Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (II)

DESCRIPTION: When Tom plays "Over the hills and far away" on his pipe, "those who heard him could never keep still; As soon as he played they began to dance." Even pigs, cows, old Dame Trot and a "cross fellow ... beating an ass" had to dance.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1843 (Halliwell)
KEYWORDS: magic dancing music animal
FOUND IN: Britain US
REFERENCES (17 citations):
Arnett-IHearAmericaSinging, p. 17, "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 507, "Tom, he was a piper's son" (1 text)
Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #127, p. 105, "(Tom, he was a piper's son)" (1 text)
Jack-PopGoesTheWeasel, p. 216, "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: James Orchard Halliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England (London, 1843 ("Digitized by Google")), #113 pp. 79-80, ("Tom, he was a piper's son") (1 text)
RELATED: Versions of the fabliau "The Friar and the Boy"/Jack and His Stepdame" --
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #977
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #1599
ADDITIONAL: Frederick J. Furnivall, _Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript: Loose and Humorous Songs_, printed by and for the Editor, London, 1868, pp. 9-28, "Ffryar and Boye" (1 text)
Joseph Ritson, _Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry_, second edition, William Pickering, 1833, pp. 31-56, "A Mery Geste of the Frere and the Boye" (1 text)
Melissa M. Furrow, _Ten Bourdes_, TEAMS (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages), Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2013, pp. 21-43, "Jack and His Stepdame" (1 edited text)
Roman Dyboski, _Songs, Carols, and Other Miscellaneous Poems from the Balliol Ms. 354, Richard Hill's Commonplace Book_, Kegan Paul, 1907 (there are now multiple print-on-demand reprints), #103, pp. 120-127, "Jak & his Stepdame, & of the Frere" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Rawlinson C.86 (Bodleian 11951), folio 52
MANUSCRIPT: {MSRichardHill}, The Richard Hill Manuscript, Oxford, Balliol College MS. 354, page 199
MANUSCRIPT: {MSPorkington10}, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS. Porkington 10, folio 139
MANUSCRIPT: {MSPercyFolio}, The Percy Folio, London, British Library, MS. Additional 27879, page ?
MANUSCRIPT: {MsRichardCalle}, Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS. Ee.4.35 (Part I), folio 6
Roud #19621
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Over the Hills So Far Away" (lyrics)
cf. "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son (I)" (lyrics)
cf. "Dolly and Hodge" (few lines)
NOTES [582 words]: See TMI D1415.2.4, "Magic pipe causes dancing." [Not TMI, D1427.1, "Magic pipe compels one to follow"; ATU Type 570 "The Rat-Catcher (The Pied-Piper")]. However, Baring-Gould (p. 104 fn. 11) writes, "This song is apparently a version of an old metrical tale, 'The Friar and the Boy,' probably the nearest British approach to the German legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin." I doubt the connection to either "The Friar and the Boy" or "The Pied Piper."
[I doubt it too, but Baring-Gould reaffirms it elsewhere, and lists other parallels; see Baring-GoundMyths, p. 241. "The Friar and the Boy" was printed by Wynken de Worde, which means it was in existence by 1535. - RBW]
Steevens summarizes "The Friar and the Boy". The boy "suffers from the capricious cruelty of a mother-in-law." A magician gives the boy three gifts: "the first is an unerring bow; the second a pipe which would compel all who heard it to dance; the third must explain itself [makes his mother-in-law fart]." For revenge, mother-in-law employs "the frere ... to persecute the boye" who makes the friar dance until his clothes are shredded. The friar calls in a magistrate for relief. The magistrate, against the friar's warning, asks to hear the boy play; so, the boy "throws all the participants into another fit of dancing, in which the offycyall himself is compelled to join, and the stepdame [sic] exhibits fresh proofs of her flatulency. The tired magistrate at last entreats our hero to suspend his operations, and, on his compliance, immediately reconciles him to his enemies." (Johnson/Steevens Vol. II, pp. 338-341). [See also the version in Briggs, pp. 250-254 - RBW.]
"Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" (II) shares two lines with "Dolly and Hodge". For example, Baring-Gould-AnnotatedMotherGoose #127, ll. 15, 18: "As Dolly was milking her cow one day ... Till the pail was broken and the milk ran on the ground" as the pail was knocked over when Tom played and "Doll and the cow danced." In the "Dolly and Hodge" broadsides, ll. 1,20 [LOCSinging as101460 and Bodleian Johnson Ballads 616]: "As Dolly sat milking her cow ... [the cow] Kick'd the stool, milking pail, down and all" as the cow grew impatient to be milked while Dolly ignored her in favor of Hodge. - BS
The TMI motif D1415 is listed by Thompson as occurring in England, Wales, Iceland, and the United States (TMI, volume II, p. 226). For "The Friar and the Boy/Jack and His Stepdame" ("The Frere and the Boy" in the earliest texts) see the RELATED references. In addition to the sundry manuscripts listed (several of which were owned by middle class merchants), there were at least six early printed editions, contemporary with the manuscripts, the earliest printing of which was by Wynkyn de Worde early in the sixteenth century. Based on linguistic features, Furrow, p. 26, suggests it originated in Norfolk.
"The Friar and the Boy" obviously exists in many sources, but the only one indexed by Steve Roud is Furnivall's text from the Percy Folio; this is Roud #9838.
The STC lists at least three early printed versions, catalogued on p. 325 under "Jest" (#14522, #14523, #14524), printed by J. Allde 1568/1569; E. Allde 1617, and again by E. Allde without a date.
Katherine Elwes Thomas, The Real Personages of Mother Goose, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1930, pp. 325-326, calls this "identical with" The Friar and the Boy -- but her text changes form in mid-stream; it appears she combined two versions to achieve the effect she wanted. - RBW
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