Nix Nought Nothing

In the tale as recorded, a queen gave birth while the king was away and, not wishing to christen the child until the father's return, decreed the boy be called Nix Nought Nothing (L: Nicht Nought Nothing) until that time. While the king later crossed a river, a giant offered aid on condition of receiving 'Nix Nought Nothing,' and the king rashly promised the unnamed boy. When the king could not or would not fulfil that promise with substitutions, the true child is handed over to the giant and raised in the giant's household, setting the narrative of impossible labours and escape into motion.

The sources provide minimal physical description of the prince beyond his social identity (son of a queen, raised at court, later servant of the giant). The antagonist is identified only as 'a giant' and the helper as 'the giant's daughter'; extant synopses emphasize their roles and deeds rather than anthropometric detail. Specific acts (summoning animals, climbing to a nest, creating obstacles during flight) constitute their observable presence in the tale rather than sustained portraiture.

Nix Nought Nothing himself is not depicted as magically empowered in the available accounts; his agency is largely mortal and dependent on helpers. The giant exercises authority to claim a human child by bargain and to set impossible tasks (cleaning stables, emptying a loch, retrieving a bird's nest without breaking eggs). The giant's daughter displays the tale's overt magical agency: she summons animals to clean stalls, summons fish to drink a loch, in Lang's text sacrifices fingers and toes to create a stair to reach a nest, and in Jacobs' version furnishes transformational implements used during the escape (a comb becoming a brier, a hair dagger becoming a hedge of razors, a magic flask producing a wave that drowns the giant). In Jacobs' variant the hero is also afflicted by a sleep-enchantment (learned from a hen-wife) and can be temporarily roused by a counteracting spell taught to the gardener's daughter.