What influence of history can be seen in Seamus Heaney's work?

Polly Jackman, 12SAM

What influence of history can be seen in Seamus Heaney’s work?

In Requiem for the Croppies Heaney writes specifically about an historic event, but he also uses different forms of history such as mythological and personal in his poetry. Although Requiem for the Croppies is written about a past event, the Battle of Vinegar Hill, Heaney uses ‘We moved quick and sudden in our own country’ to produce the idea that he was with the ‘people, hardly marching’, that he was a part of them. These words also give rise to the idea that when Heaney writes about the Battle of Vinegar Hill he also refers to the continuing troubles in Ireland, which he most definitely is involved in. This poem is steeped in history; Heaney describes things, as they were then; ‘The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley-‘. As he writes here it seems factual writing, as though having ‘barley’ to eat is a normal thing. When Heaney writes ‘No kitchens on the run, no striking camp-’ the misery and wanting these men had to go through becomes clear. It appears that the men were living hand to mouth, fighting for their own country which, paradoxically they had to move ‘quick and sudden’ in. Even though they had been born into Ireland and had it’s ancestral roots, it was they who were scared and ran, not the invaders. Again Heaney reiterates that he was involved in this Battle, by writing ‘We found new tactics happening each day: / We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike’. The ‘people’ with Heaney had to live by their wits, they had no modern artillery or machinery to fight with, just old spears. Here Heaney brings home just how violent it was, they’d ‘cut through…rider’ in order to win their country. Most of the people fighting were from the country, and they used the tools they had, in the most part ‘cattle’, which they used to ‘stampede…into infantry’. After this they would ‘retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown’, and most probably kill them while they were wounded. This fighting went on ‘until’ the two sides met ‘on Vinegar Hill’, what Heaney calls the ‘fatal conclave’. Although of course it wasn’t a ‘conclave’, it was an incredibly public meeting in which ‘Terraced thousands died’. Those that died Heaney refers to as ‘Terraced’ perhaps because of the sloping side of the hill, which meant that those fighting would have been raised above one another on levels of land. Here Heaney imparts the bravery of those standing up against the cavalry. They died ‘shaking scythes at cannon’, against impossible odds, but still fighting for what they believed in. Heaney uses powerful imagery in this poem. He writes ‘The hillside blushed’, which is because of the ‘broken wave’ of blood from the dead but also a metaphor for the earth’s embarrassment at what the men were doing to it and each other. ‘They buried us without shroud or coffin’ is a distinctive line because it seems like ’They buried’ all Ireland when this monstrosity was committed. Irish people today still have the psychological scars from their history being ‘buried without shroud or coffin’, this refers to the burying of the memories of events like this, when Irish schoolchildren were taught the British version of Irish history. The last line connects with the first line, ‘And in August the barley grew up out of the grave’, the barley from the ‘pockets of our greatcoats’ which they had been eating during the fighting grows up from the ‘grave’ having been fertilised by the rotting of the bodies. This ends the poem by returning in to the beginning and so it seems circular; the barley reminding people of the deaths, the deaths causing the barley to grow.

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Heaney uses old artefacts he has seen to write poetry about. In Relic of Memory he does just this. Something left over after the decay of the rest is a relic, and here Heaney writes about left over memory. Heaney writes about ‘The Lough waters’ preserving objects by ‘petrify[ing]’ them, particularly ‘wood’ like ‘Old oars and posts’ from boats and moorings. This petrifying turns the wood to stone and ‘Harden[s] their grain’ so that the patterns of fibres of the wood are locked forever. As the wood becomes locked, as it will be for all time, Heaney imagines it to 'Incarcerate ghosts’ as if in a prison. The ‘Lough waters’ preserve real objects, and within them, preserve history and memories. Trees ‘Of sap and season’ are petrified, mature, ‘season[ed]’ trees and young [sap]lings, or those that are young when they become petrified and still look the same when they are found, yet become old through lying under water for years. The Lough ‘shallows lap’ the trees and ‘give’ them eternity, yet ‘take’ away their right to be out in the world, alive. Objects in the Lough receive ‘constant ablutions’, to become cleansed and pure, yet this is a ‘drowning love’ that leaves them in limbo, a ‘relic of memory’ yet to be found. These motions of the Lough could ‘Stun a stake/ To stalagmite’, turn wood through petrifaction and erosion to limestone. Heaney writes about the coming of Earth in existence, and the origins of life. The molten rock or ‘Dead lava’ becoming a ‘cooling star’ which has a choice to become ‘Coal and diamond’ or of ‘sudden birth’ from the ‘Dead lava’ and ‘burnt meteor’. Heaney writes that these things are ‘too simple’, too scientific perhaps, ‘Without the lure/ That relic stored’, without history there is no significance to anything. History builds things up, gives a template for everything to happen on. If it is known how to extract it, even ‘A piece of stone/ On the shelf at school, / Oatmeal coloured’ will tell a story, and give masses of information.

