Sephora Marie Borges, “The Troubles of an Irish Poet,” 2nd Place ENL 258

Sephora Marie Borges, Spring 2010


Seamus Heaney was born on April 13, 1939 in Derry, Northern Ireland at the Heaneys’ family farm of ‘Mossbawn’; as the son of a potato farmer, he would have been expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, but chose a profession in writing instead (Vendler xi). Heaney lived in Northern Ireland in a time of great political turmoil – The Irish Troubles – a time where the largely Catholic population of Derry was still under the foot of a mainly Protestant Unionist corporation and the British (O’Dochartaigh 4 – 5). These ‘Troubles’ inspired much of Heaney’s poetry of the time. In addition to the conflicts in Ireland, Heaney was also inspired by the archaeological findings of almost perfectly preserved Iron-Age bodies in the bogs of Denmark, Ireland, Scotland, England, Germany, Holland, and others (Glob 101). Heaney admitted these findings resonated with him and he in turn connected them with the more current conflicts at hand: “The unforgettable photographs of these victims blended in my mind with photographs of atrocities, past and present, in the long rites of Irish political and religious studies” (Heaney 58). These elements come together at their most poignant in Heaney’s so-called ‘bog poems.’ Caught in the political pressure of his homeland to protest and take up arms, Heaney chose to take up a pen instead and speak out while adopting the voices of the different sides at war during the ‘Troubles.’

“A Constable Calls” is the recollection by a Catholic child of a time when a Protestant policeman belonging to the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) made a crop-checking call for taxing purposes at his father’s farm (Bloom 14). As stated previously, Heaney was in fact the son of a Catholic potato farmer, so this poem is very likely to be autobiographical in nature. The first four stanzas of the poem itself describe the policeman’s arrival and appearance. Heaney’s language conveys an ominous presence with the policeman’s bicycle having ‘fat black handlegrips,’ (line 4). The most ominous portion of this description comes in the next stanza:

Heating in the sunlight, the ‘spud’

Of the dynamo gleaming and cocked back

The pedal treads hanging relieved

Of the boot of the law (5 – 8)

While the dynamo is merely just a motor for the bicycle, it is described as ‘gleaming’ and ‘cocked back’ – words that are sure to remind the reader of a gun. The description of pedals being ‘relieved’ of the officer’s boot drives home a feeling of oppression. Even the word ‘boot’ carries a connotation of being heavy, rugged, and capable of brute force. As the speaker goes on to describe the officer further, he compares the line created in his hair by the pressure of his cap to a ‘bevel’ (13) as well as referring to him un-strapping ‘the heavy ledger’ (14) in preparation to take inventory of his father’s crops; the words work together to create the same feelings for the reader as the situation does for the child – “Arithmetic and fear” (17).

In the fifth stanza, the child notices the policeman’s gun – an exemplification of the foreboding presence of this man that Heaney is able to create up to this point without yet specifically referencing to his firearm.

In the stanza immediately following, upon being asked if there were ‘any other root crops’ (21), the speaker’s father lies, failing to mention ‘a line / Of turnips where the seed ran out / In the potato field” (22 – 24). This does not go by unnoticed by the child speaker and causes him to feel guilty: “I assumed / Small guilts” (24 – 25). The speaker then imagines “the black hole in the barracks” (26). This can refer to two things: the fear that his father will end up in jail for lying to the RUC as well as a foreshadowing to the multiple bombings made on RUC barracks during the rebellion (Coogan 141). Then the policeman is described as closing ‘the domesday book’ (30). This is an allusion to a book William I created in the 1080s that held information on who owned what throughout the country as well as who owed him taxes in order to further dominate Medieval England (“Domesday Book”). As the officer is leaving finally, the speaker describes the departure using auditory language: “His boot pushed off / And the bicycle ticked, ticked, ticked” (35 – 36). The repetition of the word ‘ticked’ is suggestive of a ticking time bomb. This suggestion can, once again, represent both the fear of the child that it is only a matter of time before his father would get in trouble for lying to the RUC as well as representing the ticking time bomb of the rebellion of the Catholics; it is only a matter of time before the riots along with the bombings of the RUC barracks begin.

In “Punishment,” the speaker compares the found body of ‘the Windeby girl’ and the circumstances of her death to that of the treatment of Catholic girls who were caught with British soldiers during the ‘Troubles.’ The description of ‘the Windeby girl’ is a vital tool in recognizing Heaney’s extensive research and knowledge of the body in connection to the poem itself.

She was found in Windeby, held down by a Birch branch and a large block of stone with a band of cloth along the back of her neck and passing over her face like a sling. The ribs were visible. Her hair was originally blonde but turned red from the bog acids and was partially shaved off with a razor on the left side of her head. She was naked with a bandage over her eyes and a radiographic study of a bone of the lower leg and its growth lines revealed that she was only about 14 when she died and had an inadequate winter diet (Glob 112 – 113). It is supposed, via information by Tacitus on the people of the time, that the girl was found as an adulteress by her tribe members – the punishment for which was the cutting of her hair in the presence of her relatives followed by banishment from her village – and was led out to the bog, blindfolded and drowned, with her body held under with the aforementioned branches and large stone (Glob 114).

