"Inchcape Rock" by Robert Southey is based on a Scottish folktale about a fourteenth-century monk, the Abbot of Aberbrothok, and a pirate, Sir Ralph the Rover. It follows the traditional conventions of the ballad genre in having a simple narrative line, strong moral, and clearly delineated flat characters. The poem does not portray the psychology of the characters or give many details about them, nor does it allow for any moral ambiguities.
Inchcape Rock is an actual reef in the North Sea that is fully submerged at high tide and a major hazard for mariners. According to the legend, the Abbot of Aberbrothok placed a bell on a buoy attached to the reef that would ring, alerting seafarers to the unseen hazard. When people heard the ringing of the bell, they would bless the name of the Abbot. All we really know about the Abbot is that he is morally good, well-liked, and the head of a monastery.
In contrast to the good Abbot, Sir Ralph the Rover is an evil pirate who plunders shipwrecks off the Scottish coast. He deliberately sinks the bell so that mariners, who expect to hear the bell if they get close to the reef, will actually be wrecked on the reef. His evil actions damn his soul, and rather than the bell acting as a blessing for him, he imagines it as a sign of the Devil.
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