Seamus Heaney, “The Strand at Lough Beg” (An Elegy from the Troubles)

#229 : Mother Earth and myths of mining and agriculture – Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 5/11/26: Tonight, I read passages on what the discoveries of agriculture and metallurgy meant for human beings, as reflected in the mythologies and rituals and stories that grew up around them. These passages are taken from sections 12 and 15 of Mircea Eliade’s History of Religious Ideas, Volume 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries.After Eliade’s rich catalogue of stories and beliefs that came out metallurgy, I read a few passages from the Hebrew Bible—Isaiah, Ezekiel, Malachi, Proverbs, and finally Job—where metallurgy is discussed literally and as metaphor. Here, metallurgy becomes a symbol of transformation imposed by God on backsliding humanity, as well as enduring symbol of wisdom and understanding.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

1. #229 : Mother Earth and myths of mining and agriculture 43:25
2. #228 – What Ted Bundy did on July 14, 1974 36:51
3. #227 – The Great Fire of London and the destruction of Jerusalem 33:02
4. #226: The Vitality and terror of cities 32:10
5. #225 – The invention of the wheel, and the power of storytelling 22:42

Seamus Heaney, “The Strand at Lough Beg”

In Memory of Colum McCartney

All round this little island, on the strand
Far down below there, where the breakers strive
Grow the tall rushes from the oozy sand.
– Dante, Purgatorio, I, 100-3

Leaving the white glow of filling stations
And a few lonely streetlamps among fields
You climbed the hills toward Newtownhamilton
Past the Fews Forest, out beneath the stars –
Along the road, a high, bare pilgrim’s track
Where Sweeney fled before the bloodied heads,
Goat-beards and dogs’ eyes in a demon pack
Blazing out of the ground, snapping and squealing.
What blazed ahead of you? A faked road block?
The red lamp swung, the sudden brakes and stalling
Engine, voices, heads hooded and the cold-nosed gun?
Or in your driving mirror, tailing headlights
That pulled out suddenly and flagged you down
Where you weren’t known and far from what you knew:
The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg,
Church Island’s spire, its soft treeline of yew.

There you used hear guns fired behind the house
Long before rising time, when duck shooters
Haunted the marigolds and bulrushes,
But still were scared to find spent cartridges,
Acrid, brassy, genital, ejected,
On your way across the strand to fetch the cows.
For you and yours and yours and mine fought shy,
Spoke an old language of conspirators
And could not crack the whip or seize the day:
Big-voiced scullions, herders, feelers round
Haycocks and hindquarters, talkers in byres,
Slow arbitrators of the burial ground.

Across that strand of ours the cattle graze
Up to their bellies in an early mist
And now they turn their unbewildered gaze
To where we work our way through squeaking sedge
Drowning in dew. Like a dull blade with its edge
Honed bright, Lough Beg half shines under the haze.
I turn because the sweeping of your feet
Has stopped behind me, to find you on your knees
With blood and roadside muck in your hair and eyes,
Then kneel in front of you in brimming grass
And gather up cold handfuls of the dew
To wash you, cousin. I dab you clean with moss
Fine as the drizzle out of a low cloud.
I lift you under the arms and lay you flat.
With rushes that shoot green again, I plait
Green scapulars to wear over your shroud.