In Wicklow: The Shadow of the Glen, The Tinker’s Wedding

Abstract

The Wicklow essays are intimately related to the plays. Again and again, when reading through them, we come across anecdotes and phrases which reappear in The Shadow or The Tinker’s Wedding. But even more interesting than such source material is the social background which the essays provide, Synge’s view of the whole Wicklow community. Three different groups can be distinguished. In the remote mountain areas live the sheep-farmers who graze their stock on the common land of the hills; down in the valleys are the villages which supply agricultural labour, and the arable farms — Michael Dara is ‘a kind of a farmer has come up from the sea’; a shifting third estate is made up by the vagrants, the tramps, tinkers and ‘travelling people’. The range of the Wicklow essays allows us to look at each group in turn, and see where they stand in Synge’s perspective.