Albatross (metaphor) 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). In the poem, an albatross starts to follow a ship — being followed by an albatross was generally considered a sign of good luck. However, the titular mariner shoots the albatross with a crossbow, which is regarded as an act that will curse the ship (which indeed suffers terrible mishaps). Even when they are too thirsty to speak, the ship's crew let the mariner know
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Jessie Walmisley, and both their children had musical careers. Their son Hiawatha adapted his father's music for a variety of performances. Their daughter Avril Coleridge-Taylor became a composer-conductor. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in 1875 in Holborn, London, to Alice Hare Martin (1856–1953), an English woman, and Dr. Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, a Creole from Sierra Leone, of mixed European and African descent, who had studied medicine in the capital. They were not married, and Daniel Taylor returned to Africa without learning that Alice was pregnant. (Alice Hare Martin's parents were not married at her birth, either.) Alice Martin named her