A Child to his Sick Grandfather — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
A Child to his Sick Grandfather
The poems
What you need to know
A child talks to a frail, sick grandfather: noticing how he has aged, remembering his kindness, promising to look after him and trying to keep him awake with stories as he drifts off.
How Baillie's language creates a child's voice: plain words, old-fashioned ones such as wot, aye and corse, close details of the grandfather's frail body, and the warmth of the repeated dad.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'Grand-dad, they say you're old and frail', 'Your knobbed stick (that was my horse)', 'I'm vexed to see you, dad', 'You used to smile and stroke my head', 'How wan and hollow are your cheeks!', 'I love my own old dad', 'Rouse up and be our dad again', 'I'll lead you kindly by the hand', 'You love a story, dad?', 'You do not hear me, dad'.
Form: eight six-line stanzas of rhyming couplets, each closing on a short line, most of them ending on dad; the child speaks directly to the grandfather, moving from his decline to promises of care and stories, and the last line leaves open whether he sleeps or dies.
Context: Joanna Baillie (1762–1851), a Scottish poet and dramatist, and her first book, Poems (1790), which set out to describe nature and the lives of ordinary country people.
Compares well with: My Father Would Not Show Us (the illness and death of an older relative), Nettles (caring for and protecting family), One Flesh (old age seen by a younger relative) and A Complaint (the fear of losing someone close).
