Johnny Cash - The Ballad Of The Harpweaver guitar chord

THE BALLAD OF THE HARPWEAVER

-E.S.V. Millay & T.M. Moore-

Recorded December 14, 1959

Bonus track on "Ride This Train" CD; previously unreleased.

SPOKEN

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 breeches

I don't even have scissors for the cloth or thread for the stitches

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

And that old family harp of our's that no one will buy

And she started to cry

I guess it's lucky for me that your daddy's in the ground

And can't see the way I let his baby go around

Well that was in the late fall and when winter-time came

I didn't have a pair of breeches or a shirt to my name

But my mother said Son come climb on my lap

And I'll warm those skinny little 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 hour's time

I've 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 our's that no one would take

We couldn't give it away for pity's sake

Well one night I was sick with a cold and my mother sang me to sleep

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

But then I saw her sitting in that one good chair

And the light shinning on her from, I couldn't tell where

But she looked eighteen years old and not a day older

And there was that old harp leaning on her shoulder

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

Then threads ran thru the harp strings from somewhere I couldn't see

Then all colored threads began to glide right thru 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 I said it couldn't be for me

She wove a pair of breeches 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 long in that cold baren house

And 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 and not a day older

A smile on her lips and a light around her head

But her hands were on the harp stings...frozen dead

But on the floor beside her, piled six feet high

Were clothes good enough for a king, just my size