Miracle on St David’s Day
Follower
My father worked with a horse-plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts of the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.
An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-ponted sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck
Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground
Mapping the furrow exactly.
I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake,
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.
I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.
I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.
Seamus Heaney
• The title ‘Follower’ can be understood in several ways: his father following the
plough, him following his father and his father following him in old age in a real
and metaphorical way. Also we all follow our parents in the sense that we come
after them.
• He remembers a scene rare now even in rural Ireland, a horse-drawn plough. The
poem is direct, opening with reference to its subject ‘my father’. His father’s
strength is expressed in the verb ‘globed’ to describe his wide, rounded shoulders,
tensed to guide the plough through the reins. His skill and ease of movement are
suggested by the simile ‘like a full sail strung’ just as a ship in full sail moves
swiftly and well. The ‘s’ alliteration emphasises the smooth movement. Using
such a plough he walked behind the horse within the shafts controlling the
straightness of the furrow it ploughed. The horses responded with greater effort,
they ‘strained’ as he used ‘clicking’, an onomatopoeic word, to keep them right.
• Two words, ‘an expert’, record Heaney’s pride in his father’s skill. He arranged
perfectly the ‘wing’ and steel tipped sock of the plough, the arm and blade that do
the cutting and turning of the earth. The ‘sod’, the turned earth, formed a perfect
roll and lay unbroken. As he reached the end of the field with only enough space
left to turn the horses ‘at the headrig’, his father only needed to ‘pluck’ the reins
once to turn the team of horses ‘sweating’ with their hard work. The ‘pluck’
implies a gentle movement; he does not need to pull or force his horses.
• Once turned he ‘mapped’ the next furrow, eyes ‘narrowed’ and ‘angled’ looking at
the ground. The three verbs underline his skill further and his concentration on his
task.
• The word ‘I’ begins the next three verses as Heaney remembers his childhood. He
uses the verb ‘stumbled’ to describe his childish clumsiness as he followed his
father who wore heavy work boots ‘hob-nailed’ to strengthen the soles and stop
them wearing out. He remembers falling on the ‘polished sod’, a metaphor to
express the appearance of the cleanly sliced soil. He remembers sometimes riding
on his father’s back and as in horse-riding going up and down to his father’s steady
steps, his ‘plod’.
• The penultimate verse begins with ‘I’ as he writes about his childhood ambition to
follow in his father’s footsteps and plough as he did, measuring each furrow with
one closed eye and stiffening his arm to keep the plough straight. He remembers
doing nothing else (‘all I ever did’) but follow in his father’s ‘broad shadow’
wherever he went on the farm and the adjective broad implies his father’s physical
stature and his importance in his son’s life.
• He remembers himself as in his father’s way (‘I was a nuisance’). He uses three
verbs, ‘tripping, falling, yapping’, the last one onomatopoeic to describe his
behaviour. The word ‘but’ signifies a change; in the present ‘today’ the roles are
reversed and his father ‘keeps stumbling/ behind me’. Is this literal or
metaphorical? Does his father stumbling with age now fall behind his son, or is it
guilt? Does he feel as though his father is always behind him perhaps because he
took up the pen not a plough? (Look at Digging for similar thoughts).
• This is an affectionate poem, a tribute to skills now gone from almost all farms and
a tribute to the love and admiration he felt for his father. The poem ends on a sad
note, the ‘expert’ of his childhood, powerful and skilful, is now ‘stumbling’ and in
fact or imagination haunts his son and follows the boy, now grown, who followed
him.