by J. M. Synge
The simplicity and unity of the dress increases in another way the local air of beauty. The women wear red petticoats and jackets of the island wool stained with madder, to which they usually add a plaid shawl twisted round their chests and tied at their back. When it rains they throw another petticoat over their heads with the waistband round their faces, or, if they are young, they use a heavy shawl like those worn in Galway. Occasionally other wraps are worn, and during the thunderstorm I arrived in I saw several girls with men’s waistcoats buttoned round their bodies. Their skirts do not come much below the knee, and show their powerful legs in the heavy indigo stockings with which they are all provided.
The men wear three colours: the natural wool, indigo, and a grey flannel that is woven of alternate threads of indigo and the natural wool. In Aranmor many of the younger men have adopted the usual fisherman’s jersey, but I have only seen one on this island.
As flannel is cheap — the women spin the yarn from the wool of their own sheep, and it is then woven by a weaver in Kilronan for fourpence a yard — the men seem to wear an indefinite number of waistcoats and woollen drawers one over the other. They are usually surprised at the lightness of my own dress, and one old man I spoke to for a minute on the pier, when I came ashore, asked me if I was not cold with ‘my little clothes.’
As I sat in the kitchen to dry the spray from my coat, several men who had seen me walking up came in to me to talk to me, usually murmuring on the threshold, ‘The blessing of God on this place,’ or some similar words.
The courtesy of the old woman of the house is singularly attractive, and though I could not understand much of what she said — she has no English — I could see with how much grace she motioned each visitor to a chair, or stool, according to his age, and said a few words to him till he drifted into our English conversation.
For the moment my own arrival is the chief subject of interest, and the men who come in are eager to talk to me.
Some of them express themselves more correctly than the ordinary peasant, others use the Gaelic idioms continually and substitute ‘he’ or ‘she’ for ‘it,’ as the neuter pronoun is not found in modern Irish.
A few of the men have a curiously full vocabulary, others know only the commonest words in English, and are driven to ingenious devices to express their meaning. Of all the subjects we can talk of war seems their favourite, and the conflict between America and Spain is causing a great deal of excitement. Nearly all the families have relations who have had to cross the Atlantic, and all eat of the flour and bacon that is brought from the United States, so they have a vague fear that ‘if anything happened to America,’ their own island would cease to be habitable.
Foreign languages are another favourite topic, and as these men are bilingual they have a fair notion of what it means to speak and think in many different idioms. Most of the strangers they see on the islands are philological students, and the people have been led to conclude that linguistic studies, particularly Gaelic studies, are the chief occupation of the outside world.
‘I have seen Frenchmen, and Danes, and Germans,’ said one man, ‘and there does be a power a Irish books along with them, and they reading them better than ourselves. Believe me there are few rich men now in the world who are not studying the Gaelic.’
They sometimes ask me the French for simple phrases, and when they have listened to the intonation for a moment, most of them are able to reproduce it with admirable precision.
When I was going out this morning to walk round the island with Michael, the boy who is teaching me Irish, I met an old man making his way down to the cottage. He was dressed in miserable black clothes which seemed to have come from the mainland, and was so bent with rheumatism that, at a little distance, he looked more like a spider than a human being.
Michael told me it was Pat Dirane, the story-teller old Mourteen had spoken of on the other island. I wished to turn back, as he appeared to be on his way to visit me, but Michael would not hear of it.
‘He will be sitting by the fire when we come in,’ he said; ‘let you not be afraid, there will be time enough to be talking to him by and by.’
He was right. As I came down into the kitchen some hours later old Pat was still in the chimney-corner, blinking with the turf smoke.
He spoke English with remarkable aptness and fluency, due, I believe, to the months he spent in the English provinces working at the harvest when he was a young man.
After a few formal compliments he told me how he had been crippled by an attack of the ‘old hin’ (i.e. the influenza), and had been complaining ever since in addition to his rheumatism.
While the old woman was cooking my dinner he asked me if I liked stories, and offered to tell one in English, though he added, it would be much better if I could follow the Gaelic. Then he began: —
There were two farmers in County Clare. One had a son, and the other, a fine rich man, had a daughter.
The young man was wishing to marry the girl, and his father told him to try and get her if he thought well, though a power of gold would be wanting to get the like of her.
‘I will try,’ said the young man.
He put all his gold into a bag. Then he went over to the other farm, and threw in the gold in front of him.
‘Is that all gold?’ said the father of the girl.
‘All gold,’ said O’Conor (the young man’s name was O’Conor).
‘It will not weigh down my daughter,’ said the father.
‘We’ll see that,’ said O’Conor.
Then they put them in the scales, the daughter in one side and the gold in the other. The girl went down against the ground, so O’Conor took his bag and went out on the road.
As he was going along he came to where there was a little man, and he standing with his back against the wall.
‘Where are you going with the bag?’ said the little man. ‘Going home,’ said O’Conor.
