At the time Synge wrote his plays, Irish people could be ...
Contents
Introduction _______________________________________ 4
Chapter 1: Identity
I) An ambiguous Irish identity 8
1) Culture and nation in Ireland 8
a) Representation and identity 9
b) Crushing Gaelic culture 10
c) Nation as a system of cultural signification 12
2) The inexorable death of Gaelic 14
a) Facts and figures 14
b) Linguistic confusion? 16
c) Synge’s Aran Islands as a snapshot of a dying society 17
3) “Collective behaviour” 19
a) Definition 20
b) An ambiguous position 23
II) Creating the Irish – romantic nationalism ? 25
1) Deanglicizing? 26
a) Reviving Irish? 26
b) A “spent force”? 28
2) Authenticity and creation 30
a) Creating HE 31
b) Synge and his literary tradition 33
3) The speech of the people 35
a) Romanticism? 35
b) Hiberno English as a symbol for unity 38
Chapter 2: Translating
I) Translating syntax: Gaelic structure of thoughts 43
1) A different temporality 43
a) Habitual tenses – Form, functions and frequencies of periphrastic do and be 43
b) Perfects 46
c) Translating thoughts 50
2) Emphasis and structure 51
a) “It’s the truth they’re saying” – Focusing devices 52
b) Pronominal emphasis – Reflexive pronouns 54
c) Definite article 55
3) “And” 58
a) “And I a proven hero in the end of all” (The Playboy of the Western World, p.163) 58
b) Enumerations 60
c) Merging traditions and beliefs 62
II) A polyphonic conception of vocabulary 63
1) The power of lexicon 64
a) Lexicon and culture 64
b) Gaelic and lexicon 66
2) A sense of place and time 67
a) Language history 67
b) Direct historical references 70
c) Traditions and sayings 73
3) “Gibberish” 75
a) Gibberish and the genesis of Hiberno-English 75
b) Nonsense and lying 77
III) A Gaelic tradition endlessly open 79
1) Re-narrating the sagas 79
a) Sagas and folklore 79
b) Mirror images 81
2) Myth in idiom 82
a) The tales of the folk 83
b) A return to traditions 85
c) Towards universality 85
Chapter 3: Free Speech
I) Misrepresentation? 89
1) Synge and Lady Gregory 90
a) Features and occurrences 90
b) Representations 95
2) Pronunciation 97
a) Synge and Sean O’Casey 97
b) A different sense of time and place 98
3) Representing and transforming 99
a) Representation and art 99
b) Dialect and language 100
II) Exploiting gaps 101
1) Debunking stereotypes and ideals 103
a) The Stage Irishman and English traditions 104
b) “Cuchulainoid” theatre 107
2) Celtic roughness and Victorian chastity 109
a) Obscenity (analysis of “shift”) 109
b) Blasphemy and violence 112
c) Gallous stories and dirty deeds 114
3) The inefficiency of the “backward look”? 115
Conclusion 117
Documents _______________________________________120
Bibliography _____________________________________ 140
Introduction
“Let you wait, to hear me talking, till we’re astray in Erris, when Good Friday’s by, drinking a sup from a well, and making mighty kisses with our wetted mouths, or gaming in a gap of sunshine, with yourself stretched back unto your necklace, in the flowers of the earth.” (Synge, J.M. (1999; 155))
Christie Mahon’s words to Pegeen Mike, taken from the third act of the Playboy of the Western World, are a perfect illustration of the very unique language used by John Millington Synge’s characters in his 6 plays, (Riders to the Sea, The Shadow of the Glen, The Tinker’s Wedding, The Well of the Saints, The Playboy of the Western World, and Deirdre of the Sorrows). He endows them with an incredible richness of speech; they all seem to be gifted with an ear for rhythm and poetry. Françoise Morvan, one of the most skilful translators of Synge’s plays into French, writes about “des scansions, des modulations d’air”. According to her, Synge’s characters “vivent dans un air immense, sans fin ni fond des îles, et ils lui résistent par la parole, qui les portent parfois dans un élan de jubilation, avant de les restituer à l’angoisse du vide.” (Synge, J.M. (1996; 25))
Indeed, all the characters in Synge’s plays, from old Maurya to the queen Deirdre, speak in a very interesting variety of English infused with Gaelic syntax, contaminated by Irish vocabulary. It is a version of Hiberno-English, made of English words and Irish thoughts. In his introduction to the Playboy of the Western World, Synge asserts that the idiom of his characters is a realistic representation of the speech of Irish peasants:
“In writing the Playboy of the Western World, as in my other plays, I have used one or two words only that I have not heard among the country people of Ireland, or spoken in my own nursery before I could read the newspapers.” (Synge, J.M. (1999; 111))
However, for a long time, the author of the Playboy was taxed of being nothing more than a “faker of peasant speech” (St John Ervine), with everything this criticism can imply – misrepresentation of Irish people, mockery and lack of national feelings. These remarks triggered out an actual controversy about Synge, his plays and his language: was it realistic or not? Was it respectful of Irish people and their traditions or not?
This debate is all the more interesting as it started at a period when Ireland was writing a major part of its history. The Ireland of the time was standing at the threshold of independence. O’Connell, Parnell, and many others had infused the minds of the people with new ideas about self determination, Irish State and Home Rule.
Irishmen were willing to show the world their ability and their right to rule themselves without the British; in other words, they wanted the world to see Ireland as a nation of its own. But how where they supposed to define this new Ireland? What would be their idea of a nation?
Clearly, there are both political and cultural sides to this question. Indeed, culture, literature and language are inherent parts of the national identity of a country, and as far as Ireland is concerned, cultural nationalism was very powerful during the period leading to independence. Language-wise, people were wondering how it was possible to keep on using English for communication and literature, for it was first and foremost the language of the coloniser. How could this alien idiom be the ambassador of a culture which was expected to define Ireland as an independent nation?
However, how would people react to another language shift, more artificial than the first one, which would impose the use of Irish again, on the grounds that it was the language of the nation’s ancestors?
Perhaps Synge’s representation of Hiberno-English could be considered as one plausible alternative to Irish people’s dilemma. He tried to translate this precious Irish legacy into the English language, and thus to mix two antagonistic traditions; his use of language in his plays is quite symbolic of the conception of a national identity which would be all the richer as it would not be based on sectarianism. Nonetheless, the controversy about the validity of Synge’s claim to realism and faithful representation, as well as the lack of legitimacy for Hiberno-English in Ireland – at the beginning of the twentieth century, but also nowadays – call for a closer analysis of the dialect itself, as well as of Synge’s literary representation of it, to decide to what extend it can be described as a realistic and valid contribution to the national longing for identity.
Indeed, considering Synge’s literary use of Hiberno-English as an attempt at representing the very spirit of Irish life in the English language, it would be interesting to study what was the relation between this hybrid and poetic idiom and the theories of cultural nationalism at the time. Was it an illustration of a main stream of thoughts, or was it quite marginal in the general reflection on cultural identity and language?
First of all, the language in Synge’s plays illustrates the nationalistic and cultural concerns of Irish nationalists: how to create a new Irish identity? Should there be a national language, and which one should it be? What would be the repercussions on the concept of a national literature? Thus it can be said to be fully inscribed in its time.
But are Synge and the idiom he uses really part of the national movement?
It is true that this language owes a lot to what I would call Romantic nationalism, because of the close relation it has with Ireland’s past, in terms of its structure and its vocabulary, as well as of the images it conjures up.
However, Synge’s idiom does not only aim at creating a unity among Irish people; it is also exploiting the clashes between two antagonistic cultures (British and Irish cultures). In this respect especially, it can be seen as illustrating another conception of nationalism – post colonial nationalism – and thus this language is not so much a way of looking back nostalgically, as a means for Ireland to look forward and to face its own future as a nation
Chapter 1
Identity
At the time Synge wrote his plays, Irish people could be seen as coming back home after the longest exile they ever went through: colonisation. Indeed at the beginning of the 20th century[1], Ireland had almost reached independence, and its shores had started experiencing the waves of nationalism, which had been invading Europe for almost a century. The question was to find a new definition of Ireland, a definition which would be fit for a new sovereign nation. Ireland had to build and make legitimate its independent identity.
But how was this possible? What image were they going to create, and how?
Ireland’s situation is a very clear testimony of the fact that creating a nation is not only a matter of land and politics. Indeed, culture – from language to literature and arts – is one of the most important component of a stable national identity, as is a willing act of imagination on the part of all the members of the community. As Benedict Anderson said, nations are mostly imagined communities and cultural artefacts.
It will be interesting to study how much language, cultural identity and the definition of a nation were closely related as far as Ireland’s situation was concerned.
I) An ambiguous Irish identity
1) Culture and nation in Ireland
It would be illusory to think that Ireland’s identity was totally independent from England’s, after such a long period of colonisation. Although the relations between these two countries were made of tension, violence and distrust in the 1900’s, each nation seemed to need the other to define itself. Hence Declan Kiberd in his book Inventing Ireland is entirely right when he starts his attempt at defining Ireland by analysing its relations to England. (Kiberd, D. (1995)) It is also a proof that Irish identity could not be created without taking the English legacy into account.
a) Representation and identity
National identity – as well as personal identity to some extent – is always built in relation with an idea of representation and exposure to others. Both Yeats’s Samhain articles and Rushdie’s essays in Imaginary Homelands have come to the conclusion that a nation could only achieve consciousness if it exposed itself to others. (Kiberd, D. (1995)) And indeed, the idea of the national movements at Synge’s period was to present the world with a new country and a legitimate nation.
However, for a long period of time, the main representation of the Irish emanated from England; “If Ireland had never existed, the English would have invented it” (Kiberd, D. (1995; 9))
Ireland was not granted with an existence of its own, but merely defined as non-England, one island being the exact antithesis of the other. This Manichean analysis of the situation was mainly due to the supremacy of the ruler’s force. Nonetheless, it left the Irish with nothing more than a succession of rough stereotypes to define themselves in the face of the world, and especially of the British world. They were pictured as rude, hot-headed and nomadic, whereas the English liked to see themselves as controlled, refined and rooted. As for Ireland itself, it was imagined as a fantasy land in which one could meet fairies and monsters.
This was all the more efficient as this representation was made in the English language, on the English stage for example. The English, coming from the stronger society at the time, also considered themselves as “lords of the language”. Thus, the typical Irish character, to which we will come back later, was either a threatening vainglorious soldier, or a reassuringly stupid servant[2].
Moreover, this negative representation was not so much a definition of Ireland as an attempt at reassuring and re-establishing English identity. This is what the Irish philosopher Edmund Burke argued for. He even attacked the misrepresentation of Ireland in the works of English historians, underlining the fact that the Irish were not only the rebellious foils the English thought they were : “But there is an interior History of Ireland – the genuine voice of its records and monuments - , which speaks a very different language from these histories from Temple and Clarendon… [and says] that these rebellions were not produced by tolerations but by persecution”. (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 19))
According to him, English stereotypes of the Irish were not based on an Irish reality, but they were merely projections of the elements the English rejected in their own society. Ireland was then to be seen as part of English identity.
But whatever the actual signification of this non representation, it was true that Ireland did not have an international representation of its own for a very long time, which also means that it could hardly be seen as a potential nation, especially by the British.
Shakespeare’s character called Captain Macmorris in Henry the Fifth is a perfect example of this idea that the British presented Ireland as lacking identity.
“FLAUELLEN: Captain Macmorris I thinke, looke you, under your correction, there is not many of your Nation –
MACMORRIS: Of my Nation? What ish my Nation? Ish a Villaine, and a Bastard, and a Knave, an a Rascal. What is my Nation? Who talks of my Nation?”
(Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 12)
Of course one can easily trace in these lines the characteristics of what would later be called the Stage Irishman, (pugnacity, ethnic pride..), but what is most interesting is that this character is basically saying that there is no Irish nation. And indeed, if the only representation of Irishmen available was the one created by the coloniser, an Irish nation was inconceivable.
As a consequence, it was necessary for the Irish to rediscover, or even invent, a representation of themselves which would enable them to proclaim the existence of their own nation to the face of the world. Without this identity, this representation, they would be caught in this non-existence which was so convenient for the English at the time of their rule.
b) Crushing Gaelic culture
The English had understood the importance of culture and traditions in the building of a nation. Thus their aim was to infuse the minds of the Irish with the idea that they had to look up to English culture, and discard ancient Gaelic traditions. After suppressing political freedom and depriving the people from their civil rights, it seemed necessary to deprive them on the cultural and spiritual level as well (P.L. Henry (1977)).
The British did in Ireland as they had done in India, that is they encouraged the ambitious natives to abandon their own culture and to think of it only in terms of mythical and backward narratives. The project of the Board of Education was, as Lord Macaulay said about India, to “make them look to this country with that veneration which the youthful student feels for the classical soul of Greece” (Kiberd, D. (1995; 148))
Indeed, it became obvious that trying to crush Gaelic culture was one of the best ways to prevent any nationalist feeling, as well as any claim for independence, even if it was not directly a political move. Spencer, for example, had clearly understood the inherent power of poets and poetry in Ireland[3]. He was convinced that they were encouraging resistance, and he was so impressed as well as worried by their works that he called for their death. Furthermore, when he was in Munster, many ancient Gaelic manuscripts were used to cover English-speaking school books circulating among Irish children at the time. (Kiberd, D. (1995)) Of course this was his way to show his spite for anything that was genuinely Irish, and probably a demonstration of the power of the ruler, but it was also a clear sign that he felt the English rule was threatened by any sign of a different culture among colonised populations. He was right, especially about Ireland, for in the ancient political pecking-order, poets were the most important members of society after their chiefs. They had always been considered as interpreters of the political situation: they imagined their monarch as wedded to the land, a beautiful woman, whose health and fertility determined whether his rule was righteous or not. (Kiberd, D. (1995))
So, as a matter of fact, English colonisers felt the necessity of crushing Irish culture if they ever wanted to get complete political obedience from these people. They had to undermine their independent identity if they wanted to get rid of their political rebellions. “We must change their course of government, clothing, customs, manner of holding land, language and habit of life, it will otherwise be impossible to set them to obedience.” (William Parson, quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 10))
All the same, in his View of the present state in Ireland, Spencer claims that the only way of getting obedience from the Gaels is to cut their hair, convert their mantles and make them speak the English tongue.
Once again, it is very interesting to notice that language played a central role in this process. It was almost considered as a mirror of the whole Irish culture, and for Spencer, as long as Irish people spoke Irish, it would be impossible to make them accept and adopt English domination and traditions. “The speech being Irish, the heart must needs be Irish”. (quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 10))
In fact, this emphasis on language dated back from the twelfth century[4]. After French had died out and English had become the medium of law and education in England, a law was passed by the London government which prevented colonisers in Ireland from using the Irish language. Likewise, in 1336, the English parliament declared that “all Englishmen and the Irish dwelling upon them must use English surnames and follow English customs. If any Englishman, or Irishman dwelling among the English, use Irish speech, he shall be attained and his lands go to his lord till he undertake to adopt and use English.” (O’Fiach, quoted from Sullivan, J.P. (1976)).
Irish language could obviously influence national feelings among Irish people, but apparently, it was also threatening to contaminate English colonisers in Ireland, and deprive them of their Englishness. And indeed, this happened for some time during the sixteenth century, before the Cromwellian dispersion of the clans, and his complete destruction of Gaelic traditions and cultural ethos. When Elizabethan officials started visiting Irish towns, they discovered that many an English dignitary had adopted Irish culture. They were obstinate papists, spoke the Irish language, which they preferred to English, wore Irish dress and had Irish habits. In other words it seems that they had almost forgotten their old nationality, insofar as they had adopted most of the characteristics of Irish culture, of which language, in Ireland as well as in most countries, is probably the most important. There was no longer anything in their appearance or behaviour which could have hinted at their original nationality. Thus, this is a true testimony of how closely culture and national feelings can be linked. So, for the English, one of the most efficient means of obtaining independence from the Irish was to crush their culture and traditions, and try to reduce them to a stereotypical representation.
c) Nation as a system of cultural signification
To some extent, one could say that the means used by the English to subdue the Irish population during their rule can help us define the concept of nation more clearly. Particularly, it gives us a hint of how the Irish nation could be imagined.
First of all, it seems obvious now that a nation is neither only a politically independent formation nor a geographical entity. Although these are important in the definition, they are not sufficient to define a nation. Otherwise it would have been superfluous for the English to waste so much energy trying to make the ancient Irish culture disappear.
The idea of a nation is closely related to its past and its culture. “If the nation states are widely considered to be new and historical, the nation states to which they give political expression always loom out of an immemorial past and […] glide into a limitless future. […] Nationalism has to be understood by aligning not with self-consciously held political ideologies, but with large cultural systems that preceded it, out of which, as well as against which, it came into being.” (Anderson, B. (1983)) In this quotation, Benedict Anderson underlines the fact that nations are more spiritual than factual; for him, they can be defined as imagined communities, which means that most members of the nation will never know his fellow-members, but that they all have a sense of community. A nation can indeed be understood as a soul, a spiritual principle, and not only geographical boundaries. It is based on the idea that its members have a rich legacy of memories in common, as well as the desire to live together and to perpetuate the value of this heritage. But there can be no precise scientific definition of what a nation is; with its almost mythical aspects, it seems that it is an inherently ambiguous and evolving notion.
If culture and a sense of community among the people are so important in a nation, it seems most natural that language plays a central role in this analysis. And this is also why it is so interesting to study the evolution of language in Ireland, as well as the way Synge wanted to represent it.
If we look back at ancient classical communities, such as Greece, or China, they were all convinced of their cosmic centrality, and thus their sacred language was logically believed to be linked to a super terrestrial order of power. Chinese ideograms were thought to be emanations of divine reality, and the Qumran was untranslatable for a very long time because people believed in the necessity of using the unsubstitutable true signs of written Arabic; indeed, the Qumran is literally the word of the Prophet, and it would therefore be sacrilege to attempt at translating it.
Of course, from the late Middle Ages on, sacred languages lost their powers and importance, and one began to see vernaculars as worthy of study. Language was no longer sacred as far as a divine communication was concerned, but to some extent, it remained central to the definition of a community, and thus a nation. “Language became less of a continuity between an outside power and the human speaker than an internal field created and accomplished by language users among themselves.” (Said, Orientalism, quoted from Anderson, B. (1983))
So, as far as Ireland is concerned, trying to prevent people from using the Irish language was an attempt at severing them from their own ancient culture, and to some extent depriving them of any nationness. But it also suggests that an Irish nation would necessarily need this immemorial Celtic past to define itself. However, what was to become of the Irish language, the medium through which all these traditions had been kept alive?
2) The inexorable death of Gaelic
a) Facts and figures
Indeed, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Irish culture was all the more in danger as the Irish language seemed to be dying all around Ireland. People were keener and keener on using English, and a great proportion of the population wasn’t even fluent in Irish anymore. The analysis of different figures will help us understand the general shift that was taking place in Ireland. Unfortunately, it is impossible to deny the progressive decline of the Irish language throughout Ireland, especially from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards.
The first data I was able to find date back to the middle of the 17th century (Sullivan, J.P. (1976)). In this census, 82.5% of the population are recorded as Irish speaking, and there are only 17.5% of English speakers.[5]Although it is necessary to question the validity and the accuracy of a 17th century census, it seems that, despite the rule of Cromwell and his ransacking of Irish traditions, English had not yet become a means of communication for the masses, although it must already have been rather popular among urban classes. At the time, English started to be seen as a means of social ascent, and it became clear that an adequate knowledge of English would be necessary as far as public life was concerned.
According to De Fréine (in O’Muirithe, D. (ed.) (1977)), it may be said that in 1800, about one and a half million of the population[6] spoke English only. Around two million people spoke Irish only, and some one and a half million were bilingual. Clearly the balance between the two languages was starting to change at the time.
These figures are evidently in relation with the fact that during the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, language policies and historical events progressively killed Irish at the top of the social scale and inevitably weakened its position in the whole society.
