In 1804 Benjamin Tabart published a Collection of Popular Stories for the Nursery, which included The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk, set "in the days of King Alfred". It is one of the best known of a cycle of Jack stories, including Jack the Giant Slayer versions of it circulated widely in "chapbooks", the popular English publications printed on a single, folded sheet of paper, illustrated by crude woodcuts and sold for a few pence by pedlars or "chapmen". ![]() The earliest printed version of Jack and the Beanstalk was published in England in the 1730s as The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean, in a satirical collection of folktales. Although the rhyme is much older than the fairytale, and is even quoted by Edgar in King Lear, it has crept into versions of Jack and the Beanstalk over the past 150 years, and no pantomime adaptation would be the same without it - accompanied by monstrous, thudding footsteps. `FE fo fi fum/ I smell the blood of an Englishman/ Be he living or be he dead/ I'll grind his bones to be my bread." That's what giants say, of course, and have done for centuries, in stories, nursery rhymes, children's games - and especially in Jack and the Beanstalk.
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