Now, this beautiful fancy of Kingsley's—and how beautiful it is can only be realized by a reading of the whole story—is based upon fact, as all beautiful fancies must be.
The fundamental idea of Kingsley's picture is that of a fruitful and beneficent mother. And Mother Carey is just the Mater Cara of the medieval sailors. Our Mother Carey's chickens are the 'Birds of the Holy Virgin,' of the South of Europe, the 'Oiseaux de Nôtre Dame' of the French seamen.
One reason for associating the petrel with the Holy Mother may possibly have been found in its supposed sleeplessness. The bird was believed never to rest, to hatch its eggs under its wings, and to be incessantly flying to and fro on the face of the waters on messages of warning to mariners. Even to this day sailors believe that the albatross, the aristocratic relative of the petrel, sleeps on the wing; and the power of the albatross, for good and evil, readers of the Ancient Mariner will remember. We say for good and evil, because opinion fluctuated. Thus:
'At length did cross an albatross,
Through the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.'
When the mariner with his crossbow did shoot the albatross, the crew said:
'I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work them woe;
For all averred I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
"Ah, wretch!" said they, "the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow!"'
And once more, when the weather cleared, they changed:
'Then all averred I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist;
"'Twas right," said they, "such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist!"'
Coleridge got his idea from Wordsworth, who got it from a passage in Shelvocke's voyages, where a long spell of bad weather was attributed to an albatross following the ship.