The figures of the next census, dating from 1851, are very telling in this respect, although they cannot be entirely reliable. According to it, the total Irish-speaking population was one and a half million, that is 23.3% of the population of the country[7], whereas 76.7% of the population were English speakers. The census also showed that 77% of Irishmen where unable to speak Gaelic, whereas only 5% were said unable to speak English. Thus, it is undeniable that most of the Gaelic speakers were described as being bilingual, which was not necessarily the case for the English speaking population. A very significant shift towards the use of English as the main means of communication had taken place, and it was probably mainly due to the Famine years of the 1840’s. However, according to many testimonies in the 1840’s, some figures in this particular census either need qualification, or are an amazingly acute testimony of the violence of exile and death during the Great Famine. For example, the Irish speaking population of County Louth was given as 19,000 people, out of a population of more than 120,000. Only 51 persons in the county were said to be unable to speak English. And yet in 1842, a German traveller named Kohl described Drogheda as a very Irish town, and said he met lots of people who were not able to speak English with ease or fluency. Moreover, around the same time, the officials of the Ordnance Survey were able to record the names of all the streets, alleys and gates in Drogheda in Irish.
But even if once again, there is a need to take these figures with a pinch of salt, they are very significant in terms of the general trend. They may exaggerate the degree of anglicisation of the people, but they are definitely pointing in the direction they were going.
And indeed, by the end of the nineteenth century, there was nothing truer than this dramatic cultural upheaval. In 1881, 85% of the population were recorded as unable to speak Irish, whereas only 1% of the population was unable to speak English.
In the Aran Islands, JM Synge gives us an account of this situation and the result of this shift, when he describes his companion Michael reading bilingual stories sent over from Dublin: “In most stories we read, where the English and the Irish are printed side by side, I see him looking across the English in passages that are a little obscure, though he is indignant if I say that he knows English better than Irish.” (Synge, J.M.(1999; 329)). In this extract we can sense that the younger generations tended to know English more generally, and most of the time much better than they knew Irish. They could be considered as bilingual, but their knowledge of the two languages was obviously not the same.
By the end of the nineteenth century then, the shift was almost completed, and it became more and more difficult to consider the Irish language as a mirror reflecting the culture of all the people. This may be one of the reasons why Synge chose to write his plays in Hiberno-English and not in Irish, though he was a quite a scholar in this language. He wanted to translate Irish life into his language, and to do so he had to find a new mirror.
b) Linguistic confusion?
In his book In Wicklow, West Kerry and Connemara, written in 1902, J.M. Synge records the words of an old countryman, commenting on all the changes he had seen Ireland go through in the course of his own life : “Now all this country is gone lonesome and bewildered and there’s no man knows what ails it.”.
This statement could simply be seen as a testimony of the disillusion about life brought along by old age, but there is much more in it. In terms of language, Ireland had indeed undergone several transformations in the course of the nineteenth century, as we have just seen it. But, as language is so closely related to cultural and national identity, especially at this period of time, one can assume that this literal shift from one language to another also resulted in a great amount of social and cultural disorientation.
It was first and foremost to be noticed among the younger generations; these children were born during the linguistic transition from Irish to English. One may think that it was a chance for them, just as for children who are born in a family where the two parents speak different languages; but in fact, some children were not even aware of the existence in their culture of two languages. Douglas Hyde, the founder of the Gaelic League, in his book Ideals on Ireland, where he talks about Connacht, an Irish county which was very well known to him, gives many examples of this loss of cultural landmarks. (Kiberd, D. (1995))
For instance, he tells that in many families, parents spoke only in Irish to their children, who would only answer in English. When Hyde himself asked one of the children: “Nach labhrann tu Gaeilge?”[8], the answer he got was: “And isn’t it Irish that I’m speaking ?”. But this situation could also be reversed. It was the case at school in many Gaeltacht[9] classrooms, where schoolteachers spoke only in English to pupils who only spoke Irish. Although he was wrong to think that Ireland was the only country in the world where such a situation could be found, he was completely right when he criticized the absurdity of such teaching methods, for sometimes schoolteachers actually taught children who could not properly understand them, and vice and versa.
Such illogism was there to prove how confusing a linguistic shift could be for a whole population, in terms of language, basically, but also in terms of culture. If some people were no longer aware of the co existence of two different languages, how would they be able to define their cultural and national identity? Not that the mixing of these two antagonistic cultures was to be criticized in itself; on the contrary, theoretically, it was a very interesting phenomenon. What was dangerous was to get them mixed up in the minds of the people, to the point of complete confusion. Moreover, the bilingual society of the end of the nineteenth century was only a stage in the shift, before the Irish language almost disappeared. Thus, what was to become of Irish culture in the twentieth century, and then, how would Irish identity be defined, if it ran the risk of losing its culture and language?
c) Synge’s Aran Islands as a snapshot of a dying society
However, change seemed inevitable, and almost necessary in the Irish society. Even in Synge’s Aran Islands, even on “Inishmaan, where Gaelic is more generally used, and the life is perhaps the most primitive that is left in Europe”, these forces of evolution are at work. It is true that this is a book and not only a picture of the life on these islands, and yet it reads like a rather faithful traveller’s account of it, and it is also one of Synge’s most famous achievements.
This is what one of the first inhabitants of the islands told him on his first visit, “in curiously simple yet dignified language”: “This island is not the same at all from what it was. It is little good I can get from the people who are in it now, and anything I have to give them they don’t care to have.” (AA p.259). It is obviously an account of a conflict between different generations, but one can also sense the idea that the whole world of this man is undergoing a thorough transformation, for not only the people, but also the island is said to be different. Somehow, Synge knew that the beauty that enchanted him among the people of Aran was due to the dying quality of the very society he was describing. He was not deploring it, for he also knew that the primitive character of the islands resulted from its deplorable state of penury, which could not possibly last forever. He was not a folklorist, and Declan Kiberd goes as far as calling him a radical socialist, who described himself as “someone who wanted to change things root and branch”.(Kiberd, D.(1993; preface)) In a way, his own presence on the islands was a factor of change, bringing the first alarm-clock (along with the notion of clock time) to the people and taking pictures of them with his camera.
Throughout his several trips to the islands, Synge was clearly interested in the speech of the people he was meeting; for him, describing their language seemed to be one of the most efficient ways of describing the people themselves. On one of his trips to the south island for example, he is first interested in the way the men he meets speak, and focuses on their clothes and habits only later on:
“I was anxious to compare their language and temperament with what I knew of the other island.
The language seems to be identical, though some of these men speak rather more distinctly than any Irish speakers I have yet heard. In physical type, dress and general character, however, there seems to be a considerable difference…” (AA, p.336)
Thus, according to the importance of the linguistic issue in this book, one can assume that studying the attitudes of these people towards their languages (English and Irish more particularly of course) may be a good way of analysing this inevitable process of cultural change.
Of course, Gaelic was all but dead in the Aran Islands at the time Synge wrote his book. In fact, there are many passages in which he wonders at this highly poetic and musical language, and his life can easily be seen as constantly surrounded by what he calls a “continual drone of Gaelic” (AA, p.262). Nonetheless, he has to give an account of the state of bilingualism in which many people on the islands are; it is a rather positive account, for there is no sign of the cultural and linguistic confusion we studied earlier on. Indeed, he is surprised by the quality of English of the pupils at the boys’ school:
“In the boys’ school, where I sometimes look in, the children surprise me by their knowledge of English, though they always speak in Irish among themselves.” (AA, p.315)
He also considers bilingualism quite fecund in terms of images and vocabulary: “A few of the men have a curiously full vocabulary, others know only the commonest words in English, and a driven to ingenious devices to express their meaning.” (AA, p. 264)
But if English was spoken even in these remote places of Ireland, was it not also a sign that Gaelic is slowly but fatally losing ground? Was it not this ephemeral state of bilingualism that highlighted the beauty of the portrait Synge was drawing for us?
Indeed, there are some clear signs of the decline of Gaelic in this book; they are perhaps more noticeable in the second half of the narration, probably because some of the magic of novelty had lost its power to the ear of the author, only for him to realise the dying quality of the sounds he cherished.
At some point during his visit, he describes himself and his companions: “For the greater part of the afternoon, we sat on the tops of empty barrels in the public-house, talking of the destiny of Gaelic.” (AA, p300). It is very telling that the barrels on which they are sitting are empty, and then it becomes less surprising to read nothing about the destiny of Gaelic in the following lines. It is as if there was nothing certain about it, or maybe even no destiny at all, as there are no words to talk about it.
Later in the book, almost at the end, Synge is having a conversation with two old men about the Irish language and the books written in it: “I asked him about the future of the language on these islands.
‘It can never die out’, said he, ‘because there’s no family in the place can live without a bit of a field for potatoes, and they have only the Irish words for all that they do in the fields. […] It can never die out, and when the people begin to see it fallen very low, it will rise up again like the phoenix from its own ashes.’” (AA, p. 345)
Of course, the Irish language being represented by the image of the phoenix, this quotation may at first seem reassuring, but on second thoughts, the man is linking Irish language with agriculture, and says that the language won’t die because the people don’t know the equivalent words in English. This doesn’t imply that they wouldn’t use them if they knew them. And he seems to recognize it himself, not necessarily on purpose, when he continues by saying: “‘There’s not a soul in Aran can count up to nine hundred and ninety-nine without using an English word but myself.’” So in a way, if the people know the English words, they definitely have a tendency to use them. Even a virulent speech in favour of Gaelic has to acknowledge this bilingual situation, attesting of the decline of the Irish language, without necessarily understanding why it had to be that way.
But how come that even the people who were the most conscious and proud of their own traditions and culture were caught in the process of replacing Irish by English? Was there someone to blame? Who had initiated this process, and where would it lead Ireland?
3) “Collective behaviour”
If we have a look at what the Irish thought of their colonisers at the beginning of the twentieth century, it could be easy to believe that all their problems and miseries were due to the English and their rule. In some ways, they were right. Ireland was used by the English as a kind of laboratory where they could put new ideas about government and new policies into practice before using them in England. This may have seemed a good thing, for Ireland was then less backwards and more innovative than what might have been commonly thought of it; it was in Ireland that the British experienced their new postal system. But these practices also meant that Ireland had to cope with British liberal ideas, which were developed much more extremely in Ireland; “laissez-faire” was the common economic policy at the time. Thus, during the Famine, they stuck to it and did not even stop ships that carried large quantities of grain from the starving island. (Of course, the behaviour of the landlords could vary from callousness to heroic generosity). But there was a sense that this was the final betrayal by England, as this peasant saying can suggest: “God sent the potato-blight, but the English caused the Famine.” (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 21))
All the same, there was another popular saying which reflected the view of many Irishmen about the English; it warned the children against three things: “the horns of a bull, the hoof of a horse, and the smile of an Englishman.” (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 22))Thus, it seemed very easy to accuse the English of all the evils existing in Ireland; if they considered themselves as the lords of language and were so strongly opposed to people speaking Irish, why could they not also be responsible for its disappearance in favour of English? It sounded quite logical to do so, but maybe all too simple to be true.
a) Definition
In fact, the English were not the only ones to blame for the disappearance of Irish; apparently, Irish people were willing to be the main actors in the shift from Irish to English. The earlier shifts of language in Ireland were basically due to natural processes of social development, going along with literacy and literary activities, the growth of trade, better communications and greater mobility. But the phenomenon starting in the middle of the nineteenth century was far too important to be entirely explained in terms of social mobility. (XXX(1977)) There were many different reasons to it, and especially the fact that the reduced economic situation of the people and the dreadful disasters of the nineteenth century had ravaged the people physically and spiritually. They were flying from their land, their country and their language.
De Fréine calls this phenomenon “collective behaviour”. In other words, it is a “behaviour which is engaged in collectively by people and which is at variance with their traditional ways of doing things.” (De Fréine, S. (1977; 82))
He adds that it often includes panic, hysteria or/and utopianism. And it can be relevant to note that this behaviour is most likely to occur in periods of cultural strain, as the second half of the nineteenth century was in Ireland. Finally, collective behaviour is said to represent “an irrational hope of relieving the strain by trying to escape from the limitations of an intolerable reality.” [10]
Nineteenth century Ireland produced its number of utopias as well; here is for example a speech on the Repeal of the Penal Laws[11] by O’Connell himself, which is quite utopian and simplifies the problems and their solutions to the extreme: “There is but one mean for the complete rescue of Ireland, and that is Repeal; but one thing on which the welfare all depends – Repeal. With Repeal you will be happy, with Repeal you will become rich, with Repeal you will obtain all you deserve and strive for.” (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995)) The Liberator probably did not believe in his simplified message, but he knew that it would appeal to most people in his audience. He was playing on all the aspirations created by the perspective of the post penal age among people who had suffered on many levels, and this is why they were all convinced that his words were true.
So in a way, being in a harsh and almost desperate economical situation during the nineteenth century, Irish people needed to hope for a straightforward solution to their problems; the fact of abandoning Irish seemed to be the answer to most wrongs. Instead of working to make up for the centuries of neglect, it seemed easier and more sensible to adopt English as a new language, which would provide the people with an efficient means of social ascent.
It is not enough to say that Irish was disappearing because it had been excluded from the national schools; and anyway, far from wanting the language at school, most Irish parents and teachers saw school as one of the best means of suppressing the language.
In the Aran Islands, J. M. Synge gives a lively account of this situation, when he describes the attitudes of the elder generation towards Irish and English. (The Aran Islands, in Synge, J.M.(1999). Collected Plays and Poems and the Aran Islands. Everyman paperbacks)
“In the older generation […] I do not see any particular affection for Gaelic. Whenever they are able, they speak English to their children, to render them more capable of making their way in life. Even the young men sometimes say to me –
‘There’s very hard English on you, and I wish to God that I had the like of it’”. (AA, p. 314)
From this quotation it seems evident that the English were not directly responsible for this point of view, although the way the situation developed in Ireland was exactly what they were expecting.[12]Irish people had decided that it would be much more profitable for them to be fluent in English than in Irish, the language of the coloniser already being that of politics, public services, commerce and education. They had yielded to the viewpoint that Irish was a backward language, and that the people who spoke it would have fewer opportunities of social progress. And it was especially the case in the older generations (the parents towards their children), because language associations such as the Gaelic league had less power on them, and also because they had probably gone through much more suffering and wanted to protect their children from such a life. It is worth noting that they did not only favour the acquisition of English, but that they actively tried to suppress any knowledge of Irish, as the poet John Montague accurately illustrates in the following lines (quoted from De Fréine (1977)):
Dumb,
Bloodied, the severed
Head now chokes to
Speak another tongue…
To slur and stumble
In shame
The altered syllables
Of your own name;
To stray sadly home
And find
The turf-cured width
Of your parents’ hearth
Growing slowly alien:
In cabin
And field, they still
Speak the old tongue.
You may greet no one.
In these lines you can sense the distress of the younger generation in the constant use of run on lines and of words such as “choke” “sadly” or the conceit of the “severed head”. The image of the hearth growing alien is very accurate as it underlines the increasing gap between generations, as well as a feeling of exile from a language and a culture which was quite paradoxical, for there was no question of any actual geographical exile what so ever at that point. But the poem also underlines the violent attitudes of the parents and the older generations towards Irish. At the time, the most horrifying means of suppressing Irish among the children were not the products of laws or official regulations, but of a social movement generated by the people themselves; there were many examples, such as tally sticks (called bata scoir)[13], wooden gags[14] (called priaslach), humiliation and mockery. [15]All these were invented by the Irish themselves.
This pronounced inferiority complex symbolised the state of doubt in which the Irish were: would they survive as a community? (P.L. Henry(1977)) Later on the question would be to know whether they would survive as a nation; at first the solution seemed “to be on the winning side, and as ambivalent as possible” (Henry).
Finally, the Great Famine was a landmark in the linguistic history of Ireland. It resulted in the death of over one million people[16], and the flight of another million. But it also left the people with a “fear of recurrence” (De Fréine (1977; 86)), that is the parents wanted their children to be able to defend themselves better in case something of the kind happened again. In this respect, English also became the key to the golden door of America, where their children would lead a better life than in the Irish country. Thus, after symbolising social climbing for most people, linguistic exile had also become the first step towards geographical exile, and a new life full of promises and dreams on another continent.
b) An ambiguous position
So Ireland was in a very ambiguous position regarding culture and language at the beginning of the twentieth century; it was looking forward to independence from the English, but at the same time, English had become part of their life. It was actually the language of most people in Ireland[17].
We have already seen that English had become necessary to succeed in life, in terms of economy as well as education. But it seemed almost as impossible to be involved in politics without speaking English. Even two popular leaders such as O’Connell and Parnell did not use Irish in their meetings. O’Connell was fluent in it, but he didn’t sigh over the gradual disuse of this language, and advocated for the “superior utility” of English as far as business and politics were concerned (Kiberd, D. (1995)). He had even chosen to use English at his mass meetings attended by many Irish speakers, for he knew that they were already supporting him and the cause he was defending, whereas he still had to convince the English readers of his words in the next morning’s newspapers. All the same, Parnell, the “uncrowned king of Ireland”, as he was called, was a Protestant gentleman educated in Cambridge, and he never had an occasion to learn Irish. The nationalist case in Ireland was paradoxically made in English most of the time. Even the rebels who wanted to defend themselves at court or the agitators who wrote threatening letters to their landlords could not achieve their goals without a certain knowledge of English.
What’s more, as far as the idea of nation and politics were concerned, a written culture was necessary to think the Irish nation. Indeed, we have already seen how Benedict Anderson describes the nation as an “imagined community”, where most members will never know each other physically and personally, but where each person is linked to the other thanks to a sense of belonging; this is only possible if the culture of the community is a written culture. “Print language is what invents nationalism, and not a particular language per sé” (Anderson, B. (1983)) Thanks to newspapers and books, the members discover new modes of apprehending the world, so that it is indeed possible to think the nation. Because of the written culture on which the community is based, there is a sense of “simultaneity in homogenous empty time”, which means that each member of the community knows that he is related to all the others by a “steady anonymous simultaneous activity”. Everybody is doing something at the same time in the imagined space and time of the community that is the nation. Thus, as far as Ireland was concerned, English was more likely than Irish to advocate for nationalism, however paradoxical this might seem, for, unlike Irish, it was actually the medium of most newspapers, tracts, books, etc…
But then what was to become of Irish identity? English had become the medium of public and private life, and it seemed almost inevitable that if politicians, writers and artists wanted to invent an Irish nation, they would have to do so in the language of the coloniser. The image people had of Ireland was indeed in jeopardy at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the closer to independence the country wanted to get, the more essential it was to get rid of ambiguities and uncertainties about Irish identity.
II) Creating the Irish – romantic nationalism ?
At the very beginning of the 1900’s, Ireland was in a very “romantic mood”, in the pessimist sense of the word. Indeed, disillusion was on every Irishman’s lips. People had to stop believing in their glorious past if they wanted to climb the English social ladder, and all the hopes they had in their “uncrowned king” had disappeared. Parnell died in 1891 after he had been disgraced by his party[18] for marrying Kitty O’Shea, the ex-wife of one of his collaborators[19]. Most people stopped believing in independence after the disappearance of the man who personified all their hopes and longings. There was nothing left there than a political vacuum waiting to be filled by a new generation of intellectuals. Those who wanted to reinvent Ireland decided to abandon the parliamentary ways and to turn back to culture, for it seemed that the best solution to Ireland’s identity problems was to make Ireland interesting again to the Irish, and maybe go as far as recreating the people themselves. As W.B. Yeats said: “Does not the greatest poetry always require a people to listen to it?”
