English Conversations

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at Lindfish

In this podcast, Steve Yenik tells the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, an old English fairytale.

Steve: Okay so Jack was a poor boy who lived with his mother and, all they had was a cow. And they were so poor. And they were getting more and more poor, and so his mother says, “Jack, take the cow and sell the cow so that we can buy some food.” So Jack takes the cow and goes off down the road and on the way to town, he meets a guy, who is a funny guy, and he says to Jack, “Oh, that’s a nice cow.” And Jack says, “Yeah, I’m going to sell the cow. And the guy says, “Well, I’ll give you some beans for the cow. I’ve got some beans. So he gave Jack like just a few beans, and Jack was kind of dumb so he traded the cow for a few beans and he went back home and he told his mother “I traded the cow for these beans.”

Mark: He tricked him! He got tricked?

Steve: Well, maybe; we’ll see. And uh, “(Jack said) the guy told me they were magic beans and so I traded the cow for the magic beans.” And his mother got angry and said, “You stupid boy!” and she took the beans and she threw them out the window and looked just angry. But the next morning when they got up there were these giant beanstalks growing way, way, way, way up high. And so Jack decided to climb the beanstalk and when he got up to the top there was another world up there and he was walking around and he found a giant castle, where the giant lived; an actual giant lived, and so he went into the giant’s castle and it was full of treasures and stuff, and so he takes one of the treasures - I forget which one - and uh, then while he is there, he hears the giant coming and the giant is singing a song, and…I am trying to remember the song…”Fee fi fo fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman.” He used to sing that because the giant liked to eat people.

Mark and Steve: Fee fi fo fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman!

Steve: So Jack ran away and he took his treasure and he got back down there and his mother was happy and then, but it wasn’t a very big treasure so when they used that up he decided to go up and get more treasure. He kept going up there and hiding in the castle and there was some kind of a harp in there, but I…I forget that part. And finally the giant finds out somebody is stealing from him and he catches Jack and he chases Jack and Jack runs to the beanstalk and slides down the beanstalk as fast as he can and when he gets to the bottom he gets an axe and he chops the beanstalk down and the giant is coming down the beanstalk and the giant falls and crashes and it kills him.

Mark and Steve: He’s dead!

Mark: But Jack won.

Steve: Jack got the big bag of gold or something like that.

Mark: The golden piano, wasn’t it? A golden piano!

Steve: Yeah, well there was a harp. So everybody lived happily ever after except the giant. He got his treasure ripped off.

Mark: And Jack got the sack of plenty.

Steve: Mmm.