This chapter takes stock of Heaney's role as a public figure across his career. It begins with a recolletion of Heaney in the National Museum of Ireland in 2013, speaking as a public figure who wished not to be part of 'Irish heritage', not to be 'inherited' as an asset but to be 'handed down' with the sensation of human contact. In a close reading of an early poem, ‘The Last Mummer’, the chapter examines the tension in Heaney’s work between the public need for a response to the political crisis and the private need to be true to his poetic impulse.