But before trying to build an Irish nation, the people had to regain interest in an Irish culture, which would naturally lead them to long for a nation of their own. A nation can only come into being as a system of cultural signification (Anderson, B. (1983)), which has been actually created[20] by the people; a nation needs stability as well as legitimacy, and they can both be achieved by the invention of traditions and the creation of a national past and its narrative. In his article “Literature – Nationalism’s Other? The Case for Revision” (in Bhabha, H.(ed.)(1990)), Simon During even goes as far as saying that cultures are even more worth fighting for than nations, because nations belong to history and politics, whereas cultures seem to fix identities – and this was exactly what Ireland was looking for at the time. Furthermore, as far as the creation of a coherent Irish culture was concerned, the ambiguous problem of language was one of the first and most important issues to be dealt with. Indeed, if the people had no longer any hope or pride their own language, it would be impossible to entice them to praise a renewed Irish culture. This was in direct relation with the conception of nationness which came into being during the Romantic period, in nineteenth century Europe. As Johan Gottfried von Herder[21] said: “Denn jedes Volk ist Volk; es hat seine nationale Bildung wie seine Sprache.”[22] Nationness is here clearly defined with regards to a “private property language” (Anderson, B. (1983))
So if Ireland was to become a nation, what was to be its national language?
Deanglicizing?
1 Reviving Irish?
At first sight, what could seem more natural than an attempt at reviving the Irish language, which was the historical language of Ireland, though it had been so neglected and despised for many years? Indeed, it was the very first link between Gaelic traditions and the people who believed in them. To sum up, it was a major part of the Ireland people were trying to bring back to life.
This was exactly what Douglas Hyde was aiming at in 1893 when he founded the Gaelic League, a language society whose goal was to revive the Irish language and to make it the official language of the Irish nation to be. The energy of the members of the league was obviously concentrated on giving Irish the ability of becoming a national language – they wanted the language to evolve and eventually to give Irish culture a written and literate dimension. They wanted people to rediscover the potentials of their language. In 1893, there were only 6 books written in Irish, and most Irish speakers in the countryside were illiterate. In one single year, according to W.B. Yeats, the League sold 50,000 textbooks, and thousands of people were registered in their language classes around the country[23]. (Kiberd, D. (1995))
A civil rights agitation was even mounted; people started to address letters and parcels in Irish, to the great confusion of the postal authorities.
Synge was an early supporter of the League[24], although their opinions diverged later on and he became more and more sceptical about its influence. However, even in the Aran Islands, it is possible to sense the presence of the League, especially among the younger generations, not without a proud disdain from older people. At some point, he writes about girls going to one of the language classes created by the members of the League: “A branch of the Gaelic League has been started here since my last visit, and every Sunday afternoon three little girls walk through the village ringing a shrill hand-bell […] Soon afterwards bands of girls – of all ages from five to twenty-five – begin to troop down to the schoolhouse in their reddest petticoats.” According to their age, one can assume that these girls grew up during the period of decline of the Irish language. The influence of the League was quite important on that portion of the population: “It is remarkable that these young women are willing to spend their one afternoon of freedom in laborious studies of orthography for no reason but a vague reverence for the Gaelic” (AA p.313-314)
But apparently, the impact of the linguistic revival on the older minds was not the same: “In the older generation that did not come under the influence of the recent language movement, I do not see any particular affection for Gaelic.” (AA p.314). There it becomes clearer that the action of the League also helped people – and especially young people – to realise they could be proud of their language. For instance, one of the League’s goals was to destroy the prejudices existing against the use of Irish (cf I) 3)). But this was no easy job, for Hyde himself[25] was mostly made fun of by the higher classes of society. For example, ladies meeting him for the first time would tell their friends that he “cannot be a gentleman because he speaks Irish” (quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 138)) This is one simple and yet telling example of the many misconstrued ideas the league had planned to fight – Irish was not considered as a language of the high society.[26]
On the contrary, Hyde thought that Irish, far from being the “badge of a beaten race” (Matthew Arnold), should be spoken with self respect and pride.
According to him and to his lecture on “The Necessity for Deanglicizing Ireland”[27] – which could be seen as one Irish cultural declaration of independence – there was nothing provincial or derogatory about speaking Irish. On the contrary, what he and W.B. Yeats described as provincialism were the attitudes of some Irish people, who had decided to cease to be Irish without becoming English altogether, but whose only aim was to copy England, the far away centre, in most cultural and ethical matters. He was not blaming the English for the current situation in Ireland, but he was deploring the loss of traditions and culture among Irish people, and he did fear that being neither Irish nor English, the people might end up in a kind of vacuum between two remarkable traditions. And if the people had not become completely English at that point, why would they not become Irish instead? This meant of course that the people had to build an identity of their own, which would be based on something more concrete than their relations to England (be it hate or envy) – and speaking Irish seemed to be the first step towards this independent representation.
2 A “spent force”?[28]
These were all very relevant theoretical remarks about the linguistic situation in Ireland, but when put into practice, it turned out that it was not as simple as Hyde had put it. Perhaps reviving Irish was not the right solution.
First of all, it seems that Irish was far too different from what the people had become used to speaking to be revived to the point of fluency in such a short period of time[29], neither to make it the national language, nor to create a national culture – and especially a national literature – in Irish. If thousands of students had enrolled in the classes set up by the Gaelic League, very few of them had managed to go any further than a few token phrases. Synge himself attests of the difficulty of learning the Irish language in the Aran Islands. And yet, he could truly be considered as a scholar in the language. Up until he was 27, he had studied purely academic and literary Irish, without any cultural motivation whatsoever at first, but merely because it was part of the curriculum for the undergraduates who wanted to become ministers of the Church. It was only in May 1898 that he decided to go to the Aran Islands to learn proper Irish[30], and although he had already acquired a decent knowledge of Irish before his trips, he could hardly understand a word of what most people had to say to him when he first arrived on the islands. All through his book, we can see his progression in the knowledge of the language, and how from a shy intruder he almost became an active member of the society. But this evolution cost him a lot of work, and many months of linguistic solitude. You can sense it in the first part of the book, each time someone tries to share poetry or stories with him. For instance, he said of old Mourteen that “he began to recite Old Irish poetry, with an exquisite poetry of intonation that brought tears to my eyes though I understood but little of the meaning.” (AA, p.260). Of his hostess he writes: “The courtesy of the old woman of the house is singularly attractive, and though I could not understand much of what she said – she has no English – …” (p.264) In these extracts of his book it seems that he has difficulty understanding the very meaning of the words[31], but in spite of this, he is able to sense the spirit of Irish, its beauty and musical quality. However, there were times when he felt much lonelier because of the barrier of language, and was really conscious of the complicated nature of Irish, of how much work it would require to master it. At some point he describes the cries of birds on a cliff facing Galway Bay: “Their language is easier than Gaelic, and I seem to understand the greater part of their cries though I am not able to answer.” (AA, p. 278 – 279) He is either being desperate or ironic about his linguistic capacity, but it is a very clear account of what it must take to become fluent in Irish – definitely more than one hour on Sundays.
Thus one can easily understand why Synge thought that it was illusory to try to create a national literature in Irish, for it would take decades, if not centuries to happen; the people would first have to master their language before becoming creative in it again: “Leinster and Ulster would take several centuries to assimilate Irish perfectly enough to make it a fit mode of expression for the finer emotions which now occupy literature.” (Quoted from Kiberd, D.(1993)) Thus, although he supported it at the very beginning, Synge turned against the Gaelic League with a true content for their policy: “The Gaelic League is made up of a doctrine that is founded on ignorance, fraud and hypocrisy. Irish as a living language is dying out year by year – the day the last old man or woman who can speak Irish only dies in Connacht or Munster – a day that is coming near – will mark a station in the Irish decline that will be final a few years later…” (Quoted from Kiberd, D.(1993; 222))[32]. For him, Irish could definitely not become again the spoken language of Ireland, and thus there was no way the national literature could be spelt in Irish.[33]
Furthermore, because of the great difference between Irish and other European languages, the extended use of it might prevent Ireland from remaining connected to the rest of Europe. Would it be possible to do without any sense of cosmopolitanism? As Stopord Brooke said, a national culture, and all the more so a national literature should “be able to become not only Irish but also alive to the interests and passions of universal humanity.” (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 156)) So to some extent, wouldn’t the use of English instead of Irish allow the power and influence of Irish culture to spread throughout Europe? But then, using the language of their coloniser, would the people be able to gather as a cultural community? This was the question Yeats asked in 1892: “Is there then no hope for the de-anglicizing of our people? Can we not build a national literature which shall be none the less Irish in spirit from being English in language?” (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 155)) Analysing the works of writers such as Walt Whitman for example, he wondered: “if one says a National Literature must be in the language of the country, there are many difficulties. Should it be written in the language that one’s country does speak or the language it ought to speak?” (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 164))
Perhaps we can go as far as interpreting this situation as typical of romanticism; a man struggling between his desire to reach his ideal and the fact that he is human, and thus limited. Likewise, Irish people were trying to bridge an unbridgeable gap between an ideal identity spelt in Irish they were trying to reach, and the reality of their world inevitably filled with English words and memories.
2) Authenticity and creation
In fact, even if there were divisions among the intellectuals who took part in the cultural revival of Ireland, especially on linguistic matters, most of them seemed to agree on the general idea they had of the Ireland they wanted to revive.
According to Douglas Hyde, political leaders had fought for Irish nationalism against England, but they had forgotten what they were actually fighting for – a distinctive culture of folktales, dances, sports, costumes, all this bound with the Irish language.
And this is exactly what W.B. Yeats meant when he talked about places in Ireland where people “live according to a tradition of life that existed before commercialism, and the vulgarity founded upon it […]” (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 139)). As far as this quotation is concerned, Yeats gives his interpretation of the essence of irishness – that is uncorrupted country life – most likely in the West of the country – emerging from a long Gaelic past and tradition.
There was a pervading idea of getting closer to the people and their life. Hyde’s problem was that he thought Irish could still be considered as the language of the people; on the contrary, Yeats, Synge and their followers were increasingly advocating for the use of English, but of an English which would be brightened by a Celtic note, “that English idiom of the Irish-thinking people of the west…the only good English spoken by any large numbers of Irish people today.” (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 162)) Although Yeats is obviously exaggerating the linguistic situation, he is right in so far as he underlines the fact that Irish people had already created a new language of their own, and that there was no use trying to make them go back to their old Irish again.
a) Creating HE
Indeed, the linguistic situation in Ireland was very specific and original in many respects; the Irish people had not only become the actors of a shift from one language to another, but the state of bilingualism they had reached at the end of the nineteenth century also helped transforming them into creators of a new brand of English – Hiberno-English.
The fact that they were not only learning and imitating but also imagining and creating may be due to the fact that bilingualism in Ireland did not go along with a state of diglossia[34]. Irish was not the “low language” in comparison with English as a “high language”. Instead of severing the two languages and conferring them strictly separate functions, people had a tendency to mingle them in animated conversations. This was especially true as far as female speakers were concerned; for instance, P.L. Henry observed this situation in the Kerry Gaeltacht, where women usually “tend to move over and back or in and out of the two languages alternatively.” (Henry, P.L. (1977; 23)). However, most people can also differentiate the two languages when they wish to do so; sometimes, you could even hear people saying twice the same sentence, once in Irish, and then in English. In his article, P.L. Henry gave the example of a man surveying the “damp wintry landscape before breakfast from his bedroom window may vent to his depression”. He could easily say: “What’s it all for, no cad chuige é ar ao’ chor?”[35] It is as if each part of the sentence were adding a rhetorical and semantic nuance to the statement he wishes to make. It may be interesting to keep in mind that this mode of expression is exactly the one which was used in the macaronic songs and ballads[36], which were obviously products of nineteenth century Ireland. In those pieces of poetry, the narrative theme is developed with equal importance in Irish and in English, just as in the speech of some Irish people.
This all shows that the language the Irish use is not the product of an imperfect learning of English, but a conscious creation of a new variety, based on bilingualism[37].
We have already come across the fact that the Irish did not become fluent in English without difficulty, and it is through the many attempts at mastering this foreign language that Hiberno-English, this “home-made hewn variety” (Henry, P.L. (1977)), came to be created. The people were basically using fragments of English there had heard here and there and consciously organising them in an Irish fashion – that is the structures of most sentences were based on the speakers’ knowledge of Irish syntax. We can use the example of a County Clare man answering his boy, who is complaining because he wants more milk for breakfast: “Drink what’s in your noggin, you bacach, and you’ll get more while ago when you’ll drink what’s that.” (Henry, P.L. (1977; 24)) This is a typical example of a parent wishing to speak English to his children because he is convinced it will help them survive and even succeed in life, although his mother tongue is originally Irish. It reads more or less like an improvisation, based on fragments picked up on different occasions. We can see that he misuses the phrase “a while ago”, whereas he obviously means “in a little while”. Likewise, the way he uses “what’s that” underlines the fact that his interpretation of English demonstrative is quite unusual. His sentences seem to bear Irish constructions, as well as Irish vocabulary, such as “noggin” or “bacach”.
As far as the imprint of Irish on the speech of these people is concerned, this language is nothing like an awkward imitation of British English. On the contrary, one has to be very careful about the terms chosen to describe the relation that Hiberno-English bears to English. Along with P.L. Henry, it is more precise and interesting to analyse Hiberno-English as a deliberate act of creation; Irish people were indeed forging their new means of personal expression, and not just trying to use the one of the English. They went way further than what one could have expected them to go in the linguistic shift from Irish to English: “What the Irish people set out to do was to learn English; what they managed by 1900 was to create Anglo-Irish.”[38]
Naturally, no one in official Ireland wanted to realize that the people had created an idiom which was not even taken into account in linguistic policies. On the contrary, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Synge and their followers noticed the importance as well as the literary potential of Hiberno-English; all the more so as it made the idea of a national literature in English look rather feasible, “by translating and retelling in English, which shall have an indefinable Irish quality of rhythm and style, all that is best in the ancient literature.” (W.B.Yeats, quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 155)). Yeats even went as far as suggesting to the Intermediate Board of Education a way of improving the written English of Irish pupils: “Let every child in Ireland be set to turn first a leading article, then a piece of what is called excellent English, written perhaps by some distinguished member of the Board, into the idiom of his own countryside.” (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 163))[39] According to him and his friends, it seemed natural for Hiberno-English to become the idiom used for church sermons, newspaper editorials, or university lectures. However this was not even debated on an official level and it was up to the literary movement to heighten the status of this new-born idiom.
b) Synge and his literary tradition
Paradoxically enough, even the greatest supporter of the revival of Irish was taken in this process of adopting Hiberno-English as a literary mode of expression and a symbol for the ambivalent identity of Ireland. In 1893, Douglas Hyde published a book called Love Songs of Connacht, which became quite famous among the Irish literary community and even further in Ireland[40]. In the book he printed the Irish version on one side of the page and the translation in dialect on the other side. However, his success was less due to the actual songs than to Hyde’s own translations in what could be considered as Hiberno-English, and especially the ones that were in prose and not in verse. For example, in the Playboy of the Western World, Christie Mahon literally quotes from the book in his game of seduction with Pegeen. To his luck, Hyde’s purpose had been entirely misunderstood; he had only decided to put the translations in order to help the understanding of some poems, but for him the main achievement was the revival of the original pieces of poetry. Thus not only was he the leader of the Gaelic League, but also the unwilling starter of the Anglo-Irish[41] literary movement, providing Yeats and his contemporaries with a brand new medium of expression. They were all in favour of a national literature in English, but they had sensed the necessity of justifying their choice. And using Hiberno-English was the perfect way to do so.
Before Synge, some other writers tried to exploit this great opportunity, but without as much genius and recognition. This is what Yeats means when he describes the works of writers and poets such as Thomas Davis[42] and Young Ireland: “Their work was never wholly satisfactory, for what was Irish in it looked ungainly in an Irish garb, and what was English was never perfectly mastered, never wholly absorbed into their beings.” For him those works were nothing but “imitations of fourth-rate English poetry and nineteenth century novels.”[43] (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 137))
Synge on the contrary, managed to achieve an actual artistic representation of this language with more skill and success than anybody else. What Hyde discovered and people like Lady Gregory refined, he brought to the status of actual art form and coherent representation. This was made possible because he was one of the most learned scholars in Irish at that period, and he knew it was the historical language of Ireland. However, he was realistic about the future of that language, especially as it was not his mother tongue spoken from the cradle. He knew he would appeal to many more people if he wrote in English, but this was not enough and he decided to write “with an eye as much on English as on Irish”. This was his contribution to the search for a national identity in Ireland at the time, but also the agent of his international fame. George Moore once mischievously said that Synge had fortunately discovered that when you literally translated Irish into English, the result you got was poetry. (Kiberd, D. (1995))
This was surely underrating the process of creation in Synge’s work, but it was not entirely wrong, for one can assume that had he decided to write in Standard English, the author of the Playboy would never have been that successful. What is particularly amazing about his works is how he genuinely managed to keep this fragile balance between two languages, two cultures, and how this research on language led him to acknowledge the artistic and national potential of a dialect[44]. He was definitely the most successful writer of his period to write in an English as Irish as possible, “an English into which toxins of the Gaelic mode of speech and syntax had been injected” (Kiberd, D. (1993; 199)). He had understood the inner principle of a faithful translation, which on his part was not only that from a language to another one, but truly the translation of a whole culture:
“To translate well is to ‘invent’ the text (vocabulary, syntax and style) that the translated author would have written if his native language had been that of the translator, not his own.” ( O’Tuama, S. (1971))
J.M. Synge was not the first man in his period to explore the potential of the new-born dialect that was Hiberno-English, but in this short literary tradition he was the one who gave it an actual artistic status and underlined its potential national dimension as far as cultural identity was concerned.
3) The speech of the people
a) Romanticism?
Behind the reflection of many writers and intellectuals involved in the revival movement, there was this idea that you had to go back to the people, their culture and their language to become authentic and creative again. This was why Hiberno-English became so praised; especially for Synge, it was not a language used by people who were not educated enough to speak English properly. In 1902 he wrote that “the linguistic atmosphere in Ireland has become definitely English enough, for the first time, to allow work to be done in English that is perfectly Irish in essence.” For him, Hiberno-English was first and foremost a language full of life and poetry, as well as a language which would enable writers and poets to spread the Irish traditions as much as possible, especially among the people who were not Irish speakers[45]. It was deeply believed that common speech could be a valid basis for a literary language, for the “spoken language of living people” (Kiberd, D.(1993; 203)) in Ireland allowed for both realism and poetry in literature. For many different reasons, it is possible to call this attempt at translating an immemorial culture into what had become the language of the people “romantic nationalism”.
Indeed, where did these ideas come from if not from the romantic period? It is exactly what Wordsworth and Coleridge advocated for in their preface to the Lyrical Ballads, often analysed as the manifesto of English romanticism: “It is the honourable characteristic of poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind. The majority of the following poems […] were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasures. […] It contains a natural delineation of human passions, human characters, and human incidents.” For these poets, Man was necessarily central in their literary project. But they did not only allude to literate upper-class scholars, who would rejoice in deciphering an intricate piece of poetry; for them poetry could not be separated from the masses, and thus, poets had to use common language as their means of expression, instead of delightfully writing with extremely complicated words and metaphors. They wanted to go back to the language of the lower classes to exalt the poetry which was naturally inherent to it. It is clear in these lines that the two English poets considered common language as one of the best means to create a new kind of poetry, which they thought to be the only true poetry – that is popular poetry, poetry relying on the people, and appealing to the people because of the universality of its themes.
It may be interesting to compare this point of view with the one expressed in the Preface to the Playboy of the Western World, where Synge also attempts at defining his conception of poetry and at justifying his use of language. (The Playboy of the Western World, in Synge, J.M. (1999))
The main relation between 1900 Ireland writers and English romantics may be their ideal of inspiration lying in common people. For Wordsworth and Coleridge it is described as the life and language of the lower classes – a division of society which is typical of the English system. As for Synge, he writes about the rural population of the West of Ireland: “fishermen”, “Irish peasantry”, and so on. They both have this idea of going back to the people to discover artistic truth: “I am glad to acknowledge how much I owe to the folk imagination of these fine people. […] All art is collaboration.” (PWW, p. 111) One may even suggest that the argument that writers should get their main inspiration from the language of their fellow countrymen is another hint at the definition of what an Irish national literature and culture should become.
