Subject: RE: Origin: Bedlam Boys / Tom of Bedlam
From:
Joe_F
Date: 29 Jul 17 - 06:00 PM
Here, FWIW, is a review I wrote in 1991 of Robert Graves's edition:
_Loving Mad Tom: Bedlamite Verses of the XVI and XVII Centuries_,
edited with notes by Jack Lindsay, foreword by Robert Graves
(Franfolico, 1927; Seven Dials, 1969). Found in the bibliography of
Gershon Legman's massive collection of dirty limericks, and then in
the Widener at Harvard. A scholarly extravaganza centered on the
well-known song "Tom o' Bedlam", purporting to be sung by one of the
roving madmen deinstitutionalized when Henry VIII shut down the
monasteries:
From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye
And the spirit that stands by the naked man
In the Book of Moons defend ye!
That of your five sound senses
You never be forsaken
Nor travel from yourselves with Tom
Abroad to beg your bacon.
Nor never sing "Any food, any feeding,
Money, drink or clothing":
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
Some of them were taken care of, after a fashion, at the Hospital of
St Mary of Bedlam (= Bethlehem) in London:
Of thirty bare years have I
Twice twenty been enragèd,
And of forty been three times fifteen
In durance soundly cagèd
In the lordly lofts of Bedlam
On stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong, sweet whips ding dong,
With wholesome hunger plenty.
And now I sing...
This book contains original texts of this and related songs,
emendations, literary revisions, burlesques, explanations,
contemporary quotations about life on the road in those days, etc.
Robert Graves, in the preface, thinks that the earthier parts of
this song, such as the ones quoted above, were actual folk poetry, but
that a professional poet later added some of the fancier fantasies,
which contain classical allusions:
I know more than Apollo,
[the sun]
For oft when he lies sleeping
I behold the stars at mortal wars
And the wounded welkin weeping;
[sky]
The moon embrace her shepherd
[who's that?]
And the queen of love her warrior,
[Venus] [Mars]
While the first doth horn the star of the morn
[cuckold][Venus]
And the next the heavenly farrier.
[Jupiter?]
While I do sing...
I have never stayed awake all night outdoors and seen the stars go by.
It is a remembrance that bums share with soldiers:
The sky slowly changes its huge guard of stars.
And there's the young lieutenant, sword buckled over his heart and
his soul on his smooth face:
Soon it's to be life or death...either one means someone's harvest
or old age shall ripen. Live, die, I'm not afraid. Father,
fatherland...life-giving earth...be safe.
The night marches on, armored in burning stars.
-- Ennius, "The Night Watch"
And the solemn firmament marches
And the hosts of heaven rise
Framed through the iron arches --
Banded and barred by the ties,
Till we feel the far track humming,
And we see her headlight plain,
And we gather and wait her coming --
The wonderful north-bound train.
-- Kipling, "Bridge-Guard in the Karoo"
I am skeptical of Graves as a scholar, tho. At about the same time
as this book was published, he wrote, with Laura Riding (who I think
was his wife), a preposterous essay arguing that in interpreting
Shakespeare's sonnets one ought to take the spelling & punctuation
seriously. A Yaley named Stephen Booth makes a monkey out of Graves
in a note to his edition of the sonnets (Yale U.P., 1977). Similar
perversity seems likely in Graves's handling of one couplet in "Tom o'
Bedlam":
In an oken Inne I pound my skin
as a suite of guilt apparrell.
Auden, in the _Oxford Book of Light Verse_, following other sources &
common sense, makes this
In an oaken inn do I pawn my skin
As a suit of gilt apparel,
which is both intelligible and funny. Graves makes it
At an oaken in I 'pound my skin
In a suit of gilt apparel,
changing "as" to "in" & putting an apostrophe on "pound" as if it were
short for something, without saying what. I have tried the _OED_ s.v.
"appound", "depound", "suppound", and "impound", all in vain; only the
last is there, and it has no plausible sense.
However, I did enjoy Graves's moving reminiscence of combat in
W.W. I (_Goodbye to All That_) & his pleasant essay on taboo language
("Lars Porsena"). He also wrote a famous book on the Greek myths that
I hope to get around to someday.
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