f Fee-Fie-Foe-Fum There was magic in the words, a weird magic that beat through Matt's head and drummed in his blood. -- Christopher Stasheff, Her Majestry's Wizard (1986) Mystique: There is a musical quality to fee-fie-foe-fum that echoes oral ballads and rhymes associated with childhood, such as "Old MacDonald's" chorus of "e-i-e-i-o" (the final "e-i-o" matching the vowel sounds of "fee-fiefoe") and "Eenie Meenie Miney Mo" (the final words "Meenie Miney Mo" again matching the vowel sounds of "fee-fie-foe"). "The sonorous part of spells and incantations can be taken just as rows of syllables that the intellect refuses to understand. In fact, [it] is a sacred language, sometimes spoken only by the performer. Nevertheless, an enormous psychological power is attributed to these incomprehensible and magic words. . . . [T]heir musicality can capture everyone." As the visionary French Jesuit, paleontologist, and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, "magical words are much more felt than understood."4 Meanings: • Where? Why? How? Whom? -- PlanetFusion.co.uk Origins: This phrase was made famous by the "Jack and the Beanstalk" fable. It is perhaps a Doric dialect (a blend of English, Gaelic, and Norse), in which the wh sound is pronounced f. Facts: In the 1947 cartoon Mickey and the Beanstalk, Willie the Giant "has the power to change his form with the utterance of a few magic words -- 'Fee Fi Fo Fum,' of course." Variations and Incantations: • Abracadabra. Fee Fo Fi Bloody Fum "Abracadabra. Fee Fo Fi Bloody Fum. And just when everyone thinks you're going to produce the most ludicrously faked bit of cheese-cloth ectoplasm, or a phoney rap on the table, it comes. Clear as a bell. Quite unexpected. The voice of truth!" -- John Mortimer, Rumpole of the Bailey (1978) 2 Experimental psychologist David Rubin of Duke University studies why people remember such rhymes and cites the examples used here (Dennis Meredith, "Mining the Meaning of Memories," Duke Magazine [March 1998]). Mirela Vlaica, "Forms of Magic in Traditional Mentality" (200 ) 4 The Future of Man (1959) PlanetFusion.co.uk 6 Daniel Briney, a review of "Walt Disney Treasures: Mickey Mouse in Living Color, Volume 2" (2004)