Tom O Bedlams Song

Tom O' Bedlam's Song

    For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam
    Ten thousand miles I traveled
    Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes
    To save her shoes from gravel.

              While I do sing, any food
           Feeding drink or clothing?
           Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
           Poor Tom will injure nothing..

    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.

    From the hag and hungry goblin
    That into rags would rend ye,
    All the sprites that stand by the naked man
    In the book of moons, defend ye.

    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 waked,
    Till the naked boy of love where I lay
    Me found and stript me naked.

    I know more than Apollo,
    For oft when he lies sleeping
    I see the stars at mortal 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.

    Of thirty years have I
    Twice twenty been enragéd
    And of forty been three times fifteen
    In durance soundly cagéd

    On the lordly lofts of Bedlam
    With stubble soft and dainty,
    Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips, ding-dong,
    With wholesome hunger plenty.

    When I short have shorn my sour-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 lonely owl my marrow;
    The flaming drake and the night crow make
    Me music to my sorrow.

    The spirits white as lightening
    Would on my travels guide me
    The stars would shake and the moon would quake
    Whenever they espied me.

    And then that I'll be murdering
    The Man in the Moon to the powder
    His staff I'll break, his dog I'll shake
    And there'll howl no demon louder.

    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.

    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 Humphry
    I sup, an when benighted
    I repose in Paul's with waking souls,
    Yet never am affrighted.

    The Gipsy Snap an 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 not nor spare not;
    But those that cross Tom Rhinoceros
    Do what the panther dare not

    That of your five sound senses
    You never be forsaken,
    Nor wander from your selves with Tom
    Abroad to beg your bacon.

    I now reprent that ever
    Poor Tom was so disdain-ed
    My wits are lost since him I crossed
    Which makes me thus go chained

    So drink to Tom of Bedlam
    Go fill the seas in barrels
    I'll drink it all, well brewed with gall
    And maudlin drunk I'll quarrel