Happy birthday, Tom Thumb

Story-telling is so much more than entertainment. Stories both true and fictional bond the generations, tell of the past, teach lessons in a gentler or more memorable way. Stories make art, from children's fairy tales to famous paintings. Some stories are too fantastical to be real, yet amazingly connected to fact.

Such is the case of Tom Thumb, the subject of the first English fairy tale in print. This little man was made perhaps most famous by the Grimm brothers' 1905 fairy tale originally published in German. In it a poor and lonely woodman and his wife wish for a child, "as small as my thumb;" magically the clever and self-sacrificial Tom appears. In this story he volunteers to be sold as a novelty to help the family; after wild adventures he escapes and returns home.

Through the years Tom Thumb legends also inspired films, books, plays, children's cartoons and comics, the name of a locomotive and a grocery chain, and poetry. "The Life and Death of Tom Thumb" is a very long, old English poem of unknown origin. It describes an equally small, but rather different Tom, given by Merlin to a ploughman and milkmaid:

"In Arthur's court Tom Thumb did live, 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 think you not this little knight was proved a valiant man?

...His hat made of an oaken leaf, his shirt a spider's web,

Both light and soft for those his limbs, that were so smally bred."

So "smally bred" was the poetic Tom that he fell in his mother's pudding, was eaten by a cow, and endured more mishaps before this entertaining poem is done.

And how about the real Tom Thumb? In human history people of very small stature long predate the "Tom Thumb" name. Nevertheless, born 175 years ago this month was "General Tom Thumb," the stage name of Charles Stratton. This "showman of short stature" (but much bigger than a thumb) was discovered by circus great P.T. Barnum.

Stratton was born in Massachusetts in 1838 with a normal birth weight and size. After six months he hadn't grown an inch. Word spread; Barnum approached the Strattons and convinced them to let him train the toddler to sing and dance. By age 5, Tom Thumb had begun worldwide tours; he once met England's King Edward VII and was attacked by his little dog.

By his 18th birthday, Tom Thumb reached 2 feet 9 inches. By his death as a rich and famous man of 45, he'd reached 3 feet. His funeral was attended by some 10,000 people. One can't help but feel sorry for his eclipsed spouse, whose gravestone next to his reads only, "His wife."

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network and may be contacted at sholehjo@hotmail.com.