{"id":16741,"date":"2012-10-23T06:30:31","date_gmt":"2012-10-22T17:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=16741"},"modified":"2012-10-23T22:28:34","modified_gmt":"2012-10-23T09:28:34","slug":"tuesday-poem-tom-o-bedlam-an-anonymous-folk-ballad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2012\/10\/23\/tuesday-poem-tom-o-bedlam-an-anonymous-folk-ballad\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Poem: “Tom O’ Bedlam” — An Anonymous Folk Ballad"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Tom O’ Bedlam’s Song<\/strong><\/dd>\n
<\/dd>\n
<\/dd>\n
.<\/span><\/dd>\n
From the hagg and hungrie goblin<\/dd>\n
That into raggs would rend ye,<\/dd>\n
And the spirit that stands by the naked man<\/dd>\n
In the Book of Moones – defend ye!<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
That of your five sound senses<\/dd>\n
You never be forsaken,<\/dd>\n
Nor wander from your selves with Tom<\/dd>\n
Abroad to beg your bacon.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
(Chorus; sung after every verse)<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
While I doe sing “any foode, any feedinge,<\/em><\/dd>\n
Money, drinke or clothing,”<\/em><\/dd>\n
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,<\/em><\/dd>\n
Poor Tom will injure nothing.<\/em><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
Of thirty bare years have I<\/dd>\n
Twice twenty been enraged,<\/dd>\n
And of forty been three times fifteen<\/dd>\n
In durance soundly caged.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
On the lordly lofts of Bedlam,<\/dd>\n
With stubble soft and dainty,<\/dd>\n
Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding-dong,<\/dd>\n
With wholesome hunger plenty.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
With a thought I took for Maudlin<\/dd>\n
And a cruse of cockle pottage,<\/dd>\n
With a thing thus tall, skie blesse you all,<\/dd>\n
I befell into this dotage.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
I slept not since the Conquest,<\/dd>\n
Till then I never waked,<\/dd>\n
Till the roguish boy of love where I lay<\/dd>\n
Me found and stript me naked.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
When I short have shorne my sowre face<\/dd>\n
And swigged my horny barrel,<\/dd>\n
In an oaken inn I pound my skin<\/dd>\n
As a suit of gilt apparel.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
The moon’s my constant Mistrisse,<\/dd>\n
And the lowly owl my morrowe,<\/dd>\n
The flaming Drake and the Nightcrow make<\/dd>\n
Me music to my sorrow.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
The palsie plagues my pulses<\/dd>\n
When I prigg your pigs or pullen,<\/dd>\n
Your culvers take, or matchless make<\/dd>\n
Your Chanticleers, or sullen.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
When I want provant, with Humfrie<\/dd>\n
I sup, and when benighted,<\/dd>\n
I repose in Powles with waking souls<\/dd>\n
Yet never am affrighted.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
I know more than Apollo,<\/dd>\n
For oft, when he lies sleeping<\/dd>\n
I see the stars at bloody wars<\/dd>\n
In the wounded welkin weeping,<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
The moone embrace her shepherd<\/dd>\n
And the queen of Love her warrior,<\/dd>\n
While the first doth horne the star of morne,<\/dd>\n
And the next the heavenly Farrier.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
The Gipsie Snap and Pedro<\/dd>\n
Are none of Tom’s companions.<\/dd>\n
The punk I skorne and the cut purse sworne<\/dd>\n
And the roaring boyes bravadoe.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
The meek, the white, the gentle,<\/dd>\n
Me handle touch and spare not<\/dd>\n
But those that crosse Tom Rynosseros<\/dd>\n
Do what the panther dare not.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
With a host of furious fancies<\/dd>\n
Whereof I am commander,<\/dd>\n
With a burning spear and a horse of air,<\/dd>\n
To the wilderness I wander.<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
By a knight of ghostes and shadowes<\/dd>\n
I summon’d am to tourney<\/dd>\n
Ten leagues beyond the wild world’s end.<\/dd>\n
Methinks it is no journey.<\/dd>\n
<\/dd>\n
.<\/span><\/dd>\n
— Anonymous (possibly Traditional)<\/dd>\n
<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

 <\/p>\n

About the Poem:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have been meaning to feature Tom O’ Bedlam’s song or ballad for some time since it is a long time favourite, although initially I only knew the concluding two stanzas:<\/p>\n

\n
With a host of furious fancies<\/em><\/dd>\n
Whereof I am commander,<\/em><\/dd>\n
With a burning spear and a horse of air,<\/em><\/dd>\n
To the wilderness I wander.<\/em><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
By a knight of ghostes and shadowes<\/em><\/dd>\n
I summon’d am to tourney<\/em><\/dd>\n
Ten leagues beyond the wild world’s end.<\/em><\/dd>\n
Methinks it is no journey.<\/em><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

As a lover of fantasy, it’s perhaps not surprising that I was much taken with the many fantastical elements of the poem as well as the sense of adventure. Later, I understood that “Bedlam” referred to the Bethelehem Hospital for those with mental illness, and so “poor Tom” would have been either meant to be an ex-patient or one who displayed similar characteristics. A Tom O’ Bedlam could also refer to vagrants that lived on the roads and begged for\u00a0 a living, regardless of whether they were mentally ill or not.<\/p>\n

Harold Bloom, in “How To Read and Why”<\/em> (Scribner, 2000) has the following to say about the poem, and although I am not prepared to say it is “the greatest” (not having read all the traditional ballads) I do think it is a great example of the form, both for the richness of the language and imagery, as well as its powerful rhythm and rhyme:<\/p>\n

“Part of the fascination of the Popular Ballads is their anonymity. Not even the best among them is quite of the eminence of the greatest anonymous lyric in the language, “Tom O’Bedlam”, first discovered in a commonplace book of about 1620, four years after the death of Shakespeare.”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong>\u2014and link to other Tuesday Poets posting around NZ and the world\u2014either click here<\/strong><\/a> or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.<\/p>\n

One of these sidebar sites is the blog of Helen McKinlay<\/a>—& today Helen has my poem, Tomo<\/em><\/strong>, featured on her site.\u00a0 I feel the poem needs to speak for itself (or not as the case may be:)) but for non New Zealand readers, “Tomo” is the Maori word for cave.<\/p>\n

To go straight to Helen’s blog and Tomo<\/em>, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom O’ Bedlam’s Song . From the hagg and hungrie goblin That into raggs would rend ye, And the spirit that stands by the naked man In the Book of Moones – defend ye! That of your five sound senses You never be forsaken, Nor wander from your selves with Tom Abroad to beg your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16741"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16789,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16741\/revisions\/16789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}