StorySpotting: Breastmilk from a giantess (Game of Thrones)

StorySpotting is a weekly or kinda-weekly series about folktales, tropes, references, and story motifs that pop up in popular media, from TV shows to video games. Topics are random, depending on what I have watched/played/read recently. Also, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. Be warned!

Who doesn't like Tormund and his outrageous stories? If there was a true storyteller in this show (after Old Nan), it's not Bran, it's definitely the Tormund.
I'm just gonna say it up front: The research for this post royally messed up my search history and Facebook ads. You're welcome.

Where was the story spotted?

Game of Thrones, season 8, episode 2 (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms)

What happens?

During the night of drinking before the Battle of Winterfell, Tormund Giantsbane, everyone's favorite Wildling, tells a story. It goes like this: "I killed a giant when I was 10. Then I climbed right into bed with his wife. When she woke up, you know what she did? Suckled me at her teat for three months. Thought I was her baby. That’s how I got so strong: giant’s milk."
The story has already launched a thousand memes. Just Google "Tormund" and "milk."

What's the story?

Tormund, in the fashion of a true storyteller, takes a story that already exists, and makes it his own. Suckling a giantess' milk is a common motif in world folklore, believe it or not. It usually goes like this:
A hero is on a voyage or a mission, and in order to complete it, he needs help from a giantess. To avoid her killing him on sight, he sneaks up on her, and in an opportune moment he latches onto her breast and sucks milk from it. Sometimes this maneuver is aided by the fact that the giantess wears her breasts thrown over her shoulders (motif number G123, because obviously). Thus, before she even notices, he becomes her milk child, and therefore she cannot hurt him.
Yup.

Pic from here

The motif appears in a lot of different cultures. In the Abaza Nart Sagas, it's the hero Sosruquo who sneaks up on a sleeping witch and sucks milk from her breast, so that she has to adopt him, and give him a horse. In the Armenian tale of the Sunset Lad, the hero on his way to placate the Sun's mother (whom he'd cursed as a child) sucks a giantess' milk, and she helps him accomplish his quest. In another Armenian tale, The Wicked Stepmother, the hero sucks the breast of the giant mother of forty giants, convincing her to help him acquire the Melon of Life. In the Palestinian folktale of Little Nightingale the Crier, the hero in search of a magic bird sucks the breast of a ghoul woman to get her to help him find the bird (and allegedly so do his brother and sister, after he fails). There are some Turkish variants as well, and  Christine Goldberg lists a bunch of other parallels from the Middle East and Africa.
In a Scottish Traveler folktale, a hero on a journey for the White Glaive of Light pretends to be a baby and is picked up and cuddled by th Big Women who guard the glaive.

Conclusion

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. In real life, sucking someone's breast uninvited (unless you are a baby) qualifies as sexual assault, not adoption. Obviously.

G is for the Giant Princess

Since we already had a dwarf.

This princess comes to you from Thailand, particularly, from this book.

The giant princess is not really the protagonist in this tale, as much as one more problem two star-crossed lovers have to overcome in order to finally be together. On the other hand, she is more interesting than the actual heroine.

The giant princess' name is Princess Phakar, and the is the only daughter of the widow queen of the giants, Queen Warsan (I wonder what happened to the king). She is young and innocent: she has never even tasted human flesh before. This seems to be kind of a coming-of-age ritual, because the Queen, as soon as her giant soldiers bring her a human prince (who happens to be the hero of this story, snatched away from his bride who at the time is disguised as an old priest, don't ask, long story) - orders the rare delicacy to be brought to the princess for consumption.

There is a problem: Princess Phakar falls in love with the human.

Talk about ill-fated love. If they could overcome the difference in size, there is still the matter of the whole star-crossed lover destiny thing, and the fact that the "other woman" is the daughter of the god Indra.

And you think your love life is complicated?!

Unfortunately I have not managed to get my hands on the original book yet, so, courtesy of Google Book Preview, the last page of the tale is missing. You have been warned. I am guessing the star-crossed lovers get together, and the giant princess can be happy to escape with her life.

Let's hope the next human she encounters is not called Jack.