Poem of the day

[pallas_athena]

To find Mad Tom of Bedlam,
Ten thousand years I'll travel.
Mad Maudlin goes with dirty toes,
To save her shoes from gravel.

Yet will I sing, Bonny Boys, bonny Mad Boys,
Bedlam Boys are Bonny.
They still go bare and live by the air
And want no Drink, nor Money.

I now repent that ever
Poor Tom was so disdainèd.
My wits are lost since him I crost,
Which makes me go thus chainèd.

My staff hath murder'd giants,
My bag a long knife carries,
To cut mince pyes from children's thighs,
With which I feast the Faries.

My horn is made of thunder,
I stole it out of Heaven.
The Rainbow there is this I wear,
For which I thence was driven.

I went to Pluto's kitchin,
To beg some food one morning.
And there I got souls piping hot,
With which the spits were turning.

Then took I up a Cauldron,
Where boyl'd ten thousand Harlots.
'Twas full of flame, yet I drank the same
To the health of all such Varlets.

A Spirit hot as lightning
Did in that journey guide me,
The Sun did shake, and the Moon pale quake,
As soon as e'er they spied me.

No gipsy, slut or doxy
Shall wind my Mad Tom from me,
We'll sleep all night, and with Stars fight:
The fray will well become me.

And when that I have beaten
The Man i'th' Moon to powder,
His dog I'll take, and him I'll make
As could no dæmon louder.

A Health to Tom of Bedlam!
Go fill the seas in barrels.
I'll drink it all, well brew'd with gall,
and Maudlin-drunk, I'll quarrel.

Yet will I sing, Bonny Boys, bonny Mad Boys,
Bedlam Boys are Bonny.
They still go bare and live by the air
And want no Drink, nor Money.

Comments

[artnouveauho.livejournal.com]

This anonymous ballad was first published in the 1656 anthology Wit and Drollery. It's a response to an earlier Tom o' Bedlam ballad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_o'_Bedlam), and shares the same tune.

Sing along here! This one goes out to all my bonny mad Bedlamites.

[library-keeper.livejournal.com]

Here's another 'Mad Maudlin' ballad, also from Wit and Drollery:

From forth the Elysian fields,
A place of restless souls,
Mad Maudlin is come, to seek her naked Tom,
Hell's fury she controls:
The damned laugh to see her,
Grim Pluto scolds and frets,
Charon is glad to see poor Maudlin mad,
And away his boat he gets;
Through the earth, through the sea, through unknown isles,
Through the lofty skies,
Have I sought with sobs and cries
For my hungry mad Tom, and my naked mad Tom,
Yet I know not whether he lives or dies.

This was the song that Purcell adapted into 'Bess of Bedlam' (which I'd love to hear you sing, by the way). In fact there are so many seventeenth-century mad songs that Jack Lindsay edited a whole anthology of them, Loving Mad Tom (1927), with a foreword by Robert Graves. One could programme an entire concert devoted solely to mad songs, though it might be a bit overwhelming both for singer and audience.