would walk away from a farm with a couple of haystacks, one under each arm, simply for the love of plunder, and when he really did not require the hay for his own purposes.

“You {144}will hardly require much argument in order to convince you that this giant was a most obnoxious person, and was consequently held in great detestation by all the poor creatures who had the misfortune to dwell near him. By these he was generally called by the euphonious name of ‘Old Bramble-Buffer,’ although the title by which he was known among his own kith and kin was probably quite different, and has not been handed down to posterity. For many years he tyrannized over the country round, and the story which I am about to tell you will show how great his fame and physical strength must have been, and thus remove any surprise which you might otherwise possibly have felt at the power of one monster to keep a whole neighbourhood in subjection.

“When their houses had been again and again destroyed, the wretched inhabitants began to seek shelter in holes in the caves and rocks, in which they hid themselves, their wives, families, and effects, and only issued forth by stealth at night, or when they had reason to believe that their terrible oppressor was away from home. In consequence of this state of things, our friend the Daddyroarer found his fun somewhat diminished. He seldom encountered a man now, the opportunities afforded him for kicking down houses were comparatively rare, and he began to think life in the country, under such circumstances, rather tedious. It was in vain that he occupied himself in mountain-building with some of his fellow-giants, snowballing was cold work, and became tiresome after a time; and when he once tried to amuse himself by baling out my river, he found the task too great for even one of his gigantic strength. {145}He kept on at it for some time, being too stupid to understand that my river, being well supplied at its sources, and aided by many a tributary stream and mountain torrent, was in no sort of way affected by the abstraction of the few millions of gallons of which his puny efforts robbed it, and his exertions only caused intense mirth to my elves and demons, without for a moment lessening the volume of water in the river, or in any way diminishing the strength and rapidity of the current.

“So when Master Bramble-buffer became tired of all these occupations and amusements he had few resources left. Persons of his description are not given to literary or intellectual pursuits, and in all probability both reading and writing were accomplishments entirely unknown to the ordinary class of giants. Eating, drinking, and sleeping appeared to be the chief objects for which these creatures existed, except to make themselves generally disagreeable to their neighbours, which was an object in which it is quite true that they rarely failed to achieve complete success. So when the excellent Bramble-buffer had found out that the task of emptying the Rhine was beyond his powers, and cared not to fall back upon the old pastimes, of which he had had his fill, he took to the practice of taking long walks, and journeying into other countries wherein he might find fresh people to terrify, new fields to destroy, and a wider scope for the exercise of his vast strength and malevolent disposition.

“He marched over a great extent of ground, and did a vast deal of mischief during these excursions. Such was his size and weight, that the commonest action on his part {146}was sometimes fraught with the most unexpected results and the direst consequences to mankind. For instance, if he carelessly slung his walking-stick as he moved along the road, the implement, being of the size and thickness of a well-grown fir-tree, brushed off the heads of trees—and of people too, for that matter, if it came in contact with them,—just as a stick in the hand of an ordinary mortal knocks over poppies and thistles if employed for that purpose. Then if he sat down on a small hill to rest, it was as if a man had jumped with his full weight on a mole-hill of which the earth was newly thrown up and consequently soft. The ground trembled beneath his weight as if with the shock of a sudden earthquake; and very often squashed under him so as to jut out on either side, and cause sudden and most inconvenient alterations in the fields and woods on each side of the hill, more especially so in those cases in which dwellings happened to have been erected thereupon. And woe betide the owner of ponds or wells when the Daddyroarer happened to be thirsty as he passed by them. It was no unusual thing for him to empty a pond at a draught, and I have known a whole village affected with drought for weeks together because old Bramble-buffer had taken a fancy to drink of the wells by which it was supplied with water.

“In his journey at last the old fellow came to the seashore, and having never before visited the blue ocean, he was abundantly delighted at all he saw. Even the coarse and blunted nature of a giant cannot fail to be struck with admiration at the first sight of the glorious sea. The waves breaking with regular and solemn force upon the shore, as if protesting ever against their enforced {147}restraint within prescribed limits: the foam dancing lightly upon the water far away out at sea; the bright rays of the sun reflected in varying lights upon the shifting waters; the ships riding at anchor, or merrily cleaving the waves asunder in their onward course; the sea-birds skimming along the bosom of the sea, ever and anon with shrill scream dipping their long wings in the spray of the wave, and mounting again in high air with joyous flight; the huge fish showing his scaled form for an instant in the light of day, and the next moment burying himself fathoms deep in the world of waters below; all these things, passing before the eye at the same moment with the rapidity of thought, strike the beholder, be he giant or man, with mingled awe and wonder.

