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The
Brownstone Journal >>
Issues >> Vol.
X Spring 2001
The Lens of Heaney’s Requiem for the
Croppies
Michael Dickerson (CAS XX) is a senior
in the College of Arts and Sciences, majoring in History. In
the fall, he will begin pursuing a Ph.D. in Irish Studies, with
an emphasis on history, at the Keough Institute for Irish Studies
at the University of Notre Dame. Though his academic focus has
been mainly historical, he has had a great interest in literature
and aims to incorporate cultural studies into his education
and professional teaching career.
The pockets of our greatcoats full of
barley -
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp -
We moved quick and sudden in our own country
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
A people, hardly marching - on the hike -
We found new tactics happening each day:
We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.
Heaney
17.
Seamus Heaney’s “Requiem for the Croppies”
functions on the surface as the elegy for the fallen participants
of the Irish rebellion of 1798. Men who died in famous battles
like “Vinegar Hill” were often buried in mass graves, “without
shroud or coffin.” When holding the poem up to the light of
Ireland’s past, however, a close analysis reveals that Heaney
uses his voice to express ideas that depart from a simple tribute.
The significance of the poem depends upon an understanding of
armed revolution as the disruption of historical, political,
and day-to-day continuity. The perpetual cycle of these disruptions–often
contributing to one another as related, glorified events in
a perceived continuum of mythology–commands Heaney’s focused
treatment of this particular treatment of this particular episode.
The sheer number of native Irish rebellions
warrants a belief in patterns. Take your pick of noteworthy
uprisings: 1641. 1782. 1798. 1848. 1916. In retrospect one can
see that revolutions always come around. Heaney suggests that
historical repetition is as natural as the cycle of life or
the cycle of seasons.
The grains of “barley” left over from one year’s harvest and
planted in a bed of earth will invariably produce new plants.
“August[’s]” “barley” comes with the regularity of an alarm,
signaling the passage of another bountiful season. The “barley”
in this poem, a staple food for those without “kitchens on the
run,” springs from the earth on which these soldiers make their
dying fall. It is easy to imagine that this new “barley” will
feed the rebels of the next era, as will the revered memory
of those who planted it. Irish rebellions tend to engender subsequent
rebellions by virtue of the mythological aspect they assume.
As with this poem, in which the narrator speaks through the
veil of death, the memory of martyred ancestors becomes the
instructive voice for eager youths intent on war.
The use of “barley” to represent the cyclical
nature of Irish revolutions is not unlike “Where Have All the
Flowers Gone,” a folk song popularized by the Kingston Trio.
The flowers, picked by girls whose young men have gone to war,
are nourished by the buried remains of an earlier age’s lovers.
The refrain of “When will they ever learn?” repeats after each
successive verse. This calls to mind an alternate connotation
for “Requiem”: the funeral dirge. With the title, Heaney plays
upon the concept of history as a smoothly sung but sorrowful
song, disrupted by the predictable chorus of civil unrest. Though
each violent refrain is expected, the effect is still jarring
after a lulling period of relative peace (perhaps characterized
by more pacifist, parliamentary efforts). “Requiem for the Croppies”
certainly poses the question: from whom and from what is each
new “wave” of Irish rebels deviating? Apart from the obvious
answer of British rule, there remains the less flattering reality
of Ireland’s preference for resignation. Evading confrontation
and rallying support after the fact is a typical quality of
the Irish national disposition. Long stretches of tranquility,
effected through appeasement and concession, obscure the smoldering
fire of discontent. Beneath a popular facade of complacency
seethes a dull unrest. Fleeting progenitors of violence fueled
by the ashes of their political predecessors, puncture the established
order of a contented Irish consensus.
Heaney expresses an awareness of irony by invoking another meaning
for “Requiem.” It is the term used by Catholics to refer to
a mass celebrated for the repose of the dead and a word with
which the Irish would be quite familiar. The poet understands
that there will be no repose, no rest for the spirit of rebellion.
The torch will be passed in songs, in the pub, and in the inflammatory
works of native writers. And there will be no rest for the bulk
of the Irish people, who must pick up the pieces of their rebel
children. The poem’s second line reproduces the public’s reluctance
to become involved in situations of physical force. “No kitchens
on the run” is at once an explanation for the consumption of
uncooked “barley” and a metaphor for the demands of domestic
life. Irish women and men have children to feed: they cannot
abandon their sedentary lives and roam the countryside for the
cause of an uncertain future. Familial duty restrains the individual
just as a lack of legs immobilizes the inanimate kitchen. This
universality of private responsibility and the unanimity of
public opinion are projected onto the physical environment.
In the speaker’s explanation of the itinerant lifestyle of the
soldier, for whom there is “no striking camp,” Heaney crafts
a pun on the work “striking.” Implying that rebel encampments
are visually inconspicuous on an uninterrupted Irish landscape,
this line illustrates the force of a uniformly held political
perspective, a force that impresses itself upon the tangible
world.
