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Tom He Was A Piper's Son
All Instruments and Vocals: Douglas Milne
From the TwinkleTrax album "Vol. 1: A Sailor Went To Sea - 20 Favourite Nursery Rhymes and Kid's Songs"
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He learned to play when he was young
But 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
Now Tom with his pipe made such a noise
That he pleased both the girls and boys
And they stopped to hear him play
Over the hills and far away
Tom with his pipe played with such skill
That those who heard him could never keep still
Whenever they heard they began for to dance
Even pigs on their hind legs would after him prance
As Dolly was milking her cow one day,
Tom took his pipe and began for to play
So Doll and the cow danced 'The Cheshire Round',
Till the pail was broke 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 beating an ass,
Heavy laden with pots, pans, and glass
He took out his pipe and he played them a tune,
And the jackass's load was lightened full soon
Tom he was a piper's son
He learned to play when he was young
But 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
This nursery rhyme about the son of a Scottish Bagpiper was first printed in "Tom the Piper's Son", a chapbook produced around 1795 in London, which also contained the similar but shorter rhyme "Tom, Tom, The Pipers Son".
The origins of the rhyme date back to a Celtic legend about the Sidhe Draoi. These Celtic tree nymphs are not particularly sociable towards humans, though they generally avoid us rather than do us harm. However it has been suggested that they may have communed with Druids in the distant past.
The Bagpiper's son, Tom, was a shepherd, and played his own pipes whilst he was minding the sheep. He played the same melody over and over again and the Sidhe Draoi came out to dance to his tune. Villagers tried to watch the Sidhe Draoi but they could never be seen.
An alternative theory on the origin of the rhyme is that it was an adaptation of Thomas D'Urfey's "The Distracted Jockey's Lamentations" which was current in England around the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries.
Origins text ©2011 TwinkleTrax Children's Songs.