The Cries of Pagan Desperation: Riders to the Sea

Collins, Christopher

doi:10.1057/978-1-349-94872-7_5

The Cries of Pagan Desperation: Riders to the Sea

Christopher Collins²

Chapter
First Online: 26 June 2016

183 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with Synge’s dramatization of magical realism in Riders to the Sea. The chapter juxtaposes Synge’s staging of pre-Christian magical rituals with his knowledge of Herbert Spencer and James Frazer’s comparative social science. The chapter suggests that it is with significance that Synge utilized magical realism because it cajoled the Catholic, bourgeois spectator into developing a respect for pre-Christian cultural residue because the dramatic action was presented within the framework of realism.

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Notes

1.
CW, vol. 3: xix.
2.
Lady Gregory, Seventy Years: Being the Autobiography of Lady Gregory (New York: Macmillan, 1976), 415.
3.
Joseph Holloway, NLI MS: 1805, 12 January 1907, f.30.
4.
CW, vol. 2: 53.
5.
TCD MS: 4422, f.4r.
6.
Synge’s diary for 12 February 1903 reads thus: ‘Letter from Symons asking my play for “Fortnightly”’ (TCD MS: 4422, f.7v).
7.
Synge met Joyce on 21 September 1903 and Synge’s diary reads thus: ‘met Joyce’ (TCD MS: 4422, f.20r).
8.
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce: New and Revised Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 124.
9.
James Joyce, The Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2, ed. Richard Ellmann (London: Faber and Faber, 1966), 35. James Joyce to Stanislaus Joyce, 9 March 1903.
10.
Ellmann, James Joyce, 124.
11.
Joyce, The Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2: 244. James Joyce to Stanislaus Joyce, 2 September 1909.
12.
Joyce, The Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2: 28. James Joyce to Stanislaus Joyce, 8 February 1903.
13.
Joyce, The Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2: 38. James Joyce to Mrs John Stanislaus Joyce, 20 March 1903.
14.
Joyce, The Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2: 35. James Joyce to Stanislaus Joyce, 9 March 1903.
15.
CW, vol. 3: 19.
16.
Ellmann, James Joyce, 124.
17.
Joyce, The Letters of James Joyce, vol. 2: 35. James Joyce to Stanislaus Joyce, 9 March 1903.
18.
Oliver St. John Gogarty, As I Was Going Down Sackville Street: A Phantasy in Fact (London: Rich and Cowan, 1937), 289.
19.
Aristotle, Poetics, trans. and ed. Stephen Halliwell (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1995), 55.
20.
CW, vol. 3: 19.
21.
Aristotle, Poetics, 125.
22.
Aristotle, Poetics, 135.
23.
Aristotle, Poetics, 135. Emphasis in original.
24.
Nicholas Grene, Synge: A Critical Study of the Plays (London: Macmillan, 1975), 54.
25.
Edward A. Kopper Jr., ‘Towards an Assessment,’ in A J.M. Synge Literary Companion, ed. Edward A. Kopper Jr. (London: Greenwood, 1988), 216.
26.
TCD MS: 4413, f.24r. It should be pointed out that it is not categorically clear that Synge read The Oresteia. Synge’s diary for 29 April 1892 reads thus: ‘Stories from the Greek Tragedians by Church’. Alfred J. Church’s work narrates the supernatural mythos that Aeschylus used in The Oresteia’s literary realism. Synge spent a considerable amount of time on this work, finishing it on 6 May 1892 (TCD MS: 4412, f.27v).
27.
James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 55.
28.
Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 29.
29.
Maggie Ann Bowers, Magic(al) Realism (London: Routledge, 2004), 4.
30.
William Stokes, The Life and Labours in Art and Archæology of George Petrie (London: Longmans Green, 1868), 47–48. Synge’s notes point out that ‘[t]he Aran islanders were so honest before they were corrupted by communication with the mainland that if a purse was dropped any where on the islands it was sure to turn up in the course of time in the Chapel. They are a brave and hardy race, industrious’ (TCD MS: 4375, ff.58v–57r).
31.
‘Aran Mor,’ Speaker 17 (1898): 555–56.
32.
TCD ASMS: 6200, f.4v. Alexander Synge to Edward Synge, 19 July 1851.
33.
