The poem is set out in two sections of blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter lines). Heaney uses onomatopoeia more lavishly here than in any poem - and many of the sounds are very indelicate: “gargled”, “slap and plop” and “farting”. The lexicon is full of terms of putrefaction, ordure (excrement or faeces) and generally unpleasant things - “festered”, “rotted”, “slobber”, “clotted water”, “rank/With cowdung” and slime kings”.
In the first section, the poet notes the festering in the flax-dam, but can cope with this familiar scene of things rotting and spawn hatching. Perhaps, as an inquisitive child he felt some pride in not being squeamish - he thinks of the bubbles from the process as gargling “delicately”. He is confident in taking the frogspawn - he does it every year, and watches the “jellied specks” become “fattening dots” then turn into tadpoles. He has an almost scientific interest in knowing the proper names (“bullfrog” and “frogspawn”) rather than the teacher's patronizing talk of “daddy” and “mammy”, and in the idea of forecasting the weather with the spawn. (Not really very helpful, since you can see if it is raining or sunny by direct observation - no need to look at the frogspawn.)
The second section appears like a punishment from offended nature for the boy's arrogance - when he sees what nature in the raw is really like, he is terrified. This part of the poem is ambiguous - we see the horror of the plague of frogs, “obscene” and “gathered...for vengeance”, as it appeared to the young boy. But we can also see the scene more objectively - as it really was. If we strip away the effect of imagination, we are left with a swarm of croaking amphibians. This may bring out a difference between a child in the 1940s and a child in the west today. The 21st century child knows all about the frogs' habitat and behaviour from wildlife documentaries, but has never seen so many frogs at close range in real life. The young Heaney was used to seeing nature close up, but perhaps never got beyond the very simple account of “mammy” and “daddy” frogs. The teacher presents the amphibians as if they were people.
The arrival of the frogs is like a military invasion - they are “angry” and invade the dam; the boy ducks “through hedges” to hide from the enemy. Like firearms, they are “cocked”, or they are “poised like mud grenades” (a grenade is a hand-bomb - the frogs, in colour and shape, resemble the Mills Hand Bomb, used by British soldiers from the Great War to modern times).
The poem has some echoes of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner - in a shorter and more comic version: the would-be naturalist is, like the mariner, revolted by “slimy things”; the Ancient Mariner learns to love them as God's creatures. Heaney indulges in a riotous succession of disgusting descriptions: “gross-bellied”, “slap and plop”, “obscene threats” (suggesting swear words), “farting” and “slime kings”.
Wordsworth suggests that poets should use everyday language. In this poem, Heaney uses terms we do not expect to see in poetry, and presents nature as the very opposite of beautiful.
Notes on the poem
-
Flax is an annual plant (it grows from seed) some one to two feet high, with blue flowers. A flax dam (traditionally called a lint hole), in Northern Ireland is not really a dam, but a pool where bundles (called “beets”) of flax are placed for about three weeks to soften the stems. The process is called “retting”. Those who used to do this work report that the smell is very strong and unpleasant. Heaney describes the flax as held down by “sods” (large clumps of earth or turf - a favourite word of the poet: count how often he uses it here and in other pieces). In some dams large stones would hold down the flax. Fibre from flax was cleaned and spun into yarn, woven into linen and bleached.
-
The townland is the smallest administrative area in Northern Ireland. They range in size from less than an acre to well over 2,000, while the average is some 300 acres. The boundaries between them are often streams or old roads.
-
Be careful how you write naturalist - keep the “al” in it, and don't mix it up with naturist, which is an old name for someone who takes off his or her clothes, to live in a “state of nature”!
- How would you react (as a young adult or as a child) to the sight of a horde of frogs invading a familiar place?
- How far does this poem tell the truth about frogs and how far does it tell the reader about the power of imagination?
- Is this poem comic, serious or both? How far does the poet invite us to laugh at him?
- Heaney describes the frogs' heads as “farting”. As a boy he might have said this word to friends, but would not repeat it at home or write it in school work. How does it work in the poem?
- Is it a good idea for teachers of the young to explain how animals live by describing them in human terms, like “mammy” (mum or mummy) and “daddy”?
- How well does this poem fit in with your ideas of what poetry should normally be like?
-
How truthful is the title? Did Heaney really lose his interest in, and love of, nature. Or does the poem record only a dramatic change of attitude, or something else? (Note, for example, that the poem called was published in 2001.)
- Does this poem have anything in common with other poems by Heaney? How far does it fit into a pattern of poems that show him not to be a real country person (like his father and grandfather) - because he can't dig, he can't plough, he gets upset when the blackberries start rotting and he is frightened by a lot of frogs?
