Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant-Killer: Two Arthurian Fairytales?

Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant-Killer: Two Arthurian Fairytales?Author(s): Thomas GreenSource: Folklore, Vol. 118, No. 2 (Aug., 2007), pp. 123-140Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30035417 .

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Folklore 118 (August 2007): 123-140

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant-Killer: Two Arthurian Fairytales?

Thomas Green

Abstract

This study examines the chapbook tales of Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant-Killer. The earliest recorded forms of these stories are discussed and it is contended that the common dismissal of their Arthurian elements as unimportant background- Arthur's Britain as a variant of "Once upon a time"-is unhelpful. Rather, both arguably embody and illustrate important points about the nature of the Arthurian legend in an era in which interest in this had declined considerably. It is suggested that the Arthurian element in Tom Thumb is, while not central, significant, and that it is best viewed in the context of an established pattern of development and expansion of the international Arthurian cycle that meets the needs and interests of different audiences. Jack the Giant-Killer, in contrast, seems to owe a noteworthy debt to the Arthur of Welsh and/or Cornish folklore rather than to the roifainiant of the international legend, perhaps reflecting the decline in importance of the latter since the time of the The History of Tom Thumbe (1641).

Introduction

The Arthurian legend has constantly developed and evolved throughout its existence, frequently absorbing originally independent characters and adventures, something apparent in even the very earliest stories. Thus Arthur's court in Culhwch ac Olwen (whose final redaction is generally dated to c.1100) consisted of over two hundred and sixty different characters, including former pagan deities, legendary figures such as Tristan and Isolt, characters from the largely unrelated Welsh "Four Branches of the Mabinogi" and from the Irish "Ulster Cycle," and even the Greek Achilles (Bromwich and Evans 1992). Indeed, in the slightly later medieval Welsh Triads, the formula "The Three Xs of Arthur's Court" began quite often to replace "The Three Xs of the Island of Britain" as a means of classifying elements of the myths and legends of Britain. Arthur's court seems to have come to represent and embody the "Island of Britain" of legend and myth, providing a home for all its tales, with Arthur as its "Lord" (Bromwich 1978).

This phenomenon is not confined to the Welsh versions of the Arthurian legend. In the international literary legend, Arthur's name and court become merely familiar anchor points in the world of storytelling, a form of shorthand for a magical and legendary land of the unspecified past, in which strange adventures took place and supernatural creatures lived. In some cases these tales and characters had an existence independent of the Arthurian legend-as with B~roul's Anglo-French Roman de Tristran (Frederick 1970), the Roman D'Ogier Le Danois (Togeby 1969), and the Livre de Caradoc (Roach and Ivy 1949-52)-while in others they appear to be de novo creations, set from the first within this world, as is ISSN 0015-587X print; 1469-8315 online/07/020123-18; Routledge Journals; Taylor & Francis a 2007 The Folklore Society DOI: 10.1080/00155870701337296



124 Thomas Green

arguably the case with Lancelot (who has no convincing origins in the Welsh Arthurian legend or in non-Arthurian continental material, despite frequent attempts to provide him with such). Thus, when Chaucer's Wife of Bath talks generally about fairies, she treats them and their stories as being naturally and fundamentally a part of the legendary Britain ruled by King Arthur:

In th' olde dayes of King Arthour, Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fullfild of fayerye. The elf-queene with hir joly compaignye, Danced ful ofte in many a grene mede ... I speke of manye hundred yeres ago. But now kan no man se none elves mo ... (Benson 1987, 116).

In the medieval Arthurian legend, this situation seemed not to have caused any major problems. Each new accretion in turn arguably expanded and developed the general conception of what the Arthurian legend was, what happened in it, and who was actually a part of it, so that Sir Lancelot and Sir Tristan became- despite their origins and nature as accretions and new elements-accepted as having a genuine place within the legend. In contrast, no such acceptance is usually offered for the two seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century chapbook and fairytale figures under consideration here, despite the fact that in both cases the tales told are set in Arthur's Britain. Coming after the end of the great medieval interest in Arthur, they are often seen as mere pale imitations of what has gone before, rather than as genuine Arthurian tales. "In the days of King Arthur ..." is here considered a variant of "once upon a time ..." and nothing more, with the Arthurian element simply providing an "unimportant background" to a series of independent and unrelated adventures (Gamerschlag 1983, 363; Thompson 1996, 136). The question asked in the present study is whether this view of these "fairy stories" is actually justified. Are these post-medieval new Arthurian characters and stories really so different from those of earlier centuries, and, if so, in what way? Can they, in fact, be considered an authentic part of the history of the growth and development of the Arthurian legend?

The Tale of Tom Thumb A clear Arthurian element in the tale of Tom Thumb is apparent from the very first. The oldest surviving version of his adventures, generally ascribed to pamphleteer Richard Johnson, is entitled The History of Tom Thumbe, the Little, for his Small Stature Surnamed, King Arthurs Dwarfe (1621) (see Opie and Opie 1974, 41-57). [1] This tale is not simply set in Arthur's Britain-as a synonym for fairyland-but involves a character who had (to some degree) a close relationship with Arthur and his court. Similarly, the earliest verse adaptation of the story is entitled Tom Thumbe, His Life and Death: Wherein is Declared many Maruailous Acts of Manhood, Full of Wonder, and Strange Merriments: Which Little Knight Liued in King Arthurs Time, and Famous in the Court of Great-Brittaine (Anonymous 1630). [2] Indeed, the latter starts in the following manner:

In Arthurs Court Tom Thumbe did liue a man of mickle might,



Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant-Killer 125

The best of all the Table round, and eke a doughty knight (Anonymous 1630, lines 1-4).

