Irish Identity in Seamus Heaney's Poem "Digging"

Irish Identity in Seamus Heaney’s Poem “Digging”

Ipatia Apostolides

May 23, 2020

Digging

by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging” was originally published in Death of a Naturalist in 1966. The poem describes the speaker looking out his window and seeing his father digging in the flowerbeds. The speaker contemplates that twenty years ago, his father and grandfather both dug for potatoes, and how he has broken that tradition by writing instead of digging. Yet there is more to the poem than first meets the eye. I will cover several aspects of the poem, like its structure, title, symbolism, and sensory detail. I will also show how the dominant theme in “Digging,” which demonstrates the act of digging, is linked to the speaker’s Irish past, or roots.

Heaney’s poem “Digging,” written in first person point-of-view, gives the impression of being a personal poem (3-4). It begins with the first stanza consisting of two eight-syllable rhyming lines followed by the second stanza consisting of two ten-syllable rhyming lines and one eight-syllable rhyming line. The third stanza consists of four lines, and here the pattern changes from traditional rhyme to nonrhyming verse. This nonrhyming verse with varying syllabic meters, including iambic pentameter, continues until the end; with five lines in the fourth stanza, two lines in the fifth stanza, seven lines in the sixth stanza, four lines in the eighth stanza, and three lines in the last stanza. Essentially, the speaker has begun with traditional rhyming verse in the first 5 lines and switches to modern, non-rhyming verse for the rest of the poem.

The speaker’s inactive stance is evident here: “Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests; snug as a gun,” and he is just sitting there (lines 1-2). According to Goes, the speaker “is preparing to write, or perhaps, is unable to write and is merely sitting dumbstruck as he attempts to” (2). Another form of inactivity is shown in the “squat pen,” which suggest that his pen is squatting, or doing nothing, just like he is. 

The physical act of digging commences with the speaker’s father. The speaker looks out the window and goes into minute detail about the process of his father digging among the flower beds (lines 5-6), and then he reminisces twenty years ago when his father dug potatoes: “Bends low, comes up twenty years away/Stooping in rhythm through potato drills/ Where he was digging” (lines 7-9). Line 7 gives a smooth transition from the present moment to twenty years into the past. The majority of the poem focuses on the digging done by his father and grandfather, denoting two generations of diggers. This shows a time in Irish history where digging potatoes was a way of life and a way to feed the family.

The speaker also plays a role in his familial past; he assisted in some part of this digging process. For example, the speaker mentions that he picked new potatoes along with others, presumably his siblings: “To scatter new potatoes that we picked/Loving their cool hardness in our hands” (lines 13-14). According to Goes, editor of the Hog Creek Review, a literary journal of the Ohio State University at Lima, the speaker “is at the center of action,” and he identifies himself as being a member of a group by using the word “we.” In addition, the speaker mentions: “Once I carried him milk in a bottle/ Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up/ To drink it, then fell to right away” (lines 19-21. This act of taking milk to his grandfather symbolizes a feminine, supportive role. It also means that what his grandfather was doing probably was too difficult a task for the speaker, who must have been a young child at the time. Yet the speaker participated in an indirect way by bringing milk to his grandfather. 

The title in the poem is significant because the act of digging has more than one connotation. Digging could consist of actual digging, which falls into the realm of naturalism. For art and literature, naturalism is defined in the dictionary as a realistic depiction of detail, and it focuses on the natural world. Heaney appears to be dealing with the natural world. Digging can also be symbolic. 

The symbolism of digging can refer not only to the physical act of digging, but also to the past. By referring to “twenty years” away (line 7), the speaker guides the reader to reflect upon his past, as if he were digging into it. In addition, using similar words, through metaphor, is a good way to show double meanings and denote symbolism. In the following phrases: “I look down,” (line 5), “Bends low” (line 7), and “going down and down” (line 23), may symbolically refer to the speaker’s father’s and grandfather’s hard manual labor in the past which represented Ireland’s past, and where the Irish, due to British Imperialism, were forced to live in poverty. “I look down” (line 5) could also suggest how the British looked down on the Irish in the past. The “roots” in the following phrase: “Through living roots awaken in my head”  (line 27), can refer to the speaker’s familial roots. There are the roots from the flowers and potatoes, and then there are the living familial roots in the speaker’s head. 

Another symbol in this poem is the gun; it could be symbolic of the sexual act. This is revealed in “snug as a gun” (line 2), “the spade sinks into” (line 4), “straining rump” (line 6), and even “the shaft” (line 10). In the natural world, the sexual act produces offspring, and in this case, the act of digging produces potatoes or crops. The gun in the second line could also represent fighting for a cause, yet it rests, where the speaker has the ability or potential to fight with words. 

