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.

A TOM-A-BEDLAM SONG.

From the hag and hungry goblin
That into rags would rend ye,
All the spirits that stand
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.

CHORUS.

Nor never sing any food and feeding,
Money, drink, or clothing;
Come dame or maid,
Be not afraid,
For 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.
In the lovely lofts of Bedlam,
In stubble soft and dainty,
Brave bracelets strong,
Sweet whips ding, dong,
And a wholesome hunger plenty.

With a thought I took for Maudlin,
And a cruse of cockle pottage,
And a thing thus--tall,
Sky bless you all,
I fell into this dotage.
I slept not till the Conquest;
Till then I never waked;
Till the roguish boy
Of love where I lay,
Me found, and stript me naked.

When short I have shorn my sow's face,
And swigg'd my horned barrel;
In an oaken inn
Do I pawn my skin,
As a suit of gilt apparel.
The morn's my constant mistress,
And the lovely owl my morrow;
The flaming drake,
And the night-crow, make
Me music, to my sorrow.

The palsie plague these pounces,
When I prig your pigs or pullen;
Your culvers take
Or mateless make
Your chanticleer and sullen;
When I want provant with _Humphrey_ I sup,
And when benighted,
To repose in Paul's,
With waking souls
I never am affrighted.