Now there was another giant, named Hotap, who, in disposition, was very different from his neighbor, and often played bad tricks on the farmers. He loved to start avalanches, by making a wet snowball called a soaker, and then flinging it over the snow and down into the valley, upon the villages. In this way, he ruined many houses, barns, and stables, killing men, goats, sheep, donkeys, chickens and cattle.
Besides this Hotap used to lie in wait for nice little boys, especially those that were rosy, and plump, and to catch them and eat them up. He sometimes came back, to his cave home, with his pocket full of small boys. He thus ruined so many families, and made so many mothers cry, that they sometimes called him Old Schoppe, which means something like Boy-Eater, or, more exactly, our John Barleycorn.
But Schoppe was a giant that destroyed many more small boys, than any other giant, or ogre, and in a different way. By and bye, Hotap and Schoppe, who at first were rivals, became partners. [[54]]Instead of living in caves, they went into business and set up shops all over Switzerland. They lured young men into these shops, and set them to drinking poisonous stuff, which the giants made, so that the roads, and streets, and gutters at nights, and early in the morning, were often full of fellows lying asleep on the ground, or like pigs in the mud.
Then, further, the two giants made it the general fashion of putting Schoppe’s drink even into things cooked for children.
Hotap found that, as partner to Schoppe, he could catch and destroy more boys in this new business, than in the old way. So he laid aside his club and stopped trying to destroy villages by rolling avalanches on them. He put on fine clothes, and made his shops very attractive, by looking glasses, and pretty pitchers, and tumblers. But, finally, he himself got so fond of the drink which Schoppe made, out of barley, and rye, and other grain that he drank himself to death and was buried in a cemetery. Over his grave a monument was carved, in the shape of a barrel, with a bung, and spout, and tap, as if he were continuing business in the next world.
But Schoppe kept on in the business. He ground up grain, and wasted so much, that he made the price of bread very high, so that poor people often had to go hungry. Out of the good [[55]]barley and rye, he made the stuff that poisoned the brains of the young men and turned them into flapjacks, so that they lay as stupid as stones in the ground. He filled up the men, until they were hardly better than swill barrels. In this way many boys were ground up into poverty or stupidity, and the graveyards were filled so fast, by old Schoppe, that people called his saloon the Mill. At last, the big fat fellow, with a red nose, died also.
So at Berne, one sees the monument of Schoppe or Boy-Eater. He stands in bronze over a fountain. He has boys in his pocket, samples of boys in his hands and mouth, some more at his feet, and a good supply at hand, to chew up and swallow.
Everyone goes to see the statue of the Boy Eater. Yet many others still follow his business and eat up the boys. [[56]]