Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son

"Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" Roud #19621
Written by	Traditional
Published	1795
Written	England
Language	English
Form	Nursery rhyme

"Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index 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,

And Tom went crying [or "roaring", or "howling", in some versions]

Down the street.

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.

This rhyme is often conflated with a separate and longer rhyme:

Tom, Tom, he was a piper's son,

He learned to play when he was young.

And all the tune that he could play

Was over the hills and far away;

Over the hills is 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,

And 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 dance.

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 and meaning

Both rhymes were first printed separately in a Tom the Piper's Son, a chapbook produced around 1795 in London. 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 (but not included) in Thomas D'Urfey'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 away.

This verse seems to have been adapted for a recruiting song designed to gain volunteers for the Duke of Marlborough's campaigns about 1705, with the title "The Recruiting Officer; or The Merry Volunteers", better today known as "Over the Hills and Far Away", in which the hero is called Tom.

Cultural references

• Tom Tom is a main character in the 1934 Laurel and Hardy film Babes in Toyland.

• The rhyme is featured in Benjamin Britten's 1954 opera, The Turn of The Screw. The two children, Miles and Flora, sing it in Act I, scene 5, at the window.

• A segment of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show (1959-4) provided a mock legal review of the case of Tom stealing the pig.

• The 1969 experimental film, "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son", by Ken Jacobs, consists of retouched footage of a 1905 film of the same name. It was placed on the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2007.

• Led Zeppelin has a song in their album Houses of the Holy (1973) entitled "Over the Hills and Far Away".

• The beginning of the Dr. Alimantado song, "I Shot the Barber" contains paraphrased elements of the rhyme.

• In the manga Kuroshitsuji the character Joker sings the first segment from the longer version of this nursery rhyme.

• Tom Tom is mentioned in the chorus of John Holt's reggae/ska hit "Ali Baba".

• Tom is the main character in Melina Marchetta's The Pipers Son.

External links

• Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (1969) at IMDb.com