This fairy tale comes from Joseph Jacobs' English Fairy Tales (1890).  Jacobs cites his source as the Folklore Journal and notes parallels to Perrault's tale, “Hop o’ My Thumb.”  He concludes the story is probably Celtic in origin because there are almost identical tales in the Celtic tradition.  The giant's speech on smelling Mollie and her sisters, "Fee, fie, fo, fum,/I smell the blood of some earthly one," is a variation on a familiar rhyme in other British tales dealing with giants (e.g., "Jack and the Beanstalk").  Because of the active female heroine, this tale has become more widely anthologized in the modern era, as feminist scholarship has sought to balance the mostly passive females of the Perrault and Grimm tales.
      "Molly Whuppie" begins with the abandonment of the children, an occasional economic necessity for poor parents in the social milieu from which the tale emerges.

Return to Fairy Tale Page