[6] According to researchers at Durham University and Universidade Nova de Lisboa, the story originated more than five millennia ago in Proto-Indo-European, based on a widespread archaic story form which is now classified by folklorists as ATU 328 The Boy Who Stole Ogre's Treasure.

[7] Jack, a poor country boy, traded the family cow for a handful of magic beans, much to the dismay of his mother.

The giant, who was very big and looked very fearsome, sensed Jack's presence and cried, "Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.

In the night, Jack crept out of his hiding place, took one sack of gold coins and climbed down the beanstalk.

Jack quickly ran inside his house, fetched an axe, and chopped down the beanstalk.

[8] "The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean" was published in London by J. Roberts in the 1734 second edition of Round About Our Coal-Fire.

[1] In 1807, English writer Benjamin Tabart published The History of Jack and the Bean Stalk, possibly actually edited by William and/or Mary Jane Godwin.

According to researchers at Durham University and the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, the tale type (AT 328, The Boy Steals Ogre's Treasure) to which the Jack story belongs may have had a Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) origin (the same tale also has Proto-Indo-Iranian variants),[10] and so some think that the story would have originated millennia ago (4500 BC to 2500 BC).

I smell the blood of an Englishman" appears in William Shakespeare's King Lear (c. 1606) in the form "Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man" (Act 3, Scene 4),[12] and something similar also appears in "Jack the Giant Killer".

"Jack and the Beanstalk" is an Aarne-Thompson tale-type 328, The Treasures of the Giant, which includes the Italian "Thirteenth" and the French "How the Dragon Was Tricked" tales.

The original story portrays a "hero" gaining the sympathy of a man's wife, hiding in his house, robbing him, and finally killing him.

In Tabart's moralized version, a fairy woman explains to Jack that the giant had robbed and murdered his father justifying Jack's actions as retribution[16] (Andrew Lang follows this version in the Red Fairy Book of 1890).

The story published by Jacobs gives no explicit justification because there was none in the version he had heard as a child, but it has a subtle retributive tone by mentioning the giant's previous meals of stolen oxen and young children.

[17] Many modern interpretations have followed Tabart and made the giant a villain, terrorizing smaller folk and stealing from them, so that Jack becomes a legitimate protagonist.

For example, the 1952 film starring Abbott and Costello the giant is blamed for poverty at the foot of the beanstalk, as he has been stealing food and wealth and the hen that lays golden eggs originally belonged to Jack's family.