10. Seamus Heaney

Irish culture and political conflicts in North Ireland in "The Singer’s House"

1. Introduction

This last paper is connected to the sixth paper. Ireland has already become a free state but now it faces problems from the north. Ireland and Northern Ireland are suspicious of each other and these tensions escalated and reached their climax in actions such as the Bloody Friday and the Bloody Sunday. Heaney was a Catholic born in Northern Ireland, so this issue affected him greatly.

2. About the Poet

Seamus Heaney was born on April 13, 1939, in Mossbawn, in County Derry, Northern Ireland, to a Catholic family. He grew up in the rural environment of his father’s farm, won a scholarship to St. Columb’s College and studied English Language and Literature at the Queen’s University of Belfast from 1957 to 1961. It was during his years as a student in that university that he discovered the poetry of Ted Hughes, Patrick Kanavagh, Robert Frost and others. He graduated with a First Class Honours Degree and after training as a teacher at St. Joseph’s College of Education he became a lecturer at Queen University. He also wrote articles for magazines and made broadcasts for BBC radio and television.

Heaney married the teacher and writer Marie Devlin in 1965, with whom he had to children in 1966 and 1968. His first book of poems, "Death of a Naturalist", was given the Gregory Award and the Geoffrey Faber Prize in 1966. Heaney began to include social and political elements in his poetry in 1969, when the period of conflicts known as the Troubles started. He moved to Dublin in 1972 due to the persistent violence and travelled to Britain and the United States to give readings.

He continued publishing poetry collections: "Wintering Out" in 1972, "North" in 1975 and "Field Work" in 1979. In 1981 he became a professor at Harvard University and received two more awards from Queen’s University and Fordham University. He collaborated as a director in the Field Day Threatre Company and published his first translation of Irish traditional poems, "Sweeney Astray" in 1983.

Heaney has published many more poetry collections, the most recent being "Human Chain" in 2010, which has been nominated for the 2010 Forward Poetry Prize. His translations have received many attention as well, especially that of "Beowulf", published in 1999. He has written two versions of Sophocles’ plays ("The Cure at Troy" in 1990 and "The Burial at Thebes" in 2004) and has been awarded with several prizes such as the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 and the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2006. He is also a Saoi, the highest honor in Aosdána, an affiliation of creative artist in Ireland.

3. Irish culture and political conflicts in North Ireland

The partition of Ireland that took place from 1920 to 1922 established two countries: Ireland and Northern Ireland. As seen in the sixth paper, because of the Anglo-Irish Treaty Ireland became the Irish Free State, a dominion within the British Commonwealth, while Northern Ireland chose to remain part of the United Kingdom.

Northern Ireland had a majority of Protestants and unionists and owned six counties in the north: Antrim, Armagh, Down, Fermanagh, Londonderry and Tyrone. Ireland had a majority of Catholics and nationalist. The relationship between the two countries and communities was very tense — Northern Ireland thought that Ireland wanted to invade them to create an unified Irish State, and reacted by discriminating the small number of Catholics who lived in the north who they feared would support the IRA. Sectarian violence in the north caused hundreds of deaths since the partition occurred and many Catholics had to migrate to the south.

The main combatants in the first half of the century were the IRA, a militant guerrilla group that wanted to annex Northern Ireland to the Irish Free State, and the paramilitary groups supported by British forces in the North.

The conflict reached its climax in the late 1960s. The discrimination against Catholics continued, and whereas the Republic of Ireland was a modern and financially stable community, the North suffered high rates of unemployment and economic difficulties. Catholics living in the north created the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) to fight for equality and in 1966, the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, some ex-IRA members blew up Nelson’s Pillar in Dublin, to which a group called Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) responded by declaring war against them.

Both sides killed the other and the many riots such as the Battle of the Bogside in 1969 led to the conflict of the Troubles in the same year. The Troubles were marked by continuous bombings and shootings such as the Bloody Sunday, perpetrated by the British Army during a NICRA march, and the Bloody Friday, a series of bombings carried out by the IRA some months later. The conflict extended to Britain in the 1980s and ended in 1998 with the signing of the Belfast Agreement that established the Northern Ireland Assembly.

4. Style

The poem is divided into eight stanzas with four lines each, which makes a total of thirty-two lines. It is written in free verse and doesn’t follow any pattern of meter or rhyme.

