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Appendix E

one big brilliant eye. The Occhiaro closed the cavern with a great stone, and
then slaughtered the servant and ate him up. After that he lay down and went
to sleep. The master drew his sword, plunged it into the Occhiaro's eye, and so
blinded him. The Occhiaro howled till the cavern rang again. In the night
the man slaughtered a sheep and wrapped himself in its skin. Next morning
the Occhiaro let the sheep out of the cavern one by one and felt them as he did
it. The man in the sheep-skin luckily got out and then mocked at the Occhiaro.
He flung him a ring, with which to make himself invisible. The man stuck the
ring on his finger. Thereupon the Occhiaro cried : ' Hold fast, ring, till I come.'
The man could no longer stir from the spot ; so he chopped the finger off with
his sword and made his escape.

To pursue the subject beyond the limits of Greece and Italy would be beside
my purpose. But it must of course be borne in mind that the variants noted in
classical lands are essentially similar to those collected from the rest of Europe.
A single specimen will suffice to make this clear, and may at the same time show
how such a tale, drifting along the current of popular mouth-to-mouth trans-
mission, may attach itself to some landmark or salient feature of the country-
side and become fixed as a local legend with names of persons and places all
complete.

(12) The Kyklops in an English Folk-tale.

In 1879 S. Baring-Gould contributed the following paragraph to W.
Henderson's Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties1 : 'At Dalton, near Thirsk, in
Yorkshire, is a mill. It has quite recently been rebuilt, but when I was at
Dalton, six years ago, the old building stood. In front of the house was a long
mound, which went by the name of "the giant's grave2," and in the mill was
shown a long blade of iron something like a scythe-blade, but not curved, which
was said to have been the giant's knife3. A curious story was told of this knife.
There lived a giant at this mill, and he ground men's bones to make his bread.
One day he captured a lad on Pilmoor, and instead of grinding him in the mill
he kept him as his servant and never let him get away. Jack served the giant
many years and never was allowed a holiday. At last he could bear it no longer.
Topcliffe fair was coming on, and the lad entreated that he might be allowed to
go there to see the lasses and buy some spice. The giant surlily refused leave ;
Jack resolved to take it. The day was hot, and after dinner the giant lay down
in the mill with his head on a sack and dozed. He had been eating in the mill
and had laid down a great loaf of bone bread by his side, and the knife was in
his hand, but his fingers relaxed their hold of it in sleep. Jack seized the
moment, drew the knife away, and holding it with both hands drove the blade
into the single eye of the giant, who woke with a howl of agony, and starting up

1 W. Henderson Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the
Bordets London 1879 P* r94 f-> S. Baring-Gould 'The Giant of New Mills, Sessay '
[Dalton is in the parish of Sessay] in Folk-Lore 1890 i. 130=0. Hackman op. cit. p. 33
no. ?.8 = Sir J. G. Frazer toe. cit. p. 430 f. no. 18.

2 S. Baring-Gould in W. Henderson op. cit. p. 196 n. adds : ' I am told by one of our
servants from Dalton that at the rebuilding of the farm the mound was opened, and a
stone coffin found in it; but whether this be a kistvaen or a mediaeval sarcophagus I
cannot tell.'

3 Ld. in Folk-Lore toe. cit. says further: 'in the mill was shown...the giant's...stone
porridge-basin or lather-dish.'
 
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