LESSON 14
THE SANDS O' DEE

Charles Kingsley (b.1819, d.1875) was born at Holne, Devonshire, England. He took his bachelor's degree at Cambridge in 1842, and soon after entered the Church. His writings are quite voluminous, including sermons, lectures, novels, fairy tales, and poems, published in book form, besides numerous miscellaneous sermons and magazine articles. He was an earnest worker for bettering the condition of the working classes, and this object was the basis of most of his writings. As a lyric poet he has gained a high place. The “Saint's Tragedy” and “Andromeda” are the most pretentious of his poems, and “Alton Locke” and “Hypatia” are his best known novels.

1. “O Mary, go and call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

And call the cattle home,

Across the sands o' Dee! ”

The western wind was wild and dank with foam,

And all alone went she.

2. The creeping tide came up along the sand,

And o'er and o'er the sand,

And round and round the sand,

As far as eye could see;

The blinding mist came down and hid the land—

And never home came she.

3. Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair? —

A tress o' golden hair,

O' drowned maiden's hair,

Above the nets at sea.

Was never salmon yet that shone so fair

Among the stakes on Dee.

4. They rowed her in across the rolling foam,

The cruel, crawling foam,

The cruel, hungry foam,

To her grave beside the sea;

But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,

Across the sands O' Dee.

STUDY GUIDE

A. Word Definition

1.dank:disagreeably dank and cold.

2.blinding:preventing sight.

3.tress:long lock of hair,especially a woman's.

4.salmon:large,edible fish with orange-pink flesh.

5.boatmen:men travelling in boats.

B. Comprehension Questions

1. Find the river Dee on a map. What part of Scotland is it in?

2. Why does Mary go out when the weather is so bad?

3. “The Sands of Dee” has been set to music and is also a song. Find this on the Internet. Do you like it? Why or why not?

4. Scotland is part of which continent?

a. Africa

b. Asia

c. North America

d. Europe

5. Was Mary's family was rich or poor? Explain.

6. Would you like to read other writing by Charles Kingsley? Why or why not?

7. Label these sentences true or false.

a. In Scotland people speak a dialect of English. _____

b. Mary was an old woman. _____

c. All rivers flow into the ocean. _____

8. Do you think Mary would have died if she was a modern woman? Explain.

C. Writing Work

Write a poem similar to “The Sands of Dee” in which each verse has six lines.