With reference to 'Requiem for the Croppies', 'The Otherside', 'Act of Union', and 'Tollund Man', what impression do you get of Heaney's political and religious viewpoint?

Requiem for the Croppies, is a dramatic monologue spoken from beyond the grave by one of the rebels killed by the English 'on Vinegar Hill' in 1798. Heaney wrote the poem in 1966 in commemoration of the Easter Rising of 1916. However, he does not celebrate the Rising itself, but the 'croppy boys' (their name originated from the way they cropped their hair in the style of the peasants in the French Revolution) who were mercilessly killed in the uprising.

The Croppies begins in an unpoetic manner, in the middle of things. We can see that the boys are on the run because of their basic food of 'Barley' and that they are not conventional soldiers as they have no 'striking camp', meaning they had no logistics. The boys moved 'quick and sudden' through their 'own country', this is an assertion to the Irish which is reflected in the phrase 'A people'. This has connotations of a unity, and in the case of the poem, it is an Irish unit fighting to keep their country from English rule. But this...