SIR PATRICK SPENS
I. The Sailing
The king sits in Dunfermline town
Drinking the blude-red wine;
"O whare will I get a skeely skipper
To sail this new ship o' mine?"
O up and spak an eldern knight,
Sat at the king's right knee;
"Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor
That ever sail'd the sea."
Our king has written a braid letter,
And seal'd it with his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,
Was walking on the strand.
"To Noroway, to Noroway,
To Noroway o'er the faem;
The king's daughter o' Noroway,
'Tis thou must bring her hame."
The first word that Sir Patrick read
So loud, loud laugh'd he;
The neist word that Sir Patrick read
The tear blinded his e'e.
"O wha is this has done this deed
And tauld the king o' me,
To send us out, at this time o' year,
To sail upon the sea?
"Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet,
Our ship must sail the faem;
The king's daughter o' Noroway,
'Tis we must fetch her hame."
They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn
Wi' a' the speed they may;
They hae landed in Noroway
Upon a Wodensday.
II. The Return
"Mak ready, mak ready, my merry men a'!
Our gude ship sails the morn."
"Now ever alack, my master dear,
I fear a deadly storm.
"I saw the new moon late yestreen
Wi' the auld moon in her arm;
And if we gang to sea, master,
I fear we'll come to harm."
They hadna sail'd a league, a league,
A league but barely three,
When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud,
And gurly grew the sea.
The ankers brak, and the topmast lap,
It was sic a deadly storm:
And the waves cam owre the broken ship
Till a' her sides were torn.
"Go fetch a web o' the silken claith,
Another o' the twine,
And wap them into our ship's side,
And let nae the sea come in."
They fetch'd a web o' the silken claith,
Another o' the twine,
And they wapp'd them round that gude ship's side,
But still the sea came in.
O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords
To wet their cork-heel'd shoon;
But lang or a' the play was play'd
They wat their hats aboon.
And mony was the feather bed
That flatter'd on the faem;
And mony was the gude lord's son
That never mair cam hame.
O lang, lang may the ladies sit,
Wi' their fans into their hand,
Before they see Sir Patrick Spens
Come sailing to the strand!
And lang, lang may the maidens sit
Wi' their gowd kames in their hair,
A-waiting for their ain dear loves!
For them they'll see nae mair.
Half-owre, half-owre to Aberdour,
'Tis fifty fathoms deep;
And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,
Wi' the Scots lords at his feet!
Hell yes it's a "grand old ballad," as Coleridge wrote in "Dejection: An Ode," which sadly does
not appear in the Dover Thrift Edition of
100 Best-Loved Poems. "Sir Patrick Spens" rocks hard from the first stanza and never stops kicking major ass. "The king sits in Dunfermline town / Drinking the blude-red wine." Blude-red wine! We all know that most wine is basically sort of blude-red (most red wine, anyway), but when you
say it, it makes it extra special. And Dunfermline! Exactly the sort of name you would want for a place where a king sits drinking blude-red wine. That is one king-drinking-blude-red-wine-sounding name of a place. Try not to think about the fact that Dunfermline now has two McDonaldses and a Pizza Hut (really). And "To Noroway, to Noroway, / To Noroway o'er the faem"--don't you want to actually go to Norway just so you can say that as you go there?
Then there's the beautiful, much-cited passage about the new moon with the old moon in her arm, and the sardonic repetition of "silken claith" and "twine" and "ship's side" and the sea that comes in despite everything. The poem reaches the pinnacle of its dark, dry (so to speak) humor in this stanza:
O laith, laith were our gude Scots lords
To wet their cork-heel'd shoon;
But lang or a' the play was play'd
They wat their hats aboon.
"They wat their hats aboon"! That's just cold.
"Sir Patrick Spens" stands better on its own without music than "Lord Randal," in my opinion: it's got that built-in swing, that piratic growl (like the sea on which Sir Patrick sails, it's "gurly," which the Dover editor glosses as "grim, surly." It's, like, riot-gurly.
The "plot point" of the Norwegian king's daughter is conspicuously unresolved. I mean, it's pretty obvious that she drowns like everyone else on the ship, but no mention of her is made after the first section. It's the men that are explicitly missed at poem's end. The ladies and maidens sit waiting for Sir Patrick and their "ain dear loves," just as, one imagines, all the "gude lord's son[s]" are expected by their fathers. But not a word about Miss Norway. You would think a king's daughter would be a bigger deal, especially as she was the main reason for the voyage in the first place. I can't help but draw a parallel with "Lord Randal," in which the "true love" plays a large part though her murderous act is mentioned only in oblique ways. Is there a misogynist implication that having a woman on board is what brings on the bad luck? Sir Patrick's bitter laughter upon hearing that he has to set out at a bad time of year to "fetch her hame" would seem to support this.
I didn't really mean to go in that direction, however. What interests me most about the king's daughter is just the way in which she, like so much else in the poem, serves as a minimally suggestive detail, hinting at a more complex narrative that never materializes. This is the haunting appeal of all those old anonymous songs. They're like Yorick's skull, whose very bareness spurs the mind to thinking of the fleshly life that once was.
