The Strand at Lough
Beg was published in 1979, and is an elegy to Colum McCartney, Heaney’s
cousin who was shot by the IRA during the Troubles. The very title of the
poem can help us identify it; it
sounds like an isolated place. The opening lines of the poem are desolate. ‘Leaving the white glow of filling stations’
shows that any remnants of urban build-up are left behind at the beginning. Heaney portrays an uninhabited wilderness. The loneliness of rural Ireland makes the murder more shocking. One is alone without any chance of help. The idea of a pilgrim contrasts with the sin of the murder. The next few images are hellish; ‘Where Sweeney fled before the bloodied heads, goat-beards and dogs’ eyes in a demon pack…’ Sweeney was a mediaeval Irish king and about whom Heaney has written. These demonic beings are on the pilgrims’ route. They are ‘…blazing out of the ground, snapping and squealing.’ This adds terror to the poem and again strengthens the epic feel; it is as though these are things which must be destroyed and fought. There''s a quick burst of action: ‘The red lamp swung, the sudden brakes and stalling engine…’ It brings the reader back to reality after the gruesome descriptions of the ‘demon pack’. ‘…voices, heads hooded and the cold-nosed gun’ are all very real images which put the scene of his apprehension by the IRA firmly in our minds. After this, however, the poem changes pace with ‘Where you weren’t known and far from what you knew’, and a peaceful image of ‘The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg, Church Island’s spire, its soft treeline of yew.’ In the second
stanza, the poet writes about his cousin’s life near Lough Beg. ‘There you once heard guns behind the house long before rising time…’ is ironic; he used to hear shooting, but it was of ‘duck hunters’, whereas now it is the IRA, with him as the target. ‘…duck shooters haunted the marigolds and bulrushes’ is mixed imagery; mentioning the names of these plants adds a naïve twist to these lines (his naivety is highlighted further with: ‘But were still scared to find spent
cartridges’) and yet the word ‘haunted’ gives a sinister feel. However, he finds ‘spent cartridges’ which brings reality to these unseen hunters. Heaney describes the cartridges as ‘Acrid, brassy, genital, ejected’. The metal of these cartridges would taste bitter. The adjectives are obvious, but ‘genital’ is harder to explain. It could again represent the violence with which these cartridges were used; genital has connotations of power and force. The author then shows that their family is a peaceful one: ‘Spoke an old language of conspirators and could not crack the whip or seize the day’. They could not overcome the enemy, but rather are more conspiratorial. It shows the closeness of the family, especially, ‘old language of conspirators…’ Unfortunately, their efforts are futile and useless against their foe, as the author’s cousin is murdered anyway. The final stanza is an imagined scene between Heaney and his cousin, whilst they are walking at Lough Beg. The poet again mentions cows, and they are once again portrayed in a peaceful way: ‘…the cattle graze up to their bellies in an early mist and now they turn their unbewildered gaze…’ ‘Unbewildered’ shows that they are not concerned by human affairs; life goes on. The next line is full of alliteration: ‘To where we work our way through squeaking sedge drowning in dew.’ The ‘w’, ‘s’ and ‘d’ sounds are repeated through this. These sounds represent the squelching sounds of the mud as they walk through it. A sinister scene is made more sinister with ‘Like a dull blawith its edge honed bright…’ The image of a knife puts death and murder in mind. The next part of this stanza shows, again, his uncertainty at how his cousin died, as in the first stanza we have: ‘…heads hooded and the cold-nosed gun? Or in your driving mirror…’ Heaney suggests that he may have been accosted and had a gun pointed at his head, or (and the ‘or’ shows us his uncertainty) he was flagged down, rather than stopped by a fake road-block. Here, in the final stanza, he writes ‘…to find you on your knees with blood and roadside muck in your hair and eyes…’ This shows us that this is his imagination, as we can see from the poem that Heaney was not there at the death of his cousin. ‘…on your knees’ has a religious tone; he could be praying, and this paves the way for the last part of the stanza. ‘…gather up cold handfuls of the dew to wash you, cousin.’ This is a baptism; he is purifying him with water and cleaning his cousin with the very finest material, like gossamer or silk. ‘I plait green scapulars to wear over your shroud.’ is another image of him honouring McCartney. It is an opulent scene, as ‘green scapulars’ would be hard to come by, as green birds are rare. A scapular is also part of a monk’s habit, and so the holy tone is reinforced. All the elements of the death ritual incorporate nature. This links the almost industrial death (the IRA would have killed hundreds in a similar manner), with nature and beauty.
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