Oh, I be vun of the useful troibe
O' rustic volk, I be;
And writin' gennelmen due descroibe
The doin's o' such as we;
I don't knaw mooch o' corliflower plants,
I can't tell 'oes from trowels,
But 'ear me mix ma consonants,
An' moodle oop all ma vowels!
I talks in a wunnerful dialect
That vew can hunderstand,
'Tis Yorkshire-Zummerzet, I expect,
With a dash o' the Oirish brand;
Sometimes a bloomin' flower of speech
I picks from Cockney spots,
And when releegious truths I teach,
Obsairve ma richt gude Scots!
In most of the bukes, 'twas once the case
I 'adn't got much to do,
I blessed the 'eroine's purty face,
An' I seed the 'ero through;
But now, I'm juist a pairsonage!
A power o' bukes there be
Which from the start to the very last page
Entoirely deal with me!
The wit or the point o' what I spakes
Ye've got to find if ye can;
A wunnerful difference spellin' makes
In the 'ands of a competent man!
I mayn't knaw mooch o' corliflower plants,
I mayn't knaw 'oes from trowels,
But I does ma wark, if ma consonants
Be properly mixed with ma vowels!
_J. M. Synge_
The most brilliant star of the Celtic revival was born at Rathfarnham,
near Dublin, in 1871. As a child in Wicklow, he was already fascinated
by the strange idioms and the rhythmic speech he heard there, a native
utterance which was his greatest delight and which was to be rich
material for his greatest work. He did not use this folk-language
merely as he heard it. He was an artist first and last, and as an
artist he bent and shaped the rough material, selecting with great
fastidiousness, so that in his plays every speech is, as he himself
declared all good speech should be, "as fully flavored as a nut or
apple." Even in _The Tinker's Wedding_ (1907), possibly the least
important of his plays, one is arrested by snatches like:
"That's a sweet tongue you have, Sarah Casey; but if sleep's
a grand thing, it's a grand thing to be waking up a day the
like of this, when there's a warm sun in it, and a kind air,
and you'll hear the cuckoos singing and crying out on the
top of the hill."
For some time, Synge's career was uncertain. He went to Germany half
intending to become a professional musician. There he studied the
theory of music, perfecting himself meanwhile in Gaelic and Hebrew,
winning prizes in both of these languages. Yeats found him in France
in 1898 and advised him to go to the Aran Islands, to live there as if
he were one of the people. "Express a life," said Yeats, "that has
never found expression." Synge went. He became part of the life of
Aran, living upon salt fish and eggs, talking Irish for the most part
but listening also to that beautiful English which, to quote Yeats
again, "has grown up in Irish-speaking districts and takes its
vocabulary from the time of Malory and of the translators of the
Bible, but its idiom and vivid metaphor from Irish." The result of
this close contact was five of the greatest poetic prose dramas not
only of his own generation, but of several generations preceding it.
(See Preface.)
In _Riders to the Sea_ (1903), _The Well of the Saints_ (1905), and
_The Playboy of the Western World_ (1907) we have a richness of
imagery, a new language startling in its vigor, a wildness and passion
that contrast strangely with the suave mysticism and delicate
spirituality of his associates in the Irish Theatre.
Synge's _Poems and Translations_ (1910), a volume which was not issued
until after his death, contains not only his few hard and earthy
verses, but also Synge's theory of poetry. The translations, which
have been rendered in a highly intensified prose, are as racy as
anything in his plays; his versions of Villon and Petrarch are
remarkable for their adherence to the original and still radiate the
poet's own personality.
Synge died, just as he was beginning to attain fame, at a private
hospital in Dublin March 24, 1909.