by J. M. Synge
The old man gave me his view of the use of fear.
‘A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned,’ he said, ‘for he will be going out on a day he shouldn’t. But we do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drownded now and again.’
A little crowd of neighbours had collected lower down to see me off, and as we crossed the sandhills we had to shout to each other to be heard above the wind.
The crew carried down the curagh and then stood under the lee of the pier tying on their hats with strings and drawing on their oilskins.
They tested the braces of the oars, and the oarpins, and everything in the curagh with a care I had not seen them give to anything, then my bag was lifted in, and we were ready. Besides the four men of the crew a man was going with us who wanted a passage to this island. As he was scrambling into the bow, an old man stood forward from the crowd.
‘Don’t take that man with you,’ he said. ‘Last week they were taking him to Clare and the whole lot of them were near drownded. Another day he went to Inisheer and they broke three ribs of the curagh, and they coming back. There is not the like of him for ill-luck in the three islands.’
‘The divil choke your old gob,’ said the man, ‘you will be talking.’
We set off. It was a four-oared curagh, and I was given the last seat so as to leave the stern for the man who was steering with an oar, worked at right angles to the others by an extra thole-pin in the stern gunnel.
When we had gone about a hundred yards they ran up a bit of a sail in the bow and the pace became extraordinarily rapid.
The shower had passed over and the wind had fallen, but large, magnificently brilliant waves were rolling down on us at right angles to our course.
Every instant the steersman whirled us round with a sudden stroke of his oar, the prow reared up and then fell into the next furrow with a crash, throwing up masses of spray. As it did so, the stern in its turn was thrown up, and both the steersman, who let go his oar and clung with both hands to the gunnel, and myself, were lifted high up above the sea.
The wave passed, we regained our course and rowed violently for a few yards, then the same manoeuvre had to be repeated. As we worked out into the sound we began to meet another class of waves, that could be seen for some distance towering above the rest.
When one of these came in sight, the first effort was to get beyond its reach. The steersman began crying out in Gaelic, ‘Siubhal, siubhal’ (‘Run, run’), and sometimes, when the mass was gliding towards us with horrible speed, his voice rose to a shriek. Then the rowers themselves took up the cry, and the curagh seemed to leap and quiver with the frantic terror of a beast till the wave passed behind it or fell with a crash beside the stern.
It was in this racing with the waves that our chief danger lay. If the wave could be avoided, it was better to do so, but if it overtook us while we were trying to escape, and caught us on the broadside, our destruction was certain. I could see the steersman quivering with the excitement of his task, for any error in his judgment would have swamped us.
We had one narrow escape. A wave appeared high above the rest, and there was the usual moment of intense exertion. It was of no use, and in an instant the wave seemed to be hurling itself upon us. With a yell of rage the steersman struggled with his oar to bring our prow to meet it. He had almost succeeded, when there was a crash and rush of water round us. I felt as if I had been struck upon the back with knotted ropes. White foam gurgled round my knees and eyes. The curagh reared up, swaying and trembling for a moment, and then fell safely into the furrow.
This was our worst moment, though more than once, when several waves came so closely together that we had no time to regain control of the canoe between them, we had some dangerous work. Our lives depended upon the skill and courage of the men, as the life of the rider or swimmer is often in his own hands, and the excitement was too great to allow time for fear.
I enjoyed the passage. Down in this shallow trough of canvas that bent and trembled with the motion of the men, I had a far more intimate feeling of the glory and power of the waves than I have ever known in a steamer.
Old Mourteen is keeping me company again, and I am now able to understand the greater part of his Irish.
He took me out to-day to show me the remains of some cloghauns, or beehive dwellings, that are left near the central ridge of the island. After I had looked at them we lay down in the corner of a little field, filled with the autumn sunshine and the odour of withering flowers, while he told me a long folk-tale which took more than an hour to narrate.
He is so blind that I can gaze at him without discourtesy, and after a while the expression of his face made me forget to listen, and I lay dreamily in the sunshine letting the antique formulas of the story blend with the suggestions from the prehistoric masonry I lay on. The glow of childish transport that came over him when he reached the nonsense ending — so common in these tales — recalled me to myself, and I listened attentively while he gabbled with delighted haste: ‘They found the path and I found the puddle. They were drowned and I was found. If it’s all one to me tonight, it wasn’t all one to them the next night. Yet, if it wasn’t itself, not a thing did they lose but an old back tooth ‘ — or some such gibberish.
As I led him home through the paths he described to me — it is thus we get along — lifting him at times over the low walls he is too shaky to climb, he brought the conversation to the topic they are never weary of — my views on marriage.
He stopped as we reached the summit of the island, with the stretch of the Atlantic just visible behind him.
‘Whisper, noble person,’ he began, ‘do you never be thinking on the young girls? The time I was a young man, the devil a one of them could I look on without wishing to marry her.’
‘Ah, Mourteen,’ I answered, ‘it’s a great wonder you’d be asking me. What at all do you think of me yourself?’
