An Analysis of Ballad of the Harp-Weaver Essay - 915 Words

An Analysis of Ballad of the Harp-Weaver Take just a second to read the first eight lines very carefully. Picture yourself as a small child being with your mother or father sitting on their lap as they hold you. It is a good feeling that brings warmth and security to any child or any adult needing to recapture the essence of their childhood. In the first four lines we are to understand that the boys mother is trying to rub his skin to make him warm. That is what chafe means, to warm by rubbing. But how many times have you found yourself not quite sleepy enough to go to sleep and you ask your mother or father to read you a bedtime story? In this section we find the relationship between mother and son the very epitome†¦show more content†¦Through this direct informal education, parents can teach their children the skills and roles they would need as adults. Though this mother has almost nothing material to give her son, she gives him what all children need, love. Think about the pain this mother feels that she cannot give her son those basic needs that people have. He has no clothes, no furniture, and very little food, but what he does have is love and happiness. We seem to forget that those simple things are as important as any of the others. For just a short period of time his mother helps him to forget their bleak circumstances and reads to him a mother-goose rhyme. This rhyme is traditionally thought of as a nursery rhyme. This form of childrens literature was designed to appeal to children--either to be read to them or by them--including fiction, poetry, biography, and history. Childrens literature also includes riddles, precepts, fables, legends, myths, and folk poems and folktales based on spoken tradition. These forms of literature can also help to convey useful information or moral advice. At one point in the poem the boy wonders what people would think hearing his mother sing to him all day. The line, In such a daft way?, means in a foolish or crazy manner. Just take a moment to think about this line. What the author is trying to relay to us