THE LAMMAS HIRELING- IAN DUHIG

‘The Lammas Hireling’ The title relates to an old harvest festival, traditionally on August 1st. This would
be the day in which farmers went to their local town or village to hire farm hands to help bring in the
harvest, which at this point would be reaching peak output. By focussing on a single unnamed individual,
it would immediately bring a sense of intrigue and mystery to the poem, and indicate that the subject
matter is specific to one person rather than to anything else. Some readers may interpret this as
showing an attempt to distance the worker from the narrator of the poem by there not being a name
involved, perhaps alluding to some notable event in the relationship between the two.
Poem Structure
There are four stanzas in total in the poem, each made up of six lines. Enjambment occurs between all
of the stanzas to create the effect of ongoing quick and frantic speech, with little opportunity to pause
for reflection on what has been said. This helps to increase the level of confusion felt by a reader, and is
one of the reasons why it is initially difficult to understand the meaning of the poem. In addition, the
breaks between stanzas often act as ‘hinge points’ for the poem, particularly between the first and
second stanza when the tone shifts to be more mysterious and disturbing.
There is a wide mix of different sentence lengths throughout ‘The Lammas Hireling’, varying from
several lines to only one line or less. Again, this helps to encourage the feeling of confusion and make a
reader see the narrator as erratic. By ending the poem on one final line a contrast is shown in
comparison to the preceding lines because it feels much more rigid in structure. This can be seen as
reflecting the idea of conforming to the ideas of church and religion, which are shared through this idea
of “confession”.
When skimming the poem, it becomes clear as to how often the word ‘and’ is repeated at the beginning
of a line, occurring at the beginning of five lines, particularly in the first stanza. This gives the idea of
further building up a story, but could be interpreted by a reader as also indicating that this may be a
fantasy and unrealistic. This could be seen as a deliberate choice by Duhig as this would further make
the actions of the narrator seem implausible by the end of the poem, and reinforce the confusion of the
reader, forcing them to consider the poem more extensively and question their views on the
truthfulness and authenticity of the piece. By encouraging the reader to question the authenticity of the
narrator’s version of events, it raises the interesting question as to whether what is written has been too
easily trusted.
Poetic Techniques
Using specific word placements helps to continue the sense of confusion, often in relation to the ideas of
“light” – whether that be something physically light in weight, or happy and positive connotations. For
example, the first line describes a “light heart” which may allude to an emptiness in love and emotion,
or alternatively a positive and happy feeling. Similarly, the oxymoron “light from the dark lantern”
makes a reader question the effectiveness of the lantern if it is not truly able to show light and clarity on
the situation, acting as a metaphor for the confusing events of the second stanza which links the ideas of
the narrator’s wife, the hireling, and warlocks all into one section. In addition, describing the moon as a
“yellow witness” is interesting because it could be interpreted as indicating that the light it gives (both
literally and figuratively) is somehow tainted, in contrast to the typically ‘pure’ colour of white.
Duhig also utilises a semantic field of the supernatural, with words such as “warlock”, “night” and
“dark”. This helps to add one of the extra layers of meaning to the poem, as it makes the reader
question the reality of this situation, continuing with the general skepticism of the narrator’s story.
Typical connotations of these words include danger, mystery and the unknown and this would make a
THE LAMMAS HIRELING- IAN DUHIG
reader apprehensive of the situation, but also potentially dismissive that the events took place as
described. What is also interesting is the inclusion of the idea of religion in this context, which acts as a
positive force against the ideas of the negative supernatural imagery.
Personification aims to reinforce the theme of the supernatural, for example “the fox-trap biting” gives
the impression that it has been ‘possessed’ to be given animal or human like qualities. In addition, the
description helps a reader to focus on this section, and opens up the possibility of multiple
interpretations; for example whether this is to stop foxes getting into the farm, or to stop people from
leaving.
Important Lines
“her torn voice”
The use of “torn” is notable because it has savage and primal connotations, reflecting the strange
situation that is described in the poem. In addition, specifically using “her” helps to focus on the
vulnerability of any other person in relation to the narrator, who would increasingly be coming across as
fearsome and frightening. A reader would also feel apprehensive as to why there may such emotion and
pain in her thoughts for her voice to be “torn” while simultaneously indicating that the reader will never
fully understand the events as nobody is able to fully describe what has happened.
“There was no / Splash”
Splitting this sentence across two lines places much more emphasis on “splash” due to the changing of
lines creating a brief pause in reading. This helps to momentarily build tension, while also demonstrating
the confusion of the description because there is more time for a reader to consider what the narrator is
sharing. This leaves the reader with many unanswered questions, which is effective at ensuring that
confusion continues until the end.
“It has been an hour since my last confession.”
Only an “hour” between confessions would strike a reader as being very short, signalling some form of
insanity or extreme guilt which is compelling the narrator to confess their actions repeatedly.  This then
results in the reader questioning whether any of the poem can truly be believed at all, if it is being
shared through the perspective of an unreliable narrator, and there is not even proof of how long the
duration between confessions has actually been. In the Catholic Church, confessions must be full and
made with the intention of making amends, so confessing this frequently to the (presumably) same
crime would indicate that various details are not being included, once again demonstrating the
narrator’s unreliability.
‘The Lammas Hireling’ Key Themes
Transgression: There is a clear link to the idea of transgression and taboo throughout the poem, linking
both the real and supernatural with contrasting ideas. Many boundaries of human interaction are
blurred, making a reader question the narrator’s reliability, and this confusion is maintained beyond the
end of the poem.
Language and Truth: It is very clear to a reader by the end of ‘The Lammas Hireling’ that accuracy and
truth are likely to be hard to find from the narrator of the poem, with numerous examples as to why
they are untrustworthy in their account. As such, the poem is very effective at maintaining confusion for
the reader due to so many unanswered questions.
THE LAMMAS HIRELING- IAN DUHIG
Society and Culture: The confusion between the narrator’s wife and the hireling raises questions for a
reader that are never adequately answered, with both a mix of feminine and masculine
imagery combining to question what a normal response of society would be. The poem is also based in
the traditional agriculture and pagan cultures, and shows how society can fail when cultures and
unsuccessfully mixed.

