The poem
My "place of clear water," the first hill in the world where springs washed into the shiny grass
and darkened cobbles in the bed of the lane. Anahorish, soft gradient of consonant, vowel-meadow,
after-image of lamps swung through the yards on winter evenings. With pails and barrows
those mound-dwellers go waist-deep in mist to break the light ice at wells and dunghills.
Anahorish was the boarding school which Seamus Heaney attended as a boy.The underlying theme of the poem is that of school and innocence.We can notice the opposition between light and darkness ("my'place of clear water'", "lamps","darkened cobbles", which illustrates the contrast between the school, place of knowledge and enlightment, which Heaney as a child seeked to acquire,and his old world (he came from a family of farmers, see the poems "Digging" or "Follower").
Anahorish school was not a boarding school as I went there for 7 years!! The name Anahorish means hill of spring water in the Irish language. The underground springs can be heard clearly in certain parts of the area.
Anahorish the placename of a small rural area in South Derry in the North of Ireland. It borders Moss Bawn where Seamus Heaney was born and it was the first hill on his horizon. Seamus Heaney did attend Annahorish Primary School but it is the place Anahorish that the poem is written about. The placename means "place of clear/excellent water"
In this magnificent poem thee is an opposition being enacted. If on the one hand the place is of clear water, it darkens the stones. It seems that the knowledge this very first school Heaney has attended, has been helpful in some ways, but daring in other ways. I believe this is why he repeats this theme in some of his other poems
This poem was published well before 1987, I was studying it at school in 1982.
I have no great analysis or insight to add, but this poem brings me up short every time I read 'soft gradient / of consonant, vowel meadow' in the middle of it, it foregrounds the process of language in what would otherwise be a very physical set of sensations, excellent.
Anahorish is the name of the are that heaney was first brought up in, he attended Anahorish primary school as well. Both of these factors contribute to Anahorish being his "place of first learning" the gentle gradient refers to the easing in to his life and the hill on the horizon represents Heaneys view that Anahorish was a starting point with the hill being his aims for the future
that is basically my Extended Essay (4,000 words) in a paragraph
I said it
I went to the same primary school as him, and when he visited us, I said that poem for him. He told me he was really pleased with me!
Anahorish meaning
In Irish (Gaelic) the words woould be 'ait' (meaning place) na (of) 'Ur' (Ur means cold or fresh) and 'uisce' (water). 'Ait' would have an accent (or fada) on the A; and the 'U' in Ur would also have an accent, to elongate the vowel sound. Often the adjective would follow rather than precede the noun so 'uisce ur' rather than ur uisce. But the other form 'ur uisce' form is not unusual. These Irish words run together quite easily to make the anglicised version of the name - Anahorish. This anglicisation of Irish place names has been brilliantly featured in an exceptional play 'Translations' by, I think, Brian Friel.