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Robert Southey’s epic poem to have rare airing

Norman Atkinson by The Inchcape Bell painting by James A Aitken.
Norman Atkinson by The Inchcape Bell painting by James A Aitken.

A 200-year-old poem about Arbroath, the Devil, and the deep blue sea will be given a special airing for a National Poetry Day audience.

Published in 1802, The Inchcape Rock follows the legends that the 14th Century abbot of Aberbrothock installed a warning bell on the notorious Inchcape sandstone reef.

According to folklore, seafarers blessed the abbot when they heard the bell ring, and thanked him for saving them from danger.

Robert Southey’s morality tale tells how a pirate named Sir Ralph the Rover cut the bell from its moorings and dropped it in to the North Sea, but drowned after hitting the rock himself on a later visit, hearing the Devil ring the bell as he met his watery doom.

Historian Norman Atkinson will give an illustrated reading of the “fantastic” ballad, once a popular text in schools which was recited at celebrations, at the Signal Tower Museum in town.

A retired Angus Council cultural services manager, Mr Atkinson was awarded an OBE last year for service to the community, and said National Poetry Day is an opportunity to keep “an important Scottish poem” alive.

He said: “It was considered as one of the big ballads of the day and I first heard it when I went to Inverbrothock School.

“Southey wasn’t as well-known as Wordsworth but he was poet laureate.

“As well as a lot of more dramatic, high-brow poetry, he did seem to like doing things like children’s stories.

“What a lot of people don’t know is that he was the first person to write down the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

“Maybe the Inchcape is one of these lighter stories.

“He must have come across the story and thought this is a cracker.”