He believes some force is plotting against him on purpose, probably to kill him. And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spens, This is the phase of the moon known as the waning crescent that “holds” the darkened portion in the hollow of its arc, the next phase of the moon being the darkened new moon. The ballad is held together by bookend stanzas harboring similar tableau: the elder knight sitting at the right knee of the king in the first stanza, and the final stanza with the lords around the feet of Sir Patrick at the bottom of the ocean. Irony is wit or mockery that usually means the opposite of what is said. A ballad is also instantly recognizable by its short, four-line stanzas (called quatrains) of alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter (lines of four and three stressed syllables respectively) that rhyme abcb and give what critic Paul Fussell has described in Poetic Meter, “. drinking the blude reid wine, This ill deid don to me, It is early a favourite residence of the Scottish kings. Eliot, Sir John (1592–1632). The variant I'm posting here is the one most often anthologised, and no wonder. The reader compares the nobles, who fear wetting their shoes, with Spens, who knows they are all doomed to drown in the storm. The women will never see their men again, though ironically, the reader sees them lying on the ocean floor. (Sandy Denny Vocal Version from 'Liege & Lief') [Intro] G D G D G D G D D C G D D C G D [Verse 1] G D G D A King sat in Dunfermline town G D G D Drinking of the blood-red wine Em Bm Em Bm "W They follow Spens’s orders as he follows the king’s. To Noroway! 73–83. Consider the inversion from “done … deed” to “deed done” in lines 17 and 18. “Sir Patrick Spens” is a traditional ballad, which means 1) that it was originally written to be sung, 2) that it is anonymous because the names of the original author or authors have been lost to us over time, and 3) that the ballad often exists in several versions. The events of the ballad are similar to, and may chronicle, an actual event: The opening lines refer to a king who is located in Dunfermline where historically there was a royal residence, Malcolm's Tower. What is not normal, however, is for a monosyllabic verb to constitute an internal foot. The story as told in the ballad has multiple versions, but they all follow the same basic plot. Others beside the king also exercise power. The closing stanza conveys the information that the distance the storm-racked boat was able to make was “half owre to Aberdour.” To indicate similar limitation of distance, lesser balladeers, including revisers of “Sir Patrick Spens,” usually fell back on “had not … a league (but one, three, etc. An important tie to England was suddenly cut. While these scenes now seem abrupt in transition, musical interludes played between scenes might once have prepared the listener for the radical changes. Does he have some secret motive for sending Spens to certain death? An “elder” knight speaks up. The name "Sir Patrick Spens" is mentioned by a courtier, and the king despatches a letter. .‘Sir Patric Spens’ is remarkable among ballads for its fine use of dramatic irony, contrast, and terse understatement.”, and Poetic Form as “the illusion of primitive sincerity and openness.”. And I feir, I feir, my master deir, Van Doren examines the emotional force of “Sir Patrick Spens.”. Both countries had their own reasons for wanting union. The lyrics can be found in. © 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. He served as Chief Justice of India from 1943 to 1947. 1-20. In choosing the second answer, the poem seems to celebrate the fearless heroism. Others go out onto the cold, rough sea. https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/sir-patrick-spens, "Sir Patrick Spens These versions apparently have historical foundation in two conflated events from the late-thirteenth-century reign of Alexander III of Scotland: one being the wreck of a vessel ferrying Scots nobles on their homeward journey from the nuptials of Margaret, Alexander’s daughter, and Eric, King of Norway; the other, the disappearance of Alexander’s granddaughter, the Maid of Norway, on her way to wed Edward I of England. 