Characters: sir Ralph (a pirate) His sailors The abbot of aberbrothok (he placed a bell on the rock) Setting: near the coast of Scotland Background/context you may need: Ralph sit the bell down from the rock so that he could loot more sinking ships that crashed into the rock, Ralph was very proud of himself and collected a lot more loot now that the bell was gone. What was the irony: the whole message of this poem is essentially what goes around comes around, in the end of the poem Ralph is very proud and sails back to shore with a ton of loot, because Ralph cut the bell down they crashed into the rock as a storm picked up and there was no visibility or sight of land.
"The Inchcape Rock" is a ballad written by English poet Robert Southey. Published in 1802, it tells the story of a 14th-century attempt by the Abbot of Aberbrothok ("Aberbrothock") to install a warning bell on Inchcape, a notorious sandstone reef about 11 miles (18 km) off the east coast of Scotland. The poem tells how the bell was removed by a pirate, who subsequently perished on the reef while returning to Scotland in bad weather some time later.
Like many of Southey's ballads "The Inchcape Rock" describes a supernatural event, but its basic theme is that those who do bad things will ultimately be punished accordingly and poetic justice done.
