Spellbinding: on Mariner, a Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Let’s get one thing straight: there is nothing wrong with shooting an albatross. The albatross was never taken commonly to be a symbol of Christian piety, nor were they “tutelary spirits” of a particular region, as Coleridge’s friend Wordsworth somewhere suggests, and as guides of a voyage they were perfectly useless. To kill one (or several) was not to declare one’s independence of nature, or of a God’s provision, and thus mount up on waxen wings, but was instead an effective way to get fresh meat at sea.