Albatross (metaphor) attention to her merchandise, while the potential customer keeps asking questions about the product, like "What flavour is it?" and "Do you get wafers with it?". Finally the man buys two albatrosses for nine pence each. The salesgirl then shouts she is selling "gannet on a stick." Later during the episode, several other characters in other sketches shout "Albatross" for seemingly no reason at all. Albatross (metaphor) The word albatross is sometimes used metaphorically to mean a psychological burden that feels like a curse. It is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (1798).
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to tutelary spirits: "Suppose you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the south sea, and the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime." By the time the trio finished their walk, the poem had taken shape. Bernard Martin argues in "The Ancient Mariner and the Authentic Narrative" that Coleridge was also influenced by the life of Anglican clergyman John Newton, who had a near-death experience aboard a slave ship. The poem may also have been inspired by the legends of the Wandering Jew, who was forced to wander the earth