Discussion. 1. What stanzas picture Scotland and the feeling her people have for the music of the bagpipe? 2. What contrasts show how universal this feeling is? 3. In the first stanza, what is this music said to be like? 4. What do you know about the bagpipe that makes this comparison especially apt? 5. The poem tells a story; with what stanzas does the story begin and end? 6. What relation to this story have the first two stanzas? 7. What do you know of the Indian Mutiny that helps you to understand this story? 8. Who first heard the sound of the pipes? 9. How is this accounted for? 10. What did this sound mean to her? 11. Read the stirring lines that give the spirit of the martial music of the pipes. 12. Why did the piper change to the air “Auld Lang Syne”? What stanzas picture the feeling of those who heard this music? 13. What people wear the “tartan”? The “turban”? 14. What is the most interesting point in the story? 15. Does the story make clear the poet’s reason for saying that the “sweetest strain” the pipes ever played was at Lucknow?

Phrases

SPANISH WATERS

JOHN MASEFIELD

Spanish waters, Spanish waters, you are ringing in my ears,

Like a slow sweet piece of music from the [gray forgotten years];

Telling tales, and beating tunes, and [bringing weary thought] to me

Of the sandy beach at Muertos, where I would that I could be.