‘Is it gold you might be wanting?’ said the man. ‘It is, surely,’ said O’Conor.
‘I’ll give you what you are wanting,’ said the man, ‘and we can bargain in this way — you’ll pay me back in a year the gold I give you, or you’ll pay me with five pounds cut off your own flesh.’
That bargain was made between them. The man gave a bag of gold to O’Conor, and he went back with it, and was married to the young woman.
They were rich people, and he built her a grand castle on the cliffs of Clare, with a window that looked out straight over the wild ocean.
One day when he went up with his wife to look out over the wild ocean, he saw a ship coming in on the rocks, and no sails on her at all. She was wrecked on the rocks, and it was tea that was in her, and fine silk.
O’Conor and his wife went down to look at the wreck, and when the lady O’Conor saw the silk she said she wished a dress of it.
They got the silk from the sailors, and when the Captain came up to get the money for it, O’Conor asked him to come again and take his dinner with them. They had a grand dinner, and they drank after it, and the Captain was tipsy. While they were still drinking, a letter came to O’Conor, and it was in the letter that a friend of his was dead, and that he would have to go away on a long journey. As he was getting ready the Captain came to him.
‘Are you fond of your wife?’ said the Captain.
‘I am fond of her,’ said O’Conor.
‘Will you make me a bet of twenty guineas no man comes near her while you’ll be away on the journey?’ said the Captain.
‘I will bet it,’ said O’Conor; and he went away.
There was an old hag who sold small things on the road near the castle, and the lady O’Conor allowed her to sleep up in her room in a big box. The Captain went down on the road to the old hag.
‘For how much will you let me sleep one night in your box?’ said the Captain.
‘For no money at all would I do such a thing,’ said the hag.
‘For ten guineas?’ said the Captain.
‘Not for ten guineas,’ said the hag.
‘For twelve guineas?’ said the Captain.
‘Not for twelve guineas,’ said the hag.
‘For fifteen guineas?’ said the Captain.
‘For fifteen I will do it,’ said the hag.
Then she took him up and hid him in the box. When night came the lady O’Conor walked up into her room, and the Captain watched her through a hole that was in the box. He saw her take off her two rings and put them on a kind of a board that was over her head like a chimney-piece, and take off her clothes, except her shift, and go up into her bed.
As soon as she was asleep the Captain came out of his box, and he had some means of making a light, for he lit the candle. He went over to the bed where she was sleeping without disturbing her at all, or doing any bad thing, and he took the two rings off the board, and blew out the light, and went down again into the box.
He paused for a moment, and a deep sigh of relief rose from the men and women who had crowded in while the story was going on, till the kitchen was filled with people.
As the Captain was coming out of his box the girls, who had appeared to know no English, stopped their spinning and held their breath with expectation.
The old man went on —
When O’Conor came back the Captain met him, and told him that he had been a night in his wife’s room, and gave him the two rings. O’Conor gave him the twenty guineas of the bet. Then he went up into the castle, and he took his wife up to look out of the window over the wild ocean. While she was looking he pushed her from behind, and she fell down over the cliff into the sea.
An old woman was on the shore, and she saw her falling. She went down then to the surf and pulled her out all wet and in great disorder, and she took the wet clothes off her, and put on some old rags belonging to herself.
When O’Conor had pushed his wife from the window he went away into the land.
After a while the lady O’Conor went out searching for him, and when she had gone here and there a long time in the country, she heard that he was reaping in a field with sixty men.
She came to the field and she wanted to go in, but the gate-man would not open the gate for her. Then the owner came by, and she told him her story. He brought her in, and her husband was there, reaping, but he never gave any sign of knowing her. She showed him to the owner, and he made the man come out and go with his wife.
Then the lady O’Conor took him out on the road where there were horses, and they rode away.
When they came to the place where O’Conor had met the little man, he was there on the road before them.
‘Have you my gold on you?’ said the man.
‘I have not,’ said O’Conor.
‘Then you’ll pay me the flesh off your body,’ said the man. They went into a house, and a knife was brought, and a clean white cloth was put on the table, and O’Conor was put upon the cloth.
Then the little man was going to strike the lancet into him, when says lady O’Conor —
‘Have you bargained for five pounds of flesh?’
‘For five pounds of flesh,’ said the man.
‘Have you bargained for any drop of his blood?’ said lady O’Conor.
‘For no blood,’ said the man.
‘Cut out the flesh,’ said lady O’Conor, ‘but if you spill one drop of his blood I’ll put that through you.’ And she put a pistol to his head.
The little man went away and they saw no more of him.
When they got home to their castle they made a great supper, and they invited the Captain and the old hag, and the old woman that had pulled the lady O’Conor out of the sea.
After they had eaten well the lady O’Conor began, and she said they would all tell their stories. Then she told how she had been saved from the sea, and how she had found her husband.
