Origins and setting
“Tom Tit Tot” is an English wonder tale from East Anglia (often Suffolk), kin to the broader European family of “name-of-the-helper” stories, of which “Rumpelstiltskin” is the best known. In this local telling the flavour is entirely English: rush-light kitchens, pie-crusts on the sill, spinning-wheels humming, and a goblin with a name that sounds like a thimble tapping a tabletop. The dramatis personae are few and vivid: a boastful mother, a sensible daughter, a king who loves good fare and fine spinning, and the impish spinner Tom Tit Tot. The plot moves with crisp inevitability: a foolish boast, a perilous bargain, eleven months of nightly spinning, a promise for a first-born, and a rescue by knowing a hidden name.
The tale
I. Five pies and a foolish boast
Once there was a woman with a daughter—a neat, bright lass who could keep house and sing to her work. One day the mother baked five pies, set them on the window-sill to cool, and went out. The lass fancied a taste, then another; before she quite knew it, she’d eaten the lot—five pies cleaned to the tins.
Back came the mother, saw the empty dishes, and fell into a taking. “You greedy little cat! What’ll I say if folk ask after my pies?”
Just then past the cottage came the king, walking out to take the air. He sniffed and smiled. “Smells brave here! What have you?”
The mother, quick as lies: “Skeins, your Majesty—my girl spun five skeins to-day.”
“Five skeins?” said the king, eyes widening (for his own mother had been a rare hand at a wheel). “That’s a wife for a king.” He turned to the lass, who stood modest and speechless. “You shall marry me, my dear; but mind, eleven months o’ the year you’ll spin me five skeins a day. In the twelfth you shall rest and be my queen.”
The lass curtsied; what else could she do? But her heart dropped like a pin.
II. The first bargain
Next morning she was led to a chamber where stood a spinning-wheel and a great hank of flax. “There you are, my love,” said the king kindly enough. “Five skeins by supper.”
When the door clicked, she set her hands to the distaff—but she’d never learned. The flax snarled and the wheel sulked. Tears pricked her eyes.
Just as the light thinned, there came a tap-tap-tap on the window-pane. She looked up. On the sill sat a little black thing, no bigger than the bellows-boy, with bright bead eyes and a mouth like a pin-cut.
“What’ll you give me if I spin you five skeins afore the king comes?” it piped.
“Oh!” said she, hope jumping. “I’ve naught to give—save my necklace.”
“Give us that then,” said the small thing. In it hopped, sat at the wheel, and—whirr-whirr—by the time the latch lifted there lay five fine skeins. The king beamed; the little creature slipped away with the necklace in its claws.
On the second night, the same tap-tap-tap. “What’ll you give me if I spin the skeins?”
“My ring,” she whispered. And so it went: the creature spun; she paid with the ring.
So for eleven months less one day it carried on—night after night, five skeins laid smooth as cream, and each time the little thing would cock its head and ask, “What’ll you give me?” till all her trinkets were gone.
III. The last skeins and the great price
On the last night of the eleventh month the lass sat wringing her hands, for she had nothing left to barter.
Tap-tap-tap.
“What’ll you give me if I spin the skeins to-night?”
“I’ve naught. Not a pin. Only my thanks.”
The black thing’s eyes shone. “Then you’ll give me what I ask.”
“If it be within right,” she said, steadying herself.
“When you’re queen and have your first babe, you’ll give it me.”
She clutched the chair. “I’ll never!”
“Leave it then,” said the creature, turning away.
She thought of the axe’s edge on the block, of the king’s trust, and of the door that would never open if she failed. “If I must—only…”
“There’s a way out,” it squeaked, sly. “If in three days after the babe is born you can tell me my name, you shall keep it. If not—mine it is.”
Her breath came back a little. “I’ll take the bargain.”
“Done,” said it, and whirr-whirr—there were the five last skeins, neat as anything. Next day the king threw up his cap for joy. On the morrow they were wed, and she was a queen indeed.
IV. “Nimmy nimmy not”: the name-game
In due time a baby prince was born, rosy and right. On the third night there came softly at the casement a tap-tap-tap—and in hopped the little black thing.
“Now, my queen, will you give me my due?” it chirruped.
“Alas—give me three days’ grace,” she begged, “and I’ll guess your name.”
“Three days ye have.” It grinned and was gone.
The queen sent messengers over moor and fen to gather every name under heaven: Bill and Ben, Hob and Bob, Ezekiel and Zedekiah, Shortshanks and Crookshanks, and a peck more besides. At dusk the creature came and perched upon the hearthstone, swinging its little legs.
“Is your name—Nicholas?”
“No.”
“Bartholomew?”
“No!” It wagged its head, eyes dancing.
She rattled off a dozen more. “No—no—no!” it sang, and hopped out like a soot-flake.
Second night, she tried stranger names: “Spindleshanks? Footless? Thread-the-Needle?”
“No—no—no!” and it showed all its tiny teeth.
Near midnight a footman, weary and mud-splashed from riding the thickets, burst in upon the queen. “Your Majesty, at the dark of Black-Heath I saw a little hut with a fire before it, and around the fire there capered a small, black, whiffling thing. It spun a twirl o’ thread and sang:
‘Nimmy nimmy not,
My name’s Tom Tit Tot!’”
The queen’s heart leapt like a fish. She hushed him, paid him well, and put the words away like treasure.
V. The third night: the right word
On the third night in popped the creature, cocked on the hearth like a kettle.
“Well then, my queen—will ye give me the babe? Or will ye tell me my name?”
She smoothed the baby’s hair and looked grave. “Is it Zebedee?”
“No.” It hugged its sides.
“Is it—Solomon?”
“No!” It hopped.
She leaned forward with a little smile. “**Well then—nimmy nimmy not—is your name Tom Tit Tot?”
At that the little thing screeched so loud the tongs rattled. “The devil told you that! The devil told you that!” it cried; and it thumped its tail, tore itself round and round, and—whether it went up the chimney in a puff or tore itself in two upon the flags—no one saw it in that palace again.
The queen kissed her babe and laughed till she cried. Next morning there were no more skeins, and no more bargains either.
Iconic lines remembered in the telling
- “Five skeins? That’s a wife for a king.”
- “What’ll you give me if I spin you five skeins afore the king comes?”
- “When you’re queen and have your first babe, you’ll give it me.”
- “If in three days you can tell me my name, you shall keep it.”
- “Nimmy nimmy not, / My name’s Tom Tit Tot!”
- “Is your name—Tom Tit Tot?”
- “The devil told you that!“
PS. How the footman found him
On the second night of the queen’s guessing-game, she had sent messengers “over field and fen” to gather every odd name they could. One such footman (sometimes described as a groom or serving-man) wandered into a lonely stretch of heath and saw, at the edge of the dark, a little hut or thicket-fire.
There, capering round the blaze and twirling a reel of thread, was a small black imp. It was singing its own secret boast aloud:
“Nimmy nimmy not,
My name’s Tom Tit Tot!”
The footman caught the rhyme by heart, hurried back through the night, and brought the words safe to the palace.
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