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Boys of Bedlam
Boys of Bedlam / Tom of Bedlam
[
Roud V53999
, V50075
; Ballad Index Log172
; DT BEDLMBOY
; Mudcat 112465
, 126639
; words trad., music Dave Moran, Nic Jones]
Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song (Roud V50075)
A Tom-o’-Bedlam Song is printed in Edward Francis Rimbault’s A Little Book of Songs and Ballads (1851), pp.200-205.
Vocal trio, The Songwainers (Ron Taylor, Ken Langsbury and Dave Stephenson) sang Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song in 1971 on their eponymous Argo album The Songwainers. They noted:
‘Harmless incurables’ were released from the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem in London—Bedlam—to wander and beg for food in the streets. Tom was one of these, and this is one of the many versions of his song. The: tune here used is in a Drexel MS. (now in the New York Public Library) and was the setting for I Am a Rogue and a Stout One, in John Gamble’s MS. Commonplace Book (1659).
The Claque sang Tom of Bedlam in 2008 on their WildGoose CD Sounding Now. They noted:
Tom of Bedlam is a grand and image laden song in which the hero declares his fantastic experiences along the way of life and wonders why he’s incarcerated in such a place. A diagnosis of bi-polarity in a big way! From the singing of the great Dave Stephenson of The Songwainers.
Mad Maudlin’s Search for Her Tom of Bedlam (Roud V53999)
Mad Maudlin’s Search for Her Tom of Bedlam as printed it Thomas d’Urfey’s Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, (1720), Volume 4, p. 189, is said to be the answer to Tom o’ Bedlam’s Sing.
With the title Boys of Bedlam it was in the repertoire of The Halliard at the end of the 1960’s with a tune that was “mostly the work of the Halliard’s Dave Moran with some small input from Nic Jones” (according to Julia Jones). However, they didn’t record it until 2005 for their songbook and CD Broadside Songs. Most of the folk revival recordings used this tune. They noted in their songbook:
Originally found in Thomas d’Urfey’s Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy as Mad Maudlin’s Search for Her Tom of Bedlam, published 1720.
We put the finishing touches to our tune on a tour of the Welsh Borders and on the way back to Essex did a booking in the Midlands at Stourport. An unaccompanied foursome called the Farriers loved the song and asked if they could sing it unaccompanied. We said sure—they were very good, a bit like the Young Tradition. Tom Gilfellon got it from them, he taught it to Steeleye Span and the folk scene welcomed a great song.
Tom Gilfellon sang Mad Tom of Bedlam in 1972 as the title track of his Leader album Loving Mad Tom. He noted:
Interest in Bedlamite songs and poems seems to wax and wane with the centuries. My personal views of the bizarre do not include the verses of this song as too outre. Rather do I see the incongruity of greed and political ambition. Bedlam may be no more but we can console ourselves with the thought that we still have the Houses of Parliament. For those with any more than a passing interest I might direct them to Jack Linsay’s book Loving Mad Tom [1970]. The tune is by Nic Jones and Dave Moran, so the legend goes! Good on yer Nic and Dave.
Steeleye Span learned Boys of Bedlam from The Halliard via the Farriers and Tom Gilfellon. They recorded it in 1971 for their album Please to See the King, and this track was later included on the Martin Carthy anthology, The Carthy Chronicles. Martin Carthy and Maddy Prior share vocals, starting singing into the back of a banjo like a primitive echo-chamber and set against simple percussion. The second verse adds Ashley Hutchings’ bass like a bell tolling. For the third track, the rhythm picks up to a jolly pace and Martin sings solo with Maddy joining in the chorus. The album’s sleeve notes commented:
The priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem at Bishopsgate founded in 1247 became the male lunatic asylum known as Bethlehem Hospital or Bedlam in 1547. In 1815 it was moved to Lambeth in the buildings now housing the Imperial War Museum and in 1931 was moved to Beckenham in Kent. The hospital of St. Mary Magdalen [pronounced Maudlin] was its female counterpart. During the 16th and 17th centuries the man in the moon was depicted as a bent old man with a staff, leading a dog, carrying a thorn bush and lantern.
