Sir Patrick Spens

The strength of this ballad, its emotional force, lies in its unadorned narrative which progresses rapidly to a tragic end that has been foreshadowed almost from the beginning.

It was first published in eleven stanzas in 1765 in Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, based on "two MS. copies transmitted from Scotland".

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.

The king sits in Dunfermline toune drinking the blude reid wine, "O whar can I get skeely skipper, To sail this ship o' mine?"

Up and spak an eldern knicht, Sat at the kings richt kne: "Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor That sails upon the se."

The king has written a braid letter, And signed it wi his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the strand.

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.

In the two-stanza exchange between Spens and the old sailor, Mark Strand and Eavan Boland have noted "the immediacy, music, and fatalism of the ballad..."[6] William Bowman Piper identifies a pattern of contrasts between authority, represented by the anonymous king, and nobility, as displayed by Patrick Spens.

[7] The references to the women awaiting the arrival of their men describe an experience common to any dangerous enterprise in peacetime or in war, and as old as the Bible.

Earl's Knowle on Papa Stronsay is traditionally held to be the final resting place of Sir Patrick Spens.

It was after his retirement from this position that he edited a collection of Scottish poetry in which the first poem is Sir Patrick Spens.