Note 1093 — THE Old Wiues Tale.
Reading edition
"The 'fee-fi-fo-fum' formula is common to all English stories of giants and ogres; it also occurs in Peele's play and in King Lear.... Messrs. Jones and Krorf have some remarks on it in their 'Magyar Tales,' pp. 340-341; so has Mr. Lang in his 'Perrault,' p. lxiii, where he traces it to the furies in Æschylus' Eumenides."—Jacobs, Eng. Fairy Tales, p. 243.