Deconstructing Fairy Tales

Bringing you more insights and re-thinkings of familiar fairy stories, in the form of this guest post by author Judith O’Grady

Chance made me look at another classic children’s tale, when I read about shape shifting magic, Fith-Fath (pronounced fee-fah), in Celtic cultures on a friend’s blog. The similarity to what the Giant says in ‘Jack the Giant Killer’

(Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum,

I smell the blood of an Englishman,

Be he alive or be he dead,

I will have his bones for bread!)

suggested the association, and when I looked into it I discovered that the story purportedly originates in Cornwall. I read both Cornish and British versions, and was again struck by what I had perceived as a child– Jack is a thief and murderer. He is both unsuccessful and inept in the beginning and initially it seems that he is taken advantage of by some pixy trickster when he trades his only cow for a handful of beans but actually they ARE magic beans and DO lead up into the cloud-land where the Giant has his castle.

We must examine the Celtic perception of ‘giant’ to begin with; in the lore, many of the first-dwellers are described as ‘giants’ by the in-comers/invaders. But they subsequently have mixed children, so the wild people who were there to start can’t actually be gigantic; I have assumed that ‘giant’ does not mean ‘many times my size’ in the stories but ‘primitive’ or ‘with a different culture’. Like Goldilocks calling the poor folk ‘bears’ in the first story. This makes the Giant Cornish and Jack a newcomer. Jack’s luck turns when he climbs the beanstalk and systematically plunders what he finds there. He sees the Giant’s castle, sneaks in, and discovers the Giant’s gold. Without any pang of conscience (in any of the various versions) he steals the gold and hot-foots it back down the beanstalk.

So he has taken the ‘native’s’ money. Once that is spent (or in some versions as he or his grasping mother are swept by greed) he goes back and steals the Giant’s treasured possessions. Now the Giant has lost savings and heritage possessions. Not content, Jack goes back and steals the singing harp, which could be typified as the native culture. The Harp, however, defends herself and cries out to the Giant as Jack races away. To save himself Jack chops down the beanstalk while the Giant is climbing down, kills him, and lives happily ever after. In one of the British versions, the tricky pixie returns and hails Jack as a liberator, rescuing the countryside from the Giant’s oppression.

So what is the moral? Culture fights back when stolen.

Judith O’Grady is the author of ‘God Speaking’ which you can find here – http://www.amazon.com/Pagan-Portals-God-Speaking-Judith-OGrady/dp/1780992815/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1370088049&sr=8-1&keywords=god+speaking+judith+o%27grady