the women awaiting the arrival of their men describe an experience common to any dangerous enterprise in peacetime or in war, and as old as the Bible. Historicity William H. Matchett considers the ballad probably to be fiction. The events of the ballad are similar to, and may chronicle, an actual event: In 1290 the bringing home of the Scottish heir to the throne, the seven-year-old Margaret, Maid of Norway was being conveyed across the North Sea to Scotland, when she took sick and died. Her mother, Margaret was married to Eric II of Norway in the summer of 1281. She was conducted to the wedding in Bergen by a number of knights and nobles, who were drowned on the return voyage. The name "Patrick Spens" has no historical record, and, like many of the heroes of such ballads, is probably an invention, although some historians believe that he was actually Sir Patrick Vans of Barnbarroch. Vans was the original ambassador sent to negotiate the marriage between James VI and Anne of Denmark, and accompanied James VI when he set out during tempestuous weather in October 1589 to bring home his bride, who had been driven back to the coast of Norway by storms. It was Thomas Finlayson Henderson’s theory that the ballad was most likely based on this voyage. The opening lines refer to a king who is located in Dunfermline where historically there was a royal residence, Malcolm's Tower. Earl's Knowle on Papa Stronsay is traditionally thought to be the final resting place of Sir Patrick Spens. The history relating to the burial of Sir Patrick Spens on Earl’s Knowle on Papa Stronsay is related by William Edmonstoune Aytoun (b. Edinburgh 21 June 1813, d. 4 August 1865), Sheriff and Lord Admiral of Orkney and Shetland. It was after his retirement from this position that he edited a collection of Scottish poetry in which the first poem is Sir Patrick Spens. In his foreword to the poem Aytoun, he writes: “It is true that the name of Sir Patrick Spens is not mentioned in history; but I am able to state that tradition has preserved it. In the little island of Papa Stronsay, one of the Orcadian group, lying over against Norway, there is a large grave or tumulus, which has been known to the inhabitants, from time immemorial, as ‘The grave of Sir Patrick Spens’. The Scottish