“A landscape fossilized, It's stone-wall patternings Repeated before our eyes In the stone walls of Mayo. Before I turned to go He talked about persistence, A congruence of lives, How, stubbed and cleared of stones, His home accrued growth rings Of iron, flint and bronze - "Belderg” IrelandArcheology Book:North Source: North
“Did you ever hear tell,' said Jimmy Farrell, 'of the skulls they have in the city of Dublin? White skulls and black skulls and yellow skulls, and some with full teeth, and some haven't only but one,' and compounded history in the pan of 'an old Dane, maybe, was drowned in the Flood.' My words lick around cobbled quays, go hunting lightly as pampooties over the skull-capped ground. -Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces” IrelandVikingsDublin Book:North Source: North
“Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.” WantClassIrelandCastesProtestantismNorthern IrelandCaste SystemClass SystemUnionism Author:Seamus Heaney
“At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.” HomeAttitudeFiguresHabitAuthorityIrelandAvoidanceFigure SkatingAuthority Figures Author:Seamus Heaney
“The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.” ImagineIreland Author:Seamus Heaney
“My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally.” SpeakSpeechFactorsIrelandScotlandTerrificNorthern Ireland Author:Seamus Heaney
“The external reality and inner dynamic of happenings in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1974 were symptomatic of change, violent change admittedly, but change nevertheless, and for the minority living there, change had been long overdue.” LongRealityHappeningsViolentMinoritiesIrelandNeverthelessNorthern IrelandOverdue Author:Seamus Heaney
