From “Follower” to Followed by Cecily Conour

In Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Follower,” the speaker[1] follows his father while he performs his work on their farm.  Heaney begins by describing his father adoringly and wishes that he were as competent as his father, but, by the end of the poem, he is the expert while his father is the one following him. Although Heaney looks up to his father and expresses his admiration in the poem, seeds of uneasiness are sown in. The word “hobnailed,” which is found in the middle of the work, is critical to the understanding of the poem, as it hints at the later discontent that the speaker feels towards his father despite his initial praise for him.

Heaney writes that he once “stumbled in his hobnailed wake,” referring to his father (13). The first definition of the adjective “hobnailed” in the OED is “Furnished or set with hobnails; having the marks of hobnails,”[2] with the noun “hobnail” defined as “a nail with massive head and short tang, used for protecting the soles of heavy boots and shoes.”[3]Thus, the “hobnailed wake” he is referring to is the imprints left by the sturdy shoes that his father would wear while farming. Since the poem is written admiringly of the speaker’s father, calling him an “expert” and sharing Heaney’s desire to be like his father, the ending is surprising, because the speaker says “But today/ It is my father who keeps stumbling/ Behind me, and will not go away,” indicating that he is almost annoyed with his father (22-24).

The key to understanding the ending of the poem comes from uncovering the second definition of the word “hobnailed.” This definition is “Rustic, boorish, clownish,”[4] and the noun “hobnail” can be used as a “generic proper name” to refer to a clown or a peasant.[5] Thus, the word “hobnailed” foreshadows the ending since it indicates that even as a boy, the speaker has a sense of that his father is uncultured, a feeling that is only strengthened when he becomes an adult, when he laments that his father “will not go away” (24). Other signs of Heaney’s discontent emerge. His remark “All I ever did was follow/ In his broad shadow round the farm” indicates that Heaney feels stuck in his father’s shadow and does not place great value on his father’s work (19-20).

Ultimately, the word “hobnailed” signals the subversion of expectations that is central to the poem. Heaney goes from the follower to the followed, the stumbling one to the one being stumbled after, and the clueless to the expert.