This story is a sort of exemplum of the sin of pride and avarice. In
this respect it is connected in idea with Grimm's story of "The
Fisherman and his Wife" (No. 19). In its method and machinery, again,
it belongs to the "Jack and the Beanstalk" cycle, the main feature of
which is a magic plant which grows rapidly until it reaches the sky
and enables its owner to climb to the upper regions and secure magic
articles. Macculloch devotes a whole chapter (XVI) to the discussion
of this cycle, and cites many folk-tales turning on the incident
of the magic plant reaching from earth to heaven (see especially
pp. 434-435). Brief, and lacking in detail though our story is, it is
nevertheless interesting as a combination of incidents from the two
cycles just mentioned; and in its combination it shows, I believe,
that it has been derived from some southern European Maerchen,--such a
one, perhaps, as the following from Normandy (given in Koehler-Bolte,
102-103), the story of poor Misere and his ever-dissatisfied wife:--

Misere meets Christ and St. Peter, and begs from them. Christ gives him
a bean, and tells him to be satisfied with it. Misere goes home with
his gift, and sticks the bean in the hearth inside his hut. Straightway
a plant grows out of the bean, and rapidly pushes its way up through
the chimney. The next day its top is entirely out of sight. The wife
now orders Misere to find out if there are any beans on it ready
to be picked. He climbs up the plant, and, since he finds no pods,
continues higher and higher, until he finds himself before a large
golden house. This house is Paradise. St. Peter opens the door for
him, and in answer to his request promises him that he will find at
home food and drink. The next day Misere's wife gives her husband no
rest until he again climbs up to Paradise and asks St. Peter for a
new house. Some days later Misere is again forced to visit St. Peter
and ask him to make him and his wife king and queen. The saint fulfils
this wish likewise, but warns Misere against coming any more. In brief,
however, Misere's wife is still unsatisfied, and even wishes to become
the Holy Virgin and her husband to be made God himself. When Misere,
with this request, comes again to Paradise, St. Peter angrily sends
him away; and the poor man finds on earth his old hut and everything
else just as it was in the first place.

Koehler (ibid., p. 103) says that probably the heaven-reaching plant
did not origi