For Tom Flanagan
I
Our guttural muse
was bulled long ago
by the alliterative tradition,
her uvula grows
vestigial, forgotten
like the coccyx
or a Brigid's Cross
yellowing in some outhouse
while custom, that "most
sovereign mistress",
beds us down into
the British isles.
II
We are to be proud
of our Elizabethan English:
"varsity", for example,
is grass-roots stuff with us;
we "deem" or we "allow"
when we suppose
and some cherished archaisms
are correct Shakespearean.
Not to speak of the furled
consonants of lowlanders
shuttling obstinately
between bawn and mossland.
III
MacMorris, gallivanting
around the Globe, whinged
to courtier and groundling
who had heard tell of us
as going very bare
of learning, as wild hares,
as anatomies of death:
"What ish my nation?"
And sensibly, though so much
later, the wandering Bloom
replied, "Ireland," said Bloom,
"I was born here. Ireland."
The poem that I have chosen to analyse
is “Traditions” by Seamus Heaney, which deals with the feeling of indignation
felt by people who like him are speakers of marginal languages. The poem is a
real declaration of patriotism that shows us that there are more things behind
what it is considered the “standard”. The poet highlights the linguistic
situation that minority languages like Irish are living at present as opposed
to traditionally pretigious languages like English.
First of all, I am going to talk
about the structure and form of the poem. It consists of three parts. Each one
of them is divided into three stanzas with four verses. So, the number of the
stanzas of the complet poem is nine. The rhyme is free.
With regard to the language, it is quite accesible, even the poet uses some colloquial words such as “gallivanting” in the first stanza of the third part. Besides, he uses some punctuation marks such as commas, colon and inverted commas when he wants to remark a word and even an interrogative sentence probably to capture the interest of the reader (“What ish my nation?”, second stanza, third part). On the other hand, as rhetorical figures, we can also find some very important metaphors in the first verse of the poem, “our guttural muse”, to refer to his language, Irish, as opposed to English. The second one is “ her uvula grows vestigial, forgotten” (first stanza) referring to Irish as a way of speaking, which becomes more and more forgotten. Moreover, a simile is also used by the poet in the second stanza of the first part of the poem, which is “forgotten like coccyx or a Brigid’s Cross”). Finally, a personification is used in the third stanza of the first part to refer to custom: (custom, that “most sovereign mistress”).
On the other hand, as I mentioned before, the main topic of the poem is the topic of the language. The poet is expressing his feeling of indignation because of the linguistic situation of Irish as opposed to English, the spread of which goes to the detriment of the rest of the languages that are also spoken in the British Isles, such as Irish.
As we can infer from the poem, this problem is a question of identity. The fact that the poet highlights his “nationality” at the end of the poem, shows that this patriotic feeling that the poet has, becomes clear for the reader at the end of the poem. (“What’s my nation?”…”Ireland”sais Bloom, “I was born here, Ireland”, last stanza). The question that underlies the poem is the following: Are minority languages doomed to disappear considering that they are completely forgotten?
Nevertheless, the poet uses an ironic tone in some verses of the poem when talking about the correct Shakespearean: We “deem”or we “allow” when we suppose…are correct Shakespearean” in contrast with the language that, according to the poet, is forgotten, Irish (“Not to speak of the furled consonants of lowlanders…between bawn and mossland”, third stanza of the second part). Something remarkable here is that if we analyse the two last words of this stanza: “bawn” and we remove “land” to “mossland”, we get “Mossbawn”, the name of the poet’s birthplace. This intensifies his feeling of anger by using personal references. The poet is all the time involving the reader and himself in the poem as we can appreciate in (“who had heard tell of us”, first stanza of the last part)
Furthermore, there are some important ideas that I would like to comment. The first aspect that I think is the dedication that the poet writes for “Tom Flanagan” before the poem starts, an American writer and professor of political science at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, whose family is Irish-American and who the Heaney could meet in one of his travels to America.
The poem starts
with a series of comparisons between his language and things that according to
the poet are forgotten. One of these things is a Brigid’s Cross, which is “an old Irish symbol, probably
derivative of the pagan sunwheel”. Some protecting
powers were attributed to these crosses in Ireland.
In the second part of the poem, as I mentioned before, Heaney talks about the traditional perfect “Elizabethan English” and “correct Shakespearean” as opposed to “the furled consonants of lowlanders”, that are refused and forgotten. Moreover, another important aspect that I consider interesting to comment on, is the mention of the name “MacMorris” by the poet in his first stanza of the last part. MacMorris is a character that appears in Shakespeare’s work “the life of Henry V: III, ii”, when Macmorris, the Irish captain says just the same sentence that Heaney has used here:”What ish my nation?”
Notice the use of the ending “ish”
(typical Irish ending) proves that Heaney is treating the topic in a very
parodic way.
Finally, the use of Bloom is another
patriotic symbol as he is a character of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and who also is
an Irish man. In this case, the repetition of the word
“Ireland” at the end of the last stanza gives more strength to the poem.
As a conclusion, I would like to
finish by saying that I have really enjoyed analysing this poem because it
transmits perfectly the ardent interest with which the poet treats the topic of
the language, and what is even more important, it reflects the real situation
that many people are living nowadays apart from the Irish, who, may consider
that their language is under threat of disappearence by the traditional
imposition of the rest of the most powerful languages of their country.