Here at “Folklife Today,” we’ve been following Jack as a character in folktales, including orally told tales and versions printed in chapbooks and in tale collections. You can see the rest of our Jack tale series at this link. Given the popularity of Jack, it’s no surprise to see him adapted and used in many works of literature, so that a recreational reader can encounter and enjoy Jack in a variety of guises. If drama, film, or TV are more your style, or even visual arts or opera, don’t worry—Jack has adaptations there too. (We’ll explore those in another post soon!) Let’s look at some of the ways you can meet this enduring and appealing character out in the literary and media landscape—starting with fiction.
It’s no secret that the genre folklorists call “magic tales,” “märchen,” or “fairy tales” have been the basis of literary fantasy stories since before the character of Jack emerged. Scholars realized long ago that “Beowulf,” perhaps the earliest surviving significant work of fiction in English, is related to the folktale sometimes called “The Bear’s Son” and numbered ATU 301. Chaucer, our greatest Middle English fiction writer, used many folktale sources, including for “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” and “The Pardoner’s Tale.” Famously, too, Shakespeare drew on multiple magic tales for his more fantastic plots.
At the same time, some of the same authors provide early evidence for the development of Jack-like characters and Jack tale themes. Chaucer created some early examples of tricky young men named “Jankyn,” and sometimes “Janekyn,” both forms of the diminutive of “John” which evolved into “Jack.” Shakespeare provides some key early evidence for “Jack and the Giant” tales with the famous line “Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man” in “King Lear.” (Lear itself is a play with a plot based on a fairy tale, a variant of ATU 510 or “Cap O’ Rushes.”) It therefore shouldn’t surprise us that literary authors have been inspired by Jack tales since the stories emerged, and continue to be inspired today.
Although these earlier authors clearly incorporated the fantastic into their stories, most people trace the emergence of fantasy as a literary genre to the 19th century. European literary authors of the era, from France to Russia, adapted folkloric and fanstastic themes in their writings, and some of them incorporated Jack tales. Leo Tolstoy’s “Ivan the Fool,” for example, is a story about the Russian version of Jack. The youngest of three brothers, Ivan, though seemingly a fool, defeats the devil through his lack of greed, anger, or ill-feelings. Ironically, he becomes powerful without craving power, and he becomes rich without seeking money. He eventually marries the Czar’s daughter and himself becomes a king—all familiar themes from Jack tales. Charles Nodier’s “Tresor des Feves et Fleur des Pois,” whose plot involves an only child setting out to trade beans, and which has a focus on magical beans and peas, is surely informed by “Jack and the Beanstalk” tales.
In Britain, one of the authors often credited with “inventing” the fantasy novel is William Morris, perhaps better known as a designer, artist, and inspiration to the Arts and Crafts movement. Morris wrote a series of fantasy novels, more in the style of medieval romances than folk tales. However, the influence of traditional folk tales and specifically Jack tales can be discerned right through Morris’s high fantasy style. For example, one of Morris’s late novels was “The Well at the World’s End,” which concerns the quest for a magical well whose water grants beauty, good health, and long life to those who drink it. The protagonist is the youngest son of a minor king who is only able to go out and seek his fortune after his older brothers have done so. Though Morris’s character is named Ralph, not Jack, the set-up to his tale is just like that of many Scottish Jack tales including for example “Jack and the Three Feathers.” More than this, “the water from the well at the world’s end” is a widespread concept in Scottish folktales, including some that Morris probably knew. In some tales, “finding the water from the well at the world’s end” is a fruitless errand assigned by one character to another in bad faith, in hopes that the person assigned the task will never return. Notably, however, in Jack tales, the water from the well at the world’s end has real healing properties, as it does in Morris’s tale. The novel thus features both a protagonist and a final goal that seem to come straight from Jack tales.
