Jack and the Beanstalk
Two versions of this story will be discussed here. The earliest known published edition appeared in London in 1734, under the title Enchantment demonstrated in the Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean. However, this version seems to have been forgotten; all later tellings seem to derive from one printed much later – in 1807. This was a sixpenny booklet called The History of Jack and the Beanstalk and is abridged below. It should be added that another version published in the same year – The History of Mother Twaddle, and the Marvellous Achievements of Her Son Jack – is very similar but ends with Jack killing the giant and marrying the damsel who had welcomed him and protected him in the giant’s house.
The 1734 publication is significant in that it is the earliest known version, and substantially different from the others, allowing a perspective on the familiar versions which all stem from the same printed source. In this alternative version, the motif of incest is stressed. We are told that although Jack ‘was a smart large boy’, nevertheless ‘his Grandmother and he laid together, and between whiles the good old Woman instructed Jack in many Things...’ The woman says to her grandson:
‘Jack, says she, as you are a comfortable Bed Fellow to me, I must tell you that I have a Bean is my House which will make your Fortune....’
The old woman accidentally loses the bean from her purse; it falls into the ashes of the hearth, where the cat finds it just as Jack is making his grandmother’s fire:
‘Odds Budd’, says Jack, I’ll set it in our Garden, and see what it will come to, for I always loved Beans and Bacon; and then what was wonderful! the Bean was no sooner put into the Ground, but the Sprout of it Jumped out of the Earth, and grew so quick that it gave Jack a Fillip on the Nose, and made him bleed furiously....’
Bleeding ‘furiously’ from his nose, Jack runs to his grandmother crying ‘Save me! I am killed!’; she tells him that now her enchantment will be broken in an hour’s time, whereupon she will be transformed. Angry at Jack’s theft of her bean, she attempts to thrash him, but he escapes up the Beanstalk, which is now a mile high. As her hour expires, the old woman turns into ‘a monstrous Toad’ and crawls into a cellar on her way to the Shades.
Meanwhile Jack climbs and climbs. On lunarchist theoretical grounds, we’d expect cooked meat to be unavailable to him, on account of his nose-bleed (rendering flesh ‘raw’). Little attention is usually given to the motif in the familiar version in which Jack (after a scolding from his mother) is sent ‘supperless to bed.’ In fact, however, there is more to this than meets the eye. The version we’re now examining lays laborious stress on Jack’s hunger, which afflicts him from the moment he begins to bleed. Jack calls at an inn in a town on one of the beanstalk’s leaves:
‘Here he thought to rest for a Time, and goes strutting like a Crow in a Gutter: What have you to eat Landlord, says he’ Everything in the World, Sir, says the Landlord: Why then, says Jack, give me a Neck of Mutton and Broth: Alas, says the Landlord, to morrow is Market Day, how unfortunate it is’ I cannot get you a Neck of Mutton to Night If it was to save my Soul: Well then get me something else, says Jack. Have you any Veal? No, indeed, Sir, not at present; but there is a fine Calf fatting at Mr. Jenkinson’s, that will be killed on Saturday next. But have you any Beef in your House, says Jack? Why truly, Sir, says the Landlord, if you had been here on Monday last, I believe, though I say it that should not say it, you never saw so fine a Sir Loin of Beef as we had, and Plum Pudding too, which the Justice who dined here, and their Clerks and Constables entirely demolished, and though I got nothing by them, yet their Company was a Credit to my House! Zounds, says Jack, have you nothing in the House? I am hungry, I am starving....’
Jack hears a cock crowing and demands that this be killed and broiled; the Landlord refuses because the cock ‘belongs to the squire’. Jack asks for a hen to be killed; but all the hens are incubating eggs, which should hatch in a week. ‘Have you no Eggs in the House?’, asks Jack. ‘No, Sir, indeed’, answers the Landlord, ‘but Jest Eggs, which we make of Chalk’. ‘Why then’, says Jack, ‘what the Devil have you got?’ ‘Why to tell you the Truth, Sir, I don’t know that I have any thing in the House to eat...’ At this point, the narrator explains: ‘Thus was poor Jack plagued by the Enchantment of his Grandmother, who was resolved to lay him under her ill Tongue, so long as her Power lasted.’