Nor is this just a stock introduction to a story set in the "days of King Arthur"; rather, it begins a tale of the origins and adventures of one of his knights. This impression is strengthened by a brief acquaintance with Tom's story. The tale, for those not familiar with it, runs along the following lines in the 1621 text. Tom was born to a poor, childless couple via the intervention of Merlin himself. Merlin, to quote James Orchard Halliwell, "had a strange knack of taking people exactly at their words" (1849, 84). So, when the "plowman" sends his wife to Merlin to try to conceive, the "inchanter" (who, we are told, "consorts with Elues and Fayries") immediately and literally grants their wish for a child, even if it should be, as the plowman has declared, only "of the very bignes of my thumb." Tom is delivered with the aid of the "Queene of Fayres," who subsequently provides him with "a Hat of an Oaken Leafe" and a shirt "of a Spiders Cobweb," along with various magical abilities. After some boyhood adventures appropriate to his size and character, he is eaten in succession by a cow, a giant, and a fish, by which means he ends up at King Arthur's court (the fish having been caught for Arthur's table). On arrival at court he is made Arthur's own dwarf and entertains as a courtier for a little while, including performing a dance at a royal tournament at which Sir Lancelot is present. While there he also sits at the Round Table, alongside Arthur and his knights, and is a constant companion for the king when he is out riding. After a while Tom begs leave to visit his parents, but soon returns to the court, where he is greeted "with Triumphs and much Reuelling," before he is taken ill, cured by Arthur's will, meets another giant and then, once again, returns to court. By now he is referred to as "Sir Thomas Thumbe" and is entertained royally before giving an account of all his deeds to the king.

The 1621 text breaks off at this point, but Johnson promises a subsequent second part to complete the story. This continuation no longer survives; however, the 1630 versification continues the story through to Tom's death and is very probably, as the Opies thought, based on this lost second part (Opie and Opie 1974, 38-40; Gamerschlag 1983, 369). Whatever the case may be, this very early version of Tom Thumb maintains and develops the Arthurian element in the tale. Thus, the 1630 ballad has Tom demonstrating his skill at courtly and knightly games:

Now he with Tilts and Turnaments was entertained so, That all the best of Arthurs Knights, did him much pleasure show, As good Sir Lancelot of the Lake, Sir Tristram, and Sir Guy, Yet none compar'd with braue Tom Thum for Knightly Chiualry (Anonymous 1630, lines 249-56).

Sadly, Tom's exertions cause him to be taken ill: Now at these sports he toyld himselfe, that he a sicknesse tooke, Though which all manly exercise, he carelessly forsooke: Where lying on his bed sore sicke,



126 Thomas Green

King Arthurs Doctor came, With cunning skill, by physicks art, to ease and cure the same (Anonymous 1630, lines 289-96).

Despite the doctor's best efforts Tom dies, and his ghost is taken into "Fayry Land," while back in the mortal world "King Arthur and his Knights, for forty daies did mourne," setting up a tomb for Tom that they visited for years after, sometimes later said to be found in Lincoln or Tattershall (Anonymous 1630, lines 325-30).

These are the broad outlines of the story, as it was current by 1630. Later versions considerably embellish this, but, as can be seen from the above, the Arthurian component in this story was certainly more than simply "unimportant background" to an unrelated tale: Arthur's Britain as a variant of "once upon a time." It was instead an integral part of large sections of the tale itself. This is not, of course, to say that the character or the story was originally-or mainly- Arthurian. Similar tales are found in German and Danish folklore, and there are correspondences with Indian and Japanese stories. One can point particularly to such characters as the Danish Svend Tomling, "a man no bigger than a thumb." (Weiss 1932, 157). Tom Thumb himself is actually first alluded to in print in 1579, and in Reginald Scott's Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584) "Tom thombe" is listed as an object of popular superstition with which servants frighten children, alongside hobgoblins, elves, and imps, indicating that an ultimate origin for Tom Thumb in folklore is indeed the correct conclusion (Halliwell 1849, 82-3; Weiss 1932, 157-8; Opie and Opie 1974, 36-8; Gamerschlag 1983, 365-6; Carpenter and Prichard 1984, 535).

Tom Thumb would consequently seem to be a magical character drawn into the world of Arthur's Britain through the process of attraction familiar from the medieval Arthurian legend. The character's adventures would have been integrated with the Arthurian cycle to create a new tale, presumably by Richard Johnson himself (Gamerschlag 1983, 366-7). The focus still remains on the non- Arthurian hero and his story, but the action now clearly takes place in the Arthurian world, with a greater or lesser role for the traditional elements of the latter (always at least more than simply name-dropping). Indeed, the Arthurian elements do remain reasonably central to the tale throughout its early existence, coming to the fore most in the eighteenth-century satirical tradition. The most important and earliest example of this is Henry Fielding's (1730) play Tom Thumb, revised as the Tragedy of Tragedies; or The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great (Fielding 1731).

Fielding's work takes the chapbook and fairytale character and uses him for satirical effect, with Tom as the conqueror of giants and a darling of Arthur's court. King Arthur wishes to reward his favourite's victories with the hand of his daughter, Huncamunca, but this unleashes a terrible sequence of events, involving complicated love triangles. The romantic chaos that thereafter surrounds Tom leads, in the end, to the death by stabbing of the entire court, with Arthur killing himself last of all. The later revision adds to the mix a further love triangle between King Arthur, Tom Thumb, and Glumdalca, Queen of the Giants. So popular was this version of the story that Eliza Haywood and William Hatchett even fashioned an Opera out of it, The Opera of Operas (Hatchett 1733). This




extended the satire to Italian opera by the introduction of an improbably happy ending, in which everyone is revived from death by Merlin and finds that they now love the "right" person. Both the play and the opera were later used by Kane O'Hara for his late eighteenth-century Tom Thumb, A Burletta, which continued to run throughout the nineteenth century (Smith 1996).

