that I might tell

Why exactly is The Idiot Boy’s narrator is unable to tell us where Johnny has been?

As we have seen in other poems like Christabel or Kubla Khan, the inability to recount events to the reader is usually accompanied by something supernatural, whether a horrific sight or a fantastic dream, which makes the presence of this conceit odd in a more realistic poem like this one.

Even stranger, the narrator’s faultiness is even more elaborated upon here than in those other poems, in a several stanzas concerned with speculation and questions directed at the Muses who “repel” his “suit.” This digression on behalf of the narrator is odd, and additionally, it almost seems to provide a pseudo supernatural moment in an otherwise “low and rustic” poem, concerned with real life. By putting these flights of poetic fancy and references to supernatural muses in the narrator’s faulty mouth, Wordsworth is perhaps illustrating what a good Poet shouldn’t do. By indulging in these fancies and this lengthy digression, Wordsworth makes his own narrator look foolish, perhaps providing a commentary on traditional poetic practice and the wisdom of sticking solidly to the real world.

(As Kathleen discusses, something like this also happens in The Thorn, where the narrator is faulty because he doesn't see correctly).