The Inchcape Rock

"The Inchcape Rock" is a ballad written by English poet Robert Southey. Published in 1802, it tells the story of a 14th-century attempt by the Abbot of Arbroath ("Aberbrothock") to install a warning bell on Inchcape, a notorious sandstone reef about 11 miles (18 km) off the east coast of Scotland. The poem tells how the bell was removed by a pirate, who subsequently perished on the reef while returning to Scotland in bad weather some time later.

Like many of Southey's ballads "The Inchcape Rock" describes a supernatural event, but its basic theme is that those who do bad things will ultimately be punished accordingly and poetic justice done.

Southey wrote the poem between 1796 and 1798 for The Morning Post, but it was not published until 1802. His inspiration was the legend of a pirate who removed a bell on Inchcape placed there by the Abbot of Arbroath to warn mariners of the reef. The poem was reprinted in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1810, published in 1812. In a letter to his maternal uncle Herbert Hill, dated 16 August 1812, Southey tells how "The Inchcape Rock" had "lain uncorrected among my papers for the last ten years", until "some unknown person ... thought proper to touch [it] up & transmit [it] for insertion".

The poem is included in the third volume of Southey's The Poetical Works of Robert Southey (1823), volume 3, where it is prefaced by a quotation from John Stoddart's Remarks on Local Scenery and Manners in Scotland (1801), which begins "An old writer mentions a curious tradition that may be worth quoting" before going on to the relate the tale. Southey added a footnote suggesting that his own source may have been a Brief Description of Scotland (1633), written by someone identified only as J. M.

The poem consists of 17 quatrains written in rhyming couplets. It begins by describing how the bell installed by the abbot was attached to a buoy, so it only rang when the Inchcape Rock was under water and the buoy was floating.

The bell is cut down by a pirate known as Sir Ralph the Rover and dropped into the sea, for reasons the poem does not explain. After its removal Ralph says, "The next who comes to the Rock, Won’t bless the Abbot of Aberbrothok". Some time later Ralph's own ship founders on the rock while he is attempting to negotiate his way back to Scotland in bad weather, laden with booty. In classic 19th-century Romantic style, the ship sinks dramatically as Ralph hears the Devil summoning him to Hell by ringing the bell he had removed:

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