Folklore A Mother 39;s Love Full Movie

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Ithas also been bad luck to kill an albatross, a superstition at the heart of the 1798 poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834). On the other hand, cormorants were considered good omens by Scandinavians, who believed that they were the spirits of loved ones lost at sea. (Koger 316)

One of the more enduring examples of nautical folklore involves ghost ships manned by ghostly crews, the sighting of which is traditionally regarded as an omen of doom. Stories of phantom ships have been told since humanity first took to the sea, but it is in the story of Captain Van der Decken and The Flying Dutchmen, however, that we find the best-known form of the legend. Some researchers state that the legend of The Flying Dutchman was fabricated by the British to expose Dutch morals as evil and god-forsaken as a retaliation against the Dutch East India Company (VOC). During the 17th and 18th centuries, the British and the Dutch competed fiercely on the high seas, a situation that led to three Dutch-British wars in the course of the 17th century. There are versions of The Flying Dutchman legend in French, English, and German, all with slightly different details. The legend can be traced back to the 17th century but the fullest version of the legend that we know today is based on 19th-century literature.

At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, ghost ships had already featured in English literature. In 1826, Edward Fitzball wrote a play called The Flying Dutchman, and in 1837 Frederick Marryat published a novel called The Phantom Ship.

After seven years, the contract came to an end, and the whole ship was taken over by the Devil. Now The Flying Dutchman is sailing the seven seas for eternity, without ever entering a harbour. The ship is always sailing with full sails, be it with or against the wind.

From that day until this Van der Decken has sailed his Flying Dutchmen round the seas of the world, sending ships on the wrong course and terrifying seamen. As time passed, he gathered a crew of all the worst sea tyrants, all cursed to sail at his side. Now he is condemned to sail until doomsday in a ship crewed by skeletons, as he turns an hourglass to watch the sands of eternity slowly trickle past. (Archibald 109-110)

This Breton legend of deathless punishment was collected by Elvire de Cerny in 1859 from an aged sailor and reported in the Revue des traditions populaires. It belongs to the class of Flying Dutchman legends, but takes the story to an even darker place. Though at first glance it seems shockingly lurid, it must be remembered that the authentic history of the sea raiders of the Barbary States and of the Spanish Main furnished many an example of fiendishness equal to that of this story.

The story is the greatest of soul mysteries, the most tragic story of the sea, mother of tragedies. Music, painting, and literature have been enriched by its inspiration, and so long as the sea remains untamed, the idea of the wandering soul, shut forever within ghostly bulwarks, beating in vain towards friendly ports and pounding for centuries through the wrack of the ocean must stir profoundly the imagination of man. The essential elements of the story, as of all legends of The Flying Dutchman type, are the phantom ship and the deathless punishment. (Bassett 46)

An autumn gale gathered its forces and before warning swept into a torrential rain. Night was falling in the little town that sits with her ancient feet in the sea, and in the twilight the heavy drops that beat upon her roofs and poured in torrents down her cobbled streets shone with the dull brilliancy of metal. Upon a side street near the fish market a small house, with high-peaked roof and gabled windows heavily thatched, challenged the torrents with an ancient sea lantern which swung sturdily and unwinking in the tumult.

Three figures in oilskins, their aged backs bent against the wind, their sticks clattering noisily upon the cobbles, halted beneath the lantern and entered through the low door. The firelight within and the rays of a swinging lamp flickered upon the smoked rafters of the little room and upon the deep-lined faces of a dozen quiet old men and a round-face young fisherman. The smoke of their pipes swayed and drifted above their heads. At their backs, the leaded windows shook with the might of the wind and the impact of the rain and the roar of the sea.

As the door closed behind the three men, and they had hung their dripping oilskins upon the hooks behind the door and drawn off their heavy sea boots, they joined the circle by the fire. It was a time for stories. Pipe smoke gathered so thickly in the air that the figures of the old sailors seemed like shadowy spirits wreathed in the ghostly clouds from their pipes. The stories started commonly enough, but as the night wore on and their corporeal bodies faded into eerie smoke, and the tangible violence of the storm hushed away into mystic voices of sea and wind, so the stories of these old men of the sea shifted sensibly from the solid ground of physical experience to the tenuous world of apparitions and legend.

