In the days of King Arthur there lived a famous magician called Merlin. One day, when he was travelling the country disguised as a beggar, he stopped at the cottage of a poor ploughman to ask for food. The ploughman had just come in from work, and was sitting down to supper. He was very tired, but he welcomed the stranger, even though this was only a ragged beggar man; and the ploughman’s wife said he could sit down and share their supper.
Now Merlin noticed that the ploughman and his wife, though they had a snug cottage and enough to eat, did not seem happy.
“What is the matter?” he asked. “What is it you lack?”
“Why,” said the ploughman’s wife, “my husband and I have lived here happily enough for nearly twenty years, but we have no child. This is a great sorrow to us. How I should love to have had a son — yes, even a little son no bigger than my husband’s thumb. However small he was, I should not mind, just so as I could call him my own and look after him.”
Well, the beggar said nothing, and soon afterwards took his leave. But thinking over what the poor woman had said, Merlin said to himself, ‘What a good idea to give this woman just what she wants.’ So by magic he brought it about that the ploughman’s wife had a little boy no bigger than the ploughman’s thumb. They loved him dearly and named him Tom Thumb, and he never grew an inch bigger, but was always just the same size as his father’s thumb.
One moonlight night the Fairy Queen happened to look in at the window of the cottage. She flew inside and kissed Tom, and ordered her fairies to make him a suit of clothes. They made him a shirt of spider’s web, a jacket of thistledown, trousers of feathers, stockings of apple peel, and a little pair of shoes of mouse-skin, with the fur on the inside. Then on top of his head was placed an oak-leaf cap; and these were the clothes that Tom wore, winter and summer, greatly to the admiration of his mother and all the neighbours round about.
As he grew older, Tom was full of tricks. He used to play cherry-stones with the boys from the village. When he had his stone of his own, he would creep into the bags belonging to the boys and steal their stones. One sharp-eyed lad caught sight of him doing this, and just as Tom had got his head inside the boy’s bag, he pulled the string tight and made Tom howl with pain.
‘That’ll serve you right for stealing!’ said the boy with the bag.
‘I’ll never steal again!’ cried Tom. ‘Only let me out, and I’ll never steal again!’
So Tom was let out; and — for a time at least — he stole no more cherry-stones.
Tom was so small that, although his mother loved him dearly, she sometimes lost sight of him, especially when she was busy. One day she was making a batter pudding and chanced to leave the kitchen for a moment. Tom climbed on to the edge of the basin to see what was inside; his foot slipped, and splash! he fell right into the batter. His mother poured the mixture into the pan and began cooking it. Tom’s mouth was so full of the pudding that he could not call out, but he kicked and struggled for all he was worth.
‘Well, now,’ said Tom’s mother, ‘I do declare that pudding is bewitched. An evil spirit has got into it, and it’s good for nothing.’ So she tipped the pudding out of the window. Just then a tinker happened to be passing, and being hungry, he thought the pudding would do for his dinner. So he picked it up and put it in his wallet. But by this time Tom had got his mouth free of the batter and began to hello out loud.
‘Oh, my!’ said the tinker. ‘Now what’s got into my bag, I wonder? ‘Tis some evil spirit come to frighten me for picking up that pudding.’
So without looking into his wallet, he opened it as quickly as he could and tipped everything out, Tom and pudding and all.
Shaking the rest of the batter from his clothes and picking up his oak-leaf cap, which had fallen off, Tom ran home as fast as he could. His mother was overjoyed at seeing him again, gave him a good wash in a teacup full of warm water, kissed him, and put him to bed.
Next day his mother took him out to the field with her when she went to milk the cow. It was a windy day, and she was afraid the little boy would get blown away. So while she did her milking, she tied him to a thistle. But the cow, seeing only his oak-leaf cap, thought she would like a tasty mouthful, so she gobbled up the thistle and Tom as well. Inside the cow’s mouth Tom was terrified of the two great rows of teeth, so he called out with all his might:
‘Mother, mother! Help, help!’
‘Where are you?’ cried his mother, getting up from her milking stool and looking round for the thistle where she had tied her son for safety.
‘Here!’ called Tom. ‘Inside the cow’s mouth!’
But the cow was so surprised to hear a shrill voice coming from inside her own mouth that she opened her jaws and let Tom fall. As luck would have it, his mother held out her apron and caught Tom just in time.
Tom’s next adventure happened when he was out in the fields driving the cattle along with a whip which his father had made him of a barley straw. He slipped on some rough ground and fell into a furrow. Before he could pick himself up, a great black raven flew down and carried him off in her beak. Away she flew over hills and valleys until she came to the sea — and there she dropped him.
Down and down fell Tom Thumb, till at last he struck the water. Then snap! — a great fish with wide-open jaws swallowed him up in a moment and carried him out to sea. But a fishing-boat caught up the fish in its nets, and next day this very fish, with Tom inside, was brought to the court of King Arthur himself. When the cook cut open the fish to prepare it for the King’s dinner, how surprised she was to find Tom inside! Alive and well he was, though a little frightened at his adventure; and all the scullions and the kitchen-maids gathered round to look at him. Then the cook took him up to the King himself; and there stood Tom, on the King’s own table, bowing and taking off his oak-leaf hat to all the ladies and the knights of the Round Table. Everyone laughed and clapped hands, and Tom was made the King’s dwarf and became a great favourite. They all wondered where he had come from. Only Merlin, the magician, could tell, but he said nothing.
‘Tell me what your parents are like,’ said the King to Tom one day. ‘Are they little folk, just like yourself?’
‘Why, no,’ said Tom, ‘my father and mother are poor labouring folk, just like those who work in your fields. They are no bigger and no smaller than others are; but perhaps they are poorer than most.’
‘Well,’ said the King, who was very fond of Tom, ‘go into my treasury, where I keep all my money, and take as much gold or silver as you can carry. Go home with it, and give it to your poor father and mother.’
So Tom went to King Arthur’s treasury with a bag made from a water bubble. But all he could get into the bag was a silver three penny piece, and even this was almost too heavy for him. Away he trudged with his load on his back, and it took him two days and two nights to reach home. His mother and father were delighted to see him, and they cooked a fine meal and made much of him, for he was nearly dead with weariness after carrying the silver piece so far. They were proud to have the silver piece, especially when they knew it was a present from King Arthur himself; and many an evening he spent telling them of his adventures at court and what a great favourite he was with all the lords and ladies.
After a few weeks, he kissed them good-bye and went back to the King’s castle, for he was afraid the King would be missing his dwarf; and very pleased they all were at court to see him again. There is no time to tell all the adventures that befell him after that; but we will finish by describing how King Arthur made him one of his knights.
First he must have a new suit, for his other clothes, that he had had from the Fairy Queen, had become torn and ragged from his adventures in the batter pudding and the cow’s mouth and the great fish. So the court tailors were ordered to make him a new coat of butterflies’ wings, and the royal bootmaker made him a pair of boots of chicken hide. Then he was knighted before the assembled court and given a needle for a sword and a sleek white mouse for a horse. And on fine days he would go hunting with all the courtiers, his sword by his side, and his mouse steed trotting beneath him.
The King also had a chair of state made for him so that he might sit on the royal table and amuse the Queen at meal times; and a little gold palace was made for him to live in with a great door an inch wide. But for all his finery Sir Thomas Thumb, as he was now called, never forgot his humble parents. Once a month he rode off on his white mouse to their cottage in the country and amused the old folks with tales and talk from the court of King Arthur. So that the poor ploughman and his wife had good cause to be proud of the little son they had been given through the magic of the great Merlin, whom they had entertained unknown, years ago, in the form of an old and tattered beggar.
