Follower Family Quotes

The first thing that comes to the speaker's mind in this memory is "my father." That's an indication that family is going to play an important role in the poem. Daddio will probably be particularly important.

We're really born in the wake of our parents, and we spend a lot of time trying to catch up to them. The speaker is no different, and luckily for him, he seems to really admire his father, so the prospect of following in the family footsteps is more enticing, even if it is a little intimidating. Heaney's having some fun with the sound of this line, using consonance: "stumbled" and "hob-nailed" with all those B and D sounds really give us the sense of the speaker bumbling around—it's not as smooth sounding as the S sounds in the first stanza that describes the father's work.

How sweet. The father seems to recognize his son's attention, so even though he's in the middle of work and giving his kid a piggyback ride probably doesn't make things any more productive, he gives him some much-craved attention.