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In that most extraordinary of books, CANIDIA, OR THE WITCHES, by R. D. 1683, 4to, v. 86, the author enumerates our hero among the attractions offered in his days at Bartholomew and other fairs. See also Part iii. p. 99:

"Jack in a Lanthorn, Whipping Tom,

Will of the Wisp, and TOм THUMB.
Women Dancers, Puppet Players,

At Bartholomew and Sturbridge Fairs."

And again, at p. 105 of the same book, Dixon says, alluding to the fruitlessness of dealing with "atheists that are mad," &c :""Tis better to play upon Tabor and Drum,

To sing Ballads, or cry, Come Pudding, come,

Tell a Tale of Robbin Hood or Tom Thumb."

In an old ballad, entitled "The Devil and the Scold," quoted by Mr. Halliwell in his Notices of Popular Histories, our hero is thus mentioned :

"Tom Thumb is not my subject,

Whom fairies oft did aide.

Nor that mad spirit Robin,

That plagues both wife and maid."

And an allusion to him also occurs in the Second Part of the Friar and the Boy :

"The merry tales of Robin Hood,

Tom Thumb, and Little John,

Cannot compare with this little book,

Which I present to you."

Mr. Halliwell, in the Nursery Rhymes of England, 6th edition, p. 18, has printed a piece called "Tom Thumb's Alphabet," beginning:

"A was an archer, and shot at a frog;"

and at p. 240 of the same entertaining work occurs the following little poemet, which is manifestly borrowed from the ancient legend of Tom Thumb:—

"I had a little husband,

No bigger than my thumb,

I put him in a pint pot,

And there I bid him drum.

I bought a little horse,

That galloped up and down;
I bridled him, and saddled him,
And sent him out of town.

I gave him some garters

To garter up his hose,
And a little handkerchief

To wipe his pretty nose."

Tom Thumb is the Swaine Tomling of early Danish folklore. But the myth is common to many languages. In Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales (1849), p. 94, is an article on "Tom Thumb," with extracts from Doctor Wagstaffe's Comment on the subject (1711). As the editor has not the Comment at hand, he may perhaps be excused for transferring from Mr. Halliwell's book a portion of the passage taken by him from Wagstaffe:

"It was my good fortune, some time ago, to have the library of a schoolboy committed to my charge, where, among other undiscovered valuable authors, I pitched upon Tom Thumb and Tom Hickathrift; authors indeed more proper to adorn the shelves of Bodley or the Vatican, than to be confined to the retirement and obscurity of a private study. I have perused the first of these with an infinite pleasure, and a more than ordinary application, and have made some observations on it, which may not, I hope, prove unacceptable to the public."

The thumb is in Cheshire, Sussex, and other counties, known at the present day as Tom Thumbkin, which forms an additional testimony to the general diffusion and singular celebrity of the story in this country.

Brand, in his Popular Antiquities, mentions a chap-book called The Travels of Tom Thumb over England and Wales; of course this is Dodsley's, who merely adopted the title for the nonce.

The present edition is carefully republished from that of 1630, many errors in Ritson's text being corrected, and the division into chapters and eight-line stanzas, which that antiquary set aside, restored; so that, in fact, the reader has now, for the first time, an opportunity of perusing the tale in its genuine shape.1

1 The cut of a mock procession, consisting of seven figures in church vestments with heads of animals is on the back of the original title, as it is given in the facsimile.

His Life and Death:

Wherein is declared many Maruailous Acts of Manhood, full of wonder, and ftrange merriments :

Which little Knight liued in King Arthurs time, and famous in the Court of Great Brittaine.

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Tom Thumbe, his Life and Death.

Of the Birth, Name, and bringing up of Tom Thumbe, with the merry prankes that hee did in his childehood.'

N Arthurs court Tom Thumbe did liue,

a man of mickle might,

The best of all the table round,

and eke a doughty knight:

His stature but an inch in height,

or quarter of a span;

Then thinke you not this little knight,
was prou'd a valiant man??

His father was a plow-man plaine,

his mother milkt the cow,

But yet the way to get a sonne

this3 couple knew not how,

10

This, and all other headings throughout the book, were omitted by Ritson.

2 Ritson, for some reason, divided the poem into four-line stanzas, but in the original the stanzas are of eight lines.

3 Old ed. has these. This reading was adopted by Ritson.

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