In Bogland Heaney uses the history of the Irish as well as the finding of artefacts. He starts with ‘We have no prairies/ To slice a big sun at evening’, ‘We’, the Irish do not have long stretches of grass that goes on for miles and ‘slices’ the sun when it sets. The ‘horizon’ appears to trespass on the property of the Irish, ‘Everywhere the eye concedes to’ it being ‘wooed into the cyclops’ eye’, the sun and sky become reflected and almost absorbed in ‘a tarn’ or small mountain lake. There are ‘no prairies’ in Ireland, but still ‘unfenced country’ although it is ‘bog’ not dry grass, that drys up or ‘keeps crusting’ each time the sun rises. Out of this bog, or ‘peat’ is ‘taken the skeleton/ Of the Great Irish Elk’, a huge mammoth the ribcage ‘An astounding crate full of air’, like a large container for packing goods. Heaney writes about the ‘peat’ that is so preserving that ‘Butter sunk under/ More than a hundred years/ Was recovered salty and white.’ The ground is a historical preserver, that keeps offering memories to people. Heaney feels that the ’ground’ itself is so soft that it’s like ‘kind, black butter’ which is ‘Melting and opening underfoot’, perhaps acting as a repository of memory and objects, yet ‘Missing its last definition / By millions of years’. How land is used makes it something significant, whether it be farmland or mining land. ‘They’ll never dig coal here,’ robs the land of its purpose and is an enormous loss to the coal diggers. The land cannot be dated either, because there is no carbon, no coal left in it, which means how old it is cannot be discovered. There is no coal, ‘Only waterlogged trunks/ Of great firs’ waiting to be turned to coal. The trees are ‘soft as pulp’ though, nothing hard or endurable. The explorers and early settlers or ‘pioneers’ of Ireland ‘keep striking/ Inwards and downwards’, digging for the first time. They dig into the past, but do not retrieve anything except the fact that ‘Every layer they strip/ Seems camped on before.’ Peoples have lived there in the past, Nordic peoples from the North ‘Atlantic’, like ‘seepage’, trickling through, then leaving. ‘The wet centre [of the boghole] is bottomless’ just as the sea surrounding Ireland, and Irish history is ‘bottomless’ and fathomless.

Bog Oak is also about relics and objects found in the ground. In this poem it is a ‘carter’s trophy’, a great treasure of someone who lugged things around. Bog oak is ‘long-seasoned’ wood found in peat’s, and the ‘carter’s trophy’ is just that. It is ‘split for rafters’ of a house and looks like a ‘black/… rib’, curved and black from the bog. It is used ‘under the first thatch’ which might suggest that it is as old as the first thatched cottages, especially since it becomes ‘cobwebbed’ from being in the roof of the house so long. The author puts himself in the poem with ‘I might tarry’, which suggests nonchalantly lingering in order to wait for something, ‘with the moustached/ dead, the creel-fillers’ perhaps the ancient dead, ghosts of the ancestors, ‘creel-fillers’ or fishermen dead long ago. Heaney might ‘eavesdrop on/their hopeless wisdom’ or listen in on their conversation that seems furtive but can do no good now because it’s powerless ‘as a blow-down of smoke’ which ‘ struggles over the half-door’. The ‘mizzling rain’ suggests a miserable obscured place, where it’s impossible to see clearly or understand, and the ‘rain’ ‘blurs the far end/ of the cart track’ so you cannot see quite to the end. The rain softened the ‘ruts’ or furrow made by the wheels of the carter. These ‘ruts’ which could also mean dull, settled habits ‘lead back to no/ ‘’oak groves’’’, no trees of wisdom as Spencer wrote in Faerie Queen. Heaney writes that there are no ‘cutters of’ the famed wisdom plant of ‘mistletoe/ in the clearings’. This seems like Heaney is writing about the loss of Irish culture in Ireland, especially when he writes ‘Perhaps I just make out/ Edmund Spenser/ dreaming sunlight’ who was severely criticised for turning a blind eye to the Irish famine, and who created a little England in Ireland. Spenser is encroached upon by ‘geniuses who creep’ the spirit of a place such as Ireland or the people who acted to reaffirm Irish heritage within the colonised Ireland. Again referring to Spenser’s poetry the ‘geniuses’ ‘creep/’’out of every corner/ of the woodes and glennes’’’, like the faeries Spenser writes about in his poetry. The ‘geniuses’ ‘creep’ ‘towards watercress and carrion’ a very odd juxtaposition since ‘watercress’ is a high cash crop in Ireland because of the wet bogs, and ‘carrion’ dead and rotting flesh. This link by Heaney refers to the eating of ‘watercress’ by the Irish during the famine because they were starving and that’s all there was, they were fighting and starving while Spenser wrote his poetry and did nothing so that they eventually turned to carrion when hunger won out.