Synge began reading Swedenborg’s Heaven and its Wonders and Hell from Things Heard and Seen on 3 April 1898 (TCD MS: 4419, f.40r).
34.
Stephen MacKenna, NLI MS: 13,276, f.16.
35.
The Theosophical Society was originally called the Dublin Hermetic Society and was found in 1885. It changed to the Theosophical Society in 1890.
36.
TCD MS: 4378, f.62v.
37.
TCD MS: 4379, f.93r.
38.
Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘Supplement II: On The Metaphysics of Music,’ in Richard Wagner, Beethoven: With a Supplement from the Philosophical Works of Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Edward Dannreuther (London: W.M. Reeves, 1903), 161.
39.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Alexander Mikeljohn and ed. Vasilis Politis (London: J.M. Dent, 1993), 61.
40.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 2, trans. E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1969), 9–10. Emphasis in original.
41.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1: 99.
42.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1: xxiii.
43.
TCD MS: 4379, f.94r.
44.
TCD MS: 4379, f.85v.
45.
Hugh Elliot, Herbert Spencer (London: Constable, 1917), 230–31. Emphasis in original.
46.
TCD MS: 4379, f.85r.
47.
Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris, ‘Introduction: Daiquiri Birds and Flaubertian Parrot(ie)s,’ in Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community, ed. Lois Parkinson and Wendy B. Faris (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 3. Emphasis in original.
48.
Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Cornell University Press, 1975), 44.
49.
It should be pointed out that Todorov’s third condition of the fantastic as a literary genre requires that ‘the reader must adopt a certain attitude with regard to the text: he will reject allegorical as well as “poetic” interpretations’ (Todorov, The Fantastic, 33). It is commonly understood that the character of The Poor Old Woman is a poetic allegory for Mother Ireland, which therefore makes the example of Cathleen Ni Houlihan as being indexical of the fantastic somewhat problematic. However, we should remind ourselves that The Poor Old Woman operates within the paradigm of realism and the reader of the theatrical text is required to consider the character within these limitations; like the Gillane family in the play, the reader of the theatrical text hesitates over the ontology of The Poor Old Woman; Peter Gillane saw an old woman, whereas Patrick Gillane saw a young girl with the walk of a queen. As Jonathan Allison has pointed out: ‘the crux of the play lies in the double function of the old woman as symbol of the nation and as a naturalistic character in the drama […] For a “fantastic” moment or two, the audience cannot decide what she is’ (Jonathan Allison, ‘Magical Nationalism, Lyric Poetry and the Marvellous: W.B. Yeats and Seamus Heaney,’ in A Companion to Magical Realism, ed. Stephen M. Hart and Wen-Chin Ouyang [Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2010], 234–35). For more on how Cathleen Ni Houlihan is exemplary of the fantastic see, Peter Kuch, ‘Writing “Easter 1916,”’ in That Other World: The Supernatural and the Fantastic in Irish Literature and its Contexts, vol. 2, ed. Bruce Stewart (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1998), 1–17.
50.
CW, vol. 2: 128. According to Ó Súilleabháin, Synge was correct to conclude that ‘the natural and the supernatural were equally real’ to the islanders. But unlike Synge, Ó Súilleabháin maintained that the islanders were able to distinguish between the two temporal modes. As far as the relationship between Riders and magical realism is concerned, Synge ensured that just like himself, his characters were able to differentiate between the natural and the supernatural; he merely appropriated the uniform credence that he believed the islanders gave to both natural and supernatural phenomena. See, Seán Ó Súilleabháin, ‘Synge’s Use of Irish Folklore,’ in J.M. Synge Centenary Papers: 1971, ed. Maurice Harmon (Dublin: Dolmen, 1972), 26.
51.
CW, vol. 3: 5.
52.
CW, vol. 2: 58.
53.
CW, vol. 3: 15.
54.
Holloway, NLI MS: 1802, 26 February 1904, f.100.
55.
Maggie Ann Bowers discusses narratives of folkloric magical realism as follows: ‘[folkloric] magical realism originates either from a particular folk tradition, or is cultivated from a variety of traditions in order to produce a particular narrative effect’. See, Bowers, Magic(al) Realism, 91–92.
56.
Judith Dineen Remy, ‘Synge’s Peasants: Characters Reflected In A Cracked Mirror,’ (PhD diss., The University of California: Irvine, 1981), 62.
