TOM THUMB *

A POOR Woodman sat in his cottage one night, smoking his pipe by the fireside, while his wife sat by his side spinning. "How lonely it is, wife," said he,

* The "Daumesdick" of Grimm; from Mühlheim, on the Rhine, In this tale the hero appears in his humblest domestic capacity; but there are others in which he plays a most important and heroic character, as the outwitter and vanquisher of giants and other powerful enemies, the favourite of fortune, and the winner of the hands of kings' daughters. There are several stories in Grimm's collection illustrative of the worth and ancient descent of the personage who appears, with the same general characteristics, under the various names in England of Tom Thumb, Tom-a-lyn, Tam-lane, Tommel-finger, &c.; in Germany, of Daumesdick, Däumling, Daumerling, and Dummling (for though the latter word is used in a different and independent sense, we incline to think it originally the same); in Austria, of Daumenlang; in Denmark, of Svend Tomling, or Swain Tomling; and further north, as the Thaumlin, or dwarfish hero of Scandinavia.

We must refer to the Quarterly Review, No. XLI., for a speculation as to the connexion of Tom's adventures, particularly that with the cow, with some of the mysteries of Indian mythology. It must suffice here briefly to notice the affinities which some of the present stories bear to the earliest Northern traditions, leaving the reader to determine whether, as Hearne concludes, our hero was King Edgar's page, or, as tradition says, ended his course and found his last home at Lincoln.

In one of the German stories now before us, his first wandering is through the recesses of a glove, to escape his mother's anger. So Thor, in the twenty-third fable of the Edda, reposes in the giant's glove. In another story-our "Thumbling" ("Der junge Riese") -the hero is in his youth a thumb long; but, being nurtured by a giant, acquires wonderful power, and passes through a variety of adventures, resembling at various times those of Siegfried, or Sigurd (the doughty champion, who, according to the Heldenbuch, caught the lions in the woods, and hung them over the walls by their tails"), of Thor, and of Grettir (the hero who kept geese on the common); and

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as he puffed out a long curl of smoke, "for you and me to sit here by ourselves, without any children to play about and amuse us, while other people seem so happy

corresponding with the achievements ascribed in England to his namesake, to Jack the Giant-killer, and Tom Hycophric (whose sphere of action Hearne would limit to the contracted boundaries of Tylney in Norfolk), and in the Servian tale, quoted by MM. Grimm from Schottky, given to "the son of the bear," Medvedovitsh.

He serves the smith, whose history as the Velint (or Weyland) of Northern fable is well known; outwits, like Eulenspiegel (Owl-glass), those who are by nature his betters; wields a weapon as powerful as Thor's hammer; and, like his companion, is somewhat impregnable to tolerably rude attacks. He is equally voracious, too, with Loke, whose "art consisted in eating more than any other man in the world," and with the son of Odin, when "busk'd as a bride so fair," in the Song of Thrym,—

"Betimes at evening he approached,

And the mantling ale the giants broached;
The spouse of Sifia ate alone

Eight salmons and an ox full grown,

And all the cates on which women feed,

And drank three firkins of sparkling mead."

HERBERT'S Icelandic Poetry, i. p. 6.

"Drive away

In our "Thumbling," also, a mill-stone is treacherously thrown upon him, while employed in digging at the bottom of a well. the hens," said he; "they scratch the sand about till it flies into my eyes." So in the Edda, the Giant Skrymmer only notices the dreadful blows of Thor's hammer as the falling of a leaf, or some other trifling matter. In the English story of Jack the Giant-killer, Jack, under similar circumstances, says that a rat had given him three or four slaps with his tail.

In the story of "Heads Off" (or "The King of the Golden Mountain") it will be seen how the giants are outwitted and deprived of the great Northern treasures, the tarn-kap, the shoes, and the sword, which are equally renowned in the records of the Niebelungenlied and Niflunga Saga, and in our own Jack the Giant-killer. The other Thumb tales are full of such adventures. They are all exceed. ingly curious, and deserve to be brought together in one view, as forming a very singular group.

