The Lammas Hireling Flashcards
1
Q
Passion, sin and guilt
A
- The speaker seems like a man struggling to keep control of his emotional life from the start. When he employs the hireling, everything seems to go well: takings from business double and the farmer has a “light heart.” The mention of the “heart” and the “dot[ing]” cattle both suggest love and attraction, perhaps giving the reader an early sign that the farmer can’t help but see the hireling in these romantic terms. Talking about the hireling, he also mentions how he “grew fond of company / that knew when to shut up.” In other words, the speaker liked the tense silence between himself and the hireling. “Shut[ting] up” here is perhaps a sign of emotional oppression, and there’s also again a suggestion of sexual tension; perhaps the speaker is implying that he consummated an affair with the hireling, and that the hireling smartly knew not to bring this up.
- The speaker justifies this killing by confirming that the hireling was indeed a warlock. The supernatural way that the hireling dies seems to prove the speaker’s theory—but, of course, the reader has no reason to definitively trust the speaker. Casting the hireling as a warlock grants the speaker an external reason for killing him, as opposed to admitting that his actions were driven by out-of-control emotion and guilt. Perhaps, then, the speaker is most afraid of himself and his own feelings.
- Indeed, killing the hireling doesn’t even solve the speaker’s fraught emotional state—it makes it worse. Shifting into the poem’s present tense, the speaker relates how he now spends his time making “ball” (ammunition) for his gun. He doesn’t sleep, and calls on God for help—his last confession was only an hour prior. In other words, he now exists in a paranoid state of ongoing guilt and perceived sinfulness. This shows that the act of killing the hireling—perhaps, of trying to kill his own desires—hasn’t solved the speaker’s internal conflict, but merely made it worse.
2
Q
Superstition and folklore
A
The poem then describes the magical transformation of the hireling into a hare, with the moon casting a kind of supernatural light over the scene. The farmer quickly kills the hireling, stuffs him into a sack that magically seems to weigh less “at every step,” and then tosses the body into the water without a sound. On the one hand, these details suggest the hireling’s mystical identity. On the other, they can be taken as symbolic manifestations of the speaker’s newfound lightness upon having disposed of someone he viewed as a threat.
3
Q
After the fair, …
… Yields doubled.
A
- Before looking at the main body of the poem, it’s important to put the title context. The poem is set some time in the past. It’s not specified when exactly, but it’s certainly a time in which folklore, the supernatural, and agriculture labor held greater sway over society. It’s also probably set in Northern Ireland. Lammas Day is a festival on the 1st of August to mark the wheat harvest—again linking the poem to agricultural labor. The speaker appears to take on the “hireling”—his new employee—because he needs more help on his farm.
- Moving on to the poem itself, the speaker appears to hire his young new employee at a country fair linked to the festival, and, for some reason, gets a highly favorable deal (“he struck so cheap”). Indeed, the speaker is cheered—he has a “light heart”—by this bit of business. Already, the poem is notable as much for the details it leaves out as the ones it includes—why, for example, did the hireling strike such a one-sided deal?
- It’s also worth noting how the past tense affects the speaker’s dramatic monologue. The poem already has a sense of foreboding, a sense that all these good things can’t last forever. The word “still” makes an important contribution, separating the time when the speaker had a “light heart” from the poem’s present, in which the speaker’s heart is anything but light.
3
Q
I grew fond …
… his pale form.
A
- Here, then, the speaker tells the reader one of the reasons why he liked the hireling so much: “I grew fond of company / that knew when to shut up.” There’s something dramatic about the enjambment here that signals a change in tone; “when to shut up” seems to suddenly introduce a hint or threat of violence to the poem. It also introduces the notion of repression to the poem: the speaker apparently prefers not to talk about his feelings. Given that the poem now shifts to a discussion of his dead wife, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that the speaker might have had conflicted feelings towards the hireling, possibly of a sexual nature—and that these contributed to the fraught state of mind that resulted in him killing his young employee.
