_Source_.--From two chap-books at the British Museum (London, 1805,
Paisley, 1814). I have taken some hints from “Felix Summerly's” (Sir
Henry Cole's) version, 1845. From the latter part, I have removed the
incident of the Giant dragging the lady along by her hair.
_Parallels_.--The chap-book of “Jack the Giant-Killer” is a curious
jumble. The second part, as in most chap-books, is a weak and late
invention of the enemy, and is not _volkstümlich_ at all. The first part
is compounded of a comic and a serious theme. The first is that of the
Valiant Tailor (Grimm, No. 20); to this belong the incidents of the
fleabite blows (for variants of which see Köhler in _Jahrb. rom. eng.
Phil._, viii. 252), and that of the slit paunch (_cf._ Cosquin, _l.c._,
ii. 51). The Thankful Dead episode, where the hero is assisted by the
soul of a person whom he has caused to be buried, is found as early
as the _Cento novelle antiche_ and Straparola, xi. 2. It has been best
studied by Köhler in _Germania_, iii. 199-209 (_cf._ Cosquin, i. 214-5;
ii. 14 and note; and Crane, _Ital. Pop. Tales_, 350, note 12). It occurs
also in the curious play of Peele's _The Old Wives' Tale_, in which one
of the characters is the Ghost of Jack. Practically the same story as
this part of Jack the Giant-Killer occurs in Kennedy, _Fictions of the
Irish Celts_, p. 32, “Jack the Master and Jack the Servant;” and Kennedy
adds (p. 38), “In some versions Jack the Servant is the spirit of the
buried man.”
The “Fee-fi-fo-fum” formula is common to all English stories of giants
and ogres; it also occurs in Peele's play and in _King Lear_ (see note
on “Childe Rowland”). Messrs. Jones and Kropf have some remarks on it in
their “Magyar Tales,” pp. 340-1; so has Mr. Lang in his “Perrault,” p.
lxiii., where he traces it to the Furies in Aeschylus' _Eumenides_.