J. M. Synge

“ MAURYA.
Continuing.—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. ”

“ MAURYA.
There does be a power of young men floating round in the sea, and what way would they know if it was Michael they had, or another man like him, for when a man is nine days in the sea, and the wind blowing, it’s hard set his own mother would be to say what man was it.
CATHLEEN.
It’s Michael, God spare him, for they’re after sending us a bit of his clothes from the far north.
[She reaches out and hands Maurya the clothes that belonged to Michael. Maurya stands up slowly, and takes them into her hands. Nora looks out.] ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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.” ”

“ NORA.
They’re carrying a thing among them and there’s water dripping out of it and leaving a track by the big stones.
CATHLEEN.
In a whisper to the women who have come in.—Is it Bartley it is?
ONE OF THE WOMEN.
It is surely, God rest his soul.
[Two younger women come in and pull out the table. Then men carry in the body of Bartley, laid on a plank, with a bit of a sail over it, and lay it on the table.] ”

“ 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. ”

“ NORA.
Looking out.—She is, Cathleen. She’s coming up to the door.
CATHLEEN.
Put these things away before she’ll come in. Maybe it’s easier she’ll be after giving her blessing to Bartley, and we won’t let on we’ve heard anything the time he’s on the sea.
NORA.
Helping Cathleen to close the bundle.—We’ll put them here in the corner.
[They put them into a hole in the chimney corner. Cathleen goes back to the spinning-wheel.]
NORA.
Will she see it was crying I was?
CATHLEEN.
Keep your back to the door the way the light’ll not be on you. ”

“ The gray pony knocked him into the sea, and he was washed out where there is a great surf on the white rocks.
[Maurya has gone over and knelt down at the head of the table. The women are keening softly and swaying themselves with a slow movement. Cathleen and Nora kneel at the other end of the table. The men kneel near the door.] ”