‘The Lammas Hireling’ by Ian Duhig can at first seem really confusing, containing a number of
allusions but if you listen to the sound of the poem then it creates an atmosphere in itself.
However it’s important to understand what actually happens in the poem…

It is a dramatic monologue that tells the story of a farmer who came to hire a young man to
help with his cows. The title ‘hireling’ and the actin of hiring a labourer at a fair takes us back to
a rural world that dates back to rural world that dates back at least 100 years.

Echoes a Thomas Hardy novel (tragic stories) and this archaic quality continues as the poem
progresses. The man he hires is really good with the animals “yields doubled” – he has an
almost magical quality.

In the second stanza, the narrator dreams of his dead wife, wakes and goes to see the hireling.
The young man is naked with a fox trap on his ankle, ‘as if interrupted in the middle of a dark
rite’ – the narrator “knew him a warlock”, that is a male equivalent of a witch.

The narrator is so shocked that he shoots the hireling through the heart. Under the moon, he
witnesses the hireling turn into a hare, one of the most magical creatures in British folklore. His
body grows lighter as the narrator takes in a sack and throws him into the river.

Narrator’s luck has run out and his cattle are then cursed and he is haunted by guild. He passes
his time using the metal from coins to create bullets for his gun, and in confessing his sins, in all
likelihood to a Catholic priest.

Glossary:

‘Lammas’ – the festival of ‘loafmass’, 1 August – traditionally a time for hiring help with the
harvest
‘cow with leather horns’ – Irish riddle meaning ‘hare’
‘muckle’ – dialect word meaning ‘much’
‘elf-shot’ – cursed
‘casting ball’ – the process of making shot for a shotgun. Gamekeepers often made their own

STRUCTURE
 THE LAMMAS HIRELING- IAN DUHIG
 Enjambment generates tension as we look to see what happens next before the second
stanza
 Strong structure of 4 6 line stanzas – makes it more like a story/fairy tale
LANGUAGE TECHNIQUES

 Intentional Ambiguity – key feature of the poem, demonstrates that a poem isn’t a code
that can be broken to provide a single meaning
 Opposites : real and supernatural; animal and human; male and female; guilt and
innocence; life and death; waking and sleeping; sanity and madness
 Vowel sounds chime and shift as the poem progresses – the long ‘i’ of light for example,
or the shift between pronouns of “I” and “him”, which enact the central relationship of the
poem which ends in such violence.
 Alliteration
 Archaic/Irish language – “dropped heifers…gets you muckle sorrow” – The use of this
language helps to illustrate the poem with aspects of a witches chant. This reinforces the
idea that the poem is about magic. It may also seem confusing to initial readers but this inly
highlights the uncertainty one feels about the narrator
IMAGERY

 The image of a cow with leather horns, as well as being an old description for a hare.
combines the male and the female – He could be sexually attracted to the hireling
 Image of of the narrator tracking down his wife’s “torn” voice to the hireling’s “pale
form” – Is it the hireling’s company that he is so “fond of”, especially as he knew “when to
shut up”
 “lovely” – perhaps has desire for the hireling
 “disturbed” – the poem does have a disturbing power, the unreliability of it’s narrator
drawing us back again and again, as in the best ghost stories, to try and work out what
actually happened
 Light – starts as an expression of cheer before becoming the light from the “dark
lantern” by which he sees the vision of the naked hireling
 Weight – starts off as a literal reference to the hireling’s body, and sows the difference
between the narrator’s heavy purse in the first stanza to becoming the weight of guilt and
endless confession.
TONE

 At the end of the first stanza, there is an ominous tone ‘Then one night’
 Tone is often underpinned by the sound and imagery of the poem
CONCLUSION

 “Bless me father” puts the reader in the role of the priest, but raises the question of
how we are meant to judge if he’s not telling the whole story. ‘In Catholic tradition, for your
sins to be confessed, you have to tell the whole truth. The narrator’s confession is only
 THE LAMMAS HIRELING- IAN DUHIG
partial and therefore that may be the reason that “it has been an hour since my last
confession”, he feels compelled to repeat his story over and over
The poem deals in transgression, exploring boundaries (see LANGUAGE TECHNIQUES).

Poems that would be good to link to this would be…

 Song – change/transformation
 Out of the Bag – archaic language and a ‘story type’
 Fox in the National Museum of Wales – use of the animal for a greater meaning
Content and Meaning

The poem is narrated by a man whose hired labour turns out to be a warlock

who shape-shifts into a hare. Once he has shot him, the narrator becomes
paranoid that the warlock will return, seeking the protection of the church.

Ian Duhig enjoys playing around with medieval tales and folklore to
comment on our modern times in a satirical way. Lammas is the traditional
celebration of the first harvest at the start of August and farmers often hired
extra help at these times. Superstition about witchcraft and supernatural
beings was common, as attendance at confession in Catholic churches. 

However, the reader becomes increasingly suspicious of the narrator

throughout the poem. Why did he hire extra help when he was a dairy
farmer? Why did the hireling stay when he could have left? How did the
narrator's wife die? Was the wife unfaithful with the hireling? Is the
narrator's need for protection and forgiveness because he murdered them
both? Is the narrator manipulating a superstitious society into a false witch
hunt to cover a cold-blooded revenge murder?

Poems in this collection present the opportunity for a variety of

interpretations and it is important to explain your reasoning from the
language and structure of the poem to support a particular approach.

Structure

The poem is presented in four stanzas with six lines each, none of which are
THE LAMMAS HIRELING- IAN DUHIG
end-stopped but all use enjambment to link the stanzas together and to give
the sense of an incomplete meaning or conclusion. The lines flow in free
verse, without a regular beat or pattern, just as the narrator's murderous
actions continue, unhindered. 

The mood of the poem shifts from happy/ victorious to suspicious/

murderous to paranoid/ anxious as the narrator changes his opinion of the
hireling.

Language

Stanza 1

 Although the hireling seems like he brings prosperity - the cows are
'fat as cream' and 'yields doubled', there is foreshadowing in the
violence of the word 'struck' and disloyalty in the way the cows 'doted
on him'.
  The suggestion that the hireling is not only a companion to the
narrator but who is also obedient in knowing 'when to shut up' hints
at there being someone who did not 'shut up' - perhaps the narrator's
wife? Domestic abuse could be hinted at here, particularly with the
aggression of the phrase 'shut up'.

