Old Magic
The folk tradition
The Interesting History of Jack and the Giants; The History of Tom Thumb; The Surprising Adventures of Puss in Boots; and The Droll Adventures of Mother Hubbard and Her Dog
In the ancient days, we are given to understand, England and Wales were filled with giants. Giants who stole from the human inhabitants of these lands; giants who used their great strength and power to bully and to be vicious and vile. They abducted women; they allied with wicked sorcerers to transfigure those they did not like into grotesque forms. The giants needed to be taught a lesson. But the leaders of mankind was too busy squabbling with each other. Who was there would could come from the serried ranks of man and do what most urgently needed to be done?
Jack the Giant Killer killed giants. It’s there in the name. Once upon a time, every English child may have had a good change of knowing all the giants Jack killed — their names and how he dispatched them. The devious, conniving giant whom Jack tricked into cutting his own belly open — Jack had cut a leather pouch under his shirt open with his own knife, and implicitly bid the giant to try the thing for real. The two giants whom Jack throttled with rope nooses until he could immobilise and kill them with his sword.
And, of course, the greatest of all the giants, the Cornish titan Cormoran, the giant of St. Michael's Mount. Stealer of livestock, terror of the county. This giant Jack summoned by making a great clamour and tricked into falling into a deep pit — a pit covered with moss and mould. Afterwards, Jack killed the giant by means of smashing his head in with an axe.
Even giants allied to wizards: they were not protected from Jack’s quick mind and his quicker sword.
How much were these stories believed? They were certainly widely repeated. Other tales were yet more fantastical, yet stranger, yet even further circulated in their day.
The legend of Tom Thumb is somehow more fantastical, although generations might have grown up sincerely believing such a man of such strange dimensions could have been born.
Tom Thumb was supposedly named as he was because he stood the height of his father’s thumb. And he got into many scrapes that one might imagine a man of that size encountering. Being swallowed by things, mostly — like fish, one of which was later caught, killed and served up at the king’s table.
At one time, we are told, Tom Thumb was a rascal, and was even sentenced to death by King Arthur, the ruler of the day. But Tom escaped and then, later, for reasons about which we may only speculate, he was pardoned.
It was after, the tellers of the legends say, that Tom took to wearing a needle as other men wore a sword — and when a cat appeared, ready to leap at the king with ill-intent, Tom Thumb prepared to defend Arthur with his needle-sword, making such a brave show of it that the cat (many times his size) thought better of the contest and departed.
Tom Thumb was knighted by King Arthur, so they say, and was part of the games, levities and amusements of Camelot, and the sports of the knights of the Round Table.
All in his own little way.
Meanwhile, to flavour the pot, we have also the story of Puss in Boots. The cat’s master was penniless, you see, and his feline companion decided to use all his cunning, all his capacity for trickery, to remedy the situation. From the first — disappearing into the local farmland to capture rabbits and game birds with a cat’s ingenuity for the king’s table — Puss soon progressed to greater things.
For instance, convincing a shapeshifting ogre to turn itself into a mouse — upon whom Puss in Boots fell with great sudden violence. And naturally, Puss’s plan worked out even more than he had said; and his owner, once penniless, discovered that, the ogre being gone, he owned now great estates, filled with workers eager to harvest for him.
Just in time for the arrival of the king and the promise of further reward.
Mother Hubbard, meanwhile, did not have a dog that did things for her in the same way. Her dog — though it appeared to have the ability to feign or cheat death — was just making fun. Most of the time.