In Walter Crane's woodcut the harp reaches out to cling to the vine Jack and his mother then live happily ever after with their riches that Jack stole from the giant. Before the giant reaches the ground, Jack cuts down the beanstalk, causing the giant to fall to his death. The giant chases him down the beanstalk and Jack calls to his mother for an axe. However, the giant is woken when Jack leaves the house with the harp. He learns of other treasures and steals them when the giant sleeps: first a goose that lays golden eggs (the most common variant is a hen compare the idiom 'to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.'), then a harp that plays by itself. Jack returns up the beanstalk twice more. Įventually, the giant falls asleep, and Jack steals a bag of gold coins and makes his escape down the beanstalk. The giant senses that Jack is nearby, and speaks a rhyme: 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. Soon after, the owner of the castle, a giant, returns home.

When Jack finds an enormous castle, he breaks into it. When he arrives home without any money, his mother becomes furious, throws the beans on the ground, and sends Jack to bed.ĭuring the night, the magic beans cause a gigantic beanstalk to grow, which Jack climbs to a land high in the sky. On the way, Jack meets an old man who offers ' magic beans' in exchange for the cow, and Jack makes the trade. When the cow stops giving milk, Jack's mother tells him to take the cow to the market to be sold. Jack is a young boy living with his widowed mother, with a dairy cow as their only source of income. 'Jack and the Beanstalk' is the best known of the ' Jack tales', a series of stories featuring the archetypal Cornish and English hero and stock character Jack. Jacobs' version is most commonly reprinted today and it is believed to be closer to the oral versions than Tabart's because it lacks the moralising. 'Felix Summerly' (Henry Cole) popularised it in The Home Treasury (1842), and Joseph Jacobs rewrote it in English Fairy Tales (1890). It appeared as 'The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean' in 1734 and as Benjamin Tabart's moralised 'The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk' in 1807. ' Jack and the Beanstalk' is an English fairy tale. Joseph Jacobs, English Fairy Tales (1890) Illustration by Arthur Rackham, 1918, in English Fairy Tales by Flora Annie Steelīenjamin Tabart, The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk (1807)

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