Goatsucker
Goatsucker - meaning Summary
Folklore Misread as Menace
Plath's poem recounts a rural legend about the Goatsucker, a nocturnal bird blamed for draining goats' milk. The speaker contrasts fearful folk belief—images of a vampiric, ruby-eyed bird—with a calmer reality in which the creature is elusive and harmless, associated instead with moths and harmless beetles. The poem explores how myth exaggerates and misreads the natural world, turning ordinary night insects into monstrous causes for farmers' anxieties.
Read Complete AnalysesOld goatherds swear how all night long they hear The warning whirr and burring of the bird Who wakes with darkness and till dawn works hard Vampiring dry of milk each great goat udder. Moon full, moon dark, the chary dairy farmer Dreams that his fattest cattle dwindle, fevered By claw-cuts of the Goatsucker, alias Devil-bird, Its eye, flashlit, a chip of ruby fire. So fables say the Goatsucker moves, masked from men's sight In an ebony air, on wings of witch cloth, Well-named, ill-famed a knavish fly-by-night, Yet it never milked any goat, nor dealt cow death And shadows only--cave-mouth bristle beset-- Cockchafers and the wan, green luna moth.
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