1—Child Ballads, and in 1986 on his and Peggy Seeger's album Blood & Roses Volume 4. Irony is more pointed in the following stanza as one of the crew expresses the dismay he felt at sight of the old-new moon, an omen to be perhaps taken seriously in one of the other seasons but a mere redundancy in the present perilous situation. Spens knows that the weather at this time of year is treacherous. .mw-parser-output .div-col{margin-top:0.3em;column-width:30em}.mw-parser-output .div-col-small{font-size:90%}.mw-parser-output .div-col-rules{column-rule:1px solid #aaa}.mw-parser-output .div-col dl,.mw-parser-output .div-col ol,.mw-parser-output .div-col ul{margin-top:0}.mw-parser-output .div-col li,.mw-parser-output .div-col dd{page-break-inside:avoid;break-inside:avoid-column}. Whatever the truth of either interpretation, the reader’s conclusion will likely depend on his or her view of loyalty—a twentieth-century perspective, influenced by the largest number of men and women in any century that maimed and killed out of loyalty to leader, country, and honor. Rather than interpreting every word of the antiquated dialect, focus on how the words sound together and flow into each other. The king's daughter to Noroway More importantly for us, these events help explain a bit about why the king ordered Spens to sail at such a dangerous time of year. “Broad” may simply mean bold or unequivocal, but it may also imply a drunken coarseness or crudity of expression; both meanings seem applicable since the letter’s contents are enough to move Sir Patrick to both laughter and tears. 2, pp. This contention could also indicate a newfound solidarity or resolution in the face of their collective end—especially if we recall that prior to the mission the men were worried about going on the voyage. He is both a hero for the glory of his perseverance and a victim for his sub-ordination to the whims of politics and to the insidious workings of fate, which neither worldly wealth and power nor love can alter or deter. The king “sits,” in that he “reigns” and his throne is a “seat” of his power. 1-14. In due course, much more than their shoes will get wet—in fact their shoes are more likely to float than they will be. More From Encyclopedia.com In his essay “Seven Types of Accuracy,” which appeared in The Iowa Review, Richard Moore has remarked that the men gathered around Sir Patrick at the end of the ballad poses a riddle: Why are the men gathered there? He is in effect saying, “How could you do this to me?,” “How can this happen to me?,” “Who ever heard of such a thing?” He may also be indicting the prompter who named him to the king, but the idea loses cogency when the facts of dreadful hardship and all but certain death are considered; in this extremity, the king’s orders to sail in the morning being already signed and sealed, court politics will not matter much and there is too little time to seek a remedy.…, “Mak hast, mak haste” is, like various duplicate imperatives in the ballads, spoken with tension at a critical moment. ." There were several songs or ballads devoted to the story of the drowning of a Norwegian princess as she sailed across the North Sea to marry a British prince. Intuitively, he already seems to understand that this will be his final voyage. Hodgart, M. J. C., “The Poetry of Ballads,” in The Ballads, Hutchinson University Library, 1950, pp. Robust yet full of foreboding, “Sir Patrick Spens” exposes the harsh machinations of fate that govern human life and make for both its glory and impermanence. Their long and patient vigil, made to seem more tragic, protracted, and suspenseful by the doubled adverbs “O lang, lang” and by incremental repetition—“lang, lang may their ladies sit” and “lang, lang may the ladies stand”—will ultimately prove futile. Half the way over to Aberdour, the ship is wrecked in the storm. In Sir Patrick’s odyssey, however, it is uncertain whether Sir Patrick, unlike Odysseus, is a hero or a fool for having followed the king’s orders. With access to English markets, linen production doubled between 1750 and 1775. Or a lesson on how honorable it is to do one’s duty, no matter what the consequences? As in many ballads, death is a dominant force in “Sir Patrick Spens.” It is a force that no human can escape. As we have seen and shall see repeatedly, familiar matter is handled differently in “Sir Patrick Spens” A: it is a “guid sailor” who is called for, a man to serve as ship’s master, not a boy to go aloft as a look out.… The king specifies not only a sailor but a “gúid sailór” (à la Française), and the stress pattern is repeated to strong effect in the following stanza when Sir Patrick is called “the bést sailór.”…, With abruptness typical of medieval narrative, going all the way back to Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry, the king writes Sir Patrick a letter—a broad letter perhaps so called for one of two reasons: its wasteful calligraphy, the result of a drinker’s loss of motor control; its unusual length, product of drunken garrulousness as he first, presumably, greets his noble reader with some flattering salutation or other and a few pleasantries before coming to the point. For Britain it meant security from attacks by her old enemy from the south, France. In “Sir Patrick Spens,” that event is a shipwreck. The king has written a braid letter, But the courtly world’s deception does not allow it to escape from life’s only