George MacDonald, a Scottish author and minister widely considered another of the pioneers of the fantasy genre, had also clearly heard tales about Jack. Although he preferred fanciful names to the pedestrian “Jack,” his young humble protagonists, like Mossy in “The Golden Key” and Buffy-Bob in “The Giant’s Heart,” are obviously Jack-like. Looking more closely specifically at “The Giant’s Heart,” most sources suggest that MacDonald based it on a Norwegian folktale published by Asbjørnsen and Moe. As Jack Zipes has pointed out, the hero of the Norwegian tale, Espen Askeladd, is the Norwegian equivalent of Jack, so we are already in Jack tale territory if his source was Norwegian. However, it’s also true that the story, numbered by scholars as ATU 302, is an internationally distributed tale which, as far as I know, was first collected in MacDonald’s native Scotland. Peter Buchan’s 1827 manuscript of the tale, for example, was written down when Asbjørnsen and Moe were schoolboys. The story survived in the Scottish oral tradition in two languages until the 21st century: in Scots, Duncan Williamson recorded it as a Jack tale for the School of Scottish Studies, and his wife Linda Williamson transcribed it. In Gaelic, similar tales starred Iain (the Gaelic version of Jack) and were collected by J.F. Campbell of Islay in “Popular Tales of the West Highlands.” The tale survived at least another century in oral tradition to be collected by several collectors at the School of Scottish Studies. MacDonald’s story is, in other words, an international Jack tale, common at the time in his native Scotland, which he lightly reworked into an early fantasy classic.
William Morris and George MacDonald’s influence on later fantasy authors, including Lewis Carroll, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, is well known. But did Jack tales influence those later authors directly? In one sense, we know they did. Both Carroll’s best known series, the Alice books, and Lewis’s, the Narnia books, are what are often called “portal fantasies”: stories in which some object in the mundane world acts as a portal allowing ordinary people to enter a fantasy realm. “Jack and the Beanstalk” is often considered one of the earliest stories in this genre, establishing the trope that allowed MacDonald’s rainbow, Carroll’s rabbit-hole and looking-glass, and Lewis’s wardrobe to make sense to readers as portals to another realm.
But folktale Jack was a more specific influence at least on J.R.R. Tolkien, especially on the characters of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins in Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.” In “The Hobbit,” Bilbo’s recruitment as a reluctant burglar comes straight from “The Master Thief,” commonly told as a Jack Tale in English; you can hear it at this link, as Ray Hicks’s “Jack and the Three Steers.” In his notes on “The Hobbit,” Douglas Anderson (Tolkien 2002: 73-83) points out that the scene in which Bilbo, with his magical helper Gandalf, tricks three trolls into staying out until sunrise, turning them to stone, “is reminiscent of the Grimm’s tale ‘The Brave Little Tailor,’ in which the title character keeps two giants fighting by secretly lobbing stones at them in such a way that each giant thinks the other is doing it.” This same trick is used by Jack in many giant tales, including versions of “Jack the Giant Killer,” such as “Jack and the Giants’ Newground,” as told by Maud Long in the player below. Meanwhile the trolls’ names, “Bert, William and Tom,” evoke Jack’s brothers Tom and Will.
Meanwhile, “The Lord of the Rings” seems to have drawn more inspiration from “Farmer Weatherbeard,” another Jack Tale. At one point in the story, Jack, like the hobbits in both of Tolkien’s books, is rescued by a giant eagle. For some time, Jack’s soul is hidden in a gold ring, like the soul of Sauron in “The Lord of the Rings.” Most strikingly, the magical ring containing Jack’s soul is placed among the embers of a fireplace—just as in the iconic moment in The Lord of the Rings where Gandalf definitively ascertains the identity of The One Ring.
The idea that these Jack tales influenced Tolkien is more than speculation. As his biographer Humphrey Carpenter notes: “Most of all [young Ronald Tolkien] found delight in the Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, especially ‘The Red Fairy Book.’ […] Whenever he read it Ronald found it absorbing.” In the essay “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien also shows detailed knowledge of the contents of “The Blue Fairy Book.” “The Red Fairy Book” contains “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “The Master Thief,” and “Farmer Weatherbeard,” while “The Blue Fairy Book,” contains “Jack the Giant-Killer” and “The Brave Little Tailor.”
Many writers of adult fantasy continue to be inspired by Jack Tales. In her 2008 story collection, “The Tarot of Perfection,” Rachel Pollack includes several tales that recall Jack’s exploits. “The Fool, the Stick, and the Princess” is based on the idea of the foolish youngest brother in folktales, while its title, and to some extent its plot, recall “The Ox, the Table and the Stick,” a common Jack Tale known in the Appalachians as “Jack and the Northwest Wind.” One of the book’s central stories is “Simon Wisdom,” which can be seen as a modern Jack tale. It begins with a young single man named Jack, who eventually marries and has a child named Simon. In his initial innocence, and his kindheartedness, Jack Wisdom is much like folktale Jack. The fact that he makes significant mistakes does not make him any less a Jack; by the end, he has redeemed himself, accepted a magical gift, and helped to save his son.