57.
See, Declan Kiberd, Synge and the Irish Language (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1993) and Richard Bauman, ‘John Millington Synge and Irish Folklore,’ Southern Folklore Quarterly 27, no. 4 (1963): 267–79.
58.
Kiberd, Synge and the Irish Language, 166.
59.
CW, vol. 3: 15.
60.
CW, vol. 3: 15.
61.
CW, vol. 3: 9.
62.
Yeats, The Variorum Edition of the Poems, 161.
63.
TCD MS: 4378, f.72r. Synge began reading the Lectures on the Growth of Religion As Illustrated By Celtic Heathendom in September 1898. His diary reads thus: ‘Hibbert Lectures on Celtic Heathendom’. Rhys’s work was originally given as part of the annual Robert Hibbert lectures on theological issues between May and June 1886.
64.
Edward Clodd, quoted in Genevieve Brennan, ‘Yeats, Clodd, Scatalogic Rites and the Clonmel Witch Burning,’ in Yeats Annual, vol. 4, ed. Warwick Gould (London: Macmillan, 1986), 207.
65.
Yeats, The Variorum Edition of the Poems, 810.
66.
Yeats, The Variorum Edition of the Poems, 810.
67.
Yeats, The Variorum Edition of the Poems, 809.
68.
Yeats, The Variorum Edition of the Poems, 809.
69.
CW, vol. 3: 9.
70.
Kiberd, Synge and the Irish Language, 166.
71.
Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates, The Cooper’s Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 166.
72.
CW, vol. 3: 9.
73.
Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, Irish Superstitions (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2002), 52.
74.
John Rhys, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion: As Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom (London: Williams and Norgate, 1892), 665.
75.
Synge first read The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, To The Land of The Living: An Old Irish Saga, vol. 1 and Alfred Nutt, ‘An Essay upon the Irish Vision of the Happy Otherworld and the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth,’ in The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, To The Land of The Living: An Old Irish Saga, vol. 2, on 21 September 1898. His diary reads thus: ‘bran voyage nutt’ (TCD MS: 4419, f.98v). He finished it on 3 October, where his diary simply records ‘bran finished’ (TCD MS: 4419, f.104v). For Synge’s extensive notes on both Meyer’s translation and Nutt’s Celtological analysis, see, TCD MS: 4378, ff.53v–47v.
76.
Kuno Meyer, The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, To The Land of The Living: An Old Irish Saga, vol. 1 (London: David Nutt, 1895), 6, 8, 24.
77.
W. B. Yeats, The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, vol. 2, 1896–1900, ed. Warwick Gould, John Kelly and Deirdre Toomey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 242. W.B. Yeats to John Millington Synge, 21 June 1898.
78.
CW, vol. 3: 244.
79.
Seán Ó Súilleabháin, ‘The Feast of St. Martin in Ireland,’ in Studies in Folklore, in Honor of Distinguished Service Professor Sith Thompson, ed. W. Edson Richmond (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1957), 253.
80.
CW, vol. 3: 25.
81.
Seán Ó Súilleabháin, Irish Folk Custom and Belief (Dublin: Three Candles, 1967), 69.
82.
Ronald Hutton, Pagan Britain (New Haven: Yale University press, 2013), 303.
83.
CW, vol. 3: 9.
84.
P.H. Pearse, ‘The Passing of Anglo-Irish Drama,’ An Claidheamh Soluis, 9 February 1907, 7.
85.
John C. Messenger, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland (New York: Holt Reinehart and Winston, 1969), 57.
86.
CW, vol. 2: 92.
87.
CW, vol. 3: 21.
88.
CW, vol. 3: 21.
89.
Grene, Synge: A Critical Study of the Plays, 55.
90.
Remy, ‘Synge’s Peasants,’ 82.
91.
TCD MS: 4378, f.55r.
92.
CW, vol. 3: 9.
93.
CW, vol. 2: 128.
94.
CW, vol. 3: 11.
95.
CW, vol. 3: 11.
96.
James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 735.
97.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 54.
98.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 24.
99.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 26.
100.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 26.
101.
Frazer, The Golden Bough, 26.
102.
Messenger, Inis Beag, 101.
103.