Maddy Prior recorded Boys of Bedlam again in 1993 for her album Year. A live version recorded during her 1994 UK tour was released in 1997 on the Park Records sampler Park Taster. Maddy wrote in the Year sleeve notes:
Bedlam was the popular name given to Bethlehem Hospital for the Insane. This lyric, set to music by Nic Jones and Dave Moran, has a certain Brechtian quality and is certainly one of the most grotesque and alarming images of madness that I know.
Horden Raikes sang Mad Tom of Bedlam in 1972 on their eponymous Folk Heritage album Horden Raikes.
John Roberts and Tony Barrand sang Tom of Bedlam in 1977 on their Folk-Legacy album of ballads of the supernatural, Dark Ships in the Forest. They noted:
More properly titled Mad Maudlin’s Search for Her Tom of Bedlam, this song does not seem to have had much currency in the tradition. It has been dug up from print and was popularised by Tom Gilfellon of the High Level Ranters.
Strawhead sang Mad Maudlin to d’Urfey’s tune in 1980 on their Traditional Sound album Songs From the Book of England.
Vocal harmony quartet, Heritage sang Mad Tom of Bedlam in 1982 on their Plant Life album Living by the Air. They noted:
This rousing song of lunacy concerns the old London Asylum “Our Lady of Bethlehem Hospital”, where, for a small fee, the public could watch the antics of the inmates.
Seannachie sang Boys of Bedlam on their 1986 album Within the Fire.
Martin and Jessica Simpson sang Bedlam Boys, tune credited to Nic Jones, in 1987 on their Topic album True Dare or Promise.
Marilyn Middleton Pollock sang Bedlam Boys, tune credited to Nic Jones and Dave Moran, in 1988 on her Fellside album Nobody Knows You.
Classical soprano Catherine Bott sang Mad Maudlin to d’Urfey’s tune in 1993 on her L’Oiseau-Lyre album Mad Songs.
Old Blind Dogs sang Bedlam Boys in 1992 on their CD New Tricks, in 1999 on their Live CD and in 2007 on their CD Four on the Floor. Iain Clavey noted on the first album:
We learned Bedlam Boys from the singing of ‘Mizz Izzie’ Swanson of Aberdeen who was kind enough to supply us with the words after being plied with cider.
Heidi Talbot sang Bedlam Boys on her 2008 album In Love + Light. This track was also included in 2010 on the anthology Folk Against Fascism.
Jeana Leslie and Siobhan Miller sang Mad Tom of Bedlam in 2010 on their Greentrax CD In a Bleeze. They noted:
A traditional English song which we learned from Siobhan’s mum, Jan. ‘Bedlam’ is a corruption of the word ‘Bethlehem’. It graphically describes the chaos of mental institutions in earlier times.
This video shows them at Studio 55 Marin in San Rafael, Marin County, California, on 23 June 2013:
GreenMatthews sang Bedlam Boys on their 2013 CD A Brief History of Music 1260-1915. They noted:
This dark and brooding ballad from the early 17th century is associated with a variety of melodies. The one used here was composed by Dave Moran in the late 1960s.
Stick in the Wheel sang Bedlam both on their 2014 EP Bones and on their 2015 CD From Here.
James Bell sang Tom o’ Bedlam, tune credited to Dave Moran and Nic Jones, on the 2016 anthology of songs from Shakespeare’s plays and times, The Food of Love Project. In King Lear, Edgar disguises himself as mad “Tom o’ Bedlam”.
Steeleye Span returned to Boy of Bedlam in 2016 on their CD Dodgy Bastards. They noted:
A celebrated Steeleye favourite. It has had many incarnations over the years by many other artists as well. This version has a spoken word interlude actually written as a rap by Maddy [Prior] and Rick [Kemp]’s son, Alex Kemp. The original libretto was full-on rap with the requisite and opposite profanities that are integrated to that genre. However, not being a ‘proper’ rapper, Julian [Littman] felt that maybe he wouldn’t carry off the cussing as well as Alex so he made more of a spoken word piece without it […] and thanks to Alex’s imagery and turn of phrase it feels just as powerful.
The words are traditional but Nic Jones and Dave Moran wrote the tune.
