The Rime of the Ancient Mariner autobiographical portrait of Coleridge himself, comparing the mariner's loneliness with Coleridge's own feelings of loneliness expressed in his letters and journals. In addition to being referred to in several other notable works, due to the popularity of the poem the phrase "albatross around one's neck" has become an English language idiom referring to "a heavy burden of guilt that becomes an obstacle to success". Monty Python's "Albatross Sketch" in which an irascible movie-theatre refreshment vendor tries to sell a single albatross from a tray around his neck, is a parody of Coleridge's description of the Mariner. The phrase "Water, water,
The Keys to the Kingdom butler is compared to Nestor of "The Adventures of Tintin"; a character describes Monday's Noon as exactly how she imagined Jane Austen's Mr Darcy; the Piper is a re-creation of the legendary Pied Piper of Hamelin, who with his music led a population of rats from a city, later to do the same to the town's children, whose parents had refused to pay him the promised fee. The Mariner is likely a reference to the title character of the ballad "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Both the mariner of the book and the one of