The Arthurian elements in the above versions of Tom Thumb are fundamental to the plot, thereby adding to the impression that the tale of Tom Thumb-whatever its ultimate origins-was considered to be essentially a popular Arthurian fairystory. Fielding's version did not, however, replace the chapbook and fairytale original, which also continued into the nineteenth century, although the story was changed to appeal to, and be more "appropriate" for, nineteenth-century children. The seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century chapbooks were, of course, works primarily intended for adults, not children. Nonetheless, by the mid eighteenth century, Tom was undoubtedly a popular children's character, being the favoured nursery figure to sponsor children's books, such as Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book and Tom Thumb's Royal Riddle Book (Carpenter and Prichard 1984, 535). Simpson and Roud have, in fact, noted that "Tommy Thumb songs" was the normal eighteenth-century term for nursery rhymes (Simpson and Roud 2000, 363). Thus, in nineteenth-century versions, Tom exits the cow via its mouth, rather than by means of a cow pat "all besmeared," and he develops an overtly Christian aspect to his character. We also find new borrowings from the now once-more- popular literary Arthurian legend, re-emphasising the Arthurian nature of the tale. Thus Charlotte M. Yonge's History of Sir Thomas Thumb ends with Tom Thumb rejecting fairyland in favour of returning to help Arthur fight Mordred, escorting Guinevere to a nunnery, and being killed while removing a disrespectful spider's web from Arthur's throne (Yonge 1855).

While this all reinforces the conclusion that, in the case of Tom Thumb, "In the days of King Arthur ..." means just that, it still remains to be demonstrated that the tale should be considered a genuine part of the Arthurian legend's development. The Arthur who figures in Tom Thumb tales is not the popular figure of folklore discussed recently by Grooms (1993), Padel (1994), and Green (1998), nor is he the pseudo-historical king or emperor found in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (HRB) and the chronicle tradition. Rather, he is the legendary Arthur of the international medieval literary tradition, with his magician Merlin, his wondrous court, his Round Table and jousting contests, his knights-including Lancelot-and a magical landscape in which one can encounter giants and Fairy Queens. It is this generalised Arthurian milieu that informs Tom Thumb, and it is this, rather than any specific elements or events from the legendary cycle, which undoubtedly caused Tom's attachment to the Arthurian legend. This is, in itself, potentially significant. Certainly the central concept, events, and characters have no Arthurian precursors and, thus, (on one level) the tale of Tom Thumb does indeed "depart widely from the tradition," which is one of the reasons given for not regarding Tom Thumb as a truly Arthurian story (Thompson 1996, 136). Furthermore, with regard to the milieu, it ought to be remembered that, as Kurt Gamerschlag argues, there is actually relatively little precise Arthurian detail utilised in the early seventeenth-century versions and only a hazy knowledge of the legend is demonstrated (Gamerschlag 1983, 364-70).



128 Thomas Green

On the other hand, key Arthurian elements and characters are present and do recur throughout the tale, forming the framework of the actual plot and including the accounts of both Tom's conception and demise. Most importantly, it is debatable whether new elements and lack of copious specific detail from the literary legend make the Tom Thumb story any less worthy of study as an example of the development of the Arthurian legend. Such "departures from the tradition" were also arguably to be found in the works of Chritien de Troyes (Kibler and Carroll 1991), and in the much-debated Welsh versions of the same stories known collectively as the 'Three Welsh Romances' (Jones and Jones 1949, 155-273). These stories are in many respects very different in event and character from those found in, for example, the earliest Welsh Arthurian material, as represented by Culhwch ac Olwen and the Celtic-Latin Saints' Lives. Only with hindsight (and later literary development) did these become wholly Arthurian and thus not "departures" from the tradition.

The above applies equally well to other, less widely retold, "new" Arthurian tales that emerged in the Middle Ages-the story of Caradoc Briebras in the Livre de Caradoc is one example of this, found in the First Continuation of Perceval (Roach and Ivy 1949-52). The tale of Yder (most fully elaborated in the thirteenth-century French romance Yder) may be another that, although clearly "Arthurian," also departs considerably in places from "the tradition" as it then existed, especially in its treatment of Arthur (Adams 1983). Perhaps, most striking of all in this regard is the tale of Sir Tristan and his lover Isolt. Although a major element of the later Arthurian tradition (as in Malory's Morte Darthur; Vinaver 1971), this story is only "Arthurian" because it is now generally accepted as such. In its earliest versions, such as B~roul's twelfth-century poem (Frederick 1970), the Arthurian content of this romance is arguably much less than that found in the earliest versions of Tom Thumb. Indeed, a wider view of the Tristan legend strengthens the comparison with Tom Thumb, indicating that the tale of Tristan and Isolt was, like Tom Thumb, originally a non-Arthurian tale that was brought into the Arthurian orbit in the twelfth century and that only became an integral part of the cycle in the mid thirteenth century with the Prose Tristan, when Tristan becomes properly a "Knight of the Round Table," and engages in typical Arthurian adventures (see Padel [1981] on B~roul and the Cornish origins of Tristan). Similarly, with Tom Thumb we get later literary developments of the character and tales that draw Tom Thumb even further into the Arthurian world, with Tom marrying Arthur's daughter and escorting Guinevere after the Battle of Camlann as a true Arthurian knight of the Round Table.

