Tom, Tom, The Piper’s Son
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 down the street.
This popular nursery rhyme dates back to at least the early 19th century and possibly earlier. It appeared in collections such as Mother Goose’s Melodies and was likely based on even older oral folklore.
The rhyme follows a mischievous boy named Tom who steals a pig (likely referring to a small roast, not a live animal), is punished, and cries. It’s a simple tale that reflects the moralistic tone of many nursery rhymes of its era: wrongdoing leads to consequence.
Yet beneath the playful scolding lies a cultural assumption—that bad behavior is purely individual, not the product of trauma, poverty, or family dysfunction.
Young Tom, the Dealer’s Son
Young Tom, the dealer’s son,
Stole a car, then tried to run.
The lights were fast, the night was loud—
The crash was sudden, sharp, and proud.
Tom’s young head was cracked and stilled.
The silence rang. The street was filled.
His father drank beneath the moon—
And died alone, many years too soon.
This doesn’t ask for moral judgment, but for mourning. It tells the story not of a mischievous child, but of a child already failed long before he ran. He wasn’t just a kid who stole a car. He was a kid born into chaos, repeating the cycles that shaped him. And his father—also lost to addiction and the streets—was a man who likely passed down what he never had the chance to heal.
Too often, the world sees “bad kids” and misses the wounded children underneath. We write headlines about their crimes, but never obituaries for their innocence.
*This broken lullaby is based on real people I knew growing up. “Tom” was a boy not much younger than I was—a kid who stole a car and died in the wreck. His father, a drug dealer in our neighborhood, died years later, alone and intoxicated on the streets of our hometown. These were not headlines. They were human beings—boys and men caught in generational chaos and pain.
Their story mirrors the kind of instability and abandonment I knew all too well. And it’s one of the reasons I write these lullabies—not just to mourn what was lost, but to confront the silence that lets this happen again and again.
