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
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’