Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. His poem "Punishment" was inspired by the archaeological discovery of a preserved bog body in Denmark from the Iron Age. In the poem, Heaney imagines the perspective of a young woman who was killed as punishment, possibly for sexual relations with British soldiers during the ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland in the 1960s, when Irish nationalists punished those seen as sympathizing with the British. The bog was used as a mass grave for outcasts and victims of ritual or judicial executions in Irish history and tradition.

1. Seamus Heaney
Navleen Multani
PUNISHMENT

2. SEAMUS HEANEY (1939-2013)
Irish Poet
Nobel Prize in 1995
Catholic in Protestant Ireland
Customs and traditions of community
Childhood experiences in Belfast
Coherent vision of Ireland (past and present)
Nationalism and Political Violence
Irish Troubles

3. THE TROUBLES
1960s; Ethno-Nationalist Conflict
Nationalists punished people who
sympathised with Britishers
Good Friday Agreement 1998
Protestants or Loyalists wanted Ireland
to remain within United Kingdom
Catholics or Irish Republicans wanted
to separate Northern Ireland from UK

4. PUNISHMENT
Public Humiliation
Spectacle
Irish Cause betrayal
Irish girls who had relationship with
British soldiers were punished
Heads were shaved, tarred and
‘feathered’

5. PUNISHMENT
Bog Poem
Based on an archaeological discovery
(1952)
Preserved mummified body of Windeby
Girl
Bog bodies suffered violent death; victims
of ritual or judicial executions
Bogs were mass graves for outcasts,
religious sacrifices, rebels(kings, queens),
traitors, adulterous wives

6. THE BOG PEOPLE
Peter V. Glob
Brutal sacrifices and rituals
Rituals to appease Goddess of Fertility
Decapitated, mutilated bodies exhumed
Hanging, strangulation, poisoning,
lacerating by axe or swords
Bogs: tombs of homicide victims

7. BOG
Source of Cultural Identity for Irish people
Symbolic significance
Silent observers of sins and crimes
Divulge hidden secrets of mysterious
deaths
Tales of human atrocity, voyeurism and
atavism
Perpetuation of violence
Connivance, ‘civil outrage,’ ‘intimate
revenge’