Thumbelina

Once there was a woman whose dearest wish was to have a child of her own, so she went to an old witch and asked her advice.

The witch gave her a barleycorn. “Plant it in a pot and see what happens,” she said. After a time, a beautiful tulip grew in the pot. “It is a lovely flower,” said the woman, and she gave the petals a kiss. As she did so, they burst open, and there, inside, was a lovely little girl. She was no bigger than your thumb, so she was called Thumbelina.

The woman was delighted, and she gave Thumbelina a walnut-shell for her bed. In the daytime, she played on the table under the woman’s watchful eye, but one night, as Thumbelina lay sleeping, an ugly old toad hopped in through the window.

“What a pretty girl,” the toad thought when she saw Thumbelina. “She would make a nice wife for my son.”

The toad picked up the walnut-shell and hopped off down the garden.

The toad’s son was even uglier than his mother, and he croaked with delight when he saw Thumbelina. “She may try to run away,” said the toad. “Let us take her out to the middle of the stream and put her on a water-lily leaf.”

The toad swam out with Thumbelina’s walnut-shell bed and placed it on the biggest water-lily leaf. Then she went back to prepare a room in the mud around the bank for her son and his new bride.

When Thumbelina awoke, she cried bitterly to find herself a prisoner on the water-lily leaf. The toad came back to fetch the walnut bed and put it in the bed-chamber. “I have brought my son with me,” she said to Thumbelina. “He is to be your husband. You will have a lovely home in the mud.”

Thumbelina cried even harder when she heard this, and the fishes, who had all heard the frog talking about her, popped their heads out of the water to have a look.

They felt so sorry for Thumbelina that they bit through the water-lily leaf so that it floated away down the stream.

Thumbelina was very happy to be away from the toad. The sunlight gleamed golden on the water, and a butterfly fluttered around her. She took off her sash and tied one end of it around the butterfly. The other end she tied to the leaf, and then she sped even faster down the stream.

Just then, a big cockchafer flew past. Seeing Thumbelina, he clutched her around the waist and flew with her up into a tree. The leaf sailed on down the river.

The cockchafer brought all the other cockchafers to see Thumbelina, for he thought how pretty she was, but the lady cockchafers said, “Isn’t she ugly? Why, she has only got two legs and no feelers at all.”

Then the cockchafer began to think Thumbelina was ugly too, and he put her on a daisy and told her she could go wherever she liked.

Thumbelina cried to think that all the cockchafers said she was ugly, but she was soon busy plaiting grass to make herself a bed. This she hung under a dock-leaf, and she lived there in the wood all summer. Her food was the honey from the flowers.

Then winter came. Cold and hungry, Thumbelina found her way to the door of a field-mouse’s home and asked for a little corn to eat.

“Come in, you poor child,” said the field-mouse. “You can stay here for the winter. All I ask is that you keep my rooms tidy and tell me plenty of stories.”

Thumbelina stayed with the field-mouse and was very comfortable. One day, the field-mouse said, “I shall soon be having a visit from my neighbor, the mole. He wears a black velvet coat and has a huge house, but his sight is weak and he cannot stand the sunlight. However, he is very rich. It would be fine if you could have him as a husband.”

The mole came to visit, and he was charmed with Thumbelina’s voice as she told stories. He had made a long passage leading from his house to theirs, and he told Thumbelina and the field-mouse that they could walk there whenever they wished. “Do not mind the bird lying in the passage,” he said. “It died at the beginning of the winter.”

Thumbelina felt sorry for the bird. That night, she took some hay and spread it around the bird. As it grew warm, it revived, for it was not dead. It told her how it had torn its wing on a bramble and been left behind when the other swallows flew away to warmer countries.

In spring, Thumbelina made a hole in the roof of the passage, and the bird flew away.

The mouse said, “You must begin to make your wedding clothes. At the end of the summer, you will marry the mole.”

Thumbelina wept, but the field-mouse would hear no objections.

At the end of the summer, the mole came to fetch his bride. Thumbelina crept outside for one last farewell to the bright sun.

There was a tweet-tweet overhead, and there was the swallow, just passing by.

Thumbelina told the bird how sad she was to have to live deep down in the earth with the mole.

“I am going to a warm country far away for the winter,” said the swallow. “Climb on and come too.”

Thumbelina climbed on the swallow’s back, and they flew away. At last, they reached a country where the sun shone and flowers were in bloom.

Growing around the fallen marble columns, the swallow placed Thumbelina on one of the flowers, and to her surprise, a tiny little man, dressed in white, with a gold crown, was sitting there too.

He was delighted when he saw Thumbelina. He told her that his people were the guardian spirits of the flowers and that he was their king. He asked Thumbelina to marry him.

Thumbelina said yes at once. All the flower people brought their new queen a present, and the best one was a pair of wings from a white fly, which were fastened to her back so that she could flit from flower to flower like the others.

Up in its nest, the swallow sang for joy to see Thumbelina so happy at last, as Queen of the Flowers.