Lesson video

Hi, everyone, and welcome to lesson 2 of our unit on "The Highwayman." In our last lesson, we learned a lot about the context of this narrative poem, and today we're going to be moving on to analysing the first two stanzas of the poem.

By the end of today's lesson, you will be able to analyse and understand the events in stanzas one and two of "The Highwayman." Here are some key words we are going to be using, stanza, analyse, linguistic features, figurative language.

Well done.

A stanza is part of a poem consisting of two or more lines grouped together.

To analyse is to study something in detail to understand its meaning.

Linguistic features are the structures of language that use words.

Figurative language is the use of metaphor, simile, and personification to paint vivid pictures for the reader.

Today, we're going to be analysing stanzas one and two of "The Highwayman." Firstly, we're gonna analyse stanza one, and then we're going to analyse stanza two.

Linguistic features are the structures of language that use words.

Which linguistic features might we find in a poem? Take a moment to have a think.

Well done if you've thought that perhaps we might see rhyme, repetition, alliteration, personification, simile, and metaphor in a poem.

If you're not sure about what all of those words mean, don't worry 'cause that's what we're going to focus on now.

It's gonna be a big part of today's learning.

Rhyme occurs when word endings sound the same.

So for example, cat and hat both rhyme.

Repetition involves the repeating of key words or phrases.

Now, it's really important that we think about key keywords.

Words such as and or the don't really count because they're just high frequency words that come up a lot in our language, but key nouns or adjectives or verbs that are important for the telling of the story being repeated is a linguistic feature of repetition.

Alliteration refers to many words beginning with the same letter, or sometimes the same letters, such as slithering serpent, or moody moonlight.

Personification gives human characteristics to non-human things.

For example, the Sun smiled its radiant smile upon the Earth.

The Sun can't actually smile, but we've made the Sun sound like it's got human characteristics with that use of personification.

Simile involves comparing two things using the words like or as.

The room was as cold as ice, for example.

Metaphor compares two things by saying that one thing is another.

Her hands were blocks of ice is an example of metaphor.

Match the linguistic features of poetry to their definitions.

Pause the video while you do that.

Well done if you spotted that rhyme is when word ending sound the same.

Repetition is the repeating of key words and phrases.

Alliteration refers to many words beginning with the same letter or letters.

Personification gives human characteristics to non-Human things.

Simile compares two things using like or as.

And metaphor compares two things by saying that one thing is another.

We are now going to read stanza one of "The Highwayman." If you think back to last lesson and the predictions you made for what you thought was going to happen in the poem, now might be a good time for you to think about whether those predictions end up being accurate.

Let's read stanza one together.

"The Highwayman," Alfred Noyes.

"The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, and the highwayman came riding, riding, riding, the highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door." Now, before we unpick the atmosphere and what's really happening in this stanza, we first need to make sure we understand all of the words.

Remember, this poem was set in the 18th century, so some of the language in this poem might be unfamiliar to us now.

A galleon, this was a sailing ship used between the 15th and the 18th centuries.

And you can see a picture of a galleon here.

So it's saying in the poem that the moon was a ghostly galleon upon the clouds.

So it's almost like the moon was sailing like a ship, sails across the sea, but the moon was sailing across the clouds at night.

The moor, now we encountered this word in our last lesson, but this is a large, vast open space of uncultivated or unharmed land, often covered in purple heather.

So there's very little human interference in a moor.

It's all wild and natural.

What does stanza one of "The Highwayman" describe? Pause the video while you decide.

Well done if you spotted that stanza one of "The Highwayman" describes the setting.

It describes the moon, it describes the wind, it describes the moor.

The highwayman is mentioned, but we don't really have any description of him just yet.

Let's reread stanza one again.

Let's do it together.

"The highway Man" by Alfred Noyes.

"The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, and the highwayman came riding, riding, riding, the highwayman came riding up to the old inn-door." So I want you to stop for a moment and picture the moon sailing like a ship on the clouds.

The wind in the darkness, blowing gusts and pulling at the trees.

The road looking like a ribbon, the way it snaked across the purple mirror.

And this figure, a highwayman riding on his horse up to an old inn-door.

So an inn was a pub, or often they had accommodation where people could stay over.

A bit like a bed and breakfast as well, but there is a pub that you could stay in.

Now that you've thought about all that imagery and pictured this scene, how does this stanza make you feel? And what imagery do you see in your mind's eye? When you've thought of that, your first task is going to be to draw what you picture in your mind's eye when you read stanza one of "The Highwayman." So thinking about what you can visualise using the words of the poem.

Don't add bits in that aren't in the poem.

You've got to use the words from the poem to inform your drawing, and pause the video while you do that.

Well done, everyone.

I'm sure you've got some amazing drawings to illustrate the events in stanza one.

Take a moment to check your drawing.

Did you remember to include all of these things? Did you include a moon in the cloudy night sky? Did you include trees blowing in the wind? Did you include a road winding across the heather covered moor? And did you include a highwayman riding on horseback up to an old inn? Now that we've got a really clear idea of what's happening in our heads, what's actually happened in the stanza, now we're going to take some time to identify some linguistic features in stanza one of "The Highwayman." When we go back to thinking about the atmosphere of this stanza, I love this poem because it creates a real, it's almost like a ghost story, or almost like a thriller, where we feel like something very big and maybe quite sinister or evil might be happening.

And we don't quite know what's going to happen next, but there's a lot of suspense because we don't know who the highwayman is, what he's doing, what's in the inn, what's he going to do when he gets there.

There's so many questions.

