like several of the others, runs song-fashion:

"They had not saild upon the sea
A league but merely nine, O,
When wind and weit and snaw and sleit
Cam' blawin' them behin', O."

Motherwell gives the ballad in four forms, in one of them the skipper
being dubbed Sir Patrick, in another Earl Patrick, in another Young
Patrick, and in yet another Sir Andrew Wood. Jamieson's version puts
into Sir Patrick's mouth an exclamation that reflects little credit
upon his sailor character:

"O wha is this, or wha is that,
Has tald the king o' me?
For I was never a gude seaman,
Nor ever intend to be."

But with a few such trifling exceptions, the tone toward the skipper
is universally one of earnest respect and sympathy, the keynote of
every ballad being the frank, unconscious heroism of this "gude Sir
Patrick Spens." In regard to the foundation for the story, Scott
maintains that "the king's daughter of Noroway" was Margaret, known to
history as the Maid of Norway, daughter of Eric, king of Norway, and
of Margaret, daughter of Alexander III. of Scotland. This last-named
monarch died in 1285, the Maid of Norway, his yellow-haired little
granddaughter, being the heiress to his crown. The Maid of Norway
died, however, before she was of age to assume control of her
turbulent Scottish kingdom. Scott surmises, on the authority of the
ballad, that Alexander, desiring to have the little princess reared in