Poor Tom

I first came across the words of the anonymous poem / folk song Tom O'Bedlam many years ago in a sci-fi book by Robert Silverburg of the same name. At the time, I assumed the poem had been written by him, but actually it is centuries old  (dating back to 1600 or so).

I stumbled across the text of the old song in full while googling something (I can' recall what), and I found myself applying the lines

"Any food. any feeding,  feeding drink or clothing, come dame or maid, be not afraid, Poor Tom will injure nothing"

to a fragment of tune in my head, and the rest of the piece grew from there.

The sort of fanfare section towards the middle of the piece is supposed to relate to the god-like visions that Tom experiences in Robert Silverburg's book.

There is a sister song to this one, Mad Maud, which I am currently working on and hope to publish on here in a few weeks.

I hope you like the tune...