"Tom o' Bedlam" is the name of an anonymous poem in the "mad song" genre, written in the voice of a homeless ":en:wiktionary:bedlamite|Bedlamite." The poem was probably composed at the beginning of the 17th century; in How to Read and Why, Harold Bloomcalls it "the greatest anonymous lyric in the language." The terms "Tom o' Bedlam" and “Bedlam begger” were used in Early Modern Britain and later to describe beggars and vagrants who had or feigned mental illness. Aubrey says they were identified by “an armilla of tin printed, of about three inches breadth” attached to their left arm. They claimed, or were assumed, to have been former inmates at the Bethlem Royal Hospital. It was commonly thought that inmates were released with authority to make their way by begging, though this is probably untrue. If it happened at all the numbers were certainly small, though there were probably large numbers of mentally ill travellers who turned to begging, but had never been near Bedlam. It was adopted as a technique of begging, or a character. For example, Edgar in King Lear disguises himself as mad "Tom o' Bedlam".
Structure and verses
As we know it, the poem has eight verses of eight lines each, each verse concluding with a repetition of a four-line chorus. The existence of a chorus suggests that the poem may originally have been sung as a ballad. The version reproduced here is the one presented in Bloom's How to Read and Why. man, from a 1580 almanac Tom o' Bedlam From the hag and hungry goblin That into rags would rend ye, The spirit that stands by the naked man In the Book of Moons defend ye, That of your five sound senses You never be forsaken, Nor wander from your selves with Tom Abroad to beg your bacon, Of thirty bare years have I Twice twenty been enragèd, And of forty been three times fifteen In durance soundly cagèd On the lordly lofts of Bedlam, With stubble soft and dainty, Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding-dong, With wholesome hunger plenty, With a thought I took for Maudlin And a cruse of cockle pottage, With a thing thus tall, sky bless you all, I befell into this dotage. I slept not since the Conquest, Till then I never wakèd, Till the roguish boy of love where I lay Me found and stript me nakèd. When I short have shorn my sow's face And swigged my horny barrel, In an oaken inn I pound my skin As a suit of gilt apparel; The moon's my constant mistress, And the lowly owl my marrow; The flaming drake and the nightcrow make Me music to my sorrow. The palsy plagues my pulses When I prig your pigs or pullen, Your culvers take, or matchless make Your Chanticleer or Sullen. When I want provant with Humphrey I sup, and when benighted, I repose in Paul's with waking souls Yet never am affrighted. I know more than Apollo, For oft, when he lies sleeping I see the stars at bloody wars In the wounded welkin weeping; The moon embrace her shepherd, And the Queen of Love her warrior, While the first doth horn the star of morn, And the next the heavenly Farrier. The gypsies, Snap and Pedro, Are none of Tom's comradoes, The punk I scorn and the cutpurse sworn, And the roaring boy's bravadoes. The meek, the white, the gentle Me handle, touch, and spare not; But those that cross Tom Rynosseros Do what the panther dare not. With a host of furious fancies Whereof I am commander, With a burning spear and a horse of air, To the wilderness I wander. By a knight of ghosts and shadows I summoned am to tourney Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end: Methinks it is no journey.
Mad Maudlin's Search
The original ballad was popular enough that another poem was written in reply, "Mad Maudlin's Search" or "Mad Maudlin's Search for Her Tom of Bedlam" or "Bedlam Boys", whose first stanza was: The remaining stanzas include: It was apparently first published in 1720 by Thomas d'Urfey in his Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy. "Maudlin" was a form of Mary Magdalene. Because of the number of variants and confusion between the two manuscripts, neither "Tom o' Bedlam" nor "Mad Maudlin" can be said to be definitive texts.