Is the highwayman a good character? Is he evil? We know highway men were robbers, but is he a good-hearted person? Is he going to cause harm to whoever is at the end? There's so many things that we're hooked into and wanting to find out more.

And so much of that is because of all of the linguistic features that Alfred Noyes uses in stanza one to hook the reader in and help us imagine what is going on.

So now you're going to circle and label one example of each of these linguistic features in stanza one, rhyme, repetition, metaphor, and alliteration.

Pause the video while you do that.

Brilliant work, everyone.

So remember, you only had to find one example of each.

I'm going to show all of the possible examples you could have circled, okay? So if we start with rhyme, trees, seas, moor, and door.

Now, moor and door sounds slightly less clear than trees and seas, and sometimes it actually depends on your accent.

Whenever I read the word moor, it sounds quite different to the word door.

But with you say moor and door, then it sounds actually much more clearly like a rhyme.

So you might have circled trees and seas or moor and door.

You can also maybe notice that these words have a pattern.

They're the final word of each line.

For repetition, you might have circled any of these.

So the highwayman came riding, riding, riding, the highwayman came riding, okay? Those are key words.

So riding, riding, riding are key verbs in the story, and the highwayman is a key noun.

Words like was or at or the, we wouldn't count as repetition.

Then we've got metaphor.

Remember saying that one thing is another.

So the wind was a torrent of darkness.

The moon was a ghostly galleon.

Was the moon actually a ship sailing up in the sky? No.

But this metaphor shows the way that the moon seems to be bouncing and gliding over the clouds.

It creates that imagery in our head.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight.

The road wasn't actually made of ribbon, but the way it snakes and curls over the moor and it's lit up silver in the moonlight, it looks like a ribbon.

Alliteration, so more than one words starting with the same letter.

So ghostly galleon or road and ribbon.

Well done if you spotted an example of each of those features.

Now we're going to move on to analysing stanza two of "The Highwayman." We're now going to read stanza two.

"He'd a French-cocked hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin, a coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brine doe-skin.

They fitted with never a wrinkle.

His boots were up to the thigh.

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle, his pistol butts a-twinkle, his rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky." Again, some of this vocabulary might be unfamiliar.

Here's a picture of a French-cocked hat.

So he had a French-cocked hat on his forehead, so tipped down over his forehead.

Claret velvet, so his coat was made of claret velvet.

So velvet is a very soft material, and claret is the colour of it is like a deep, deep red.

A bit like the colour of red wine, if you've ever seen that before.

So claret velvet would be a coat made of velvet soft material and a deep red colour.

Breeches were just riding trousers.

So somebody who wears breeches is a person who rides horses.

And in the poem, it says there were breeches of brown doe-skin.

A doe is a female deer.

So they were made of deer skin.

He had a pistol, which is a gun.

And a rapier is a sword.

And the hilt of his rapier, and the pistol is the handle.

So the bit that you hold them by.

So he had these weapons as well as being dressed in this way.

What does stanza two of "The Highwayman" describe? Pause the video while you decide.

Well done if you spotted that stanza two is all about the highwayman.

So stanza one described the setting, and stanza two describes the highwayman and his appearance in lots of detail.

Let's read it again one more time.

"He'd a French-cocked hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin, a coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown dough skin.

They fitted with never a wrinkle.

His boots were up to the thigh.

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle, his pistol butts a-twinkle, his rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky." How does this stanza make you feel? And what do you imagine the highwayman looks like? Draw what you picture in your mind's eye when you read stanza two of the highwayman.

So remember, use the words in the stanza to inform your drawing.

Pause the video while you do that.

Great work, everyone.

So now that we've finished our drawings, take a moment to check it.

And did you remember to include all of these things? So did you draw a highwayman with a French-cocked hat and lace material bunched up at his chin? Did you draw him wearing a red velvet coat and brown riding trousers? Did you draw his boots, which went all the way up as high as his thighs? And did you show that he had a pistol and a rapier? So a gun and a sword.

Well done.

Now we're going to move on to the second part of our task, which is just like our first task, where we're now going to reread stanza two of "The Highwayman." And this time we're going to find and circle and label one example of each of these.

"He'd a French-cocked hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin, a coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin.

They fitted with never a wrinkle.

His boots were up to the thigh.

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle, his pistol butt a-twinkle, his rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky." So now take a moment to find, then circle and label one example of rhyme, repetition, metaphor, and alliteration.

Pause the video while you do that.

Brilliant work, everyone.

Well done if few spotted, first of all, more rhyming words.

And again, the same pattern, the final word of each line.

So chin and skin and thigh and sky are rhyming pairs.

We also had repetition.

And again, you might notice that the repeated languages in the same part of the stanza.

So in the final three lines of the stanza, jewelled twinkle, a-twinkle, a-twinkle, and jewelled.

Alliteration, so coat, claret, breeches, and brine.

And metaphor, the jewelled sky.

Did the sky actually have jewels in it? No.

What do you think the jewels were? Have a think for a moment.

What made the sky look as if they were jewels in it? Well done if you've noticed that the jewels in the sky were actually the stars in the sky.

That now brings us on to the end of our lesson, where today we've been analysing stanzas one and two of "The Highwayman." Today, we've been learning about how poets use a range of linguistic devices to create vivid imagery in their reader's minds and create atmosphere in their writing.

Precise use of language can evoke strong feelings for the reader.

And analysing the use of imagery, linguistic devices, and atmosphere in text enables us to understand its meaning in greater depth.

I really hope you enjoyed our learning today and our tasks.

We're going to be using this analysis to really help us with our writing.

Well done, everyone.