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Title: Riders to the Sea

Author: J. M. Synge

Release date: July 1, 1997 [eBook #994]
Most recently updated: November 19, 2019

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/994

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SEA ***

Riders to the Sea

A PLAY IN ONE ACT

by J. M. Synge

Contents
INTRODUCTION
RIDERS TO THE SEA

INTRODUCTION
It must have been on Synge’s second visit to the Aran Islands that he had
the experience out of which was wrought what many believe to be his
greatest play. The scene of “Riders to the Sea” is laid in a cottage on
Inishmaan, the middle and most interesting island of the Aran group. While
Synge was on Inishmaan, the story came to him of a man whose body had
been washed up on the far away coast of Donegal, and who, by reason of
certain peculiarities of dress, was suspected to be from the island. In due
course, he was recognised as a native of Inishmaan, in exactly the manner
described in the play, and perhaps one of the most poignantly vivid
passages in Synge’s book on “The Aran Islands” relates the incident of his
burial.
The other element in the story which Synge introduces 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

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’s 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 to the pier?
NORA.
Looking out.—She’s passing the green head and letting fall her sails.
BARTLEY.
Getting his purse and tobacco.—I’ll have half an hour to go down, and
you’ll see me coming again in two days, or in three days, or maybe in four
days if the wind is bad.

MAURYA.
Turning round to the fire, and putting her shawl over her head.—Isn’t it a
hard and cruel man won’t hear a word from an old woman, and she holding
him from the sea?
CATHLEEN.
It’s the life of a young man to be going on the sea, and who would listen to
an old woman with one thing and she saying it over?
BARTLEY.
Taking the halter.—I must go now quickly. I’ll ride down on the red mare,
and the gray pony’ll run behind me. . . The blessing of God on you.
[He goes out.]
MAURYA.
Crying out as he is in the door.—He’s gone now, God spare us, and we’ll
not see him again. He’s gone now, and when the black night is falling I’ll
have no son left me in the world.
CATHLEEN.
Why wouldn’t you give him your blessing and he looking round in the
door? Isn’t it sorrow enough is on every one in this house without your
sending him out with an unlucky word behind him, and a hard word in his
ear?
[Maurya takes up the tongs and begins raking the fire aimlessly without
looking round.]
NORA.
Turning towards her.—You’re taking away the turf from the cake.
CATHLEEN.
Crying out.—The Son of God forgive us, Nora, we’re after forgetting his bit
of bread.
[She comes over to the fire.]
NORA.
And it’s destroyed he’ll be going till dark night, and he after eating nothing
since the sun went up.

CATHLEEN.
Turning the cake out of the oven.—It’s destroyed he’ll be, surely. There’s no
sense left on any person in a house where an old woman will be talking for
ever.
[Maurya sways herself on her stool.]
CATHLEEN.
Cutting off some of the bread and rolling it in a cloth; to Maurya.—Let you
go down now to the spring well and give him this and he passing. You’ll see
him then and the dark word will be broken, and you can say “God speed
you,” the way he’ll be easy in his mind.
MAURYA.
Taking the bread.—Will I be in it as soon as himself?
CATHLEEN.
If you go now quickly.
MAURYA.
Standing up unsteadily.—It’s hard set I am to walk.
CATHLEEN.
Looking at her anxiously.—Give her the stick, Nora, or maybe she’ll slip on
the big stones.
NORA.
What stick?
CATHLEEN.
The stick Michael brought from Connemara.
MAURYA.
Taking a stick Nora gives her.—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.
[She goes out slowly. Nora goes over to the ladder.]
CATHLEEN.
Wait, Nora, maybe she’d turn back quickly. She’s that sorry, God help her,
you wouldn’t know the thing she’d do.

NORA.
Is she gone round by the bush?
CATHLEEN.
Looking out.—She’s gone now. Throw it down quickly, for the Lord knows
when she’ll be out of it again.
NORA.
Getting the bundle from the loft.—The young priest said he’d be passing to-
morrow, and we might go down and speak to him below if it’s Michael’s
they are surely.
CATHLEEN.
Taking the bundle.—Did he say what way they were found?
NORA.
Coming down.—“There were two men,” says he, “and they rowing round
with poteen before the cocks crowed, and the oar of one of them caught the
body, and they passing the black cliffs of the north.”
CATHLEEN.
Trying to open the bundle.—Give me a knife, Nora, the string’s perished
with the salt water, and there’s a black knot on it you wouldn’t loosen in a
week.
NORA.
Giving her a knife.—I’ve heard tell it was a long way to Donegal.
CATHLEEN.
Cutting the string.—It is surely. There was a man in here a while ago—the
man sold us that knife—and he said if you set off walking from the rocks
beyond, it would be seven days you’d be in Donegal.
NORA.
And what time would a man take, and he floating?
[Cathleen opens the bundle and takes out a bit of a stocking. They look at
them eagerly.]
CATHLEEN.
In a low voice.—The Lord spare us, Nora! isn’t it a queer hard thing to say
if it’s his they are surely?

