Jack and the Beanstalk is an English fairy tale first recorded in the 1734 second edition of Round About Our Coal-Fire. Better-known versions were retold by Benjamin Tabart in 1807, and Joseph Jacobs in 1890.
Summary[]
Once upon a time, there was a poor widow with a son named Jack. They lived on a farm, where they kept a cow, whose milk they lived off of. However, when the cow stopped giving milk, they had no choice but to sell it. The widow sent Jack into town to sell the cow.
While on his way to the market, Jack ran into a peculiar man. This peculiar man made a peculiar offer: the cow, in exchange for magic beans. Jack ended up making the trade, to the fury of his mother, who upon learning what he'd done, threw the beans out the window.
But that strange man was no charlatan - those beans truly were magic, and grew overnight. When Jack awoke, there outside was a gigantic beanstalk connecting the sky to the land. The boy proceeded to climb up the beanstalk, higher and higher, until he reached a world within the clouds. There he found a behemoth castle, where he met a kind giantess who gave him something to eat. However, he would have to hide from the giantess's husband, who ate humans.
When the giant returned to his castle, he could immediately detect Jack's presence - "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!" The giantess denied that there was a boy there, protecting Jack from her husband. Then that evening, when the giant went to sleep, Jack stole a sack of gold and made his way back down the beanstalk. With that gold, Jack and his mother were able to live well.
Jack would journey up that beanstalk twice more. On his second trip, largely the same sequence of events happened - the giantess gave him food, the giant sensed his presence, the giantess covered for him, and Jack made off with the giants' treasure. On this second trip, he took a hen (in some versions a goose) that laid golden eggs.
Then on Jack's third visit, the same sequence repeated a third time (rule of three), only this time the giant discovered him. Jack had to quickly climb down the beanstalk, the bloodthirsty giant in hot pursuit. Arriving down at the beanstalk's base, Jack took an axe to chop it down, sending the giant plummeting to his death.
Jack and his mother lived happily ever after.
Variations[]
- The earliest recorded version in Round About Our Coal-Fire has roughly the same skeleton as the story we know, but many of the details are radically different. Instead of a mother, Jack has a grandmother who's a witch, as well as the catalyst for the story. The magic beans started out in the grandmother's possession, before Jack stole and planted them. The grandmother also had a pet cat, who Jack followed up the beanstalk, before it changed into a princess. The grandmother turned into a toad for some reason. Before the giant's castle, Jack visited a bar on one of the beanstalk's leaves. In his sleep, Jack was visited by a fairy, who gifted him with a magic ring. The giant himself welcomed Jack and the princess into his home, though intended to eat them later. Instead of the giant falling to his death, he was turned to stone by the princess, who was changed into a basilisk by the magic ring.