certainty: death. Sir Patrick’s forced cheeriness is calculated, of course, to keep the “merry” men’s spirits as high as possible. Someone sits and drinks wine in other ballads—“Lamkin,” “Brown Robin,” “The White Fisher”—but only in “Sir Patrick Spens” is the combination found of sits as monosyllabic foot and wine that is “blude-reid” (the stress is on blude), adding a splash of color and an ominous symbol, both of which were welcomed by the medieval audience. This structure is reflected in “Sir Patrick Spens.” Most obvious is the power of the king, who holds the power of life and death, first symbolized in the “blude-reid wine” he drinks on his throne. They are doomed to wait, perhaps long after they feel certain their husbands have perished. 'Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor That ever sailed the main.' The women cannot search and rescue their husbands, nor can they easily move on and marry again. . Matchett, William H., "The Integrity of 'Sir Patrick Spens'", Maurice Lindsay, "The Lowlands of Scotland", p. 175, Robert Hale & Co, 1973, "The Island and its history — papastronsay.com", "Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE OLD SEAPORT, by DAVID MACBETH MOIR", King Edward the Fourth and a Tanner of Tamworth, The King's Disguise, and Friendship with Robin Hood, The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea, Robin Hood's Birth, Breeding, Valor, and Marriage, The Young Earl of Essex's Victory over the Emperor of Germany, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sir_Patrick_Spens&oldid=1010608297, Wikipedia articles with MusicBrainz work identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, In 1290 the bringing home of the Scottish heir to the throne, the seven-year-old. Destiny or fate are traditionally represented as “blind”—think of Oedipus, Homer, and Milton, whose blindness is seen as a sign that they “see” a higher truth. The ballad begins by introducing the main characters. Their main function is, of course, to entertain, yet as living artifacts of pre-literate and illiterate folk cultures, they also tend to mirror common fears, fantasies, and aspirations; comment on life; and offer strategies for living. He “sat at the king’s richt knee” which makes him the second most powerful man at court. War broke out between England and France in 1756. Come sailing to the strand. Because of the enormous strain it placed on the English treasury, parliament and the Crown had to create new sources of revenue. The strength of this ballad, its emotional force, lies in its unadorned narrative which progresses rapidly to a … Finally, there was a famous shipwreck off the coast of Aberdour near Papa Stronsay Island, which claims to be the burial place of Sir Patrick Spens. Explain what you would do in his situation, using lines from the poem to support your position. Waiting for thair ain deir lords, The king's wrote a large letter, Sealed it with his own hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on dry land. Again, gold is a gold traditional symbol of worldliness, and while the gold combs will remain shiny, the women’s hair will turn grey with time. Here, we meet the king, who is in Dumferling, Scotland. A ballad tends to be a purely narrative poem—that is, it tells a story—as a rule concentrating on a single incident or situation. More significantly though, he has the king’s ear. In the following essay, Hochman discusses the role of loyalty in the poem “Sir Patrick Spens.”. Sir Patrick does what no one should be forced to do to enter into dangerous circumstances knowing he will not come out alive. Sir Patrick has been set up by one of the knights closest to the king who, in his jealousy, has recommended Sir Patrick to sail to Norway despite the threat of an impending storm. William Patrick Spens, 1st Baron Spens, KBE, PC, KC (9 August 1885 – 15 November 1973) was a British lawyer, judge and Conservative politician. 'To Noroway, to Noroway, To Noroway o'er the faem; The king's daughter o' Noroway, 15 'Tis thou must bring her hame.' In the following essay, Meyer analyzes how “Sir Patrick Spens” fits into the category of ballad and comments on the poem’s ultimately tragic storyline. The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens In the reign of Alexander III of Scotland, his daughter Margaret was escorted by a large party of nobles to Norway for her marriage to King Eric; on the The king sits in Dunfermline toune While ballads tell stories, they do so in special ways, generally by presenting events without much descriptive detail and sometimes leaving out key events entirely. Sat at the kings richt kne: When he recommends Sir Patrick as a good sailor, the king listens. Jhan Hochman is a writer and instructor at Portland Community College in Portland, Oregon. As part of the oral tradition, ballads