“The soil rolled over without breaking.”
Is very graphic as you can almost imagine the plough cutting through the soil, very slowly and carefully, not breaking the fresh sod. This sentence is very descriptive and expressive as it expresses just how good his father was at ploughing by not one single break in the soil.
The father’s skill continues to be praised by his son,
“With a single pluck
Of the reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into land”
This shows that Heaney’s father had complete control of the horses. The words “Single Pluck” emphasising that he only had to “Pluck” once and the horses obeyed him. With two run-on lines this creates a fast rhythm and tempo. “Pluck” is onomatopoeic so the reader can relate to the sound and expertise associated with the movement. Similar to this is,
“His eye Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.”
The comma (end stop line) after ‘ground’ gives a more precise meaning to “mapping the furrow exactly.” Which is very visual an again highlights the skill of the father.
In the fourth stanza the emphasis of this poem is reallocated to Heaney himself as a young boy.
“I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;”
These two lines are both very flamboyant and have great imagery. They are also quite comical as we can almost visualise the young Heaney trying hopelessly to keep up with this ‘expert’. “Hob-nailed wake” and “polished sod” are both evocative in a visual sense and add quality to this image.
Heaney continues describing this experience,
“Dipping and rising to his plod”
This suggests the rhythm of his father’s footsteps with the verbs ‘dipping’ and ‘rising’ giving the movements a dance quality.
“I wanted to grow up and plough,”
“All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.”
We see in this verse Seamus Heaney wanted to impersonate his father and become a farmer and be able to plough, just to be like him. By saying “broad shadow” Heaney is talking about his father’s physique, it clearly describes what an imposing figure his father was, so much so that his young son wanted to be like him in every way. His sheer size was yet another thing that the son admired in his father.
Verse six is a paradox; it is both comical and sad.
“I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always.”
‘Yapping’, ‘tripping’ and ‘falling’ all help to put together an audio and visual picture of the child following the daddy incessantly around the farm.
This final line on the other hand offers a very serious message about life,
“it is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away”
These words, although simplistic and seem directly related to Heaney’s relationship with his father but yet have meaning for us all. The cycle of the human life is complete, the son is no longer the follower but the leader; the father, no longer the leader but the follower. Something which my own grandfather always said which reflects these same thoughts is ‘Once a man, twice a child’.
The second Heaney poem which I will use as a comparison his is poem, ’Digging’. Unlike ‘follower’ this poem has a more irregular versification with nine verses of various length. Rhyme is only used at the start of the poem. Like the previous poem this poem also deals with Heaney’s father yet goes further into his paternal ancestry. This emphasises the importance the family and background to the poet and this is also typical of most Irish families.
Again Heaney uses the imagery of farm life to express his feelings. The poem opens with a rhyming couplet,
“Between …gum”
This immediately lets us into the issue or thoughts behind this entire poem. The young Heaney is breaking away from family traditions and choosing to be writer. The simile ‘snug as a gun’ is ambiguous. It could mean that H is comfortable with his chosen path in life, as comfortable as his forefathers with guns and spades, the tools of farm life. Or it could mean that he is not comfortable, who could be ‘snug’ with a gun? The decision to become a poet was perhaps not an easy choice for a young boy from a farming background in Bellaghy.
Like ‘Follower’ this poet is full of visual and audio imagery. He paints a picture of what is going on below his bedroom window. Again these images of farm life, directly involve his father.
“line 4 and5”
Once again the use of sibilant sounds enhances the description. The comma before the word ‘digging’ links to the title of the poem and slows the pace of the poem down in preparation for the following description. This incident stops him from working and provokes him to think about his father and his forefathers. The fact that he stops working is again a tribute to his father, it is a mark of respect.
The run-on line is used to link the next verse to the previous one. Heaney also used this technique in ‘follower’. As they are both narrative poems, this technique helps in the retelling of this incident from his life. The image of the
‘straining rump…bends low…stooping in rhythm’
bring us back to ‘Follower’ in which his father is also described heaving involved in hard, physical work. Yet again however the use of ‘rhythm’ suggests that this comes easy to his father, it is something that he is used to doing.
In verse 4 the actions of the father at work help to speed up the poem again and suggest expertise,
“nestled…levered firmly…rooted out’.
The use of ‘lug’ is Heaney using colloquial phrases to help clarify the images of his poem.
Once again H falls into nostalgic mode, thinking of incidents from his childhood which arouse emotions within the poet. Firstly we have the fond memory of gathering spuds,
“we picked..hands”.
Simple use of adjectives an alliteration helps to clarify these memories from his youth.
This prepares us for H’s emotional outburst about his father and his ancestors,
“By God…”
The fact that H gives this statement a separate 2 line verse helps to display his pride in his family tradition, something that he has emphasised in both poems. The repetition of ‘old man’ emphasises the strong family tradition and introduces us nicely to his grandfather who was also a hero figure’
“My grandfather cut more…bog”
Again the use of nostalgia is evident as H’s grandfather seemed to be renowned in the locality for his ability to work.
Like the young Heaney in the poem ‘Follower’ who could barely keep up with the movements of his father, this time he remembers carrying to his grandfather “milk in a bottle” which he barely stopped to drink and immediately went back to work. This memory adds to the heroic image H has of his relatives. The story of the grandfather’s reputation as a worker is again something that is common in the South Derry area, it is almost a colloquial trait, stories are often told of great men, who simply worked hard.
An obvious connection between the two poems is H’s admiration of the expertise both men show in their work. In ‘Follower’ we have
“the sod rolled over without breaking”
and in ‘Digging’ we have,
“Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods”.
Again the reference to his grandfather’s shoulder has links to his father’s “shoulders globed like a full sail strung”. This focus on the men’s physique is another attribute that the young Heaney admires and is proud of.
Heaney once again isolates the word digging’ at the end of this verse, with a fullsop after it. This has the effect of making it sound like an important activity, which it was for H and his ancestors as their livelihood depended on it.
In the penultimate verse there is an obvious change of tone, it becomes kind of sad. He combines the imagery of farm work, effectively using onomatopoeia and alliteration in,
“squelch and slap…curt cuts”
force him to think about his work. The sounds of his father working below the window, ‘living roots awaken in my head’ prompt him to consider his chosen path. He seems to feel inadequate
“But I’ve no spade to follow men like them”.
There is a clear sense that he is breaking away from tradition and in some way feels guilty about it. In the poem, ‘Follower’ there is also a deliberate change of direction towards the end of the poem and it highlights that H is coming to a conclusion, is thinking personally and reflectively about his own life, not he lives of his forefathers.
However in the last verse Heaney seems to be resolved about his chosen career. He shows this through the link to the opening verse, the repetition of the first line,
“between my finger….rests”
emphasises that a cycle has taken place, something changed.
“I’ll dig with it”
is a direct line to the title and the theme of this entire poem. The misuse of the verb ‘dig’ is clever as it helps to highlight the fact that H has broken away, he is going to be a poet, this will be job.
The most obvious link between these 2 poems f and d is the huge respect that H has for the work of his fathers, the simple tradition of farm life. The use of simple diction and local dialect helps to portray this yet the figurative language used to describe the skill of farm work makes it sound like work to be proud of. In both poems H deals with personal issues and is very honest about hard life is. Yet he is strong and stands by his choices in life. H also effectively uses his childhood memories in both poems to help paint nostalgic pictures of his past. Someone like H could almost be forgiven for forgetting the simple background from which he came from, yet in these poems it is obvious that he is proud of his humble beginnings.