Betty Foy is a character appearing in William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....

's poem "The Idiot Boy

The Idiot Boy

-Poem:The poem is of four hundred and sixty three lines and is written in five-line stanzas with a varying rhyme scheme. It was first published in the Lyrical ballads of 1798, where it appeared between The Mad Mother and Lines Written Near Richmond....

" and is the mother of the title character. In the poem, Betty is caring for a sick neighbor; in desperation, she sends her mentally handicapped son Johnny on horseback to fetch a doctor from the nearby town. When he has not returned after several hours, she grows frantic and sets out to find him. Eventually, she discovers him near a waterfall, his pony feeding. She leads him home and on the way they are met by the sick neighbor, who has, as it were, worried herself well and found the strength to help look for the boy.

Betty Foy is one of a number of female figures in the 1798 Lyrical Ballads

Lyrical Ballads

Lyrical Ballads, with a Few Other Poems is a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, first published in 1798 and generally considered to have marked the beginning of the English Romantic movement in literature...

; she is, perhaps, a foil to the grieving and guilty mother of The Thorn. And, certainly, she is one of the figures in the volume who best exemplifies the "romantic" qualities of Wordsworth's first mature lyrics. Her simple and strong emotions, strong sense of duty and especially of responsibility to the people in her life, are clear instances of traditional country life as Wordsworth imagined it. The last name, "Foy," may be a reference to faith; this is an old romance name, as for example Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...

's pagan knight Sansfoy in The Faerie Queene

The Faerie Queene

The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and is one of the longest poems in the English...

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In popular culture

Rivendell Bicycle Works

Rivendell Bicycle Works

Rivendell Bicycle Works is a producer of lugged steel bicycle frames, located in Walnut Creek, California, United States. Rivendell produces stock and customized frames. Rivendell frames are designed in the U.S., with manufacturing of stock frames in the United States, Japan, and Taiwan...

 has a bicycle model, Betty Foy, named for the mother in the poem. The bicycle is a mixte with a headbadge that feature's Betty Foy's portrait.