It was dinner-time, and the servant brought in a dish of meat about twenty-four feet across. At the table were the farmer, his wife, and three children. The farmer placed me at some distance from him on the table, which was thirty feet high from the floor. I was in a terrible fright, and kept as far as I could from the edge, for fear of falling. The wife minced a bit of meat and crumbled some bread, placing it before me on a plate. I made her a low bow, took out my knife and fork, and began to eat, which gave them much delight.
The baby seized me by the middle
Then the master beckoned me to come to his plate; but as I walked on the table, I stumbled against a crust and fell flat on my face. I got up immediately, and finding the good people greatly concerned, I waved my hat over my head, giving three huzzas to show that I had received no hurt. Just then I heard a noise like that of a dozen stocking-weavers at work, and turning my head, found it to be the purring of a cat three times as big as an ox. The fierce look of this creature, which had jumped into the mistress’s lap, altogether discomposed me, although I stood at the further end of the table, fifty feet away. I was less afraid of the dogs, one of which was a mastiff as big as four elephants.
But my chief danger came from another quarter. When dinner was almost over, a nurse came in with a child a year old in her arms, who immediately spied me and began a squall that you might have heard across London, to get me for a plaything. The mother put me towards the baby, who suddenly seized me by the middle, and put my head into his mouth, where I roared so loud that he was frightened and let me drop. And I should certainly have broken my neck if the nurse had not held her apron under me. To quiet the baby, the nurse shook a rattle filled with rocks as big as cobblestones, which was fastened by a cable to the child’s waist.
But the one of all the family whom I liked the best was a little girl nine years old, who became from the first my chief protector. It was she who fixed up a bed for me in her doll’s cradle, and it was she who taught me the language. When I pointed out anything, she told me the name of it in the giants’ tongue, so that in a few days I was able to call for whatever I wished. She was very good-natured, and not above forty feet high, being small for her age. She gave me the name of Grildrig, meaning mannikin. I called her my Glumdalclitch, or little nurse.
She was not above forty feet high
It soon began to be known in the neighborhood that my master had found in the field a tiny animal shaped exactly like a human creature, which seemed to speak in a little language of its own, had already learned several words of theirs, walked erect on two legs, was tame and gentle, and would come when it was called. Another farmer, who lived near by, came on a visit on purpose to find out the truth of this story. Being old and dim-sighted, he put on his spectacles to see me better, at which I could not help laughing, for his eyes looked like the full moon shining into a room at two windows. This man was thought to be a great miser, and to my way of thinking, he well deserved it, for the first thing he did after seeing me was to advise my master to show me as a sight in the next town.