At Roan Head Robin Robertson At Roan Head
‘At Roan Head’ Robin Robertson
‘At Roan Head’ • • by Lorraine Martinuik (June 1, 2011) • At Roane Head” fully embodies that ‘freighting’. Robertson revisits the lore of the selkie (the poem “Selkie” appeared in Swithering). In Celtic folklore, a selkie is a changeling who transforms from seal to human and back by taking off or putting on a sealskin. The lore of selkies comes mostly from the far north of Scotland, or from Ireland, where they are sometimes called roanes. Roane Head is a fictional place that stands in for any number of Scotland’s remote and mythbound settlements. • The narrative is spare, constructed of the diction and speech patterns we might say are regional, of the imaginary Roane Head. Plot elements are presented as hearsay, the lore of that place:
Robin Robertson In this poem I've invoked the Celtic myth of the selkie: creatures that swim as seals but which can become human by shedding their skins. The transformation is reversed by climbing back into the sealskin, but if the magical skin is lost, or stolen, the creature is doomed to remain in human form. Ròn - pronounced roane - is the Gaelic for 'seal'. Although crusted in Scottish blood and sea-salt, this poem found its way into the world one afternoon over Christmas in a rented boathouse on the Norfolk Broads.
Robin Robertson 'At Roane Head', from The Wrecking Light, is the second in a series of narrative poems I've written - all of them set in fictional Scottish locations. They have some of the attributes of folk tales, and some of folklore's familiar, cheery themes: murder, rape, revenge, madness, physical deformity, witchcraft and the supernatural.
Poetry Analysis Form/Kind Shape persona Form/structure At Roane Head Mood Theme Content Atmosphere Language Symbolism Verse Form Sound
Content • Make sure you have a clear idea of what happens in each stanza. • How does the narrative build up?
At Roan Head
You’d know her house by the drawn blinds – by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall, the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry. You’d tell it by the quicken and the pine that hid it from the sea and from the brief light of the sun, and by Aonghas the collie, lying at the door where he died: a rack of bones like a sprung trap. A fork of barnacle geese came over, with that slow squeak of rusty saws. The bitter sea’s complaining pull and roll; a whicker of pigeons, lifting in the wood.
Imagery You’d know her house by the drawn blinds – by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall, the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry. You’d tell it by the quicken and the pine that hid it from the sea and from the brief light of the sun, and by Aonghas the collie, lying at the door where he died: a rack of bones like a sprung trap. A fork of barnacle geese came over, with that slow squeak of rusty saws. The bitter sea’s complaining pull and roll; a whicker of pigeons, lifting in the wood.
Word Choice You’d know her house by the drawn blinds – by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall, the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry. You’d tell it by the quicken and the pine that hid it from the sea and from the brief light of the sun, and by Aonghas the collie, lying at the door where he died: a rack of bones like a sprung trap. A fork of barnacle geese came over, with that slow squeak of rusty saws. The bitter sea’s complaining pull and roll; a whicker of pigeons, lifting in the wood.
She’d had four sons, I knew that well enough, and each one wrong. All born blind, they say, slack-jawed and simple, web-footed, rickety as sticks. Beautiful faces, I’m told, though blank as air. Someone saw them once, outside, hirpling down to the shore, chittering like rats, and said they were fine swimmers, but I would have guessed at that.
Her husband left her: said they couldn’t be his, they were more fish than human; he said they were beglamoured, and searched their skin for the showing marks. For years she tended each difficult flame: their tight, flickering bodies. Each night she closed the scales of their eyes to smoor the fire.
Until he came again, that last time, thick with drink, saying he’d had enough of this, all this witchery, and made them stand in a row by their beds, twitching. Their hands flapped; herring-eyes rolled in their heads. He went along the line relaxing them one after another with a small knife.
They say she goes out every night to lay blankets on the graves to keep them warm. It would put the heart across you, all that grief. There was an otter worrying in the leaves, a heron loping slow over the water when I came at scraich of day, back to her door.
Analysis • Read the next stanza out loud, and listen carefully. You'll hear it shift in rhythm- the woman wore "four stones, " "four rings, " had "four small candles burning. " The poem becomes a chant as the story moves toward its climax, almost like a mystic song. The images presented only heighten this surreal feeling- in addition to the mystical connotations of candles and rain, the rising of the "milky smoke, " a "waterfall in reverse, " seems to hint at reality becoming less and less solid, at the unreal coming closer and closer. The chant continues with the last three lines of that stanza, each of which begins with "and, " creating a sense of movement that continues to build. It pauses, just for a moment, at the last line, lingering upon the woman's last word. Her story has come to a close.
She’d hung four stones in a necklace, wore four rings on the hand that led me past the room with four small candles burning which she called ‘the room of rain’. Milky smoke poured up from the grate like a waterfall in reverse and she said my name, and it was the only thing and the last thing that she said.
She gave me a skylark’s egg in a bed of frost; gave me twists of my four sons’ hair; gave me her husband’s head in a wooden box. Then she gave me the sealskin, and I put it on.
Final stanza • The final stanza opens once more with a mystical image- a "skylark's egg, " preserved in "a bed of frost"- a symbol of freedom, of potential, and of potential that will never hatch. She gives the speaker twists of his four sons' hair. . . wait, his sons? Slowly, the identity of the speaker comes to light, line by line. They were his sons, but, as the next line reveals, he was not the husband who murdered them. Instead, he receives that husband's head in a box - his story, like his wife's and the four sons', has come to a tragic closure. That leaves only one story to close- the speaker's. And in the final line, every hint of magic, of his true identity- the reason why his sons were half-fish- it all finally comes together. In the same matter-of-fact manner in which he described the deaths of his sons and the woman's house, he describes being given the sealskin, and putting it on.
Theme • What themes do you think are presented in the poem? • What evidence do you have to support theme?
Themes • • Mythology and folklore Witchcraft and the supernatural Physical deformity Death/Grief Clash of cultures/worlds Revenge Violence
Sounds • Write down everything you can hear in the poem. • For each sound comment on the effect of the poet’s description of that sound.
Language • Word choice • Imagery • Sentence Structure • Description
Symbolism • What examples of symbolism are there in the poem? • What do they represent? • Why has Robertson used them?
Mood and Atmosphere • What mood(s) is created throughout the poem? • How is this created?
Persona • • What persona is created in the poem? Comment on the style of narration. When is the identity of the narrator revealed? What is the impact of this revelation?
Structure: Basic Structure • How is the poem divided up. • What is the purpose of each section of the poem? • How does this add to the reader’s enjoyment of the narrative?
Structure: Techniques • What structural devices are used in the poem • Enjambement • Line length • How do the structural devices affect the rhythm?
Introduction ‘At Roane Head’ by Robin Robertson is a dark atmospheric poem that explores the folklore of the selkies. Robertson creates a fascinating persona that is central to the overall success of the poem. The true identity of the narrator is not revealed until the last line of the poem. This revelation then lets the reader fully appreciate some of the previously disconcerting elements of the poem.
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