At the end of the 1800s, one Irish poet suggested that one Irish playwright visit the rugged, remote Irish island of Inishmaan. For one thing, said the poet, island people spoke the Gaelic Irish language – some of the few to do so back when Ireland was still part of Great Britain. And for another thing, they still told tales of ancient times, ancient curses, and treasured or feared ancient superstitions.
It took four extended visits to Inishmaan before playwright John Millington Synge could properly thank poet William Butler Yeats. He also energized the entire theater-loving world. The short play Synge wrote about the things he encountered on Inishmaan, a few miles off the coast near Galway, became a classic for the theater company that he, Yeats and others founded in Ireland’s capital city of Dublin. The play, titled “Riders to the Sea,” has been performed all around the globe.
The playwright and the poet helped launch the Irish Literary Revival, which accomplished many different things. It certainly inspired great plays, poems, short stories and novels by a host of Irish men and women who put pen to paper. Seen a different way, these works also helped spread the sense of “being Irish” rather than British. This led to the violent but doomed Easter Rising of 1916, which led in turn to a larger rebellion against England. In 1922, most of Ireland’s counties joined together to form today’s independent Republic of Ireland that’s part of the European Union.
“Riders to the Sea” is, in plot terms, a very simple play. We meet an aging woman and her two grown daughters. They’re all worried that one of the mother’s two surviving sons has died at sea. We slowly understand that many men of the island die at sea, whether they are fishing for a living or trying to deliver cattle, horses or other goods to sell for cash on the mainland. We are finally told that a body found washed up on the shore does indeed belong to son Michael. Last son Bartley goes out to deliver horses and ends up drowning in the wild ocean as well. See? Simple. No plot twists. No real danger of what we call spoiler alerts.
Many books have been written about Synge and his plays, which include “The Playboy of the Western World” and “Riders to the Sea.” Lots can be said. But what comes through is a sense of unavoidable tragedy much like that felt by the ancient Greeks, and the impossibility of understanding why a Christian God of love does such cruel things to so many humans. This darkest truth breeds both religious fervor and wild superstition. These were the visuals, actions and ideas Synge found on Inishmaan.
Today, it’s possible to visit Synge’s island – much easier in fact than it was for him, being rowed about by young men in small, shallow island boats called curraghs. There are only three or four rustic bed and breakfasts on the island, only a handful of cars to serve as lowkey taxis, and believe it or not, only one pub that serves dinner each evening between 6 and 8. Food really does stop at 8, probably to let hours of drinking take over the pub.
This small island, one of three forming the Aran Islands, measures only 2.5 miles by 1.5 miles, with a population of 184. It is surrounded by the cold Atlantic Ocean, so on most days and nights not having air conditioning isn’t a tragedy. It was jacket-cool on a recent August visit.
It would have been nice to attend a live performance of “Riders to the Sea” somewhere before taking the bouncing ferry (no curragh rowing required) to the island, but neither Dublin nor Galway was putting on the play just then. Knowing the play makes a visit more meaningful, but plenty of writeups here and there can catch you up enough during a visit. There are two Synge places you have to visit.
One is called Teach Synge (but pronounced something like CHOCK Synge) in Irish. It’s the humble stone cottage the playwright rented for his visits. A woman maintains the cottage as a kind of Synge museum, and it’s usually open for a walk-through about two hours per day. The locals say the whole cottage business is iffy, so if the painted wooden gate is open to the road, just walk on in. The house looks as much like it did more than a century ago as the current owner and her brother can manage.
The occasional sign to the island’s second site promises “Chair Synge” or “Synge’s Chair.” This is the rocky “chair” where the playwright sat for hours watching the crashing Atlantic waves below, which would eventually steal the lives of not one but two characters in “Riders.”
The walk is mostly a climb. The blacktop road becomes a gravel trail, which then gives way to an indistinct path marked by white arrows painted on stone walls. They’re not as close together as you’d like. The final twenty feet lead down a non-trail of sharp rocks and soggy grass that move frighteningly under your feet. You reach the Chair, snap a few photos and climb carefully back up to the path. You’ll celebrate like you’ve just conquered Mount Everest.
As you can guess, not many tourists come to Inishmaan, and most locals you talk to here and there will assure you nobody wants them anyway, ever. They might let on that better WiFi is coming soon, but they insist it’s mostly for locals. In fact, the few things the island has are mostly for locals, who seem to enjoy being far away from the bustle of Dublin or Galway, or even from the newer concrete-and-steel ferry dock at Rossaveel.
Still, one tourist managed to pass this way a long time ago, studying Inishmaan’s numberless stories before giving the island its biggest and best story of them all.
