The Ballad of the Harp Weaver

Umm, we would like to say that

On May 10th, this year

We're goin' into Carnegie Hall

Where is Carnegie Hall Luthe? (Mississippi)

Mississippi (no, it's not)

Uh, Gordon Terry, John Western

The Carter Family, Tom, Paul, McGlaiser Brothers

And Mike Wiseman for, uh, showin'

We're gonna record on the stage at Carnegie Hall

An album

And uh, one of the things we intend to record is a reading

It's one of our very favorite poems

I think a beautiful story

We'd like to do it for you

We hope you enjoy

"The Ballad of the Harp Weaver"

Once, my mother told me when I was knee high

"Son, you'll need clothes this winter, and not a rag have I

There's not a thing in this house to make a boy's britches

I don't even have scissors for the cloth nor thread for the stitches

There's nothing in this house but a half a loaf of rye

And that old family harp of ours that no one will buy"

Well, that was in the late fall and when the winter came

I didn't have a pair of britches nor a shirt to my name

But my mother said, "Son, come climb on my lap

And I'll warm those skinny legs while you take a nap"

And we'd rock back and forth to a Mother Goose rhyme

And boy, we were happy for about an hours time

I heard it said that that year the winter was very bad

I know we sat on the floor because we burned what chairs we had

Except for one chair that mother couldn't break

And that old family harp of ours that no one would take

One night, I was sick with a cold and my mother sang me to sleep

And when she laid me on the floor, I thought I heard her weep

But then I saw her sittin' in that one good chair

With the light shining on her from I couldn't tell where

But she looked eighteen years old, not a day older

And there was that old harp playing against her shoulder

Well, she began to play that harp and her hands moved rapidly

Then thread ran to the harp strings from somewhere that I couldn't see

Then all colored threads began to glide right through my mother's hands

I saw the thread turn into cloth

And I watched the cloth expand

And she wove a boy's jacket and when it was done

She laid it on the floor and wove another one

She wove a long red coat, and what a sight to see

"That coat's for a king's son", I said

"Couldn't be for me," but I knew it was for me

She wove a pair of britches and quicker than that

She wove a pair of boots and a little woolen hat

She wove a pair of mittens, she wove a little blouse

She wove all night in that cold barren house

Then she sang while she worked and the harp strings spoke

But her voice never faltered and the thread never broke

But when I awoke, there sat my mother

With that harp against her shoulder lookin' eighteen years old, not a day older

A smile on her lips and a light around her head

But her hands were on the harp strings, frozen dead

But on the floor beside her, piled six feet high

Were clothes good enough for a king just my size