Jack’s mother sent him to market with the cow, because there was nothing left to eat and no money to buy any. The cow was the last thing they had.
Jack came home with five beans.
His mother said nothing for a moment that lasted quite a long time. Then she said a great deal. The beans went out of the window and Jack went to bed without supper, which was not entirely different from any other night recently.
In the morning there was a beanstalk where the beans had landed. It was not a modest beanstalk. It went up through the clouds and out of sight, thick as a tree and tall as imagination, and it had not been there the night before.
Jack climbed it, because he was that sort of boy.
Above the clouds he found a road, and at the end of the road a castle, and in the castle a giant who smelled the blood of an Englishman and said so at considerable volume. Jack hid in the oven while the giant’s wife, who was tired and practical, told her husband he was imagining things and put his supper on the table.
The giant ate, and counted his gold, and fell asleep.
Jack took the gold and climbed back down.
He came back a second time and took a hen that laid golden eggs. He came back a third time, which was perhaps one time more than wisdom recommended, and took a golden harp that played by itself and sang beautifully and also, at the critical moment, called out for its master.
The giant woke. He came down the beanstalk behind Jack, shaking it with every step, filling the sky with his roaring.
Jack reached the ground, called for an axe, and chopped. The beanstalk came down. The giant came down with it, and did not get up again.
Jack’s mother, who had come outside to see what the noise was, looked at the fallen beanstalk, and the giant, and Jack standing there with the axe and the harp, the hen already pecking around his feet.
“Well,” she said.
“I told you they were good beans,” said Jack.