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Corinne Klassen
Introduction to Literary Analysis
Professor Vanwinkle
December 12, 2014
Bog Bodies in Seamus Heaney’s Poetry
The presence of bog bodies as a recurring theme throughout Seamus Heaney’s poems
“Punishment,” “Strange Fruit,” and “Bog Queen” is significant, not only in understanding an
important part of Heaney’s life, but also in interpreting the meanings of these poems and many
of his others. Because the bog body motif in these three poems is especially conspicuous, and
because the same motif presents itself in much of his poetry throughout the years, it seems to
exemplify a special significance in Seamus Heaney’s life. First, the poem “Punishment”
demonstrates Heaney’s observance of a bog body of a young girl who exhibited signs of being
hung and drowned in the bogs for adultery. He makes parallels with this young girl and some of
the hardships going on in Ireland at the time: this shows the affect that learning about these bog
bodies had on his own life and perspective. “Strange Fruit” demonstrates another observance of a
bog body, this time only the head of a girl, which Heaney speculates to be a murder victim. In
the third poem “Bog Queen,” Seamus Heaney actually depicts the narrator of the poem as a girl
drowned in the bog; we learn this person’s story as if they rose from the dead out of the bog to
tell it. Not only does the recurring motif of bog bodies demonstrate Seamus Heaney’s own
parallel of thought, it is extremely significant in relating to what was happening in Heaney’s
locality at the time; it is open to interpretation whether such a motif signifies a political agenda

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Heaney may have had, or if—discerning from the tone of each poem--it has special significance
in a morbidly romantic sense in his own life.
The way Seamus Heaney conveys the majority of his poetry illustrates a parallel of
thought unlike any other writer. The tone of his poetry, with its grisly, gritty, and cacophonous
language, conveys a writer whose mind must run along those same gritty lines in order to write
poetry that accurately exhibits a message such as the one “Bog Queen,” “Strange Fruit,” and
“Punishment” all exhibit. Seamus Heaney quotes when asked about the exceptional technique of
his poetry, “Technique, as I would define, involves not only a poet’s way with words, his
management of meter, rhythm, and verbal texture; it involves also a definition of his stance
towards life, a definition of his own reality” (Jackson, Birns 2). The definition of Heaney’s
reality seems to involve not only that of a gross and strange kind of beauty, but also a subtle
political message that runs through the undertone of a great many of his poems. The way he
represents the ancient bog bodies found in Ireland and other parts of Europe is one way of
getting across such a message, whether it be directly from spontaneous inspiration or from a pre-
determined political or social agenda.
The tone of the three poems “Punishment,” “Strange Fruit,” and “Bog Queen” is very
similar throughout each one, even though each conveys a slightly different message. Upon
observance of all three poems, there are a few motifs that tend to make themselves known in
each. The first is the most obvious, that is, that each poem conveys bog bodies; with this motif,
Heaney causes his readers to conjure up a distinct picture from each poem of a very grotesque
and deranged form buried in the swampy bogs of Ireland. The second motif is that, in these three
poems, Heaney focuses on the bodies of young girls. He does not say the precise age of each, but
one can derive from the tone that these girls are not older women, or even women with families,

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but rather young and innocent girls. Although Heaney does have a few poems about the bog
bodies of men, it seems that he tends to focus more often on the more vulnerable sex, the reason
being precisely that they are more vulnerable and provoke a sense of pity in the reader. The third
motif is the type of language that Heaney uses to describe these young girls in the three poems.
Throughout each he uses language that conveys the girls as part of the Irish landscape: phrases
and words such as “turf-face,” “flaxen-haired,” and “broken nose is dark as a turf clod” (Heaney
114) exhibit imagery that is very much Irish in its tone. Consequently, the distinctly Irish tone is
not one of light, happy imagery; rather, especially with the use of the bogs, it is wordplay that
demonstrates a gritty tangibility that brings the bog bodies to life and gives them a strange
beauty. In this way Heaney brings romance to an otherwise gory poem, not only through tone,
but also through his impeccable imagery.
The imagery throughout these three poems is similar in that all three bring to mind in the
reader one distinct vision; the vision uniquely grotesque, beautiful, and tangible of the bog
bodies of young girls. Not only does Heaney provide for his readers sight, smell, and touch, he
even gives a sense of taste by telling what the young girls have last eaten, and speculates on their
last thoughts before they were drowned in the bogs. Heaney chose the bog bodies as a theme for
a great many of his poems because he was so intrigued by one man’s description and observance
of them, and though it is not sure whether Heaney himself ever actually saw the bodies in person,
he was inspired by them enough to provide enthralling imagery of several of the bodies, simply
from reading about them. “[Heaney] had been moved by Glob's lyrical descriptions of the
sometimes beautifully preserved Iron-Age bodies that turned up from time to time in the peat-
bogs of Northwestern Europe, and was intrigued by the archaeologist's recourse to theories of
ritual human sacrifice in order to explain their presence in the bogs” (Purdy). The young girl in

