THE OUTLAW. A poem by Seamus Heaney.
COMMENTARY by Poetry Editor, Ira Maine
Governmental regulation, in the interest of breeding quality, disease-free animals, demands that all bulls be registered. Taking your cows to a properly ruled, regulated and registered bull can be an expensive business. When you need him, the approved bull is always ten miles away and either you go there or he comes here. Either option costs money if loading, transportation and time are taken into account. The owner of the bull, aware he has a bit of a monopoly locally, nevertheless whinges loudly about the prohibitive cost of keeping a registered bull and apologizes extravagantly for the exhorbitant fee he is forced to charge. (the bounder, the cad…)
In Ireland at least, this is generally all too much for a ‘wee’ bloke on a ‘wee’ smallholding, and, when you’ve only got a couple of cows to be serviced, other more radical solutions are sought. This usually involves, as Heaney says, out-of-the-way lanes and by-ways, muddy fields and darkened sheds and, naturally, a mutually acceptable exchange of ‘…clammy silver…’
Interesting how ‘…clammy silver…’ immediately conjures (in my mind) the thirty Biblical pieces. I think there’s hardly any doubt that Heaney’s ‘…clammy silver…’ is intended to evoke this idea of betrayal. Locally, as an instance, everyone who knows about the illegal bull is capable of informing the authorities. Another instance might be the betrayal involved in ignoring the ‘Regulations”, and therefore putting other animals at risk through contact at local markets and fairs. There is also the betrayal of the local authority which is shamefully denied it’s right to make important entries in important ledgers. This action, this unscrupulous betrayal eats at the very heart of a bureaucracy and threatens it’s very existence.
There’s not a lot more to say about this poem. Largely self explanatory, the poem was written perhaps fifty years ago, when Heaney was in his twenties and, as a young poet, was watching and observing everything.
An ‘…ash-plant..’, common when I was a kid in country Dublin, was a stick cut from a hedge, and absolutely necessary to herding animals gently along or cutting the seed heads off thistles with a mighty swing. A good one came from ‘Fraxinus Excelsior’, the common European Ash, because it remained flexible and didn’t crack or break easily. The ancient Celtic game of ‘Hurling’, still hugely popular in Ireland, uses the timber from Ash trees, straight-grained and flexible, to make the (phonetically) ‘Cam-Awn’, a type of heavier hockey stick which, with liberal applications of linseed oil becomes so flexible that it can drive the solid leather ball for hundres of metres. Enough of this wallowing!
I leave you to Mr Heaney.
The Outlaw
Kellys kept an unlicensed bull, well away
From the road: one risked a fine, but had to pay
The normal fee if cows were serviced there.
Once I dragged a nervous Friesian on a tether
Down a lane of alder, shaggy with catkin,
Down to the shed the bull was kept in.
I gave Old Kelly the clammy silver, though why
I could not guess. He grunted a curt “Go by.
Get up on that gate.” and from my lofty station
I watched the businesslike conception.
The door, unbolted, whacked back against the wall.
The illegal sire fumbled from his stall
Unhurried as an old steam engine shunting.
He circled, snored, and nosed. No hectic panting,
Just the unfussy ease of a good tradesman;
Then an awkward unexpected jump, and
His knobbled forelegs straddling her flank,
He slammed life home, impassive as a tank.
Dropping off like a tipped-up load of sand.
“She‟ll do,‟ said Kelly and tapped his ash-plant
Across her hindquarters. “If not, bring her back.‟
I walked ahead of her, the rope now slack
While Kelly whooped and prodded his outlaw
Who, in his own time, resumed the dark, the straw.