Synge

Abstract

I first saw J. M. Synge in the North Island of Aran. I was staying there gathering folk-lore, talking to the people, and felt quite angry when I passed another outsider walking here and there, talking also to the people. I was jealous of not being alone on the island among the fishers and seaweed gatherers. I did not speak to the stranger, nor was he inclined to speak to me; he also looked on me as an intruder, I only heard his name. But a little later in the summer Mr. Yeats, who was staying with me at Coole, had a note from Synge saying he was in Aran. They had met in Paris, Yeats had written of him from there: ‘He is really a most excellent man. He lives in a little room which he has furnished himself; he is his own servant. He works very hard and is learning Breton; he will be a very useful scholar.’

English Review (London) xiii (Mar 1913) 556–66, reprinted, with variations, from Our Irish Theatre (London and New York: G. P. Putman, 1913) pp. 120–39.