Rachel Pollack’s earlier novel, “Godmother Night,” won the 1997 World Fantasy Award. It is based on several traditional magic tales, most notably “Godfather Death,” whose American version “Soldier Jack” or “Jack and the Sack,” is known in both the Appalachians and the Ozarks. [Hear Ray Hicks’s version here!] Pollack signalled the importance of Jack tales to her novel by naming a central character Jacqueline, and having her try several versions of her name, including “Jack,” before settling on “Jaqe.” Jaqe’s very special relationship with Death is quite like our Jack Tale: like Jack, Jaqe tries to prevent those around her from dying, and like Jack she eventually must surrender to Death herself.
There are several similarities between Pollack’s “Godmother Night” and an earlier Jack novel, Charles de Lint’s “Jack the Giant Killer”: both feature a posse of supernatural bikers, and the protagonists of both are named Jacqueline and Kate. In “Jack the Giant-Killer,” however, Jacqueline (nicknamed “Jacky”) is explicitly recognized as Jack of the Jack tales. In de Lint’s realms of Faerie, “Jack” is not a name but a title; Jacky Rowan’s name is considered “a lucky name,” but not a prerequisite for her being “a Jack.” In the story, which occurs in the Faerie realm that exists alongside modern-day Ottawa, Jacky Rowan and Kate Hazel (a.k.a. Kate Crackernuts, another folktale reference) must protect the Faerie clan of Kinrowan against the faeries of the Unseelie Court. But Jacky and Kate live in the mundane world, and must learn the ropes of Faerie as they go. Jacky behaves as a true Jack: she obtains magical gifts which she either uses for herself, or returns to their rightful owners; she rescues the Laird of Kinrowan’s daughter, whose protection spells are desperately needed by the clan; and, most tellingly, she kills several giants. In the end, Jacky takes up residence in a magical tower as the clan’s protector and provider. De Lint is another winner of the World Fantasy Award, and “Jack the Giant-Killer,” along with its sequel, “Drink Down the Moon,” remain among the most thorough fictional explorations of Jack’s mythic nature.
It might be surprising to hear that the masters of horror, Stephen King and the late Peter Straub, have also drawn on Jack tales. In King’s “Dark Tower” series, protagonist Jake Chambers shares many characteristics with the Jack of folklore: a young, kind, helpful boy with qualities of resourcefulness, cleverness, loyalty, and luck, who is drawn into a great quest. One hint that he’s related to Jack is that his given name is John, but he’s called “Jake;” as we’ve seen, “Jack” in English is a diminutive of “John.” Similarly, in “Fairy Tale,” King draws on multiple tales but his reliance on “Jack and the Beanstalk” is quite obvious, not only in the novel’s structure as a portal fantasy, but in the inclusion of man-eating giants and a monstrous villain named “Gogmagog,” which is the giant’s name in the first known version of “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
King and Straub together wrote “The Talisman,” featuring protagonist Jack Sawyer, who is even closer to folktale Jack. In “The Talisman,” now the first of three Jack Sawyer novels, Sawyer journeys into a separate world in a quest for a magical object which can cure his mother’s cancer in the real world, picking up friends and companions and evading enemies on the way. This plot is essentially that of “Jack and the Water from the Well at the World’s End,” in which Jack undertakes an arduous quest and brings back the hard-to-obtain water to revive his mother from a mysterious coma resulting from a curse. “The Talisman” has incidents and aspects that are clearly inspired by other works, including Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn,” Sir Walter Scott’s “The Talisman,” and Charles Dickens’s “Oliver Twist.” But the central core of the story, the overall quest undertaken to obtain a magical cure for Jack’s mother, certainly seems to have been picked up from Jack tales—along with Jack’s first name, of course! (In both of Peter Straub’s National Book Festival appearances and Stephen King’s National Book Festival talk from 2016, the authors speak briefly about “The Talisman.”)
Folktale Jack is a prominent character in several series of fantasy novels for kids, including “The Sisters Grimm” by Michael Buckley, “Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles” by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, and “The Land of Stories” by Chris Colfer. In “The Sisters Grimm,” fairy-tale characters live in exile in a town in upstate New York. These “everafters” are watched over by Relda Grimm and her granddaughters, Sabrina and Daphne. In the series’ first novel, Jack, once a rich and famous giant-killer, now works at a big-and-tall men’s store. Bitter and angry about his reversal of fortune, he seems ready to help the girls when giants attack the town. It’s also possible, however, that the giants’ attacks are part of Jack’s plan–you’ll have to read it to find out! Buckley discussed “The Sisters Grimm” at several National Book Festivals.
