Clive,
Thanks very much. Actually I went to look for "Loving Mad Tom" and found it was in "The Common Asphodel" not "The Crowning Privilege". Obviously you were working from memory. I have edited my post and now use the Giles Earle version that Graves prints in his essay.
Graves does say some interesting things but some of his glosses are just plain wrong. The OED gives other definitions than the ones he chooses.
He speculates if Shakespeare could have wrote this song and (as he states) there were many great writers back then who could have written it. But interestingly Tom makes a legal joke which was Shakespeare's forte. (See verse 4--I just figured it out and added it above.) If I get the time to work on this thing I will add or change my original post.
If this type of thing interest you, you might want to look at my post on Sonnet 107. Thank again. You did me a real favor in that I was working off an edited version I found in the Oxford Book Of Light Verse (1938 by Auden).
ewrgall
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