Tursas

Tursas is a mighty giant who rises from the ocean into a meadow where water-maidens have gathered grasses. His brief appearance marks a turning point in the Great Oak’s origin: after the grasses are burned, he plants an acorn in the ash-enriched ground, and a tall oak grows there. The episode gives him a specific role in a chain of transformations linking sea, meadow, fire, and tree.

Identity and Appearance

Tursas enters the scene from the ocean, identified as a giant and described as mighty, tall, and hardy. The poem offers no further account of his origins, history, or motives; his identity is established through this sudden emergence and through the consequential work he performs in the meadow.

Tursas and the Grasses

Before Tursas appears, the water-maidens have raked the mown grasses into a windrow. He presses the gathered grasses compactly together. A fire then kindles among them, and the windrow is reduced to ashes. The account places Tursas’s action immediately before the fire, but does not say that he kindles it or explain how it begins; his clearly described action is to compact the grasses.

Planting the Great Oak

Once only ashes remain, Tursas places tender leaves in them and plants an acorn among the leaves. The acorn sprouts quickly into a tall, stately oak, growing from ground enriched by the ashes of the grasses the water-maidens had raked. Tursas’s role is therefore not merely to appear in the meadow: he makes the deliberate planting that turns the aftermath of the fire into the beginning of new growth.

Narrative Role

The episode connects contrasting forces without making Tursas the source of all of them. The grasses come from the water-maidens’ work; fire leaves the windrow as ash; Tursas places the leaves and acorn; and the oak rises from the enriched ground. His actions provide the hinge between destruction and growth, while the sequence gives the Great Oak a particular origin in the meadow rather than presenting it as an unexplained feature of the landscape. The narrative leaves Tursas’s story there, with the acorn’s rapid growth as the consequence of his intervention.