A.C. Haddon and C.R. Browne, ‘The Ethnography of The Aran Islands, County Galway,’ in The Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Third Series, vol. 2 (Dublin: Dublin University Press, 1893), 819.
104.
TCD SSMS: 6213, f.4r.
105.
CW, vol. 3: 9.
106.
CW, vol. 2: 11.
107.
CW, vol. 2: 13.
108.
W.B. Yeats, Uncollected Prose, vol. 2, ed. John P. Frayne and Colton Johnson (London: Macmillan, 1975), 228.
109.
Eugene O’Curry, On The Manners and Customs of The Ancient Irish, vol. 2 (Dublin: John F. Fowler, 1874), 208.
110.
Ó Súilleabháin, Irish Folk Custom, 77.
111.
W.Y. Evans Wentz, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1977), 253.
112.
Dáithí Ó hÓgáin, The Sacred Isle: Belief and Religion in Pre-Christian Ireland (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999), 77.
113.
Tom Cowan, Fire In the Head: Shamanism and the Celtic Spirit (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), 32.
114.
CW, vol. 3: 25.
115.
CW, vol. 3: 19.
116.
TCD MS: 4422, f.6r. Synge met with Yeats on 2 February 1903.
117.
Yeats was particularly knowledgeable on Swedenborg’s philosophy. For example, in 1920 he published an essay entitled ‘Swedenborg, Mediums, and the Desolate Places,’ in Lady Gregory, Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1970), 311–36.
118.
Arthur Schopenhauer, ‘Supplement I: An Essay on Visions and Matters Connected Therewith,’ in Richard Wagner, Beethoven: With a Supplement from the Philosophical Works of Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Edward Dannreuther (London: W.M. Reeves, 1903), 117.
119.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1: 16–17.
120.
Schopenhauer, ‘Supplement I,’ 150.
121.
Schopenhauer, Manuscript Remains in Four Volumes, vol. 4: 182.
122.
David Cartwright, Schopenhauer: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 448–9.
123.
Schopenhauer, ‘Supplement I,’ 137, 121, 138.
124.
TCD MS: 4378, f.55r.
125.
Ó Súilleabháin, Irish Folk Custom, 39.
126.
CW, vol. 2: 157.
127.
CW, vol. 3: 19.
128.
Wendy B. Faris, Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and the Remystification of Narrative (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004), 75.
129.
CW, vol. 3: 15.
130.
CW, vol. 3: 19.
131.
CW, vol. 2: 51.
132.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Manuscript Remains in Four Volumes, vol. 4, The Manuscript Books of 1830–1852 and Last Manuscripts, trans. E.F.J. Payne, and ed. Arthur Hübscher (Oxford: Berg, 1990), 182.
133.
Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Psychology (London: Routledge, 1996), 30. Emphasis in original.
134.
Spencer, The Principles of Psychology, 30.
135.
TCD MS: 4379, ff.94r–94v.
136.
TCD MS: 4379, f.91r.
137.
CW, vol. 2: 99.
138.
CW, vol. 2: 19.
139.
CW, vol. 3: 19.
140.
Aristotle, Poetics, 135. Emphasis in original.
141.
CW, vol. 3: 21.
142.
Grene, Synge: A Critical Study of the Plays, 50.
143.
Malcolm Pittock, ‘Riders to the Sea,’ English Studies 49 (1968): 448.
144.
Mary C. King, The Drama of J.M. Synge (London: Fourth Estate, 1985), 60.
145.
Edward Stephens, My Uncle John: Edward Stephens’s Life of J.M. Synge, ed. Andrew Carpenter (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 68.
146.
Stephens, My Uncle John, 69.
147.
CW, vol. 3: 21.
148.
Patricia Lysaght, The Banshee: The Irish Death Messenger (Colorado: Roberts Rinehart, 1996), 66.
149.
CW, vol. 3: 21.
150.
CW, vol. 3: 17.
151.
Seán Ó Súilleabháin, Irish Wake Amusements (Cork: Mercier, 1967), 141.
152.
CW, vol. 2: 181.
153.
Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 360.
154.
Lysaght, The Banshee, 110.
155.
CW, vol. 3: 9.
156.
Lady Wilde, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland: With Sketches of the Irish Past, vol. 1 (London: Ward and Downey, 1887), 280.
157.
TCD SSMS: 6219, f.67.
158.
