The narrator of the Prologue besieges Mary to "gideth [his] song" because he desperately wants to glorify her but finds it difficult to do so. He presents mountainous difficulties to the task of exaltation, exclaiming that of Mary's virtue "no tonge may expresse in no science", and lamenting that his "konning is so waik" and that he, like a child, "kan unnethes any word expresse" (476, 481, 485). Like the narrator, the child in the tale bemoans his rudimentary language capacity and his restricted "konninge" in honoring Mary (cf 523-524, 657). The fate of the child seems to be the text's answer to the narrator's plea.

The manner in which the events after the child's death address the deficiencies of science, tonge and song is strikingly literal. The solution, administered by the Virgin herself, to the inept tongue bounded by the limits of science, takes the form of a divinely empowered dead martyr's tongue endlessly chanting praises it learned by rote while living. The tale's exemplification and glorification of the tragic martyr, especially after highlighting the difficulties of being devout, seem to advocate overcoming the limits of the intellect and ability through the rote and mechanical enshrining of the divine through songs of praise incomprehensible to the speaker and the sacrifice of oneself . It also comes perilously close to alluding that devout but antagonist acts are the means of precipitating miracles and circumventing the realm of the ordinary.