"Abracadabra! Here I cast this spell! May
the son, your wife will shortly give you,
never grow any taller than my own thumb!"

After Tom Thumb was born, his parents were
at their wits' end. They could never find him,
for they could barely see him. They had to
speak in whispers for fear of deafening
the little boy. Tom Thumb preferred playing
with the little garden creatures, to the
company of parents so different from himself.
He rode piggyback on the snail and danced
with the ladybirds.

Tiny as he was, he had great fun in the
world of little things.

But one unlucky day, he went to visit a
froggy friend. No sooner had he scrambled
onto a leaf than a large pike swallowed
him up. But the pike too was fated to come
to a very bad end. A little later, he
took the bait cast by one of the King's
fishermen, and before long, found himself
under the cook's knife in the royal
kitchens. And great was everyone's surprise
when, out of the fish's stomach, stepped
Tom Thumb, quite alive and little the worse
for his adventure.

"What am I to do with this tiny lad?" said
the cook to himself. Then he had a
brainwave. "He can be a royal pageboy!
He's so tiny, I can pop him into the cake
I'm making. When he marches across the
bridge, sounding the trumpet everyone
will gasp in wonder!" Never had such a
marvel been seen at Court. The guests
clapped excitedly at the cook's skill
and the King himself clapped loudest of all.
The King rewarded the clever cook with a
bag of gold. Tom Thumb was even luckier.
The cook made him a pageboy, and a
pageboy he remained, enjoying all the
honours of his post.

He had a white mouse for a mount, a gold
pin for a sword and he was allowed to eat
the King's food. In exchange, he marched
up and down the table at banquets. He
picked his way amongst the plates and glasses
amusing the guests with his trumpet.
What Tom Thumb didn't know was that he
had made an enemy. The cat which, until
Tom's arrival, had been the King's pet,
was now forgotten. And, vowing to have its
revenge on the newcomer, it ambushed Tom in
the garden. When Tom saw the cat, he did
not run away, as the creature had intended.
He whipped out his gold pin and cried to
his white mouse mount: "Charge! Charge!"
Jabbed by the tiny sword, the cat turned
tail and fled. Since brute force was not
the way to revenge, the cat decided to
use guile.

Casually pretending to bump into the King
as he walked down the staircase, the cat
softly miaowed: "Sire! Be on your guard!
A plot is being hatched against your life!"
And then he told a dreadful lie. "Tom Thumb
is planning to lace your food with hemlock.
I saw him picking the leaves in the garden
the other day. heard him say these very words!"

Now, the King had once been kept in bed
with very bad tummy pains, after eating
too many chernes and he feared the
thought of being poisoned, so he sent for
Tom Thumb. The cat provided proof of his
words by pulling a hemlock leaf from
under the white mouse's saddle cloth, where
he had hidden it himself. Tom Thumb was
so amazed, he was at a loss for words to
deny what the cat had said. The King,
without further ado, had him thrown into
prison. And since he was so tiny, they
locked him up in a pendulum clock.

The hours passed and the days too. Tom's
only pastime was swinging back and forth,
clinging to the pendulum, until the
night when he attracted the attention of
a big night moth, fluttering round the
room.

"Let me out!" cried Tom Thumb, tapping
on the glass. As it so happens, the moth
had only just been set free after being
a prisoner in a large box, in which she had
taken a nap. So she took pity on Tom Thumb
and released him.