- 756291906.m4a
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Lyrics:
Now listen I’ll tell you a tale
A story from long time ago
In Hamelin there was a plague
A plague of dirty rats.
They ate all the cheese from the vats
And
spoiled the ladies’ chats
By speaking and shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
Chorus
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of rats
Cheeky and sneaky and ravenous rats
Fought with the dogs and they killed the cats
Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of rats.
Then one day a stranger appeared
Dressed in bright yellow and red
Said he “The Pied Piper am I
And I can get rid of those rats”.
Chorus
The piper stepped out in
the street
Put his pipe to his lips and he played
He danced all the way across town…..
The people of Hamelin cheered
And rang all the bells in the town
“Go” said the Mayor “and get poles
Poke out the nests and block up the holes”.
So the piper went back to the Mayor
Who’d faithfully promised to pay
One thousand guilders reward
The Mayor said “Fifty is all you will get.”
Chorus
The piper stepped out in the street
And once again
started to play
And all over Hamelin town
Came the patter of tiny feet.
They followed the piper up Koppelberg Hill
A door in the mountain swung open until
All of the children were safely inside
Then that door in the mountain swung shut.
And that’s how this sad story ends
Not one of those children returned
The lesson is clear to us all
A promise made is a promise kept.
Chorus
Tags:
- FAIRY TALES
- NARRATIVE
Album:
Sheet music |
1795 |
Traditional |
"Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" is a popular English language nursery rhyme. It has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 19621.
Lyrics[edit]
Modern versions of the rhyme include:
Tune for Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son
Tom, Tom, the piper's son,Stole a pig, and away did run;The pig was eatAnd Tom was beat, And Tom went [or "which sent him"] crying [or "roaring", or "howling", in some versions]Down the street.[1]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.[1] 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.
Lyrics for "Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son" and illustrations show a boy stealing a pig and being stopped by the police, in The Baby's Opera A book of old Rhymes and The Music by the Earliest Masters, ca. 1877
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 playWas '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 skillThat 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.[1]Origins[edit]
Both rhymes were first printed separately in a Tom the Piper's Son, a chapbook produced around 1795 in London, England.[1] 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 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.[1]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.[1]
- ^ a b c d e f I. Opie and P. Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford University Press, 1951, 2nd edn., 1997), pp. 408-11.