Tom Thumb

A popular literary character in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was no taller than his father's thumb. He appears as King Arthur's dwarf, is loved by the Queen of the Giants, but is in love with Arthur's daughter Huncamunca.

In the Tom Thumbe, His Life and Death (1630), he is given by Merlin to a childless plowman:

No blood nor bones in him should be,

in shape and being such,

That men should heare him speake, but not

his wandring shadow touch:

But so unseene to goe or come

whereas it pleasd him Nill,

Begot and borne in halfe and houre,

to fit his Fathers will:

And in foure minutes grew so fast,

that he became so tall

As was the Plowmans thumbe in height,

and so they did him call,

Tom Thumbe, the which Fayry-Queene,

there gaue to him his name,

Who with her traine of Goblins grim,

unto his Christning came.

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