Gendered Spaces in Contemporary Irish Poetry

The Northern critic Ciaran Carson has attacked Heaney for
perpetuating myths of violence.^31 Edna Longley also attacks his image
of the Tollund man as a ëCatholicí symbol of ritual or as a ëChrist-
surrogate, whose death and bizarre resurrection might redeem, or
symbolize redemption for Catholic victims of sectarian murder.í^32 But
what ëThe Tollund Maní critiques is the inescapability of politics and
myth, and the disastrous hold of both within a community. The
Tollund man is murdered as part of a fertility rite in the belief that in
order for spring to reoccur, one man must be sacrificed. This cyclical
version of death followed by redemption connects with both the
biblical story of Christ and with Yeatsís Irish nationalist attention to
the tale of Cathleen NÌ Houlihan, who summons young men to fight
for her. The latter story has been drawn on by Patrick Pearse and
Joseph Plunkett, provoking the following comments from Carson who
refers to ëthe intensive pressure on Heaney [...] to be more Irish, to be
more political, to ìtry to touch the peopleî, to do Yeatsís job again
instead of his owní.^33
Yet rather than creating a nationalist myth anew, ëThe Tollund
Maní raises the issue of how tradition and communal myths ëtry to
touchí or ground ëthe people.í The speaker suggests:

I could risk blasphemy

Consecrate the cauldron bog

Our holy ground and pray

Him to make germinate

The scattered, ambushed

Flesh of labourers,

As a Catholic speaker, the poet ‘could’ risk ‘blasphemy’ by praying to
the ‘cauldron bog’ in an act of Pagan rather than Catholic belief. In

31 Ciaran Carson in Edna Longley, Poetry in the Wars (Newcastle: Bloodaxe,
1986), p.157. Carson, The Honest Ulsterman (Belfast), No.50, p.184.
32 Longley, Poetry in the Wars, p.151.
33 Cf. The Literary Writings of Patrick Pearse (Cork: Mercier Press, 1979).
Joseph Plunkett, ëThe Little Black Rose Shall Be Red At Lastí dedicated to
Cathleen NÌ Houlihan in The 1916 Poets, ed., Desmond Ryan (Westport:
Greenwood, Press 1963), p.201. Carson in Longley, Poetry in the Wars, p.151,
p.168.