_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 _volkstuemlich_ 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 Koehler 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 Koehler 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_.



XX. HENNY-PENNY.