At last, however, the old woman’s spell breaks; at this point, we enter the marital phase of lunar time (familiar to English speakers as ‘honeymoon’). While the old grandmother turns into a toad, Jack finds himself at last in the presence of the opposite kind of woman – a ‘fair lady’ known as the ‘Empress of the Mountains of the Moon’; in her previous life she was the grandmother’s black cat. It is explained that this beautiful woman is entirely at Jack’s disposal, and that he now has the full power to enjoy every imaginable pleasure. The couple go to bed and ‘play their Rantum scantum Tricks until the next Morning’. Jack is so tired from his amorous exertions that he sleeps long into the morning, dreaming about killing the giant Gogmagog and rescuing ‘several thousand young Ladies’ from being crushed in the monster’s jaws.
* * * * *
The later version will be more familiar. Jack sells his mother’s cow ‘for a few paltry beans’, which the old woman angrily throws into the garden. Having nothing to eat, ‘they both went supperless to bed’. In the morning, Jack sees a huge beanstalk growing in the garden and climbs up to the sky. Jack finds himself in a barren world: ‘he concluded that he must now die with hunger.’ He arrives at a castle and is taken in by a woman at the door; she agrees to hide him in the oven where he will not be seen by her husband, a giant who craves human flesh. The giant enters, declaring he can smell fresh meat, but Jack remains safe in the oven. Having eaten his usual cannibalistic meal, the giant falls asleep. Jack escapes, seizes a magic hen which lays golden eggs and climbs down the beanstalk to his mother with his prize.
Some tine later, Jack resolves to climb up again. His mother refuses permission, so Jack ‘rose very early, put on his disguise, changed his complexion, and, unperceived by any one, climbed the beanstalk.’ The complexion change (think of it as ‘masking up’) is achieved with ‘something to discolour his skin.’ He is soon back at the castle, unrecognised by the giant’s wife. Events are repeated – this time with Jack stealing gold and silver in two bags.
On the third trip to the sky, it is midsummer’s day. Jack disguises himself completely, goes to the castle and this time escapes with the giant’s magic harp – magic because it plays all by itself. The harp cries out to warn the giant, who wakes up and chases the boy down the beanstalk. But as Jack reaches the ground he fetches an axe, chops down the stalk and brings the giant crashing to his death. Jack and his mother live in wealth and comfort to the end of their days.
Discussion. Bleeding from the nose may be regarded as men’s answer to menstruation (nose-bleeding for this purpose is common in Papua New Guinea). The story of Jack and the Beanstalk may in this light relate to some long-forgotten tradition of male initiation in England.
The relevant menstrual magic is stated in the myth to be derived from womankind: Jack acquires the bean from his grandmother, or in exchange for his Mother’s cow. He is under the spell of this incestuous relationship as his nose bleeds and as he climbs the beanstalk. The immense, growing beanstalk doubtless has phallic connotations. These, however, are inseparable from the incest-motif: the magic is sexual, but it is also menstrual and symbolic of the mother-son connection. This is not marital sex.
While blood is flowing, flesh is raw and inedible, so hunger logically prevails. While under the spell, correspondingly, Jack is hungry (this is stressed in all versions) and when he arrives at the castle be is in fact (to use the language of so many Australian Aboriginal myths) ‘swallowed’ or ‘eaten alive’. He is taken into a cooking receptacle in the giant’s kitchen. Far from consuming meat, he himself is the meat! He comes frighteningly close to being eaten alive. His flesh is raw, the odour of blood exciting and arousing the giant. ‘Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum!’, as the English Yurlunggur (one term for the Aboriginal Rainbow Snake) thunders in the pantomime versions, ‘I smell the blood of an Englishman.’
Three trips are made into the giant’s kitchen, and three treasures stolen. When Jack ‘changes his complexion’ and hides in a symbolic womb (the oven) he is undergoing a role-change similar to that undergone by women in entering menstrual seclusion. When he emerges and escapes from the monster’s jaws in possession of the treasures, it is as if he were reborn. The stolen goose, gold and harp take the place of the stolen blood and fire – or the stolen sound-making instruments or ritual paraphernalia – as featured in primitive matriarchy myths the world over.
Why three trips to the sky? Here’s the lunarchist explanation. Once a month, the moon is absent from the sky for a period which corresponds, ideally, to the time of the menstrual flow. The ‘third time lucky’ motif derives from the idea that the moon is ‘lucky’ – i.e. it arises from its temporary ‘death’ – on the third night after its disappearance.
