The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #112465 Message #2600411
Posted By: Jim Dixon
30-Mar-09 - 10:38 AM
Thread Name: Origin: Bedlam Boys / Tom of Bedlam
Subject: Lyr Add: MAD MAUDLIN / BEDLAM BOYS (from Pills...)
From Songs Compleat, Pleasant and Divertive; Set to Musick —also known as Wit and Mirth, Or Pills to Purge Melancholy —which includes a tune: [I have modernized the spelling and punctuation.] MAD MAUDLIN , To find out Tom of Bedlam. 1. 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: 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. 2. I now repent that ever poor Tom was so disdained. My wits are lost since him I crossed, which makes me go thus chained. 3. My staff hath murdered giants. My bag a long knife carries, To cut mince-pies from children's thighs, with which I feast the fairies. 4. 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. 5. I went to Pluto's kitchen, to beg some food one morning, And there I got souls piping hot, with which the spits were turning. 6. Then took I up a cauldron where boiled ten thousand harlots. 'Twas full of flame, yet I drank the same to the health of all such varlets. 7. 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 spied me. 8. And now that I have gotten a lease, than Doomsday longer, To live on earth with some in mirth, ten whales shall feed my hunger. 9. No Gypsy, 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. 10. 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. 11. A health 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.