by J. M. Synge
‘“I will,” says he, “surely. I’m choicing out the ones that have pictures on them, for it’s that kind they do set store on?”’
Afterwards we began talking of boats that had been upset during the winter, and lives that had been lost in the neighbourhood.
‘A while since,’ said the local man, ‘there were three men out in a canoe, and the sea rose on them. They tried to come in under the cliff but they couldn’t come to land with the greatness of the waves that were breaking. There were two young men in the canoe, and another man was sixty, or near it. When the young men saw they couldn’t bring in the canoe, they said they’d make a jump for the rocks, and let her go without them, if she must go. Then they pulled in on the next wave, and when they were close in the two young men jumped on to a rock, but the old man was too stiff, and he was washed back again in the canoe. It came on dark after that, and all thought he was drowned, and they held his wake in Dunquin. At that time there used to be a steamer going in and out trading in Valentia and Dingle and Cahirciveen, and when she came into Dingle, two or three days after, there was my man on board her, as hearty as a salmon. When he was washed back he got one of the oars, and kept her head to the wind; then the tide took him one bit and the wind took him another, and he wrought and he wrought till he was safe beyond in Valentia. Wasn’t that a great wonder?’ Then as he was ending his story we ran down into Dingle.
Often, when one comes back to a place that one’s memory and imagination have been busy with, there is a feeling of smallness and disappointment, and it is a day or two before one can renew all one’s enjoyment. This morning, however, when I went up the gap between Croagh Martin and then back to Slea Head, and saw Inishtooskert and Inishvickillaun and the Great Blasket Island itself, they seemed ten times more grey and wild and magnificent than anything I had kept in my memory. The cold sea and surf, and the feeling of winter in the clouds, and the blackness of the rocks, and the red fern everywhere, were a continual surprise and excitement.
Here and there on my way I met old men with tail-coats of frieze, that are becoming so uncommon. When I spoke to them in English, they shook their heads and muttered something I could not hear; but when I tried Irish they made me long speeches about the weather and the clearness of the day.
In the evening, as I was coming home, I got a glimpse that seemed to have the whole character of Corkaguiney — a little line of low cottages with yellow roofs, and an elder tree without leaves beside them, standing out against a high mountain that seemed far away, yet was near enough to be dense and rich and wonderful in its colour.
Then I wandered round the wonderful forts of Fahan. The blueness of the sea and the hills from Carrantuohill to the Skelligs, the singular loneliness of the hillside I was on, with a few choughs and gulls in sight only, had a splendour that was almost a grief in the mind.
I turned into a little public-house this evening, where Maurice — the fisherman I have spoken of before — and some of his friends often sit when it is too wild for fishing. While we were talking a man came in, and joined rather busily in what was being said, though I could see he was not belonging to the place. He moved his position several times till he was quite close to me, then he whispered: ‘Will you stand me a medium, mister? I’m hard set for money this while past.’ When he had got his medium he began to give me his history. He was a journeyman tailor who had been a year or more in the place, and was beginning to pick up a little Irish to get along with. When he had gone we had a long talk about the making of canoes and the difference between those used in Connaught and Munster.
‘They have been in this country,’ said Maurice, ‘for twenty or twenty-five years only, and before that we had boats; a canoe will cost twelve pounds, or maybe thirteen pounds, and there is one old man beyond who charges fifteen pounds. If it is well done a canoe will stand for eight years, and you can get a new skin on it when the first one is gone.’ I told him I thought canoes had been in Connemara since the beginning of the world.
‘That may well be,’ he went on, ‘for there was a certain man going out as a pilot, up and down into Clare, and it was he made them first in this place. It is a trade few can learn, for it is all done within the head; you will have to sit down and think it out, and then make up when it is all ready in your mind.’
I described the fixed thole-pins that are used in Connaught — here they use two freely moving thole-pins, with the oar loose between them, and they jeered at the simplicity of the Connaught system. Then we got on the relative value of canoes and boats.
‘They are not better than boats,’ said Maurice, ‘but they are more useful. Before you get a heavy boat swimming you will be wet up to your waist, and then you will be sitting the whole night like that; but a canoe will swim in a handful of water, so that you can get in dry and warm the whole night. Then there will be seven men in a big boat and seven shares of the fish; but in a canoe there will be three men only and three shares of the fish, though the nets are the same in the two.’
After a while a man sang a song, and then we began talking of tunes and playing the fiddle, and I told them how hard it was to get any sound out of one in a cottage with a floor of earth and a thatched roof over you.
‘I can believe that,’ said one of the men. ‘There was a man a while since went into Tralee to buy a fiddle; and when he went into the shop an old fiddler followed him into it, thinking maybe he’d get the price of a pint. Well, the man was within choicing the fiddles, maybe forty of them, and the old fiddler whispered to him to take them out into the air, “for there’s many a fiddle would sound well in here wouldn’t be worth a curse outside,” says he; so he was bringing them out and bringing them out till he found a good one among them.’
