Follower

Seamus Heaney (1939–2013), the Irish Nobel laureate who often wrote about rural life and his farming roots, recalls in 'Follower' his boyhood admiration for his skilful father, and reflects on how time reverses the roles of parent and child.

The child's awe of his father's skill

The poet reflects on his childhood on a farm, where he spent hours watching his father work with a horse-drawn plough. He describes his father as an absolute 'expert' of agricultural labour. With his shoulders 'arched like a full sail', his father guided the horses with single plucks of the reins, turning the soil and 'mapping the furrow exactly' without breaking the sod.

The young boy was filled with awe at his father's immense physical power and precision.

The clumsy follower

The speaker describes himself as a clumsy child who struggled to keep up. He would stumble in his father's 'hob-nailed wake', occasionally falling on the wet, slippery soil. Sometimes his father would laugh and lift the boy onto his back, carrying him across the fields.

The boy dreamed of growing up to plough the land, wishing to close one eye and stiffen his arm just like his hero. Yet he felt he was nothing but a 'nuisance', constantly tripping, falling and yapping behind his father.

The poignant role reversal

The final stanza brings a sudden, emotional twist in time. The speaker has grown up, but he did not follow his father's footsteps into farming; instead, he became a writer.

Now his father has grown old, weak and frail. In a poignant role reversal, it is his aged father who keeps stumbling behind the speaker and will not go away, representing the inevitable passage of time and the changing dynamics of family relationships.