NORA.
I’ll get his shirt off the hook the way we can put the one flannel on the other
[she looks through some clothes hanging in the corner.] It’s not with them,
Cathleen, and where will it be?
CATHLEEN.
I’m thinking Bartley put it on him in the morning, for his own shirt was
heavy with the salt in it [pointing to the corner]. There’s a bit of a sleeve
was of the same stuff. Give me that and it will do.
[Nora brings it to her and they compare the flannel.]
CATHLEEN.
It’s the same stuff, Nora; but if it is itself aren’t there great rolls of it in the
shops of Galway, and isn’t it many another man may have a shirt of it as
well as Michael himself?
NORA.
Who has taken up the stocking and counted the stitches, crying out.—It’s
Michael, Cathleen, it’s Michael; God spare his soul, and what will herself
say when she hears this story, and Bartley on the sea?
CATHLEEN.
Taking the stocking.—It’s a plain stocking.
NORA.
It’s the second one of the third pair I knitted, and I put up three score
stitches, and I dropped four of them.
CATHLEEN.
Counts the stitches.—It’s that number is in it [crying out.] Ah, Nora, isn’t it
a bitter thing to think of him floating that way to the far north, and no one to
keen him but the black hags that do be flying on the sea?
NORA.
Swinging herself round, and throwing out her arms on the clothes.—And
isn’t it a pitiful thing when there is nothing left of a man who was a great
rower and fisher, but a bit of an old shirt and a plain stocking?
CATHLEEN.
After an instant.—Tell me is herself coming, Nora? I hear a little sound on
the path.

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.
[Nora sits down at the chimney corner, with her back to the door. Maurya
comes in very slowly, without looking at the girls, and goes over to her stool
at the other side of the fire. The cloth with the bread is still in her hand. The
girls look at each other, and Nora points to the bundle of bread.]
CATHLEEN.
After spinning for a moment.—You didn’t give him his bit of bread?
[Maurya begins to keen softly, without turning round.]
CATHLEEN.
Did you see him riding down?
[Maurya goes on keening.]
CATHLEEN.
A little impatiently.—God forgive you; isn’t it a better thing to raise your
voice and tell what you seen, than to be making lamentation for a thing
that’s done? Did you see Bartley, I’m saying to you?
MAURYA.
With a weak voice.—My heart’s broken from this day.

CATHLEEN.
As before.—Did you see Bartley?
MAURYA.
I seen the fearfulest thing.
CATHLEEN.
Leaves her wheel and looks out.—God forgive you; he’s riding the mare
now over the green head, and the gray pony behind him.
MAURYA.
Starts, so that her shawl falls back from her head and shows her white
tossed hair. With a frightened voice.—The gray pony behind him.
CATHLEEN.
Coming to the fire.—What is it ails you, at all?
MAURYA.
Speaking very slowly.—I’ve seen the fearfulest thing any person has seen,
since the day Bride Dara seen the dead man with the child in his arms.
CATHLEEN AND NORA.
Uah.
[They crouch down in front of the old woman at the fire.]
NORA.
Tell us what it is you seen.
MAURYA.
I went down to the spring well, and I stood there saying a prayer to myself.
Then Bartley came along, and he riding on the red mare with the gray pony
behind him [she puts up her hands, as if to hide something from her eyes.]
The Son of God spare us, Nora!
CATHLEEN.
What is it you seen.
MAURYA.
I seen Michael himself.
CATHLEEN.
Speaking softly.—You did not, mother; it wasn’t Michael you seen, for his

