Hop o' My Thumb: 10 facts to know

Three are somewhere between:

Bluebeard
Diamonds and Toads
Hop o' My Thumb

The last on the list above is better known as the German version, rewritten by Brothers Grimm. Read on to learn more!

Hop o' My Thumb is often titled as The Little Thumb or Seven-League Boots and too often confused with Tom Thumb. The French title is Le Petit Poucet, which can be translated as A Little Thumb, but the more poetic Hop 'o My Thumb coming from the phrase Hop on my thumb, used for teasing little people, caught on much better in English speaking world.

So don't be surprised if you open a collection of fairy tales and find the same story with a different title.

While we are dealing with a story about seven boys confronting a giant, it's essentially an older version of Hansel and Gretel confronting the witch.

There are also several similarities with a fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk (communication with giant's wife, stealing his treasures, hiding and running away, ...).

Apart from that, we can relate it with Babes in the Wood, Brother and Sister and a few other 'children in the wood' themed fairy tales.

Charles Perrault used the story to mock and criticize the poor countrymen who had way too many children and suffered from famine: in Hop o' My Thumb all seven boys were born in just four years span! This is theoretically possible, though - if we are dealing with sets of twins.

Perrault himself got four kids in five years, though. But he was a rich man when he married.

Hop o' My Thumb is actually the only protagonist. His brothers are merely his followers and the story would be pretty much the same without them. They are just casualties, exactly like the seven giant's daughters who die instead of the boys.

The Hop o' My Thumb's mission in the story is simple. He must confront the antagonist if he wants to grow up.

We are dealing with only one antagonist as well. This is Hop o' My Thumb's father. But this antagonist is polarized. He acts as a protector and a threat at the same time. This conflict is solved with symbolic transformation into a man-eating giant. Such polarization is pretty usual in fairy tales and one of the reasons for their popularity.

Kids can't destroy their father, but in order to survive, the giant must be defeated and his power (seven-league boots) taken before the kids can return home - to the nicer half of their father, represented as the woodcutter.

When the brothers returned home for the first time, without confronting the giant and gaining his treasure, nothing was solved. So they must go to the wood again.

The mother is also presented on two levels - as the mother of the boys and as the wife of the giant.

In both cases, she serves as their helper, who is trying to protect the boys from the brute force. In both cases, she is way too weak and incapable to do anything useful.

The boys must find a way to survive on their own. Symbolically they must grow up.

The motif of switching caps with the giant's girls is present in several other fairy tales. It's a popular tool of conmen - they love to trick the opponents into their own traps.

This motif is used together with another popular one - about the youngest, smallest, weakest kid in the family, a so-called simpleton, who shows superb wit through the story and achieves much more than his or her siblings.

All used images are Public Domain.

Credits:

https://charles-perraults-fairy-tales.weebly.com/books

https://myfairyland.jimdofree.com/giant/hop-o-my-thumb-in-pictures/

https://oskar-herrfurth.weebly.com/little-thumb.html