The Serpent Came To Gloucester and Made a Big Impression

Before the new Disney animated feature Winnie the Pooh is a short entitled The Ballad of Nessie. This charming retro short paints the fabled Scottish sea serpent in an endearing light, which seems to be the case more often than not. While Nessie is probably the most famous of these legendary creatures, they have been spotted by sailors and coast dwellers in many parts of the world, particularly prior to the 1900s. M. T. Anderson’s The Serpent Came to Gloucester recounts the true story of the time when hundreds of residents of the Massachusetts seaside town reported seeing a sea serpent splashing in the waters of the harbor between August of 1817 and September of 1818. Appropriately, the book is narrated by an aged man relating a marvelous story to a young child, recalling the time when he was just a boy and saw the monster with his own two eyes. Hence, there’s the sense that he, like so many wizened storytellers before him, weaves in threads of the fanciful in order to make his tale more flavorful.

Anderson narrates in lyrical rhyme reminiscent of a sophisticated sea shanty. His wording is complex and poetic, but each two-page segment concludes with two lines that describe the state of the sea at that particular time. The word “sea” appears two or three times in each refrain and is accompanied by different adjectives. For instance, when the speaker suggests that the beast is merely frolicking, “frothy” and “wobbly” describe the sea, but when he speaks of the men who set out to kill it upon its return the next year, the sea becomes “murky and murderous.” The final words he uses to describe the waters are “ancient and wrinkled,” like the speaker himself, who does not reveal his age until the final stanza, though his narrative tone suggests it throughout the story.

Each verse is made up of two sets of four lines, followed by the refrain. The basic rhyme pattern is ABCB, though in some cases the first and third lines rhyme, and internal rhyme is sprinkled throughout with no particular pattern to it, catching readers by surprise when it appears. Anderson is also fond of alliteration, with the “s” serving him particularly well. In addition to the refrain, Anderson frequently uses repetition in the verses, which adds to the shanty feel. Most often this occurs as a sort of transition between stanzas. For instance, “They vowed they would drown or would stab or would stifle / The beast, if it cost them their lives. // If it cost them their lives, they would catch it, / By net or by hook or by crook.”

The rhythm is mostly consistent, faltering a bit in places, though this may be intentional in at least one case as a way to express hesitation. While it seems a bit lengthy to actually sing – twice as long as Gordon Lightfoot’s The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which always seemed pretty epic to me – it wouldn’t be too hard to set the poem to music. Just out of curiosity, I tried pairing the verses up with the tune of Phil Coulter’s Home From the Sea, and it mostly works. Again, the scansion isn’t perfect, but an undeniable potential for musicality is present.

The speaker’s sympathies lie with the creature, whose wild thrashing he interprets as playing. Other villagers react differently. Some see it as an atrocity to be feared, others a prize to be attained. While many merely join the boy in fascinated observation of the serpent from a distance, others feel that its presence merits action, and this is where the chief conflict comes in. The idea of civilization encroaching upon the splendor of nature seems to be a favorite topic of Anderson, who also wrote Me, All Alone, At the End of the World, a picture book about a boy who revels in the quiet solitude of his home in the mountains until developers threaten his way of life. An elegiac tone pervades both stories, but especially this one, as the speaker suspects that such wonders as he witnessed as a boy are slowly fading into the realm of foggy memory.

Bagram Ibatoulline, who illustrated Kate DiCamillo’s luminous Christmas book Great Joy, furnishes paintings that perfectly complement Anderson’s lyrical writing. There’s an old-fashioned look to the acrylic gouache artwork, which depicts the town, its residents, the serpent and the ever-changing sea. Seven paintings stretch across two full pages, leaving plenty of room to show the town at a glance or the expansive nature of the sea. Meanwhile, the remaining seven paintings fill one page each. The title painting and the nearly identical painting that accompanies the final sad, slightly elongated refrain are also two-page spreads.

I find Ibatoulline’s depiction of the sea itself, particularly as it relates to the sky, to be the most effective aspect of his illustrations, as he evokes a range of emotions from terror to serenity with his brushstrokes and color choices. Some of his depictions are truly harrowing. While the people are well-drawn, they fade into the background; the only figure who truly pops for me is the old man who wistfully gazes out the window as if hoping to catch one last glimpse of the elusive friend whose portrait hangs on the wall behind him. Like the little girl curled up in his lap, the reader must rely on his recollection to recapture the enchantment of that experience.

“Though I hope you shall see it, / I fear it is gone,” he laments, never suggesting that it might never have been there in the first place. The old man knows what he and so many of his fellow villagers saw. Anderson seems to side with these eye-witnesses from centuries past and even provides a list of additional reading material supporting their case in his author’s note at the end. Whether or not you believe this creature was anything more unusual than an oversized fish, set aside time to read this ancient mariner’s artful account, and you too can see the spectacular sight of the serpent swimming and slithering in the summertime sea.