Robin Hamilton asked me to forward this, in reply to Max, on the Tom a
Bedlam poems
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Max:
I've been working on an edition of all of the various Tom a Bedlam poems,
of which this is the earliest.
Below a transcription of the 1610 text, and some notes on the source MSS.
(Actually, it’s been so long since I last worked on this, that I’m not
quite sure how reliable the text below is. I think it’s someone else’s
edited and punctuated transcription of the 1610 Giles Earle His Booke
version that I was going to use as the basis of a version collated with the
Harley MS and Le Prince d’Amour. I’m pretty sure that somewhere I have a
facsimile of the 1610 MS, but curse me if I can find it at the moment.)
Robin
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A Tom a Bedlam Song (1610)
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 bacon.
Chorus:
While I doe sing "any foode, any feeding,
Feedinge, drinke or clothing,"
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enraged,
And of forty been three times fifteen
In durance soundly caged.
On the lordly lofts of Bedlam,
With stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding-dong,
With wholesome hunger plenty.
With a thought I took for Maudlin
And a cruse of cockle pottage,
With a thing thus tall, skie blesse you all,
I befell into this dotage.
I slept not since the Conquest,
Till then I never waked,
Till the roguish boy of love where I lay
Me found and stript me naked.
When I short have shorne my sowre 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 Mistrisse,
And the lowly owl my morrowe,
The flaming Drake and the Nightcrow make
Me music to my sorrow.
The palsie plagues my pulses
When I prigg your pigs or pullen,
Your culvers take, or matchless make
Your Chanticleers, or sullen.
When I want provant, with Humfrie
I sup, and when benighted,
I repose in Powles with waking souls
Yet never am affrighted.
I know more than Apollo,
For oft, when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at bloody wars
In the wounded welkin weeping,
The moone embrace her shepherd
And the queen of Love her warrior,
While the first doth horne the star of morne,
And the next the heavenly Farrier.
The Gipsie Snap and Pedro
Are none of Tom's companions.
The punk I skorne and the cut purse sworne
And the roaring boyes bravadoe.
The meek, the white, the gentle,
Me handle touch and spare not
But those that crosse Tom Rynosseros
Do what the panther dare not.
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 ghostes and shadowes
I summon'd am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wild world's end.
Methinks it is no journey.
________________________________
From the Hag and hungry goblin / That into rags would rend you, . . .
BL Add. 24665, f. 73v (Giles Earle His Booke)
BL Harley 3991, f. 58
Bod Tanner 465, f. 86v [transcribed Wells]
U. Leeds, Brotherton (Lt q 49), f. 17r-v
Le prince d'amour (1660), p. 167
Westminster drollery [Pt.2] (1672), p. 15
Wit and drollery (1682), p. 149
______________________________
BL1 Add. 24665 (Giles Earle His Booke – 1616+)
From the hag and hungry goblin `Second song of Tom of Bedlam' Methinks it
is no journey. | Yet do I sing any food any feeding...Poor Tom will injure
nothing. BL1 Add. 24665 f. 73v
_________________
Title on manuscript Giles Earle his booke / 1615
Summary description English and Latin songs with music, compiled by Giles
Earle. Many taken from part-songs. Included are various Latin mottoes,
lines in praise of the Roman church, and love verses
Library siglum GB Lbl
Name and location London (Great Britain), British Library
Manuscript no. Add. 24665
Date of copying between 1610 and 1626
Physical description 1 ms. score: 84 f.
Dimensions 14 x 18 cm
References See: J. P. Cutts, ''Venus and Adonis' in an early
seventeenth-century song book', Notes and Queries (1963), 302-3; Peter
Warlock (Philip Heseltine), Giles Earle his Booke (London, 1932); S. Wells,
'Tom O'Bedlam's song and King Lear', Shakespeare Quarterly (1961), 311-16
Provenance Giles Earle (1615). Purchased by the British Museum from Joseph
Lilly on 17 May, 1862
_______________
EARLE, Giles, Bernard VAN DIEREN, and Peter Warlock. Giles Earle His Booke
(Additional MS. 24, 665 in the British Museum). [A Collection of Lyrics
Made by G. Earle.] Edited by Peter Warlock. [Revised for the Press by
Bernard Van Dieren.]. London: Houghton Publishing Co, 1932.
Jorgens, Elise Bickford, British Library Manuscripts, Part I (English Song
1600-1675) (Garland Pub, 1986). Includes facsimile of Add Ms. 24665 (Giles
Earle’s Songbook).
Jorgens, Elise Bickford, Texts of the Songs (English Song, 1600-1675)
[Music-Garland, 1989]. 608 pp.
Physical Description: xii, 589 p. ; 31 cm.
"The texts of all the songs from the manuscripts in the facsimile
edition are given in this volume..."
Jack Lindsay, ed. -- Lindsay, Norman, and Graves, Robert, and Lindsay,
Jack, and Warlock, Peter, and Fanfrolico Press. Loving mad Tom : Bedlamite
verses of the XVI and XVII centuries / with five illustrations by Norman
Lindsay ; foreword by Robert Graves ; the texts edited with notes by Jack
Lindsay; musical transcriptions by Peter Warlock Fanfrolico Press, London :
1927
-- Text based on a transcript of the 1610 MS provided by Norman Lindsay
[from Peter Warlock, who edited Giles Earle His Booke?].
-- Contains the first essay Robert Graves wrote on “Tom ‘o Bedlam’s Song”:
Robert Graves, ‘The Rediscovery of "Loving Mad Tom" (pp.9-20).
-- 375 copies of the original edition were published.
Reprinted: Lindsay, Jack, ed. Loving Mad Tom: Bedlamite Verses of the XVI
and XVII Centuries. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1970
Roger Bourke, "‘The Moon’s my constant mistress’: Robert Graves and the
Elizabethans," Gravesiana: The Journal of the Robert Graves Society, Vol.
3, no. 1 (2007), pp. 75-85, comments on Loving Mad Tom.
_____________________________________________
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-----Original Message-----
From: Max Richards
Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2012 9:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: loving mad tom
When I looked this up via google just now, I couldn't quickly find a
version that I could confidently print out and put inside my copy of
Ricks's Oxford Book of English Verse, which strangely lacks any version.
Suggestions please...=
--
David Joseph Bircumshaw
**
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