Moreover, as was the case during the Romantic period in England, he clearly establishes a distinction between city and countryside, suggesting the purity of the latter as opposed to the corruption of industrialised towns: “in the modern literature of towns…”(PWW, p.112) This is particularly noticeable in the last few lines of his preface: “those of us who wish to write start with a chance which is not given to writers in places where the springtime of local life has been forgotten, and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.” Here he basically underlines the privileged situation of Irish writers, who still live in a rural enough society to be surrounded by poetry, just as he was living in a “constant drone of Gaelic” in the Aran Islands. For him as for Wordsworth and his followers, countryside and nature seem to be an ideal place for man, because of their natural poetic quality, and the pastoral-like purity and innocence going along with it. Urbanisation and industrialisation are clearly defined as the winter of the mind, where imagination inevitably becomes frozen and sterile. On the contrary, life closer to nature seems to be associated with fecundity and richness of imagination, where every speech can be “as fully flavoured as a nut or apple”: “In Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery, and magnificent, and tender.” (PWW, p.112)
So basically, it becomes more and more obvious why Hiberno-English was to be used in Ireland. If popular imagination was to be the new muse of the poets in the country, nothing must have been more natural for them than to use the language which was born thanks to this very same rich and fine spirit[46]. The people in Ireland had just created a new variety which seemed to suit their inner identity, so using Hiberno-English in literature was the best way of remaining faithful to the spirit of Ireland.
However, Synge feels the need to explain why he chose to write in Hiberno-English, just as Wordsworth and Coleridge had to underline their conviction that common speech has a natural poetic quality. In both cases, authors were seeking linguistic legitimacy. Synge insists on underlining the realistic character of the idiom he has his characters speak: “I have used one word or two only that I have not heard among the country people of Ireland, or spoken in my own nursery before I could read the newspapers.” (PWW, p.111)This could at first be analysed as a major difference between the Irish writer and the English romantics, who were placing the power of imagination above everything else in the theory of creation. Nonetheless, by realism, Synge doesn’t mean utilitarian use of realistic language, as was often the case in the theatre of that period; indeed, at Synge’s time, realism had become an actual art form, and was usually sought for in a play. On the contrary, the linguistic reality in Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century was so complicated and original that it gave birth to a language which was indeed too poetic to be real: “the wildest sayings and ideas in this play are tame indeed, compared with the fancies one may hear in any little hillside cabin…”
Thus, Synge’s aim was not to be “joyless and pallid”, but to be faithful to the reality of Irish life, carried along with this new language the people were using. In a way, the realism Synge was aiming at could be nothing else than a paradoxical “poetic realism”, which would enable him to show Hiberno-English as conductive of joy and richness, and to give a stylised representation of the inner essence of Irish life. As Moredecar Gorelik said: “If you really wish to give us an illusion of life, you must seize upon the essence of life. Forget the body; give us the soul.” (Quoted from Deane, S. (1971))
Finally, the poetic quality inherent to Hiberno-English is so hardly deniable that one can definitely say there are many similarities between the ideals of the English romantics and the intellectuals working for a cultural revolution in Ireland in the 1900’s. Thus, the use of Hiberno-English as the medium for spreading the idea of a nation and a new identity can be associated with romanticism, on a purely literary and poetic level as well as on a more ideological and cultural level[47].
b) Hiberno English as a symbol for unity
Somehow, this incredibly colourful and musical language was a very efficient means of bridging gaps. On a purely literary level, Synge was using Hiberno-English for it enabled him to reconcile two important characteristics of drama for him; he wanted to go against conventions and show that realism could be rich and imaginative[48], just as the English romantics aimed at demonstrating that poetry could be poetry even if it was not only using complicated words and obscure images. As far as the reflection on national identity and Irish culture and literature was concerned, Synge’s idiom was also bridging a gap between two opposite cultures; he was translating Irish life and culture into another language, thus keeping a perfect balance between Irish and English and suggesting a possible unity where there usually were rivalries and contradictions.
In fact, this was one of the main goals of the literary movement in which Synge took part: creating a new unity among all Irish people, not by political means, but by cultural innovations. It becomes clearer if we have a look at an extract taken from the Irish Literary Theatre Manifesto (1897)[49]. “We propose to have performed in Dublin in the spring of every year certain Celtic and Irish plays, which whatever be their degree of excellence will be written with a high ambition, and so to build up a Celtic and Irish school of dramatic literature. We hope to find in Ireland an uncorrupted and imaginative audience trained to listen by its passion for oratory, and believe that our desire to bring upon the stage the deeper thoughts and emotions of Ireland will ensure for us a tolerant welcome, and that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theatres of England, and without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed. We will show that Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment, as it has been represented, but the home of an ancient idealism. We are confident of the support of all Irish people, who are weary of misrepresentation, in carrying out a work that is outside all political questions that divide us.” (Lady Gregory, Our Irish Theatre)
Clearly here, we can find some ideas already expressed throughout this chapter, such as the will to create an actual cultural representation of Irish in which all Irish people would recognize themselves and unite to form the Irish nation. To do so, they wanted to rely on the poetry and dignity which they thought was inherent to Ireland (“an uncorrupted and imaginative audience”; “the home of an ancient idealism”), and to fight the misrepresentation of Ireland, especially in English plays (“Ireland is not the home of buffoonery and of easy sentiment”)[50]. There is a sense that culture and cultural identity stand above all political and religious problems, and thus maybe culture was the first means of solving Ireland’s problems with identity and nationality: “carrying out a work that is outside all the political questions that divide us”[51]. The fact that politics was not the ground on which they wanted to fight helped them to talk of an achievable unity, although it might also be seen as an idealistic way of avoiding thorny issues.
Of course, not all the plays staged at the Abbey had been written in Hiberno-English. This was especially true of the plays which were called “peasant dramas”[52]. Yeats, for example, was more inclined towards poetic drama, where he was trying to stage the transfiguration of the new Ireland; in Cathleen na Houlihan for instance, he writes about an old woman, the personification of Ireland, who is transformed into a young girl with the walk of a queen by the end of the play. However, most of the playwrights were aiming at building a common image for all the people in Ireland, and to some extent, Hiberno-English – being a language created by the people, but also a bridge between two rival cultures – could be understood as a symbol for the idealistic definition of a nation as unity, as a community infused with a certain mythical spirit.
We have seen that J.M. Synge and his plays could easily be said to belong to this tradition of romantic nationalism. Thus it will be interesting to study the structure of his idiom and the use he makes of it in his plays, to understand how he put this ideal into practice.
Chapter 2.
Translating
Synge’s idiom is representative of “romantic nationalism” in Ireland, for the syntax and vocabulary he uses are very much inspired by Gaelic, but also very telling as to the life of the people he stages in his plays, their traditions and their past. Thus, by using this language in his plays, he underlines the fact that Irish culture and traditions can be expressed through a non-Celtic language, and suggests that Hiberno-English has become the new language of the people of Ireland, “who have [not] shut their lips to poetry.”
It will be interesting to study how this translation of Irish culture into a specific brand of English works, and how it can definitely be seen as a bridge between two cultures, rather than a radical opposition of England and Ireland. To do so, I will concentrate on two of his plays: The Playboy of the Western World and Deirdre of the Sorrows. First, these plays both have special characteristics which make them more interesting to study. The first staging of the Playboy generated such an agitation that it is still well know for its scandalous aspect, but it is although Synge’s most famous play, mostly because of his incredibly clever use of language. As for Deirdre, Synge did not finish it, but it is extremely interesting because it deals with on of the greatest Irish myths and thus it stages kings and queens speaking Hiberno-English.
Furthermore, the Playboy and Deirdre are the last two plays that Synge ever wrote, so they are more elaborate, especially as far as language is concerned. Indeed, most of the inconsistencies which Alan J. Bliss noted in his article (Bliss, A.J.(1971)) were found in Synge’s first two plays, Riders to the sea and the Shadow of the Glen. However, I will not restrict my examples to the two plays I want to concentrate on, for very relevant examples can be found in the whole of Synge’s works.
In Chapter 1, we have seen that language can be considered as a mirror of the culture of a nation. To my mind, this is how Synge reacted towards Hiberno-English. He saw it as the best way to express Irish life, and by using it in his plays, he did all but try to bury and forget the Irish language. For him, Hiberno-English was a new means of saving what was most precious about Gaelic – all the symbols and traditions it had been carrying along for centuries – without destroying the long process of linguistic adaptation Irish people had been going through since their colonisation.[53]
Indeed, most of the characteristic linguistic features of Hiberno-English have two main origins: the Irish language (called substratum in this case, because it is the “prior” language which influences another which comes to dominate. In the case of Irish, it was largely abandoned during the linguistic shift) and Elizabethan English(and English is called superstratum, because it is the language people decided to adopt instead of Irish). Thus, using Hiberno-English does not mean forgetting Irish and everything this language stands for. On the contrary, as far as Hiberno-English is concerned, some of the main features of the Irish language have been transposed into the system of English language – that is its lexicon, and its word-order[54].
According to Sean O’Tuama, culture is “a community’s design for living, handed from generation to generation, but always with a certain structural permanency” and that language, “as a part of the design, reflects and transmits a particular and evolving network of feelings, thinking and behaving” (O’Tuama, S. (1971))
So, if Hiberno-English had become to some extent the new mirror of Irish culture, the characteristic syntax used by the speakers of this variety of English could be rather telling as to Irish philosophy of life, and Irish structure of thoughts itself. Indeed, syntax is the structure of the language itself, and in this case, it is often relying on a direct translation of many components of Irish thoughts and beliefs. All the same, characteristic words in the Hiberno-English lexicon are actual historical and cultural testimonies, and allow writers such as Synge to give a particular sense of time and place to his plays and settings.
As a consequence, we can try to go into details as far as Synge’s representation of Hiberno-English is concerned, to see how far he proves able to translate Irish thoughts into English words.
I) Translating syntax: Gaelic structure of thoughts
The study of Hiberno-English syntax can be very interesting in so far as it will help us understand how Synge managed to remain faithful to Irish life through his use of English words. Indeed, the non-standard features of Hiberno-English owe a lot to the Irish language, and thus, one can deduce that it is pregnant with elements of Irish thinking and philosophy of life.
1) A different temporality
Some nuances of meaning in the verb phrase are very particular to Hiberno-English, and can scarcely be achieved in a standard translation.
a) Habitual tenses – Form, functions and frequencies of periphrastic do and be
“It’s a queer thing the way the likes of me do be telling the truth, and the wise are lying al times.” (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.180)
In this extract of Deirdre, Lavarcham, Deirdre’s nurse, is complaining about her incapability of preventing the fatal events to happen, for nobody ever listens to her. To express the circular power of fate, and this recurrent feeling of helplessness, she uses the grammatical structure: “do + be + V_ing”.
This feature is used quite often in the texts of Synge’s plays, and it may be interesting to focus on this characteristic verbal form.
In Hiberno-English, there are three different forms of the present tense which are used to express a habitual or generic aspect; they have no direct equivalent in Standard English.
- Inflected do, which is not to be confused with the emphatic use of do.
Ex: Me ma does tell me I’m livin on my nerves.
- Inflected be
Ex: There bees no partition between the cows.
- Inflected do + uninflected be[55]. This form favours recurrent events (as in the first example) and plural subjects showing generic qualities (as in the second example).
Ex: He does be weighing things out for me for when I’m on me own.
Those pancakes do be gorgeous.
These features are by no means a sign of an imperfect mastery of Standard English grammar. On the contrary, they add a nuance which is not structurally existent in Standard English, but which is both a unique and extensively applied feature of Irish. Indeed, the Irish verb “to be” has two forms of the present tense, tá and bíonn. The second one is called habitual (generic), or consuetudinal, and would be roughly rendered in Standard English by expressions such as “always is”, or “is regularly”. It is no wonder then that Irish people, during the years of bilingualism, felt the need of using a similar tense in English. The use of “bees” or “does be” is the illustration of this necessity for Irish people to carry over Irish aspectual distinctions into Hiberno-English.
Joyce himself noticed the expression of these aspects in Hiberno-English:
“The Irish peasantry seem to feel the want of these two tenses when they are speaking English; and they often, in fact, attempt to import them into the English language, even in districts where no Irish has been spoken for generations; thus they will say ‘I do be reading a book while you do be writing,’ ‘I used to be walking every day when I lived in the countryside,’” (Joyce, P. W. (1910; 58))
So it becomes clearer now that Synge’s use of “does be” is directly motivated by its grammatical relation to Irish, and by the fact that most Irish people (especially most English-speaking Irish people), would feel the need to express this conception of time in their new language. We can analyse two different passages from the Playboy of the Western World, and Deirdre of the Sorrows, to give these structures an actual context.
“NELLY: Are you thinking them’s his boots?
SARAH: [taking them up] If they are, there should be his father’s track on them. Did you never read in the papers the way murdered men do bleed and drip?
SUSAN: Is that blood there, Sarah Tansey?” (The Playboy of the Western World, p.132)
This is the beginning of second act in the Playboy. Christy Mahon has already started telling everyone about the murder of his father with a shovel, and is progressively becoming a wonder in the small Mayo village. A group of young women from the village have “destroyed themselves” climbing up the hill to Pegeen’s shebeen[56] to see “the man killed his father” (p.133). At that moment, they have seen a pair of boots and are wondering whether they belong to the murderer or not.
To do so, Sarah tries to rely on what she knows about murders. The information she gives is a generalisation from what she has read in the papers. As it has been said that murdered people leave some of their blood on their aggressor, she deduces that if the boots the girls see are indeed that of Christie, they should necessarily be able to notice some blood stains on them. She is not trying to emphasize the fact that it is true that murdered men bleed (as opposed to an argument suggesting they do not bleed:
“I’m not really sure that murdered men bleed and drip.
- But I’m telling you, I read it in the paper, they do bleed and drip !”)
She wants to underline the fact that murdered men always bleed and drip, without even questioning the overall existence of bleeding as far as murdered men are concerned. As a consequence, the do she uses is definitely an occurrence of generic present.
If she had only used the simple present (“the way murdered men bleed and drip”), or even added an adverb (“the way murdered men always bleed and drip”), her argument may have had less impact on her Irish companions. Generic present helps her express the necessary relation between a murderer and the blood of his victim in the very structure of her sentence – the papers always talk of blood stains in case of a murder – and thus make her friends agree with her. (“Is that blood there, Sarah Tansey?”)
“DEIRDRE: And yet I’m in dread leaving this place, where I have lived always. Won’t I be lonesome and I thinking on the little hills beyond, and the apple-trees, do be budding in the springtime by the post of the door? [A little shaken by what has past] Won’t I be in great dread to bring you to destruction, Naisi, and you so happy and young?” (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.190)
This extract is taken from the first act of the play, when Deirdre is still in Lavarcham’s house on Slieve Fuadh. She has been living most of her life among nature, without any claim to become a queen whatsoever. At that moment, she has seduced Naisi and they have almost decided to elope to Scotland to prevent Conchubor from taking Deirdre to Emain Macha on the next day. However, Deirdre is already incredibly conscious of the threat time and fate represent for her and for her love for Naisi. She means to underline the discrepancy between the lives of all the natural beings she is used to and her own tragic human life. She aims at differentiating between two conceptions of time: nature’s cyclical time (when “apples trees do be budding in the springtime”), and human linear time (when Deirdre will eventually bring Naisi to destruction). If she had used a mere simple present, (“the apples trees bud in the springtime”), one would have been less likely to sense all the tragic implications of this remark; the opposition between nature’s cycle and Man’s fate would have been harder to grasp, basically because the latter is only alluded to in this extract. It is definitely the use of consuetudinal present which allows her to make her distinction even more accurate. This is all the more so as this non standard feature is a reminiscence of Irish syntax, and thus in some respects a reminder of Irish culture, of which the Sagas[57] are such an important component.
Finally, if most of Synge’s characters make the distinction between simple and consuetudinal present, it is because they feel the need to underline in their own version of the English language aspectual differences which are more natural to an Irish speaker, who would use a particular grammatical feature to be precise and convincing enough.
b) Perfects
“I never married with one, let alone with a couple or three.”(The Playboy of the Western World, p.120)
“And I’ll have your words from this day filling my ears, and that look is come upon you meeting my two eyes, and I watching you loafing around in the warm sun, or rinsing your ankles when the night’s come.”(The Playboy of the Western World, p.139)
“Amn’t I after seeing the star of knowledge shining from her brow, and hearing words would put you thinking on the holy Brigit speaking to the infant saints…”(The Playboy of the Western World, p.146)
Christie Mahon, the “playboy of the western world”, is probably one of the most colourful heroes of Synge’s plays, but he also grows into a master of language in the course of the play. He plays with words and his fight with Hiberno-English syntax is close to heroism. Thus, one cannot possibly put down the above non-standard quotes to lack of proficiency in language.
A Standard English speaker would have expected to find a perfect tense, or a structure such as “have just + past participle”, or instead of “he is come”, “I never married” and “you’re after making”. However, these are probably some of the most famous features of Hiberno-English. Irish people, as well as many characters in Synge’s plays, have a very particular way of expressing their relation to time; they use five different verbal constructions where a standard-English speaker would have basically used the preterit and the present perfect. (Kallen, J. “Some major features of Irish English”. Lecture given at Trinity College Dublin, 16 July 2001) This can be partially explained[58] by the fact that Celtic languages have no specific lexical entries for the verb “to have” and thus Irish has no tense corresponding to the English perfect tenses. (Sullivan, J.P. (1976)). Thus Hiberno-English speakers kept a lot of these Irish structures in their speech, without totally suppressing Standard English structures, though.
Here are the five different forms expressing the perfect tense in Hiberno-English:
- Perfect with after[59].
This form is usually constructed as follows: be + after + verb_ing. The structure be + after can also be followed by a nouns in some cases.
Exs[60]: > I’m just after sending a lady up that way.
> You’re after our tea
It is basically used to describe an event that has happened in the more or less recent past but whose effect still last in the present. Jeffrey Kallen argues that most of those structures involve a notion of recentness, or of completion. However, the time of speaking and the time of occurrence of the event can be more remote from each other than what Harris suggests when he calls this feature “hot news perfect”. (Filpulla, Markku (1999)) It is in very close relation with an Irish structure once again, which is: “tá + taréis + verbal noun”. It is also used only in reference to actions which have been concluded very recently.
The Standard English equivalent of this form would be the perfect tense with the addition of “just”. (“He has just finished”) (Sullivan, J.P. (1976))
- “Extended-now” perfect
In Hiberno-English, simple tenses are usually used with verbs followed by a time adverbial, such as since, how long, etc… [61]
Exs: > The system of this country is all wrong since 1922.
> How long are you here ?
- Medial-object perfect[62]
This is a form of perfect where the object comes before the past participle. It often has a resultative meaning – that is it focuses more on the result of the action than on the action itself. It is important that this structure never has a causative meaning; it is in no way a “indirect passive” (Harris) such as in “the pilot had a leg broken” for example. The subject is always the agent of the activity expressed by the verb phrase, and the object is in some way or other affected by the action. The verbs used are transitive and dynamic most of the time.
Exs: > I have the grass now cut.
➢ I asked whether he had the music got.
- Perfect with be
In this structure, which has sometimes been considered as the intransitive counterpart of the “medial-object” perfect, HE speakers use the auxiliary be instead of have in their construction of the perfect. It means that the speaker is focusing on the end point of a prior action.
However, its use is lexically restricted to some verbs such as leave, change, die or go, and it is much less common than some of the other perfect forms in HE.
Exs: > Esther is just gone asleep about two minutes ago.
> He’ll probably be back at Christmas, but they’re broken up.
- ‘Standard’ perfect with have
This is the standard version of the perfect tense, which is of course also used in HE.
