Requiem+for+the+Croppies

 //This poem is redolent of all the things that make us Irish. Our capacity to endure. Our unquenchable spirit and the resurrection image of the barley all relate to the images in my psyche anyway. k // //Joe Staunton // Before reading the poetry of Seamus Heaney it is a good idea to acquaint yourself thoroughly with the history of Ireland as well as the contemporary context in which Seamus Heaney is writing.//R////equiem for the Croppies// was written in 1966 on the fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising of 1916. As Neil Corcoran says in his student guide //Seamus Heaney// (Faber and Faber); "Heaney celebrates not the Rising itself but what he considers its original seed in the rebellion of 1798." The poem was printed in his second collection //Door into the Dark//. Heaney has written about the origins of the poem on many occasions and here are some of these comments:

"Requiem for the Croppies' . . . was written in 1966 when most poets in Ireland were straining to celebrate the anniversary of the 1916 Rising. That rising was the harvest of seeds sown in 1798, when revolutionary republican ideals and national feeling coalesced in the doctrines of Irish republicanism and in the rebellion of 1798 itself - unsuccessful and savagely put down. The poem was born of and ended with an image of resurrection based on the fact that some time after the rebels were buried in common graves, these graves began to sprout with young barley, growing up from barley corn which the 'croppies' had carried in their pockets to eat while on the march. The oblique implication was that the seeds of violent resistance sowed in the Year of Liberty had flowered in what Yeats called 'the right rose tree' of 1916. I did not realise at the time that the original heraldic murderous encounter between Protestant yeoman and Catholic rebel was to be initiated again in the summer of 1969, in Belfast, two months after the book was published."

 "//Requiem for the Croppies//, ... is about the 1798 Rebellion, when Irish foot soldiers were killed by the English at Vinegar Hill:  'Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon'.  When I read this aloud in the 70s - I wrote it on the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising - it went down as an anthem in certain nationalist domains, but sounded very uneasy in the Unionist zones. I think the young nationalist in me was trying to give voice to things that the culture in Northern Ireland did not admit. There was no official space for anything of that kind."

"I suppose I did feel a certain “public” pressure always. One of the very first poems I wrote was “Docker”—“That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic”—and one of the sturdiest was “Requiem for the Croppies,” written 50 years after 1916 [the year of the Easter Rising]. “Being responsible” and what it means, what it demands, have indeed preoccupied me—maybe too much. But this is it, this is the thing, this is what you’re up against."

** Close Reading of 'Requiem for the Croppies' **

When analysing the poem remember that the “ground I was brought up on” features prominently in Heaney’s poetry. There is a sense of linkage between the land, the history and the self. Be on the look-out for examples in Heaney’s poetry of a desire to protect and preserve traditions that are under threat. Early in his career (1963), when referring to the violence in Northern Ireland, he wrote that, “the artist is the custodian of human values, of sanity and tolerance and these are the qualities most needed in the North of today”. So although Heaney was born and raised in the midst of sectarian violence, he has refused to be identified wholly as a political poet. Whilst there is a theme of violence that has plagued Ireland in his poetry, and the relationship between the Irish and the land is a central theme in his later poetry, many commentators have found a certain detachment in his poetry.

 On the last day of the last century (31st December 1999) //The Irish Times// published a list of the 100 Favourite Irish Poems of all time. More than 3,500 readers of the paper had written or e-mailed their choices. //Requiem for the Croppies// was one of ten Seamus Heaney poems to appear on this [|list].

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> **Brief notes on the poem:**


 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Heaney tells the story of the 1798 rebellion though the voice of a random dead croppy boy and, therefore, the rebel's point of view.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The poem is written in sonnet form - 14 lines - but with no division into stanzas.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> The poem describes the struggle the Irish rebels had to undergo.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Heaney focuses on the old-fashioned weapons - pike, scythes - the rebels used.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> The rebels also used herds of cattle to stampede into the lines of British solders.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The poem shows how the rebels used clever tactics to attack the superior army.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The rebels included priests, tramps, and farmers.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> A priest, Father John Murphy, led the rebellion in Wexford.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> The first line and the last line both mention barley, the food that sustained the rebels and grew out of their unmarked graves.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">The setting of the last lines of the poem is Vinegar Hill where the rebels were defeated. Vinegar Hill in Wexford was the site of the battle in which the rebels were defeated.
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> By describing the hillside as "blushing", Heaney expresses the vast amount of blood that was shed
 * <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> The rebels who died were buried without a coffin or even a shroud.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> **Links:**

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Brownstone Journal - Analysis of [|Requiem for the Croppies]. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Poetry Page - [|Seamus Heaney]. <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;"> Poem Hunter - Responses on [|Requiem for the Croppies].