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Next morning I felt, as the lines go:
“Drained of all
But memories of you.”
I got the Synge books off the shelf and a pad and pen, tried to put him down on paper.
He was born in Dublin in 1871. His father, a barrister, died when Synge was in infancy. A student at Trinity, he later went to Paris. A meeting with W.B. Yeats was to be hugely influential. Yeats suggested he visit the Aran Islands, to learn how the Irish peasant lived and worked. From 1899 to 1902, he would visit there annually. The result was The Aran Islands in 1907, an account of his time there. Then there were the plays, the first, In the Shadow of the Glen, in 1903.
Riders to the Sea in 1904.
Well of the Saints in 1905.
Then of course, the famous riots in 1907 at the Abbey when The Playboy of the Western World wa