We will know try to analyse two examples taken from Synge’s plays, to see how he manages to convey the subtle differences of meaning between these forms, and how this is once again a sign that he is indeed trying to be as faithful as possible to Irish culture and what he considered to be the Irish way of understanding the world.
“PEGEEN: And you shot him dead?
CHRISTY: [shaking his head] I never used weapons. I’ve no licence, and I’m a law-fearing man.” (PWW, p.121)
This extract is taken from the beginning of the first act of the Playboy. Christie has just arrived in the shebeen, and “is after telling” Pegeen and her father about his parricide. However, he remains rather mysterious about the circumstances of the murder, and thus, the characters start a game of questions and answers which almost sounds like a catechism. Christie does not tell more than what he has to, but answers all the questions about his “dirty deed” with good will and honesty. Here he denies Pegeen’s suggestion that he may have killed his father by shooting him, on the grounds that he has never used a weapon.
To express this idea, he uses a preterit, along with an adverb of time (“never”). A Standard English speaker would have expected him to use a perfect here, because of the structure of the sentence. (“I have never used weapons”). Indeed, it sounds like the situation of Christie never having touched a weapon in his life has not been affected by the murder of his father. However, if he had used a perfect, Christie would have put the emphasis on the duration of the situation – that is on the fact that he has never touched a weapon in his life and that this is still true of him in the present of his speech. On the contrary, here it seems more important to him to deny the action Pegeen is associating him with. He does not want people to believe that he shot his father, although it sounds rather ironic that a “law-fearing man” should be more worried by the fact of owning a weapon than by the murder of his father. Anyway, this is why he uses what we have called an “extended-now” perfect, in order to emphasize the negation of the action rather than the duration of time suggested by a perfect tense.
“CHRISTIE: Shut your yelling, for if you’re after making a mighty man of me this day by the power of a lie, you’re setting me now to think if it’s a poor thing to be lonesome it’s worse, maybe, go mixing with the fools of earth.” (The Playboy of the Western World, p.162)
This extract is taken from the very end of the Playboy. The villagers have discovered that Christie was lying about the murder of his father, and even Pegeen is now rejecting him. However, Christie, who has built himself a new self-confident image, begins to show some signs of disdain for his former worshippers. He is basically telling them how much they have to do with their own deceiving; they have made him into the “proven hero”(p.163) they are now rejecting.
In order to underline this process, he uses this very Hiberno-English structure: “to be after + V_ing”. If he had used a standard perfect, (“you have made a mighty man of me by the power of a lie”), his audience’s attention would have been drawn towards the whole process of transformation Christie has been going through during his day spent among them (from a “poor fellow [who] would get drunk at the smell of a pint” (p.144) to the “wonder of the western world” (p.152)). Furthermore, the idea of recentness given by the term “this day” would be missing from the structure of the verb. But the standard expression “you have just made a mighty man of me this day by the power of a lie” sounds a bit dodgy in this situation. It must be because “to have just + past participle” is more exclusively referring to “hot news” than the Hiberno-English expression is. Indeed, “you have just made” is still an occurrence of the standard perfect, and thus it still alludes to duration – in this case a very short one – more than to completion. On the contrary, “You’re after making a mighty man of me” clearly suggests that the action has been completed a little while ago – thus accounting for “this day” – but it first and foremost aims at attesting of the actual completion of the action; Christie is now a mighty man, even though this has been achieved by the power of a lie.
c) Translating thoughts
Now that we have put these two characteristic features of Hiberno-English into context, it may be easier to determine why they are not only representative of Irish language, but also of what could be called Irish philosophy of life. Here by Irish I mean the Ireland about which Synge was writing and which was an important element in the construction of Irish identity at the beginning of the twentieth century.
As well as the expression “be after + V_ing” clearly states that people in Ireland have a tendency to give more importance to the concrete completion of an action rather than to the temporal link between past and present, if we look back at what we have said about habitual present, this may give some clue to imagine the way of life people had in Ireland in Synge’s time. Indeed, this verbal form is a very accurate means of differentiating between circular time, recurrent actions, and linear time. In the Aran Islands as well as in most of his plays, Synge skilfully manages to represent these two conceptions of time in terms of language as well as thematically.
First, the idea of cyclical time can easily be linked with the relation of Irish people to nature. In the Playboy, there are many references to people working in the fields, and obviously agriculture is a very cyclical occupation. Christie alludes to the fact that when he was living with his father he kept on “toiling, moiling, digging, dogging”(p.126), and then he rejoices because he thinks he won’t have to do this again if he marries Pegeen:
“And I’ll be growing fine from this day, the way I’ll have a soft lovely skin on me and won’t be the like of the clumsy young fellows do be ploughing all times in the earth and dung.”(p.131)
Likewise, in the Aran Islands, Synge underlines quite accurately how close the islanders are to the nature surrounding them:
“The curaghs and spinning wheels, the tiny wooden barrels […], the home-made cradles, churns and baskets, are full of individuality, and being made from materials that are common here, yet to some extent peculiar to the island, they seem to exist as a natural link between the people and the world that is about them.” (Aran Islands, p.263)
But paradoxically enough, the characters of Synge’s writings are also incredibly conscious of their mortal existence; in a way, the fact of having a specific means of expressing habitual time may also help to put the emphasis on the inevitability of death when this tense is not used.
Indeed, death is a very recurrent theme in his writings. Many of his heroines are literally over-conscious of it. Maurya in Riders to the Sea, as well as Deirdre[63] try to lead their life with as much dignity as possible knowing time is eventually going to take everything away.
In the Aran Islands as well, death seems to be the other pole around which many lives are revolving, if only because the main occupation of men on the islands is fishing, which was extremely dangerous at the time, especially in the Atlantic Ocean. For instance, Synge’s description of the funeral of an eighty-year-old woman on the island is very impressive and accounts for the idea of an actual community facing this event:
“The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island.” (AA, p.280)
However, these two poles of life are intricately intertwined in reality as well as in a mere grammatical structure, as this extract shows it:
“In Inishmaan one is forced to believe in a sympathy between man and nature, and at this moment when the thunder sounded a death-peal of extraordinary grandeur above the voices of the women, I could see the faces near me stiff and drawn with emotion.” (AA, p.280)
Eventually, we can say that Synge’s use of non-standard means of expressing time allows him to translate into English not only Irish syntactic features, but also a very characteristic conception of time and life.
2) Emphasis and structure
Hiberno-English has been described as probably “the most flexible and the most expressive” of all varieties of English. (Bliss, A.J.(1971; 49)). By this phrase, Alan J. Bliss means that most nuances and emphasis effects are integrated in the structure of the sentence, instead of mostly relying on appropriate stress and intonation in standard English[64].
This is indeed one of the great differences between Standard English and Hiberno-English, and it is once again mostly due to the fact that emphasis is included in sentence structure in Irish as well. [65]So in this section it will be interesting to focus on the Irish origins of many HE grammatical structures related to emphasis. It will enable us to understand the importance Synge gave to the “substratum” of Hiberno-English – that is the Irish language and its syntactic structure.
a) “It’s the truth they’re saying” – Focusing devices
Topicalisation is one of the most frequent features to be found in Synge’s plays. However, this way of focusing on certain elements is very different from the standard idiomatic turns of expressions which do not allow an alternative order of elements, such as:
Here he is.
Up jumped the rabbit.
The only standard equivalent to this Hiberno-English way of topicalising an element of the sentence would be an intonational emphasis, but by no means a change in the organisation of the sentence itself.
What happens is that a clause-element goes from a neutral position in the verb phrase to a marked position at the very beginning of a clause, but the syntactic relations in the clause remains unchanged. However, the rest of the clause is “thrown into relative form” (Christian Brothers (1902), quoted from Sullivan, J.P. (1976)) It can be used to specify an element in the clause, but also to underline the contrastiveness of this element, or to confirm or reassert something. Emphatic topicalisation is also possible, but it is less common.
Hiberno-English speakers, and all the more so Synge’s characters, would be able to highlight almost any element of the sentence with this structural possibility.
From the viewpoint of Standard English, the Hiberno-English phenomenon may be expressed as:
Intonational Emphasis (English) ( N1 + V1 + X + S (Hiberno-English),
Where N1 ( “it”
V1 ( “is”
X ( (unit to receive emphasis)
S ( (relativized form of the utterance)
Here are several different examples taken from the Playboy of the Western World:
Is it yourself is fearing the polis? – Emphasis on the subject / Are you fearing the polis?
It’s your own the fault is. – Emphasis on the attribute / The fault is yours.
I’m told, in the big world, it’s bloody knives they use. – Emphasis on the direct object / they use bloody knives.
It’s making game of me you were. – Emphasis on the verb / You were making game of me.
Isn’t it long the nights are now? – Emphasis on the adjective / Are the nights long now?
It’s there yourself and me will have great times whispering and hugging. – Emphasis on adverbial phrases / You and I will have great times whispering and hugging there.
Is it often the polis do be coming into this place, master of the house? / Do the polis come often into this place?
It was with a loy the like of that I killed my father. – Emphasis on the prepositional phrase / I killed my father with a loy the like of that.
This feature can basically be considered as a direct translation from Irish. Indeed, Irish always “expresses emphasis by grammatical means rather than by intonation” (Greene (1966), quoted from Sullivan, J.P. (1976)). We have already seen that Irish is a VSO language, which means that the position of the verb in the Irish sentence is at the very beginning. Thus, when a different unit of the sentence needs to be emphasized, it is placed immediately after an unemphatic impersonal verb – the Gaelic verb “is” – and the rest of the sentence takes up a relative form. The Christian Brothers grammar (Quoted from Sullivan, J.P. (1976)) lists the various possible emphatic forms of the Irish sentence “Chuaigh Seán go Doire inné” (John went to Derry yesterday), and we can easily see how close to these structures (“is” + emphasized unit + relativized form of S) Hiberno-English gets.
Is é Seán a chuaigh go Doire inné. / It was John who went to Derry yesterday.
Is go Doire a chuaigh Seán inné. / It was to Derry that John went yesterday.
Nach inné a chuaigh Seán go Doire. / Was it not yesterday that John went to Derry?
Pronominal emphasis – Reflexive pronouns
But this idea of using syntactic means rather than intonation to express emphasis is not restricted to what we have just seen about focusing devices. A similar process takes place when it comes to pronominal emphasis. Indeed, in Hiberno-English, reflexive and emphatic pronouns are totally identified, whereas they are not in Standard English.
In Standard English, a reflexive pronoun is used when there is another nominal element in the same clause or sentence with which it stands in coreferential relation. Filpulla calls these pronouns “bound reflexive pronouns”; because they can’t refer to themselves, there has to be an anaphoric relation in the sentence for it to be grammatically correct. Moreover, both elements have to be governed by the same verb in the sentence.[66]
Ex: Poirot believes himself to be the best. In this sentence, “Poirot” is the antecedent of “himself”, and these two elements are both governed by the main verb of the sentence.
In Hiberno-English, on the contrary, reflexive pronouns can be “unbound” – that is they can be used on their own, without any reference to an antecedent in the same sentence:
(emphasized) personal pronoun (English) ( reflexive pronouns (Hiberno-English)
Ex: Poirot believes that himself is the best. In this case, “himself” is not governed by “believe”; it has no antecedent and thus can be said to be unbound. We can note that this construction put the emphasis on the subordinate clause.
This kind of construction is often used with reference to the persons who are the topics of the conversation and more generally to put the emphasis on one of the actors in the sentence. “The reflexive pronoun does not necessarily refer to the subject but is a mere intensifier of the pronoun.” (Hartog (1909), quoted from Sullivan, J.P. (1976; 100)).
This use of pronouns can also involve a certain social dimension, an idea of politeness and respect.
It has almost become an institutionalised feature of Hiberno-English, and there are several occurrences of it in Synge’s plays. Here are a few examples taken from Deirdre of the Sorrows, which is especially interesting as far as the use of pronouns are concerned, for there is an actual social hierarchy between the different characters of the ancient Saga.
It was yourself brought Naisi and his brothers to a grave was scooped by treachery. / pronoun used as a subject.
I’m in dread Conchubor wants to have yourself and to kill Naisi. / pronoun used as a direct object.
That is a question will give small pleasure to yourself or me. / pronoun used as an indirect object. This last example is also interesting in term of social context, for these words are Lavarcham’s (Deirdre’s nurse), who is talking to Conchubor, the king of Ulster. Thus, she has almost no other choice but to address him with a reflexive pronoun denoting respect.
Once again, this recurrent feature in Hiberno-English as well as in Synge’s works can be considered as a direct translation from the Irish language, which uses the same grammatical formative to mark both reflexive and emphatic pronouns. According to the Christian brothers grammar (quoted from Sullivan, J.P. (1976; 93)), the suffix fein may be added to personal pronouns to form the reflexive pronouns, but may also be used to mark emphasis. Thus Hiberno-English speakers have basically retained this Gaelic mode of expressing emphasis, and have come to use the English pronominal equivalents of fein in constructions where they denote emphatic and non reflexive pronouns.[67]
c) Definite article
But Hiberno-English is not only a variety of English where elements of reality are emphasized in the Irish way; we could go as far as saying that Hiberno-English speakers derive from Irish a completely different way of referring to reality in general.
In this respect, let us have a look at Hiberno-English noun phrases, and especially at the way determinants are used. Indeed, a common noun without any determinant can only be said to refer to the notion it is describing, and not to anything concrete.
It is most interesting to notice that Hiberno-English consistently displays the definite article in structures where Standard English would have ø, a, or occasionally a possessive article. This fact is common to many different varieties of English, but the list of the different uses of “the” is much longer in Hiberno-English than in any other variety (Filpulla, Markku (1999))
In Standard English, the definite article is used to refer to a general class of nouns, such as “the women”. In that case, “the” helps presenting this class as a definite group and can often help opposing this group to another one – the women vs the men for instance. It is true that the opposition is still present if “the” is removed, but the fact of highlighting the existence of a group as a discrete group strengthens this very meaning. In terms of particular nouns, “the” is a sign of anaphora in the sentence. This means that the noun which is introduced by “the” has already been mentioned in the text (ex: Bill was making a card castle. The card castle was blown down.), or that its existence can be easily inferred, either by the situation or by a reliance on common knowledge. (ex: Pass me the salt, please!)
In Hiberno-English on the contrary, there is no such notion as anaphora as far as definite articles are concerned. Interestingly enough, we had already seen a similar situation when concentrating on reflexive pronouns[68]. Anaphora does not seem to be taken into account in Hiberno-English grammar in general.
Furthermore, the definite article is used in Hiberno-English when referring to:[69]
- Plural count nouns with generic reference (ø)
Ex: The people were very much afraid of the diseases.
- Non-count abstract nouns / concrete mass nouns (ø)
Ex: the goodness; the money
- Quantifying expressions (ø)
Ex: the both of them
- Names of languages, branches of learning (ø)
- Physical sensations and states / diseases and ailments (ø)
- Names of social and domestic institutions / geographical areas and localities (ø)
- Parts of the body / family (possessive pronouns)
- Parts of the day, week or year (ø)
Ex: In the summer, twice the week…
- _ing verb forms referring to activities (ø)
Ex: The labouring, the hurling…
- Names of persons with an adjective or a title (ø)
(Filpulla, Markku (1999))
All these examples show us once again, as we had already noticed it in the section concerning the use of perfect tenses, that Hiberno-English is more concerned by concreteness than Standard English. Indeed, to say “I have the cancer” and not “I have cancer” is to highlight this disease in a very different way. When you use the definite article in such a sentence, you no longer refer to the notion of “cancer” in general, but you almost personify the disease, and put more emphasis on it in your sentence. And one may suggest that to go from a notion to a personification is to rely on a more concrete way of expressing reality.
Here is now an example taken from Synge’s Playboy, which will help us understand more concretely how far it is possible to assert that Hiberno-English displays a structurally different way of referring to reality.
“PEGEEN: If I am a queer daughter, it’s a queer father’d be leaving me lonesome these twelve hours of dark, and I piling the turf with the dogs barking and the calves mooing, and my own teeth rattling with the fear.” (p.116)
This scene takes place at the beginning of the play, when Pegeen tells her father, who is about to leave for Kate Cassidy’s wake, that she is afraid to spend the night all by herself in the shebeen.
When Pegeen talks about “piling the turf”, she either means “piling turf onto the fire, or stacking turf outside the house” (The Playboy of the Western World, in Synge, J.M.(1999; 169)). Thus she is referring to a common activity in the West of Ireland at the time, and she uses the definite article “the” to determine a concrete mass noun such as “turf”. This gives it a very concrete quality, for we either feel that we know which turf she is talking about, or that there is a definite quantity of turf to be piled.
Then she explains she is afraid to it with “the dogs barking and the calves mooing”. She could be using “the” as an anaphor marker, assuming everybody knows she and her father own dogs and calves. However, as she is living in a shebeen, (so that her father is a bar tender), it is more likely that she is talking about the barking if dogs and the mooing of calves in general. Moreover, she alludes to the night to come, so it seems doubtful that she will be able to recognize the dogs and the calves she is talking about. The most logical explanation is that in that case, “dogs” and “calves” are plural count nouns with generic reference, and that Pegeen’s use of a definite article gives these nouns a more personal and concrete identity than the English ø would have.
Finally, she is so afraid that she talks about her “own teeth rattling with the fear”. Here, clearly, “fear” refers to a feeling, almost to an ailment, and a Standard English speaker would necessarily have used a ø instead of “the” in this case. Pegeen’s way of referring to fear almost presents us with an allegory of fear, because of this definite article highlighting the existence of this feeling and apparently assuming that it is familiar to all the characters in the scene.
Once again, this characteristic feature of Hiberno-English relies very much on the Irish use of determinants. Irish, “like Greek and Hebrew, has only one article, the definite” (Greene (1966), quoted from Sullivan, J.P. (1976; 113)), and the most of the various grammatical conditions under which it is used are similar to those alluded to a while ago, about Hiberno-English. It seems then more than obvious that Hiberno-English speakers have retained the Irish syntactic requirements governing the appearance of the article, and that Synge is very accurately including this feature in his representation of Hiberno-English as a glimpse of Irish thoughts and culture.
3) “And”
This small and apparently most insignificant word, because of the many functions it has in Hiberno-English, can in fact give us a wonderful insight into the relation between this variety of English and Irish culture.
a) “And I a proven hero in the end of all” (The Playboy of the Western World, p.163)
“Leave me go, will you? When I’m thinking of my luck to-day, for she will wed me surely, and I a proven hero in the end of all.”
As Christie’s words proudly suggest it, in HE, it is quite common to use “and” to introduce a subordinate clause instead of a coordinate clause[70]. This is meant to express a temporal relation of simultaneity or a relation of casual or concessive dependence between the actions or states of affairs in the two clauses connected by “and”. (Filpulla, Markku (1999)). This subordinate relation is usually equivalent to the standard use of while, although, when, or of a relative clause:
- Conjunction1 + noun + aux + pres.part. (English) ( conjuntion2 + pronoun + pres.part. (Hiberno-English)
- {When / since / as / etc…} + aux (English) ( “and” + ø (Hiberno-English)
Here are some examples taken from Deirdre and the Playboy:
What is there to hurt you, and you a fine, hardy girl would knock the head of any two men in the place?
If they are itself, you’ve heard it these days, I’m thinking, and you walking the world telling out your story to young girls and old.
Walk on from this, for I’ll not have him tormented, and he destroyed travelling since Tuesday was a week.
(The Playboy of the Western World)
If it wasn’t you’d do well to keep a check on her, and she turning a woman that was meant to be a queen.
If it’s the truth I’ll tell you, she’s growing too wise to marry a big king and she a score only.
It’s too much to have me twoscore and two weeks waiting for your voice in Emain, and you in this place growing lonesome and shy.