In Tom Thumb, the Arthurian setting, although extensive, is treated just as it is in many of these earlier texts-as a vehicle relating the adventures of a "new" Arthurian knight. The point is not that Tom Thumb is a major Arthurian work. It is rather that these Arthurian tales and Tom Thumb are working in essentially the same way and within an established pattern for the development and expansion of the Arthurian legend. Tom Thumb may be a particularly late and loose example of such treatment of the legend-and popular, even humorous and vulgar, rather than literary in nature (although, of course, the medieval "literary" romances drew extensively on folkloric sources, and humour was an element in even the earliest material, such as Culhwch ac Olwen)-but it would seem to fit reasonably easily into the situation outlined at the start of this study. There are, in fact, only




two essential differences. The first comes from the fact that here we have a fairytale, rather than a heroic tale or courtly drama, being integrated with the Arthurian milieu to create a new Arthurian hero and adventure. The result is thus an Arthurian fairytale, rather than a Romance.

The second is that, unlike Tristan and Lancelot, Tom Thumb never becomes fully integrated into the Arthurian world and the "canon," failing to appear in Arthurian tales in which he is not the main focus. This must be partly understood in light of the fact that Tom's relationship with the Arthurian legend comes some considerable time after the "canon" had been already established by, for example, Malory's Morte Darthur. Even allowing for this, however, the importance of this difference is clear-Tom never becomes an established and recurring part of the legend and, thus, is not a truly Arthurian figure. Nonetheless, it is worth remembering that this may simply exclude Tom from the first rank of Arthurian characters, placing him alongside other figures, who are clearly Arthurian but who never become part of the "core" legend and thus the milieu for other stories. In any case, even if this was a dead-end in the evolution of the Arthurian legend, it does not detract from the fact that the nature of the Tom Thumb tale seems to be both Arthurian and in line with the general development of the Arthurian legend.

Finally, the point raised above regarding the lateness of Tom Thumb needs expanding. This Arthurian tale seems to have thrived in an environment in which the canon was not only long-since established, but also thoroughly neglected. Tom's reinvention as an Arthurian character came at the very end of the widespread general interest in the Arthurian legend (the last printing of Malory for nearly two hundred years was in 1634), while his greatest fame is found in a century that saw no substantial English version of the legend being printed at all. The tale of Tom Thumb thus appears to have been one of the only manifestations of the Arthurian legend that survived the changing of literary tastes. Such survival may well be due to its borrowing so little of the specific detail and events of the Arthurian legend, which seemed now to be boring audiences. Instead, it used the Arthurian legendary milieu to create, out of an independent wonder tale, a new "Arthurian fairytale" that was more attractive to seventeenth-century tastes than were traditional medieval courtly dramas. Indeed, for more than a century, the tale of Tom Thumb was the most widely known and popular version of the Arthurian legend in circulation in England.

Jack the Giant-Killer If the tale of Tom Thumb can be seen as part of the normal development of the Arthurian legend, it must be wondered whether such an interpretation is also valid for the other "fairytale" under discussion here. The History of Jack and the Giants was an immensely popular chapbook in the eighteenth century, read and apparently enjoyed by many, including Dr Johnson, James Boswell, and Henry Fielding (Opie and Opie 1974, 61-2; Carpenter and Prichard 1984, 277). Although there are references to the tale existing in 1708, the earliest version of the Jack and the Giants that we know of is from 1711. Unfortunately, the original of this has been lost and we must rely principally upon two sources for knowledge of this text: Halliwell's bowdlerised transcription of the 1711 text (1849, 57-69) and the Opies' transcription of a Shrewsbury chapbook of c.1760-65, which they consider to be



130 Thomas Green

directly derived from one published at the beginning of that century (Opie and Opie 1974, 62 and 64-82). [3] The tale begins "In the reign of King Arthur, near the Lands-End of England, namely, the county of Cornwall, there lived a wealthy Farmer, who had one only Son, commonly known by the name of Jack the Giant- killer" (Opie and Opie 1974, 64; italics as original). As with Tom Thumb, the tale is, from the outset, securely placed in an Arthurian context. In this case, however, there is no claim for a personal relationship between Arthur and Jack. Therefore, this could be simply an instance of name-dropping; a piece of "unimportant background" to an independent and fundamentally non-Arthurian tale, which departs "widely from tradition" (Thompson 1996, 136). Once again we must ask whether this would be a fair judgement.

After explicitly setting the tale in Arthur's Britain, the narrative tells of Jack's defeat of the giant Cormilan, a destructive creature who was "eighteen Foot in height ... the Terror of all the neighbouring Towns and Villages." He was based in a cave at St Michael's Mount and devoured the local livestock at will. Jack tricks him by digging and disguising a hole, then rousing the giant and finishing him off with a pick-axe when he falls into the trap. His reward is the giant's treasure and he is named by the worthies of Marazion "the Giant Killer," a title that carries with it a sword and an embroidered belt, which reads:

Here's the right valiant Cornish Man, Who slew the Giant Cormilan (Opie and Opie 1974, 66).

Jack then has further successful encounters with three giants, killing them and freeing their prisoners-most remarkable is a two-headed giant from Wales, whom Jack tricks into slitting open his own stomach. After this, Jack meets King Arthur's son, to whom he becomes a servant. As they are both penniless, Jack suggests that they lodge with his uncle, who is (most curiously) a three-headed giant himself. Jack tricks this giant into locking himself away so that Jack and Arthur's son can feast and help themselves to his treasure. The giant, thinking Jack has saved him from death at the hands of the prince, subsequently gives Jack a mantle of invisibility, a cap of knowledge, shoes of swiftness, and a never-failing sword.

Jack and Arthur's son then travel on, until they find a possessed lady whom Arthur's son wishes to marry. Jack uses his magic gifts to free her from the evil spirits and the marriage goes ahead. On their return to King Arthur's court, Jack is knighted and brought to the Round Table for his services (although his deeds with them are not described). After a little while as a member of Arthur's court, Jack asks permission to rid Wales of all remaining "blood-thirsty Giants," a proposal Arthur accepts. Jack has great success in this endeavour, sending the heads of the first two giants to Arthur along with an account of his deeds. He then meets a two- headed giant who, before being killed, utters the traditional:

Fee, fau, fum, I smell the blood of an English man, Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread (Opie and Opie 1974, 78).