Heaney emphasizes the predominant docility
of the Irish character by underscoring its antithesis, the anomalous
rebel. Against the backdrop of politically stagnant Ireland,
the incarnate spirit of rebellion is prominent. The introduction
of the revolutionary as an aberration comes in the poem’s third
line, “We moved quick and sudden in our own country.” The speaker
expresses the unsettling effect of their efforts with the words
“quick” and “sudden.” There also seems to be professed incredulity
at the fact that this skittish behavior is necessary “in our
own country.” Heaney reinforces the notion of rebellion as an
entity altogether separate from traditional society when he
describes the last congregation at Vinegar Hill as the “the
fatal conclave.” A clandestine meeting, with relevance for a
Catholic audience, the “conclave” sounds conspiratorial and
enclosed like a cave. Elsewhere, the poet refers to the soldiers
as “Terraced thousands.” This qualification encapsulates both
the stratified military formations that are necessary on a hill
and the artificial manipulation of the environment. Terraces
are nearly level strips of land with an abrupt descent, and
rebels embody the abrupt dissent from an otherwise level populace.
Heaney punctuates the rebel’s deviation from
history’s smooth trajectory:
A people, hardly marching - on the hike
-
We found new tactics happening each day:
We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
(lines 5-9)
The poet segregates the upstarts of society
with the article “A.” “A people” could never be confused with
“The people” and Heaney solidifies this distinction with a divisive
comma. Presumably it is “A people” who are “hardly marching,”
and yet the subject is purposefully separated from the action
which it performs. “A people[’s]” lack of cultural conformity
is similarly accentuated in their unwillingness or inability
to march–the very picture of collective movement. Instead, the
rebels are forced to be “on the hike,” an individual activity
suggestive of a terrain wholly unwelcoming to mass transit.
Heaney further isolates the rebels by sequestering “on the hike”
between two dashes. The poet depicts the eccentricity of the
warriors’ “new tactics” in terms of temporal disruption. Revolutions
“cut through” and “stampede” the drowsy regularity of life only
to “Then retreat” while everyone returns to their respective
affairs. These guerrilla maneuvers represent the “wave”-like,
periodic disturbance of Irish rebellions.
But regardless of how intrusive these uprisings
may be, they are also portrayed as natural and inevitable. Using
the carved wooden “pike” against the smelted metal of gun and
sword, the Irish rebel seems to be in alliance with the inscrutable
forces of nature. The insurgents “stampede cattle into infantry,”
and one imagines that they have literally transformed the animals
into a ground militia. Mission completed, the revolutionaries
retreat and seek refuge among the “hedges where [the organized]
cavalry must be thrown.” There appears to be an ironic cooperation
between the Irish landscape and the Irish rebel, which brings
about these “new tactics.” As the latest link in a chain of
armed revolts, these tactics are in no way new. The newness
of their appearance is born out of the failure to recall past
insurrections–an embarrassing characteristic of Irish military
history. Confined to contemporary tunnel vision, “each” separate
rebellion regards itself as disconnected from the past, as if
it were something “new” “happening each day.” Having to lean
the hard way by direct experience, “each” successive rebellion
might sense its own infantile pretensions, and, like “The hillside,”
blush.
There exists in any lopsided contest an appreciation
for the futility of the underdog’s attempt. The image of “shaking
scythes at cannon” reminds the reader of this truth. Heaney’s
appreciation of this futility extends well beyond the failure
fo any particular rebellion. Barley will always provide sustenance
for later generations, but to what avail? The goals for which
the men of “Vinegar Hill” fought remain unrealized at the end
of the poem. Catholic emancipation and poverty relief, neatly
coupled within the line that reads “The priest lay behind ditches
with the tramp,” took years to implement, and it is difficult
to know whether physical force hurt or helped its own cause.
Most unfortunate of all is the futile stance taken against the
inexorable cycle of history, to which rebel lives and deaths
only contribute.
In the end, the proud men of ‘98 must acquiesce
to become uniform themselves, a wrinkling “broken wave” smoothed
over by the British army. Anonymous participants “without shroud
or coffin,” Irish rebels are reduced to mere symbols within
a legacy of Irish resistance. Perhaps they are partially redeemed
by a memorable nickname (“the Croppies”) or a signature battle
(“Vinegar Hill”), but perhaps not. With this understanding dawns
the full irony of Heaney’s use of the word “Requiem.” Once it
was a proper noun signifying the specific Catholic ceremonial
formula for a funeral mass. Now it means any sort of eugolistic
respect for the dead. The singular has been subsumed by the
general: just as Kleenex means facial tissue, Xerox means photocopy,
and Band-Aid means disposable bandage. Heaney treats the rebellion
of 1798 as a microcosm in which Ireland’s catalogue of numbered
revolts may be seen writ small. In ‘the fatal conclave,” which
summons the word “concave” to the ear and eye. Heaney reveals
this perspective. A concave lense is used to magnify the appearance
of an observed object, “Requiem for the Croppies” magnifies
the machine of self-perpetuating strife in a representative
episode of manageable size. TBJ
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Heaney, Seamus. Selected Poems 1966-1987. New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1990.
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