Fee-fi-fo-fum
Historical quatrain / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Fee-fi-fo-fum" is the first line of a historical quatrain (or sometimes couplet) famous for its use in the classic English fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk". The poem, as given in Joseph Jacobs' 1890 rendition, is as follows:
Fee-fi-fo-fum,
I smell the bones of an Englishman,
Be he alive, or be he dead
I'll grind his bones
And get his dough.
[1]
Though the rhyme is tetrametric, it follows no consistent metrical foot; however, the lines correspond roughly to a monosyllabic tetrameter, a dactylic tetrameter, a trochaic tetrameter, and an iambic tetrameter respectively. The poem has historically made use of assonant half rhyme.