Then the old woman told her story; the way she had found the lady O’Conor wet, and in great disorder, and had brought her in and put on her some old rags of her own.
The lady O’Conor asked the Captain for his story; but he said they would get no story from him. Then she took her pistol out of her pocket, and she put it on the edge of the table, and she said that any one that would not tell his story would get a bullet into him.
Then the Captain told the way he had got into the box, and come over to her bed without touching her at all, and had taken away the rings.
Then the lady O’Conor took the pistol and shot the hag through the body, and they threw her over the cliff into the sea.
That is my story.
It gave me a strange feeling of wonder to hear this illiterate native of a wet rock in the Atlantic telling a story that is so full of European associations.
The incident of the faithful wife takes us beyond Cymbeline to the sunshine on the Arno, and the gay company who went out from Florence to tell narratives of love. It takes us again to the low vineyards of Wurzburg on the Main, where the same tale was told in the middle ages, of the ‘Two Merchants and the Faithful Wife of Ruprecht von Wurzburg.’
The other portion, dealing with the pound of flesh, has a still wider distribution, reaching from Persia and Egypt to the Gesta Rornanorum, and the Pecorone of Ser Giovanni, a Florentine notary.
The present union of the two tales has already been found among the Gaels, and there is a somewhat similar version in Campbell’s Popular Tales of the Western Highlands.
Michael walks so fast when I am out with him that I cannot pick my steps, and the sharp-edged fossils which abound in the limestone have cut my shoes to pieces.
The family held a consultation on them last night, and in the end it was decided to make me a pair of pampooties, which I have been wearing to-day among the rocks.
They consist simply of a piece of raw cowskin, with the hair outside, laced over the toe and round the heel with two ends of fishing-line that work round and are tied above the instep.
In the evening, when they are taken off, they are placed in a basin of water, as the rough hide cuts the foot and stocking if it is allowed to harden. For the same reason the people often step into the surf during the day, so that their feet are continually moist.
At first I threw my weight upon my heels, as one does naturally in a boot, and was a good deal bruised, but after a few hours I learned the natural walk of man, and could follow my guide in any portion of the island.
In one district below the cliffs, towards the north, one goes for nearly a mile jumping from one rock to another without a single ordinary step; and here I realized that toes have a natural use, for I found myself jumping towards any tiny crevice in the rock before me, and clinging with an eager grip in which all the muscles of my feet ached from their exertion.
The absence of the heavy boot of Europe has preserved to these people the agile walk of the wild animal, while the general simplicity of their lives has given them many other points of physical perfection. Their way of life has never been acted on by anything much more artificial than the nests and burrows of the creatures that live round them, and they seem, in a certain sense, to approach more nearly to the finer types of our aristocracies — who are bred artificially to a natural ideal — than to the labourer or citizen, as the wild horse resembles the thoroughbred rather than the hack or cart-horse. Tribes of the same natural development are, perhaps, frequent in half-civilized countries, but here a touch of the refinement of old societies is blended, with singular effect, among the qualities of the wild animal.
While I am walking with Michael some one often comes to me to ask the time of day. Few of the people, however, are sufficiently used to modern time to understand in more than a vague way the convention of the hours, and when I tell them what o’clock it is by my watch they are not satisfied, and ask how long is left them before the twilight.
The general knowledge of time on the island depends, curiously enough, on the direction of the wind. Nearly all the cottages are built, like this one, with two doors opposite each other, the more sheltered of which lies open al
l day to give light to the interior. If the wind is northerly the south door is opened, and the shadow of the door-post moving across the kitchen floor indicates the hour; as soon, however, as the wind changes to the south the other door is opened, and the people, who never think of putting up a primitive dial, are at a loss.
This system of doorways has another curious result. It usually happens that all the doors on one side of the village pathway are lying open with women sitting about on the thresholds, while on the other side the doors are shut and there is no sign of life. The moment the wind changes everything is reversed, and sometimes when I come back to the village after an hour’s walk there seems to have been a general flight from one side of the way to the other.
In my own cottage the change of the doors alters the whole tone of the kitchen, turning it from a brilliantly-lighted room looking out on a yard and laneway to a sombre cell with a superb view of the sea.
When the wind is from the north the old woman manages my meals with fair regularity; but on the other days she often makes my tea at three o’clock instead of six. If I refuse it she puts it down to simmer for three hours in the turf, and then brings it in at six o’clock full of anxiety to know if it is warm enough.
The old man is suggesting that I should send him a clock when I go away. He’d like to have something from me in the house, he says, the way they wouldn’t forget me, and wouldn’t a clock be as handy as another thing, and they’d be thinking of me whenever they’d look on its face.
The general ignorance of any precise hours in the day makes it impossible for the people to have regular meals.
They seem to eat together in the evening, and sometimes in the morning, a little after dawn, before they scatter for their work, but during the day they simply drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of bread, or some potatoes, whenever they are hungry.
