Poem of the week: Sir Patrick Spens

It's time for the redoubtable Anon to take the stage again, this time as a balladeer. The ballad is an evergreen form, originally sung, and, if the name is to be believed, accompanied by dancing. It twines its indestructible way through written literature and still attracts contemporary poets and musicians. There are dozens of magnificent old ballads that continue to be set and sung, and for whose survival we owe much to the first great collectors like Allan Ramsay, Thomas Percy and FW Child.

A ballad inevitably has many different versions, and this week's poem, "Sir Patrick Spens", is no exception. The variant I'm posting here is the one most often anthologised, and no wonder. It's an excellent distillation, combining minimal exposition with swift, exact reportage. However, the other versions are often lively and well worth comparing. In some of these you'll find mermaids, rows about "expenses" and even bolts of silk being used to stuff the holes in the side of Sir Patrick's unfortunate ship. You can read a few of them here. The more expansive variants are also useful for filling in some noticeable narrative gaps, such as the purpose and destination of Sir Patrick's voyage, left unexplained in the shorter version.

First recorded in the 18th century, the ballad is said to describe an incident, or combination of incidents, dating from the 13th. Sir Patrick himself, probably an invention, emerges as a fallible, generous sort of character. We first meet him in close-up, reading the King's "braid letter" in that wonderfully imagined fourth verse. His reaction is described by a typical ballad convention, the "first he/then he" narrative pattern, but here the device is powerfully suggestive. He laughs aloud at the ridiculousness of the king's request, and the next minute weeps because he sees no choice but to obey. In one of the versions he denies that he's any sort of seaman at all, heightening the possibility that he has been set up by an adversary. Nevertheless, like the biblical Abraham, he accepts unquestioningly his superior's demand for sacrifice.

The narrator moves on swiftly from Sir Patrick's solitary reading of the letter to his command that the crew prepare to sail, and then into hurried, urgent dialogue. Our version doesn't tell us the identity of the second speaker. In some variants, he's "a pretty boy" and in others, an old man. His words heighten the tension, bringing in meteorological evidence to justify the fears of the fatalistic captain. It's also possible, with a punctuation by-pass, to read these passages as soliloquy, and imagine Sir Patrick talking partly to himself, and partly, in his head, to the King ("my master").

After the ominous seventh stanza, you might expect a slow build-up to the shipwreck. Instead, we get another "first/next" compression, with two expressive long-shots: the pathetically fussy nobles "right laith" to spoil their expensive shoes as the vessel begins to ship water, and then a rapid cut to the image of the hats that "swim aboon" on the ocean's surface, and are all that now remain of the travellers.

This tragedy is a collective one, and, unusually for the ballad, "Sir Patrick Spens" pays attention to the many bit-players – those hopelessly decorative nobles and the ladies waiting at home. Many little details illustrate material wealth – the cork-heeled shoes, the gold combs. Is there a hint that that these lords and ladies have got what they deserved? Perhaps, but, having displayed a certain irony, the narrator quickly raises the pitch to pathos and sorrow. There is an almost keening tone in the two stanzas beginning "O lang, lang …"

Ballads are human stories writ large. The past they inhabit is a strange and shadowy country, haunted by violence and death. They sing in ancient measures, and stir primitive emotions. This one seems also to possess a strange modernity. It may partly be due to the absence of the traditional refrain, but it also lies in the shorthand style, the brisk parade of revealing images, the telling shifts of viewpoint and angle. As for the plotline, it manages to combine inevitability with suspense, realism with parable. Kings, or politicians, should trust the experts: loyal servants at any level in the chain of command should dare to disobey unreasonable requests from above. Then there's that moral about the limits of wealth. To be reminded that fine shoes and fancy hats are no insulation when seas are rough is always welcome. Especially to the down-at-heel troubadours like Anon.

Sir Patrick Spens 
The king sits in Dumferling town
    Drinking the bluid-red wine:
'O whar will I get a guid sailor
    To sail this ship of mine?' 
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.' 
The king has written a braid letter
    And signed it wi' his hand,
And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,
    Was walking on the sand. 
The first line that Sir Patrick read
    A loud lauch lauched he;
The next line that Sir Patrick read,
    The tear blinded his ee. 
'O wha is this has done this deed,
    This ill deed done to me,
To send me out this time o'the year,
    To sail upon the sea? 
'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.' 
'Late, late yestre'en I saw the new moon
    Wi'the old moon in his arm,
And I fear, I fear, my dear master,
    That we will come to harm.' 
O our Scots nobles were richt laith
    To weet their cork-heeled shoon,
But lang or a' the play were played
    Their hats they swam aboon. 
O lang, lang may their ladies sit,
    Wi'their fans into their hand,
Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spens
    Come sailing to the land. 
O lang, lang may the ladies stand
    Wi'their gold kems in their hair,
Waiting for their ain dear lords,
    For they'll never see them mair. 
Half o'er, half o'er to Aberdour
    It's fifty fathoms deep,
And there lies guid Sir Patrick Spens
    Wi'the Scots lords at his feet. 

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