“Tom Tit Tot.” Fairy Gold : A Book of Old English Fairy Tales Chosen by Ernest Rhys, Ernest Rhys, London: J.M. Dent & Co.; New York : E.P. Dutton & co., 1907, pp. 51-57.

Tale Summary

After overbaking five pies, a woman tells her daughter to put them on a shelf to let the crust get soft again, to eat later. The daughter thought that if they would be okay to eat later, she may as well eat them then, and so ate each one. At supper-time, her mother asked for a pie, but the girl explained that she had eaten them all, and she was taken out into the street and beaten, all the while her mother singing:

“My darter ha’ ate five, five pies to-day!

My darter ha’ ate five, five pies to-day!”

The king happened to be walking by, and asked the woman what it was she was saying, and so ashamed, said instead:

"My darter ha’ spun five, five skeins to-day!

My darter ha’ spun five, five skeins to-day!”

The king was so impressed that he asked for her to be his wife under the condition that for eleven months of the year she would be treated lavishly, but the last month she would spend spinning five skeins a day, under penalty of death. So they were married, and for eleven months the girl was treated well, but then she was taken to a room with a spinning wheel and a stool. The king told her that starting the next day, she would be shut in with some flax, and her head would be cut off if she did not produce five skeins. The girl sat in the kitchen and wept, for she did not even know how to spin. Then, there was a knock at the door, and in came a small black thing with a long tail. She explained her situation to him when he asked about her crying, and he promised to do all the work for her. He would give her three tries every night to guess his name, and if she could not do it by the end of the month, she would be his. She agreed, and every morning she snuck him the flax from her window, and every evening he snuck the finished skeins back, and the girl was not able to guess his name. On the second to last day of the month, the king was confident that he would not have to kill his wife, and so had dinner with her in the room. He told her a story about how earlier that day he ventured into a new part of the woods and came across a small black creature with a long tail hopping around a chalk-pit and singing:

“Nimmy Nimmy Not,

My name’s TOM TIT TOT.”

The next evening the creature visited her and asked for her guesses, expecting her to soon be his. She guessed wrong twice, and then repeated the chant her husband had told her:

“Nimmy Nimmy Not,

Yar name’s TOM TIT TOT.”

The little creature shrieked and flew away, never to be seen again.