Description
Jack is a poor young man who lives with his widowed mother and a dairy cow in a country house. The cow's milk is their only source of income. One day, the cow stops giving milk, so the mother asks Jack to take it to the market to be sold. On the way, Jack meets a grain merchant who offers magic beans in exchange for the cow, and Jack agrees. When he arrives home without any money, his mother gets angry, throws the beans on the floor, and sends Jack to bed without dinner.
During the night, the magic beans cause a giant beanstalk to grow outside Jack's window. The next morning, Jack climbs the beanstalk to high ground in the sky. He finds an enormous castle and sneaks into it. Soon after, the giant owner of the castle returns home. The giant describes that there is the smell of a human being in rhyming sentences:
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Fei Fei Foo Fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman: dead or alive, I will grind his bones to make bread. |
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In versions where the giant's wife appears, she convinces him that he is wrong and helps Jack hide because the woman knows he is poor. When the giant falls asleep, Jack steals a bag of gold coins and escapes down the beanstalk.
Jack climbs the beanstalk twice to look for other treasures and steals them while the giant sleeps; first he steals a goose that lays golden eggs, then a magical harp that plays itself. The giant wakes up when Jack leaves the house with the harp and chases Jack down the beanstalk. Jack yells at his mother to give him the axe before the giant reaches the ground, and then chops down the beanstalk, causing the giant to fall and die.
Jack and his mother live happily ever after with Jack's riches.
