Baptism and Limbo: Seamus Heaney

Atlantic Ocean

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.  John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. Matthew 3: 13-15

There are so many good poems, personal reflections and theological explanations about the meaning and value of Baptism. This Christian rite is more than just an entry card into the Church; it is a sacramental sign of a covenant and most importantly the establishment of a new inner relationship between God and the baptised.

However, in thinking about baptism my imagination has been taken in another direction.  A poem written over 50 years ago by an Irish writer speaks powerfully for me today.  Seamus Heaney’s poem, Limbo, appeared in his 1972 collection ‘Wintering Out’. It is a short, five verse poem describing the action of a woman casting her unbaptised baby into the Atlantic Ocean; the child is subsequently ‘hauled in with the fish’ by local fishermen.

Limbo by Seamus Heaney

Fishermen at Ballyshannon

Netted an infant last night

Along with the salmon.

An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back

To the waters.  But I'm sure

As she stood in the shallows

Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists

Were dead as the gravel,

He was a minnow with hooks

tearing her open.

She waded in under

the sign of the cross.

He was hauled in with the fish.

Now limbo will be

A cold gutter of souls

Through some far briny zone.

Even Christ's palms, unhealed,

Smart and cannot fish there.

Rowan Williams in ‘Being Christian‘ asserts that Baptism involves a restoration, a ‘being with Jesus “in the depths”, in the depths of human need’ and a re-taking back into ‘the depth of God’s love.’ And by this rite ‘Jesus…. restores humanity “from within”, (Jesus) has come down into the chaos of our human world….to where things are shapeless and meaningless, in a state of vulnerability and unprotectedness….’ (pp. 3-4) Ultimately the rite of Baptism ‘brings us to a new level of solidarity with other people.’ (p 6)

Andrew McGowan, in his contemplation of this passage from Matthew, focuses on the word ‘righteousness.’ For him the meaning of the word ‘righteousness’ is shown by Jesus’ act of submission to be baptised by John. Here, by requesting John baptise him and not the reverse, Jesus subverts the expectation that he has arrived in order to fulfil a role and add more rules. By his action Jesus is revealing the mercy of God. For this is a relationship founded on love. ‘Righteousness is God’s remarkable saving love, above all, and for human beings that means our own righteousness is in keeping with that love.’ Hope is born from this understanding of righteousness, and of paramount importance in the reign of heaven. This makes God’s saving grace something much bigger than simply sticking to the rules. It also means that ‘Jesus teaches that the righteousness that characterizes the reign of heaven requires more of its members, rather than less.’

Seamus Heaney’s poem Limbo not only goes straight to the heart of Irish rural life, history and identity, and the meaning of Irish Catholic belief and practice at that time, but the poem also can have resonances for our own understanding of ‘righteousness.’ And while we can celebrate the rite of baptism, what of those who are unbaptised?

Heaney is a poet whose empathetic understanding of history and culture of Ireland is as deep as his imagination and compassion for the forgotten, the marginal and the abandoned are wide. Interested in myth and story, his poetry is often built on the ordinary moments in life made startingly alive. Struggle and poverty, bloody religious conflict are themes that he never shied away from.

In Limbo Heaney explores the subject of Irish social and religious practice in terms of the belief in souls who are exiled from Heaven in a place called Limbo. Some medieval theologians espoused the idea that Limbo (Latin meaning edge, boundary) is a space prepared by God for infants who have died before being baptised, and therefore not eligible for heaven, eternally exist in it. It was a strong Irish Catholic belief known by Heaney in his lifetime.

Ballyshannon is one of the oldest towns in Ireland, on the border of the North but firmly placed in the South, the Republic of Ireland. This poem, though short and ostensibly drawing a relatively simple picture of a tragic scene, moves with remarkable swiftness through complex ideas and feelings. It is lyrical, its rhythm kept smooth and flowing with the sound of consonants and vowels echoing one another in assonance. The tone of the first three-line sentence is factual and journalistic, a matter-of-fact sounding headline: a dead child caught in the nets of fishermen. The next three-line sentence flows into the second verse and interprets this headline with a hint of spiteful moralism -  ‘An illegitimate spawning’ – but then moves on quickly into the gentler tones of the second verse, beginning with the visual image of a ‘small one thrown back / To the waters’ and finishes by taking our eyes to watch, with neither sentiment nor emotion, the dreadful pain of a mother letting her baby go into the waters:

 …she stood in the shallows

Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists

Were dead as the gravel.

The tone continues to be light but heavily charged. Words like ‘frozen’ and ‘dead’ pin the mother to the scene. The mother bending over the ocean waters in stillness is like a tragic figure in ancient Greek mythology.  In two short lines she is described as if it is she who is being abandoned and dying, and not the perpetrator of such a shocking act: ‘He was the minnow / with hooks tearing her open.’

The final two verses are the ones where societal rules about how the spiritual life is believed to operate comes crashing down in full force. Perhaps the mother’s wading in ‘under the sign of the cross’ is her own attempt to baptise the child before letting go. But, also, perhaps the phrase ‘sign of the cross’ is the lynchpin in this whole poem. The baby has been cast into the ocean and relegated along with all ‘the cold gutter of souls’ to a ‘far briny zone.’ Cast so far out that not even Christ, with all his resurrected saving wounds can reach. Christ who called his followers, some of whom were fishermen, to become ‘fishers of men.’ (Matthew 4:19) cannot – even after his own death and resurrection - reach this ‘far briny zone.’ 

The last two lines: ‘Even Christ's palms, unhealed, / Smart and cannot fish there,’ intentionally are meant to sting hard. They deliberately, I believe, are designed to provoke the reader’s indignation; and for a Christian, righteous indignation. For here is not a sign of Christ’s meaning of ‘righteousness’ being a revealing of the mercy of God, but an exposure of a limited and bigoted religious rule. A rule that casts a dead child to an eternal state of living at the edge of heaven, and not in the heart of it. The whole poem then can be read as an exposure of an Irish Catholic society at this time which not only condemns a woman giving birth out of wedlock so she may be driven to such a desperate act, but also a child because certain requirements have not been met. The poem both exposes and subverts the belief system of this society. It reveals that such judgements make life smaller, lessens humanity. It unmasks a belief system where there is no coming down of Jesus ‘into the chaos of our human world….to where things are shapeless and meaningless, in a state of vulnerability and unprotectedness…’ There is no restoration or re-taking back into ‘the depth of God’s love.’ 

In re-reading this poem, re-thinking the mother’s wading ‘in / under the sign of the cross’ we may realise that the child and mother herself, may actually both be living under the sign of this cross. There is nothing in the poem that condones the woman’s action nor the horror of it; but it does seem, to me, to require more of us as readers. The meaning in the last lines lies within us. Perhaps ‘God’s remarkable saving love’ is gracing both mother and child with a much bigger understanding of baptism. For in its very denial of places Christ cannot go, there is a pressure in us to recognise that Christ isn’t an entity we wait for to act but is found within our own capacity for compassion for despair and suffering. Christ is found by our own actions. Here is precisely where God’s mercy and hope in the reign of heaven is to be found. And here, in all its flawed, broken humanness, is a sacramental sign of God’s love for and mercy upon our world.

Sources

Seamus Heaney. Wintering out. Faber, 1971

Andrew McGowan. Andrew’s Version: Thoughts on the Revised Common Lectionary readings for Sundays from the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, 2025

Rowan Williams. Being Christian. SPCK, 2014