Once he is dealt with, his heads, too, are removed and sent to Arthur. Finally, Jack encounters a giant named Galigantus and a "conjuror." The conjuror is carried




away by a whirlwind, but the giant is slaughtered by Jack: "This being done, the head of Galigantus was likewise according to his accustomed manner, conveyed to the court of King Arthur, as a present to the king" (Opie and Opie 1974, 82). All of the remaining giants in Wales thus dispatched, Jack retires to an estate granted to him by Arthur and lives happily ever after, married to a Duke's daughter whom he earlier rescued from the conjuror's clutches.

Clearly, the Arthurian elements are not fundamental to the story of the giant- killer, especially in the first section, but they are recurrent and found throughout the tale, with Arthur's son having a major role in the central section, and the motif of sending the giants' severed heads to Arthur running throughout the last part. It is, thus, perfectly justifiable to treat this as an Arthurian "fairytale," comparable with Tom Thumb. Nonetheless, as in that case, we seem to have a popular Arthurian tale, which is informed by the milieu of the Arthurian legend in a general sense, rather than including any specific details or events. Indeed, here we do not even have the references to Merlin, Lancelot, and jousting that we have in Tom Thumb. If the literary legend is its inspiration, then this tale would, as a result, be more vulnerable to the common criticism that the late popular tales are simply unrelated stories name-dropping Arthur (although one could still point to the Arthurian elements running through the whole narrative). Leaving this to one side for the moment, a key question that needs to be answered is whether the story of Jack can be treated-like Tom's tale-as an independent narrative, which became attracted to, and intertwined with, the Arthurian cycle.

The answer to this question is perhaps a little less clear than one might assume. Giant-killing certainly occurs frequently in medieval English folk entertainment, and incidents in The History of Jack and the Giants have counterparts in Norse and Indo-European mythology (see Weiss 1929; Opie and Opie 1974, 58-60). However, it is not at all clear that these elements were combined into an earlier non- Arthurian Jack tale. While elements of the Jack tale look non-Arthurian in their ultimate origins, and Jack is not a traditional Arthurian figure, it has been argued that the tale itself was created de novo through the combination of a number of classic giant-incidents in the late seventeenth century. Jack appears to have had no recorded existence in English folklore before the early eighteenth century and his tale is absent from seventeenth-century catalogues of chapbooks and the like. The story as we now have it cannot, therefore, be considered an ancient folktale, which suggests that the tale of Jack is a relatively modern composition, which was deliberately set within Arthur's magical and legendary Britain from the outset (Opie and Opie 1974, 60; Carpenter and Prichard 1984, 277; Bottigheimer 2000, 266).

The above conclusion naturally raises the possibility that the Arthurian elements may thus have been influential in the actual creation of this character and his story. If so, one has to wonder just how this influence would have worked. How much did the literary legend contribute to this new creation beyond a generalised Arthurian milieu and the inclusion of Arthur and his son as characters? Jack is, after all, said to be Cornish and his adventures all take place in Cornwall and Wales (the Arthurian heartlands), with some of his escapades being attached to specific sites, and actually having parallels in folklore collected from these areas-for example, the giant Cormilan features in other, non-Jack, Cornish folklore based at St Michel's Mount (Hunt 1881, vol. 1, 46-7). Furthermore, it has



132 Thomas Green

been noted that certain features in the earliest texts of The History of Jack and the Giant might reflect a Cornish turn of phrase (Opie and Opie 1974, 64). It might be suggested, therefore, that the placing of Jack within Arthur's world-and especially his role as the final deliverer of Britain from the threat of giants, and his sending of every severed head back to Arthur-was influenced more by Arthur's folkloric reputation as a giant-killer himself, as found in Welsh and Cornish folklore (and Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae), than by the international literary legend.

Certainly, the Arthur of legend bloodily slew a livestock-eating giant at Mont St Michel (the Breton version of St Michael's Mount) in Geoffrey's HRB, an episode that shows signs of being based on a pre-existing folktale (Roberts 1991b, 108). This incident was probably widely known from the HRB, as Welsh histories (in Welsh and in Latin) continued to be based on Geoffrey's work right into the eighteenth century. See, for instance, Theophilus Evans's Drych y Prif Oesoedd, published in 1716 (Lloyd-Morgan 2005, 115-16). Similarly, in sixteenth-century to nineteenth-century folklore collected in Wales and Cornwall, it is repeatedly claimed that Arthur was the greatest of all giant-killers, responsible for finally ridding the land of giants, just as Jack is. This is evident, for example, in the material collected by Si6n Dafydd Rhys in the early seventeenth century and by Hugh Thomas in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries (Grooms 1993; Bromwich and Evans 1992, liv-ix). To quote one old Cornish man (living near Land's End, like Jack) whose reminiscences were collected by Robert Hunt at some point in the early nineteenth to mid nineteenth century, the whole land at one time "swarmed with giants, until Arthur, the good king, vanished them all with his cross-sword" (Hunt 1881, vol. 2, 307).