(Deirdre of the Sorrows)
To understand this non-standard use of “and” in Hiberno-English, we have to look back at Irish grammar once again. The Gaelic utilization of the simple conjunction “agus” is much more extensive than that of the corresponding “and” in English. (Greene (1966), in Sullivan, J.P. (1976; 136)). Subordinate sentences beginning with “when”, “as”, “considering”, etc. are often idiomatically rendered in Irish by the grammatical structure “agus + subject of the subordinate clause + ag + verbal noun[71]” (Henry (1904), in Sullivan, J.P. (1976; 136)). In these constructions the verb “to be” is often omitted, as in these following examples:
Do chonac é agus me ag teacht amach. ( I saw him and I coming out. (literally: at coming out)
Bhíodar ina suí i dteannta a chéile agus iad ag caint. ( They were sitting together and they talking. (literally: at talking)
Do bhuail sé uman agus mé ar mo shlí abhaile. ( I met him and I on my way home.
(Henry (1904) quoted from Sullivan, J.P. (1976; 136))
So this grammatical structure has once again been almost literally translated into English, and is widely used in Ireland, and all the more so in Synge’s plays.
Enumerations
But even a very common and standard way of using the conjunction “and” can sound particularly Irish in the mouths of Synge’s characters, and help us learn a bit more about Irish culture.
“But this talk brought me ease, and I see we’re as happy as the leaves on the young trees, and we’ll be so ever and always, though we’d live the age of the eagle and the salmon and the crow of Britain.” (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.198)
In this extract, Naisi is telling Fergus how much he trusts his love for Deirdre. His words sound highly poetic and solemn, because of the intricate link between the lovers and the natural elements surrounding them (“young trees” “eagle”, “salmon”…), but also simply because of the structure of his sentence. The recurrent use of coordination gives it a highly rhythmical quality, and illustrates his conception of never-ending love, for this description of happiness sounds as if it could go on forever[72].
This is one of the many examples of how a simple conjunction can underline the tragic and heroic quality of the stories Synge is presenting in his plays.
The succession of “and” can take up a very tragic quality, as in Lavarcham’s lament, which closes Deirdre of the Sorrows:
“Deirdre is dead, and Naisi is dead; and if the oaks and stars could die for sorrow, it’s a dark sky and a dark and naked earth we’d have this night in Emain.” (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p. 217)
This literally sounds like a eulogy, a keen, just like the ones Synge had the opportunity to hear on the Aran Islands. We can sense the dignity and respect for the dead and their love in the many parallelisms present in the sentence: “Deidre is dead /and/ Naisi is dead.”
“the oaks /and/ stars” // “a dark sky /and/ a dark and naked earth”. Once again, we can notice how close to nature the characters seem to be, in their lives as well as in their deaths.
But the conjunction can also give an actual feeling of heroism, as in this passage taken from the Playboy of the Western World:
“He gave a drive with the scythe, and I gave a leap to the east. Then I turned around with my back to the north, and I hit a blow on the ridge of his skull, laid him stretched out, and he split to the knob of his gullet.” (The Playboy of the western World, p.135)[73]
Here the use of the conjunction of coordination gives more reality to Christie’s fictitious narration of the murder of his father. He manages to picture himself temporally as well as spatially (“to the north”, “to the east”[74]). In the first sentence, the second clause, introduced by “and”, sounds like a direct reaction to the aggression described in the first clause. Likewise, in the second sentence, we can almost see Christie’s rotational movement, of which the blow seems to be a logical consequence, thanks again to the use of coordination to link these two actions.
But this prodigal use of the “and” conjunction can also lead to mock-heroism, as is often the case in the Playboy of the Western World. According to Declan Kiberd, this is to be linked with what he calls “alliterative romance”, relying on a quotation about the Irish language by O’Grady (1881) (Kiberd, D. (1993)):
“The genius of the Gaelic seems to impel alliteration, and its numerous synonyms invite to repetitions which, properly used, strengthen, and, being abused, degenerate into jingle and tautology. The Irish speakers of the present day very commonly, for emphasis’s sake, use two synonymous adjectives instead of one with an adverb, and these they almost invariably choose so that there shall be alliteration.”
In the Playboy, there are plenty of these alliterations, linked by a “and” conjunction:
“powers and potentates”, “cot and cabin”, “prayers and paters”
“cup and cake”, “wealth and wisdom”, “next and nighest”, “wakes and weddings”
In the Aran Islands as well, Synge, who was adept at spotting nuances in the speech of islanders, notices this speaking habit in one of the women’s speech:
“She plays continual tricks with her Gaelic in the ways girls are fond of, piling up diminutives and repeating adjectives with a humorous scorn of syntax…”
This constant oscillation between heroism and mock heroism certainly goes back to the extravagance and bombast to be found in old Irish romances, as well as to the ancient tradition of storytelling, where exaggeration and lies were the absolute rule.
c) Merging traditions and beliefs
However, Synge’s extensive use of enumerations is not only a tribute to the old sagas, but also a hint at an Irish popular habit of language. Apart from the legendary Irish love for words and exaggeration, let’s have a look at how Irish speakers greet each other.
- Dia dhuit
- Dia’s Muire dhuit[75]
Originally, this could go on and on until people had named half the saints on the calendar. Although in a very ironic way, Shawn Keogh’s idiom (Pegeen’s unfortunate lover) illustrates this Irish habit of naming saints:
“Oh Father Reilly, and the saints of God, where will I hide myself today? Oh, St Joseph and St Patrick and St Brigit and St James, have mercy on me now!” (PWW, p.117)
But here is a maybe more realistic example of greetings in the Playboy:
“MEN: God bless you! The blessing of god on this place!
PEGEEN: God bless you kindly.” (PWW, p.116)
We can see that an adverb (“kindly”) is used to replace the name of Mary, usually added by the second speaker in Irish.
This is but one example of the religious uses of enumeration and of the “and” conjunction. Indeed, it is often linked with words of blessing and cursing, and in most of the situations where there is question of religion in general.
Here are some of the words of blessing and swearing to be found in the Playboy and in Deirdre:
“May God and Mary and St Patrick bless you and reward you for your kindly talk.” (PWW, p.130)
“Aid me for to win her, and I’ll be asking God to stretch a hand to you in the hour of death, and lead you short cuts through the Meadows of Ease, and up the floor of heaven to the Footstool of the Virgin’s Son.” (PWW, p.147)
“…but let you take my word and swear Naisi, by the earth, and the sun over it, and the four quarters of the moon, he’ll not go back to Emain…” (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.192)
“By the sun and moon and the whole earth, I wed Deirdre to Naisi. May the air bless you, and water and the wind, the sea, and all the hours of the sun and moon.” (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.192)
All these different blessings have the same structure. However, the things by which the characters swear are very different from one another; in the Playboy, the characters are referring to the catholic God and his saints, whereas in Deirdre[76]they call the names of natural elements surrounding them. So, using the same grammatical devices for such different divinities may be a way for Synge to call attention to the fact that Irish culture is made of paganism as much as Christianity, and that if a true Irish culture is to be recreated, these two elements have to be taken into account. Christie Mahon gives a beautiful illustration of the author’s conviction in one of his poetic fits inspired by Pegeen:
“Amn’t I after seeing the love-light star of knowledge shining from her brow, and hearing words would put you thinking on the Holy Brigit speaking to the infant saints…” (PWW, p.146)[77]
II) A polyphonic conception of vocabulary
However, this analysis of the use of the conjunction “and” seems to suggest that the content of Hiberno-English is as interesting in terms of culture and national identity as its form is. Ala J. Bliss goes as far as asserting that in Synge’s plays, there is a “progressive change of emphasis from syntax to vocabulary”. (Bliss, A.J.(1971)) According to him, the Playboy in particular relies for its effects very largely on its exotic vocabulary, and he states that the relative emphasis as between syntax and vocabulary is the same in Deirdre. Nonetheless, one could say that the norm he establishes (two syntactic features per sentence, and about five “unique[78]” words in ten pages) is based on incomplete data. Indeed, however interesting the notion of “unique words” may be, it is, as we will see, only one category of lexicon used by Synge. Further more, the syntactic table he uses is adapted from Professor Taniguchi’s Studies on the Structure of the Dialogue in Synge’s Plays; the idea of the Japanese researcher was to show the “average number of occurrences per sentence” of a number of selected syntactic features. The problem there is that this technique is not very precise about the mentioned occurrences: for instance, he records 0.00 occurrences of the form do be[79] in the Playboy. But how is it possible to know if this feature even occurs once in the play, with such an approximation?
Thus, it may seem more relevant in this case to say that the importance Synge gives to vocabulary is indeed becoming greater in his later plays, but that this does not allow us to underestimate the influence of syntax in his representation of Hiberno-English[80].
So what is so particular about Synge’s use of vocabulary? Why does it have a function which can be seen as distinct from that of syntax? What does it tell us about Irish culture and the way people lived at the time?
1) The power of lexicon
“Arguably, the most transparent reflection of speakers’ attitudes, values and self-perception is to be found in the lexicon.” (Collins, Peter and Blair, David (2001). “Language and identity in Autralia” (1-16), in English in Australia, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.) This remark is certainly very interesting as far as Synge’s growing emphasis on vocabulary is concerned, for it may be a hint at an evolution in his conception of the dialect itself, and more precisely of the relation between dialect and national identity.
a) Lexicon and culture
Indeed, vocabulary seems to be a more obvious means of expressing national identity and culture through a language. Of course, syntax can be presented as more scientific and systematic, but we have to keep in mind that at Synge’s time, sociolinguistics was not a widespread subject, and that very few people would have been able to give a very reliable account of the grammar of Hiberno-English[81], all the more so as even fewer people actually considered it as a variety of English worth concentrating on. Even to a complete outsider, a word taken from the Irish lexicon is easier to recognize than a syntactic feature[82], and it may also be harder to discard it as “wrong” or sign of the misunderstanding of a rule.
This reliance on vocabulary is also to be found in one of the first books attempting to give a description of Hiberno-English as a variety: Joyce, P. W. [83](1910). English as we speak it in Ireland. Reprinted (1988), Dublin: Wolfhound Press.
In his introduction to the book, Terence Dolan describes it as “full of information, both relevant and irrelevant for HE studies.” He says the book is “presented in a readable, enthusiastic way almost as a continuous narrative, with a strong prejudice in favour of the integrity of both Irish and Anglo-Irish culture. It is at times a dictionary of sayings, an anthology of proverbs, a diary of folklore, as well as being a collection of Hiberno-Englishisms.” (8). Dolan clearly hints at the non-scientific aspect of the book, although he doesn’t discard it as completely anecdotal: “All in all, his book is of great interest for the study of HE, of local history, as well as of general native Irish culture.” (9). Nonetheless, he seems to suggest that Joyce is much more reliable in cultural terms than in scientific linguistic terms. And indeed, if we have a look at the table of contents, we can see that only two of his chapters are in direct relation with syntax[84]; but even if he is able to list many features which have been studied by sociolinguists in a more orderly fashion since, he treats his syntactic material more or less as his lexical material – that is he merely lists and quotes, but does not methodically analyse it. Anyway, the cultural aspect of language seems to be what he was mostly interested in, according to some of his other books: Irish Peasant Songs (1906); Old Celtic Romances, trans from the Gaelic (1879); A Short History of Ireland to 1608 (1893); The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places (1869-1913); and thus his concentrating on vocabulary can be put in direct relation with these goals.
The various sources from which he derives his material are another very interesting point about Joyce, and can help us draw another parallel between him and Synge. They range from his memory (“My own memory is a storehouse both of idiom and vocabulary”, (5)) to his readings and the replies from the correspondents listed at the end of the book (“Eighteen years ago, I wrote a short letter which was inserted in nearly all the Irish newspapers and in very many of those published outside Ireland, announcing my intention to write a book on Anglo-Irish dialect, and asking for collections of dialectical words and phrases. In response to this I received a very large number of communications from all parts of Ireland, even from America, Australia, and New Zealand…” (6)). But one of the most interesting sources is probably the notebook he writes about a few pages later in his preface: “For twenty-years or more I have kept a large note-book lying just at my hand; and whenever any peculiar Irish-English expression, or anything bearing on the subject, came before me – from memory, or from reading, or from hearing it in conversation – down it went in the manuscript. In this way an immense mass of materials was accumulated almost imperceptibly.” (8-9).
Indeed, Synge had the same way of collecting sayings and vocabulary during his life and especially during his stays on the Aran Islands. Kiberd underlines it in his book (Kiberd, D.(1993)), and Synge himself alludes to it in his introduction to the Playboy of the Western World, and his description of sources definitely sounds like Joyce’s in many ways: “I have used only one word or two that I have not heard among the country people of Ireland, or spoken in my on nursery before I could read the newspapers. A certain number of the phrases I employ I have heard also from herds and fishermen along the coast from Kerry to Mayo or from beggar-women and ballad-singers near Dublin…” (The Playboy of the Western World, p.111).
So these two men, who did not exactly have the same aims in their collection of Hiberno-English material[85], had more or less the same method to do so. This may be in favour of the argument that vocabulary and culture are more directly and obviously linked than syntax and culture, although these two elements constituting a language are complementary.
Thus when Synge wrote the Playboy of the Western World, which was meant to be both a praise and an open satire of life in the West of Ireland, he probably decided to rely more on what people would be more likely to react to, that is lexicon. And he was right about the behaviour of his audience, for the riots against the play actually started at the utterance of the word “shift”, and not at the violence implied by the tenth use of “and” as a means of introducing a subordinate clause. The very uproar triggered out by his most famous play is a perfect example of what Collins and Blair meant in their book about English in Australia: lexicon is where language attitudes can be analysed most clearly.
b) Gaelic and lexicon
Synge’s growing emphasis on vocabulary may also be a sign that he understood more clearly the spirit of the Irish language, which he was trying to render in the speech of his characters. Indeed, the Irish language is often described as a concrete, noun-centred medium (Kiberd, D.(1993)).
Thus, for Synge to give more and more importance to lexicon, as opposed to syntactical constructions, is to understand the deep functioning of the Irish language, and to try to preserve its meaning even when expressed in English.
2) A sense of place and time
In his “Synge Glossary” (Bliss, Alan J. (1979)), Bliss divides the non-Standard words and phrases used by Synge into seven classes:
The words directly adopted from the Irish language, the words and phrases literally translated from the Irish, the “mistranslations” from the Irish, the words formerly used in Standard English but now obsolete, those in general dialect use in England and Scotland, those in dialect use in limited areas only, and finally the words and phrases of which no other instances seems to be recorded, and which may have been adopted by Synge.
We will go into details for some of these categories, to see how telling they can be as far as Irish culture is concerned. Indeed, one can assume that it is because of their direct cultural and Irish quality that Synge decided to use them in his plays. In a notebook he wrote:
“No personal originality is enough to make a rich work unique, unless it has also the characteristic of a particular time and locality and the life that is in it.” (quoted from Kiberd, D. (1993; 200))
He aimed at creating an actual sense of place and time through the words of his characters, and this was best achievable thanks to a skilful use of non-Standard lexicon.
a) Language history
First and foremost, some of these categories are testimonies of the history of HE, and especially of its genesis, that is the shift from Irish to English in Ireland[86].
This is true of the words directly adopted from the Irish language, of which here is a complete list: banbh, boreen, cleeve, curagh, Dun, frish-frash, keen, loy, ohone, poteen, Samhain, shebeen, sluigs, sop, streeleen, streeler, thraneen. (Bliss, Alan J. (1979))
Here are a few examples in Synge’s plays, which will help us to give this process a context:
I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of it on the ridge of his skull… (PWW, p.121) / A loy is a long narrow spade. In Irish it is written láighe.
Would you go making murder in this place, and it piled with poteen for our drink to-night? (PWW, p.158) / Poteen means “illicit whiskey”; it is written poitín in Irish, and literally means “little pot”.
She wouldn’t wish to be soiling them, she said, running out and in with mud and grasses on her feet, and it raining since the night of Samhain. (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.179)
Kiberd asserts that he has heard all these words used in the English of the West of Ireland, except for the word “Samhain”. (Kiberd, D.(1993)) Nonetheless, in his glossary, Bliss records this word as Irish, and meaning “All-Hallowtide”. More precisely, “Samhain” is the Celtic festival of the new year, the dead, the north, the element of earth, and the frozen state just prior to rebirth. Samhain begins on the night of the 31st of October, Hallowe’en, and the dawn of 1 November, all Saints Day – the meeting point of pagan and Christian religions.( Synge, J.M.(1999; 33)) This direct use of Irish words seems to be developing an innate tendency of HE, especially at Synge’s time, which was the period just following the main linguistic shift in Ireland. Indeed, P.L. Henry has noted that “in areas where Irish was recently spoken, many Irish words are still used, though not always fully understood.” ((Kiberd, D. (1993; 211)). Once again, this language habit can also help HE speakers to convey nuances almost inexistent in English as far as the structure of a single word is concerned. One can note, for instance, that five words of the complete list bear the suffix _een. (boreen, poteen, shebeen, streeleen and thraleen.) In Irish, this diminutive is generally applied to anything insignificant, small, or of little consequence, and William Burke wrote that “the delicate flavour of contempt conveyed by this suffix cannot be adequately represented in English”. (Quoted from (Kiberd, D.(1993))
We can see this meaning in practice among the characters of the Playboy:
Wouldn’t it be a bitter thing for a girl to go marrying the like of Shaneen, and he a middling kind of scarecrow with no savagery or fine words in him at all? (PWW, p158)
There is almost no need to underline how contemptuous of Shawn Pegeen is, and we can easily see that the suffix put at the end of the character’s name is very fitting to the description Pegeen gives of the young man who wants to marry her: “an middling kind of scarecrow”.
However, in the case of Pegeen, it is most likely that the use of this suffix on the heroine’s name is ironical. Indeed, Pegeen is everything but insignificant in the play, and she even describes herself as being able to frighten most men in the region:
And to think it’s me is talking sweetly, Christy Mahon, and I the fright of seven townlands for my biting tongue. (PWW, p.156)
There is another category of words which is very relevant in terms of history of HE: what Bliss call the mistranslations of Irish. These are words which are used in the English of rural Ireland, but which are based on an original mistranslation from the source-word in Irish. As Bliss explains:
“The connotations of an Irish word rarely coincide with those of any individual English word, so that the correct rendering into English will depend on the context. It seems, however, that at some stage of the acquisition of the English language Irish speakers learnt a “standard” equivalent of each Irish word, which they use irrespectively of the context; and this type of “mistranslation” from Irish is a fruitful source of special Anglo-Irish usage.” (Bliss, Alan J. (1979; 298))
These words draw attention to the process of adopting a new language that Irish people had to go through during the nineteenth century. They did not only try to forget Irish and learn Standard English, they basically tried to translate their culture into the new language they felt the need to speak. This is why these mistranslations cannot simply be analysed as a “wrong” usage made of English vocabulary. They are a clear sign that Irish people were trying to appropriate the new language and to create a new variety which would be a mixture of Irish and English. Even English vocabulary is given an Irish meaning.
Given Synge’s opinion on Irish identity and language, he could hardly but use these words in his representation of HE. Here are a few examples:
If it didn’t, maybe all knows a widow woman has buried her children and destroyed her man is a wiser comrade for a young lad than a girl, the like of you, who’d go helter-skeltering after any man would let you a wink upon the road. (PWW, p.129)
It is I will be your comrade and will stand between you and the great troubles are foretold. (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.182)
In the first example, comrade means “wife”, and in the second, it means “husband”. This is a translation from the Irish céile, which can mean either “comrade”, or “spouse”. We can also note that fear céile means “husband”, and that bean céile means “wife”. So in this case, HE speakers have concentrated their translation on the matrimonial meaning of he word.
… and he a man’d be raging all times, the while he was waking, like a gaudy officer you’d hear cursing and damning and swearing oaths. (PWW, p.126)
Here gaudy means “splendid”. It comes from the Irish gréagach, which literally means “Greek”, but whose other meanings are “splendid” and “gaudy”.
