Picking beans is a tedious task during which the mind tends to wander to all manner of subjects.
A couple buckets down the row I started thinking about beanstalks. Surprising I know, but true nonetheless. Then I started thinking about Jack and the Beanstalk.
If you are familiar with the fairy tale you might recall how desperate times had fallen on Jack and his mother so she sent Jack off to market to sell one of the few assets they owned — the family cow.
Poor little Jack is taking their cow to market when a man swindles him into trading the cow for a handful of magic beans. Enraged, his mother flings the beans out the window and sends Jack to bed without his supper. In the morning the magic beans have erupted into a vine that climbs right through clouds and into the sky. Jack, who is obviously a tad impulsive, climbs up the vine to see where it will take him.
He ends up in the home of a giant whose wife kindly feeds poor hungry Jack before the giant thunders into the kitchen yelling out, “Fee Fi Fo Fum I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”
The wife hides Jack, shushes her husband and Jack makes his escape, but not before snatching a bag of gold coins.
As a child I was happy for Jack getting a chance to redeem himself to his mother and they sure needed the money, given they were about to starve and all. A bag of gold coins! How wonderful!
But as I worked my way down my row of beans it suddenly struck me that stealing the giant’s gold was a pretty crappy way of repaying the generous hospitality of the giant’s wife. To be sure the whole “I smell the blood of an Englishman” thing is a pretty provocative statement and I’m not trying to excuse the giant for his questionable culinary tastes.
But it was his house after all and it doesn’t follow that issuing death threats is a good enough reason to steal someone’s hard-earned gold.
Stealing is never OK. How had I never thought of this before?
As a child, my sympathies had always been with Jack. It was hard to feel sorry for a child crunching giant. To make matters worse, Jack doesn’t stop at the bag of gold. The next day he climbs up the beanstalk once again.
And again the wife is kind to him and hides him from her Englishman sniffing spouse. This time Jack snatches up the giant’s hen that lays golden eggs and scampers back down the beanstalk to safety.
So now Jack and his mother not only have a bag of gold, but a hen that deposits a golden egg into their bank account day after day.
Life is good; but apparently not good enough for greedy little Jack. Back up the beanstalk he goes. This time the wife is understandably ticked and not so pleased to see Jack and neither is the talking harp that catches his fancy.
Tucking the harp under his arm, Jack goes to make his exit but the harp cries out for the giant who arrives on the scene just in time to see Jack making his latest thieving exit.
As a child, I remember being filled with terror as the giant started down the beanstalk after Jack. “Go Jack go!” I would yell as the giant’s huge legs appeared above Jack’s head. When Jack neared the ground, he shouted for his mother to bring him the axe and proceeded to chop down the beanstalk causing the giant to fall to his death. The giant fell so hard his fallen body buried itself in the earth creating a small mountain next to the nearby village. Jack and his mother live happily ever. The giant, well, not so much.
Meanwhile, somewhere up in the clouds, the giant’s widow is wondering where it all went wrong. She welcomed young Jack into her home, fed and protected him and where did it get her? She’s lost her gold, her hen, her harp and her husband. Honestly, it’s enough to put a person off beans and fairy tales altogether. And me with two more rows to pick.
Shannon McKinnon is a Canadian humour columnist. You can read past columns by visiting www.shannonmckinnon.com