Songs like 'Tom o' Bedlam,' mad-songs they were called, were very commonly sung in England in the 17th century. The tune and words of the original 'Tom a Bedlam' are to be found in Chappell, Vol. I. p. 175. Its date is some time before 1626,[1] and verse 1 begins, 'From the hagg and hungrie Goblin,' and the whole is as full of ejaculations of 'Poor Tom' as Act III. of Lear.
The last sentence has yet another play on the double meaning of divisions.' A few lines further on Edmund explains what kind of 'divisions' he expects to follow the eclipses—namely, 'between the child and the parent … dissolutions of ancient amities; 'divisions in state,' etc. But the very use of the word in the quoted lines brings its musical meaning into his head, for he promptly carries off his assumed blindness to Edgar's presence by humming over his 'fa, sol, la, mi.' [Burney, Hist., Vol. III. p. 344, has a sensible observation on this passage—that Edgar alludes to the unnatural division of parent and child, etc., in this musical phrase, which contains the
- ↑ Rimbault's preface to the Musical Antiquarian Society's reprint of Purcell's opera, "Bonduca," says that Mad Tom was written by Coperario in 1612, for the Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn, by Beaumont. This was, 'Forth from my sad and darksome sell.'
