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"Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" is a popular English language
nursery rhyme A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and other European 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. Fr ...
. 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. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadsid ...
number of 19621.


Lyrics and melody

Modern versions of the rhyme include: beat Beat, beats, or beating may refer to: Common uses * Assault, inflicting physical harm or unwanted physical contact * Battery (crime), a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact * Battery (tort), a civil wrong in common law of inte ...
, And Tom went crying down the street.
Iona and Peter Opie Iona Margaret Balfour Opie, (13 October 1923 – 23 October 2017) and Peter Mason Opie (25 November 1918 – 5 February 1982) were an English married team of folklorists who applied modern techniques to understanding children's literature and p ...
, ''The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes'' (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd ed., 1997), pp. 408–411. 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 type of small printed booklet that was a popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 1 ...
produced around 1795 in London, England. 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 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's 1698 play '' The Campaigners'': 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 ...
away. This verse seems to have been adapted for a recruiting song designed to gain volunteers for the
Duke of Marlborough 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 O.S.) was a British army officer and statesman. From a gentry family, he ...
'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 English Army officers, the womanising Plume and the cowardly Brazen, in the town of Shrewsbury (the town where ...
; or The Merry Volunteers", better today known as " Over the Hills and Far Away", in which the hero is called Tom.


References


External links

* * {{Authority control 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