The Alba-gloss—Or; We Read THE ANCIENT MARINER, So You Don’t Have To
by The Emigre
June 2023
A handy guide to all the marginal glosses from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s frankly rather heavy-going The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (London: Sampson Low, Son & Co., Ludgate Hill, MDCCCLVIII)
The Argument
How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.
Part I
An ancient Mariner meeteth three gallants bidden to a wedding feast, and detaineth one.
The Wedding Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale.
The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather till it reached the Line.
The Wedding Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner continueth his tale.
The ship drawn by a storm toward the south pole.
The land of ice, and of fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen.
Till a great seabird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and received with great joy and hospitality.
And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward.
The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.
Part II
His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for killing the bird of good luck.
But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus make themselves accomplices in the crime.
The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails northward, even till it reaches the Line.
The ship hath been suddenly becalmed.
And the Albatross begins to be avenged.
A spirit had followed them; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted. They are very numerous, and there is no climate or element without one or more.
The shipmates, in their sore distress, would fain throw the whole guilt on the ancient Mariner, in sign whereof they hang the dead sea-bird round his neck.
Part III
The ancient Mariner beholdeth a sign in the element afar off.
At its nearer approach, it seemeth to him to be a ship; and at a dear ransom he freeth his speech from the bonds of thirst.
A flash of joy;
And horror follows. For can it be a ship that comes onward without wind or tide?
It seemeth him but the skeleton of a ship.
And its ribs are seen as bars on the face of the setting Sun. The spectre-woman and her death-mate, and no other on board the skeleton-ship.
Like vessel, like crew!
Death and Life-in-Death have diced for the ship’s crew: she (the latter) winneth the ancient Mariner.
No twilight within the courts of the Sun.
At the rising of the Moon,
One after another,
His shipmates drop down dead.
But Life-in-Death begins her work on the ancient Mariner.
Part IV
The Wedding-Guest feareth that a spirit is talking to him.
But the ancient Mariner assureth him of his bodily life, and proceedeth to relate his horrible penance.
He despiseth the creatures of the calm.
And envieth that they should live, and so many lie dead.,
But the curse liveth for him in the eye of the dead men.
In his loneliness and fixedness he yearneth towards the journeying Moon, and the stars that still sojourn, yet still move onward: and everywhere the blue sky belongs to them, and is their appointed rest, and their native country and their own natural homes, which they enter unannounced, as lords that are certainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy at their arrival.
By the light of the Moon he beholdeth God’s creatures of the great calm.
Their beauty and their happiness.
He blesseth them in his heart.
The spell begins to break.
Part V
By grace of the holy Mother, the ancient Mariner is refreshed with rain.
He heareth sounds and seeth strange sights and commotions in the sky and the elements.
The bodies of the ship’s crew are inspired, and the ship moves on.
But not by the souls of the men, nor by demons of earth or middle air, but by a blessed troop of angelic spirits, sent down by the invocation of the guardian saint.
The lonesome spirit from the south pole carries on the ship as far as the line, in obedience to the angelic troop, but still requireth vengeance.
The Polar Spirit’s fellow demons, the invisible inhabitants of the element, take part in his wrong: and two of them relate, one to the other, that penance long and heavy for the ancient Mariner hath been accorded to the Polar Spirit who returneth southward.
Part VI
The Mariner hath been cast into a trance; for the angelic power causeth the vessel to drive northward faster than human life can endure.
The supernatural motion is retarded: the Mariner awakes, and his penance begins anew.
The curse is finally expiated;
And the ancient Mariner beholdeth his native country.
The angelic spirits leave the dead bodies.
And appear in their own forms of light.
Part VII
The Hermit of the wood.
Approacheth the ship with wonder.
The ship suddenly sinketh.
The ancient Mariner in saved in the Pilot’s boat.
The ancient Mariner earnestly entreateth the Hermit to shrieve him: and the penance of life falls on him:
And ever and anon throughout his future life an agony constraineth him to travel from land to land,
And to teach, by his own example, love and reverence to all things that God made and loveth.
