Editorial note
The aim of the elemental edition is to make the poems accessible to the largest variety of readers, which involves modernizing spelling and punctuation as well as adding basic glosses. Spelling and punctuation reflect current standard American usage; punctuation highlights syntax which might otherwise be obscure. Outmoded but still familiar word forms (“thou,” “‘tis,” “hold’st”) are not modernized, and we do not modernize grammar when the sense remains legible. After a brief headnote aimed at offering a “way in” to the poem’s unique qualities and connections with other verse by Pulter or her contemporaries, the edition features a minimum of notes and interpretative framing to allow more immediate engagement with the poem. Glosses clarify synonyms or showcase various possible meanings in Pulter’s time. Other notes identify named people and places or clarify obscure material. We rely (without citation) primarily on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the Oxford Reference database, and the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible. When we rely on Alice Eardley’s edition of Pulter’s work, we cite her text generally (“Eardley”); other sources are cited in full. The result is an edition we consider a springboard for further work on Pulter’s poetry. See full conventions for this edition here.
Headnote
By offering examples of how diminutive and seemingly insignificant things (flies, worms, clothes) can overcome even the mightiest people, this emblem warns against the vanity of human overconfidence and pride (vices that Pulter sees in the tyrannies of English politics of the day). The central conceit is of a magisterial ship able to battle and survive the worst ocean storms; Pulter develops this conventional metaphor of the ship of state by asking the reader to imaginatively fuse two stories of sailors battling the elements: Aeneas, in conflict with the goddess Juno when fleeing Troy, and King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England), who believed witches tried to wreck him and his queen at sea as an attack on royal power. As it turns out, small suckerfish–invisibly glued to the keel of a boat–could accomplish what powerful tempests at sea could not: halt the ship in its tracks. The poem’s central image of an anchored ship morphs at this point in the poem into numerous sailing vessels from Roman and Greek histories, all of which succumbed to the unexpected power of a something lower down on the food chain.Line number 4
Gloss note
The first eight lines of this poem describe how Aeneas sought to sail away from the defeated city of Troy after the Trojan war. Virgil (at the opening of in his Aeneid) narrates how the goddess Juno disrupted Aeneas’s voyage by means of storms created by Aeolus (the wind god), before Neptune (god of the ocean and sympathetic to Aeneas as the son of his niece, Venus) intervened. The Roman Emperor Julius Caesar traced his lineage to Ascanius, son of Aeneas.Line number 7
Gloss note
four joint rulers; here, the winds from the four cardinal directionsLine number 7
Gloss note
discords, disputesLine number 8
Gloss note
Of whichLine number 9
Gloss note
a mythical bird, formerly a daughter of Aelous, who would calm the seas when the halcyon brooded over her nest at sea; also, the kingfisher birdLine number 10
Gloss note
steady unidirectional wind, especially at seaLine number 10
Gloss note
at rest; tranquilLine number 11
Gloss note
Folklore had it that witches (“hags”) from the region of Finland would sell wind to mariners. See James George Frazier, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, (New York: Macmillan, 1923), vol. 1, p. 81.Line number 13
Gloss note
James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England, claimed descent from Fergus, the first king of Scotland. In this and the lines that follow, Pulter alludes to the fact that when James I travelled back to Scotland (emblemized by the River Tweed) from Denmark with his bride, Anne (here called an “elf”), they encountered storms that James attributed to the devices of witchcraft. In Scottish witchcraft trials in the 1590s, some women were charged with attempting to destroy the monarchy by sinking his ship.Line number 15
Gloss note
Boreas was the name given by the Greeks to the north wind. Here Pulter might be alluding to the fact that Ulysses received the winds in a leather bag from Aeolus, the wind god; but she fuses it into the story of the Northern witches who reputedly caused King James of Scotland’s ships to go awry.Line number 17
Gloss note
noble, statelyLine number 18
Gloss note
halt; remain fixedLine number 21
Gloss note
a sandbank in the sea rendering the water shallow and dangerousLine number 23
Gloss note
Julius Caesar. Pulter puts Julius Caesar into a story that her source (Pliny) attributed to other Roman leaders (Mark Antony and Roman Emperor Caius, or Caligula). See Pliny, The History of The World, trans. Philemon Holland (London, 1634), Book 32, Ch. 1: pp. 425-26.Line number 24
Gloss note
andLine number 24
Gloss note
(Latin for “delay); a fish with a sucker for attaching to the undersides of sea creatures or ships, also called an Echeneis. Numerous emblem books and literary texts of the day described ships delayed or halted by small sea creatures. See E. W. Gudger, “Some Old Time Figures of the Shipholder, Echeneis or Remora, Holding the Ship,” Isis (1930),13:2, pp. 340-52.Line number 25
Gloss note
In the margin left of this line, a note refers readers to Pliny’s ninth book, chapter 2, folio 249; Chapter 25 (rather than Chapter 2) of the ninth book of Philemon Holland’s translation of Pliny’s natural history states that fish called echeneis (or “stay-ships”) “chanced upon a time to cleave fast unto a ship, bringing messengers from Periander, with commission to geld all the noblemen’s sons in Gnidos, and stayed it a long time.” Pliny, The History of the World, trans. Philemon Holland (London, 1634), p. 249.Line number 26
Gloss note
Periander, an ancient tyrant in Corinth, had three hundred sons of his enemies castrated as punishment for their killing of his son.Line number 27
Gloss note
a Greek city in Asia Minor, in modern Turkey; “Gnidos” in the manuscriptLine number 29
Gloss note
A common superstition was that a wish made on a shooting star would come true.Line number 32
Gloss note
In the biblical Book of Esther, the Jewish Mordecai is the cousin of Queen Esther. His refusal to bow to Haman, the king’s chief advisor, leads Haman to plan a massacre of the Jews and Mordecai’s hanging; Haman, however, winds up hanged on the gallows he built for Mordecai.Line number 34
Gloss note
Herod Agrippa I “was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost” because “he gave not God the glory” (Acts 12:23).Line number 35
Gloss note
Legend had it that the twelfth century Pope Adrian IV died because he drank water with a fly in it and choked. Pulter resituates this incident as happening to one of the popes named Alexander.Line number 36
Gloss note
The second wife of Jason, whose first wife, Medea, douses Creusa’s garment (the “mantle” of the next line) with a flammable liquid which burns Creusa to death. Sorry, but there are no notes associated with
any currently displayed witness.
Comparison Tool
Sources 
