Looking to do some research on this story, and looking for a more expansive plot maybe, maybe some Easter eggs I could slide into a retelling, really anything. I'm aware of Jack Spriggins, but can't find the original text.
Found at least the first written story: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Round_about_our_Coal_Fire%2C_or%2C_Christmas_Entertainments%2C_4th_edn%2C_1734.pdf
Oops... I just googled the Jack Spriggins one and not realised that I wrote it in the plot-points, but I did find this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-fi-fo-fum
I remember finding a youtube video once about giants and what the legends might have really been referring to. It included J& the BS along with many variations on it from the British Isles I believe. Let me see if I can re-discover that.
Not finding it yet, but if you do a search for myths giants on youtube, there's a lot of fascinating-looking videos. I'll keep looking, but I might get caught up in watching some of these. Sorry, you know how the internet sucks us in.
The Hungarian version of the beanstalk story features no giants. Always found that fascinating; instead the realm of the clouds has a three-headed dragon with the golden hen. The story ends the same way, except the dragon doesn't fall to death and instead the boy kills him with an axe. Ah, yes. And the lute is not a lute, but a hurdy-gurdy.
"Jack" is actually a kind of Cornish folk hero, so you could build in elements of other Jack stories into yours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_(hero)
Ok, here's a very basic breakdown of the elements of it: It follows the typical hero's journey template, a difficult journey and at the end a dragon (or a giant) guarding treasure. And it begins with Jack seeing the value of the beans for growing the vine rather than as food, or whatever he was supposed to be buying. I should look it up, I don't remember it all that well. Anyway, he believed in the magic, so he was granted access to the Giant's abode (the vine grew tall enough so he could reach it). For anyone who refused to believe in the magic I think it wouldn't have worked, or it would have ended up disastrously, like the vine grows and falls on their house. Then he still needs to have the courage and fortitude to complete the terrifying climb, which he obviously does. Giants can represent different things, and it depends on what kind of interpretation you're looking for. There are historical interpretations in which the giants represent empires or large powerful city-states that are conquering smaller ones in the region. But there's also a psychological one, or perhaps several. I think this is a lot more to the point, and likely all these interpretations can be true at the same time. Myth, fairy tale and religion are the deepest wisdom, and they work, like dreams, on several levels of interpretation at once. The giant is playing the same role often played by a dragon,—the savage guardian of the treasure who must be defeated, not just through courage but outsmarted. Jack does this and as a result he gains the treasure—not just a golden egg, but the goose that lays them, so he and his mother (family? Don't recall) are set for life now. This means he entered into a difficult and danger-fraught inner voyage in what we today know as the unconscious. In those days it was known by many names, generally envisioned as a strange faraway land difficult to reach. I would say the giant represents something primitive and dangerous inside his unconscious, that must be tricked in order for him to pull the treasure out of repression. The treasure being something like an ability or strength that he long ago repressed because it was seen as bad or shameful. This of course parallels the journey of Individuation I posted about earlier today, Jung's name for the Hero's Journey that results in growth and a release of the inner qualities formerly repressed. You don't have to think of it in his terms specifically—the myths and religions all tell the same tale in a thousand different ways, using a rotating cast of characters like giants, dragons, ogres etc. It's a very dreamlike way of expressing inner truths they understood then but could only express metaphorically. I know in some mythology giants (Titans to the Greeks) represent the gargantuan forces of nature in all their savage power and careless destruction. They came into existence before the gods, who were more evolved and human, endowed with those same forces of nature but under more conscious control and dedicated to helping mankind forge a way out of barbarism and primitiveness to become more civilized.
Will get to everyone's posts. Thanks, guys! I believe the original written text refers to the giant as Gogmagog, which, besides being a disappointment of a heavy metal supergroup, was also a giant in Welsh folklore. Will now have to delve into that, lol.
If you want an alternative take on the story, you could make the 'giants' ordinary people and the main character a very small person who doesn't realize he lives in a garden, until he climbs a beanstalk to the window of the house.
That could be a good story. Honestly, though, the angle I'm going for is a Monty Python-style one. Lots of jokes to be made there.
"Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman!" "I'll have you know my mother was Welsh. And that doesn't even rhyme."
Yours is probably funnier than mine. I was going to go with something like: Gogmagog: Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Jack: ...well, I'm not bleeding. Are you? Gill: No, I'm not. Jack: Mr. Giant, are you sure it's BLOOD you're smelling? Could just be the iron from our swords. Gogmagog: What? Er . . .
"You LIE! I can see a pool of blood on the floor behind you!" "That's not blood." "...what is it?" "Well, I had a bit too much to drink last night."
