Tom o' Bedlam

The Madhouse - the 8th panel from William Hogarth's "A Rake's Progress" 

Per this article, Tom o' Bedlam, the term "Tom O' Bedlam" (a Bedlamite) was used in Early Modern Britain and later to describe beggars and vagrants who had or feigned mental illness.They claimed, or were assumed, to have been former inmates at the Bethlem Royal Hospital, (Bedlam) in London, recognised as the world's first and oldest institution to specialise in the mentally ill. Apparently, some of the inmates were sent out into the streets to beg for food to keep its costs down, a practice that Ebenezer Scrooge would hardily approve.

You can see in the Hogarth's painting the poor treatment of the wretched souls.

Even more amazing in the painting are the fine ladies, fans in hand, because "in the 18th century people used to go to Bedlam to stare at the lunatics. For a penny one could peer into their cells, view the freaks of the "show of Bethlehem" and laugh at their antics. Entry was free on the first Tuesday of the month.In 1814 alone, there were 96,000 such visits." That was 400 British pounds a year, a pretty in the 18th Century! (Inflation programs go off the chart trying to calculate the income at present day prices!)

Bedlam Boys

circa 1600, anon.   

For to see Mad Tom of Bedlam,

Ten thousand miles I've traveled.

Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes,

For to save her shoes from gravel

(chorus)

"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 or money."  

Tom o' Bedlam

circa 1600, anon.

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; sung after every verse)

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 sheperd

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.

(Alas and lackaday, Spell Check still miserably fails English 101)

Ce qui, je souci? À tout à l'heure.
“Fall Down Seven Times, Get Up Eight"
(Bright)