Joseph Jacobs Quotes

Who says that English folk have no fairy-tales of their own?

Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the blood of an Englishman,
Be he alive or be he dead
I'll have his bones to grind my bread.

There once was upon a time a poor widow who had an only son Jack, and a cow called Milky-White.

Woe worth you, Molly Whuppie! never you come again
Twice yet, carle, quoth she, I'll come to Spain.

Out the Old Woman jumped (of the window). And whether she broke her neck in the fall; or ran into the wood and was lost there...or taken up by a constable to the House of Correction for the vagrant she was I cannot tell. But the Three Bears never saw anything more of her.

You don't know what these beans are, said the man [that Jack meets]. If you plant them overnight, by morning they grew right up to the sky.

Little pig, little pig, let me come in.
To which the pig answered: Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.
The wolf answered to that, Then I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow the house down.

Kind sir, if the truth I must tell,
At the sign of Basin of Water I dwell.

...he must need wish in a hurry; and wish he did, that the black pudding may come off his nose.

But the Harp called out quite loud: Master! Master!

The sky is a-going to fall, I must go and tell the King.

Well, he [the wolf] huffed, and he puffed, and he puffed, and he puffed and he puffed and huffed; but he could not get the house down.

My man is an ogre and there is nothing he likes better than boys broiled on toast.

When the pig saw what he [the wolf] was about, he hung on a pot full of water, and made a blazing fire...and in fell the wolf...

For out of every hole the rats came tumbling.