Once Jack has gone up three times, he chops the beanstalk down, ending the menstrual/incestuous spell and the possibility of further journeys to the sky. A lunar interpretation can be placed on the fact that this occurs on midsummer’s day. When the lunar light/dark cycle is mapped onto the seasonal cycle, midsummer appears as ‘full moon’. This is the traditional time of emergence from seclusion – a moment often marked by ceremonial love-making and popular joy.
The 1734 publication is significant in that it is the earliest known version, and substantially different from the others, allowing a perspective on the familiar versions which all stem from the same printed source. In this alternative version, the motif of incest is stressed. We are told that although Jack ‘was a smart large boy’, nevertheless ‘his Grandmother and he laid together, and between whiles the good old Woman instructed Jack in many Things...’ The woman says to her grandson:
‘Jack, says she, as you are a comfortable Bed Fellow to me, I must tell you that I have a Bean is my House which will make your Fortune....’
The old woman accidentally loses the bean from her purse; it falls into the ashes of the hearth, where the cat finds it just as Jack is making his grandmother’s fire:
‘Odds Budd’, says Jack, I’ll set it in our Garden, and see what it will come to, for I always loved Beans and Bacon; and then what was wonderful! the Bean was no sooner put into the Ground, but the Sprout of it Jumped out of the Earth, and grew so quick that it gave Jack a Fillip on the Nose, and made him bleed furiously....’
Bleeding ‘furiously’ from his nose, Jack runs to his grandmother crying ‘Save me! I am killed!’; she tells him that now her enchantment will be broken in an hour’s time, whereupon she will be transformed. Angry at Jack’s theft of her bean, she attempts to thrash him, but he escapes up the Beanstalk, which is now a mile high. As her hour expires, the old woman turns into ‘a monstrous Toad’ and crawls into a cellar on her way to the Shades.
Meanwhile Jack climbs and climbs. On lunarchist theoretical grounds, we’d expect cooked meat to be unavailable to him, on account of his nose-bleed (rendering flesh ‘raw’). Little attention is usually given to the motif in the familiar version in which Jack (after a scolding from his mother) is sent ‘supperless to bed.’ In fact, however, there is more to this than meets the eye. The version we’re now examining lays laborious stress on Jack’s hunger, which afflicts him from the moment he begins to bleed. Jack calls at an inn in a town on one of the beanstalk’s leaves:
‘Here he thought to rest for a Time, and goes strutting like a Crow in a Gutter: What have you to eat Landlord, says he’ Everything in the World, Sir, says the Landlord: Why then, says Jack, give me a Neck of Mutton and Broth: Alas, says the Landlord, to morrow is Market Day, how unfortunate it is’ I cannot get you a Neck of Mutton to Night If it was to save my Soul: Well then get me something else, says Jack. Have you any Veal? No, indeed, Sir, not at present; but there is a fine Calf fatting at Mr. Jenkinson’s, that will be killed on Saturday next. But have you any Beef in your House, says Jack? Why truly, Sir, says the Landlord, if you had been here on Monday last, I believe, though I say it that should not say it, you never saw so fine a Sir Loin of Beef as we had, and Plum Pudding too, which the Justice who dined here, and their Clerks and Constables entirely demolished, and though I got nothing by them, yet their Company was a Credit to my House! Zounds, says Jack, have you nothing in the House? I am hungry, I am starving....’
Jack hears a cock crowing and demands that this be killed and broiled; the Landlord refuses because the cock ‘belongs to the squire’. Jack asks for a hen to be killed; but all the hens are incubating eggs, which should hatch in a week. ‘Have you no Eggs in the House?’, asks Jack. ‘No, Sir, indeed’, answers the Landlord, ‘but Jest Eggs, which we make of Chalk’. ‘Why then’, says Jack, ‘what the Devil have you got?’ ‘Why to tell you the Truth, Sir, I don’t know that I have any thing in the House to eat...’ At this point, the narrator explains: ‘Thus was poor Jack plagued by the Enchantment of his Grandmother, who was resolved to lay him under her ill Tongue, so long as her Power lasted.’
At last, however, the old woman’s spell breaks; at this point, we enter the marital phase of lunar time (familiar to English speakers as ‘honeymoon’). While the old grandmother turns into a toad, Jack finds himself at last in the presence of the opposite kind of woman – a ‘fair lady’ known as the ‘Empress of the Mountains of the Moon’; in her previous life she was the grandmother’s black cat. It is explained that this beautiful woman is entirely at Jack’s disposal, and that he now has the full power to enjoy every imaginable pleasure. The couple go to bed and ‘play their Rantum scantum Tricks until the next Morning’. Jack is so tired from his amorous exertions that he sleeps long into the morning, dreaming about killing the giant Gogmagog and rescuing ‘several thousand young Ladies’ from being crushed in the monster’s jaws.
