#rime of the ancient mariner

[whore-ticulturist]

Damn imagine having to wear one of those as a necklace

hey did you know how big an albatross was because I

VERY

fucking

did not

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

Illustration for "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" – Gustave Doré // The Albatross – Taylor Swift

[runawaymarbles]

[ltwilliammowett]

Ship in stormy sea, scene from 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' by S.T. Coleridge, drawn by Gustave Dore, published by Harper und Brothers, New York, 1876

[lionofchaeronea]

"I had done a hellish thing" (illustration for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), Gustave Doré, 1876

[heavymetal]

[pulpsandcomics2]

It was wonderous cold

Gustave Dore illustration for Rime of the Ancient Mariner

[nerdsandbabyteeth]

From A levels time

[broke-on-books]

in the club with the cursed albatross of shame slung around my neck

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Iron Maiden – Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

[o-wild-west-wind]

thinking about this post on how Ed’s impossible bird alludes to the albatross and now all I can think about is how these past 3 episodes feel like a play on the Rime of the Ancient Mariner…he’s crashing weddings to make sure everyone knows that he’s the mariner who shot the albatross, who cursed his luck and life; but what’s interesting is he also seems to be his own albatross. it’s his own weight hanging around his neck. and the act curses his crew—he kills the part of himself that guides sailors safely—and they are now forced to turn on him, their souls sucked away by his curse. and he’s ready to reconcile the guilt of it all via his own death, he wants to do so, but he just cannot seem to die:

“Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide wide sea! / And never a saint took pity on / My soul in agony.

The many men, so beautiful! / And they all dead did lie: / And a thousand thousand slimy things / Lived on; and so did I.”

but then finally, in the darkest night of the greatest carnage, he’s suddenly reminded that he’s not alone like he thought—there’s life in the sea, and it’s beautiful and fiery-warm. and it’s the moment he feels love again that the albatross finally frees itself from his neck and falls into the water. it’s the feeling of love that breaks the curse.

…is this something? can’t tell if this is a thing or if i’m charlie day meme-ing myself this show has broken me

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

Illustration for "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" – Gustave Doré // The Tortured Poets Department (The Albatross Variant) – Taylor Swift

[wronghands1]

[no-living-thing-within]

"Instead of the cross, the Albatross

About my neck was hung."

-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Albatross, 1912.

[falseficus]

this is just like what happened to my good friend the ancient mariner

[three--rings]

OFMD and Rime of the Ancient Mariner

I have to shout out @nonsensicalramblings79 who wrote their own analysis of the connections. It's very worth reading. But I want to talk less about symbols and more just bits of the poem that vibe with the season so far.

The "impossible bird" that Ed references in ep 1 immediately made me think of an albatross, because there was a sailor legend that albatrosses always flew across the ocean and never stopped on land.

And because there's a strong connection between sailors and albatrosses, most famously as a result of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834).

So because the other post linked above didn't quote the actual poem much, that's what I'd like to do to point out WHY it feels like this is an actual connection.

First of all, the poem takes place At a Wedding, in which the Ancient Mariner is a fairly unwelcome guest. We learn at the end that he is cursed for the rest of his life to forcibly spill out his story to people when he sees someone who he's Meant to tell. So he's talking to a Wedding Guest in the middle of a wedding party.

It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May'st hear the merry din.'

This is how it begins. The mariner has a "long grey beard and glittering eye." Okay, Ed-core. He's at a wedding and stops this bridegroom's next of kin, who complains why are you making a fuss, the party is going on right now, they're going to hear you. Definitely evoking Ed crashing the wedding in ep 1.

So the Mariner was on a ship, a storm came and blew them off course, then they saw an albatross in the sky and were able to get free of the ice. I find it interesting that the albatross:

It ate the food it ne'er had eat, And round and round it flew... And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo!

The albatross ate the food it had never eaten, it flew around and came everyday when they called it for food and play. This evokes Ed and Stede in their honeymoon days on the Revenge, Ed trying new food, them playing different roles and eating good meals...