Indeed, in Rhys's collection of Welsh giant-lore, preserved in the National Library of Wales (MS Peniarth 118; edited and translated in Grooms 1993, 249- 316), Arthur seems to fully dominate this category of folklore in the early seventeenth century. He is frequently referred to throughout Rhys's preface and his tales both begin and end the collection, with Arthur being the only hero (aside from his nephew, Gwalchmei), who is credited with slaying more than one giant. In these tales Arthur himself seems to have had not only the same role as Jack-the hero who finally rid Britain of its giants-but also his reputation for killing giants through a mixture of trickery and violence. Thus, Arthur is said to have killed the three sisters of the giant Cribwr at Cefn Cribwr near Llangewydd, Glamorgan, "through cunning":

For Arthur nicknamed himself Hot Soup to the first sister, and Warm Porridge to the second sister (so runs the tale), and to the third sister Piece of Bread. And when the first sister called for help against Hot Soup, Cribwr answered, "Silly girl, let it cool." And in the same manner he answered the second sister when she sought help against Hot Porridge. And the third sister cried out that Piece of Bread was choking her, and he answered as well, "Silly girl, take a smaller piece." And when Cribwr reproached Arthur for killing his sisters, Arthur answered with an Englyn Milwr in this form:

Cribwr [Comber] take your combs. Skulk not in silent wrath. Opponents, if to me they come, What they have had you too shall have.




No one could kill the three sisters together, by reason of the greatness of their strength, but separately and through cunning Arthur killed them (Grooms 1993, 311).

Similarly, the motif found in The History of Jack and the Giants of trapping a giant in a hole before killing him-the safest method!-also occurs in the early Arthurian text Culhwch ac Olwen when Arthur's men kill the monstrous giant Dillus Farfawg in Wales. Although this is a common trick, it is noteworthy-as is the fact that the tale of the killing of Dillus Farfawg was localised and told in Welsh folklore outside of the text of Culhwch. There is evidence for the performance of parts of Culhwch ac Olwen itself in Wales, to music, until at least the sixteenth century (Grooms 1993, 167-8; Sims-Williams 1990, 620).

The above folkloric and vigorous Arthur appears to have existed independently of, and largely uninfluenced by, the international literary legend, whose Arthur was both aged and generally inactive (Padel 1994; this is not, of course, to say this folkloric Arthur did not gather new tales or develop within this tradition-see Lloyd-Morgan 2005). [4] The absence of Merlin, Lancelot, jousting and the like, in The History of Jack and the Giants, takes on, perhaps, a much greater significance when seen in this light. It may simply represent a more extreme example of utilising only the general Arthurian milieu rather than details from the literary legend, but it is intriguing. It might also be said that the Arthurian milieu that we have in The History of Jack and the Giants is more that of Culhwch ac Olwen, the Saints' Lives, and post-medieval Welsh and Cornish folklore, than it is that of the literary legend. Indeed, the only element that looks certainly derivative of the latter is a single, very brief, mention of the Round Table.

The style of Jack's later killings may also be relevant in this connection. In the first part of the tale, before he sets off on his Arthur-like (and Arthur-sanctioned) quest to extinguish all the giants of Wales, Jack destroys giants largely through cunning and trickery. In contrast, the first two giants he encounters after embarking on this quest (during which he sends the decapitated heads ritualistically back to Arthur, as observed in Bottigheimer 2000, 267) are slaughtered more through valour and strength of arms. Thus Jack kills the first giant he comes across by means of an "unstoppable attack," as Bottigheimer puts it, eventually "giving him with both hands a swinging stroke, [Jack] cut off both his legs, just below the knees, so that the trunk of the body made not only the ground to shake, but likewise the trees to tremble with the force of his fall" (Opie and Opie 1974, 74; Bottigheimer 2000, 266). Jack finishes the monster off by running it "through and through" while his foot is on its neck. Similarly, Jack violently attacks this giant's brother, cutting off his nose with his first stroke. Jack ends the fight by running "his sword up to the hilt in the Giant's fundament, where he left it sticking for a while, and stood himself laughing (his arms akimbo) to see the Giant caper and dance the canaries, with the sword in his arse, crying out, he should die, he should die with the griping of the guts" (Opie and Opie 1974, 76). In both cases Jack then hacks the heads off and sends them to Arthur, along with "an account of his prosperous success."

These descriptions recall Arthur's own furious nature in the pre-Galfridian and folkloric material, where he bloodily defeats his enemies through his peerless military might-and enjoys it. In Culhwch ac Olwen, Arthur slices a witch-the female equivalent of a giant in Welsh tradition-into two halves with his knife,



134 Thomas Green

while the difficult early poem Pa gur yv y porthaur? appears to have Arthur laughing as he slaughters another of these creatures. Most relevant, perhaps, is Arthur's fight with the giant of Mont St Michel in HRB, where we find him administering the coup de graice in the following manner:

Moving like lightning, he [Arthur] struck the giant repeatedly with his sword, first in this place and then in that, giving him no respite until he had dealt him a lethal blow by driving the whole length of the blade into his head just where his brain was protected by his skull. At this the evil creature gave one shriek and toppled to the ground with a mighty crash, like some oak torn from its roots by the fury of the winds. The King laughed ... (Thorpe 1966: 240; see further on this incident, and those above, note [4]).

The similarity between this and Jack's killings is quite striking, and is further emphasised by the fact that Arthur then saws off the giant's head as a trophy. Although the examples cited above are all from early medieval texts, there can be little doubt that this lusty and bloody Arthur would have been known in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. First, as noted above, some of these texts certainly continued to circulate in Britain beyond the twelfth century. Geoffrey's HRB was widely known in the medieval and post-medieval period, and Culhwch itself was popular with the Welsh poets into the fifteenth century, with at least some elements being apparently performed in the sixteenth century, if not later.