Before the publication of "Field Work" in 1979 Heaney hadn’t really addressed the political conflicts in his country. In this volume he conceals his views on the conflict behind rich imagery and symbolism. This imagery revolves around Irish traditions, myths and history, sometimes places like Carrickfergus and Gweebarra in this poem.

The symbolism of this poem focuses on rural elements such as minerals ("salt", "granite"), agriculture ("grain", "season") and other elements such as the sea ("seal") or objects like "knives", "forks" and an "oilcloth".

5. Summary

Heaney bases his poem on two places: Carrickfergus, controlled by the British, and Gweebarra, an bay located in the north that is part of Ireland. With contrasting symbolic imagery, Heaney mourns the gradual loss of Irish culture because of Britain’s cultural impositions but has hopes for a new Celtic Revival that will restore their culture.

6. Analysis

Heaney mentions a city called Carrickfergus in the first stanza. Carrickfergus is a large town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland, famous for her salt mines. It was built in the 12th century by the Normans, who also built the Carrickfergus castle. Salt mining began in this town around 1850 and it is still an important industry in Ulster, but many mines had been abandoned by the time Heaney wrote this poem. The "frosty echo of salt miners’ picks" (2) is not only describing the workers’ activities in winter; it symbolizes old Ireland, with her own history and culture (salt mining) that have become "frosty", have been left aside. Heaney remembers old times with nostalgia; the "chambered and glinting" minerals are the foundations of this "township built of light" (3-4).

Heaney laments the abandonment of the salt mines, the symbol of Irish culture, and he feels that the Irish are losing their identity, their magic, because they have no voice in preserving, "conjuring" it (6). Their salt, their culture, "is gone" when it "should be crystal and kept" (7-8).

In the "amicable weathers" that "bring up the grain of things", "grain" represents Irish society and "amicable weathers" suggests something warm and good, their culture (9-10). But now they only feel it as a "tang of season and store", a monotonous cycle is all the "packing" they get (11-12). "Packing" sounds similar to "picking", and with this substitution Heaney might have been referring to the Northern Irish people that migrated to the south, as he did.

In the fourth stanza Heaney introduces a new place, Gweebarra. This bay is located on the west coast of County Donegal, the only county located in the North of the island that does not belong to North Ireland. The "salt" from Carrickfergus is now "granite" in Gweebarra and the "chambered and glinting" sights are now "glittering sounds" (15-16) that can be seen "framed in your window" (17). The pronoun "your" alludes to Heaney’s friend David Hammond, to whom this poem is dedicated. Heaney and Hammond were recording songs and poems for a radio show when a series of explosions provoked by Northern Irish extremists interrupted them.

The next three lines contrast British and Irish culture: the "knives and forks set on oilcloth"(18) evoke a clean, correct image associated with the more advanced British society; while the "seals" (19) refer to the Celtic legend of the Selchies, creatures that could live in the sea as seals or transform into humans and visit people, usually with tragic consequences. Heaney is encouraging Hammond to keep on singing when he says that those seals, who represent the Irish, "love music and swam in for a singer / who stood at the end of summer" (24-25). In Carrickfergus it was winter because it was under British control, but in Gweebarra it’s summer because Hammond’s songs can be "a rowboat far out in the evening" (28), his songs can help to mushroom Irish culture.

In the last stanza Heaney repeats his words of encouragement: Hammond was "always singing" (29) and he should keep on doing so, it won’t be easy but as the people from Carrickfergus still work on their mines and fields, Hammond should sing his songs, which are "a hint of the clip of the pick / in your winnowing climb and attack" (30-31). "Pick" and "winnowing" connect the first stanza with the last and the last line of this last quatrain sums up Heaney’s intentions: if he himself, Hammond and other people "raise" their voices, people will "believe what [they] hear" (32) because Irish culture is only debilitated, not dead.

7. Conclusion

With the Troubles coming to an end in 1998, peace in Ireland has been achieved despite some isolated terrorist acts by both parties’ paramilitary groups. Irish poetry is still very alive thanks to poets from both countries: Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon from the north; and Pat Boran, Connor O’Callaghan and Trevor Joyce in the south. There are also poets that write their works in Irish, like Michael Hartnett, Gabriel Rosenstock and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill.