Child Rowland to the dark tower came,
His word was still, "Fie, foh, and fum,
I smell the blood of a British man."

– William Shakespeare

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 4. Edgar plays to his role of the strange beggar Tom O’Bedlam with these rambling comments about the old English fairy tale Childe Rowland. But there is sanity and meaning in his seemingly insane and meaningless rhyme. What appears to be a harmless rhyme carries in it a serious threat. In speaking of Child Rowland smelling the blood of a British man, Edgar is making a social commentary on the way children in the play seek to violently wrest power from their fathers. As in the case of Lear’s Fool, there is wisdom and insight behind the words of this seeming madman.