body is after being found in the far north, and he’s got a clean burial by the
grace of God.
MAURYA.
A little defiantly.—I’m after seeing him this day, and he riding and
galloping. Bartley came first on the red mare; and I tried to say “God speed
you,” but something choked the words in my throat. He went by quickly;
and “the blessing of God on you,” says he, and I could say nothing. I looked
up then, and I crying, at the gray pony, and there was Michael upon it—
with fine clothes on him, and new shoes on his feet.
CATHLEEN.
Begins to keen.—It’s destroyed we are from this day. It’s destroyed, surely.
NORA.
Didn’t the young priest say the Almighty God wouldn’t leave her destitute
with no son living?
MAURYA.
In a low voice, but clearly.—It’s little the like of him knows of the sea. . . .
Bartley will be lost now, and let you call in Eamon and make me a good
coffin out of the white boards, for I won’t live after them. I’ve had a
husband, and a husband’s father, and six sons in this house—six fine men,
though it was a hard birth I had with every one of them and they coming to
the world—and some of them were found and some of them were not
found, but they’re gone now the lot of them. . . There were Stephen, and
Shawn, were lost in the great wind, and found after in the Bay of Gregory
of the Golden Mouth, and carried up the two of them on the one plank, and
in by that door.
[She pauses for a moment, the girls start as if they heard something through
the door that is half open behind them.]
NORA.
In a whisper.—Did you hear that, Cathleen? Did you hear a noise in the
north-east?
CATHLEEN.
In a whisper.—There’s some one after crying out by the seashore.
MAURYA.
Continues without hearing anything.—There was Sheamus and his father,

and his own father again, were lost in a dark night, and not a stick or sign
was seen of them when the sun went up. There was Patch after was
drowned out of a curagh that turned over. I was sitting here with Bartley,
and he a baby, lying on my two knees, and I seen two women, and three
women, and four women coming in, and they crossing themselves, and not
saying a word. I looked out then, and there were men coming after them,
and they holding a thing in the half of a red sail, and water dripping out of it
—it was a dry day, Nora—and leaving a track to the door.
[She pauses again with her hand stretched out towards the door. It opens
softly and old women begin to come in, crossing themselves on the
threshold, and kneeling down in front of the stage with red petticoats over
their heads.]
MAURYA.
Half in a dream, to Cathleen.—Is it Patch, or Michael, or what is it at all?
CATHLEEN.
Michael is after being found in the far north, and when he is found there
how could he be here in this place?
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.]
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.]
CATHLEEN.
To the women, as they are doing so.—What way was he drowned?
ONE OF THE WOMEN.
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.]
MAURYA.
Raising her head and speaking as if she did not see the people around her.
—They’re all gone now, and there isn’t anything more the sea can do to
me.... I’ll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind
breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the surf
is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hitting one
on the other. I’ll have no call now to be going down and getting Holy Water
in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won’t care what way the sea is when
the other women will be keening. [To Nora]. Give me the Holy Water, Nora,
there’s a small sup still on the dresser.
[Nora gives it to her.]
MAURYA.
Drops Michael’s clothes across Bartley’s feet, and sprinkles the Holy Water
over him.—It isn’t that I haven’t prayed for you, Bartley, to the Almighty
God. It isn’t that I haven’t said prayers in the dark night till you wouldn’t
know what I’ld be saying; but it’s a great rest I’ll have now, and it’s time
surely. It’s a great rest I’ll have now, and great sleeping in the long nights
after Samhain, if it’s only a bit of wet flour we do have to eat, and maybe a
fish that would be stinking.
[She kneels down again, crossing herself, and saying prayers under her
breath.]

CATHLEEN.
To an old man.—Maybe yourself and Eamon would make a coffin when the
sun rises. We have fine white boards herself bought, God help her, thinking
Michael would be found, and I have a new cake you can eat while you’ll be
working.
THE OLD MAN.
Looking at the boards.—Are there nails with them?
CATHLEEN.
There are not, Colum; we didn’t think of the nails.
ANOTHER MAN.
It’s a great wonder she wouldn’t think of the nails, and all the coffins she’s
seen made already.
CATHLEEN.
It’s getting old she is, and broken.
[Maurya stands up again very slowly and spreads out the pieces of
Michael’s clothes beside the body, sprinkling them with the last of the Holy
Water.]
NORA.
In a whisper to Cathleen.—She’s quiet now and easy; but the day Michael
was drowned you could hear her crying out from this to the spring well. It’s
fonder she was of Michael, and would any one have thought that?
CATHLEEN.
Slowly and clearly.—An old woman will be soon tired with anything she
will do, and isn’t it nine days herself is after crying and keening, and
making great sorrow in the house?
MAURYA.
Puts the empty cup mouth downwards on the table, and lays her hands
together on Bartley’s feet.—They’re all together this time, and the end is
come. May the Almighty God have mercy on Bartley’s soul, and on
Michael’s soul, and on the souls of Sheamus and Patch, and Stephen and
Shawn [bending her head]; and may He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and
on the soul of every one is left living in the world.

[She pauses, and the keen rises a little more loudly from the women, then
sinks away.]
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.
[She kneels down again and the curtain falls slowly.]

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