“Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive, or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”
A considerable number of decades ago, I remember hearing those words at bedtime – because that is when we used to listen to the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. It is a miracle that I ever got a wink of sleep! But the fairy tale has become more than just the giant wishing to make bread out of a child. The adaptations over the years have made Jack into a ‘Robin Hood’ of his time as he steals (gold coins, a hen that lays golden eggs, and a golden harp that talks) from a Leviathan thief to alleviate the poverty of those living at the base of the beanstalk.