"What you say is

and merry with their children!" very true," said the wife, sighing, and turning round her wheel; "how happy should I be if I had but one child! If it were ever so small-nay, if it were no bigger than my thumb-I should be very happy, and love it dearly." Now-odd as you may think it-it came to pass that this good woman's wish was fulfilled, just in the very way she had wished it; for, not long afterwards, she had a little boy, who was quite healthy and strong, but was not much bigger than my thumb. So they said, "Well, we cannot say we have not got what we wished for, and, little as he is, we will love him dearly." And they called him Thomas Thumb.

They gave him plenty of food, yet for all they could do he never grew bigger, but kept just the same size as he had been when he was born. Still his eyes were sharp and sparkling, and he soon showed himself to be a clever little fellow, who always knew well what he was about.

One day, as the woodman was getting ready to go into the wood to cut fuel, he said, "I wish I had some one to bring the cart after me, for I want to make haste." "Oh, father," cried Tom, "I will take care of that; the cart shall be in the wood by the time you want it." Then the woodman laughed, and said, "How can that be? you cannot reach up to the horse's bridle." "Never mind that, father," said Tom; "if my mother will only harness the horse, I will get into his ear and tell him which way to go." "Well," said the father, we will try for once."

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When the time came the mother harnessed the

horse to the cart, and put Tom into his ear; and as he sat there the little man told the beast how to go, crying out, "Go on!" and "Stop!" as he wanted: and thus the horse went on just as well as if the woodman had driven it himself into the wood. It happened that as the horse was going a little too fast, and Tom was calling out, "Gently! gently!" two strangers came up. "What an odd thing that is!" said one; "there is a cart going along, and I hear a carter talking to the horse, but yet I can see no one." "That is queer, indeed," said the other; "let us follow the cart, and see where it goes." So they went on into the wood, till at last they came to the place where the woodman was. Then Tom Thumb, seeing his father, cried out, "See, father, here I am with the cart, all right and safe! now take me down !" So his father took hold of the horse with one hand, and with the other took his son out of the horse's ear, and put him down upon a straw, where he sat as merry as you please.

The two strangers were all this time looking on, and did not know what to say for wonder. At last one took the other aside, and said, "That little urchin will make our fortune, if we can get him, and carry him about from town to town as a show: we must buy him.” So they went up to the woodman, and asked him what he would take for the little man: "He will be better off," said they, "with us than with you." "I won't sell him at all," said the father; "my own flesh and blood is dearer to me than all the silver and gold in the world." But Tom, hearing of the bargain they wanted to make, crept up his father's coat to his shoulder, and

whispered in his ear, "Take the money, father, and let them have me; I'll soon come back to you."

So the woodman at last said he would sell Tom to the strangers for a large piece of gold, and they paid the price. "Where would you like to sit ?" said one of them. "Oh, put me on the rim of your hat; that will be a nice gallery for me; I can walk about there, and see the country as we go along." So they did as he wished; and when Tom had taken leave of his father they took him away with them.

They journeyed on till it began to be dusky, and then the little man said, "Let me get down, I'm tired." So the man took off his hat, and put him down on a clod of earth, in a ploughed field by the side of the road. But Tom ran about amongst the furrows, and at last slipt into an old mouse-hole. "Good night, my masters!" said he; "I'm off! mind and look sharp after me the next time." Then they ran at once to the place, and poked the ends of their sticks into the mousehole, but all in vain; Tom only crawled farther and farther in; and at last it became quite dark, so that they were forced to go their way without their prize, as sulky as could be.

When Tom found they were gone, he came out of his hiding-place. "What dangerous walking it is,” said he, "in this ploughed field! If I were to fall from one of these great clods, I should undoubtedly break my neck." At last, by good luck, he found a large empty snail-shell. "This is lucky," said he, "I can sleep here very well ;" and in he crept

Just as he was falling asleep, he heard two men