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Heaney’s poem “Strange Fruit” could be speculated to have died by human sacrifice. He
describes her as a “Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible Beheaded girl, outstaring axe and
beatification, outstaring What had begun to feel like reverence” (114). This could easily be
speculated as either human sacrifice or an extremely violent death by punishment. Heaney’s
imagery in “Strange Fruit” such as “head like an exhumed gourd,” and “prune-stones for teeth,”
gives a very distinct picture of how horrifically terrible this girl was to look upon. Heaney further
proves this by saying she almost needed to be reverenced because of her terrible blank stare, and
her horrific image was dreadful enough to be sanctified. However, although Heaney describes
this girl in such a grotesque way, there is no sign of a political agenda in his imagery and tone
and there is every sign of a romantic and pitying tendency in his language and descriptions.
“Leathery beauty” and “perishable treasure” convey a sense of longing and love for this horrific
creature buried in the bog. Even though he says she is terrible to look at, he looks at her with a
kind of helplessness and sorrow for what he supposes to have happened to her.
A similar imagery is used with the girl in “Bog Queen,” which carries the same romantic
language with a slight twist in narrator; that is, the bog body herself is speaking rather than
Heaney as a voyeur speaking about her. This “bog queen” describes herself the same way the girl
in “Strange Fruit” is described: with a black face and slimy hair. She tells the story of what
happened to her before she was drowned in the bog, and evokes pity from the reader in hearing
about how her hair was robbed from her and she was stripped by a “turf-cutter’s spade.” Heaney
especially brings to life this bog body when he uses the image of her actually rising from the bog
to avenge her terrible death: “I rose from the dark, hacked bone, skull-ware, frayed stitches, tufts,
small gleams on the bank” (109). Although he evokes the image of this terrible figure rising from
the bog, there is a certain softness and romance to how Heaney presents the woman in this poem.

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Even though Heaney uses a dead body as a narrator, his soft imagery makes her sound lovely
despite her turf-like face and hair like a birth-cord.
The third poem, “Punishment,” illustrates a similar situation, but with a twist. Although
in the other two poems the girls could have been killed due to human sacrifice, “Punishment” is
one poem that Heaney speculates, if the girl was not killed by human sacrifice, she was certainly
killed due to a chastisement of some kind. He describes this young girl as a “Little adulteress”
with “her noose a ring to store the memories of love” (Heaney 112). In other words, she was a
prostitute who was hanged for her crimes. Heaney seems to try to demonstrate in any way he can
a kind of imagery that shows his background in Irish culture; from comparing the female bog
bodies to the Irish landscape, to bringing in events from local Ireland, Heaney shows his strong
ties to the culture of Ireland. “In this sense, the bog queens in ‘Come to the Bower’ and ‘Bog
Queen’ appear to be as Nerthus, for whom people were sacrificed to ensure the fertility of the
territory in spring, and as Mother Ireland, who needs the blood of her children to survive”
(Hakkioğlu, Mümin, and Parlak). Mother Ireland is an extremely central figure in Irish culture,
and because of this, one could even speculate that Heaney uses this motif of women in his bog
body poetry to show the extent of his love for Ireland.
Keeping Heaney’s conspicuous admiration for Irish culture in mind, it is possible that
“Punishment” may have a kind of political agenda along with the slightly romantic tone that the
others have. “I almost love you” and “I am the artful voyeur of your brain’s exposed and
darkened combs […] and all your numbered bones” (Heaney 113) definitely suggests a romantic
notion towards this young girl in the bog. However, that love could also reflect Heaney’s love for
Ireland because he goes on to talk about the girl’s “betraying sisters, cauled in tar, wept by the
railings,” which is actually an image of contemporary events in Ireland at the time. “The analogy

