Meg Merrilies

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1818

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Summary

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Tomb, the Moon, and the Mats o’ Rushes

Instead of books, Keats tells us, Meg reads tombstones in the graveyard (Line 8). Instead of eating, she sometimes stares “Full hard against the Moon” (Lines 15-6). She weaves garlands and mats of rushes, singing as she works (Lines 17-20). All of these activities place Meg in a long literary tradition of witches and magic women. Witches often live in graveyards—the outskirts of society—and moon-watching, weaving, and singing represent their oracular activities. Walter Scott’s character was overtly supernatural, and Keats, trained in the classics, would have also been familiar with many ancient witches who took part in these activities (e.g., Homer’s Circe, Euripides’s Medea, Lucan’s Erichtho). While Keats roots his poem primarily in Meg’s sympathetic humanity, he also hints at her potentially magical nature.

The Garlands of Woodbine and Yew

In Stanza 5, Keats describes Meg as weaving garlands of woodbine in the morning and yew in the evening. Woodbine is another name for honeysuckle, a fragrant climbing plant with sweet, edible flowers, well suited for an image of bright, happy mornings. Yew, on the other hand, is a bitter and poisonous evergreen. It has folkloric associations with death, churchyards, and cemeteries. By depicting Meg at equal ease working with cheery woodbine and gloomy yew, Keats portrays her as someone who can weather the good and bad parts of life.

This trait also makes Meg a stand-in for the art of poetry. For Keats, poetry should be at ease covering the positives and negatives of the human experience. As he wrote to a friend, Richard Woodhouse, “[Poetry] enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated” (Keats, John. The Letters of John Keats, 1814-1821, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins. Volume I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958, page 387).

Margaret Queen and the Amazons

In Line 25, Keats compares Meg to “Margaret Queen,” referring to Margaret of Anjou, the Queen of England during the War of the Roses (1455-1476) who was famed for her courage and political acumen. Walter Scott compared Meg to Margaret of Anjou in Guy Mannering (“So saying, [Meg] broke the sapling she held in her hand, and flung it into the road. Margaret of Anjou, bestowing on her triumphant foes her keen-edged malediction, could not have turned from them with a gesture more proudly contemptuous” [Scott, Walter. Guy Mannering, ed. P. D. Garside. Volume II. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1815, page 125]).

Keats describes Meg as “tall as Amazon,” too (Line 26). Though Scott does not directly compare Meg to an Amazon, in the Mannering novel she is physically impressive as well: “[…] her appearance made Mannering start. She was a full six feet high, wore a man’s great-coat over the rest of her dress […] and in all points of equipment, except her petticoats, seemed rather masculine than feminine” (Scott, Walter. Guy Mannering, ed. P. D. Garsid, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999, 14).

Queen Margaret and the Amazons are both powerful feminine figures who excelled in arenas dominated by men. Margaret of Anjou ruled England in her husband’s stead during his frequent bouts of insanity; the Amazons bravely rode into battle in a time when most women were relegated to the household. Keats seems to have powerful women on the mind in “Meg Merrilies.” These comparisons position Meg as a valiant, noble figure, despite her lowly circumstances in life.