Fee - fi - fo - fum - wikipedia Fee - fi - fo - fum `` Fee - fi - fo - fum '' is the first line of a historical quatrain ( or sometimes couplet ) famous for its use in the classic English fairy tale `` Jack and the Beanstalk ''. The poem, as given in Joseph Jacobs ' 1890 rendition, is as follows : 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 ; however, the respective verses correspond roughly to monosyllabic tetrameter, dactylic tetrameter, trochaic tetrameter, and iambic tetrameter. The poem has historically made use of assonant half rhyme. Origin The rhyme may have originated with the ballad Childe Rowland. It appears in the pamphlet Haue with You to Saffron - Walden ( published in 1596 ) written by Thomas Nashe ( who mentions that the rhyme was already old and its origins obscure ) : Fy, Fa and fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman In William Shakespeare 's play King Lear ( c. 1605 ), the character Edgar 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 : King Lear shouts, `` Fie, fie, fie ! pah, pah ! '', and in Antony and Cleopatra, Mark Antony 's 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 chapbooks ), 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 ' cultural detestation of the invading Angles and Saxons : Fa from faich ( 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 ! '' Ironically, after the Napoleonic Wars it could be said that the British soldier alive or dead gave British children their homes and bread. The battlefields were swept of corpses by UK businessmen whom shipped tons of bones through the port of Hull to Yorkshire where steam mills setup to grind them sent the powdered calcium through Doncaster and other markets where it was sold to farmers as fertiliser for their fields. References ^ Jump up to : Tatar, Maria ( 2002 ). `` Jack and the Beanstalk ''. The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. New York : W.W. Norton & Co. pp. 131 -- 144. ISBN 0 - 393 - 05163 - 3. ^ Jump up to : McCarthy, William Bernard ; Oxford, Cheryl ; Sobol, Joseph Daniel, eds. ( 1994 ). Jack in Two Worlds : Contemporary North American Tales and Their Tellers ( illustrated ed. ). UNC Press Books. p. xv. ISBN 9780807844434. Jump up ^ `` Fie ''. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. The Houghton Mifflin Co. 2000. Retrieved November 13, 2008. Jump up ^ `` The Arthuriad '' ( PDF ). p. 25 ( PDF 26 ). Jump up ^ History of Jack the Giant Killer. Glasgow : Printed for the booksellers. Jump up ^ Mackay, Charles ( 1877 ). The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe : And More Especially of the English and Lowland Scotch, and Their Slang, Cant, and Colloquial Dialects. Trübner. p. 160. Retrieved 25 August 2015. Jump up ^ https://www.historyextra.com/period/were-the-pulverised-bones-of-soldiers-and-horses-who-died-at-the-battle-of-waterloo-sold-as-soil-fertiliser/ Jack Jack and the Beanstalk Film Jack and the Beanstalk ( 1902 ) Jack and the Beanstalk ( 1952 ) Jack and the Beanstalk ( 1974 ) Jack and the Beanstalk ( 2009 ) Jack the Giant Slayer ( 2013 ) Into the Woods ( 2014 ) Television `` Beanstalks and Bad Eggs '' ( 1997 episode ) Jack and the Beanstalk : The Real Story ( 2001 miniseries ) Once Upon a Time : `` Tallahassee '' ( 2012 ) `` Tiny '' ( 2013 ) Cartoon Jack and the Beanstalk ( 1931 ) Giantland ( 1933 ) Jack - Wabbit and the Beanstalk ( 1943 ) Beanstalk Bunny ( 1955 ) Tweety and the Beanstalk ( 1957 ) Tom and Jerry 's Giant Adventure ( 2013 ) Video games Jumpin ' Kid : Jack to Mame no Ki Monogatari The Simpsons : Bart & the Beanstalk Tiny Toon Adventures : Buster and the Beanstalk Tiny Toon Adventures : The Great Beanstalk Related articles Fee - fi - fo - fum Fun and Fancy Free Into the Woods The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales Politically Correct Bedtime Stories Jack the Giant Killer Characters Blunderbore Cormoran Thunderdell Film Jack the Giant Killer ( 1962 ) Jack the Giant Slayer ( 2013 ) Jack the Giant Killer ( 2013 ) Novel Jack, the Giant Killer Video games Jack the Giantkiller Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fee-fi-fo-fum&oldid=856262376 '' Categories : English poems Talk About Wikipedia Add links This page was last edited on 24 August 2018, at 00 : 32 ( UTC ). 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Question: where did fe fi fo fum come from
Answer: English fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk