The Lammas Hireling

Question 1

What is the form of the poem?

Answer 1

Dramatic monologue

Question 2

What is the plot of the poem?

Answer 2

• The speaker - the farmer- tells the story of a hireling he employed around the time of the Lammas Harvest
• That night the farmer catches the hireling in a fox trap under the full moon and realises he is a male witch
• The hireling turns into a hare and is killed with a gunshot into the heart
• At the end the poem turns into present tense and the speaker confesses to the priest/ the audience.

Question 3

How are the themes of passion, sin and guilt shown?

Answer 3

• The speaker lives in fear of revenge so repeatedly confesses his crime
• However, the speaker may be an unreliable narrator as he mentions his dead wife but not the circumstances of her death
• The farmer now lives in a paranoid state which shows that the act of killing the Hireling- perhaps of trying to kill his own desires- hasn’t solved the speakers internal conflict- but merely made it worse.

Question 4

How are themes of superstition and folklore shown?

Answer 4

• Folklore and superstition are used to justify his killing of the hireling which explores the role the supernatural and folklore once played in people’s lives.