The speaker’s use of sensory detail abounds in this poem; he sees, hears, and even smells in the poem. These details include the following concrete words: pen, gun, flowerbeds, boot, knee, spade, hands, potatoes, turf, shoulders, and milk, among others. When the speaker states what he sees, as in: “I look down” from the window, and what he hears, as in the “clean rasping sound” (line 3), the reader is there with him, seeing and hearing. Later, the speaker talks about the sound of the spade sinking into the “gravelly ground” (line 4), as well as the sound of “the squelch and slap” (line 25), and these sounds bring realism and naturalism to the poem. In addition, the sense of smell, as seen in line 25, “The cold smell of potato mould” is evident in  these few words. Although smell is not “cold,” the cold in this phrase represents the coolness of the damp earth where the mold grows.

A central theme to this poem is Irish identity. This has been a topic that has been a central theme in many Irish poets’ works, and being under British rule in the 19^th century and early 20^th century meant that the Irish were inevitably poor, which was a stark reality of their Irish culture. Both Heaney and Yeats were Irish poets. W.B. Yeats was born in Ireland in 1865 and grew up as a Protestant with the Irish revolting against the British (Finneran). Heaney was born in 1939 in Northern Ireland and grew up as a Catholic (Heaney). 

Their Irish identity was important to them, and it shows in their poems, even though they came from different religious backgrounds and time periods. During the 1840s to 1890s, the Irish peasant was tagged as “Paddy,” a comic Irish buffoon due to their post-famine emigration into the English slums (Hirsch 1119). The Irish Literary Revival revolved around Yeats’s writing; and it tried to change the “Paddy” image into a “natural” aristocrat by idealizing them (1120). Although Yeats liked to idealize and romanticize the Irish past, this romanticizing of the “peasant” was not necessarily the truth, because Yeats didn’t really know them, since much of his life was spent in Sligo, Dublin, or in Coole Park. As a result, the question I raise is “What is the real Irish man’s identity?” The Irish man’s identity really begins when he is liberated from Britain. As long as the Irish were ruled by Britain, their identity was not their own. Even though he was a romantic, Yeats’s “Easter 1916” poem attempts to mark this historical uprising in 1916 of Ireland against Britain, and in line 41, the speaker emphasizes Ireland’s unified front: “Hearts with one purpose alone” (Finneran 76). This was a turning point in Ireland’s history with Britain.

Another significant aspect of the Irish identity was the role that poverty played in their lives. According to the May 18, 2020 lecture by Dr. Frazier (University of the Cumberlands), the Irish were cultivating potato crops but the British were confiscating them, leaving the Irish to be hungry. Hirsch states, “The overwhelming squalor and poverty in the West during the horrible years of the famine also led English writers to conclude that the Irish existed on a lower rung of the Darwinian ladder” (1119). 

Heaney’s “Digging” poem refers to the Irish man’s years of famine, where growing potatoes was an integral part of that life; and it’s depicted through his personal experience with his grandfather: “My grandfather cut more turf in a day/Than any other man on Toner’s bog” (lines 17-18). Equating the Irish past with poverty can also be seen in the “coarse boot” (line 10) which portrays an old boot that is not shiny or new, but a boot of a hardworking man who has used it often in his work. Also, the bottle that was “Corked sloppily with paper” (line  20) reveals that there is no cork, which may have been lost or misplaced, but a substitute cork made of paper. Milk, readily available from the cow, was the food of the poor. These well-chosen and well-placed words give rich detail to the “Digging” poem, bringing the reader into the speaker’s humble Irish past, and making it real for them. Poems like this, that deal directly with the Irish past, help piece together the true Irish man’s identity.

The ending lines of the poem brings it to a full circle as the speaker reminds us again of the squat pen and how he will “dig with it” (line 31). In essence, there are two different ways to earn a living through digging, either through the physical process of digging, or through digging with the mind and pen. By tying into the Irish past with the digging of potatoes, the speaker reminds us that the act of digging is not always an activity reserved for flowerbeds, but was useful at one time for making a living and feeding the poor. The speaker also reveals how he now has a choice to dig with his pen rather than with the lowly spade, and through this, reminds us that his father and grandfather did not have that option during their poverty-stricken Irish lives. 

                                                      Works Cited

Finneran, Richard J., editor. The Yeats Reader: A Portable Compendium of Poetry, Drama, and Prose. By W.B. Yeats. 2nd ed., Scribner, 2002.

Goes, Adam. “Digging into Society: The Hierarchy of the Poet and the Working Man.” Hog Creek Review. https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/79431/5/LIMA_HCR_2012_ESSAY_Goes.pdf

Heaney, Seamus. “Digging.” 100 Poems. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2008, pp 3-4.
Hirsch, Edward. “The Imaginary Irish Peasant.” PMLA, vol. 106, no. 5, Oct., 1991, pp. 1116-1133. https://www.jstor.org/stable/462684