1972: SEAMUS HEANEY Meets a PAGAN GOD | Ulster in Focus | Writers & Wordsmiths | BBC Archive

"When you take a boat out on the Erne waters, you voyage into time. The islands lie, like stepping stones, in the long river of our past."

Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney explores the islands of Lough Erne in Northern Ireland.

He encounters an ancient and mysterious stone statue on Boa Island and imagines what the old gods in Ireland were like, before the arrival of Saint Patrick.

The monastic round tower of Devenish Island is a reminder of those early Christian missionaries who "startled the nature gods and put them to flight."

This is an excerpt from BBC Northern Ireland programme Ulster in Focus: The Loughsiders.