From: jcf@world.std.com (Joseph C Fineman)
Subject: Re: Mad Tom of Bedlam?
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Distribution: rec
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 02:12:56 GMT

robd@cherry09.cray.com (Robert Derrick) writes:

>Mike Koster (mikek@ios.Convergent.COM) wrote:
>: Hey, there;
>: 
>: Where might I find the words for "Mad Tom of Bedlam"? Any or all
>: versions would be interesting. Thanks,

Dear Rob & Mike,

The review below, which I wrote for an apa I used to belong to, may be
of interest to you:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

  Loving Mad Tom: Bedlamite Verses of the XVI and XVII Centuries,
edited with notes by Jack Lindsay, foreword by Robert Graves
(Franfolico, 1927; Seven Dials, 1969).  Found in the bibliography of
Gershon Legman's massive collection of dirty limericks, and then in
the Widener at Harvard.  A scholarly extravaganza centered on the well-
known song "Tom o' Bedlam", purporting to be sung by one of the roving
madmen deinstitutionalized when Henry VIII shut down the monasteries:

 From the hag and hungry goblin
 That into rags would rend ye
 And 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 travel from yourselves with Tom
 Abroad to beg your bacon.
   Nor never sing "Any food, any feeding,
   Money, drink or clothing":
   Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
   Poor Tom will injure nothing.

Some of them were taken care of, after a fashion, at the Hospital of
St Mary of Bedlam (= Bethlehem) in London:

 Of thirty bare years have I
 Twice twenty been enraged,
 And of forty been three times fifteen
 In durance soundly caged
 In the lordly lofts of Bedlam
 On stubble soft and dainty,
 Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding dong,
 With wholesome hunger plenty.
   And now I sing...

This book contains original texts of this and related songs,
emendations, literary revisions, burlesques, explanations,
contemporary quotations about life on the road in those days, etc.

  Robert Graves, in the preface, thinks that the earthier parts of
this song, such as the ones quoted above, were actual folk poetry, but
that a professional poet later added some of the fancier fantasies,
which contain classical allusions:

 I know more than Apollo,
		  [the sun]
 For oft when he lies sleeping
 I behold the stars at mortal wars
 And the wounded welkin weeping;
		 [sky]
 The moon embrace her shepherd
		      [who's that?]
 And the queen of love her warrior,
	 [Venus]           [Mars]
 While the first doth horn the star of the morn
		      [cuckold][Venus]
 And the next the heavenly farrier.
			   [Jupiter?]
   While I do sing...

I have never stayed awake all night outdoors and seen the stars go by.
It is a remembrance that bums share with soldiers:

 The sky slowly changes its huge guard of stars.

 And there's the young lieutenant, sword buckled over his heart and
 his soul on his smooth face:

   Soon it's to be life or death...either one means someone's harvest
   or old age shall ripen.  Live, die, I'm not afraid.  Father,
   fatherland...life-giving earth...be safe.

 The night marches on, armored in burning stars.

                 -- Ennius, "The Night Watch"

 And the solemn firmament marches
   And the hosts of heaven rise
 Framed through the iron arches --
   Banded and barred by the ties,

 Till we feel the far track humming,
   And we see her headlight plain,
 And we gather and wait her coming --
   The wonderful north-bound train.

       -- Kipling, "Bridge-Guard in the Karoo"

  I am skeptical of Graves as a scholar, tho.  At about the same time
as this book was published, he wrote, with Laura Riding (who I think
was his wife), a preposterous essay arguing that in interpreting
Shakespeare's sonnets one ought to take the spelling & punctuation
seriously.  A Yaley named Stephen Booth makes a monkey out of Graves
in a note to his edition of the sonnets (Yale U.P., 1977).  Similar
perversity seems likely in Graves's handling of one couplet in "Tom o'
Bedlam":

 In an oken Inne I pound my skin
 as a suite of guilt apparrell.

Auden, in the Oxford Book of Light Verse, following other sources &
common sense, makes this

 In an oaken inn do I pawn my skin
 As a suit of gilt apparel,

which is both intelligible and funny.  Graves makes it

 At an oaken in I 'pound my skin
   In a suit of gilt apparel,

changing "as" to "in" & putting an apostrophe on "pound" as if it were
short for something, without saying what.  I have tried the OED s.v.
"appound", "depound", "suppound", and "impound", all in vain; only the
last is there, and it has no plausible sense.

  However, I did enjoy Graves's moving reminiscence of combat in W.W.
I (Goodbye to All That) & his pleasant essay on taboo language ("Lars
Porsena").  He also wrote a famous book on the Greek myths that I hope
to get around to someday.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Enjoy.  %^)  Joe Fineman  jcf@world.std.com
Newsgroups: rec.music.folk