Tom Bolin, and the Maid of Boston

A text of contradictions, this song should be distinguished from Dibdin’s “Tom Bowling” (see The Boston Frigate’s Engagement), to which it bears no resemblance. This is a comic English text making fun of the Scots with grotesque and contradictory humor. It has deep roots, traced by Iona and Peter Opie to 1549 as “Tommy O’Lin” (413-15). No period tune has been located, although the text has been found in print and in oral tradition in England and America (Roud #294; Tom Bolin). The text appeared in Songs, for the Amusement of Children (3-7; R. Keller).

“The Maid of Boston” seems to be a British woman’s lament for a lover gone off following “honor’s call.” The place and river were probably renamed for the Boston audience as it appears in two local songsters in the 1790s, and three songsters between 1798 and 1818 (R. Keller, Early American Songsters). The diction is eighteenth-century and the sentiment is akin to lyrics such as “The Banks of the Dee” (see A New Irish Song) and “Roseline Castle” (see The Bonny Blade). Here White used the text as a filler piece, a sentimental foil to the topsy-turvy humor of the first song.