This evening, after a day of teeming rain, it cleared for an hour, and I went out while the sun was setting to a little cove where a high sea was running. As I was coming back the darkness began to close in except in the west, where there was a red light under the clouds. Against this light I could see patches of open wall and little fields of stooks, and a bit of laneway with an old man driving white cows before him. These seemed transfigured beyond any description.
Then I passed two men riding bare-backed towards the west, who spoke to me in Irish, and a little further on I came to the only village on my way. The ground rose towards it, and as I came near there was a grey bar of smoke from every cottage going up to the low clouds overhead, and standing out strangely against the blackness of the mountain behind the village.
Beyond the patch of wet cottages I had another stretch of lonely roadway, and a heron kept flapping in front of me, rising and lighting again with many lonely cries that made me glad to reach the little public-house near Smerwick.
Miscellaneous Essays and Reviews
CONTENTS
VITA VECCHIA
ÉTUDE MORBIDE
ON A TRAIN TO PARIS
UNDER ETHER
IN WICKLOW
AN AUTUMN NIGHT IN THE HILLS
IN CONNEMARA
BETWEEN THE BAYS OF CARRAROE
AMONG THE RELIEF WORKS
THE FERRYMAN OF DINISH ISLAND
THE KELP MAKERS
THE BOAT BUILDERS
THE HOMES OF THE HARVESTMEN
THE SMALLER PEASANT PROPRIETORS
ERRIS
THE INNER LANDS OF MAYO
THE SMALL TOWN
POSSIBLE REMEDIES
VARIOUS NOTES
LA VIEILLE LITTÉRATURE IRLANDAISE
THE POEMS OF GEOFFREY KEATING
AN IRISH HISTORIAN
CELTIC MYTHOLOGY
AN EPIC OF ULSTER
A TRANSLATION OF IRISH ROMANCE
IRISH HEROIC ROMANCE
IRISH FAIRY STORIES
LE MOUVEMENT INTELLECTUEL IRLANDAIS
THE OLD AND NEW IN IRELAND
THE FAIR HILLS OF IRELAND
THE WINGED DESTINY
GOOD PICTURES IN DUBLIN
A CELTIC THEATRE
ANATOL
E LE BRAZ
THREE FRENCH WRITERS
A NOTE ON BOUCICAULT AND IRISH DRAMA
CAN WE GO BACK INTO OUR MOTHER’S WOMB?
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
VITA VECCHIA
A YOUNG GIRL of the Roman Catholic Church spent nine weeks in the house where I lodged when I was studying music in Germany. Two days before she moved on to Venice I promised to play for her on the violin. The following night I dreamed that I did so, and that when I began a crowd of people rushed into the room with such noise and disturbance that I stopped playing and threw down my fiddle on the floor with the horror of nightmare.
The next morning I played for her as she wished, and as I was in the middle of an old love song I had chosen, a number of children ran into the room and began to make fun of my performance. I was playing from memory. I began to lose notes, and in the end I broke down utterly.
A year later my thoughts were turning continually to the same person, and I dreamed that I was sitting beside her as her accepted lover in a gathering of people. Then a sad deserted woman passed near us and I stood up and followed her. In the morning I wrote these lines: —
By my light and only love
Long I lived in glee
Marked her musing deep delight
Murmur love for me
A footfall faint arose
Timid touched the way
Of one that many loved
In days passed away.
I faltered, found my feet
Bound me to her side
We wandered years and years
Till she drooped and died.
I learned afterwards that this second person that I dreamed of was engaged to be married two days later at the other end of the world.
In a few months I came back into the neighbourhood of my friend, and I lived in a house where I could see her window at the other side of the street when I was practising. I made many simple poems the days that I saw her: —
I have seen her brows and head,
Trimmed around with angel-thread,
Bending o’er the lines she read.
I have seen her pearly eyes
Peering round her, quaintly wise,
Seeking souls to sympathise.
I have seen her finger white,
Round those leaves to linger light,
Happy leaves though crumpled quite.
She was a devout Christian in her heart, and was always busy doing good among the poor. One day I heard people in the street talking of her great beauty, and goodness, and I made these lines: —
Sweet seemeth it when people praise,
What fair I deem,
When many turn on one to gaze,
That I esteem.
So find I joy when many meet
Where thou art known,
For eulogies my yearning greet
Of thee alone.
Even at this time I began to mock my proper exaltation, although I was still full of wonder and delight that after my desolate youth a person of such beauty should be ready to regard me.
I continued my way to the south, and in a little time I was in Rome wandering in the streets. One day I went into a church, where they were celebrating a High Mass for the princes that had been killed in the Abyssinian war. I saw a woman kneeling by a pillar who was like my friend. I made these lines: —
I heard low music wail
Woe wanton, wed to fear,
Heard chords to cleave and quail
Quelled by terror sheer.
