Dictionary of Phrase and Fable—T

Tom Thumb

the nursery tale, is from the French Le Petit Poucet, by Charles Perrault (1630), but it is probably of Anglo-Saxon origin. There is in the Bodleian Library a ballad about Tom Thumb, “printed for John Wright in 1630.”

Tom Thumb.
The son of a common ploughman and his wife, who was knighted by King Arthur, and was killed by the poisonous breath of a spider, in the reign of King Thunstone, the successor of Arthur. (Nursery tale.)

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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