‘Bedad, noble person, I’m thinking it’s soon you’ll be getting married. Listen to what I’m telling you: a man who is not married is no better than an old jackass. He goes into his sister’s house, and into his brother’s house; he eats a bit in this place and a bit in another place, but he has no home for himself like an old jackass straying on the rocks.’
I have left Aran. The steamer had a more than usually heavy cargo, and it was after four o’clock when we sailed from Kilronan.
Again I saw the three low rocks sink down into the sea with a moment of inconceivable distress. It was a clear evening, and as we came out into the bay the sun stood like an aureole behind the cliffs of Inishmaan. A little later a brilliant glow came over the sky, throwing out the blue of the sea and of the hills of Connemara.
When it was quite dark, the cold became intense, and I wandered about the lonely vessel that seemed to be making her own way across the sea. I was the only passenger, and all the crew, except one boy who was steering, were huddled together in the warmth of the engine-room.
Three hours passed, and no one stirred. The slowness of the vessel and the lamentation of the cold sea about her sides became almost unendurable. Then the lights of Galway came in sight, and the crew appeared as we beat up slowly to the quay.
Once on shore I had some difficulty in finding any one to carry my baggage to the railway. When I found a man in the darkness and got my bag on his shoulders, he turned out to be drunk, and I had trouble to keep him from rolling from the wharf with all my possessions. He professed to be taking me by a short cut into the town, but when we were in the middle of a waste of broken buildings and skeletons of ships he threw my bag on the ground and sat down on it.
‘It’s real heavy she is, your honour,’ he said; ‘I’m thinking it’s gold there will be in it.’
‘Divil a hap’worth is there in it at all but books,’ I answered him in Gaelic.
‘Bedad, is mor an truaghe’ (‘It’s a big pity’), he said; ‘if it was gold was in it it’s the thundering spree we’d have together this night in Galway.’
In about half an hour I got my luggage once more on his back, and we made our way into the city.
Later in the evening I went down towards the quay to look for Michael. As I turned into the narrow street where he lodges, some one seemed to be following me in the shadow, and when I stopped to find the number of his house I heard the ‘Failte’ (Welcome) of Inishmaan pronounced close to me.
It was Michael.
‘I saw you in the street,’ he said, ‘but I was ashamed to speak to you in the middle of the people, so I followed you the way I’d see if you’d remember me.’
We turned back together and walked about the town till he had to go to his lodgings. He was still just the same, with all his old simplicity and shrewdness; but the work he has here does not agree with him, and he is not contented.
It was the eve of the Parnell celebration in Dublin, and the town was full of excursionists waiting for a train which was to start at midnight. When Michael left me I spent some time in an hotel, and then wandered down to the railway.
A wild crowd was on the platform, surging round the train in every stage of intoxication. It gave me a better instance than I had yet seen of the half-savage temperament of Connaught. The tension of human excitement seemed greater in this insignificant crowd than anything I have felt among enormous mobs in Rome or Paris.
There were a few people from the islands on the platform, and I got in along with them to a third-class carriage. One of the women of the party had her niece with her, a young girl from Connaught who was put beside me; at the other end of the carriage there were some old men who were talking Irish, and a young man who had been a sailor.
When the train started there were wild cheers and cries on the platform, and in the train itself the noise was intense; men and women shrieking and singing and beating their sticks on the partitions. At several stations there was a rush to the bar, so the excitement increased as we proceeded.
At Ballinasloe there were some soldiers on the platform looking for places. The sailor in our compartment had a dispute with one of them, and in an instant the door was flung open and the compartment was filled with reeling uniforms and sticks. Peace was made after a moment of uproar and the soldiers got out, but as they did so a pack of their women followers thrust their bare heads and arms into the doorway, cursing and blaspheming with extraordinary rage.
As the train moved away a moment later, these women set up a frantic lamentation. I looked out and caught a glimpse of the wildest heads and figures I have ever seen, shrieking and screaming and waving their naked arms in the light of the lanterns.
As the night went on girls began crying out in the carriage next us, and I could hear the words of obscene songs when the train stopped at a station.
In our own compartment the sailor would allow no one to sleep, and talked all night with sometimes a touch of wit or brutality and always with a beautiful fluency with wild temperament behind it.
The old men in the corner, dressed in black coats that had something of the antiquity of heirlooms, talked all night among themselves in Gaelic. The young girl beside me lost her shyness after a while, and let me point out the features of the country that were beginning to appear through the dawn as we drew nearer Dublin. She was delighted with the shadows of the trees — trees are rare in Connaught — and with the canal, which was beginning to reflect the morning light. Every time I showed her some new shadow she cried out with naive excitement —
‘Oh, it’s lovely, but I can’t see it.’
This presence at my side contrasted curiously with the brutality that shook the barrier behind us. The whole spirit of the west of Ireland, with its strange wildness and reserve, seemed moving in this single train to pay a last homage to the dead statesman of the east.
Part III
A LETTER HAS come from Michael while I am in Paris. It is in English.
MY DEAR FRIEND, — I hope that you are in good health since I have heard from you before, its many a time I do think of you since and it was not forgetting you I was for the future.
I was at home in the beginning of March for a fortnight and was very bad with the Influence, but I took good care of myself.
