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“Prairie Roots” column for The Earlville Post

November 15, 2002

A LESSON LEARNED

I discovered the poem “Follower” by Seamus Heaney, the Nobel laureate poet of Ireland, long ago and taught it in both literature classes and creative writing for many years. First, the subject focused on father-son stuff, the relationships between generations. With my growing up in a family with four brothers who worked with and for our father and having three sons of my own, the poem has always struck a nerve close to home. Also I remember my Grandpa Donahue and my godfather Tucker Murry still loving and working with their teams of horses. Oh, they did the heavy farm work like plowing and discing with tractors, but they did not want to let go of their draft horses. As I recall, they were used during haying time–to pull the sickle through the field cutting the hay, then the rake rolling the rows of grass over to dry on the other side, and finally pulling the hay in big clumps on the fork into the loft. Their love for these magnificent animals just would not let them step into the world of mechanized farming entirely. Thus the poem has always spoken to me on many levels. Heaney’s poem “Follower” reads:

My father worked with a horse plough,
His shoulders globed like a full sail strung
Between the shafts and the furrow.
The horses strained at his clicking tongue.

An expert. He would set the wing
And fit the bright steel-pointed sock.
The sod rolled over without breaking.
At the headrig, with a single pluck

Of reins, the sweating team turned round
And back into the land. His eye
Narrowed and angled at the ground,
Mapping the furrow exactly.

I stumbled in his hobnailed wake.
Fell sometimes on the polished sod;
Sometimes he rode me on his back
Dipping and rising to his plod.

I wanted to grow up and plough,
To close one eye, stiffen my arm.
All I ever did was follow
In his broad shadow round the farm.

I was a nuisance, tripping, falling,
Yapping always. But today
It is my father who keeps stumbling
Behind me, and will not go away.

One January morning I was teaching this poem to a first hour class, and we were all giving our views about what was going on in the poem and how we felt about it. I was really coming down hard on the speaker/son in the poem because I thought he had betrayed the father in a sense. I pointed out that the son had been a pain in the neck for the father while he was growing up, following him around, getting in the way, more or less a real nuisance, but the father had time to spend with his boy. Now when the father has grown old and the son has taken over the farm, he gets irritated at his aging father and seems to have the attitude: “Go away, old man. I’m running the show now. Get lost. You’re a pain.” All my seniors in creative writing shook their heads up and down, agreeing with Mr. Myers, their teacher.

Then my third son Tim raised his hand and asked if he could say something. A senior at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, he was sitting in on my class waiting for me to co-sign a note so he could go another year at U of I to earn a second major. “Sure,” I replied. “This is an open classroom. Everyone can speak up.”

“Dad, I disagree with your interpretation of the poem.” Students’ heads turned to look at this outspoken son of mine with wide-eyed interest.

My mental voice snapped inside my head, “Who in blazes do you think you are, Mr. Big
Britches? I’m the one with a Master’s Degree in English and thirty credits beyond.” Smiling, I asked, “How do you interpret the poem, Tim?”

“Well, Dad, I think the father in the poem is dead, and he has been dead for a long time. What the poet is trying to show is that the influence of our fathers on our lives is so powerful that even long after our fathers are dead and gone, it’s almost as if they are following right behind us talking to us over our shoulders.”

It was one of those slap-yourself-in-the-face moments of realization. That is precisely what Seamus Heaney is dealing with in this poem. It shows how the Irish hatred for the English has been passed down from generation to generation, and the Catholics’ and the Protestants’ troubles throughout the years. I had been teaching this poem incorrectly for several years, and my son had given me the key to viewing the poem properly.

“Follower” shows us that the past gives us experience and wisdom, but memories can also be painful. This little classroom incident shows that teaching and learning are a two way street–teachers can learn from their students and parents can also learn from their children. A lesson well learned. Thanks, Seamus Heaney, for your beautiful poem, and thanks, son Tim, for teaching your father a life’s lesson.