Daily Almanac for
Nov 19, 2008
Search White Pages
Info search tips
Bio search tips

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
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

More on Tom Thumb from Infoplease:

See a map of "" in the Visual Thesaurus

    • Cite
    • Print
    • Bookmark

Related Content