Let you wait to hear me talking, till we’re astray in Erris, when Good Friday’s by, drinking a soup from a well, and making kisses with our wetted mouth…(PWW, p.155)
In this case, astray is employed as “wandering about”, whereas in Irish, the word ar searchán can mean both “astray” and “mistaken”. However, Synge seems to enrich this notion of mistranslation by including it into his artistic representation of HE. Indeed, he obviously decides to exploit the ambiguity between those two meanings of the word; the underlying second meaning of astray is used as a hint of the illusory character of his ambition.
So Synge did not only capture the importance of vocabulary in terms of language history, but he also managed to enrich these characteristics of the HE lexicon by considering them as essential elements of his representation of HE.
b) Direct historical references
In Bliss’s ‘Synge Glossary’, there are also several words which are in direct relation with the historical context of the community staged in Synge’s plays. It would be very difficult to understand some of these for someone who would not be familiar at all with he political and social situation of Ireland at the time. The fact that Synge uses them in his plays is a proof that he wants to create an actual sense of time and place, to give a very realistic setting to his characters.
First of all, there are many words suggesting the presence of the coloniser, and especially the repression associated with the English:
For example, one can sense the presence of the English in the many words Synge’s characters employ to talk about the police, or members of the administration who could be associated, to some extent, to the idea of repression:
Is it often the polis do be coming into this place, master of the house? (PWW, p.119)
According to Bliss, the spelling here is designed to indicate stress on the first syllable, with a long o; this pronunciation is said to be noted by the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (Oxford, 1884-1933) for Ireland and Scotland, and it may come from the Irish póilín, meaning “policeman”. (Bliss, Alan J. (1979))
The peelers is fearing him, and if you’d that lad in the house there isn’t one of them would come smelling around if the dogs itself were lapping poteen from the dung-pit of the yard. (PWW, p.122)
Peeler means “policeman”. They were named like that after Mr. Robert Peel, during whose Secretaryship (1812-18) the Irish constabulary was founded. (Bliss, Alan J. (1979))[87]
Was it bailiffs? […]
Agents? (PWW, p.120)
A bailiff is the manager of a district or an estate. An agent is a deputy or steward, who collects rent. (Synge, J.M.(1999). Collected Plays and Poems and the Aran Islands. Everyman paperbacks.)
Bliss also records the word Mergency man, which means “occasional bailiff’s officer, recruited for special service, especially for evictions”.
Indeed, evictions were quite frequent among the poor peasants who were not always able to pay their rent. In the Aran Islands, Synge describes attempts of eviction on the islands, (“Two recent attempts to carry out evictions on the island came to nothing, for each time a sudden storm rose, by, ot os said, the power of a native witch, when the steamer was approaching, and made it impossible to land.”, AI, p.291)and underlines the contrast between the islanders and the police force trying to drive an old woman away from “the hearth she had brooded on for thirty years”: “…these mechanical police, with the common place agents and sheriffs, and the rabble that they hired, represented aptly enough the civilisation for which the homes of the island were to be desecrated.”(AI, p.292)
Sometimes the agents of oppression were only related to the English, if not English themselves:
…and the thousand militia – bad cess to them – walking idle through the land. (PWW, p.116)
Many, surely, with the broken harvest and the ended wars. (PWW, p.118)
These two quotations suggest the idle state of the militia; it was considered as a resented alien force, definitely not friends of the peasantry and doing nothing but annoying or threatening people. The second quotation in particular draws attention to the historical fact that bad harvests often led to rural unrest, especially when this was to be associated with unemployed soldiers returning from a war, who were a potential source of crime. (The first Vagrancy Act of the 1820’s was passed to stop the increase of begging, vagrancy and petty crime due to unemployed soldiers.)[88]
A whole other range of non-standard words and allusions refer to the legal and illegal commerce of alcohol in Ireland at the time. Especially in the Playboy, there are many occurrences of words such as poteen, which means “illicit whiskey”, or to the shebeen of Pegeen’s father, which can either mean a “low wayside public house”, or more commonly an “unlicensed public house”. (Bliss, Alan J. (1979))
If you’d come in better hours, you’d have seen ‘Licensed for the Sale of Beer and Spirits, to be Consumed on the Premises’, written in white letters above the door, and what would the polis want spying on me, and not a decent house within four miles, the way every living Christian is a bona fide, saving one window alone? (PWW, p.119)
A bona fide is a “person living at a distance of more than three miles and therefore entitled under (obsolete) licensing laws to obtain drink as a traveller.” (Bliss, Alan J. (1979))
Likewise, Synge uses the word pot-boy in the Playboy, which has also to do with the commerce of alcohol in Ireland, for it is “a boy or man employed to serve liquor, clean up and help out in the pub.” (Synge, J.M.(1999; 169))
Alcohol, as part of daily life of the peasantry, could also included in proverbs and sayings, and it would be a pity not to mention Old Mahon’s words about his son, to conclude on this lexical field:
And he a poor fellow would get drunk at the smell of a pint. (PWW, p.144)
One last part of lexicon I would like to talk about in this section is that related to diseases. Indeed, Synge’s plays are set in early twentieth century Ireland, where many people were still very aware of the disastrous Famine Years during the 1840s. At that period, around a million people died of hunger and diseases related to it, and another million decided to emigrate.[89]Thus it is more than understandable that the lives of most Irish people, and especially Irish peasants, were still haunted by the spectres of death and diseases and that they had become part of their daily vocabulary.
In the Playboy, Bliss records words such as cholera morbus, meaning “infectious cholera”, or the expression old hen, used to describe “influenza”. This is a literal translation of the Irish expression an tsean-chearc.
The words famished and perished also take up very particular meanings in the English of the West of Ireland, for they both signify that someone died of cold. Famished comes from the Irish préachta, which can mean both “famished” or “dying of cold”, and this use of perished seems to be common to many dialects of English.
Thus we can definitely say that part of the lexicon Synge uses in his plays helps him to build an actual historical background, which is realistic and clearly Irish.
Traditions and sayings
There are also several non-standard words in Synge’s plays which are very informative as to the way of life and traditions of the people of Ireland, if not directly linked with history itself.
First, his characters have a very developed lexical field when it comes to talk about nature and working in the fields. It is not very surprising that one of the plays in which most of these words are to be found is Deirdre of the Sorrows, where most characters, and especially the heroin herself, have a very close relation to nature. (“She has the birds to school her, and the pools of the rivers where she goes bathing in the sun.”, p.179)
Conchubor and his lot will be coming quickly with a torch of bog-deal for her marriage, throwing a light on her three comrades. (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.214)
Here bog-deal means “the wood found buried in a bog”, and bog means “moor”, or “heath”. The latter is to be found in most of the plays. (Bliss, Alan J. (1979))
… putting a curse on the sun that gave them beauty, and on the madder and the stonecrop put red on their cloaks. (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.211)
Madder is a herbaceous climbing plant whose root is used for dying clothes, and stonecrop is a herb that grows on walls and rocks, which is used similarly. (Synge, J.M.(1999; 220))
Bliss records several similar words used to describe plants, such as blackthorn or carrageen. Blackthorn is “the stick made from the blackthorn bush” (Bliss, Alan J. (1979)) We can also note that walking sticks were at the time sign of gentility. Carrageen is a “kind of edible moss, Chondrus crispus”; this name comes from a village four miles west of Waterford.
One last most interesting characteristic of HE lexicon is the way speakers refer to cardinal points to talk about basic directions. Let’s see how Christie uses the points of the compass to describe the “murder” of his father:
He gave a drive with the scythe, and I gave a leap to the east. Then I turned around with my back to the north, and I hit a blow on the edge of his skull, laid him stretched out, and he split to the knob of his gullet. (PWW, p.135)
The directions are always described as if one were facing the east, which means that east is “front”, west is “back”, north means “left” and south means “right”.
This shows how important the earth and the sun (with its link to the east in particular) still were for Irish peasants at the time. (Joyce, P. W. (1910))
Religion is another very important part of the everyday lives of Irish peasants. Thus, there are many words in relation with religious beliefs and traditions in Synge’s plays.
Religious practices are especially alluded to when they are in relation to death, which is almost always part of the plot of the plays. In the Playboy, for example, Michael and his friends go to Kate Cassidy’s wake, which is the night watch of relatives and friends over the body of a dead person, usually implying celebration, drinking and feasting. (Synge, J.M.(1999; 16))
As for the keen, derived from the Irish caoineach, it means “lament” and is usually associated with the women at the funeral. In the Aran Islands, Synge goes as far as describing it as the lament of the whole community, as opposed to the personal mourning of the family for example:
“The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of a woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas. […] There was an irony in these words of atonement and Catholic belief spoken by voices that were still hoarse with the cries of pagan desperation.” (AA, p280)
What is mostly interesting in Synge’s description is that he consciously associates two very different sides of Irish culture – Catholic beliefs and pagan traditions. This is something which is easily noticeable in an analysis of the lexicon used by his characters in his plays.
We have already seen how many different saints a character can name in a single sentence, from St Patrick and St Mary to St Brigit and St Michael[90]. Irish peasants also had many ways of describing the religions practiced at the time. So in the Playboy for example, the “holy missioners making sermons” are protestant evangelists, and the “Luthers” are followers of the Lutherian church.[91] Christie for example, talks about “the sunshine of St Martin’s Day”. St Martin’s feast day is 11 November, Martinmas.
At the same time, many characters still allude to pagan celebrations, usually associated with the turn of seasons, or more generally to nature[92]. We have already mentioned Samhain, but we can also talk about the opposition between the eastern and the western world, two mythical lands situated in Ireland (one in the East and one in the West!).[93]
“Gibberish”
“In writing ‘The Playboy of the Western World’, as in my other plays, I have used one word or two only that I have not heard among the country people of Ireland, or spoken in my own nursery before I could read the newspapers.” (PWW, p.111)
In his preface to the Playboy, Synge asserts he only invented a word or two in the play; he wants to advocate for the realism of his representation of Hiberno-English, and prevent people from associating his characters with the stock Irishmen usually presented in most English-speaking plays.
However, according to Bliss for example, there seem to be much more than just a word or two which are not likely to have been heard among the “people of Ireland”. At first glance, this sounds like an argument against his claim for realism, as far as strict linguistic realism is concerned. Indeed, one would not expect Balzac’s characters, for instance, to use words which have been invented by the author! But so far, it is clear that Synge has mostly been trying to remain faithful to Gaelic culture, and to the spirit living inside the Irish language, which is in many ways much more interesting than a realistic rendition of actual peasant speech. Thus, to some extent, we may be able to consider this habit of creating new words as a faithful representation of the creation of Hiberno-English itself, and of an exciting side of Irish folk culture, which is the art of storytelling.
Gibberish and the genesis of Hiberno-English
There are two different categories of words found in Synge’s plays which can be analysed as being “gibberish”. First of all, it is not always easy to determine if the words which have been literally translated from the Irish are genuinely a part of Hiberno-English usage (such as hag, ill-lucky or playboy), or if they have been translated by Synge for his own special purposes. For instance, Bliss seems very doubtful that the expression on the ridge of the world, which means “in existence and is supposedly a translation from the Irish expression ar dhruim an domhain, has ever been used in natural speech. (Bliss, Alan J. (1979))
But in his glossary, Bliss also records a number of “words and phrases of which no other instance seems to be recorded, and which may have been invented by Synge”, such as: bias crossing roads, curiosity man[94], dreepiness, louty[95], over, pitchpike, puzzle-the-world[96], scorch, straitened waistcoat, string gabble, swiggle[97], tackle, turn of (the) day. (Bliss, Alan J. (1979; 299))
This idea of using words which have no objective existence in any Irish dialect is not purely gratuitous on Synge’s part. It seems that it cannot be separated from his search for a language which may convey an actual sense of place. Indeed, he recalled in his Autobiography:
“I had a strong feeling for the colour of locality which I expressed in syllables of no meaning, but my elders checked me for talking gibberish when I was heard practicing them.” (quoted from Kiberd, D. (1993; 200))
Of course, the reaction of his family can easily remind us of the reaction of a number of Dublin critics hailing his language as “gibberish” when he tried to express his feeling for the colour of peasant locality in dialect.
But more than that, this act of linguistic invention is actually part of his process of creation. Indeed, many of his notebooks contain several of his inventions, and it may be interesting to notice that on the first page of one of them, he wrote “quibblers and querry-heads – JMS”; the fact that he added his initials seems to suggest that he invented the phrase himself. (Kiberd, D. (1993))
Somehow, Synge’s method to create his representation of HE is to be linked with the actual process of creation of the language itself.[98]What happened in the “hedge-schools” can perhaps help us understand why Synge’s characters have a tendency to use unrealistic words in their everyday speech.
Joyce gives a very lively description of what a hedge-school was:
“At the end of the seventeenth century, among many other penal enactments, a law was passed that Catholics were not to be educated”. Thus, for the people who did not accept this deprivation of the means of education, “schools were kept secretly, though at great risk, in remote places – up in the mountain glens or in the middle of bogs. […] and from the common plan of erecting these in the shelter of hedges, walls, and groves, the schools came to be known as “Hedge Schools”.”
After the repeal of the penal laws, schools could be held freely among the Catholic community, and they were usually held by a private schoolteacher who was living on the fees paid by his pupils, but some of them still retained the name of hedge-school. (Joyce, P. W. (1910; 149-150))
But, as we have seen in the first chapter, there remained an important linguistic difficulty. If these children were to survive, they had to speak English, however little knowledge their teacher had of it at first. Thus the teachers, usually being rather familiar with Latin, would try to avoid Anglo-Saxon words, for they were not quite sure of their connotations. Likewise, they would use very few Norman-French words, and try to stick to the Latin ones as often as possible. This is why unnecessary Latinisms such as “potentate” or “retribution”, which actually almost sound like “gibberish”[99], were common place in all types of rural Hiberno-English. Furthermore, the teachers, in absence of any formal diploma, had a tendency to overuse polysyllabic words in order to impress the parents of their pupils and to advertise their mastery – at least relative mastery – of the English language. So even if Synge uses a few Latin words which were not in use at the time, he nonetheless acknowledges a historical fact which is part of the process of creation of Hiberno-English, as one can see in this rhyme quoted by Kiberd:
While words of learned length and rumbling sound
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed and still their wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.
Nonsense and lying
Nonsense can even be said to be genuinely part of Irish oral culture, and especially of the tradition of storytelling. Indeed, it seems that most of the stories would have a nonsensical ending, whatever their subjects. In the Aran Islands, Synge gives an account of it. Describing the storyteller, he writes:
“He is so blind that I can gaze at him without discourtesy, and after a while the expression on his face made me forget to listen, and I lay dreamily in the sunshine letting the antique formulae of the story blend with the suggestions from the prehistoric masonry I lay on. The glow of childish transport that came over him when he reached the nonsense ending – so common in these tales – recalled me to myself, and I listened attentively while he gabbled with delightful haste: ‘They found the path and I found the puddle. They were drowned and I was found. If it’s all one to me to-night, it wasn’t all one to them the next night. Yet, if it wasn’t itself, not a thing did they lose but an old black tooth’ – or some such gibberish.” (AA, p.318)
Here obviously, the words themselves make perfect sense, but it is their association which sounds completely nonsensical. However, there are many similarities between this extract and Synge’s “gibberish”. First, this word appears in the account he gives of the words of the storyteller, and it is associated with “childish transport”; we have seen that Synge’s interest in “gibberish” dates back from his childhood as well. Furthermore, it would have been quite hard for Synge to insert such sentences in one of his plays; so what he did is that he transferred the concept of nonsense, which is inherent to Irish culture, into his representation of Hiberno-English. Thus one could go as far as saying that the words he especially invented for his characters are symbolic of this traditional inclusion of nonsense in the art of storytelling.
This is all the more true as his inventions can sound like lies, as far as the actual lexicon of Hiberno-English is concerned. The fact that his characters use these words may be considered as an attempt at making his audience believe that the “gibberish” genuinely exists in the tongues of the peasants of the West of Ireland. How could we find a better definition of oral storytelling than to describe it as the art of lying? Synge himself makes this association about Old Pat Dirane in the Aran Islands:
“I am leaving in two days, and old Pat Dirane has bidden me good-bye. […] They say on the island that he can tell as many lies as four men: perhaps the stories he has learned have strengthened his imagination.” (AA, p.303)
Likewise, lying is how Christie manages to become a hero in the small Mayo village where he seeks shelter. All the villagers, even Pegeen, are more bedazzled by the “gallous story” of the fake murder of old Mahon, than by the “dirty deed” accomplished by Christie in the last act, when he tries to make his lie come true. He tells it himself to the Mayo people before leaving:
“… you’re after making a mighty man of me this day by the power of a lie” (PWW, p.162)
And it is also by telling stories – which will surely include many lies and exaggerations – that Christie and his father decide to take their revenge on the villagers:
“…my son and myself will be going our own way, and we’ll have great times from this out telling stories of the villainy of Mayo, and the fools is here.” (PWW, p.166)
So in conclusion, Synge’s linguistic creativity is in no ways to be discarded as inaccurate, for it stands as a symbol for an essential part of Irish oral culture: storytelling.
III) A Gaelic tradition endlessly open
This was indeed a great source of inspiration for Synge in his plays; we can see for example the importance he gives to the stories he was told in the Aran Islands, among which lies the anecdote which triggered out the plot of the Playboy of the Western World, as well as the story at the origin of the Shadow of the Glen. What is mostly interesting is that Synge did not only revere those tales, he also aimed at giving them a new status by reviving them. Indeed, storytelling is first and foremost part of oral culture, and what Synge managed to do, thanks to his relying on Hiberno-English, is to give it an actual literary status, without discarding the oral spirit of its origins. Once again, he tried to play with the antagonism between two cultures, the ‘literary’ and ‘folk’ cultures of Irish people. He managed to present oral storytelling heard on the Aran Islands to a sophisticated Dublin theatre. And by doing this, he also achieved one of the goals announced in the Preface to the Playboy, that is to transform the Ibsenite drama of ideas as much as he transformed the oral materials on which he worked. As Kiberd, one could go as far as saying that to a certain extent, the Playboy is “a problem play in a folk medium. […] In rejecting the temptation to imitate folk forms and in pursuing a more difficult art which sought to wed folk techniques with modern forms of literature, Synge was at one with the most progressive contemporary writers in the Irish language.” (Kiberd, D. (1993; 162))
1) Re-narrating the sagas
a) Sagas and folklore
First of all, let’s have a look at some of the folk traditions and ancient saga stories with which Synge has infused most of his plays.
For example, The Shadow of the Glen can be interpreted as a wake, which seems to be an essential element of the representation of death for Synge. Although it turns out to be an ironic version of it, there are many traditional rules to be found during the play, from the setting of the corpse on a “bed in the kitchen” with sheets hung over it, to the mention of the fact that at no time during the wake should the corpse be left alone, or the idea of playing games of courtship. And maybe it is because the play turns out to be a mock-wake (Dan is in fact not dead, Nora leaves her husband for a tramp, and both had spent the night praising the virtues of Nora’s former lover, instead of her husband’s) that one can say that Synge actually manages to transmute folk beliefs into modern dramatic art.
