index-of-imagination

[index-of-imagination]

Thunderdell, the Most Iconic Giant You've Never Heard of, and a Brief History of Fee Fi Fo Fum

Did you know the giant who said "Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an English man" had a name? Well, sorta.

The first known instance of the phrase was found in the pamphlet (a cheap, unbound book more or less) entitled Have with You to Saffron-Walden in 1596 by playwright Thomas Nashe. However, the pamphlet remarks that the origins of the phrase were unknown. Quote:

"O, 'tis a precious apophthegmatical pedant, who will find matter enough to dilate a whole day of the first invention of Fy, fa, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman [...]" pg. 20

The first known and documented instance I could find of the phrase being uttered by a giant was in the 1711 Newcastle-on-Tyne text The History of Jack and the Giants, one of the very first "Jack tales." If you're not a folklore geek like me, you may not've paid much mind to the name 'Jack' appearing damn near everywhere in fairy tales. You got Jack and the Bean Stalk, Jack-o-Lantern's, The House that Jack Built, and more modern urban legends like Springheeled Jack. He even has cognates all across Europe, such as Antonio in Italy, Hansel in Germany and Ivan in Russia. Anyway, back on topic, the Newcastle text, though once more not the original version of the story and instead a "modernized" take on it, features the iconic phrase.

"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."

The giant that utters this is Thunderdell, a two-headed giant who attacked Jack at his own banquet to avenge the deaths of all the other giants Jack has slayed up to this point, those being identified as Cormoran, whom Jack kills with a pickaxe, Blunderbore, whom Jack kills by hanging and stabbing and an unnamed female giant. Thunderdell was the penultimate of the giants Jack killed, with the final being Galligantus, who is the only of these giants that lacks a Wikipedia article.

I'm unsure if any noteworthy version of Jack and the Beanstalk identified the giant he killed, unfortunately.