survived in the collective consciousness of cultures across Europe and North America, having been transmitted from generation to generation as a kind of verbal legacy until they eventually found their way into print, in important compilations such as Francis J. Child’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads(1882-98) and Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry(1765). Medieval drama is a case in point; the “English and Scottish popular ballads” are another. The King has written a broad letter, And sealed it with his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the strand. Or was it, as some critics suggest, because the elder knight was an enemy of Sir Patrick and he set Sir Patrick up for such a dangerous mission? Child 58L: Sir Patrick Spens Motherwell’s Note-Book, p. 6, Motherwell’s MS., p. 156, from Mrs Gentles, Paisley, February 1825. His fate is sealed, but his tear-blinded eye is ironic. (Appropriately most ballad tunes are written in a minor key.) Source: William M. Ryan, “Formula and Tragic Irony in ‘Sir Patrick Spens,’” in Southern Folklore Quarterly, Vol. Why does the balladeer conclude the poem with the overwhelming image of death, of corpses submerged at the bottom of the ocean? The namesake of the ballad - Sir Patrick Spens - is called upon by the king to sail to Norway and fetch his daughter. Although being selected by the king is an honor, it also means that Spens must undertake an impossible journey. Up and spak an eldern knicht, Sir Patrick Spens has died in the shipwreck, and so his body is at the bottom of the ocean. The elder knight praises Sir Patrick Spens as the world’s best sailor. No sooner is the first line finished than meter again makes itself felt, this time in a telling participle at the beginning of line two—“drinking.” The stem drink is the first foot, and in this position of emphatic prominence, coming as it does after the even more conspicuous “sits,” it directs attention to the king’s second condition, as it were. In the two-stanza exchange between Spens and the old Tis fiftie fathom deip, Even the ladies’ waiting brings ironic hint of the comic, in the same manner as Chaucer’s very numerous occupationes suddenly abandon someone or other, to the reader’s amusement. About Us, Royal Society, oldest scientific organization in Great Britain and one of the oldest in Europe. Most overt Scottish resistance to the union was put down within a few decades. The fifth and final scene shows Sir Patrick and his men drowned at the bottom of the ocean. Today: Growing numbers of Americans are dissatisfied with the federal tax system. As we will see, because the knight speaks “up,” Spens and his ship are sent down “fifty fadom deip.”. He also “sits” in the sense of being stationary. The winter storms have the best of the great sailor, sending him and the Scottish lords to the bottom of the sea. 'To Noroway, to Noroway, To Noroway o'er the faem; The king's daughter o' Noroway, 15 'Tis thou must bring her hame.' To see the image as absurd leads the reader to conclude that suicidal loyalty is ridiculous. to Noroway! The “eldern knicht” occupies a position of power. Play also suggests a child’s game, for the sailors are like toys in the hands of nature. This kind of omission is called an ellipsis. Just as the “who” is absent from the line, so Spens will be absent from the earth when the letter sends him to his death. His descendant, Sir Patrick Spens (1885–1973), was created 1st Lord Spens of Blairsanquhar, Fife, in 1959. They stand, while the king sits, and by the poem’s end, the men lay. Ballads may or may not have some basis in fact. In a parting irony, Sir Patrick’s body is revealed to lie “fiftie fadom deip … Wi’ the Scots lords at his feit,” as if symbolically paid homage in a justly fitting—if macabre—tribute to his true nobility. And no matter how loyal and true he is, like all people, Spens must die. Characters walk here or there in a few of the ballads, just as characters sit by windows or on castle walls in others, but these have none of the ironic association conveyed by the king’s sitting in “Sir Patrick Spens.”