Then more fog and ice came and so the Mariner shoots the albatross. Everyone is happy about it because they think it brought bad weather until they become becalmed. We get the most famous lines of the poem:

Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.

That has nothing to do with OFMD it's just Good Poem. I do find the next stanza evocative:

The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.

Very Kraken-y. It will come up again. The crew decides the Mariner did this to them by killing the albatross that had been their friend and good luck. They tie the bird around his neck as a mark of his crime.

It goes on to describe them all dying of thirst and how then Death comes on them and all the men on the ship, 200 of them, die EXCEPT for the Mariner. All of them die looking him directly in the eye, cursing him in death.

Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony. The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.

So I said the slimy things would be back, the Mariner is relating himself to them, again like Ed and the Kraken. Here we get to the part of the poem that is about the Mariner's inability to die. He's been cursed and so he cannot die, despite his desperate situation. This is where it really resonates with Ed in the early eps of S2. He desperately wants to die. He feels he is a curse on humanity, which he acts out in his violence, and also a curse on his crew, who he is ruining. He wants to die but cannot, despite all his attempts at getting someone to kill him.

An orphan's curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die.

He tries to pray, but his heart is "dry as dust" and he cannot. But after seven days he starts watching the snakes in the water and enjoys the beauty of the world around him, and the albatross falls off of his neck and he can pray. He prays and basically a spirit or God or Mary answers him. It rains and he drinks water and then the corpses of the crew, which have not rotted at all, stand up inhabited by spirits and begin working the ship again. Wind carries it back to his home.

Yeah zombie sailors, dead men crewing a ship, WAY before Pirates of the Carribean.

So anyway, eventually he hears two voices speaking on the air.

'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man? By him who died on cross, With his cruel bow he laid full low The harmless Albatross. The spirit who bideth by himself In the land of mist and snow, He loved the bird that loved the man Who shot him with his bow.' The other was a softer voice, As soft as honey-dew: Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.'

I find the lines about the spirit who loved the albatross, who loved this man, who shot him. So the Mariner killed something who loved him, and that was his sin that brought the curse on him. But now he's done penance and will do more and that's why he can be saved.

Could make a connection to Ed shooting Izzy, but also it feels like Stede is also the albatross, but rather than Ed killing him, the albatross failed to love him? IDK Maybe Stede is the spirit who loved Ed the albatross and Blackbeard killed the Ed that Stede loved....that fits best. And it's the spirit who saved him ultimately. As Stede in mermaid form saves Ed.

Getting to that, the boat approaches land.

Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed The light-house top I see? Is this the hill? is this the kirk? Is this mine own countree?

Lighthouse imagery, of course. So a boat approaches this ship, with a "Good Hermit" in it. The ship however basically cracks in half and sinks right in the bay, and they fish the Mariner our of the water and think he is dead, but he wakes up and scares the crap out of them. Then he starts to row for shore.

'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see, The Devil knows how to row.'

They call him The Devil, which I point out because Ed calls himself that.

Basically he tells his whole story and here is where we learn he's compelled to tell his story when he meets the right people. He closes by talking about how alone alone alone he was and how he appreciates being with people and walking to church with them, going to a wedding. And also learned how important it is to cherish all creatures in the world.

And finally the Wedding Guest who heard this whole story:

He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn: A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.

IDK I just like this image of being sadder and wiser when you wake up in the morning, which again feels evocative to how Ed is going to wake up maybe?

IDK. I don't think we can say "oh clearly they had this poem in mind while writing these episodes", but they feel to me like they were written with this somewhere in the back of their minds. The reference to the impossible bird feels very much like a literary reference to an albatross, which would immediately conjure the "what happens if you kill an albatross" from this poem.

If you're still reading, hope you enjoyed this little journey into poetry. I'd encourage you to read the whole thing. It's very very weird and unique.