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with contemporary events--made through allusion to the ‘betraying sisters,’ shaved, stripped,
tarred and handcuffed by the IRA to the railings of Belfast for keeping company with British
soldiers--would be attacked for its mythologizing mystification of historical realities and its
failure to condemn outright the odious violence perpetrated on these young women” (Purdy).
Heaney may have been attacked for his less-than-condemning attitude toward the violence on
these young women, but he presents it in such a way that demonstrates the pity he feels for the
terrible acts perpetrated on the girl in “Punishment” and the girls being punished in his own
locality.
Even though “Punishment” seems to demonstrate a slightly political--if not only
distinctly Irish—agenda, the other two poems “Strange Fruit” and “Bog Queen” do not seem to
have the same tone. They do, however, demonstrate a romantic and pitying tone toward the girls
drowned in the bog. All three poems give off a soft and loving tone, and they portray these girls
as beautiful and something to be loved, not to be disgusted by because of their horrific deaths or
bog body forms. Their forms, in fact, seem to give Heaney even more cause to be fascinated and
inspired by them. One word used in “Punishment” gives off just the tone that Heaney seems to
demonstrate toward all three poems: the word voyeur. “Artful voyeur” is just how Heaney
himself puts it, and it describes perfectly his attitude toward, not only the bog bodies themselves,
but also the meaning he derives from the bodies and the surroundings that they are found in. The
word voyeur conveys something slightly disturbing in that, as one watching without being
watched, he could be either a deranged pervert who overly enjoys observing the bog bodies of
these women or—the more likely choice—he is inspired by their semblance of dark beauty, and
the only way to convey this is by dark poetry. Not only does Heaney observe these bog bodies
and convey them in ways that open the reader’s mind through his poetry, he allows the reader to

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see beauty in new and original ways by creating something lovely out of a potentially grotesque
and disturbing phenomenon.
The incredibly well-preserved bog bodies found in Ireland and other parts of Europe are
not something one would typically consider as material for inspiring and beautiful poetry;
however, Seamus Heaney makes them so. Heaney’s tone throughout “Bog Queen,”
“Punishment,” and “Strange Fruit” makes the poems tangible, and invites the reader’s mind to
explore new depths of beauty and thought. Because he conveys the women of the bogs almost as
one would describe a lover, it gives them life and a new form other than the creepy black-faced
bodies that would normally be conjured up in one’s mind. His imagery of the girls in all three
poems does the same, along with creating pictures that make one think of these girls as once
living creatures rather than simple artifacts. Although there is grounding for the interpretation
that the recurring motif of the bog bodies is a representation of Ireland, which could indeed be
the fact in his poem “Punishment,” all three poems more likely exemplify a simply romantic tone
that would set Heaney’s bog body poetry apart from the rest. Using tone, imagery, and metaphor,
Seamus Heaney uniquely exhibits the bog bodies of Ireland as a beautiful and cherished work of
art.

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Works Cited
Hakkioğlu, Mümin, and Erdinç Parlak. "From Antaeus to the Bog Queen: Mythological
Allusions in Seamus Heaney's North." Journal of Graduate School of Social Sciences
17.2 (2013): 105-118. Academic Search Complete. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.
Purdy, Anthony. "The Bog Body as Mnemotope: Nationalists Archaeologies in Heaney and
Tournier." Style 36.1 (2002): 93. Literary Reference Center. Web. 8 Dec. 2014.
Jackson, Constance, and Nicholas Birns. "’Technique’ Informing ‘Craft’ in Seamus Heaney's
Early Sonnets." Pennsylvania Literary Journal 4.1 (2012): 18-38. Academic Search
Complete. Web. 9 Dec. 2014.
Heaney, Seamus. Opened Ground. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998. Print.