… At most, walking is being set as a counterweight against thematic dying—motion against repose. The Stamp Act caused growing dissatisfaction with English rule in the American colonies. The ship has now sailed, but the nobles are “loath” to “wet” their shoes. because he had seen an omen of danger. Letters seldom bring good news in the realm of balladry, and the king’s “braid letter” is no exception, since by it Sir Patrick’s fate is quite literally “signed,” sealed and delivered. The images recall the famous words from the Book of Ecclesiastes: “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation.” And so “lang, lang, may the ladies stand,” waiting with their baubles and fashion as if everything were fine and in the end there would be a happy ending. Of this final ballad grouping, one of the best known is “Sir Patrick Spens,” a traditional folk ballad in Scottish dialect that tells the tragic tale of a dauntless sea captain who, at his king’s commanding, must undertake an ill-timed sea voyage that he knows will spell his doom. In all of these forms, the narrative is presented not “as a continuous sequence of events but as a series of rapid flashes.” The ballad’s effect on us depends on which scenes are presented and how individual scenes are situated in the story as a whole. Instead, as Lloyd Frankenberg writes in his book Invitation to Poetry, all the action “is about to take place or has already gone by. Again, as we have come to expect, “Sir Patrick Spens” A works the old into something fresh. He is far away from Sir Patrick and his men, “in Dumferling toune,” and until his letter comes they can live as if he does not exist. He sits; he drinks. Some indicate that a storm sank the ship in the initial crossing, thus ending the ballad at this point, while many have Sir Patrick safely reaching Norway. Significantly, they lie at his feet, not he at theirs. As a narrative poem, “Sir Patrick Spens” is in the tradition of Homer’s great epics The Iliad and The Odyssey. 'Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor That ever sail'd the sea.' As a sailor, Spens is a “good,” skillful sailor and because he is brave, he is a good man as well; but this cannot save him from his fate. With a metrical break similar to that in the first line of the poem, “lang, lang” receives two stresses.…. ." Moore asserts the laugh is provoked by the king’s remark that Sir Patrick has been recommended as the best sailor on the seas. Their fans are a sign of vanity, but fans are also used to control the weather by making one more comfortable when it is too hot. The third scene depicts Sir Patrick talking to his fearful crew. At sea, however, the weather cannot be controlled, and the storm kills their men. Blood and wine were, moreover, commonly associated in popular literature and therefore in people’s minds, quite apart from the sacrament of the Eucharist.…, When the king, perhaps on drunken impulse, sings out “O whar,” he sounds like many another ballad character; the two words are heard in at least twelve ballads, by my count, and continue in modern usage in popular songs like “Billy Boy” and “Where and O Where Is My Little Wee Dog?”… In eight of the old ballads the query regards a “little” or “wee” or “bonny” boy, who is said to be used in almost all instances a messenger. [1] It is a maritime ballad about a disaster at sea. At the end, while the lords may outrank Spens socially (note that some versions of the poem have Spens not a “Sir,” but merely a Captain), their cowardice and concern for worldly things—their failure to comprehend their situation and act accordingly—sets Spens above the lords in the end. This is an evil omen that predicts bad weather, and the sailor fears, correctly, the ship and crew will come to harm. This is ironic, because soon not only their shoes, but their entire bodies will be wet, and they will be drowned. This means that although ballads may appear simple, they are deceptively so. The hats themselves can be seen as a sign of worldly vanity, and it is ironic that the hats swim, but the nobles themselves cannot; they drown. "Yestreen I saw the new moone, The scenes are as follows: the first is of the elder knight recommending Sir Patrick for the mission. The story itself is simple and yet universal in its theme: the courageous knight dutifully obeys the command of his king despite the knowledge that he will almost certainly be going to his death. Written in a traditional ballad form, the poem is composed of four-line stanzas. . Again a poor choice is avoided in “Sir Patrick Spens” A: instead of specifying the familiar bonny boy as deliverer of the letter, the letter is simply “sent.”…. The wine that the king drinks is “blood red,” suggesting his power over life and death, as well as the ease with which he controls other people’s lives. Today: The execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a brutal murderer and self-proclaimed reborn Christian, rekindles the debate over the legitimacy of capital punishment in the United States. The concluding stanza specifies the whereabouts of his vessel at the time of its sinking, “haf owre to Aberdour,” a potent reminder of a destination within reach but forever unattainable. 