No. 38, Bog Poems - The Sorcerer's Apprentice
No. 38, Bog Poems - The Sorcerer's Apprentice
No. 38, Bog Poems - The Sorcerer's Apprentice
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II<br />
BOG POEMS<br />
1975<br />
†<br />
‘<strong>Bog</strong>’ is one of the few borrowings in English from<br />
the Irish language: the Irish word means ‘soft’, and<br />
one of its Irish usages has survived in the Hiberno-<br />
English as ‘soft day’. Where I grew up, however, we<br />
called the bog ‘the moss’, a word with <strong>No</strong>rse origins<br />
that was probably carried to Ulster by the Scottish<br />
planters. I am pleased that the Irish, English and<br />
<strong>No</strong>rthern European points of reference in these<br />
poems were already implicit in the linguistic quick of<br />
‘bog’ and ‘moss’.<br />
– Seamus Heaney, <strong>Bog</strong> <strong>Poems</strong> (1975)
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