Colonel Martin
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1938. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2034, and this site is served partly from American servers. So for now we give the notes without the full text; it will appear here in 2034.
It begins: The Colonel went out sailing
In brief
SummaryA Galway ballad of a betrayed husband who gives his damages away.
A ballad in eight short sections. The Colonel, a travelled man, comes home to find his wife gone and suspects she is with a lover. Disguised as a pedlar with a pack of fine jewellery from a Galway shop, he talks his way into a rich man's house, follows the maid upstairs in soft slippers and finds his wife in the rich man's bed. A judge awards him three kegs of gold in damages, and he has his servant Tom scatter it through the town. The gunmen hired to kill him refuse, because he gave everything to the poor. Tom, who kept none, ends up living off seaweed.
Lines to remember
The Colonel went out sailing.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 9The empty room
The Colonel has sailed the world and speaks every tongue. Asking what a man is worth without a wife, he sails home, lifts the latch and finds the room upstairs empty. The refrain, that he went out sailing, closes every section.
Lines 10 to 18Suspicion
He admits he kept his wife much in the country and much alone. She may still be there, or in town; he suspects he will find her in a young man's bed. The voice is wry rather than raging.
Lines 19 to 27The pedlar's disguise
He swaps clothes with a pedlar, buys the grandest jewellery in a Galway shop, and packs it where the thread and needles should be. With a thong round his hand he hitches the pack on his back, a folk-tale disguise.
Lines 28 to 36At the rich man's door
At the rich man's house the maid says her mistress is still in bed and cannot see such things, though she has never seen jewellery so fine. He tells her to take it all to her mistress and lays it in her hand.
Lines 37 to 45Caught in bed
He follows the maid up the stairs, cleverly wearing slippers so as not to be heard, runs ahead at the top and finds his wife and the rich man in bed together. The ballad reports the discovery flatly, with no speech from anyone.
Lines 46 to 54Gold for the town
At the Assize Court the judge awards him three kegs of gold. Instead of keeping it, the Colonel tells his man Tom to load it on an ass and cart and throw it about every part of the town.
Lines 55 to 63The gunmen refuse
The rich man has paid men with pistols to wait at every street corner and shoot the Colonel. Instead they throw down their guns, swearing they could never kill a man who had done all that for the poor.
Lines 64 to 72Tom's reward
The Colonel asks Tom whether he kept any gold. Tom never thought of it, and the Colonel's curse, that he should want before he dies, comes true. The narrator's grandfather saw Tom scraping a living from seaweed on the shore, a sting in the tale.
Themes
Honour and generosity
The Colonel turns his humiliation into a public gift. By scattering his damages through the town he wins the loyalty of the poor, and even the hired gunmen will not touch him. The ballad admires a grand, careless gesture more than the money itself.
Folk memory
The poem is told as local legend, handed down: the narrator's "own grand-dad" saw the end of the story. The disguise, the rich villain and the gunmen who change their minds belong to folk tale. Yeats presents the story as something remembered and sung in the west of Ireland.
Irony
The ending undercuts the heroics. Tom, the faithful servant who did exactly as he was told, is left poor, and his master shows him no mercy. The steady refrain, returning after every event, adds a note of detachment, as if the Colonel is always already somewhere else.
Context
The poem was first published in New Poems (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1938), among several ballads Yeats wrote in his last years in the manner of popular street songs.
The story is usually linked to Richard Martin of Ballynahinch in Connemara, a Galway landowner and politician remembered as "Humanity Dick", who is said to have won large damages in court from his wife's lover and given the money to the poor. Yeats reshapes the tale freely as folk legend.
Form
Eight numbered sections of nine lines each: eight lines of ballad metre, alternating four and three beats and rhyming loosely on the even lines, then the refrain line about the Colonel sailing. The fixed refrain gives the tale the rhythm of a sung ballad and marks each section off as a scene.