I’ve been to the Blasket Islands and these illustrations fit the poem, perfectly.
“The Given Note” by Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) first appeared in the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet’s second collection, Door into the Dark (1969). It was the only one of his poems to be read at his funeral. “The Given Note” takes its inspiration from the legend of the fiddler who brought back the Port na bPúcaí (The Fairies’ Tune) from the westernmost of Ireland’s most westernmost islands, the windswept and forbidding Blaskets. This adaptation of the poem into comics was done at the suggestion of Dr. Marco Sonzogni of Victoria University, Wellington.
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