* * * * *
The later version will be more familiar. Jack sells his mother’s cow ‘for a few paltry beans’, which the old woman angrily throws into the garden. Having nothing to eat, ‘they both went supperless to bed’. In the morning, Jack sees a huge beanstalk growing in the garden and climbs up to the sky. Jack finds himself in a barren world: ‘he concluded that he must now die with hunger.’ He arrives at a castle and is taken in by a woman at the door; she agrees to hide him in the oven where he will not be seen by her husband, a giant who craves human flesh. The giant enters, declaring he can smell fresh meat, but Jack remains safe in the oven. Having eaten his usual cannibalistic meal, the giant falls asleep. Jack escapes, seizes a magic hen which lays golden eggs and climbs down the beanstalk to his mother with his prize.
Some tine later, Jack resolves to climb up again. His mother refuses permission, so Jack ‘rose very early, put on his disguise, changed his complexion, and, unperceived by any one, climbed the beanstalk.’ The complexion change (think of it as ‘masking up’) is achieved with ‘something to discolour his skin.’ He is soon back at the castle, unrecognised by the giant’s wife. Events are repeated – this time with Jack stealing gold and silver in two bags.
On the third trip to the sky, it is midsummer’s day. Jack disguises himself completely, goes to the castle and this time escapes with the giant’s magic harp – magic because it plays all by itself. The harp cries out to warn the giant, who wakes up and chases the boy down the beanstalk. But as Jack reaches the ground he fetches an axe, chops down the stalk and brings the giant crashing to his death. Jack and his mother live in wealth and comfort to the end of their days.
Discussion. Bleeding from the nose may be regarded as men’s answer to menstruation (nose-bleeding for this purpose is common in Papua New Guinea). The story of Jack and the Beanstalk may in this light relate to some long-forgotten tradition of male initiation in England.
The relevant menstrual magic is stated in the myth to be derived from womankind: Jack acquires the bean from his grandmother, or in exchange for his Mother’s cow. He is under the spell of this incestuous relationship as his nose bleeds and as he climbs the beanstalk. The immense, growing beanstalk doubtless has phallic connotations. These, however, are inseparable from the incest-motif: the magic is sexual, but it is also menstrual and symbolic of the mother-son connection. This is not marital sex.
While blood is flowing, flesh is raw and inedible, so hunger logically prevails. While under the spell, correspondingly, Jack is hungry (this is stressed in all versions) and when he arrives at the castle be is in fact (to use the language of so many Australian Aboriginal myths) ‘swallowed’ or ‘eaten alive’. He is taken into a cooking receptacle in the giant’s kitchen. Far from consuming meat, he himself is the meat! He comes frighteningly close to being eaten alive. His flesh is raw, the odour of blood exciting and arousing the giant. ‘Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum!’, as the English Yurlunggur (one term for the Aboriginal Rainbow Snake) thunders in the pantomime versions, ‘I smell the blood of an Englishman.’
Three trips are made into the giant’s kitchen, and three treasures stolen. When Jack ‘changes his complexion’ and hides in a symbolic womb (the oven) he is undergoing a role-change similar to that undergone by women in entering menstrual seclusion. When he emerges and escapes from the monster’s jaws in possession of the treasures, it is as if he were reborn. The stolen goose, gold and harp take the place of the stolen blood and fire – or the stolen sound-making instruments or ritual paraphernalia – as featured in primitive matriarchy myths the world over.
Why three trips to the sky? Here’s the lunarchist explanation. Once a month, the moon is absent from the sky for a period which corresponds, ideally, to the time of the menstrual flow. The ‘third time lucky’ motif derives from the idea that the moon is ‘lucky’ – i.e. it arises from its temporary ‘death’ – on the third night after its disappearance.
Once Jack has gone up three times, he chops the beanstalk down, ending the menstrual/incestuous spell and the possibility of further journeys to the sky. A lunar interpretation can be placed on the fact that this occurs on midsummer’s day. When the lunar light/dark cycle is mapped onto the seasonal cycle, midsummer appears as ‘full moon’. This is the traditional time of emergence from seclusion – a moment often marked by ceremonial love-making and popular joy.