Second, and most important, there is the obvious continuity of this concept of Arthur exhibited in Welsh and Cornish folklore of the modern and early modern periods, discussed above, in which Arthur is personally responsible for ridding Britain of giants "with his cross-sword," such as in the tale of Arthur strangling one of Cribwr's sisters and taunting Cribwr himself when he complains. To cite another example, Arthur's violent victory over the beard-collecting giant Retho, recorded in the HRB (Thorpe 1966, 240), seems to have been extremely popular in Wales. Rhys clearly knew of multiple versions of this tale circulating in his day, noting that "in the country of Meirionydd also, and close to Penn Aran in Penllyn, and under the place called Bwlch-y-groes, there is a very large-sized grave, in which place they say is buried Lytta or Rhitta or Rhicca or Rhithonwy or Itto the giant." The fight, in one version recorded by Rhys, involves Arthur throwing away his sword and wrestling hand-to-hand with the giant. In the course of the struggle they roll from the top of Bwlch-y-groes down to the bottom of the valley, with each combatant trying to pull the other's beard off, before Arthur retrieves his weapon and slaughters the giant (Grooms 1993, 300-3).

It has recently been argued that these later stories and localisations cannot all have been derivative of Geoffrey's work; rather, they owe their origin to the underlying and ancient Arthurian giant-slaying tales that Geoffrey himself was repeating, and which survived in oral tradition into at least the seventeenth century (Bromwich and Evans 1992, Ivii). In fact, the tale of Arthur's battle with Retho/Rita Gawr seems to have been current even into the nineteenth century (see Grooms 1993, 214-8). The Arthur of Culhwch-and of the folklore underlying Geoffrey's HRB-thus clearly maintained his character and ferocity in popular tales well after the international literary legend began to influence his portrayal by the poets and prose writers, making him the elderly and inactive ruler he is, in Continental Romances and in the later medieval and post-medieval literary




tradition (see Padel [2000, 80-82 and 89-93] on the influence of the thirteenth- century French notion of the roifainiant in Wales, which is present even in the early Welsh "Three Romances"). Indeed, further evidence for the continued vitality of the early, folkloric, Arthur beyond the twelfth century can be found even in England, where what is arguably an otherwise unknown version of the Arthurian battle with a highly dangerous cat-monster-first mentioned in the perhaps tenth- century poem Pa gur?-was recorded in a fifteenth-century text, with Arthur as the hero (Sims-Williams 1991, 45-6). (See Roberts [1991a, 78; 2006, 125] on the potential date of this poem, and Bromwich [1978, 486-7] on the development and other manifestations of this specific tale.)

In light of all this, it can at least be tentatively suggested that the legend of Jack the Giant Killer was, from its creation, placed in an Arthurian world and that this was the world of the folkloric Arthur, rather than the international literary legend (which was, in this period, very much in the doldrums in England). The reasons for doing this were obvious: not only was Arthur the legendary lord of a magical Britain in which such events could naturally take place, but he was, himself, a great giant-killer. Certainly, the tale of Jack is itself focused on Cornwall and Wales, where the concept of Arthur as a giant-killer appears to have been powerful in post-medieval folklore. There is also some evidence that Cornish giant-lore was used in the creation of the tale-and it is just possible that it may have been written by a Cornishman, if one follows Opie and Opie (1974, 64). Furthermore, and most importantly, it seems not impossible that some of Jack's own deeds-most particularly his quest to rid the land of giants-were not only responsible for suggesting an Arthurian setting, but were even modelled on the deeds of Arthur, as found in Cornish and Welsh folklore, and in the widely-known Historia Regum Britanniae. This would certainly explain the strange and ritualistic collecting of heads for return to Arthur, as well as the character and objective of the battles Jack undertakes.

If Arthurian folklore may thus have been one source of inspiration for The History of Jack and the Giants, it should be noted that the primitive, gory nature of the killings in the Jack legend did not long survive the tale's first appearance. The indecorous quotations above are taken from a mid-eighteenth-century printing, rather than Halliwell's mid-nineteenth-century transcription of the 1711 chapbook. Despite the fact that Halliwell was transcribing a rare text, he chose to skip over these parts in his version of The History of Jack and the Giants, so that after cutting off the giant's nose we learn simply that Jack "soon despatched him." As a recent survey of the legend has noted, when the:

Jack tales were rewritten for refined sensibilities later in the 18th and 19th centuries, the crudity of their gory killings disappeared, King Arthur faded away, Jack became an earthly Everyboy and the Giant a geographically unlocalizable married oaf, reachable only by the magic of a bean that grew endlessly heavenward (Bottigheimer 2000, 268-9).

Conclusion: The Creation of Two Arthurian Fairytales

It is difficult to treat the Arthurian setting in these two fairytales as merely a variant of "Once upon a time..." and nothing more, despite the fact that this is often just how they are viewed. The tale of Tom Thumb appears to be derivative of



136 Thomas Green

the international literary legend. It also seems to represent a development or expansion of that legend in the manner of the tales of Tristan and Isolt and of Caradoc Briebras. Tom Thumb might best be understood as an exceptionally innovative and minimalist use of the Arthurian legend. This innovation may, in fact, be the key to its popularity at a time (the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries) when the literary Arthurian legend was in a perilous state. Parallel innovations seem to lie behind the transformation of the Welsh folkloric Arthurian legend into a popular international tale-cycle in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: a new form for a new audience. We should not reject Tom Thumb as an Arthurian text simply because it is told in a fairytale style-this was clearly what was required of popular tales if they were to thrive in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Although the tale of Tom Thumb contains more references to the Arthurian literary legend than does The History of Jack and the Giants, it can be reasonably argued that the latter is, nonetheless, the more complex and truly Arthurian of the two tales. Most significantly, Jack, unlike some of his victims, is, "except in story- books, unknown." He has no genuine place in Cornish folklore that Robert Hunt could discover, despite the clear localisation of his tale (Hunt 1881, vol. 2, 303-4; see also Spooner 1965, 26-7). This fits well with the argument that he was not a traditional character but rather a new creation, as was his tale, which brought together earlier giant-killing stories in a narrative composed probably not long before our first reference to the tale in 1708. The Arthurian milieu was thus probably always a part of the tale. Jack does, in fact, appear to have taken over Arthur's folkloric role, as the hero who finally rids Britain of giants. He also adopts the furious and cunning nature of the Arthur of folklore; the sending of the severed heads to Arthur perhaps being an acknowledgement of this. We might thus compare Jack with the development of Lancelot, another "new" character who seems to have adopted part of Arthur's original role in his adventures; in this case the rescuing of Guinevere/Gwenhwyfar from Meleagant/Melwas (see Sims- Williams 1991, 58-61). Whether the fact that Jack's uncle is a giant is of any relevance in this context is debatable, but it is worth noting that Arthur also seems, in Cornish and Welsh folklore, to have had giant's blood in his veins, despite his role as the ultimate giant-killer (Harris 1906; Hunt 1881, vol. 1, 186; Grooms 1993, 113-28).

