Riders to the Sea - J. M. Synge (suggested reading .TXT) 📗

into the

play is equally true. Many tales of “second sight” are to be

heard among Celtic races. In fact, they are so common as to

arouse little or no wonder in the minds of the people. It is

just such a tale, which there seems no valid reason for

doubting, that Synge heard, and that gave the title, “Riders to

the Sea”, to his play.

 

It is the dramatist’s high distinction that he has simply taken

the materials which lay ready to his hand, and by the power of

sympathy woven them, with little modification, into a tragedy

which, for dramatic irony and noble pity, has no equal among

its contemporaries. Great tragedy, it is frequently claimed

with some show of justice, has perforce departed with the

advance of modern life and its complicated tangle of interests

and creature comforts. A highly developed civilisation, with

its attendant specialisation of culture, tends ever to lose

sight of those elemental forces, those primal emotions, naked

to wind and sky, which are the stuff from which great drama is

wrought by the artist, but which, as it would seem, are rapidly

departing from us. It is only in the far places, where solitary

communion may be had with the elements, that this dynamic life

is still to be found continuously, and it is accordingly

thither that the dramatist, who would deal with spiritual life

disengaged from the environment of an intellectual maze, must

go for that experience which will beget in him inspiration for

his art. The Aran Islands from which Synge gained his

inspiration are rapidly losing that sense of isolation and

self-dependence, which has hitherto been their rare

distinction, and which furnished the motivation for Synge’s

masterpiece. Whether or not Synge finds a successor, it is

none the less true that in English dramatic literature “Riders

to the Sea” has an historic value which it would be difficult

to over-estimate in its accomplishment and its possibilities.

A writer in The Manchester Guardian shortly after Synge’s death

phrased it rightly when he wrote that it is “the tragic

masterpiece of our language in our time; wherever it has been

played in Europe from Galway to Prague, it has made the word

tragedy mean something more profoundly stirring and cleansing

to the spirit than it did.”

 

The secret of the play’s power is its capacity for standing

afar off, and mingling, if we may say so, sympathy with

relentlessness. There is a wonderful beauty of speech in the

words of every character, wherein the latent power of

suggestion is almost unlimited. “In the big world the old

people do be leaving things after them for their sons and

children, but in this place it is the young men do be leaving

things behind for them that do be old.” In the quavering

rhythm of these words, there is poignantly present that quality

of strangeness and remoteness in beauty which, as we are coming

to realise, is the touchstone of Celtic literary art. However,

the very asceticism of the play has begotten a corresponding

power which lifts Synge’s work far out of the current of the

Irish literary revival, and sets it high in a timeless

atmosphere of universal action.

 

Its characters live and die. It is their virtue in life to be

lonely, and none but the lonely man in tragedy may be great.

He dies, and then it is the virtue in life of the women

mothers and wives and sisters to be great in their

loneliness, great as Maurya, the stricken mother, is great in

her final word.

 

“Michael has a clean burial in the far north, by the grace of

the Almighty God. Bartley will have a fine coffin out of the

white boards, and a deep grave surely. What more can we want

than that? No man at all can be living for ever, and we must

be satisfied.” The pity and the terror of it all have brought

a great peace, the peace that passeth understanding, and it is

because the play holds this timeless peace after the storm

which has bowed down every character, that “Riders to the Sea”

may rightly take its place as the greatest modern tragedy in

the English tongue.

 

EDWARD J. O’BRIEN.

 

February 23, 1911.

 

RIDERS TO THE SEA

 

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

 

First performed at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, February 25th,

1904.

 

PERSONS

 

MAURYA (an old woman) … Honor Lavelle

 

BARTLEY (her son) … . . W. G. Fay

 

CATHLEEN (her daughter)… Sarah Allgood

 

NORA (a younger daughter). . Emma Vernon

 

MEN AND WOMEN

 

RIDERS TO THE SEA

 

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

 

First performed at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, February 25th,

1904.

 

SCENE. — An Island off the West of Ireland. (Cottage kitchen,

with nets, oil-skins, spinning wheel, some new boards standing

by the wall, etc. Cathleen, a girl of about twenty, finishes

kneading cake, and puts it down in the pot-oven by the fire;

then wipes her hands, and begins to spin at the wheel. NORA, a

young girl, puts her head in at the door.)

 

NORA

[In a low voice.]

 

Where is she?

 

CATHLEEN

She’s lying down, God help her, and may be sleeping, if she’s

able.

 

[Nora comes in softly, and takes a bundle from under her

shawl.]

 

CATHLEEN

[Spinning the wheel rapidly.]

 

What is it you have?

 

NORA

The young priest is after bringing them. It’s a shirt and a

plain stocking were got off a drowned man in Donegal.

 

[Cathleen stops her wheel with a sudden movement, and leans out

to listen.]

 

NORA

We’re to find out if it’s Michael’s they are, some time herself

will be down looking by the sea.

 

CATHLEEN

How would they be Michael’s, Nora. How would he go the length

of that way to the far north?

