Sailors' superstitions "Souda" (modern Lefkai). Another mythological creature, the Scylla, is a similar female sea demon that is both dangerous yet beautiful. Sirens supposedly "lured mariners to their deaths with their melodious, enchanting song", while "Scylla sent countless sailors to the depths of the sea." The albatross as a superstitious relic is referenced in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's well-known poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. It is considered very unlucky to kill an albatross; in Coleridge's poem, the narrator killed the bird and his fellow sailors eventually force him to wear the dead bird around his neck. Having bananas on a ship,
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner many opinions on why Coleridge inserted the gloss. Charles Lamb, who had deeply admired the original for its attention to "Human Feeling", claimed that the gloss distanced the audience from the narrative, weakening the poem's effects. The entire poem was first published in the collection of "Lyrical Ballads". Another version of the poem was published in the 1817 collection entitled "Sibylline Leaves" (see 1817 in poetry). On a surface level the poem explores a violation of nature and the resulting psychological effects on the mariner and on all those who hear him. According to Jerome McGann the poem is like