Meditation on the Word Tattoo in Seamus Heaney’s “Place-Lore” Poem Broagh

It's easy to read this poem, and get a completely different viewpoint. It's almost entirely inescapable for me, living by the Susquehanna, to see something entirely wrong in the poem. Though, a neat little interpolation I drew from it... it wasn't correct.

The fact remains, that I put question marks by the word "Tattoo". I didn't like it in the poem, and thought Heaney was just pandering to a sort of strange ethos. It seemed strangely placed, and it should have been my first clue to slow down, and look at the poem more carefully. As, the "Tattoo" was taking another denotation, that of a "drumming" and it was describing the rain.

Many things I got correct. Such as the description of the Tillage, the time of year---because I'm from a rural area too, these sorts of questions come to my mind. Yet, many things I got wrong, such as "rig" which didn't mean boat, but meant the tillage. And also "Tattoo", which dubiously I thought was placed in the poem, and I had begun to think I was reading an amateur. I followed through with my investigation, not knowing that "docken" wasn't "dock" as that's Scottish, but was "docken" as in dandelion, thistle, stinkweed, milkweed and the such. I had interpreted half the poem, yet why didn't I use my literary pretension, to assume that "Tattoo" in this instance wasn't being used to represent what I commonly think, and then the rest of the poem as well. It's a trap, of course, Seamus placed in the poem. Probably one to pleasantly drive a reader like myself to this other interpolation. Not dubiously, would a skilled reader place question marks next to "Tattoo", yet a more skilled reader might try to find sense three or four of the word in Webster.

Which, this brings one to a question, of the reader's aptitude. Had I gone with my better instincts, in being skeptical of the word "Tattoo" and not been tainted by instagram poetry where such things would unapologetically be thrown around... I may have gotten the right answer on a first draw through.

The poem is using idiomatic expression from the locale of Broagh; its dialect. So, pad, rig, docken and tattoo are not portmanteau or expressions of boats. It should be obvious to anyone, knowing the river is too small, the Moyola river is too small to have boats or docks in it. Yet, none are clued into that, unless they take great offense at the word "tattoo" and are thereby questioning the very deceptive nature of the wording of the poem. Seamus is aware of this, too, as there is a pleasant little side trek one can go on without first knowing the true meaning of the word. Yet, it would assume that Seamus would use the word "Tattoo" and refer it to a footprint. Such a thing is of an inferior quality for a poet of such high caliber, and ought to be condescended to the local dialect, over one's own prejudices and word associations. (Unless, of course, Seamus was superbly skilled enough to dual wield a metaphor, and thereby allow negative capability so a lay reader can also enjoy the poem. To which, if the poem has negative capability, Seamus' mastery is all to forward to make the use of Second Person Figure, to say that this significant character's footprint is now tattooed into the soil of Broagh. But, one would have to interpret the rhubarb is what ends like the "gh" and not the rain; to which, I received a pleasant meditation on man's impact on the environment with farming, getting a sort of sense of how we, through this, are a part of the land and nature, too.)

The poem was beautiful, and the tradition is called Dinnseanchas, or more appropriately simplified to, "Place-lore." It's creating a mythology for the place---the very specific locale. And all of that is fine, yet how do we get to the true interpretation of the poem? Obviously Seamus gets us there by placing a gaudy word like "tattoo" into the poem, to help us be skeptical of some of the word choice. To make us tread more carefully through the poem's use of seemingly obvious words. Because, after using the internet to search the river, it should be clear the river is not wide like the Susquehanna, but is rather what we would call around my parts a creek. There can't be docks and  boats on it. Which, is why "tattoo", the specious word choice, becomes the most critical word in the poem, to help the reader doubt their first impressions on the poem's meaning. 

As the poem is not about the narrator's childhood, where he would place shoeprints in the tillage. As there's another carefully chosen word, an innocuous one, "You". The poem uses Second Person Figure. Therefore, the narrator is talking to someone other than himself. Which, the word "tattoo" ought to bring one to this subtle doubt of their own first impressions. The rabbit hole is quite pleasant, but it's not the true interpretation of the poem, which can only be rendered in such a way that "tattoo" is the word which brings us to doubt our first impressions. And if one places question marks next to the word, to question why Seamus would use such a base word, it is meant to bring one to that question, and to be answered by a rarer, and more beautiful and poetic denotation.


Heaney, Seamus. Selected Poems 1966 - 1987. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990. Twelfth Printing, 1999. Text.
mrdgEnglish. 05 Broagh. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aykv6QCWaEc. 2/14/22. Web.