page_title: The Inchcape Rock
section_title: Biographical background and publication
hierarchical_section_title: The Inchcape Rock / Biographical background and publication
caption_attribution_description: Bell Rock Lighthouse
context_page_description: "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 Aberbrothok to install a warning bell on Inchcape, a notorious sandstone reef about 11 miles 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.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: Bell Rock Lighthouse was built on the Inchcape reef in the early 19th century, and is named after the legend of the Abbot's bell
exif: {}