Members of St Malachy’s GAA Castledawson stand guard of honour as the funeral cortege passes Hillhead, Co Derry.
We marked the pitch: four jackets for four goalposts,
That was all.
Place. It's important, you know. This week, the poet and ambassador for a nation, Seamus Heaney, has returned to the place, and the land, that was the source of much of his inspiration.
Like the Gaelic games he played in his teenage years, the poet is of a place. In the poem, 'Markings', the metaphoric 'pitch' is said to be known locally in the Broagh area as: 'Sally Anne's field', where an enactment of the poem was filmed some years ago by the London Weekend programme, with young Gaelic footballers from the area taking part.
Heaney attended, and remained devotedly loyal to, Anahorish primary school – where the current headmaster is former Derry All-Ireland winner, Danny Quinn. Born in the same year as the founding of the club he played for, St Malachy's Castledawson, his relocation at the age of fourteen to only a few miles away took him across one of the many invisible borders he spoke of, and into the Bellaghy area. That he continued to represent his original club after he moved, is one of the most unique and special aspects of the GAA.
Heaney maintained a special bond with the communities of Bellaghy, Castledawson and neighbouring areas. Following the awarding of the Nobel Prize for literature, Heaney was honoured with a special reception at Bellaghy GAA where he was presented with a painting of Lough Beg and the surrounding countryside – which he knew and loved, and brought to a worldwide stage.
The corners and the squares
Were there like longitude and latitude
Under the bumpy ground, to be
Agreed about or disagreed about
When the time came.
Heaney's association with the GAA and our local community was never clearer than in the aftermath of the shocking and brutal murder of Sean Brown in Bellaghy in 1997. In Greece at the time, Heaney had just visited the stadium where the first Olympic Games had been held when he learned of the news. Months earlier, Sean Brown had been one of the chief organisers of the function – which was attended by all sections of the local community – to mark Heaney's achievement.
The collision of where he had been, and the spirit and ideals represented by Sean Brown, and the GAA, triggered a resonance in his mind, and prompted the poet to pen a letter to the Irish News in which he described the act as 'a crime against the ancient Olympic spirit'. That spirit is one where sportsmen confine their battles to the athletics arena and one which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.
In Heaney's own words, the Bellaghy GAA chairman was: 'a man of integrity and good will' and 'represented something better than we have grown used to'. "The murder of Sean Brown hurt my soul", Heaney is quoted as saying.
And then we picked the teams
And crossed the line our called names drew between us.
Seamus Heaney travelled, and was known throughout, the world. His sense of place was omnipresent and he never ever shirked an opportunity to describe to people the community he came from, and the ordinary lives of the characters so formative to his makeup.
Speaking in Belfast in 2008 at a reading of 'At the Wellhead', Heaney spoke about some of those influences:
'The woman who brought the first sense, really, of beauty and art and the possibility of that in the midst's of the everyday into my life, into my work; a blind woman called Rosie Keenan who lived next door to us.'
That Rosie Keenan's nephew is the current Derry GAA chairperson once again illustrates linkage of our local community and Heaney's work.
To many, Heaney's appeal is that the life he expresses is part of a collective shared spirit of a time, place and sense of belonging. In his own words: 'the world of state scholarships, the Gaelic Athletic Association, October devotions, the Clancy Brothers, buckets and egg-boxes where I had had my being'. A world now much changed but with the same collective spirit bonded as strong as ever.
Poet, scholar, and ambassador for a nation, Seamus Heaney was known world-wide as a Derry man. His passing is extremely sad. He gave us the gift of his words and also his humanity and his passion for place and the everyday. His spirit is an affirmation, if any were needed, about the inherent importance of the role that the GAA plays in our communities today.
A county and a people mourn, but are deeply proud.
Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam uasal.
Youngsters shouting their heads off in a field
As the light died and they kept on playing
Because by then they were playing in their heads
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