SOURCE: "Fishing the Deep Sea: Archetypal Patterns in Thomas' 'Ballad of the Long-legged Bait'," in Modern Poetry Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, Autumn, 1975, pp. 102-14.

In the following essay, Ferguson contends that Dylan Thomas's sea voyage poem "Ballad of the Long-legged Bait" relates a "quest for [the integration of personality" and features a selection of Jungian archetypes.]

According to William York Tindall, Dylan Thomas once offered the basis for interpreting his "Ballad of the Long-legged Bait" as a poem of quest: "a young man goes out to fish for sexual experience, but he catches a family, the church, and the village green. Indeed, he himself is caught by his bait."¹ Other readings have been advanced by the critics. Fixing upon the physical suffering and death of the bait, Elder Olson saw the theme as "mortification of the flesh," while Clark Emery, allegorizing, called the "Ballad" a "creation poem." Richard Condon...