Arms and the Boy Arms and the Boy "Arms and the Boy" is a poem by Wilfred Owen. Like Owen's other famous poems, it deals with the atrocities of World War I; in it, he portrays the loss of innocence of a child in the midst of war. Thousands like the boy are drawn into the battlefield, to the tormenting visitations of war. <poem>"Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood"</poem> It seems a wonder that a boy familiar with sticks and stones holds bayonets in the same hands and learns the coldness of death.
The Mermaid and the Boy married. While the animals who give return are a frequent motif—"The Grateful Beasts", "The Two Brothers", "The Queen Bee", "The Death of Koschei the Deathless", "The Gold-bearded Man"—in most cases they come to the hero's aid themselves. These animals fulfill a role more commonly found in fairy godmothers and like creatures, of giving the hero magical things that he may use. The Mermaid and the Boy The Mermaid and the Boy is a Sámi fairy tale collected by Josef Calasanz Poestion in "Lapplandische Märchen" (Wein; 1886). Andrew Lang included an English-language version in "The Brown Fairy Book" (1904). It is