The Ballad of the Oysterman

This poem was about an oysterman (a fisherman who specifically fishes for oysters, not an oyster-human hybrid) and his lover, the fisherman's daughter who lived across the river from him. The story starts out with the oysterman standing outside his house on the bank thinking to himself on night when he sees the fisherman's daughter wave her handkerchief at him as a signal to come over because her parents are not at home (Holmes). The oysterman decides not to take his boat in case that the parents might see him, so, remembering the story of Leander and Hero that he read one time, he swims across the river to her (Holmes). They fool around for a while until the girl's father comes to see her, at which point the oysterman jumps into the river again to swim back to his house (Holmes). The fisherman asks his daughter was the noise was; she lies and says she threw a rock in the river (Holmes). He then spots the figure of the oysterman swimming home; she says it is a porpoise (Holmes). Unfortunately, the fisherman goes to kill the "porpoise," which is actually the oysterman, with a harpoon (Holmes). This causes the girl to faint out of grief, and the oysterman drowns in the river after being hit (Holmes). The girl dies in her coma, but the poem ends by saying that Fate changed their appearance so that they now keep an oytser shop for mermaids at the bottom of the sea (Holmes).

This poem made a very good allusion to the story of Hero and Leander, in which Hero, who is a priestess in Aphrodite's temple on one side of the Hellesponte River, lights the way every night for her lover, Leander, to swim across the river and make love to her (Marlowe). One night, however, the wind from a storm blows out Hero's lights and makes the waters rough, so Leander loses his way and drowns (Marlowe). Hero in her sorrow jumps from the tower of the temple and dies as well (Marlowe). It was very clever of Holmes to use this to bring the poem together and to foreshadow the events of it as well. A metaphor was made at the end as well, when it said that "Fate [had] metamorphosed them, in pity of their woe, and [then] they [kept] an oyster-shop for mermaids down below" (Holmes). I believe this line to be saying that they were reincarnated as oysters to be together and to make pearls for the mermaids.

I think that what the author is really trying to say, besides telling us a sad love story, is that although things do not always work out like we think they should (the two lovers die instead of getting to live with each other), everything will turn out alright in the end, even if the end is not what we expected it to be (the two lovers were reincarnated as oysters, but they were able to be together) (Holmes).

Works Cited

Holmes, Oliver Wendell. "The Ballad of the Oysterman." Yale Book of American Verse. Ed. Thomas R. Lounsbury. New Haven: Yale UP, 1912. Bartleby. Jan. 1999. Web. 31 Oct. 2010. www.bartleby.com.

Marlowe, Christopher. Hero and Leander. Classic Literature Library. Web. 31 Oct. 2010. www.classic-literature.co.uk.