This information is explicitly referred to throughout the poem with the first seven stanzas being specifically about how the Windeby girl was found, referencing “the halter at the nape / of her neck, the wind / on her naked front” (lines 2 – 4), “the frail rigging / of her ribs” (7 – 8), and even more specifically, “her drowned / body in the bog” with “the weighing stone / the floating rods and boughs” (9 – 12).

When the speaker describes the girl “at first / she was a barked sapling / that is dug up” (13 – 15), he is referring to the fact that the turf cutters who originally found the body saw the birch branch sticking out of the peat that was holding her down and assumed it was just a sapling and thus disregarded it and continued digging (Glob 112). His specific reference to the shaved head of the girl in the fifth stanza as well as calling her “Little adulteress” (20) in the sixth stanza leads the way for him to draw the parallels between this condemned ancient girl and the modern condemned Catholic girls who often had their heads shaved and were tarred and feathered as a punishment for the ‘betrayal’ of fraternizing with British soldiers (Vendler 49).

Here, Heaney does not use ‘adulteress’ simply as a woman who is unfaithful to her husband, but as a woman committing any kind of sexual misbehavior. He refers to her once blonde hair and her malnourished state – again bringing the archaeological finds to the forefront of the poem. The girl’s “tar-black face” (27) is so due to the bog water. Upon looking at the statement in its entirety: “and your / tar-black face was beautiful” (27 – 28), Heaney use of the description ‘tar-black’ suggests ugliness, but he makes sure to point out that it was once beautiful. This enforces the idea of how far this girl has fallen in the world’s eyes while simultaneously drawing a parallel to how far the Catholic girls have fallen in the eyes of their fellow Catholics.

Heaney then goes on to the most affecting and controversial part of his poem, beginning it with:

My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you

but would have cast, I know,

the stones of silence (28 – 31)

By referring to the girl as his ‘poor scapegoat,’ the speaker is revealing that he believes the murder of this girl along with the modern Irish-Catholic girls who are being tarred and feathered are the acts of specific people unfairly paying for a ‘crime’ committed by many. However, he admits he would have stood silent then just as he does now despite this sympathy.

He then goes on to describe himself as the “artful voyeur” to the girl’s “brain’s exposed / and darkened combs” as well as her “muscles’ webbing and all your numbered bones” (32 – 36). This brings the poem back to the archaeological discovery once more before the definitive ending of the poem. The use of the word ‘voyeur’ suggests a person who watches but does not participate – something the speaker clearly embodies.

In the final two stanzas, the speaker describes himself as a person who has stood by silently while “your betraying sisters, / cauled in tar / wept by the railings” (38 – 40). This is a direct reference to the treatment of ‘betraying’ Catholic girls. By calling them the Windeby girl’s sisters, he is finally drawing a distinct connection between the two. He then describes himself as the person “who would connive / in civilized outrage” (41 – 42). Here, connive seems to carry dual meaning – one meaning being that the speaker is failing to act against something he should oppose and the other is to have secret sympathy for something or someone. The oxymoron of ‘civilized outrage’ is an echo of the hypocritical way the speaker feels – a point solidified by the last two lines: “yet understand the exact / and tribal, intimate revenge” (43 – 44). Thus, while the speaker pities the victims of these crimes and regrets standing idly by to watch, he reveals that the reason he does stand by is because he understands the actions of the Windeby girl’s tribe as well as the actions of the Irish-Catholics as being necessary.

While “A Constable Calls” is a good look from a child’s point of view at a time immediately preceding the ‘Troubles,’ “Punishment” delivers a solid look at life in the midst of the turmoil and conveys a sense of not fully knowing where to stand, but realizing the necessity of standing in the first place. While Heaney may have defied expectations by never taking over his father’s farm or joining the IRA (Irish Republican Army) (O’Dochartaigh 42) during the ‘Troubles,’ he still worked to provide significant insight into the lives of different people’s experiences and views of the time by utilizing inspiration from his own life as well as the archaeological findings of The Bog People.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold. Seamus Heaney. New Haven, CT: Chelsea House, 1986. Print.

Coogan, Tim P. The Troubles: Ireland’s Ordeal 1966-1996 and the Search for Peace. Boulder: Roberts Rinehart, 1996. Print.

“Domesday Book.” History Learning Site. Web. 13 May 2010. <http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/domesday.htm>.

Glob, P. V. The Bog People; Iron Age Man Preserved. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1969. Print.

Heaney, Seamus. Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968-1978. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980. Print.

O’Dochartaigh, Niall. From Civil Rights to Armalities: Derry and the Birth of the Irish Troubles. Cork: Cork UP, 1997. Print.

Vendler, Helen. Seamus Heaney. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1998. Print.

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