E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
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.”
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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.)