In some ways, such an origin for the Arthurian aspects of this tale is unsurprising. The tale is localised in Arthur's folkloric heartlands and has hints of composition there. Further, it looks like it was composed after the great collapse of interest in the Arthurian literary legend, and lacks any obvious reference to it, other than a single mention of the Round Table. In such circumstances, a primary derivation from non-literary Arthurian lore is surely not at all implausible. Whether we can go any further than this and suggest specific sources for the borrowed concept of Arthur as the greatest of giant-killers is still unclear, but it is not impossible that the folkloric sources were supplemented by the account in the HRB of Arthur's defeat of the giant of Mont St Michel. Who might have combined these materials is beyond speculation, but it was presumably someone with antiquarian interests and a knowledge of Cornish and/or Welsh tales in which Arthur had not yet become the "do-nothing" king of the international legend, but was still the monster-slayer he originally seems to have been. Although much of




our evidence for the continuation of this earlier concept of Arthur is Welsh, not all of it is, and this geographical imbalance may reflect the nature and interests of our sources and authors, rather than anything else. Certainly, the role recorded for Arthur in Cornwall in the nineteenth century is identical to that observed by Rhys and Thomas in seventeenth-century Wales (Grooms 1993).

Obviously this is not a full explanation of The History of Jack and the Giants. There is still an evident place for the Germanic and Danish parallels to Jack's trickster- like behaviour in the first part of the tale; for Cornish folklore about specific giants (the conspicuous absence of Jack from Hunt's tale of Cormelian, the giant of St Michael's Mount, suggests that the version in The History of Jack and the Giants is derivative of Cornish folklore, rather than vice-versa); for a borrowed "grateful dead" episode (see Groome 1898; Briggs 1972, 270; Spooner 1976, 106); and, perhaps, for Continental influence in the final encounter with the conjuror and the duke's daughter. Nonetheless, the idea that in Jack we have not just an "Arthurian fairytale," but one in which Arthur's deeds, as expressed in seventeenth-century folklore, are retold with Jack as the hero, is certainly highly interesting. Indeed, I find that I am not alone in this suspicion, as Grooms has stated (although not gone into detail on the matter) that Arthur as the heroic protector and vanquisher of giants is, in his opinion, "a tradition that precedes and informs the popular chapbook tales of Jack the Giant-killer" (Grooms 1993, 1).

To sum up, it would appear that these "fairytales" should be treated as genuine elements of the Arthurian legend, embodying and illustrating important points about its nature and development. It seems clear that simply because they do not necessarily conform to the literary norms, and are primarily popular works that post-date Malory, this does not mean that they are any less a part of the history of the Arthurian legend, nor that they fail to fit into the general pattern of its historical development. Indeed, not only do they fit into the context of this legend well, but they show how at least some Arthurian tales managed to survive and thrive despite the collapse in interest in the main Arthurian legend in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They also show how the folkloric Arthur may have proven in these circumstances more influential than his more highly- developed and refined literary cousin.

Acknowledgements This article benefited from comments made Professor P.J.C. Field and Folklore's anonymous reviewers. All errors and interpretations are, of course, my own.

Notes [1] This is forty-page prose version of the legend, generally ascribed to Richard Johnson and

printed in 1621 for Thomas Langley in London (the unique copy of this chapbook is found in Pierpoint Morgan Library, New York). The transcription of this in Opie and Opie (1974, 41-57) is used in this study, as it is based upon microfilms of the chapbook supplied by Pierpoint Morgan Library (see Opie and Opie 1974, 6).

[2] A transcription of the 1630 original of this first metrical version of Tom Thumb, printed in London for John Wright, has been stored as part of The Camelot Project, run by the University of



138 Thomas Green

Rochester (New York), and can be accessed online (http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/ TT(1630).htm [accessed 14 December 2006]). A UMI microfilm of a slightly later edition, printed between 1655 and 1658 and found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is also available, and the text can be read via Early English Books Online 1473-1700 (http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home [accessed 14 December 2006]).

[3] The Opie transcription (Opie and Opie, 1974, 62 and 64-82) is used in the present study. A 1787 unbowdlerised version of the History, printed in Falkirk, is available in facsimile from Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (http://infotrac.london.galegroup.com/default [accessed 14 December 2006]), as is a 1790 version in two parts, printed in Newcastle.

[4] This matter is dealt with in more detail in my upcoming monograph Concepts of Arthur.

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Biographical Note Thomas Green is presently completing his D.Phil. in European Archaeology at the University of Oxford, focusing on Anglian-British interaction from the fifth to eighth centuries. His other research interests include the use of romanitas in Early Medieval Britain and, most especially, the history, nature, and origins of the early Arthurian legend in Britain. He has completed a detailed monograph study of the latter, which is awaiting publication.



Tom Thumb and Jack the Giant-Killer: Two Arthurian Fairytales?

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