Stanza 2

 The focus on the narrator's apparent grief for his 'dear late wife' is
made dubious by the rather aggressive verb choice 'hunted' and the
adjective 'torn' - had he 'hunted' her and 'torn' her apart?
 The word choices in the stanza work together to suggest infidelity.
Whether the narrator feels betrayed because he thought they were
friends, he now realises what the man really is or whether there has
been infidelity with his now dead wife, is open to interpretation. His
'pale form', 'stark-naked', 'dark lantern', 'fox-trap' and 'leather horns'
of a cuckhold all build to suggest that the hireling has cheated him. 
THE LAMMAS HIRELING- IAN DUHIG
 The 'warlock' revelation shifts the poem into a different realm,
explaining why the man had a magical effect on the cows and on the
narrator. 
 'to go into the hare gets you muckle sorrow, The wisdom runs, buckle
care.' is archaic language like a proverb, 'the wisdom runs' that sums
up the central hub or point of the poem, sitting in the exact middle of
the poem, forming a focus as we try to understand it. The proverb says
that turning into a hare will bring problems. When we compare the
'light heart' at the start and the sleepless nights and paranoid days at
the end of the poem, we can see that the 'sorrow' and 'care' comes to
the narrator, not to the hireling, who is the one turning into a hare.
This suggests that it might be the narrator who is at fault. 

Stanza 3

 The murderous act is heightened by the fact that he has a gun with
him 'I levelled', he doesn't hesitate and shoots to kill 'through his
heart'.
 The word 'witness' is interesting because the moon, symbolic of Diana,
goddess of hunting, 'sees' the changing of the man into a hare. 
 Descriptive language 'fur over', 'head thinned', 'top lip gathered' 'rose
like bread' are vivid metaphors and similes to help the reader imagine
the transformation.

Stanza 4

 The narrative language continues with a disconcerting lack of 'splash'

suggesting that the creature, although dissipating, is not dead.
 The continuing presence of a curse is suggested by the ill-effects of his
disappearance on the 'elf-shot' herd, which has grown small and
infertile.
THE LAMMAS HIRELING- IAN DUHIG
 'my nights' and 'my days' implies a constant and unrelenting haunting -
he makes musket bullets from coins, the silver of which is the only
metal that is believed to be able to kill a witch.
 The final two lines reveal an overwhelming guilt that must be
obsessively confessed every hour.
 Title: Lammas — harvest festival celebrated in England. Hireling — a person
part-time employed to do menial work during the harvest season.
 Tone: 1st POV, at first jolly but quickly turns macabre. Seemed like a
monologue or narrative at first, but the last lines reveal that he is speaking to
a priest — reader is the priest. Descriptions are meant to be ambiguous and
twisty — creates mysterious atmosphere.
 Summary: A farmer hires a young man as his hireling for cheap, who seems to
be a good omen as his harvest/produce quickly become plentiful. There are
connotations of him pursuing the boy romantically. But one night, after woken
up by a nightmare, he wakes up to see the boy practicing dark magic. He
quickly kills the boy, who turns into a hare — Irish folklore has it that
witches/warlocks die and turn into a hare. The experience seems to shock the
farmer, and as his luck turns bad again, he seems to be between a dead state
and living, like in a limbo. He confesses his sins to try and salvage his life, but
does not tell us the full story.
 Structure: Dramatic monologue!!!! Stanzas of 6 lines, caesura (1st stanza
signals volta, listing builds anticipation) and enjambment create tension.
Strong structure.
 Themes: Liminality, witchcraft/magic, surrealism,
 Devices used: contrasts (light/heavy — pun too), alliteration and sibilance,,
references to Irish folklore, Intertextuality (Annals of Pursuit, muckle sorrow
part), repetition, Christian allegory, metaphor (small hour),
 Links to other poems: Eat Me (dramatic monologue), Giuseppe (surrealism,
legend?), The Deliverer (atrocities)