I am getting good wages from the first of this year, and I am afraid I won’t be able to stand with it, although it is not hard, I am working in a saw-mills and getting the money for the wood and keeping an account of it.
I am getting a letter and some news from home two or three times a week, and they are all well in health, and your friends in the island as well as if I mentioned them.
Did you see any of my friends in Dublin Mr. — or any of those gentlemen or gentlewomen.
I think I soon try America but not until next year if I am alive.
I hope we might meet again in good and pleasant health.
It is now time to come to a conclusion, good-bye and not for ever, write soon — I am your friend in Galway.
Write soon dear friend.
Another letter in a more rhetorical mood.
MY DEAR MR. S., — I am for a long time trying to spare a little time for to write a few words to you.
Hoping that you are still considering good and pleasant health since I got a letter from you before.
I see now that your time is coming round to come to this place to learn your native language. There was a great Feis in this island two weeks ago, and there was a very large attendance from the South island, and not very many from the North.
Two cousins of my own have been in this house for three weeks or beyond it, but now they are gone, and there is a place for you if you wish to come, and you can write before you and we’ll try and manage you as well as we can.
I am at home now for about two months, for the mill was burnt where I was at work. After that I was in Dublin, but I did not get my health in that city. — Mise le mor mheas ort a chara.
Soon after I received this letter I wrote to Michael to say that I was going back to them. This time I chose a day when the steamer went direct to the middle island, and as we came up between the two lines of curaghs that were waiting outside the slip, I saw Michael, dressed once more in his island clothes, rowing in one of them.
He made no sign of recognition, but as soon as they could get alongside he clambered on board and came straight up on the bridge to where I was.
‘Bhfuil tu go maith?’ (‘Are you well?’) he said. ‘Where is your bag?’
His curagh had got a bad place near the bow of the steamer, so I was slung down from a considerable height on top of some sacks of flour and my own bag, while the curagh swayed and battered itself against the side.
When we were clear I asked Michael if he had got my letter.
‘Ah no,’ he said, ‘not a sight of it, but maybe it will come next week.’
Part of the slip had been washed away during the winter, so we had to land to the left of it, among the rocks, taking our turn with the other curaghs that were coming in.
As soon as I was on shore the men crowded round me to bid me welcome, asking me as they shook hands if I had travelled far in the winter, and seen many wonders, ending, as usual, with the inquiry if there was much war at present in the world.
It gave me a thrill of delight to hear their Gaelic blessings, and to see the steamer moving away, leaving me quite alone among them. The day was fine with a clear sky, and the sea was glittering beyond the limestone. Further off a light haze on the cliffs of the larger island, and on the Connaught hills, gave me the illusion that it was still summer.
A little boy was sent off to tell the old woman that I was coming, and we followed slowly, talking and carrying the baggage.
When I had exhausted my news they told me theirs. A power of strangers — four or five — a French priest among them, had been on the island in the summer; the potatoes were bad, but the rye had begun well, till a dry week came and then it had turned into oats.
‘If you didn’t know us so well,’ said the man who was talking, ‘you’d think it was a lie we were telli
ng, but the sorrow a lie is in it. It grew straight and well till it was high as your knee, then it turned into oats. Did ever you see the like of that in County Wicklow?’
In the cottage everything was as usual, but Michael’s presence has brought back the old woman’s humour and contentment. As I sat down on my stool and lit my pipe with the corner of a sod, I could have cried out with the feeling of festivity that this return procured me.
This year Michael is busy in the daytime, but at present there is a harvest moon, and we spend most of the evening wandering about the island, looking out over the bay where the shadows of the clouds throw strange patterns of gold and black. As we were returning through the village this evening a tumult of revelry broke out from one of the smaller cottages, and Michael said it was the young boys and girls who have sport at this time of the year. I would have liked to join them, but feared to embarrass their amusement. When we passed on again the groups of scattered cottages on each side of the way reminded me of places I have sometimes passed when travelling at night in France or Bavaria, places that seemed so enshrined in the blue silence of night one could not believe they would reawaken.
Afterwards we went up on the Dun, where Michael said he had never been before after nightfall, though he lives within a stone’s-throw. The place gains unexpected grandeur in this light, standing out like a corona of prehistoric stone upon the summit of the island. We walked round the top of the wall for some time looking down on the faint yellow roofs, with the rocks glittering beyond them, and the silence of the bay. Though Michael is sensible of the beauty of the nature round him, he never speaks of it directly, and many of our evening walks are occupied with long Gaelic discourses about the movements of the stars and moon.
These people make no distinction between the natural and the supernatural.
This afternoon — it was Sunday, when there is usually some interesting talk among the islanders — it rained, so I went into the schoolmaster’s kitchen, which is a good deal frequented by the more advanced among the people. I know so little of their ways of fishing and farming that I do not find it easy to keep up our talk without reaching matters where they cannot follow me, and since the novelty of my photographs has passed off I have some difficulty in giving them the entertainment they seem to expect from my company. To-day I showed them some simple gymnastic feats and conjurer’s tricks, which gave them great amusement.
