Analysis and commentary of Traditions by Seamus Heaney

The poet Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 at Mossbawn, Northern Ireland (Irish Culture). One of his main characteristics as a poet is his ambivalent opinion about the English influence in the Irish culture. On the one hand, Heaney mourns the loss of the native Irish language, as a consequence of the English colonization during the Elizabethan period (Corcoran, p.38). On the other hand, he is in debt to England because he was taught by its lecturers, his works were printed by its publishers and he belonged to its literary circles (Teachit). In 1972, he published ‘Wintering out’, a collection of poems which deals with a wide range of topics including myth, religion, and the English colonization and, as a consequence, the loss of the Gaelic language in the Irish lands (Teachit). Therefore the aim of this paper is to analyse ‘Traditions’, a poem which is representative of these themes. I will focus on Heaney’s divided attitude towards the English language and the loss of the Irish language.

‘Traditions’ is divided in three sections and each one contains three quatrains. In the first section, Heaney begins saying that the Irish ‘guttural muse/ was bulled .../by the alliterative tradition’ (L. 1-3) and, according to Corcoran, ‘alliterative tradition’ is used instead of the Elizabethan English because its earliest metres of poetry ‘were alliterative in form’ (Corcoran, p.38). However, what is important in these lines is the use of the word ‘bulled’, which is employed to compare the damage in the Irish language to a rape (Corcoran, p. 38).

Next, in L. 7 and 8, Heaney uses a simile to describe the decadence of the Gaelic language. He says that the Irish language is like a ‘Brigid’s Cross/ yellowing in some outhouse’ (L. 7-8), and, paradoxically, this particular cross is an antique Irish symbol which is used to protect the house from fire (Wikipedia). In the third stanza, the metaphor of the rape continues. ‘Custom, that ‘the most/ sovereign mistress” finally gives up and ‘beds us down into the British Isles’ (L. 9-12), showing the triumph of the English language.

In the second section, Heaney writes about the linguistic consequences of the Elizabethan conquest in the current English spoken in Northern Ireland. Corcoran explains this part of the poem saying that, nowadays, the Irish people uses ‘some ‘correct Shakespearean’ forms’ but also words ‘introduced by the Scots and English planters’, as we can see in L.24: ‘bawn’ is a fortified farmhouse used by English colonists and ‘mossland’ means ‘bogland’ in the Scots language; but he also remarks that Heaney is wrong about the origin of  the term ‘bawn’ because, actually, this word comes from the Irish bábbhún (Corcoran, p.39).  With regards to the meaning of the whole section, in my opinion, Parker goes beyond with his explanation, showing Heaney’s divided feelings towards the English language; Parker suggests that, in fact, ‘‘correct Shakespearean’ ... reminds him [Heaney] of defeat, like the name of his birthplace [Mossbawn]...’ (Parker, p.98).

On the contrary, in the third section, Heaney’s pessimistic attitude towards the English language changes. As Parker suggests (p. 98), Heaney criticizes MacMorris for being an stereotyped Irish character, but, then, the poet counterpoints MacMorris’ question ‘What ish my nation?’ with a resolute answer formulated  by Joyce’s protagonist, Bloom (L. 35-36). Moreover, Parker states that in the last stanza Heaney pays homage to James Joyce for his contribution to the Modern Irish literature (Parker, p.98).

In conclusion, as we have seen, Heaney starts mourning the loss of the old Gaelic language, that is to say, part of the Irish identity, but, later, the poet shows mixed feelings when he describes that the English spoken in Northern Ireland is a ‘correct Shakespearean’ because this also represents the victory of the English colonization. In the last section, however, Heaney finally accepts the intrusive language because with Irish writers such as James Joyce ‘English is by now not so much an imperial humiliation as a native weapon’ (qtd in Parker, p. 97).

Erika Giselle Wilson Cantariño

Bibliography:

bhaggerty@irishcultureandcustoms.com. Irish culture and customs. 21 April 2006. http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/Poetry/SeamsHeaney.html

Corcoran, Neil. The Poetry of Seamus Heaney: A Critical Study. London: Faber, 1998.

Heaney, Seamus. “Traditions”. 20 April 2006. http://www.well.com/www/eob/poetry/Traditions.html

Parker, Michael. Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet. London: Macmillan, 1993.

garry@teachit.co.uk. Teachit’s English teaching resources. 20 April 2006. http://www.teachit.co.uk/pdf/winterin.pdf

Wikipedia. “Brigid’s Cross”. 20 April 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid's_cross