Editing Seamus Heaney (section)

== Early life ==
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| quote = <poem>
Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four-foot box, a foot for every year.

</poem>
| source = from "Mid-Term break", <br />''[[Death of a Naturalist]]'' (1966)
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| bgcolor = #FFFFF0
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Heaney was born on 13 April 1939 at the family farmhouse called Mossbawn,<ref name="seambio2">{{Cite web |title=Biography of Irish Writer Seamus Heaney |url=http://www.seamusheaney.org/seamus_heaney_biography.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100224114536/http://www.seamusheaney.org/seamus_heaney_biography.html |archive-date=24 February 2010 |access-date=20 February 2010 |publisher=www.seamusheaney.org |quote=Heaney was born on 13th April 1939, the eldest of nine children at the family farm called Mossbawn in the Townland of Tamniarn in Newbridge near Castledawson, Northern Ireland, ...}} Archived at Wayback Engine.</ref> between [[Castledawson]] and [[Toomebridge]]; he was the first of nine children. In 1953, his family moved to [[Bellaghy]], a few miles away, which is now the family home. His father was Patrick Heaney (d. October 1986),<ref name="parker-2212">{{Cite book |last=Parker |first=Michael |title=Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet |publisher=University of Iowa Press |year=1993 |isbn=0-87745-398-5 |location=Iowa City |page=221 |quote=The deaths of his mother in the autumn of 1984 and of his father in October 1986 left a colossal space, one which he has struggled to fill through poetry.}}</ref> a farmer and cattle dealer, and the eighth child of ten born to James and Sarah Heaney.<ref>{{Cite web |title=A Note on Seamus Heaney |url=http://inform.orbitaltec.net/heaney |access-date=20 April 2009 |publisher=inform.orbitaltec.ne |quote=Seamus Heaney was born on 13 April 1939, the first child of Patrick and Margaret Kathleen (née McCann) Heaney, who then lived on a fifty-acre farm called Mossbawn, in the townland of Tamniarn, County Derry, Northern Ireland.}}</ref> Patrick was introduced to cattle dealing by his uncles, who raised him after his parents' early deaths.<ref name="nobel_prize_heaney_biography2">{{Cite web |title=Biography |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1995/heaney/biographical/ |access-date=23 May 2010 |publisher=Nobel Media}}</ref> Heaney's mother was Margaret Kathleen McCann (1911–1984), whose relatives worked at a local [[Linen|linen mill]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Verdonk |first=Peter |title=Stylistics |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2002 |isbn=0-19-437240-5 |location=Oxford |page=57}}</ref><ref name="parker-32">{{Cite book |last=Parker |first=Michael |title=Seamus Heaney: The Making of the Poet |publisher=University of Iowa Press |year=1993 |isbn=0-87745-398-5 |location=Iowa City |page=3 |quote=Mrs Heaney bore nine children, Seamus, Sheena, Ann, Hugh, Patrick, Charles, Colum, Christopher, and Dan.}}</ref><ref name="lifeofrhyme">{{Cite news |last=McCrum |first=Robert |date=18 July 2009 |title=Seamus Heaney: A life of rhyme |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jul/19/seamus-heaney-interview |access-date=19 July 2009 |work=The Guardian}}</ref> Heaney remarked on the inner tension between the rural Gaelic past exemplified by his father and the industrialized Ulster exemplified by his mother.<ref name="nobel_prize_heaney_biography2" />

Heaney attended Anahorish Primary School, and won a scholarship to [[St Columb's College]], a Roman Catholic boarding school in [[Derry]] when he was twelve years old. While studying at St Columb's, Heaney's younger brother Christopher was killed in February 1953 at the age of four in a road accident. The poems "[[Death of a Naturalist#"Mid-Term Break"|Mid-Term Break]]" and "[[District and Circle|The Blackbird of Glanmore]]" are related to his brother's death.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Tragic death of brother (4) that inspired Seamus Heaney recalled |url=https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/theatre-arts/tragic-death-of-brother-4-that-inspired-seamus-heaney-recalled-38700247.html |access-date=2 February 2021 |work=belfasttelegraph |issn=0307-1235}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=27 October 1999 |title=Heaney, Seamus: Mid-Term Break |url=http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=1546 |access-date=20 November 2010 |publisher=Litmed.med.nyu.edu}}</ref>

Heaney played [[Gaelic football]] for [[Castledawson GAC]], the club in the area of his birth, as a boy, and did not change to Bellaghy when his family moved there.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Carney |first=Jim |author-link=Jim Carney (poet) |date=5 April 2020 |title=Why have football and hurling remained a cultural wasteland for our writers and artists? |url=https://www.independent.ie/sport/gaelic-games/why-have-football-and-hurling-remained-a-cultural-wasteland-for-our-writers-and-artists-39103123.html |work=[[Sunday Independent (Ireland)|Sunday Independent]]}}</ref> However, he has remarked that he became involved culturally with Bellaghy GAA Club in his late teens, acting in amateur plays and composing treasure hunts for the club.