The ”Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles” trilogy contains a more modest and down-to-earth version of Jack, known as “NoSeeum Jack” because he is elderly and his eyesight is failing. In this series, it’s revealed that Jack’s giant-slaying is a hereditary role passed from father to son. Holly Black discussed the trilogy at the 2013 National Book Festival. Finally, in “The Land of Stories,” Jack is one of the important recurring characters, a grown man whose beanstalk days are behind him. Red riding Hood loves Jack, but he falls in love with Goldilocks, who is a criminal despite her good heart. Because he loves her, Jack joins her on the run. Will they live happily ever after? I’ll never tell!
Less fantastical children’s books also may carry a touch of folktale Jack. In the “Jack and the Geniuses” series, Jack is the youngest of three “siblings,” though they are not blood relatives but orphans who were fostered together. Their adventures involve more science and invention than magic, as you might expect from a series co-written by Bill Nye, the Science Guy with his friend Gregory Mone. Initially considered the least promising and competent of the trio, and thus relegated to being a “gofer,” Jack goes along for the ride when his siblings, “the geniuses,” are invited to help a quirky scientist and inventor. They have so far had three adventures, in Antarctica, Polynesia, and the Amazon rainforest. In the course of those stories, Jack has gone from doing manual labor and fetching things to showing that his wits and street-smarts can often be more useful than the so-called genius of his siblings—all of which tracks with folktale Jack.
It’s easy to spot Jack’s influence in more realist fiction for adults as well. Who could doubt, for example, that there’s some folktale Jack in Patrick O’Brian’s flamboyant English naval Captain, Jack Aubrey? Aubrey is a giant-killer who repeatedly defeats massive men-of-war with small, outgunned sloops and frigates, using cleverness and trickery. Aubrey’s escapes are narrow and his exploits are sometimes fantastic; in one memorable sequence in the novel “Post Captain,” he is forced to traverse most of France disguised as a bear. But like folktale Jack, he perseveres, venturing into the jaws of danger to bring back the secrets of Napoleon (dubbed by French newspapers “The Corsican Ogre”), with the help of his friend, the surgeon and spy Stephen Maturin. Most tellingly, from the early days of his career, Aubrey is known as “Lucky Jack.”
Similarly, would it be reaching (pun intended) to suggest there’s a little bit of folktale Jack in Lee Child’s itinerant crime-stopper Jack Reacher? According to Child, Reacher’s name is a reference to the way a tall man reaches items on a high shelf for shorter people in a supermarket. This is exactly the sort of generous act that often begins folktale Jack’s adventures, as when he shares his bread with a stranger in “Soldier Jack,” or helps someone climb out of a hole in “How Jack Got His Big Farm.” Reacher takes to the road carrying nothing but the clothes on his back, living from day to day or meal to meal, much like Jack setting out to seek his fortune. Like Jack in many of the tales, Reacher tends to end up in trouble through no real fault of his own, then gets out of trouble by skill and luck—often helping other people along the way. In addition to generalities, there are some specifics that Reacher and Jack have in common. Tales about Jack’s hunting trips reveal that he’s an excellent marksman, which is also true of Reacher. In “Soldier Jack,” Jack is a soldier discharged after a long military career, left to wander aimlessly across America—Just like Reacher at the beginning of the novel sequence.
I haven’t seen Lee Child acknowledge folktale Jack as an influence on Jack Reacher, but he often speaks of the archetypal hero, and suggests folkloric background for Reacher’s character. In fact, according to Child’s biographer, to generate plots for early Jack Reacher novels, Child relied on “a high-concept bullet-point list of twelve steps that has its origins in Vladimir Propp’s ‘Morphology of the Folktale.’” Whether by the author’s design or by the general influence of the folktale tradition, there’s surely some folktale Jack in this popular current series as well.
Thanks for reading this whirlwind survey of folktale literature, from Beowulf to Jack Reacher, with an emphasis on Jack tales. Jack Aubrey and Jack Reacher, of course, have taken their respective Jacks from the page to the screen, which suggests we should explore dramatic adaptations of Jack Tales. We’ll look at Jack on stage and screen, and in music and art (including comics), in a future post. Stay tuned!