- This link between the dead wife and the young hireling is then emphasized in line 8. The speaker hunts down the voice of his wife to the “pale form” of the hireling (the emphasis on the body of the hireling suggests that this really does have something to do with the repression of sexual attraction). The assonance and consonance of the wife’s “torn voice” with “form” further links these two characters in the speaker’s psyche (though the speaker isn’t necessarily conscious of this).
4
Q
Stock-still in the …
… runs, muckle care.
A
- The speaker finds the hireling frozen in the low light of a lantern (emphasized by the alliteration between “light” and “lantern”). The hireling is entirely naked, which again suggests that the violence that follows has something to do with repressed sexual desire. The hireling’s foot is caught in a “fox-trap,” a detail that goes unexplained—perhaps the speaker lay this trap for him. It’s possible the speaker assumes the hireling had transformed himself into a hare and gotten caught in the trap.
- The visual image here is bizarre and grotesque, and the speaker believes that he has found confirmation that the hireling is indeed a “warlock” (a male witch). The speaker provides no proof of this other than his own assertion. With the main detail being the hireling’s nakedness, the poem thus draws a link between evil and the nude male figure. Again, this suggests that what’s actually happening in the poem is the violent outburst of repressed sexuality (though it should be stressed that this can’t be confirmed for certain).
5
Q
I levelled …
… rose like bread.
A
- The section after the full stop caesura in line 13, at the start of stanza three, represents the poem’s main event—the shooting of the hireling by the speaker. The speaker claims that this shooting is based on the knowledge that the hireling was a warlock (a male witch). The speaker blows “the small hour through his heart”—perhaps an allusion to the witching hour (between midnight and 1:00 am). Intensifying the poem’s supernatural atmosphere, the speaker recounts how “the moon came out.” It’s almost as if the moon comes out of the hireling himself. The moon is a symbol of witchcraft, but this also spells out how there is now a hole where the hireling’s heart used to be (a hole through which light can pass).
- The speaker has a point to prove: his justification for killing the hireling depends on the hireling actually being a warlock, and so the speaker is keen to highlight the supernatural evidence of witchcraft. /L/ consonance runs through these lines to highlight the way the gunshot moves through the hireling’s chest (“I levelled / and blew the small hour through his heart”). Perhaps it’s significant that the speaker shoots the hireling specifically though the heart—the heart, of course, represents passion, attraction, and love. Again, this suggests that the repression of these feelings causes the killing the first place.
- The hireling undergoes a transformation, supposedly turning into a hare (in keeping with the poem’s mythological background). His body covers over with hair. Notice the speaker’s focus on the hireling’s physical appearance—it’s another suggestion of homoerotic tension, which is a possible motive for the killing. The speaker lets slip that he finds the hireling’s head “lovely.” The sentences here all begin with the same word, “His” (a device known as anaphora), showing the speaker’s intense focus on the hireling’s body. Indeed, the focus on the “top lip” hints at sexual desire (kissing). The simile—”his eyes rose like bread”—ties this event back to the wheat harvest, when the two characters first met.
6
Q
I carried him …
… my herd’s elf-shot.
A
- After the full-stop caesura that follows “bread,” the speaker recounts what he did with the hireling’s body. It’s worth noting the way that the story doesn’t unfold neatly throughout the stanzas—that is, the different stanzas don’t really correspond to the different sections of the speaker’s story. Instead, the story unfolds somewhat awkwardly across stanzas, particularly here—and this perhaps reflects the speaker’s troubled state of mind.
- In fact, whatever the speaker’s motives for killing the hireling, the fraught state of his mind is one thing that the reader can reliably confirm in this poem. The enjambment across the stanzas is intentionally cumbersome, perhaps to suggest the heaviness of the hireling’s body (despite the speaker’s protestation his body “grew lighter” with every step).
- So, with the hireling shot dead, the speaker puts him in a sack in order to dispose of the body. There is a macabre sense of humor here—both the speaker and the hireling are more used to carrying sacks of agricultural produce than dead bodies. The speaker continues to try and convince the reader that the hireling was a warlock by claiming that “there was no / splash” when he dropped the body off the bridge. The enjambment creates an ironic emphasis on the word “splash.”
