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 volkstumlich 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 Kohler 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 Kohler 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.