1, 1958, pp. In an indictment of materialism sharpened through a mordantly satirical comment on the pretensions of the upper classes, the rich are deprived of their belongings as well as their dignity as the ship goes down. First, Sir Patrick refuses to believe the fateful notice he is given. (1863–1944).The Oxford Book of Ballads. Where the ship is bound for is not indicated in the most widely anthologized version of the poem. Known as the Seven Years War, the conflict is considered an early “World War,” in which Britain and Prussia were allied against France, Austria, Spain and Russia. There is no cause for merriment: the sailors make haste toward certain danger and their “guid schip,” as at least one of the crew suspects, will be the means to their demise. The first stanza provides an … Poetry for Students. However, the spirit of rebellion lived on in Scotland in the eighteenth century. According to Francis James Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads, other versions of “Sir Patrick Spens” suggest it may be combining three historical events. The war, however, proved costly for England. The finality of their situation is rendered with the stanza’s shift from present to past tense: As in Shakespeare’s famous lines “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players” (As You Like It, 2.7.139-40), real life here is compared with play-acting, only in this case misadventure stops the proceedings and the play goes unfinished. The Scottish mining industry grew rapidly as well. under … Although ballads such as “Sir Patrick Spens” are traditional and anonymous, many poets copy the traditional ballad form. The fourth scene is of the wives of the ship’s crew waiting—somewhat like Odysseus’ wife Penelope—for the ship to return. “Sir Patrick Spens” is considered a ballad, an old-English, rhymed-song form that tells a story. 58) (Roud 41), and is of Scottish origin. Create and get +5 IQ. Each new singer of a ballad, in the course of its successive re-telling, becomes as much an original composer as a preserver or guardian of tradition. Retrieved April 15, 2021 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/sir-patrick-spens. 4. Canada was ceded to Britain by the treaty; this greatly strengthened the English position in North America. The women wait for their “own dear lords,” but their men belong no longer to them but to death. His power seems to issue more from his moral force and personality rather than from his place in the social hierarchy. A compelling image in the poem is that of lord’s ladies waiting for their men to return from the mission. "Sir Patrick Spens" is one of the most popular of the Child Ballads (No. The stanzas are carefully laid, and because so much is implied, so little given, the ending comes almost as suddenly as the losing of the boat and the drowning of its crew. ." In some cosmologies, the moon corresponds to the changing phases of human life, and the completely invisible new moon on the cusp of two successive months would indicate death. Another question must be asked at this point. Unconsciously mimicking the king’s “O whar,” “O wha,” says Sir Patrick, “… has don this ill deid,” and like the king he is of course perfectly aware of the answer to his own question. Suspense is generated by a device common to ballads, a sequence (“first … then”) which is then combined with incremental repetition to capture Sir Patrick’s rapid alteration from laughter (perhaps at the thought that the king is joking) to tears: Sir Patrick racks his brain for a possible reason for his seeming persecution, feverishly stumbling over the same thoughts again and again. It is thus through understatement that the ballad’s central event, the tragic shipwreck, is suggested rather than painstakingly described. “Oh where will I get a good sailor, to sail this ship of mine?” the king asks. ).” As poet and reader take leave forever of the sunken boat and its lifeless crew, Sir Patrick is shown somewhat elevated even in death “Wi the Scots lords at his feit,” probably by virtue of his having been lashed to the rudder during the storm. That we will cum to harme." Power was concentrated at the top. In one of the ballad’s few details, the wine the king drinks is said to be not merely red, but a vivid “blude-reid,” an ominous symbol of the monarch’s complicity in shedding the blood of his countrymen. "Mak haste, mak haste, my mirry men, That is, if the king was determined to do an ill deed it was no doubt poor Patrick who must fall victim to it. ‘Tae Noroway, to Noroway, Tae Noroway ower the faem; The King’s dauchter o Noroway, Tis thou maun bring her hame.’ The first word that Sir Partick read Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. For a verb like sits to receive stress is quite normal, just as it is for the verb-to-be not to receive it. The name "Patrick Spens" has no historical record, and, like many of the heroes of such ballads, is probably an invention, This page was last edited on 6 March 2021, at 10:33. what did sir patrick spens do when he received the letter as he was walking along the seacoast? 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