"Sumer is icumen in,/Lhude sing cuccu" as the anonymous composer of the year 1250 AD or thereabouts had it. And Martin Brennan of Cloonloo, Co Sligo, writes to say that he heard a cuckoo "repeatedly calling at his location on the shores of Lough Gara in Sligo on April 17th this year." And he saw the first willow warbler of the season, at the same place on April 1st. But on to that huge bird which inspired Coleridge to The Rime of the Ancient Mari- ner. Huge, indeed, with a wing span of six to eight feet, they seldom stray into European waters, according to that comprehensive book The Birds of Britain and Europe by Heinzel, Fitter and Parslow, available also in French. Television has made us aware of these birds through Attenborough's work. And the recent mention of The Rime has inspired Tom Nisbet, long-time correspondent of this newspaper who opens "Y", it's yourself. Attention of the albatross today invokes more satanic verses, to wit: "I met an ancient mariner/On the hills in winter time./He had just come down from an icecold ridge/And his whiskers shone with rime./The frost's a hoar, I remarked,/Feeling very clever./It's worse than that the old man cried./It's Friesian like a heifer./So never try your idle quips/On men who spend their lives on ships./They're masters of the craft at sea/Of ready wit and repartee./Well, I took him down to Fox's pub/And stood him a ball of malt./ For if a man can't take a joke/He isn't worth his salt."
The Rime was based on a dream of Coleridge's friend Cruikshank and was originally planned as a collaboration between the two friends to pay the expense of a walking tour they took with Dorothy Wordsworth in November 1797. Wordsworth suggested the shooting of the albatross and the navigation of the ship by the dead men and wrote a few lines of the poem. The Latin epigraph which Coleridge includes in this version, taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, opens: "I readily believe that there are more invisible than visible natures in the universe" but down to earth, Coleridge's poetry lent itself to the once favoured chanting by the whole class: "We were the first that ever burst/Into that silent sea". And somehow "Hold off; unhand me greybeard loon" sent everyone into fits of laughter. For those long out of class, it still is worth rereading. Y