This ballad is one of many which were first made known to the world through Percy's Reliques. Percy's version remains, poetically, the best. It may be a fragment, but the imagination easily supplies all that may be wanting.
The versions fall into two classes. Of the copies here printed, A and B belong to the first group; G belongs to the second, which is distinguished by additional circumstances. Thus in the second group the destination of the ship is Norway; the object of the voyage (not told in G) is to bring home the king of Norway's daughter (or the Scottish king's daughter), or to take out the Scottish king's daughter to Norway, where she is to be queen. The ballad may or may not be historical. Motherwell has suggested a sufficiently plausible foundation. Margaret, daughter of Alexander III, was married, in 1281, to Eric, King of Norway. She was conducted to her husband, "brought home," in August of that year, bv many knights and nobles. Many of these were drowned on the return voyage. Margaret died in 1283, leaving a newly-born daughter, to whom the crown of Scotland fell in 1286. A match was proposed between the infant Margaret, called the Maid of Norway, and the eldest son of Edward I of England. A deputation was sent to Norway in 1290 to bring the princess over, but she died on the voyage. According to one (untrustworthy) account she perished, apparently in a storm, on the coasts of Bogban (Buchan?). No such name as Patrick Spens is historically connected with any of these occurrences; but the ballad might be substantially historical though the command of the ship were invariably given (as it is in one version) to Sir Andrew Wood, a distinguished admiral, who was born a couple of centuries after the supposed event, and it might be substantially historical though we could prove that Patrick Spens was only a shipmaster, of purely local fame, who was lost off Aberdour a couple of hundred years ago. The question cannot be decided, and is of slight importance.
This page most recently updated on 08-Dec-2010, 17:38:21. Return to main index