Joshua Burnell sang Boys of Bedlam, tune credited to Nic Jones and Dave Moran, on 7 February 2017 in his “a folk song a week” song cycle. This was included in 2021 on his album Seasons Vol. 1 Winter. He noted:
This one is based on a real-life horror story that makes Steven King seem about as scary as Peppa Pig. Our tale begins in 1247 with the founding of the priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem: Britain’s first lunatic asylum. Bethlehem became Bethlem, and Bethlem became Bedlam. The word became synonymous with ‘chaos’. What a legacy.
Bedlam’s treatment of its patients was nothing short of torture, involving starving, beating, dunking them in ice-cold baths and spinning them in chairs suspended from the ceiling. Essentially, they were experimenting on the mentally ill and making a pretty penny too. By the 17th century, wealthy tourists flocked to Bedlam to take a stroll around the magnificent grounds and pay admission to see the patients like animals in a zoo.
Many patients died—in fact, they discovered a mass grave beneath the original site—but if they made it out alive, they were unemployable and ended up begging on the streets. And where there’s money, there are scam artists; a ‘Tom of Bedlam’ was someone who faked that they had been incarcerated to cash in on the pity of the public. ‘Mad Maudlin’ was his female counterpart, named after the women’s lunatic asylum, The Hospital of St. Mary Magdalen. These recurring characters are the subjects of our song. Mad Maudlin’s Search For her Tom of Bedlam was written by Thomas d’Urfey and was first published in his 1720 book Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy. I’m not sure how such a grisly song does any of those things!
I first heard Steeleye Span’s definitive version on Please to See the King and mine is like an artistic response, an example of an ongoing thought experiment: if I had been around during the 70s with the same instruments and influences, what might my version have sounded like? Regardless of how accurately retro it is, this is one of my favourites on Winter. Ben [Burnell]’s bouzouki part is a great earworm and the choral sections sound like they’re ringing through the endless chambers of the world’s most terrifying asylum…
Bethlem Royal Hospital is still open today, but is now a place of healing. But we still have the song, as a gritty reminder of how much progress society has made.
Lyrics
The Songwainers sing Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song
From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend thee,
And the spirit that stands by the naked man
In the Book of Moons defend thee,
That of thy five sound senses
You’ll never be forsaken,
Nor wander from your selves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.
Chorus (after each verse):
Yet I cry, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
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 wakèd,
Till the roguish boy of love where I lay
Me found and stript me nakèd.
When I short have shorn my sow’s 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 lowly owl my marrow;
The flaming drake and the night crow make
Me music to my sorrow.
I know more than Apollo,
For oft, when he lies sleeping
I have seen the stars at bloody 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.
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a blazing 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 Claque sing Tom of Bedlam
From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend thee,
The spirit that stands by the naked man
Of the Book of Moons defend thee,
That of thy five sound senses
You never be forsaken,
Nor wander from the world with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.
Chorus (after each verse):
Yet I cry, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
I went down to Satan’s Kitchen
For breakfast one fine morning
And there I got souls piping hot
All on the spit a-turning.
My staff has murdered giants
And bag a long knife carries
To cut mince pies from children’s thigh
Which with to feed the faeries.
With a thought I took for Maudlin
And a cruse of cockle pottage,
With a thing thus tall, sky bless you all,
Me befell into this dotage.
I slept not since the Conquest,
Till then I never wakèd,
Till the wayward boy of love where I lay
Me found and stript me nakèd.
I know more than Apollo,
For oft, when he lies sleeping
I have seen the stars at bloody wars
And the wounded welkin weeping;
And the moon embrace her shepherd,
And the Queen of Love her warrior,
Whilst the first doth horn the star of morn,
And the next the heavenly Farrier.
And spirits white as lightning
Do on my travels guide me;
The moon will quake and the stars will shake
When ever they espy me.
The moon’s my constant mistress,
And the lowly owl my marrow;
The flaming drake and the night crow make
Me music to my sorrow.
With a host of furious fancies
Whereof I am commander,
With a flaming spear and a sword 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.
Mad Maudlin’s Search for Her Tom of Bedlam in Pills to Purge Melancholy
To find my 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 disdain’d,
My Wits are lost since hime I cost, which makes me go thus Chain’s:
Yet will I sing &c.
My Staff hath Murder’d Gyants, my Bag a long Knife carries,
To cut Mince-pyes from Children’s Thighs, With which I feast the Furies:
Yet I will sing &c.
