The Lammas Hireling

Question 1

What is a summary of the poem?

Answer 1

Speaker= farmer that employs someone to help during the harvest period. Dramatic monologue - based on past Northern Irish folklore.

Question 2

Key Themes of the Lammas Hireling

Answer 2

myth, faith and reality vs illusion

Question 3

‘After the fair, I’d still a light heart..’

Answer 3

Opening with an initial tone of celebration and happiness.

Question 4

‘heavy purse’ ‘yields doubled’

Answer 4

Introduced to the farmer as money-obsessed

Question 5

‘cattle doted on him’ ‘yields doubled’

Answer 5

Hireling has a natural affinity to the farm and the animals - perhaps foreshadows his inhuman identity revealed later in the poem.

Question 6

‘Mine only dropped heifers, fat as cream’

Answer 6

Simile - sense of uncertainty

Question 7

‘I grew fond of company
That knew when to shut up’

Answer 7

Juxtaposition reiterates the unreliable nature/attitude of the farmer.

Question 8

‘Then one night’

Answer 8

Caesura and shift in time = change to a period of literal/metaphorical darkness, signals the transgression that is soon to occur.

Question 9

‘Disturbed from dreams of my dear late wife’

Answer 9

Plosive alliteration introduces a darker, more disturbed tone.

Question 10

‘I hunted down her torn voice to his pale form’

Answer 10

• Aggressive language, presented as violent and savage etc.

Question 11

‘his pale form’
‘in the light’
‘dark lantern’

Answer 11

Contrasting light imagery portrays broader intentional ambiguity and uncertainty of what is real or concealed (illusion?)

Question 12

‘The moon came out…its yellow witness’

Answer 12

Personification of the moon as a force of judgement for the narrators transgression

Question 13

‘like a stone mossing’

Answer 13

Simile to convey the hireling’s death

Question 14

Enjambment between Stanza 2 and Stanza 3..

Answer 14

demonstration of the narrator’s loss of control.

Question 15

‘I don’t dream’
‘But spend my nights casting ball from half-crowns’

Answer 15

Evidences a transformation in the poem and narrator, evidences a change since the beginning of the poem, where the speaker was money-obsessed and had a tone of celebration, now cursed.

Question 16

‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been an hour since my last confession.’

Answer 16

The once care-free, happy speaker finishes the poem locked in a cycle of forgiveness, seeking absolution.
An hour is such a short period of time that indication the speaker endures either an extreme sense of guilt, or insanity.
- Unreliable narrator etc, can we trust events of poem?

Question 17

Structure and Form

Answer 17

4 regular sestets and regular line length conveys the authoritative, controlling speaker that has transgressed against nature.

Question 18

The Title ‘The Lammas Hireling’ and the hiring of a laborer…

Answer 18

Places the poem to a setting of a rural world..

Question 19

What might be considered the moral of the story of the Lammas Hireling?

Answer 19

You pay for your trechery? Sins?

Question 20

‘Splash. Now my herd’s elfshot. I don’t dream’

Answer 20

Caesura emphasises the curse that the farmer now endures due to his actions - warning against hunting the supernatural? Guilt? Regret?

Question 21

What events happen within poem that might help you understand it better?

Answer 21

1. Farmer gets good deal from the hireling, whom he believes seems to be the cause for his farm/cows thriving.
2. Hunts down the voice of his wife to find the hireling.
3. Shoots him and dumps the body in the river.
4. Now spends his time seeking forgiveness and casting bullets.