"Fee-fi-fo-fum" is the first line of a historical quatrain (or sometimes couplet) famous for its use in the classic English fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk". The poem, as given in Joseph Jacobs' 1890 rendition, is as follows:
Though the rhyme is tetrametric, it follows no consistent metrical foot; however, the respective verses correspond roughly to monosyllabic tetrameter, dactylic tetrameter, trochaic tetrameter, and iambic tetrameter. The poem has historically made use of assonant half rhyme.
Video Fee-fi-fo-fum
Origin
The rhyme may have originated with the ballad Childe Rowland.
It appears in the pamphlet Haue with You to Saffron-Walden (published in 1596) written by Thomas Nashe (who mentions that the rhyme was already old and its origins obscure):
In William Shakespeare's play King Lear (c. 1605), the character Edgar exclaims:
The verse in King Lear makes use of the archaic word "fie", used to express disapproval. This word is used repeatedly in Shakespeare's works: King Lear shouts, "Fie, fie, fie! pah, pah!", and in Antony and Cleopatra, Mark Antony's exclaims, "O fie, fie, fie!"
The earliest known printed version of the Jack the Giant-Killer tale appears in The history of Jack and the Giants (Newcastle, 1711) and this, and later versions (found in chapbooks), include renditions of the poem, recited by the giant Thunderdell:
Charles Mackay proposes in The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe that the seemingly meaningless string of syllables "Fa fe fi fo fum" is actually a coherent phrase of ancient Gaelic, and that the complete quatrain covertly expresses the Celts' cultural detestation of the invading Angles and Saxons:
- Fa from faich (fa!) "behold!" or "see!"
- Fe from Fiadh (fee-a) "food";
- Fi from fiú "good to eat"
- Fo from fogh (fó) "sufficient" and
- Fum from feum "hunger".
Thus "Fa fe fi fo fum!" becomes "Behold food, good to eat, sufficient for my hunger!"
Maps Fee-fi-fo-fum
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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