Early one morning in March, many centuries ago, a young Austrian farmer set to work behind his plow.  The rhythms of the work and the peacefulness of the hour wove their own reverie.  Morning mist lay in the lower reaches of the valley and curled up its grassy slopes.  Threads of smoke rose from the cottages of the village, a jumble of low slate roofs clinging to the valley's side and reduced to insignificance by the mountains massed around the settled lowland.

As the day wore on, the sun rose above the Alpine ridges, shining full into the valley, and the air grew warm.

Accustomed to the towering splendors of the mountains, the farmer focused on
the plow, but he raised his head with a jerk when the earth trembled and a
shadow fell across the length of the field.  His eyes could make no sense of the shape that descended swiftly toward him.  Before he could dodge or even cry out he was squeezed, front and back, by an irresistible power.  He flew skyward.

Beneath his kicking legs, his half-plowed field dropped sickeningly away. 
Village, meadow and mountain whirled briefly at the corner of his vision and
clouds wheeled in white streaks above his head.  Then the dizzying ascent halted, and the farmer found himself swaying 70 feet above the ground.

After studying him for a while, she dropped him into what appeared to be a rough cloth bag.  He slid down the folds of fabric, landing on a carded seam.

Moments later, an agony of buffeting and jostling began.  The air grew icy, and
the wind started to howl.  Evidently he was being taken up to the mountains.
All at once, the wind stopped.  An inanimate grinding sounded, as though of
iron on iron, and then a great crash - a portal closing, to judge from the sudden
warmth in the air.  The bag was tilted, and the farmer spilled out onto what looked to him like a wooden floor.

High above the farmers head, a welter of beams and arches soared off into distant shadow.  All around him was a circle of moving monoliths, larger than castle towers, they were human in form.

Their big eyes glittered;   their lips were stretched in laughter, revealing tombstone teeth and scarlet tongues.  The farmer realized he was standing on a giant's banqueting table.  Waves of unintelligible noise deafened him - speech and
laughter, he surmised.  He covered his ears and faced his captor.  She stood
leaning on the table, her hair falling red-gold on either side of her head.

She carefully lifted him in one hand.  With one finger she straightened his smock and smoothed his hair.  When that was done, she set him down. Panting at him, she said something, and pearls of thunderlaughter rolled over the farmer's head.

Scarlet with rage an humiliation, the farmer shouted up at the giantess. His voice was no more than a thin squeal.  His fury overmastered his fear and when a finger was pointed at him again, he swung his fists at it violently.

The noise around him abated. An old man, grey-bearded and wearing a gold
crown, spoke to him in a gusty whisper: " Forgive us, mortal. We mean you no harm. "

Then the king turned to the maiden with the red-gold hair. "Return this good
man to his own land daughter. These are not your toys. He is a creature of
the younger race. When the last of us has gone, his kind will rule the earth
that was ours! "