Tales of Giants from Brazil

Elsie Spicer Eells spent three years in Brazil, listening to storytellers. Her foreword sets out what she found: Portuguese settlers had brought old world folk tales with them, and planted in Brazilian soil those tales grew into new shapes. The twelve she retells here open with the Moon Giant courting the giantess of the Great River, whose daughter is decreed ruler of all the springs, rivers and lakes. Elsewhere a blind king sends his sons for water from the fountain of Giantland, guarded by a dragon; a lost prince finds the wall around the land of the giants; and a girl driven out by a jealous stepmother is taken in by three enormous brothers who mistake her for a fairy. Eells credits Sylvio Romero’s “Contos Populares do Brazil.” Dodd, Mead published it in 1918, illustrated by Helen M. Barton.