"Tom o' Bedlam" is the title of an anonymous poem in the "mad song" genre, written in the voice of a homeless "Bedlamite". The poem was probably composed at the beginning of the 17th century. In How to Read and Why Harold Bloom called it "the greatest anonymous lyric in the [English] language."[1]
The terms "Tom o' Bedlam" and “Bedlam beggar” were used to describe beggars and vagrants who had or feigned mental illness (see also Abraham-men). Aubrey writes that such a beggar could be identified by “an armilla of tin printed, of about three inches breadth” attached to his left arm.[2] They claimed, or were assumed, to be former inmates of the Bethlem Royal Hospital (Bedlam). 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 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".
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.[3]
From the hag and hungry goblinThat 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 sensesYou never be forsaken,Nor wander from your selves with TomAbroad to beg your bacon,
While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
Of thirty bare years have ITwice twenty been enragèd,And of forty been three times fifteenIn durance soundly cagèdOn the lordly lofts of Bedlam,With stubble soft and dainty,Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding-dong,With wholesome hunger plenty,
And now I sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
With a thought I took for MaudlinAnd 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 layMe found and stript me nakèd.
And now I sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
When I short have shorn my sow's faceAnd swigged my horny barrel,In an oaken inn I pound my skinAs a suit of gilt apparel;The moon's my constant mistress,And the lowly owl my marrow;The flaming drake and the night crow makeMe music to my sorrow.
While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
The palsy plagues my pulsesWhen I prig your pigs or pullen,Your culvers take, or matchless makeYour Chanticleer or Sullen.When I want provant with HumphreyI sup, and when benighted,I repose in Paul's with waking soulsYet never am affrighted.
But I do sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
I know more than Apollo,For oft, when he lies sleepingI see the stars at bloody warsIn 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.
While I do sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
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 gentleMe handle, touch, and spare not;But those that cross Tom RynosserosDo what the panther dare not.
Although I sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
With a host of furious fanciesWhereof I am commander,With a burning spear and a horse of air,To the wilderness I wander.By a knight of ghosts and shadowsI summoned am to tourneyTen leagues beyond the wide world's end:Methinks it is no journey.
Yet will I sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
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"[4] (she may be meant to be the Maud who seems to be mentioned in the verse "With a thought I took for Maudlin / And a cruise of cockle pottage / With a thing thus tall, Sky bless you all / I befell into this dotage." which apparently records Tom going mad) or "Bedlam Boys" (from the chorus, "Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys / Bedlam boys are bonny / For they all go bare and they live by the air / And they want no drink or money."), whose first stanza is:
For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam,
Ten thousand miles I've traveled.
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes,
For to save her shoes from gravel
The remaining stanzas include:
I went down to Satan's kitchen
To break my fast one morning
And there I got souls piping hot
All on the spit a-turning.
There I took a cauldron
Where boiled ten thousand harlots
Though full of flame I drank the same
To the health of all such varlets.
My staff has murdered giants
My bag a long knife carries
To cut mince pies from children's thighs
For which to feed the fairies.
No gypsy, slut or doxy
Shall win my mad Tom from me
I'll weep all night, with stars I'll fight
The fray shall well become me.
[5] [6]
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 of each poem, and confusion between the two, neither "Tom o' Bedlam" nor "Mad Maudlin" can be said to have definitive texts.[7]
The folk-rock band Steeleye Span recorded "Boys of Bedlam", a version of "Mad Maudlin", on their 1971 album Please To See The King. Steeleye recorded a very different arrangement on Dodgy Bastards (2016), which included a rap section and a bassline that set the song in the Phrygian mode.