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[ More Johnny Cash lyrics ]
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Artist/Band: Johnny Cash
Lyrics for Song: Ballad Of The Harp Weaver
Lyrics for Album: Hayride Anthology [2009]



Son said my mother when I was knee high



You need of clothes to cover you and not a rag have I



There's nothing in the house to make a boy's britches



Nor shears to cut a cloth with nor thread to take stitches



There's nothing in the house but a leaf end of rye



And the harp with a with the woman's head nobody will

by and she began to cry



That was in the early fall and when came the late fall



Son she said the sight of you makes your mother's blood crawl



Little skinny shoulder blades stickin' through your clothes



And where you get a jacket from God above knows



It's lucky for me lad your daddy's in the ground



And can't see the way I let his son go around and she made a queer sound



That was in the late fall when the winter came



I'd not a pair of bridges nor a shirt to my name



I couldn't go to school or out of doors to play



And all the other little boys passed our way



Son said my mother come climb into my lap



And I'll chave your little knees while you take a nap



And oh but we were silly for half an hour or more



Me with my long legs draggin' on the floor



I rocked rocked rocked to a mother goose rhyme



Oh but we were happy for half an hour's time



But there was I a great boy and what would folks say



To hear my mother singin' me to sleep all day in such a daft way



Men say the winter was bad that year fuel was scarce and food was dear



A wind with a wolf's head howled about our door



And we burned up the chairs and sat upon the floor



All that was left us was a chair we couldn't break



And the harp with the woman's head nobody would take for song or pity sake



The night before Christmas I cried with the cold



I cried myself to sleep like a two year old



And in the deep night I felt my mother rise



And stare down upon me with love in her eyes



I saw my mother sitting on the one good chair



A light falling on her face from I couldn't tell where



Looking nineteen and not a day older



And the harp with the woman's head leaned against her shoulder



Her thin fingers moving in the thin tall strings



Were weave weave weaving wonderful things



Many bright threads from where I couldn't see



Were running through the harp strings rapidly



And gold threads whistlin' through my mother's hands



I saw the web grow and the pattern expand



She wove a child's jacket and when it was done



She laid it on the floor and wove another one



She wove a red cloak so regal to see



She's made it for a king's son I said and not for me

but I knew it was for me



She wove a pair of bridges and quicker than that



She wove a pair of boots a little cocked hat



She wove a pair of mittens she wove a little blouse



She wove all night in the still cold house



She sang as 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 the harp against her shoulder lookin' nineteen and not a day older



A smile about her lips and a light about her head



And her hands in the harp strings frozen dead



And piled up beside her toppling to the skies



Were the clothes of a king's son just my size


Album Lyrics: Hayride Anthology [2009]


Johnny Cash
"Hayride Anthology [2009]"


1. Ballad Of The Harp Weaver