"Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" is a popular
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...
nursery rhyme
A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes.
From t ...
. It has a
Roud Folk Song Index
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...
number of 19621.
Lyrics
Modern versions of the rhyme include:
:Tom, Tom, the piper's son,
:Stole a pig, and away did run;
:The pig was eat
:And Tom was
beat
Beat, beats or beating may refer to:
Common uses
* Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area
** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols
** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men
* Battery ( ...
,
:And Tom went
r "which sent him"crying
r "roaring", or "howling", in some versions:Down the street.
[I. Opie and P. Opie, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'' (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 408-11.]
The 'pig' mentioned in the song is almost certainly not a live animal but rather a kind of pastry, often made with an apple filling, smaller than a pie.
[ And the meaning of the rhyme involves a naughty boy named Tom whose father was a piper, and he steals the "pig", eats it, and after his father (or someone else) physically chastises him, Tom cries all the way down the street.
Another version of the rhyme is:
:Tom, Tom, the piper's son,
:Stole a pig, and away he run.
:Tom run here,
:Tom run there,
:Tom run through the village square.
This rhyme is often conflated with a separate and longer rhyme:
:Tom, he was a piper's son,
:He learnt to play when he was young,
:And all the tune that he could play
:Was 'over the hills and far away';
:Over the hills and a great way off,
:The wind shall blow my top-knot off.
:Tom with his pipe made such a noise,
:That he pleased both the girls and boys,
:They all stopped to hear him play,
:'Over the hills and far away'.
:Tom with his pipe did play with such skill
:That those who heard him could never keep still;
:As soon as he played they began for to dance,
:Even the pigs on their hind legs would after him prance.
:As Dolly was milking her cow one day,
:Tom took his pipe and began to play;
:So Dolly and the cow danced 'The Cheshire Round',
:Till the pail was broken and the milk ran on the ground.
:He met old Dame Trot with a basket of eggs,
:He used his pipe and she used her legs;
:She danced about till the eggs were all broke,
:She began for to fret, but he laughed at the joke.
:Tom saw a cross fellow was beating an ass,
:Heavy laden with pots, pans, dishes, and glass;
:He took out his pipe and he played them a tune,
:And the poor donkey's load was lightened full soon.][
]
Origins
Both rhymes were first printed separately in a ''Tom the Piper's Son'', a chapbook
A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch.
In early modern Europe a chapbook was a type of printed street literature. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered bookle ...
produced around 1795 in London, England
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major s ...
.[ The origins of the shorter and better known rhyme are unknown.
The second, longer rhyme was an adaptation of an existing verse which was current in ]England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
around the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. The following verse, known as "The Distracted Jockey's Lamentations", may have been written for (but not included in) Thomas D'Urfey
Thomas d'Urfey (a.k.a. Tom Durfey; 165326 February 1723) was an English writer and wit. He wrote plays, songs, jokes, and poems. He was an important innovator and contributor in the evolution of the ballad opera.
Life
D'Urfey was born in Devonshi ...
's play ''The Campaigners'' (1698):
:Jockey was a Piper's Son,
:And fell in love when he was young;
:But all the Tunes that he could play,
:Was, o'er the Hills, and far away,
:And 'Tis o'er the Hills, and far away,
:'Tis o'er the Hills, and far away,
:'Tis o'er the Hills, and far away,
:The Wind has blown my Plad
Plad is an unincorporated community in northeast Dallas County, in the U.S. state of Missouri. The community is on Missouri Route 64
Route 64 is a highway in central Missouri with endpoints of Route 254 south of Hermitage and Route 5 in Lebano ...
away.[
This verse seems to have been adapted for a recruiting song designed to gain volunteers for the ]Duke of Marlborough
General (United Kingdom), General John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, 1st Prince of Mindelheim, 1st Count of Nellenburg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, (26 May 1650 – 16 June 1722 Old Style and New Style dates, O.S.) was an Engl ...
's campaigns about 1705, with the title "The Recruiting Officer
''The Recruiting Officer'' is a 1706 play by the Irish writer George Farquhar, which follows the social and sexual exploits of two officers, the womanising Plume and the cowardly Brazen, in the town of Shrewsbury (the town where Farquhar himse ...
; or The Merry Volunteers", better today known as " Over the Hills and Far Away", in which the hero is called Tom.[
]
External links
{{The Turn of the Screw
English nursery rhymes
Pigs in literature
English folk songs
English children's songs
Songs about fictional male characters
Songs about pigs
Songs about crime
Songs about criminals
Traditional children's songs
1795 songs