 Roger Lancelyn Green suggests that "Jabberwocky" is a parody of the old German ballad "The Shepherd of the Giant Mountains" in which a shepherd kills a griffin that is attacking his sheep.The ballad had been translated into English in blank verse by Carroll's cousin Menella Bute Smedley in 1846, many years before the appearance of the Alice books.Historian Sean B. Palmer suggests that Carroll was inspired by a section from Shakespeare's "Hamlet", citing the lines