Seamus Justin Heaney was born 13 April 1939. Seamus was born and raised on the family farm in Mossbawn, County Derry. Seamus was the eldest of nine children of Patrick and Margaret Kathleen Heaney. His early education took place at the local Anahorish School from 1945 to 1951. From 1951 to 1957 he was a boarder at St. Columb’s College in Derry. His life in Mossbawn features prominently in his early work. It is obvious from his early poems that Mossbawn gave him a sense of belonging. A belonging to a farming community, who would have understood each other, on an agricultural level. In 1953 Seamus’s infant brother Christopher died in a road accident. Christopher is featured in the poem "Mid-Term Break." From 1957 to 1961 Seamus attends Queen’s University, Belfast. He graduates with first-class honours degree in English language and literature. Seamus then takes a postgraduate teacher’s training diploma at St. Joseph’s College, at Andersontown, Belfast. He then became a Lecturer in English at St. Joseph’s. In August 1965 he married Marie Devlin. The next year "Death of a Naturalist" was published and he won the Faber prize, Somerset Maugham Award and the Gregory Award for young writers. His wife Marie gave birth to their first child Michael in July. He became a lecturer in English at Queens University in 1966. In 1969 he discovers Professor P V Glob’s book, The Bog People. This inspired Heaney to write the "Tollund Man" and various other poems. The Tollund Man is one of the poems I am going to be looking at.
On 30 January 1972 the British Army shot dead 13 civilians in the Bloody Sunday riots. Seamus Heaney resigns from his post at Queen’s University and moves to a cottage at Glanmore, County Wicklow, in the Irish Republic. Where he started working as a full-time freelance writer. The poems that I am going to be analysing are the Tollund Man, from Wintering Out. The Grauballe Man, from North. Personal Helicon, from Death of a Naturalist and Limbo from Wintering Out.
The first poem I am going to be looking at is the Tollund Man from the anthology Wintering Out. Professor PV Glob, who wrote the book The Bog People, inspired Seamus Heaney. This poem consists of eleven, four line stanzas. The first verse of the poem he states that some day he will visit Aarhus. Seamus Heaney is so fascinated by the bog people that he is determined to visit Aarhus to see for himself the artifacts of the bog people. Heaney also describes the Tollund Man and how the bog preserves them. Heaney is become with nature probably due to his upbringing in Mossbawn. The second verse describes were they found him, in the flatlands of Jutland. In the second verse there is a very important line it is˜his last gruel of winter seeds caked in his stomach.” His body was so well preserved that you were able to see his last meal.
The ˜Tollund Man was found naked except for the skinned cap and his girdle. The Tollund Man was probably strangled. In the third stanza we find that the Tollund Man was found with a noose around him. At the beginning of the fourth stanza we read that she tightened her torc on him. A torc is a necklace and therefore the necklace was his noose. The Tollund Man was sacrificed for the community so that the community would have fertility. He was sacrificed to the Goddess of fertility. The authour of the bog people Professor PV Glob argues that the Tollund Man was used in a “ritual sacrifice to the Mother Goddess, the Goddess of the ground who needed new bridegrooms each winter to bed with her in her sacred place, in the bog, to ensure the renewal and fertility of the territory in the spring.” We have here a possible link to the troubles in Ireland. Were both sides of the community sacrifice themselves, of course in a very different way, for the sake of their cause? Again more religious connotations can be found here. We know that the bog preserves well, in the fourth stanza Heaney says “those dark juices working him to a Saint’s kept body.” There is a suggestion here that the Tollund Man is like a Saint because the Roman Catholic religion believes that a Saints body never decays. In the fifth stanza Heaney talks about how the Tollund Man stained face lies in peace and tranquility at Aarhus. The body of the Tollund Man is unknown, but is probably subject to some scientific experiment. The head however is preserved in a museum in Silkeborg, near Aarhus. Seamus Heaney is so involved and taken in by the discovery of the Tollund Man that he could pray to the bog man and risk blasphemy. Heaney states this in the sixth stanza. If he were to offer prayer to the Tollund Man he would be praying to false idols. This gives Heaney given, a God-like characterization to the Tollund Man. The impact that Professor PV Glob’s book had on Heaney must have been phenomenal. The bog is the holy ground and it seems as if Heaney is thinking of turning to a different religion. Maybe he is saying that the people of Ireland should turn to a different religion to overcome their hatred.