 

NORA

The young priest says he’s known the like of it. “If it’s

Michael’s they are,” says he, “you can tell herself he’s got a

clean burial by the grace of God, and if they’re not his, let

no one say a word about them, for she’ll be getting her death,”

says he, “with crying and lamenting.”

 

[The door which Nora half closed is blown open by a gust of

wind.]

 

CATHLEEN

[Looking out anxiously.]

 

Did you ask him would he stop Bartley going this day with the

horses to the Galway fair?

 

NORA

“I won’t stop him,” says he, “but let you not be afraid.

Herself does be saying prayers half through the night, and the

Almighty God won’t leave her destitute,” says he, “with no son

living.”

 

CATHLEEN

Is the sea bad by the white rocks, Nora?

 

NORA

Middling bad, God help us. There’s a great roaring in the

west, and it’s worse it’ll be getting when the tide’s turned to

the wind.

 

[She goes over to the table with the bundle.]

 

Shall I open it now?

 

CATHLEEN

Maybe she’d wake up on us, and come in before we’d done.

 

[Coming to the table.]

 

It’s a long time we’ll be, and the two of us crying.

 

NORA

[Goes to the inner door and listens.]

 

She’s moving about on the bed. She’ll be coming in a minute.

 

CATHLEEN

Give me the ladder, and I’ll put them up in the turf-loft, the

way she won’t know of them at all, and maybe when the tide

turns she’ll be going down to see would he be floating from the

east.

 

[They put the ladder against the gable of the chimney; Cathleen

goes up a few steps and hides the bundle in

the turf-loft. Maurya comes from the inner room.]

 

MAURYA

[Looking up at Cathleen and speaking querulously.]

 

Isn’t it turf enough you have for this day and evening?

 

CATHLEEN

There’s a cake baking at the fire for a short space. [Throwing

down the turf] and Bartley will want it when the tide turns if

he goes to Connemara.

 

[Nora picks up the turf and puts it round the pot-oven.]

 

MAURYA

[Sitting down on a stool at the fire.]

 

He won’t go this day with the wind rising from the south and

west. He won’t go this day, for the young priest will stop

him surely.

 

NORA

He’ll not stop him, mother, and I heard Eamon Simon and Stephen

Pheety and Colum Shawn saying he would go.

 

MAURYA

Where is he itself?

 

NORA

He went down to see would there be another boat sailing in the

week, and I’m thinking it won’t be long till he’s here now, for

the tide’s turning at the green head, and the hooker’ tacking

from the east.

 

CATHLEEN

I hear some one passing the big stones.

 

NORA

[Looking out.]

 

He’s coming now, and he in a hurry.

 

BARTLEY

[Comes in and looks round the room. Speaking sadly and

quietly.]

 

Where is the bit of new rope, Cathleen, was bought in

Connemara?

 

CATHLEEN

[Coming down.]

 

Give it to him, Nora; it’s on a nail by the white boards. I

hung it up this morning, for the pig with the black feet was

eating it.

 

NORA

[Giving him a rope.]

 

Is that it, Bartley?

 

MAURYA

You’d do right to leave that rope, Bartley, hanging by the

boards (Bartley takes the rope]). It will be wanting in this

place, I’m telling you, if Michael is washed up to-morrow

morning, or the next morning, or any morning in the week, for

it’s a deep grave we’ll make him by the grace of God.

 

BARTLEY

[Beginning to work with the rope.]

 

I’ve no halter the way I can ride down on the mare, and I must

go now quickly. This is the one boat going for two weeks or

beyond it, and the fair will be a good fair for horses I heard

them saying below.

 

MAURYA

It’s a hard thing they’ll be saying below if the body is washed

up and there’s no man in it to make the coffin, and I after

giving a big price for the finest white boards you’d find in

Connemara.

 

[She looks round at the boards.]

 

BARTLEY

How would it be washed up, and we after looking each day for

nine days, and a strong wind blowing a while back from the west

and south?

 

MAURYA

If it wasn’t found itself, that wind is raising the sea, and

there was a star up against the moon, and it rising in the

night. If it was a hundred horses, or a thousand horses

you had itself, what is the price of a thousand horses against

a son where there is one son only?

 

BARTLEY

[Working at the halter, to Cathleen.]

 

Let you go down each day, and see the sheep aren’t jumping in

on the rye, and if the jobber comes you can sell the pig with

the black feet if there is a good price going.

 

MAURYA

How would the like of her get a good price for a pig?

 

BARTLEY

[To Cathleen]

 

If the west wind holds with the last bit of the moon let you

and Nora get up weed enough for another cock for the kelp.

It’s hard set we’ll be from this day with no one in it but one

man to work.

 

MAURYA

It’s hard set we’ll be surely the day you’re drownd’d with the

rest. What way will I live and the girls with me, and I an old

woman looking for the grave?

 

[Bartley lays down the halter, takes off his old coat, and puts

on a newer one of the same flannel.]

 

BARTLEY

[To Nora.]

 

Is she coming