There were current many old stories of characters similar to Tom Thumb. A certain man was so thin that he could jump through the eye of a needle. Another crept nimbly to a spider's web which was hanging in the air, and danced skillfully upon it until a spider came, which spun a thread round his neck and throttled him. A third was able to pierce a sunmote with his head and pass his whole body through it. A fourth was in the habit of riding an ant, but the ant threw him off and trampled him. In a work written in 1601, referred to in Grimm's _Household Tales_ a spider relates:-- Once did I catch a tailor proud Heavy he was as elder wood, From Heaven above he'd run a race, With an old straw hat to this place, In Heaven he might have stayed no doubt, For no one wished to turn him out. He fell in my web, hung in a knot, Could not get out, I liked it not, That e'en the straw hat, safe and sound, Nine days ere him came to the ground. A delightful little rhyme, _Tom Thumb_, is among Halliwell's _Nursery Rhymes_. It may refer to the Danish _History of Tom Thumb_: I had a little husband No bigger than my thumb; I put him in a pint pot And there I bade him drum: I bridled him and saddled him, And sent him out of town; I gave him a pair of garters To tie up his little hose; And a little handkerchief To wipe his little nose. The English version of _Tom Thumb_ as we know it today, opens with a visit of the magician Merlin at the cottage of an honest and hospitable ploughman. Merlin rewarded the Goodman and his Wife for their hospitality by calling on the Queen of the fairies, who brought to the home, Tom Thumb, a boy no bigger than a man's thumb.