The history of a race of singular mendicants, known by the name of _Tom
o' Bedlams_, connects itself with that of our poetry. Not only will they
live with our language, since Shakspeare has perpetuated their
existence, but they themselves appear to have been the occasion of
creating a species of wild fantastic poetry, peculiar to our nation.
Bethlehem Hospital formed, in its original institution, a contracted and
penurious charity;[175] its governors soon discovered that the
metropolis furnished them with more lunatics than they had calculated
on; they also required from the friends of the patients a weekly
stipend, besides clothing. It is a melancholy fact to record in the
history of human nature, that when one of their original regulations
prescribed that persons who put in patients should provide their
clothes, it was soon observed that the poor lunatics were frequently
perishing by the omission of this slight duty from those former friends;
so soon forgotten were they whom none found an interest to recollect.
They were obliged to open contributions to provide a wardrobe.[176]
In consequence of the limited resources of the Hospital, they relieved
the establishment by frequently discharging patients whose cure might be
very equivocal. Harmless lunatics thrown thus into the world, often
without a single friend, wandered about the country, chanting wild
ditties, and wearing a fantastical dress to attract the notice of the
charitable, on whose alms they lived. They had a kind of _costume_,
which I find described by Randle Holme in a curious and extraordinary
work.[177]
"The Bedlam has a long staff, and a cow or ox-horn by his side; his
clothing fantastic and ridiculous; for being a madman, he is madly
decked and dressed all over with rubins (ribands), feathers, cuttings of
cloth, and what not, to make him seem a madman, or one distracted, when
he is no other than a wandering and dissembling knave." This writer here
points out one of the grievances resulting from licensing even harmless
lunatics to roam about the country; for a set of pretended madmen,
called "Abram men," a cant term for certain sturdy rogues, concealed
themselves in their _costume_, covered the country, and pleaded the
privileged denomination when detected in their depredations.[178]
Sir Walter Scott first obligingly suggested to me that these roving
lunatics were out-door pensioners of Bedlam, sent about to live as well
as they could with the pittance granted by the hospital.
The fullest account that I have obtained of these singular persons is
drawn from a manuscript note transcribed from some of Aubrey's papers,
which I have not seen printed.
"Till the breaking out of the civil wars, _Tom o' Bedlams_ did travel
about the country; they had been poor distracted men, that had been put
into Bedlam, where recovering some soberness, they were licentiated to
go a begging; _i.e._, they had on their left arm an armilla, an iron
ring for the arm, about four inches long, as printed in some works.[179]
They could not get it off; they wore about their necks a great horn of
an ox in a string or bawdry, which, when they came to a house, they did
wind, and they put the drink given to them into this horn, whereto they
put a stopple. Since the wars I do not remember to have seen any one of
them." The civil wars, probably, cleared the country of all sorts of
vagabonds; but among the royalists or the parliamentarians, we did not
know that in their rank and file they had so many Tom o' Bedlams.
I have now to explain something in the character of Edgar in _Lear_, on
which the commentators seem to have ingeniously blundered, from an
imperfect knowledge of the character which Edgar personates.
Edgar, in wandering about the country, for a safe disguise assumes the
character of these _Tom o' Bedlams_; he thus closes one of his
distracted speeches--"Poor Tom, _Thy horn is dry_!" On this Johnson is
content to inform us, that "men that begged under pretence of lunacy
used formerly to carry a horn and blow it through the streets." This is
no explanation of Edgar's allusion to the _dryness_ of his horn.
Steevens adds a fanciful note, that Edgar alludes to a proverbial
expression, _Thy horn is dry_, designed to express that a man had said
all he could say; and, further, Steevens supposes that Edgar speaks
these words _aside_; as if he had been quite weary of _Tom o' Bedlam's
part_, and could not keep it up any longer. The reasons of all this
conjectural criticism are a curious illustration of perverse ingenuity.
Aubrey's manuscript note has shown us that the Bedlam's horn was also a
_drinking-horn_, and Edgar closes his speech in the perfection of the
assumed character, and not as one who had grown weary of it, by making
the mendicant lunatic desirous of departing from a heath, to march, as
he cries, "to wakes, and fairs, and market-towns--Poor Tom! thy horn is
dry!" as more likely places to solicit alms; and he is thinking of his
_drink-money_, when he cries that "_his horn is dry_."
An itinerant lunatic, chanting wild ditties, fancifully attired, gay
with the simplicity of childhood, yet often moaning with the sorrows of
a troubled man, a mixture of character at once grotesque and plaintive,
became an interesting object to poetical minds. It is probable that the
character of Edgar, in the _Lear_ of Shakspeare, first introduced the
hazardous conception into the poetical world. Poems composed in the
character of a Tom o' Bedlam appear to have formed a fashionable class
of poetry among the wits; they seem to have held together their poetical
contests, and some of these writers became celebrated for their
successful efforts, for old Izaak Walton mentions a "Mr. William Basse,
as one who has made the choice songs of 'The Hunter in his career,' and
of 'Tom o' Bedlam,' and many others of note." Bishop Percy, in his
"Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," has preserved six of what he calls
"Mad Songs," expressing his surprise that the English should have "more
songs and ballads on the subject of madness than any of their
neighbours," for such are not found in the collection of songs of the
French, Italian, &c., and nearly insinuates, for their cause, that we
are perhaps more liable to the calamity of madness than other nations.
This superfluous criticism had been spared had that elegant collector
been aware of the circumstance which had produced this class of poems,
and recollected the more ancient original in the Edgar of Shakspeare.
Some of the "Mad Songs" which the bishop has preserved are of too modern
a date to suit the title of his work; being written by Tom D'Urfey, for
his comedies of Don Quixote. I shall preserve one of more ancient date,
fraught with all the wild spirit of this peculiar character.[180]
This poem must not be read without a continued reference to the
personated character. Delirious and fantastic, strokes of sublime
imagination are mixed with familiar comic humour, and even degraded by
the cant language; for the gipsy habits of life of these "Tom o'
Bedlams" had confounded them with "the progging Abram men."[181] These
luckless beings are described by Decker as sometimes exceeding merry,
and could do nothing but sing songs fashioned out of their own brains;
now they danced, now they would do nothing but laugh and weep, or were
dogged and sullen both in look and speech. All they did, all they sung,
was alike unconnected; indicative of the desultory and rambling wits of
the chanter.