“In the case of old Bramble-buffer, however, neither feeling lasted long, and after a very short space of time the spirit of mischief arose within his breast, and tempted him to try his powers of doing evil under the new circumstances before him. Placing himself in a recumbent posture, and supporting his huge frame upon his two stalwart arms, he began to blow violently down upon the sea below, with all the force of his mighty lungs. The effect was instantaneous. The bosom of the deep was troubled as with a terrible hurricane. The waves reared up their heads, the foam danced higher than ever, the sea-birds shrieked more loudly, and the fishes were astonished at the wondrous commotion which had arisen upon the surface of their watery home. The poor mariners, who were taken totally unawares by the extraordinary suddenness of the storm, were, as may well be supposed, in considerable trouble. Their ships were {148}driven from their moorings, masts were snapt asunder, sails and rigging rent and injured irreparably, and several men and boys blown overboard by the violence of the terrible blast. Indeed, more than one vessel was lost, and an immense amount of property utterly destroyed; and all because of this mad freak of the mischievous old giant.

“But the best of the joke in this case was that the poor mortals had no idea whatever of the cause of the disaster which had so unexpectedly befallen them, and a lengthy correspondence was carried on in the newspapers {149}of a certain country whose inhabitants think themselves wiser than anybody else, as to the cause of storms, the efficacy of storm signals, and the possibility of foretelling when the weather is going to be calm or rough. Some people wrote letters which appeared to the world exceedingly wise, whilst others published ideas which every one agreed to be remarkably foolish, but none of them ever hit upon the right cause of this catastrophe, and possibly many others of a like character, nor did any person ever dream for a moment that the whole of the affair was owing to the whim of old Bramble-buffer and his desire to try his strength upon the waves of the ocean. When he had accomplished his purpose, put everybody and everything into the greatest confusion, and done all the mischief he could in the shortest possible time, the fellow sat up, folded his arms, and indulged in a series of hearty laughs and strange roars of pleasure which the innocent people of the neighbourhood took for claps of thunder, and said it was a good thing; that the thunder-storm would clear the air, and the wind would soon be lulled.

“Giants, however, like men, find pleasures greater in anticipation than in realisation, and our old friend thought it too much trouble to repeat the experiment of raising the wind, which is one never to be performed without a certain amount of difficulty. Accordingly, he resolved to seek for some other amusement, and turning away from the sea-shore, again penetrated into the interior of the country. It would be endless to tell: you all the strange pranks he played, and how gradually his name became known and detested throughout the whole country through which the river which bears my name holds {150}its course. It he desired notoriety, he certainly had it to his heart’s content, and never was there a being more feared and hated since the beginning of the world.

“At last, having travelled far enough, he returned by easy stages to the country from whence he had set out, and there recommenced his old evil practices with the smallest possible delay. He had always a spite against my beautiful river, I suppose because he had failed in emptying it; but, whatever the reason may have been, he liked it not, and used to vary his occupations sometimes by pitching pieces of mountain into it, and close by its side, so as to make its shores if possible unapproachable by mortal foot, in doing which he added greatly to the wild beauty of the scenery, without in reality doing the smallest harm either to the river or to mankind.

“After a while, old Bramble-buffer began to find that the effects of his bad and cruel conduct towards mankind had so diminished the number of those who used to dwell in houses, that he had some difficulty in obtaining supplies from farms and homesteads as before. He therefore, much against his will, was obliged to take to hunting and trapping wild animals, in which he was not very skilful, but for this he was in some measure compensated by the advantages of size and strength, which enabled him to catch creatures which his skill alone would never have brought within reach of his devouring jaws.

“In his search after game he was in the habit of roaming far and wide over the mountains and through the forests of Rhine-land, and his loud cries and roars were often heard for miles, sending the frightened people into their holes and caves, where with trembling hearts they sought {151}a refuge from the mighty Daddyroarer. At last, one day, the old fellow had been more than commonly successful in his hunting. Chance had thrown in his way several roe-buck and sundry hares, of which he had made a very hearty meal, and naturally felt rather sleepy afterwards. He therefore wandered slowly through the forest, looking for some convenient and comfortable spot upon which he might deposit his huge carcase, and indulge in that after-dinner nap which is ordinarily so agreeable to persons of a certain age. In a giant’s case, such naps are almost always unnaturally long and deep, and in fact these vast beings have been known not unfrequently to sleep round from one dinnertime to another, when their repast has happened to be somewhat larger and more satisfactory to themselves than common.