My Horn is made of Thunder, I stole it out of Heavn’n,
The Rainbow there is this I wear, for which I thence was driv’n:
Yet will I sing &c.
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:
Yet will I sing &c.
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.
Yet will I &c.
A Spirit as hot as Lightning, Did in that Journey guide me,
The Sun did shake, and the pale Moon quake, As soon as e’er they spi’d me:
Yet will I &c.
And I that I have gotten a Lease, than Dooms-day longer,
To live on Earth with some in Mirth, then Whales shall feed my hunger:
Yet will I &c.
No Gipsie, Slut, or Doxy, shall win my mad Tom from me,
We’ll weep all Night, and with Stars fight, the Fray will well become me:
Yet will I &c.
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 Demon louder:
Yet will I &c.
A Health to Tom of Bedlam, go fill the Seas in Barrels,
I’ll drink it all, well Brew’d with Gall, and Maudling-Drunk, I’ll Quarrel:
Yet will I &c.
Steeleye Span sing Boys of Bedlam
For to see mad Tom of Bedlam
Ten thousand miles I’d travel
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes
For to save her shoes from gravel
Chorus (repeated after each verse):
Still I sing: bonnie boys, bonnie mad boys
Bedlam boys are bonnie,
For they all go bare and they live by the air
And they want no drink nor money
I went down to Satan’s kitchen
For to get me food one morning
And there I got souls piping hot
All on the spit a-turning
My staff has murdered giants
And my bag a long knife carries
For to cut mince pies from children’s thighs
With which to feed the fairies
This spirit’s white as lightning
Would on my travels guide me
The moon would shake and the stars would quake
When ever they espied me
And when that I have murdered
The man in the moon to a powder
His staff I’ll break and his dog I’ll shake
And there’ll howl no demon louder
For to see mad Tom of Bedlam
Ten thousand years I’d travel
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes
For to save her shoes from gravel
Roberts & Barrand sing Tom of Bedlam
To find my Tom of Bedlam
Ten thousand years I’ll travel,
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes
To save her shoes from gravel.
Chorus (after each verse):
Still I sing: Bonny boys, bonny mad boys,
Bedlam boys are bonny,
For they all go bare and they live by the air,
And they want no drink nor money.
I now repent that ever
Poor Tom was so disdained,
My wits are lost since him I crossed,
Which makes me thus go chained.
I went to Pluto’s kitchen
To beg some food one morning,
And there I got souls piping hot,
All on the spit a-turning.
There I took up 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,
For to cut mince pies from children’s thighs,
With which to feed the fairies.
A spirit hot as lightning
Did on that journey guide me,
The sun did shake and the pale moon quake,
As soon as e’er they spied me.
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.
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.
Strawhead sing Mad Maudlin
To find my Tom of Bedlam Ten Thousand Years I’ll Travel,
Mad Maudlin goes with dirty Toes to save her Shoes from Gravel.
Chorus (after each verse):
Yet will I sing Bonny Boys, bonny Mad Boys, Bedlam Boys are Bonny:
They still go bare and they live by the Air, and want no Drink, nor Money.
My Staff hath Murder’d Gyants, my Bag a long Knife carries,
To cut Mince-pyes from Children’s Thighs, With which I feast the Furies:
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:
A Spirit as hot as Lightning, Did in that Journey guide me,
The Sun did shake, and the pale Moon quake, As soon as e’er they spi’d me:
No Gipsie, Slut, or Doxy, shall win my mad Tom from me,
We’ll weep 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 Demon louder:
Jeana Leslie and Siobhan Miller sing Mad Tom of Bedlam
For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam,
Ten thousand miles I’ve travelled.
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes,
For to save her shoes from gravel.
Chorus (after each verse):
Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys,
Bedlam boys are bonny,
For they all go bare, and they live by the air,
And they want no drink nor money.
I went down to Satan’s Kitchen
To get me food one morning
And there I got souls piping hot
All on the spit a-turning.
There I took up 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 the children’s thigh
And feed them tae the faeries.
And when that I’ll be a-murdering
The man in the moon to a powder
His staff I’ll break and his dog I’ll shake
An there’ll howl no demon louder.
For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam,
Ten thousand miles I’ve travelled.
Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes,
For to save her shoes from gravel.