15 pages 30 minutes read

John Keats

Meg Merrilies

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1818

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Further Reading

1.

Composed in the same letter to his sister Fanny as “Meg Merrilies,” “There was a naughty boy” is a charming self-caricature that paints Keats as a rebellious boy packing up for adventure in Scotland (as the real Keats did, against his doctor’s orders). It complements “Meg” in illustrating the poet’s preoccupation in this period with his wild childhood and with an older, kindly wise woman: perhaps his beloved grandmother, who might feature in the poem as “Granny-good.” 

2.

Inspired heavily by John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Hyperion and its subsequent revision, The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream, is Keats’s unfinished epic poem on an episode from Greco-Roman myth, the fall of the Titans. Some of the older female characters bear a passing resemblance to Meg in their sympathetic natures and imposing physicality (e.g., Mnemosyne, Moneta).

3.

Another ballad from the Romantic period, Robert Burn’s “Highland Mary” uses the same poetic structure, meter, and rhythm as “Meg Merrilies.” It also features a highland woman and pristine natural scenery, but rather than centering on freedom, Burns’ poem laments his long-lost love, another popular subject for the Romantic poets.