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 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.

[4] Both rhymes were first printed separately in a Tom the Piper's Son, a chapbook produced around 1795 in London, England.

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.

[4] 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.