> Louis Killen > Songs > Tom Paget
> Spiers & Boden > Songs > Tom Padget

Tom Paget / Tom Padget

[trad.]

Louis Killen learned “that sly and saucy pean to begging, Tom Paget,” from Brian Blanchard of the Brighton Folk Club. He recorded in in Winter 1977 at the Eldron Fennig Folk Museum of American Ephemera for his album Old Songs, Old Friends.

John Spiers and Jon Boden recorded Tom Padget in 2008 for their album Vagabond and again in 2010/11 for their CD The Works. Jon Boden also sang it as the July 31, 2010 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day. They commented in the first album's notes:

Learnt from the singing of Louis Killen pretty much the best singer of traditional songs in England at this time. Louis learnt it from Brian Blanchard whilst getting a lift to Brighton after the 1970 Sidmouth festival; Brian had learnt it that summer from a singer in Cork.

Lyrics

Louis Killen sings Tom Paget

Of all the trades going 'tis begging I take great delight,
For m'rent is all paid as I lay me bags down for the night;
For me rent is all paid as I take a long stick in me hand —
And at night I will please the fair maidens as best as I can.

I walked all the day till I came to some rich farm house,
And I knocked on the door like some poor fool left lately without;
Without eating or drinking for twenty long hours and more —
And I said, “Kind madam, will you pray for, and remember the poor?”

“If it's alms that you want, you shall get them old man,“ she said.
But before she gave pennies she ran to her mother upstairs —
Crying, “Mammy, o Mammy, there is a strange man in the hall —
Stay close to your chamber, for I fear he will ravish us all!/”

Well, her mother did scuff her and called her a silly young fool
To take any such notion about a poor man at the door —
For his clothes were all ragged and his britches torn behind and before,
And his doldrums hung down a good fourteen long inches or more.

“Tom Paget,” she said, 'Why don't you go and work for your bread,
To some rich farmer and be decently clothed and fed?”
“Ah! To plough and sow, Madam, I'm afraid I have but little skill;
But I'll plough the small furrow that lies at the foot of your hill!”

“Tom Paget,” she said, “If you and I could but agree,
Then I'd make you the steward over all of my lands for to be.
And we'd eat at one table, and we'd sleep on a soft bed of down,
If only I could have you, Tom Paget of Killaloe town.”

(repeat first verse)

Links and Acknowledgements

I copied Louis Killen's lyrics from the liner notes of his LP.

See also the Mudcat Café thread Lyr Add: Tom Padget.