Heaney and His Bogs

I love Seamus Heaney's poetry from The Bog People, especially the element of truth being uncovered from beneath a dark and miry surface. This theme seems present in more than a few of his poems, but especially in his "bog" poems--my favorite of which is "Punishment."

In it, Heaney describes a bit of the story of a girl whose body, naturally preserved by the bog, was discovered beneath the "peat." Apparently she was entombed there as punishment for adultery in the 1st Century a.d.--of which it cannot be determined whether or not she was guilty, but it can be safely doubted with the knowledge of the extreme gender prejudice of that time. Heaney illustrates her body, grotesquely and yet delicately: "...the wind / at her naked front. / It blows her nipples / to amber beads, it shakes the frail rigging / of her ribs. / I can see her drowned / body in the bog..." (3-10).

Through the excavation of this once "flaxen-haired, / undernourished" (25-26) girl, Heaney discovers, or rediscovers, the same barbaric (and likely undeserved) punishment done unto women who have "kept company" with British soldiers. Just as the acknowledgment of the preserved, "Little adulteress" (23) is ignored and hidden beneath the bog, the acknowledgment of these punished prisoners, "[weeping] by the railings" (40), are ignored and hidden beneath the miry bog of Ireland's war-state. Heaney finds himself unable to reconcile his sense of "civilized outrage" (42) with his desire for "tribal, intimate revenge" (44).