nts out one of the grievances resulting from licensing even harmless
lunatics to roam about the country; for a set of pretended madmen,
called "Abram men," a cant term for certain sturdy rogues, concealed
themselves in their _costume_, covered the country, and pleaded the
privileged denomination when detected in their depredations.[178]

Sir Walter Scott first obligingly suggested to me that these roving
lunatics were out-door pensioners of Bedlam, sent about to live as well
as they could with the pittance granted by the hospital.

The fullest account that I have obtained of these singular persons is
drawn from a manuscript note transcribed from some of Aubrey's papers,
which I have not seen printed.

"Till the breaking out of the civil wars, _Tom o' Bedlams_ did travel
about the country; they had been poor distracted men, that had been put
into Bedlam, where recovering some soberness, they were licentiated to
go a begging; _i.e._, they had on their left arm an armilla, an iron
ring for the arm, about four inches long, as printed in some works.[179]
They could not get it off; they wore about their necks a great horn of
an ox in a string or bawdry, which, when they came to a house, they did
wind, and they put the drink given to them into this horn, whereto they
put a stopple. Since the wars I do not remember to have seen any one of
them." The civil wars, probably, cleared the country of all sorts of
vagabonds; but among the royalists or the parliamentarians, we did not
know that in their rank and file they had so many Tom o' Bedlams.

I have now to explain something in the character of Edgar in _Lear_, on
which the commentators seem to have ingeniously blundered, from an
imperfect knowledge of the character which Edgar personates.

Edgar, in wandering about the country, for a safe disguise assumes the
character of these _Tom o' Bedlams_; he thus closes one of his
distracted speeches--"Poor Tom, _Thy horn is dry_!" On this Johnson is
content to inform us, that "men that begged under pretence of lunacy
used formerly to carry a horn and blow it through the streets." This is
no explanation of Edgar's allusion to the _dryness_ of his horn.
Steevens adds a fanciful note, that Edgar alludes to a proverbial
expression, _Thy horn is dry_, designed to express that a man had said
all he could say; and, further, Steevens supposes that Edgar speaks
these words _aside_; as if he had been quite weary of _Tom o' Bedlam's
part_, and