Alone and crippled, but still resolute and buoyant, drifting to leeward through the long night the solitary hull rolled away into the darkness. Day after day, and through many a night, the lonely brig drifted on her solitary way at the mercy of wind and wave. By day, the fin of a shark gleamed alongside; by night, wan phosphorescent lights flitted along her decks, and aloft from spar to spar, and in her stifled cabins the death-dew gathered white and damp.

Slowly, the currents set her to the westward till she approached the Algerian coast. A sail crept out of the morning haze to meet her, one of that fierce band of cutthroats who haunt the darker lanes of oceans and lurk in the deep shadows beyond the harbour lights. She was an Arab felucca, whose graceful sweeping lines glistened in the sun beneath the splendid sweep of birdlike lateen. Slipping to the windward like a gull, her pirate captain hove alongside the desolate brig and hailed her. No sounds came back save the creak of yards in their slings and the hollow voice of idle blocks. At once a score of crew leaped aboard her, burst her hatches and fought each other for the plunder in the poor sea chests of the lost crew. But though the plunder in the mouldering cabin was worth but little, the plunderers were delighted to find the ship sound and seaworthy, and they at once decided to stay aboard her, leaving a few of their comrades to sail the felucca. The strongest and handsomest ruffian of them all was their captain, a man guilty of all crimes, and his name was Dahul. Even his own men dreaded him, and believed that his reckless prowess and contempt of danger were due to an alliance with the devil. Under his orders, new canvas was bent onto the bare yards, fresh rigging rove, and a hot fire blazed in the unused galley.

The big ship was sighted one fine morning in that sparkling sea that lies between Gibraltar and the Azores. Her billowy canvas and spotless deck shone in the summer sun, and her polished brass glistened peacefully in the shadow of her awnings. Her captain marked the approach of the brig through his glass and drew no ill augury from the approach of a merchant brig under a peaceful flag. Not until two armed boats dashed from under her lee and a solid shot crashed into his hull did he prepare for defence. Before the crew of the big ship could get to quarters, Dahul at the head of his men boarded from her lee fore-chains. With cutlass and pistol the pirates cut down the surprised crew before they could arm themselves. Not a man asked for quarter and not one was spared, including her officers, whom Dahul caused to be bound hand and foot and hanged from their own yardarms. The dead and dying sailors were cast into the sea from the blood-stained decks they had so lately trod, and the pirates rushed below to the booty which they knew a big ship must contain.

Breaking the cabin door, they came upon a scene which would have softened any but these hardened ruffians, whose lives had been full of plunder and violence. There in an agony of fear they found a Spanish family, with a black-robed priest, calm and resolute, quieting their fears and praying in a firm voice that they might be delivered from their peril. The summer sun shone from the open port on the face of a mother whose tears fell upon the child she strained to her breast; on the startled black eyes of a beautiful girl of eighteen or twenty years who clutched despairingly at her father, a tall Spanish merchant facing the pirates unarmed but like a lion at bay.

With brutal exaltation Dahul ordered them all dragged upon deck, while his men broke open chests and lockers and rioted in the profusion and variety of plunder from overseas they found aboard. Golden ornaments and precious silver miniatures from Cathay rolled about the decks, and the rich silks of Amoy fell disregarded from the ransacked chests. By the rail stood Dahul, pointing to this silver trinket and that ivory charm as his own portion and demanding that it be laid at his feet.

The priest, gazing with terror upon this scene of riot and brutality, and fearing that the next mood might involve his charges in some bloody carnival of riot and excess, taking new courage from his faith and from his extremity, approached Dahul with such fortitude and calmness as he could muster. With firm words, he besought the pirate captain to be satisfied with the golden trinkets and the rich fabrics which had fallen to his lot, and to avoid the wrath of the church and the judgement of God by sparing the lives of the unhappy passengers who had fallen into his hands.

The great yards moaned aloft with the pitch and roll of the vessel, and her blood-stained planks seemed to take up and swell the cry of agony of the priest who poured forth all his soul in his last appeal to his God. Dahul blanched and sprang to his feet in alarm as the priest ended and out of a darkened sky a mighty voice, heard above wind and wave, thundered in his ears from he knew not whence:

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