Holloway, NLI MS: 1802, 25 February 1904, ff.95–96.
159.
Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall, Ireland: Its Scenery, Character, &c, vol. 1 (London: How and Parsons, 1841), 222n–223n.
160.
Eugene O’Curry, On the Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, vol. 1 (Dublin: John F. Fowler, 1874), cccxxiv.
161.
Synge was certainly interested in Boucicault’s work. On 11 June 1904 he published an essay on Boucicault’s drama in The Academy and Literature in a section entitled ‘Literary Notes’. In that essay he points out that it was ‘unfortunate for Dion Boucicault’s fame that the absurdity of his plots and pathos has gradually driven people of taste away from his plays, so that at the present time few are perhaps aware what good acting comedy some of his work contains’ (CW, vol. 2: 398).
162.
Dion Boucicault, Selected Plays of Dion Boucicault (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1987), 315.
163.
Boucicault, Selected Plays, 316.
164.
CW, vol. 4: 261.
165.
CW, vol. 4: 259.
166.
CW, vol. 4: 173.
167.
CW, vol. 3: 192.
168.
CW, vol. 3: 198.
169.
CW, vol. 2: 74–75.
170.
Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill, ‘Tórramh-Chaoineadh Airt Uí Laoghaire,’ in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vol. 4, Irish Women’s Writing and Traditions, ed. Angela Bourke, Siobhán Kilfeather, Maria Luddy, Margaret Mac Curtain, Gerardine Meaney, Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha, Mary O’Dowd and Clair Wills (Cork: Cork University Press, 2002), 1379.
171.
CW, vol. 3: 27.
172.
William Stokes, The Life and Labours in Art and Archæology of George Petrie (London: Longmans Green, 1868), 58.
173.
George Roberts, ‘Memoirs of George Roberts,’ Irish Times, 2 August 1955, 5.
174.
CW, vol. 3: xix.
175.
Roberts, ‘Memoirs of George Roberts,’ 2 August 1955, 5.
176.
‘He is gone from me! Forever! Forever! Forever!’
177.
Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years: Recollections of Maire Nic Shiubhlaigh, as told to Edward Kenny (Dublin: James Duffy, 1955), 55.
178.
CW, vol. 3: 21.
179.
O’Curry, On The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, vol. 1: cccxxiv.
180.
Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall, Ireland, 223.
181.
RIA MS: 12 Q13, f.107.
182.
Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years, 54.
183.
P.W. Joyce, Ancient Irish Music (Dublin: M.H. Gill, 1890), 59.
184.
William Beauford, ‘Caoinan: or Some Account of the Antient Irish Lamentations’ in Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 4, ed. George Bonham (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 1792), 43. All of my quotations from Beauford’s analysis (including the title of his essay) repeat his eighteenth-century use of the English language.
185.
Donald Campbell, A Treatise on the Language, Poetry, and Music of the Highland Clans with Illustrative Traditions and Anecdotes and Numerous Ancient Highland Airs (Edinburgh: D.R. Collie & Son, 1862), 163.
186.
Anonymous informant, quoted in Edward McLaysaght, Irish Life in the Seventeenth Century (Cork: Cork University Press, 1950), 349.
187.
Beauford, ‘Caoinan,’ 44.
188.
CW, vol. 4: 261.
189.
CW, vol. 3: 21.
190.
Beauford, ‘Caoinan,’ 44.
191.
Breandán Ó Madagáin, ‘Song for Emotional Release in the Gaelic Tradition,’ in Irish Musical Studies, vol. 2, Music and the Church, ed. Gerard Gillen and Harry White (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1993), 259–60.
192.
Breandán Ó Madagáin, ‘Irish Vocal Music of Lament and Syllabic Verse,’ in The Celtic Consciousness, ed. Robert O’Driscoll (Dublin: Dolmen, 1981), 313.
193.
CW, vol. 3: 21.
194.
CW, vol. 3: 23.
195.
Angela Bourke, ‘Keening as Theatre: J.M. Synge and the Irish Lament Tradition,’ in Interpreting Synge: Essays from the Synge Summer School, 1991–2000, ed. Nicholas Grene (Dublin: Lilliput, 2000), 69.
196.
