Bodies and Souls

Heaney captures moments from his life as a boarder at St Columb’s college. 1 In the Afterlife When the school day came to an end for a bored schoolboy exiled far from home young Heaney entered a kind of afterlife. Wiling away long hours before lights-out, was not much of a life for him. Were he to awaken on the other side of death, the scene might bear a depressing resemblance to St Columb’s. The central character is ‘real name’ (Jim Logue, the caretaker), initially engaged in the fortnightly routine of sweeping up hair off that classroom floor behind the school barber (an actual person contracted to the school). With Heaney in tow (falling into step) Logue follows his upper-floor […]