7
Q
I don’t dream …
… my last confession.
A
- The poem concludes with an image of the speaker in the present day, suffering from perpetual paranoia. Since he killed the Lammas hireling, the speaker has barely slept. This ongoing wakefulness is signaled by the enjambment after “dream” in line 21: “I don’t dream / but spend my nights casting ball from half-crowns.” Instead of sleeping, he spends his nights making ammunition for his gun. The alliteration, consonance, and assonance here create an image of something deliberately made, the construction of the poem’s sound hinting at the speaker’s making of ball (the ammunition). He seems, perhaps, to fear the hireling’s return, or some kind of supernatural avenger.
- The speaker informs the reader that he now spends his days “here.” The location isn’t specified, but it is suggested by the sentence that comes after the full-stop caesura: “Bless me Father for I have sinned.” This is an allusion to the Catholic tradition, perhaps revealing that the speaker spends his days in a church (where he can confess his sins). This notion of sinfulness is important. Obviously, the speaker has committed the sin of murder. But it’s quite plausible given the earlier evidence that his main source of guilt is his sexual attraction to the hireling, the moral transgression of his repressed sexuality. Indeed, perhaps that’s why his paranoia is ongoing—he still feels that way.
- Not only does this moment frame the speaker’s words, it also casts the reader in the role of priest. That is, it is the reader who hears the confession.
8
Q
Form
A
- “The Lammas Hireling” consists of four sestets (six-line stanzas). The poem is a dramatic monologue told in the past tense—up until the final stanza, which brings the action into the present.
- The first stanza describes a brief period of happiness. Just after taking on the hireling from the fair, everything was going well for the speaker. His farm was making profits and he was feeling happy. Things take a darker turn in the second stanza when the speaker links his dead wife’s voice to the “pale form” of the hireling, perceiving the latter to be a male witch. In the third stanza, the speaker recounts how he shot the hireling, and how the hireling (supposedly) transformed into a hare (proof that he was supernatural and evil).
- The final stanza offers up a kind of perpetual present, with the speaker spelling out his repetitive behavior: he confesses his crime during the day and makes ammunition by night. This final stanza also transforms the reader’s role, making the reader into a priest figure who hears the confession.
- One other thing to note about the form is the way the sentences unfold. They are abrupt and disjointed, often stretched or stopped by enjambment and caesura. Furthermore, no stanza is self-contained: in each, the ending sentence wraps around into the next stanza. This gives the poem a fraught sense of tension, which fits with the speaker’s troubled state of mind.
9
Q
Meter
A
- “The Lammas Hireling” is written in free verse, so it doesn’t have a metrical scheme. The free verse allows the poem to create a more disjointed feel that fits with the speaker’s troubled state of mind (so troubled that he doesn’t sleep and confesses in church all day long!). The lack of meter also perhaps signals that the speaker is thinking on his feet, trying to create a convincing story to justify his killing of the hireling.
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10
Q
Rhyme Scheme
A
- “The Lammas Hireling” doesn’t use rhyme. In fact, it doesn’t use all that much sound patterning generally. This is probably for two reasons. Firstly, it would seem too orderly and organized if the poem was neatly rhymed—it wouldn’t really fit with the speaker’s sleepless and paranoid state of mind. Secondly, the vocabulary and phrases in the poem are already intensely strange, drawing on folklore and mythology. Keeping the tone fairly conversational lets this strangeness ring out more clearly.
- That said, there is an exception fo this. It’s the internal rhyme between the end of the second stanza and the beginning of the third: “To go into the hare gets you muckle sorrow, // the wisdom runs, muckle care.” The rhyme here gives the sense that this is a kind of proverb. So, just as the speaker is about to kill the hireling for practicing witchcraft, he himself breaks away from his conversational tone into a witchlike chant. In doing so, he captures the supernatural feeling of this scene and also casts doubt on his reliability as a narrator.
