The Life and Adventures of Tom Thumb appeared in the Tabart Collection of Fairy Tales, noted before, and a version entirely in verse was included in Halliwell. A monograph on Tom Thumb was written by M. Gaston Paris. Little Thumb as it appeared in Perrault and in Basile, was a tale similar to the German Hansel and Grethel. Thumbling, and Thumbling as Journeyman are German variants. Andersen's Thumbelina is a feminine counterpart to Tom Thumb, and in Laboulaye's Poucinet we have a tale of the successful younger brother, similarly diminutive.
There were current many old stories of characters similar to Tom Thumb. A certain man was so thin that he could jump through the eye of a needle. Another crept nimbly to a spider's web which was hanging in the air, and danced skillfully upon it until a spider came, which spun a thread round his neck and throttled him. A third was able to pierce a sunmote with his head and pass his whole body through it. A fourth was in the habit of riding an ant, but the ant threw him off and trampled him. In a work written in 1601, referred to in Grimm's Household Tales a spider relates:—
Once did I catch a tailor proud
Heavy he was as elder wood,
From Heaven above he'd run a race,
With an old straw hat to this place,
In Heaven he might have stayed no doubt,
For no one wished to turn him out.
He fell in my web, hung in a knot,
Could not get out, I liked it not,
That e'en the straw hat, safe and sound,
Nine days ere him came to the ground.
A delightful little rhyme, Tom Thumb, is among Halliwell's Nursery
Rhymes. It may refer to the Danish History of Tom Thumb:
I had a little husband
No bigger than my thumb;
I put him in a pint pot
And there I bade him drum:
I bridled him and saddled him,
And sent him out of town;
I gave him a pair of garters
To tie up his little hose;
And a little handkerchief
To wipe his little nose.
The English version of Tom Thumb as we know it today, opens with a visit of the magician Merlin at the cottage of an honest and hospitable ploughman. Merlin rewarded the Goodman and his Wife for their hospitality by calling on the Queen of the fairies, who brought to the home, Tom Thumb, a boy no bigger than a man's thumb.
The time of the tale is in the days of Merlin and King Arthur's court. The tale is marked by a number of distinct English elements. The introduction of the Queen of the Fairies, of Fairy Land and the visit there, and of the fairy clothes they make for Tom, are all decidedly English. The sly ways of Tom, his tricks and his cleverness are distinctly English humor. He played with the boys for cherry-stones, and took theirs. He had so much curiosity that he fell into his mother's pudding. He was so light that on a windy day he had to be tied to a thistle when his mother went to milk the cow; and so, with his oak-leaf hat, he got caught in the cow's one mouthful. After other strange adventures he arrived at King Arthur's court where he became the favorite. His feats at tilts and tournaments give a glimpse of English court life, with its pastime of hunting; and fighting with the sword brings in the knight element. The story has little plot, being a succession of many episodes and a repetition of some. It shows little constructive ability, promises to be a perpetual tale, and is ended only by sudden death at the poisonous breath of the spider. Tom Thumb is one of the tales of pure fancy, with no underlying meaning, created for pure entertainment, to please children and grown-ups by its little people and little things. The moral is in the effect of Tom's character.
Perrault's Little Thumb tells how a poor Fagot-maker and his Wife sat by the hearth, sad with famine, and Little Thumb overheard their words. When they started to the wood to gather fagots, Little Thumb, like Hansel, scattered pebbles. The parents left the seven children in the wood but little Thumb guided them home by his pebbles. They set out a second time, when Little Thumb scattered bread-crumbs; and as the birds ate them, the children were lost. Little Thumb climbed a tree and saw the light of the Ogre's cottage afar off. The children reached the Ogre's cottage where Little Thumb changed the golden crowns of the seven little Ogresses, and putting them on his brothers, saved their lives. Then they all fled through the wood and hid in a rock, while the Ogre in his seven-league boots, pursued them and lay down to rest at the rock in which they were hidden. Little Thumb sent his brothers home, stole the fairy boots, and through craft, persuaded the Ogre's Wife to give him all the Ogre's gold. So, rich and happy, he returned to his father's home.
This tale shows a number of common motifs that appear in other tales:
(1) The design of distressed parents to expose children to the forest.