"Sir Patrick Spens," first printed in 1765, tells a story that may be based on two voyages of thirteenth-century Scots noblemen to conduct their princesses to royal marriages. Margaret, daughter of Alexander III, was married to Eric of Norway in 1281, and many members of her escort were drowned on the voyage home. Her daughter, also named Margaret, was drowned with her escort on the way to a marriage in Scotland in 1290. In Child version H, Patrick is sent to Norway to bring the king´s daughter home. In all versions, Patrick is sent to sea against his will.
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Sir Patrick Spens
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1
The king sits in Dumferling town,
Drinking the blude-reid wine:
"O whar will I get guid sailor,
To sail this ship of mine?"
2
5 Up and spak an eldern knicht,
Sat at the king's richt knee:
"Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor
That sails upon the sea."
3
The king has written a braid letter
10 And signed it wi' his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,
Was walking on the sand.
4
The first line that Sir Patrick read,
A loud lauch lauched he;
15 The next line that Sir Patrick read,
The tear blinded his ee.
5
"O wha is this has done this deed,
This ill deed done to me,
To send me out this time o' the year,
20 To sail upon the sea?
6
"Mak haste, mak haste, my mirry men all,
Our guid ship sails the morn."
"O say na sae, my master dear,
For I fear a deadly storm.
7
25 "Late, late yestre'en I saw the new moon
Wi' the auld moon in hir arm,
And I fear, I fear, my dear master,
That we will come to harm."
8
O our Scots nobles were richt laith
30 To weet their cork-heeled shoon,
But lang or a' the play were played
Their hats they swam aboon.
9
O lang, lang may their ladies sit,
Wi' their fans into their hand,
35 Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the land.
10
O lang, lang may the ladies stand
Wi' their gold kems in their hair,
Waiting for their ain dear lords,
40 For they'll see them na mair.
11
Half o'er, half o'er to Aberdour
It's fifty fadom deep,
And there lies guid Sir Patrick Spens
Wi' the Scots lords at his feet.
Editor´s Comments
It can be very useful to know something about what goes into writing a poem. But it's also important to think about how poems are received, how we read them, or hear them. Some poems are very difficult; it's necessary to read them carefully, looking up words in a dictionary, maybe tracing down mythological references. Poems like that generally have particular audiences. They might be read mostly in schools or colleges, or they might have been written primarily for a few other artists to read, the members of an avant-garde artistic movement, for example. In the Middle Ages, and even in the Renaissance, long after printing had been invented, poems might be passed around in manuscript, to an audience that obviously would have to have been quite small and select.
But some poetry is not meant to be read at all; it's meant to be heard. Poetry can be an art for the few, but it doesn't have to be that; it can just as well be a popular art. The ballad is a good example. The ballad form has always been associated with music, and while all ballads don't have to be sung, most of them have been. They were sung, and they told stories. In fact, for centuries, ballads were a form of popular art, a form which was not restricted to any special audience, whether of birth, or wealth, or education. If a poem is going to be heard by a large and various audience, it needs to have some special characteristics. It should tell its story in a pretty straightforward way, and it helps if the patterns of the verse are familiar to the audience, and if there is some regular repetition. If you look around this part of the website, you'll find lots of things to read and look at, but you should start by just listening to the performance of the ballad. If you already did that, then listen to it again, and think about how the ballad of Sir Patrick Spens might have been enjoyed by men and women who had no books at all to read.
Historical Considerations
The texts of ballads, like other kinds of verse, often have undergone a complex process of change and revision before we actually read them. But unlike poems, for which an author may write several versions before arriving at a final one, ballads cannot be identified with a single author. Revision still occurs, however, but it is a kind of collective revision, as a ballad is taken up by various performers and often changed- perhaps to meet the expectations of differing audiences, perhaps simply to make better sense to the individual performer.
"Sir Patrick Spens" appeared in print for the first time in the eighteenth century in Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. Here is how the ballad appeared in an 1869 reprint of that book.
When the famous Chaucerian scholar George Lyman Kittredge edited a student's edition of the English and Scottish Popular Ballads in 1904, he included several different versions of "Sir Patrick Spens."
The Poet´s Life and Work
Unlike every other poem in this collection, "Sir Patrick Spens" has no single author. As a ballad, it was invented, elaborated, refined, and passed along by many singers, whose names and faces we cannot know. If there is any foster parent for the ballads we have today, however, it might be Francis James Child, whose great nineteenth- century collection English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882-98) became the standard source for anyone interested in the ballad tradition.
Click here to read an analysis of the problems of authorship and authenticity surrounding the ballad form: Susan Stewart, "Scandals of the Ballad."
To see an image of Child, click the image below.
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