The Lammas Hireling - Ian Duhig Flashcards
What is The Lammas Hireling about? (4 points)
A ‘hireling’, who has a supernaturally positive effect on the livestock, seems to have undercharged for his services - oddities build up as the poem progresses with no explanation
The second paragraph portrays a strange supernatural scene, in which the farmer recognises the hireling to be a ‘warlock’ — a wizard
The speaker cites ancient superstitions and proceeds to describe what could be murder
Final stanza suggests that the repeated confessions to the priest do not assuage the speaker’s guilt
What is the structure of The Lammas Hireling?
The poem comprises four six-lined stanzas - the lines are of equal length, and there is no rhyme scheme
Lines are enjambed to create a free-flowing narrative and stanzas are also enjambed - sentences vary in length
What is the language and imagery of The Lammas Hireling? (4 points)
The voice is that of the speaker, using the first person singular pronoun ‘I’, the farmer whose barely credible experiences form the essence of the poem
It is a dramatic monologue, in which only part of the story is revealed and the reader has to piece together the remainder - more prose than poetry
The character of the farmer comes over clearly - a man of few words who expresses himself tersely, with a brooding nature and a belief in the supernatural
The story gains interest through the varying sentence length; long and short, through understatement and brief snatches of unexplained mystifying occurrences.
