That's Where She Gets It From!
From The following exercise at the Soul Food Cafe
Box of Chocolates
‘Lessons and Philosophy from the Bear of Very Little Brain’
http://www.outbackonline.net/choc%20box/choc_pooh.htm
Fe, fa, fi-fo-fum
I smell the breath of an Englishman
Let him be alive
or let him be dead
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread
And wrapped around these Merry Little Lines was a tale about Cannibalism, Breaking and Entering (or as they refer to it on the Cop shows “ B & E”) and cold blooded murder (okay, I’d settle for Manslaughter. Or would it be Giant Slaughter?) Regardless, that Giant wouldn’t have ended up dead at the foot of the beanstalk had a certain little Englishman not been snooping around places he didn’t belong!
Back to the story…before I learned to read my Mom use to buy me these children’s books called “ Golden Readers”. They were easy to read (and by that I mean easy for the Parents to read.) The Fairy Tales were written at about an eight year olds reading level.Back in the day they were nice little books- I still have a few of them on my bookshelf. They were bound with string, not glue or paste and the pictures were wonderful.
Lots of detail, no pastels and they didn’t use block type. So no matter how little you were you felt like you were reading a ‘big kid’s book’.
And if you couldn’t read you may have done what I did: I use take the books and make my own story up to fit the pictures.
The thing is I ALWAYS saw more then what was actually there and by the ripe old age of five I was already addicted to a TV show called Nightmare Theatre. They played old horror and ghosts films every Friday and on Saturday afternoon they had a matinee.
I guess you can see where this is going…
Jack and the Beanstalk? Ha, How’s about Jack the Little Ripper?
I hated Jack.
He was mean and sneaky and remember the Harp calling out for the Giant? I thought she wanted to stay and I just knew that little Jerk Jack was going to take her down the Beanstalk and she would never see her castle again (well, that’s how I told it.)
I would read about Jack throwing all the stuff he stole from the castle down the beanstalk and just before he gets caught the last time he slides down the beanstalk, grabs an axe and he starts chopping and hacking until down comes the beanstalk and before you can say ‘busted’ the Giant crashes after it and dies.
So in the end Jack is sitting at this table and the harp is crying and Jack’s Mom is serving him stew (which I was convinced contained some Giant along with the chickens he stole…why NOT eat the Giant? He ate everything else he lifted from the Castle!)
Remember Jack swinging the axe? I do, I can still see it. So how does it end?
The last picture in the book is of Jack at the table with the stolen harp and the chunky stew.
That picture finally got to me in a big way.
I remember taking my little copy of Jack and The Beanstalk and tossing it under my bed where it STAYED.
That’s right…everytime I found it on my bookshelf or in my toy box I’d take that sucker and throw it under my bed because everytime I saw it I could hear that line over and over…the only one I remembered after my Mom read me the book (which I didn’t buy for a minute that malarkey she read was true)
Fe, fa, fi-fo-fum
I smell the breath of an Englishman
Let him be alive
or let him be dead
I’ll grind his bones to make my bread
It was never a Giant’s Voice I heard when I ‘read’ my little Golden Book. It was always a kid’s voice, a little boy’s voice. It was laughing the entire time and it wasn’t a happy laugh.
Fe, fa, fi-fo-fum
posted by Anita Marie Moscoso @ 10:02 PM
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