![]() Dorothy Wordsworth, acutely aware of the need for money in the Wordsworth household, wrote to Coleridge to urge on his efforts. ![]() Together the two dined with the publisher Longman to discuss the poem, then Wordsworth returned home, leaving the manuscript with Coleridge so that he could show it to Charles Lamb (who professed himself dissatisfied with the inactivity of the main characters) and continue negotiations with Longman. In February 1808 Wordsworth visited London to consult Coleridge about The White Doe, and to try to sell it for, Wordsworth hoped, 100 guineas. Later that year he read Whitaker's account of the legend of the white doe, and, in October 1807, began to write The White Doe, finally completing it on 18 January 1808. In June 1807 Wordsworth and his sister visited Bolton Abbey. The metre of the poem is similar to that of Coleridge's Christabel, and Wordsworth acknowledged his debt to it in a preface, but Scott, Virgil and Samuel Daniel have also been cited as possible influences on the metre. The influence of other ballads from Percy's Reliques has also been traced in the poem, and the dedicatory poem to The White Doe is filled with references to Spenser's The Faerie Queene. The historical parts of the story of The White Doe are taken from a ballad called "The Rising in the North", which Wordsworth had read in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, and also from Nicolson and Burn's The History and Antiquities of the Counties of Westmorland and Cumberland. Wordsworth found in Thomas Whitaker's The History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven the legend of a white doe which, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, continued to make a weekly pilgrimage from Rylstone to Bolton Abbey. It has been argued that Wordsworth was induced to write a historical poem by observing the success of Walter Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel. The mystery of why the white doe visits the grave is thus explained. Emily at last dies and is buried at Bolton Abbey. When Rylstone Hall suffers devastation Emily flees, and only returns years later, there to find the same white doe, which henceforth becomes her faithful friend, going wherever she goes. Francis almost accomplishes this task, but he is surprised by a party of the royal army and is killed. She sends an old friend of her father to get news of his fate he returns to say that her father is taken prisoner, and that he has told Francis to regain the banner and take it to Bolton Abbey, where it can serve as an emblem of the purity of his motives. The poem then returns to Rylstone Hall, where Emily encounters the white doe by moonlight. On the approach of Queen Elizabeth's army the rebels fall back in retreat. Norton's band of soldiers, including other brothers of Emily, joins forces with those of the Earl of Northumberland and other Catholic rebels, and they march to Wetherby. Emily's brother Francis tries unsuccessfully to dissuade their father from this course, then resolves to follow them unarmed, in the hope that he can still dissuade his father. The poem then moves back in time to Emily Norton at Rylstone Hall at her father's command she embroiders a banner for his followers, who are to rise in rebellion. The White Doe of Rylstone opens outside Bolton Abbey in Wharfedale, where the poet sees the white doe enter the churchyard and lie down by one particular grave, where it is recognized as a regular visitor by the parishioners.
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