Tales of Giants from Brazil — Text and Context

Voice and Register: From Ornate to Blunt

The opening of “The Princess of the Springs” uses elaborate, measured language: “Never before in all the world had a giant or giantess possessed such a magnificent home.” The sentences are long, the adjectives piled. But elsewhere, the voice becomes terse and colloquial. In “The Giant’s Pupil,” a giant says flatly, “In truth, lad, you are a boy of great skill and strength,” then immediately seizes and binds him. The same tale ends with the giant’s sleepy complaint about mosquitoes—a jarringly human detail after a scene of dismemberment and resurrection.

This alternation is not random. The ornate passages often introduce settings or characters; the blunt ones carry dialogue or action. The effect is a kind of tonal whiplash that keeps the reader off-balance, mirroring the unpredictability of the giant world.

Pacing Through Repetition and Compression

Several tales compress key events into a few lines. In “The Giant’s Pupil,” the boy’s mother negotiates for her son’s life in a single paragraph: she begs, the giant laughs, she asks a “tiny, tiny, little one” about the sword and horse. The entire sequence—binding, threat, plea, apparent death—unfolds in under 200 words. Then, just as quickly, the boy is restored by Nossa Senhora, who anoints him with porcupine’s oil and cobra’s oil, and he returns to kill the giant.

By contrast, “How the Giantess Guimara Became Small” opens with a slow, almost leisurely description of a lost prince wandering toward a wall that turns out to be the boundary of giant land. The pace here is measured, building anticipation. The collection thus uses both compression (rapid-fire plot turns) and expansion (detailed scene-setting) to vary rhythm.

Recurring Motifs and Their Narrative Function

Three motifs recur across the excerpts: magical oils, maternal intervention, and the reversal of scale. Oils from porcupine, cobra, or hen serve as cure-alls, restoring sight and mending severed limbs. They appear without explanation, treated as ordinary remedies. Mothers, meanwhile, act as negotiators and protectors: the boy’s mother bargains for a specific method of death, then later declares that “the magic circle of a mother’s love” guards against perils. The giantess Guimara, though enormous, is described as “very much pleased” with a human prince—a hint that size does not determine power or emotion.

These motifs are not developed thematically; they are functional, driving the plot forward. The oils enable resurrection, the mother’s plea buys time, and the giant’s size becomes irrelevant when a small sword finds its mark. The narrative treats them as tools, not symbols.

Readers will notice that the tales rarely explain why giants behave as they do—they simply are. The language does not moralize or interpret; it reports. Pay attention to how Eells uses direct speech: giants speak plainly, while narrators sometimes wax lyrical. This split gives the collection a distinctive texture, part wonder tale, part folk report. The stories reward a focus on how they are told, not just what happens.

There’s a particular ache in these giant tales—mothers bargaining with moon-dwellers, magic oils that never quite undo the harm—that reminds me of sitting with The Thousand and One Nights, Vol. I. Commonly Called the Arabian Nights' Entertainments — Reading Notes. Both worlds trade in sudden reversals, where a palace turns to dust and a voice stays blunt and close. I think I’ve carried that feeling longer than I’ve known its name.