An Innovative Ballad
Williams Wordsworth’s “The Idiot Boy” consists of 453 lines. Each five-line rimed stanza has the rime scheme ABCCB, except for the first stanza, which has six lines and the rime scheme ABCCDB and the final stanza, which consists of seven lines, ABCCBDD.
“The Idiot Boy” is an innovative ballad. The traditional ballad stanza features quatrains with the rime scheme ABCB or ABAB. Wordsworth tweaked the form, adding a line and altering the rime scheme. The effect reflects the nature of the boy whose mind is not normal. The idiot boy is simple and naïve, yet he is well loved by the people in his life.
Written with Glee
About the poem, Wordsworth has explained: “The last stanza—‘The Cocks did crow to-whoo, to-whoo, And the sun did shine so cold’—was the foundation of the whole. The words were reported to me by my dear friend, Thomas Poole; but I have since heard the same repeated of other Idiots. Let me add that this long poem was composed in the groves of Alfoxden, almost extempore; not a word, I believe, being corrected, though one stanza was omitted. I mention this in gratitude to those happy moments, for, in truth, I never wrote anything with so much glee.”
The Story
The narrative features a simple story: Betty Foy’s friend and neighbor Susan Galen is ill and needs a doctor, but Betty’s husband is away, and there is no one who can go fetch the doctor but Betty’s retarded son, Johnny, the title character. So Betty sets Johnny upon his pony and tells him to go fetch the doctor. She worries because Johnny has never done such a thing before.
Johnny leaves at around 8:00 p.m., and later what Betty thought should take about an hour has turned into two, three, four hours, and more. So Betty finally decides she has no choice but to go look for her son. Susan agrees even through she is still feeling poorly.
Betty looks everywhere for son. She even wakes up the doctor to find out if Johnny has been there. But the doctor has not seen the boy, so Betty leaves and continues looking for the boy. At that point, the reader might wonder why Betty does not send the doctor to Susan, and then the same thought occurs to Betty as she realizes that Susan still is without medical help. That lapse in judgment, however, reflects the importance now attached to finding Johnny.
Betty soon finds her son though. He is fine, still sitting on the pony gazing at a waterfall as the pony grazes on the grass.
The Muses
The story is simple like the people whose lives it narrates. The speaker elucidates for the reader the nature of motherhood, friendship, affection, and caring. But it also speaks to the issue of creating such a drama for readers. The speaker invokes the muses in the middle of the story, both demonstrating that the ballad is a work in progress and that the poet is real person contemplating the material that is becoming his poem.
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