Bourke argues that in ‘the years before [Synge] began to make regular visits to the islands, Irish readers of English has been introduced to caoineadh as a source of romantic poetry. Thomas Crofton Croker’s Researches in the South of Ireland (1824) and the Keen of the South of Ireland (1844) had drawn attention to the traditional oral lament many years before’ (Bourke, ‘Keening as Theatre,’ 69).
197.
CW, vol. 2: 75.
198.
Kevin Whelan, ‘The Cultural Effects of the Famine,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Irish Culture, ed. Joe Cleary and Claire Connolly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 141.
199.
Mr and Mrs S.C. Hall, Ireland, 15n.
200.
Angela Bourke, ‘Performing, Not Writing: The Reception of an Irish Woman’s Lament,’ in Dwelling in Possibility: Women Poets and Critics on Poetry, ed. Yopie Prins and Maeera Shreiber (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 143.
201.
CW, vol. 3: 21, 23.
202.
Ó Madagáin, ‘Irish Vocal Music of Lament and Syllabic Verse,’ 311.
203.
Ó Madagáin, ‘Song for Emotional Release in the Gaelic Tradition,’ 256.
204.
Ó Madagáin, ‘Irish Vocal Music of Lament and Syllabic Verse,’ 311.
205.
TCD SSMS: 6213, ff.3r–3v.
206.
Beauford, ‘Caoinan,’ 45.
207.
TCD SSMS: 6190, f.575.
208.
TCD MS: 4373, f.28r.
209.
CW, vol. 4: 261.
210.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1: 263.
211.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1: 262.
212.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1: 260.
213.
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, vol. 1: 259.
214.
TCD MS: 4349, f.20v.
215.
TCD MS: 4349, f.3v.
216.
Max Beerbohm, ‘Some Irish Plays and Players,’ Saturday Review, 9 April 1904, 457.
217.
Beerbohm ‘Some Irish Plays and Players,’ Saturday Review, 9 April 1904, 456.
218.
CL, vol. 1: 343–44. J.M. Synge to Molly Allgood, 13 May 1907.
219.
Nic Shiubhlaigh, The Splendid Years, 54.
220.
Arthur Griffith, ‘All Ireland,’ United Irishman, 5 March 1904, 1.
221.
‘Irish National Theatre Society,’ Irish Times, 26 February 1904, 5.
222.
‘Irish National Theatre Society,’ 5.
223.
CW, vol. 3: 23.
224.
Breandán Ó Madagáin, Caointe Agus Seancheolta Eile: Keening and Other Old Irish Musics (Indreabhán, Conamara: Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 2005), 81.
225.
Angela Bourke, ‘The Irish Traditional Lament and the Grieving Process,’ Women’s Studies International Forum, Special Issue: Feminism in Ireland 11, no. 4 (1988): 289–90.
226.
Edmund Spenser, Ireland Under Elizabeth and James the First, Described by Edmund Spenser by Sir John Davis and Fynes Moryson, ed. Henry Morley (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1890), 95.
227.
M. Comerford, Collections Relating to the Dioceses of Kildare and Leighlin (Dublin: James Duffy, 1883), 81–82.
228.
RIA MS: 12, M11, f.395.
229.
Anonymous informant, quoted in Angela Bourke, ‘More in Anger Than in Sorrow: Irish Women’s Lament Poetry,’ 167.
230.
Angela Bourke, ‘Lamenting The Dead,’ in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, vol. 4: 1365.
231.
Seán Ó Coileáin, ‘The Irish Lament: An Oral Genre,’ Studia Hibernica 24 (1988): 114. Ó Coileáin advocates that ‘by the mid-seventeenth century, keening is being mentioned, along with the wearing of the traditional tight-fitting trousers, as something abhorrent to the Catholic clergy.’
232.
Ó Súilleabháin, Irish Folk Custom and Belief, 40.
233.
CW, vol. 3: 27.
234.
Remy, ‘Synge’s Peasants,’ 87.
235.
Gearóid Ó Crualaoich, ‘The “Merry Wake”,’ in Irish Popular Culture: 1650–1850, ed. James S. Donnelly Jr. and Kerby A. Miller (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1998), 192.
236.
Ó Crualaoich, ‘The “Merry Wake”,’ 192.
237.
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School of English, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK
Christopher Collins

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Collins, C. (2016). The Cries of Pagan Desperation: Riders to the Sea . In: Theatre and Residual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94872-7_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94872-7_5
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