Anonymous poet wiki

Tom o' Bedlam

The folk-rock band Steeleye Span recorded "Boys of Bedlam", a version of "Mad Maudlin", on their 1971 album Please To See The King. Steeleye recorded a very different arrangement on Dodgy Bastards (2016), which included a rap section and a bassline that set the song in the Phrygian mode.

In modern culture

• Lin Carter included the poem in his 1969 fantasy anthology Dragons, Elves, and Heroes.
• Tom o' Bedlam is the name Edgar gives in Shakespeare's King Lear when he pretends to be a mad vagrant. It is also to be found in a case before Star Chamber in 1632 when a Sussex man complains of being defamed in a set of verses sung in the ale houses of Rye to the tune of Tom o' Bedlam, further indication that it was a ballad.
• Kenneth Patchen's surrealistnovelThe Journal of Albion Moonlight is loosely based on and makes frequent reference to the poem.
• Robert Silverberg's science fiction novel Tom O' Bedlam (1985) includes several quotations from the poem.

  The main The Poet | PoE Wiki QOXIR