The earliest form of the rhyme appears in
''The Old Wives' Tale'', a play by
George Peele first printed in 1595: The rhyme appears in the 1596 pamphlet "
Haue with You to Saffron-Walden" 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 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 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: Fee, fau, fum, I smell the blood of an
English man, Be alive, or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread. Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum. I smell the blood of an Englishman, Be he living, or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to mix my bread. 19th-century author
Charles Mackay proposed in
The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe (1877) 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 (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!" ==See also==