ASHIEPATTLE: OR HANS SEEKS HIS LUCK 85 



giant, for example, he is very strong, he is stupid, he 

 eats men, and he possesses the curious characteristic, 

 although a male, of suckling infants. 1 When we go 

 north into Lapland, and then turn into Eussia, we find 

 the same strong, stupid, man-eating being, but the sex 

 is now female, and the suckling no longer a matter of 

 difficulty. 2 In this case the change is from male to 

 female, but in the case of Cinderella the change is from 

 female to male. When we pass from Germany to Nor- 

 way, Ash-lad replaces Cinder-girl, and the prince who 

 conducts Cinderella to church, and rides off with her 

 to his paternal home, is replaced by the princess who 

 bestows her hand on Askelad, and thus gives him the 

 right to the kingdom. In other words, Cinderella is 

 only a late, and we must even say perverted, version of 

 Hans seeks his Luck. The main features are the same 

 in the two cases, but the sexes of the chief characters 

 have changed, and with the sex patriarchal custom has 

 been changed to mother-right. 



In the German we have Aschenputtel despised by 

 her two sisters, and sitting at home among the cinders. 



1 In Der junye Riese the giant suckles a man, and in Die Robe lie has to go 

 home to suckle his child. 



2 Compare the stupid man-eating giantess in Alder-tree Lad, the giant- wife 

 in Family Strong, I war's mother, etc., with Jaga baba and other Russian giant 

 heroines. Nor is it only in Lapland and Russia where the sex of the giant is 

 predominantly female, we find a great number of old Norse words for giantess 

 with no male equivalents, e.g. gfjgr, skessa, grydr, gifr, etc. These were Titanic 

 women approaching to deities, and probably related to the tribal - mother, 

 priestess, and goddess ideas to which we have referred in Essays IX. and XI. It 

 is noteworthy that giants themselves, gigantes, denote nothing else than "the 

 produced." In mediaeval times they were invariably looked upon as the illicit 

 produce of mortal women by unknown fathers, e.g. due to eating forbidden 

 herbs, or to the " sons of god." The terms giganta cyn of Beowulf and gigant- 

 macg of Csedmon suggest at once the kin-produce of a tribal-mother from the 

 old cannibal days of the mother-age. 



