"Fee-fi-fo-fum" is the first line of a historical

quatrain A quatrain is a type of stanza, or a complete poem, consisting of four lines. Existing in a variety of forms, the quatrain appears in poems from the poetic traditions of various ancient civilizations including Persia, Ancient India, Ancient Gre ...

(or sometimes couplet) famous for its use in the classic English fairy tale "

Jack and the Beanstalk "Jack and the Beanstalk" is an English fairy tale. It appeared as "The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean" in 1734 4th edition On Commons and as Benjamin Tabart's moralized "The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk" in 1807. Henry Co ...

". The poem, as given in

Joseph Jacobs Joseph Jacobs (29 August 1854 – 30 January 1916) was an Australian folklorist, translator, literary critic, social scientist, historian and writer of English literature who became a notable collector and publisher of English folklore. Jacob ...

' 1890 rendition, is as follows: Jack and the Beanstalk Giant - Project Gutenberg eText 17034

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.

Though the rhyme is tetrametric, it follows no consistent

metrical foot The foot is the basic repeating rhythmic unit that forms part of a line of verse in most Indo-European traditions of poetry, including English accentual-syllabic verse and the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry. ...

; however, the lines correspond roughly to a monosyllabic tetrameter, a dactylic tetrameter, a

trochaic tetrameter Trochaic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line of four trochaic feet. The etymology of the word Trochaic is the Greek word ''trokhaios'', from the verb ''trecho'', which means "I run". In classical metre, a trochee is a foot co ...

, and an

iambic tetrameter Iambic tetrameter is a poetic meter in ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spondee and an iamb, or two iambs. Ther ...

respectively. The poem has historically made use of assonant

half rhyme Perfect rhyme—also called full rhyme, exact rhyme, or true rhyme—is a form of rhyme between two words or phrases, satisfying the following conditions: *The stressed vowel sound in both words must be identical, as well as any subsequent s ...

Origin

The rhyme appears in the 1596 pamphlet " Haue with You to Saffron-Walden" written by

Thomas Nashe Thomas Nashe (baptised November 1567 – c. 1601; also Nash) was an Elizabethan playwright, poet, satirist and a significant pamphleteer. He is known for his novel '' The Unfortunate Traveller'', his pamphlets including ''Pierce Penniless,' ...

, who mentions that the rhyme was already old and its origins obscure: In

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's play ''

King Lear ''King Lear'' is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his power and land between two of his daughters. He becomes destitute and insane a ...

'' (c. 1605), in Act III, Scene IV, the character Edgar referring to the legend of Childe Rowland exclaims:

Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man.

The verse in ''King Lear'' makes use of the archaic word "fie", used to express disapproval. This word is used repeatedly in Shakespeare's works:

shouts, "Fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!", and in ''

Antony and Cleopatra ''Antony and Cleopatra'' ( First Folio title: ''The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra'') is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The play was first performed, by the King's Men, at either the Blackfriars Theatre or the Globe Theatre in arou ...

'',

Mark Antony Marcus Antonius (14 January 1 August 30 BC), commonly known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from a constitutional republic into the ...

exclaims, "O fie, fie, fie!" The earliest known printed version of the Jack the Giant-Killer tale appears in ''The history of Jack and the Giants'' (Newcastle, 1711) and this, and later versions (found in

chapbook A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. In early modern Europe a chapbook was a type of printed street literature. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered bookl ...

s), include renditions of the poem, recited by the giant Thunderdell:

Fee, fau, fum, I smell the blood of an ''English'' man, Be alive, or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread.

Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum. I smell the blood of an Englishman, Be he living, or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to mix my bread.

Charles Mackay proposes in ''The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe'' that the seemingly meaningless string of syllables "Fa fe fi fo fum" is actually a coherent phrase of ancient Gaelic, and that the complete quatrain covertly expresses the

Celts The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancien ...

' cultural detestation of the invading Angles and Saxons: * ''Fa'' from (fa!) "behold!" or "see!" * ''Fe'' from ''Fiadh'' (fee-a) "food"; * ''Fi'' from ''fiú'' "good to eat" * ''Fo'' from ''fogh'' (fó) "sufficient" and * ''Fum'' from ''feum'' "hunger". Thus "Fa fe fi fo fum!" becomes "Behold food, good to eat, sufficient for my hunger!"

References

{{Jack English poems

Origin

See also

References