Long long ago, in the age before television, lived a giant. He was large fearsome looking being but actually quite kind. Many kings, dukes, and other nobles would hire the giant to help them build their castles and palaces. Because of this the giant soon grew quite rich. He eventually decided that he helped enough other people and wanted to build a home for himself. However wherever he went he had trouble finding a place large enough for him. Any place flat enough to build a home for him had so many farms and villages he knew he would accidentally squish someone if he stayed there. There were mountains without people but they weren’t flat enough to build a home the size he needed. One day while traveling through the mountains he climbed to the top of the tallest one and looked out to find a place to build his home. As far as he could see were settlements and homes with no room for him. He noticed though that standing on top of the mountain he was tall enough to just reach the clouds in the sky. He reached up and managed to grab onto one and pulled himself up. The clouds were great for the giant. It was always sunny, there was plenty of room, and most importantly he didn’t have to be careful about accidentally stepping on someone or knocking something over. He moved all of his possessions up onto the clouds and built himself a large castle to live in. He eventually married a giantess and lived a comfortable life on top of the clouds. During the day he would work as a heavy lifter and in the evening he would come home. Everything was fine until one day when he came home after a hard day of work he smelled a stranger. The giant had an excellent nose and since there was no one on the top of the clouds besides the giant himself and his wife he could pick out the scent easily. The giant was worried, he didn’t really want humans on his cloud, he enjoyed being able to walk naturally up on the clouds without worrying about stepping on people. He decided to try scaring the human and so bellowed out
“Fe 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.”
He figured that would scare the intruder back to where he belonged. After eating dinner the giant sighed as the remembered that he needed to work on the family budget. Although the human kings paid a lot for the giants labor, the giant and his wife were big eaters and money was always a concern for them. He carefully started counting out the money creating piles to determine how much to spend on food, tools, and other necessities. The giant was worried to see how little was left over for savings. He started counting again however he found working on the budget and counting money very boring. That combined with the hard days work he had just done made him drowsy and he eventually fell asleep at the table. In the morning he awoke to stiff neck and all of his gold gone. The giant was in a bit of a panic thinking he had misplaced it but a full search and it never turned up. The giant asked his wife about it who told him a human had somehow made his way onto the clouds and to the castle. The wife said she had given the young man something to eat and when she heard the giant coming home had put the human in safe place so he wouldn’t get hurt and forgotten about him. They sadly realized that the greedy human must have stolen all their money.
“What are we going to do?” The giant asked “We aren’t going to be able to afford food to eat!”
“Maybe we can get some help from that emperor you’re currently working for.”
The giant discussed the situation with the Emperor and in exchange for some extra work the Emperor agreed to let the giant borrow a magical goose that laid golden eggs. The eggs weren’t large compared to the giant so it didn’t really solve the budget problems but it did keep them from starving. Every night the giant would come home and tell the goose to lay until they had enough gold to make it through the day. Because of the extra work the giant was always tired these days and frequently fell asleep before he could even make it to bed. One night after doing this he again smelled a stranger in the castle again. Again he bellowed out
“Fe 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.”
Thinking that maybe the thief who had robbed him was back the giant searched all through the castle. The giant hoped that maybe if he found the thief he could force him to return the gold he stole last time but found no sign of a human at all. Being tired from the extra work he had been doing and knowing if he didn’t tell the goose to lay they would be out of food he gave up searching for human brought out the goose. He had hardly made the goose lay more then a few dozen eggs when exhaustion overcame him and he fell asleep at the table again. In the morning he was horrified to realize that the thief had struck again as the goose was gone. The giant didn’t know what he was going to do, the goose wasn’t even his and he would have to give it back to the Emperor soon. They also had no money at all either. His wife confessed that yesterday a human had come visiting. She couldn’t tell if it was the same person or not since humans were so small it was hard to tell them apart. Questioning him the human had claimed his name was ‘Jack’ which she had suspected was a fake name. Not wanting to falsely accuse an innocent person of theft she had placed him in a pot so he couldn’t escape until her husband got home but had forgotten about him again. Looking in the pot she had placed the human in they found a hole in the bottom large enough for a human to climb through. They had been planning on repairing the pot before their gold was stolen but with the theft they hadn’t been able to afford too. The giant didn’t know what he was going to do, they had little food, no money, and now couldn’t replace the goose he had borrowed. They decided the only option they had was to lay a trap for the thief so that when he struck again they could regain their possessions. It wasn’t long before the human was back at the front door while the giant was away at work. The giantess pretended to be friendly towards the human and gave him the last of their food. She then told the human he should hide in the pot again which he did. When the giant came home he immediately smelled the human. In order to avoid suspicion he again bellowed out
“Fe 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.”
He then pretended to search for the thief but intentionally avoided the pot where he and his wife had agreed to hide the thief. He then brought out the last treasure in the house, a harp that could sing and play by itself. This treasure was a family heirloom that the giant and his wife would never sell unless there was absolutely no other choice. It wasn’t very valuable as money but had great sentimental value as it was a gift from the giants grandmother. The plan was to use the harp as bait, and when the thief stole the harp chase him to where he hid his loot and reclaim their stolen property. The giant ordered the harp to play so that the thief would be tempted to steal it. The giant then pretended to fall asleep at the table, and he waited. The thief was quieter then the giant expected and he might have gotten away with it if the harp itself didn’t cry out a warning. The giant ran after the human being careful to stay close enough to keep an eye on him but far enough to make the thief think he might escape. He chased the thief to a far corner of the cloud where the top of a beanstalk was poking through. The human quickly scampered down it. The giant looked down and saw the beanstalk extended all the way down to the ground where there was farm. The giant started to climb down but the beanstalk it couldn’t really hold his weight and he got his foot tangled when he put his whole weight on it. The giant heard yelling at the bottom and saw that the thief had an accomplice with him at the bottom of the beanstalk though he couldn’t quite make out the other person very well. The other person came running up with an axe and the thief got to work and started chopping down the beanstalk. The giant struggled to either get back up onto his cloud or down to the ground but he was badly tangled in the beanstalk and couldn’t get free. The thief soon had chopped enough of the beanstalk that it came crashing down with the giant still tangled near the top. The falling beanstalk caused a swath of destruction that stretched to the neighboring kingdom where the giant landed. The giant didn’t survive the fall and wiped out most of the kingdom he landed in. The giants wife didn’t know what had happened to her husband and was left a poor widow who eventually died of a broken heart when the giant never came back. Only the thief remained to tell what happened, and his version is the one most people know, but now you know what really happened.