I saw a women bend,
Bowed in saintly prayer,
Where shadow round did wend,
Won by face so fair,
Like yours that kneeling form,
Far under mine that woe,
Our sorrow’s rage and storm,
Stem gods had died to know.
I dreamed afterwards, when I went in out of the moonlight, that I was walking in the street before her house, and that she came into the window, and closed the curtains when she saw me, without any salutation. This is the end of the poem I made in the morning: —
I saw thee start and quake,
When we in face did meet,
I saw dead passion wake,
One thrill of yearning sweet.
Then came a change, a wave,
Of bitterness, disdain,
That through my grassy grave
Will rack my haunted brain.
The same week the second person I had dreamed of broke off her engagement in peculiar circumstances. She came to Italy, and I learned to know her in Venice, with another woman who also answered my dream.
Then my friend to whom I was still desolately faithful, wrote to tell me that her confessor had made her believe that it would be a sin to marry a man who was not a Christian.
After many months I find these lines in my note-book: —
I curse my bearing, childhood, youth
I curse the sea, sun, mountains, moon,
I curse my learning, search for truth,
I curse the dawning, night, and noon.
Cold, joyless I will live, though clean,
Nor, by my marriage, mould to earth
Young lives to see what I have seen,
To curse — as I have cursed — their birth.
One night I went back to the town where she lodged, and went to look upon her door. As I passed she came into her window, and looked down on me with no sign of recognition. I went back to Ireland into the heart of the hills.
I fled from all the wilderness of cities,
And nature’s choristers my art saluted,
Chanting aloud to me their tunes and ditties
And to my silent songs like joys imputed;
But when they heard me singing in my sorrow,
My broken voice that spoke a bosom breaking,
They fled afar and cried! Hell did borrow
As through their notes my notes fell discord waking.
I had a strange feeling as I returned among the hills I worshipped in my childhood.... I rested by low beds of the streams where there was nothing but heather and granite and blue sky, with a brown current near me, and the tumult of the bees.... The autumn was beginning and I sensed the dismay that is blended for many of us with all that is lovely and puissant on the earth....
I wrote in a nook by a river:
Wind and stream and leaves and lake,
Still sweeter make
The songs they wake
A thrill my throes would prisoner take.
Birds and flies and fish that glide,
Why would ye hide
Or slip aside
From one who loves your lonely pride?...
I stood on the side of a hill watching the stars and the moon and listening to the crying of the snipe.... An earth breath came up across the bogs, carrying essences of heath, and obscure plants and the ferment of the soil... In a little while the same moon will rise and there will be wonderful perfumes and darkness and silver and gold lights in the pathways of Wicklow, and I will be lying under the clay.... I am haunted by the briefness of my world. It brings me at times a passionate thirst for the fulfilment of every passive or active capacity of my person. It seems a crime that I should go home and sleep in trite sheets while heaven and earth slip away from me for ever....
Later I thought I was better and returned to Paris. I wrote this little verse: —
Wet winds and rain are in the street,Where I must pass alone, Where no one wayfarer I meetThat I have loved or known.
’Tis winter in my heart, the air
Is wailing, bitter cold,
While I am wailing with despair,
As I have wailed of old.
At this time also I wrote this sonnet:
Through ways I went where waned a lurid light, While round about lewd women wan did glide, Yet no hard hand I sought to soothe my side But will-less went, held from the earth my sight:
Then saw among the clouds one woman white Star-like descend; when I her aim descried My temp
les reeled, I staggered, scarlet dyed, Then sightless stood, heard weeping swift indite.
‘From Heaven have I seen thee, wherefore here?
‘I loved thee, named thee noble, praised thee pure, ‘How canst thow to defilement turn thee near, ‘How loathsome lust, thus tolerate, endure?’
I moaned, ‘Sad, innocent, I torture flee,
‘Him wouldst thou blame, joy-exiled, damned by thee?’
At last I met her in the street:
Again, again, I sinful see
Thy face, as men who weep
Doomed by eternal Hell’s decree
Might meet their Christ in sleep.
I find two short poems at the end of my note-book:
Five fives this year my years
Half life I live to dread,
Yet judged by weight of tears
Now were I calmed, were dead.
Not craven crushed in heart
Loves longing love decayed
I living learn my part
In sternness steeped arrayed
Yet bliss our credence new
That sleeping soothes the strife,
Annihilation due
To pall the pang of life.
And again:
Thrice cruel fell my fate,
Did I, death tortured, see,
A God, inhuman, great,
Sit weaving woes for me.
So hung as Hell the world,
Death’s light with venom stung,
Toward God high taunts I hurled,
With cursing parched my tongue.
[At last:]
A Dream
Mid rush, rose, lavender, luxuriant piled,
Low melodies I marked a soul to sing
