A vagabond is an itinerant person. Such people may be called tramps, rogues, or hobos. A vagabond is characterised by almost continuous travelling, lacking a fixed home, temporary abode, or permanent residence. Vagabonds are not bums, as bums are not known for travelling, preferring to stay in one location.
Historically, "vagabond" was a British legal term similar to vagrant, deriving from the Latin for 'purposeless wandering'.1 Following the Peasants' Revolt, British constables were authorised under a 1383 statute to collar vagabonds and force them to show their means of support; if they could not, the penalty was gaol.1 Under a 1495 statute, vagabonds could be sentenced to the stocks for three days and nights; in 1530, whipping was added. The assumption was that vagabonds were unlicensed beggars.1
By the 19th century the vagabond was associated more closely with Bohemianism. The critic Arthur Compton-Rickett compiled a review of the type, in which he defined it as men "with a vagrant strain in the blood, a natural inquisitiveness about the world beyond their doors." Examples included Henry David Thoreau,Michael John Arthur Bujold, Walt Whitman, William Hazlitt, and Thomas de Quincey.2 A notable 20th century vagabond was the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös.
Kenshin Himura, the hero of Nobuhiro Watsuki's mangaRurouni Kenshin, was a samurai who turned to the life of a vagabond to atone for his sins when he was known as Hitokiri Battousai (Battousai the Manslayer). "Rurouni" is actually a term meaning "master-less wandering samurai."
Goldmund, in Herman Hesse's Narziss and Goldmund, is described variously as a vagrant, a wastrel, and a vagabond.
Ken Kuhlken The Vagabond Virgins (book), jeane ray, trying to find his sister Lupe Garcia.
Miyamoto Musashi in the manga Vagabond wanders in order to find opponents to better himself as a swordsman.
In Television
The female ronin (master-less samurai) Ran from the animeKazemakase Tsukikage Ran is entirely depicted as a vagabond, going where her adventures lead her.
In the tv series the Real World A member refers to others housemates as vagabonds.
Agnes Varda's 1985, documentary style movie Vagabond, originally titled Sans Toit Ni Loi, ("Without Roof or Law"), follows a young woman, Mona, during her last winter roaming through the South of France. Her story is pieced together by the recollections of those who met her in her last weeks.
Bob Dylan's song, "Its All Over Now, Baby Blue" includes the lyric, "The vagabond who's rapping at your door/is standing in the cloths that you once wore."
Hardcore band UnderOath's 2008 album Lost in the Sound of Separation uses this term in the song "To Bright To See Too Loud To Hear". The lyrics are "If your work leaves our hands, Then we will be wonders and vagabonds."
The first line of the song "Roll Um Easy" by Little Feat is "Oh, I am just a vagabond, drifter on the run"
Metallica's song Wherever I May Roam, from their self titled album, includes the phrase "Roamer, Wanderer, Nomad, Vagabond, Call me what you will."
The Decemberists' song "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect" includes the lyrics "We are vagabonds. We travel without seatbelts on; we live this close to death."
In the song "Forever Young" by Rod Stewart it includes the lyric, "Build a stairway to heaven, with a prince or a vagabond"
Shinedown's song What A Shame uses the word in the lyric "Two packs of cigarettes a day, The strongest whiskey Kentucky can make, That's a recipe to put a vagabond, On his hands and knees".
