Tom Tiddler’s Ground, a nook in a rustic by-road, where Mr. Mopes, the hermit, lived, and had succeeded in laying it waste. In the middle of the plot was a ruined hovel, without one patch of glass in the windows, and with no plank or beam that had not rotted or fallen away. There was a slough of water, a leafless tree or two, and plenty of filth. Rumor said that Tom Mopes had murdered his beautiful wife from jealousy, and had abandoned the world. Mr. Traveller tried to reason with him, and bring him back to social life, but the tinker replied, “When iron is thoroughly rotten you cannot botch it, do what you may.”--C. Dickens, A Christmas Number (1861).
Tom Tiler and His Wife, a transition play between a morality and a tragedy (1578).
Tom Tipple, a highwayman in Captain Macheath’s gang. Peachum calls him “a guzzling, soaking sot, always too drunk to stand himself or to make others stand. A cart,” he says, “is absolutely necessary for him.”--Gray, The Beggar’s Opera, i. (1727).
Tom Tram, the hero of a novel entitled The Mad Pranks of Tom Tram, Son-in-Law to Mother Winter, whereunto is added His Merry Jests, Odd Conceits and Pleasant Tales (seventeenth century).
All your wits that fleer and sham,
Down from Don Quixote to Tom Tram.
Prior.
Tom-a-Thrum, a sprite which figures in the fairy tales of the Middle Ages; a “queer-looking little auld man,” whose chief exploits were in the vaults and cellars of old castles. John Skelton, speaking of the clergy, says:
Alas! for very shame, some cannot declyne their name;
Some cannot scarsly rede, And yet will not drede