> Nic Jones > Songs > Boys of Bedlam
> Steeleye Span > Songs > Boys of Bedlam
> Martin Carthy > Songs > Boys of Bedlam

Boys of Bedlam

[ Roud - ; Ballad Index Log172 ; words trad., music Nic Jones / Dave Moran]

This song is originally from Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy, published 1720. There it hat the title Mad Maudlin's Search for Her Tom of Bedlam. It was in the repertoire of The Halliard at the end of the 1960's with a tune written by Nic Jones and Dave Moran. However, they didn't record it until 2005 for their songbook and CD Broadside Songs.

Steeleye Span learned Boys of Bedlam from The Halliard via the Farriers and Tom Gilfellon. They recorded it then for their album Please to See the King. This track was later released 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 Please to See the King 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 re-recorded this song later for her album Year. A live version recorded during her 1994 tour was released 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.

Lyrics

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 (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

Me staff has murdered giants
And me 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 me 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