Likewise, Riders to the Sea is filled with premonitions of catastrophe, so much as to make its tragic ending sound inevitable from an early point in the play. For example, it was considered dangerous for a person not to return a blessing; people on the Aran Islands even thought that compliments to another person were harmful if they were not rounded off by the words “God bless you”. Thus, it is more understandable why Cathleen is so upset with her mother Maurya when she fails to return Bartley’s blessing as he leaves the house:
“Why wouldn’t you give him your blessing and he looking round in the door? Isn’t it sorrow enough is on everyone in this house without your sending him out with an unlucky word behind him and a hard word in his ear?” (Riders to the sea, p.24)
We can see that the idiom of the characters seems to be part of the belief expressed by Cathleen, as if Synge wanted to underline the origin of this belief without sounding patronising or folksy: there are two features which have already been analysed – the use of “and” to introduce a subordinate clause[100], and the HE focusing device using “it is” at the beginning of the sentence to highlight one of its elements[101]. Cathleen also uses the preposition “on” in a very characteristic way; in HE, an action done “to someone’s disadvantage” is said to be done “on him”. This structure is also utilized to place curses “on” people. (Sullivan, J.P.(1976))[102]
The Playboy of the Western World and Deirdre of the Sorrows[103] are even more interesting as far as storytelling and folk beliefs are concerned, for they both manage to combine the stories of the ancient Irish sagas with the idea of folk traditions. Indeed, in these two plays, Synge revives both the art of storytelling and the technique of narrating a myth, partly thanks to his use of language and HE.
In the Playboy for instance, the art of storytelling is of course revived in the character of Christie Mahon, the “playboy” turned into a “mighty man by the power of a lie”. In the way he uses language, we can sense his skills as a storyteller growing as the play progresses.
As a genuine storyteller would, he manages to transform the raw material of the opening scene into a tale which takes heroic proportions at the beginning of Act 2 (Price, A. (1961)):
Don’t strike me. I killed my father, Tuesday was a week, for doing the like of that. (p.121)
( I hit a blow on the ridge of his skull, laid him stretched out, and he split to the knob of his gullet. (p.135)[104]
He becomes a hero by creating a legend for himself, through the power of his own words.
But by playing with Christie’s image, Synge also manages to recreate the ancient technique of narrating a myth. Indeed, The Playboy’s atmosphere is mostly that of mock heroism, and Christie can easily appear as a distorted image of the Gaelic hero Cuchulain. Thus, Synge himself could pass for the satirist Bicriu, who is believed to be at the origin of the story of the Ulster cycle, for it was he who played with his characters, making fun if them whenever he wanted and consciously stirring them in and out of trouble. (Kiberd, D. (1993)) The fact that he uses Hiberno-English to develop this distorted image of a heroic myth can be seen as an illustration of the mock heroism in action, for Synge was playing with the down-to-earth connotations of the dialect, compared to the heroic aura of the Irish language in regards to the narration of sagas, but it is also a hint at the definition of storytelling, which could not exist but among the people and their language. Thus, to give an artistic representation of Irish folk traditions, the most appropriate language was that of Irish people – Hiberno-English.
b) Mirror images
In terms of representation of sagas and folks beliefs, one could say that The Playboy of the Western World and Deirdre of the Sorrows are mirror images of one another, and underline two different and original ways of illustrating an ancient myth.
Indeed, as we have just seen it, the Playboy presents us commoners echoing a reversed mythical situation. On the contrary, in Deirdre, we are presented with a genuine version of the myth, but the kings and queens of the Ulster Cycle are actually living like commoners, and having a very close relation to nature.
In both plays, Synge chose to have his characters speak in Hiberno-English. This has been seen as a major flaw of his plays, by critics such as Bourgeois, for instance:
“All his characters, despite geographical differences, talk alike” (Quoted from Bliss, Alan J. (1971)) To this quotation one could easily add “despite of historical and social differences”, as far as the Playboy and Deirdre are concerned. However, Bliss suggests that Synge’s dialect is not as uniform as Bourgeois claims it. For him it is mostly a matter of chronological progression. (Bliss, Alan J. (1971)) This is indeed true insofar as a feature such as the omission of the relative pronoun[105] is concerned, for example. It seems to have become a real linguistic obsession for Synge, and Taniguchi records almost no relative pronouns in Deirdre, whereas one could find some of them in his earlier plays: “Synge sparingly uses the relative pronouns, and in Deirdre of the Sorrows, for instance, no relatives are used except in a few cases.”(Taniguchi, J. (1972))
Here are a few examples of this HE feature:
What we all need is a place is safe and priceless in your own like. (Deirdre, p.182)
And he a man would be jealous of a hawk would fly between her and the rising sun. (D, p.178)
My two brothers, I am going with Naisi in Alban and the north to face the troubles are foretold. (D, p.191)
Having said that, Synge also seems to nuance his use of Hiberno-English according to the story he chose to stage, and the Playboy and Deirdre are mirror images of the dialect as well. The same syntactical features are used for both plays, but their effects sound much more subdued in Deirdre, because they are used with a less extravagant frequency. Likewise, we can have a look at what Bliss calls “unique words”, and see how they are used in the idiom of the characters of these two plays. (Bliss, Alan J. (1971))
A “unique word” is a word of which there is only one occurrence in Synge’s works. They constitute a little more than two-thirds of the total 282 words recorded in Bliss’s “Glossary”.
There are 24 occurrences in Deirdre, whereas Bliss recorded 102 unique words in the Playboy. Considering the average number of occurrences per ten pages, we get 5.5 in Deirdre, and 17 occurrences per ten pages in the Playboy, that is three times as many.
Thus, it becomes more obvious now that Synge tried to adapt his use of Hiberno-English to the subject he was dealing with. He managed to demonstrate quite skilfully how the same dialect could represent heroism and tragedy, as well as mock-heroism and comedy, depending on the emphasis put on its characteristic features, and that storytelling and mythical narration could find an adequate modern literary representation thanks to the language of the folk.
2) Myth in idiom
Let’s have a look then at how Synge manages to relate Hiberno-English to the myths and beliefs of Ireland, and how this association successfully works.
a) The tales of the folk
Synge had grasped the close relationship between the heroic world of the ancient legends and the world of Irish peasants among who these stories were still alive. And his use of Hiberno-English to stage the myths of Cuchulain and Deirdre aims at reproducing the way their stories are still told in Ireland. This is his subtle way to suggest that peasants should be considered as the guardians Irish culture, for they preserve it and make it evolve at the same time.
His Deirdre, for example, is not an ethereal image of purity and poetry, as many versions of the story written around the same period turned out to be. Here is an extract of Yeats’s version, followed by an extract of Synge’s Deirdre:
Do you remember that first night in the woods
We lay all night on leaves, and looking up,
When the first grey of the dawn awoke the birds,
Saw leaves above us? You thought that I still slept,
And bending down to kiss me on the eyes,
Found they were open. Bend and kiss me now,
For it may be the last before our death. ( “Deirdre”, in Yeats, W.B. (1974; 68))
It’s well you know it’s this night I’m dreading seven years, and I fine nights watching the heifers walking to the haggard with long shadows on the grass; [with emotion] or the time I’ve been stretched in the sunshine, when I’ve heard Ainnle and Ardan stepping lightly, and they saying: ‘Was there ever the like of Deirdre for a happy and sleepy queen?’ (Deirdre of the Sorrows, in Synge, J.M.(1999;193))
We can notice that whereas Synge’s characters speak in Hiberno-English, Yeats’s Deirdre speaks in Standard English verse, which gives her a certain unreal quality. As Kiberd says, it sounds like the two lovers are “posing for posterity” (Kiberd, D. (1993)) There is a certain sense of frozen insensitivity in the way Deirdre asks Naisi to “bend and kiss her”, thus wishing to re-enact their first night
together.
On the contrary, Synge’s Deirdre has abandoned her mythological verse for a folk-like idiom, and is thus enabled to be poetical without sounding frozen and stilted (‘Was there ever the like of Deidre for a happy and sleepy queen”). Moreover, her vocabulary is more colourful, especially as far as natural elements are concerned (“heifers, haggards, sunshine and shadows on the grass”, vs “ woods, leaves, birds and the first grey of dawn”).
It sounds like Synge had a much more human conception of mythical representation than most of his contemporaries. This is what he writes about his play:
“I am trying a three-act prose Deirdre to change my hand. I am not sure yet whether I shall be able to make a satisfactory play out of it. These saga people, when one comes to deal with them, seem very remote; one does not know what they thought or what they are or where they went to sleep, so one is apt to fall into rhetoric.” (quoted from Kiberd, D. (1993; 191))
To avoid this falling into rhetoric[106], he decided to rely on the folk spirit and on the original version of the myth, and not on versions of versions translated into English and deprived of their coarse atmosphere.
So the robust, personal idiom of his characters is in keeping with the mortal conditions to which they are assigned, and this representation of the heroes of the Ulster cycle is very faithful to the folk rendering of the legends. “Conchubor and the other leaders of the Ulster Cycle were euhemerised gods who had been reduced by the storytellers to the status of mortals.” (Kiberd, D. (1993))
The tone of the play is neither elegiac nor filled with mysticism. On the contrary, the plot is more centred on the idea of a crisis in human relations, and just as Synge seemed eager to concentrate on the daily preoccupations of his characters (“what they thought or what they are or where they went to sleep”), he also decided to suppress all the supernatural interventions in the myth. Indeed, in the original literary version, unlike the versions spread by folk storytellers, the characters’ actions were motivated by a superior and irrational spirit called geis in Irish. Synge’s lovers have free will, and it is their own choice to decide to go back to Ireland and face Conchubor. Thus they become truly tragic and play a genuine part in their own destruction. They are not tricked or forced to return, they deliberately choose to die rather than see their youthful love wither:
There are as many ways to wither love as there are stars in a night of Samhain; but there is no way to keep life, or love with it, a short space only […] It’s for that we’re setting out for Emain Macha when the tide turns on the sand. (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p. 200)
This suppression of a traditional feature of the myth was deliberate on Synge’s part, for he aimed at presenting a myth more human and true to the spirit it had acquired in the spirit of Irish people. However, thanks to his use of language, he also manages to return to the letter of the Book of Leinster, where the first version of Deirdre is to be found in Irish.
b) A return to traditions
In the 12th century Book of Leinster, the story of Deirdre and Naisi is listed among thirteen aitheda[107]. Here the mode of narration is intensely realistic, sometimes almost mercenary. Deirdre is described as a “barbarian woman, rude and passionate in her speech and savage in her actions.” (Kiberd, D. (1993))
As for Lavarcham, Deirdre’s nurse, she is said to be a monstrous woman who can fly across Ireland by means of her strangely twisted legs. The narration ends with the death of the sons of Usna, and Deirdre lives a humiliating life with Naisi’s enemy, Eoghan MacDurtacht. The bleak honesty of the story is even emphasized when the heroine eventually flings herself from Eoghan’s chariot and dashes her brains out on a rock. (Kiberd, D. (1993))
Synge’s plot can seem quite different from the original version, for Deirdre stabs herself and falls in Naisi’s grave at the end of the play. However, the language his characters use helps them get closer to their first representation. Indeed, many critics have said that Synge’s use of Hiberno-English in his Deirdre was incoherent for such an idiom was not fitting for royal characters. But they must have forgotten that the use of idiom was actually part of the Book of Leinster narration. Moreover, the roughness of speech may be a way to make up for the rather tame ending, when compared to the ancient version:
It is not a small thing to be rid of grey hairs, and the loosening of teeth. It was the choice of lives we had in the clear woods, and in the grave we’re safe, surely…
It is most likely that Yeats’s Deirdre would have been offended to have to talk so rudely about grey hairs and loose teeth…
But Synge’s dialect, shared by commoners and noble figures, also echoes the old Gaelic hierarchy, where kings and queens were not so distant from their subjects, and they almost shared their lives and speeches. (Kiberd, D. (1993))
So even if the story itself has evolved over its eight centuries of written existence, Synge has managed, thanks to his use of Hiberno-English, to present ancient Irish myths with their original spirit and atmosphere.
c) Towards universality
Both the idiom and the myths gain something in this interaction. Mythical heroes become more human and credible, and they are no longer stock figures, but actual human beings thrown in a tragic situation. This is skilfully expressed because these kings and queens in the most desperate situations still use the idiom of Irish people, Hiberno-English. So, in a way, isn’t Synge also proving that even a local variety of English is capable to express the universality of a myth? Isn’t it what Deirdre herself suggests in these words?
It was my words without pity gave Naisi a death will have no match until the end of life and time. (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.211-2)
So Synge is definitely infusing his English speech with Irish spirit, from their conception of time to their ancient beliefs and traditions. His representation of Hiberno-English can indeed be linked to “romantic nationalism” insofar as he builds it on his knowledge of Irish past and traditions.
Nonetheless, many elements of his characters’ speech suggest that he does much more than just reviving. He also seems to be inventing a new life for this language, along with a new image for Irish identity, thanks to his skill in exploiting the clash between English and Irish cultures. He had far more innovative and modern ideas than most of his contemporaries, and this is certainly why his representation of Ireland holds a very special place at the beginning of the twentieth century, and why his plays triggered out so many controversies.
Chapter 3
Free speech
A dramatist once wrote a play
About an Irish peasant,
We heard some of the audience say
“The motive is unpleasant.”
Our own opinion, we admit,
Is rather – well – uncertain,
Because we couldn’t hear one bit
From rise to fall of curtain.
(Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 185)).
This is an extract from a poem which was published in the Arrow, a theatre journal, shortly after the first staging of the Playboy of the Western World at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, in January 1907. It refers to the historical riots which took place in the theatre during the eight representations of Synge’s most famous play. Indeed, most people in the audience sounded literally outraged by what they saw and heard, and were shouting so loud that it was hardly possible to understand a single word of what the actors were saying.
Several criticisms about the Playboy, in respect to plot, characterisation, and also about language tend to underline the fact that Synge was not fully considered as belonging to the revivalist movement, although we have seen that his use of language definitely has many characteristics of romantic nationalism. W.B. Yeats seems to sense the situation of his friend, as he writes in a letter to John Quinn on 15 February 1905:
“He will start next time with many enemies but with many admirers. It will be a fight like that over the first realistic plays of Ibsen.” (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 173))
Synge’s representation of Hiberno-English in the Playboy but also in the rest of his plays was not supported by many, and Irish people resented it as an insult towards themselves and their identity. It was mainly taxed of obscenity, blasphemy and misrepresentation of Irish speech by audiences as well as by newspapers and theatre journals.
Here is for example an extract from a review of the play by The Freeman’s Journal[108]:
“A strong protest must, however, be entered against this unmitigated, protracted libel upon Irish peasant men and, worse still, upon Irish peasant girlhood. The blood boils with indignation as one recalls the incidents, expressions, ideas of this squalid, offensive production, incongruously styled a comedy in three acts.” (quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 177-178))
Here all the vigour of the protests against Synge’s play can easily be sensed, with expressions such as “the blood boils with indignation”, and “this unmitigated, protracted libel”. The reviewer underlines the idea of misrepresentation of Irish peasantry, all the more so as it is linked with the obscene and offensive quality of the play.
Of course, as we will see later on, these attacks triggered out a virulent reaction on the part of Synge and his supporters as well, and the whole event lead to what could be described as a cultural and political controversy about Ireland, theatre, and freedom of speech and expression.
It is quite paradoxical that his plays should have experienced such a bad reception by the Irish public if we look back at what the author wrote in the preface to the Playboy for example, where he was describing his choice of plot and use of language as realistic and poetic at the same time. Thus it will be more than interesting to analyse Synge’s representation of speech in the light of the criticisms it triggered out at the time his plays were staged for the first time. First of all because understanding criticisms is probably one of the best ways to prove them wrong, but also because it will help us define more clearly Synge’s position in the national and cultural debate, for it is now obvious that he was neither a supporter of the Empire, nor a true revivalist.
As far as his use and representation of language is concerned, it is rather likely that there is already something post-colonial about Synge’s conception of culture and nationalism, and that he was trying to convey these revolutionary ideas as he designed his literary representation of Hiberno-English.
I) Misrepresentation?
One of the main critics which were made to Synge regarding his use and representation of language is that he is not faithful to real peasant speech, and that the language of his characters is completely unrealistic.
In a satire published in the Saturday Evening Herald at the time of the first staging of the Playboy of the Western World, which presented a dialogue between “Rafferty” and “Casey”, Rafferty declares:
“Misther Yates shows us as we used to be like, an’ Misther Synge shows us as we are not.”
(Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 180))
However restrictive it may be, the distinction which is made between Yeats and Synge is rather interesting, for it suggests that Yeats was much more of a revivalist in the strict sense of the term – that is he was concentrating on representing ancient myths and believed in a transfiguration of Ireland into a new Celtic haven – whereas Synge is presented as a liar, a charlatan as far as a true representation of Irish peasantry is concerned. Nonetheless, both playwrights seem to be discarded as being too remote from Irish people to be able to understand them properly. (“Misther Yates and Misther Synge”)
It is true that the idiom of Synge’s characters definitely has a very Rabelaisian quality, which astonished Irish audiences, who, at the beginning of the twentieth century, could still vividly remember the English representation of the Stage Irishman. It was all the more true that this epiphany of language was in clear contrast with the extreme realism of the settings. Let’s have a look at the stage indications in the first act of the Playboy:
“Country public house or shebeen, very rough and untidy. There is a sort of counter on the right with shelves, holding many bottles and jugs, just seen above it. Empty barrels stand near the counter. At back, a little to left of counter, there is a door into the open air, then, more to the left, there is a settle with shelves above it, with more jugs, and a table beneath a window. At the left there is a large open fire-place, with turf fire, and a small door into inner room. Pegeen, a wild-looking but fine girl, of about twenty, is writing at a table. She is dressed in the usual peasant dress.”
(The Playboy of the Western World, in Synge, J.M.(1999; 113))
Synge gave all possible indications to make sure the setting would actually look like a proper shebeen (he even gives the Irish name), from the position of jugs and barrels to the detail of the “turf fire”, which was used by most families in the West of Ireland. Likewise, it is written that Pegeen should be dressed as a traditional Irish peasant girl.
Thus, according to this realistic setting, it is understandable that audiences should have expected a regular traditional peasant drama, like those which had already been staged by the Abbey at the time. Instead, they were presented with characters speaking a surprisingly colourful and imaginative language, so that most of the people in the audience, and later on many readers of the Playboy in particular, considered Synge’s representation of Hiberno-English unfaithful to Irish reality.
Indeed, many critics, up to a very recent period, were used to discard Synge’s works, and especially his use of language as being totally unrealistic. For instance, St John Ervine accused Synge of being “a faker of peasant speech”, describing his language as “contrived literary stuff, entirely unrepresentative of peasant speech.” (Quoted from Kiberd, D. (1993)) Some people went as far as thinking there was something almost surreal about Synge’s representation of Hiberno-English. Frank Hugh O’Donnell wrote that “it is very clever and often powerful but it is not Irish. It belongs to Syngeland.” (Quoted from Strand, G. (1996))
Even Taniguchi, in his book about the artistic representation of Hiberno-English, devotes a whole part to the language of Synge without really describing it as worthy of analysis, and certainly not as an idiom to be praised for its linguistic value as far as mere realism is concerned. Indeed, he does not consider it as a true testimony of Hiberno-English, for he calls it “Syngese dialect”, meaning that it is the result of a pure invention by the author. (Taniguchi, J. (1972).)
Thus in this section, we will try to analyse the idiom in the light of the contradiction between these criticisms and the linguistic and literary project Synge has defined in his introduction to the Playboy of the Western World; how realistic is his idiom, and what can exactly be defined as realistic in terms of literary representation of a dialect?
1) Synge and Lady Gregory
a) Features and occurrences
First of all, it is very hard to give an informed account of the reality of Synge’s dialect. Indeed, to do this properly, we would need to compare the idiom of the characters in Synge’s plays with actual data dating back from the same period. But it is quite obvious that no tape recordings were made in the 1900s, and even written data dating back from this period is quite difficult to find. Indeed, sociolinguistics was not at all a widespread discipline, and one of the only testimonies we have is Joyce’s book[109]. (Joyce, P. W. (1910)) However, we have already seen that the latter is definitely not as reliable as a contemporary scientifically designed sociolinguistics book on Hiberno-English would be. Indeed, there are no figures concerning the frequency of occurrence of the features he is listing, and no proper analysis concerning the features themselves. So it would be quite experimental and rather misleading to rely on Joyce’s description as far as realism is concerned[110].
As the most scientific method is not available to analyse the realism of Synge’s representation of Hiberno-English, one of the alternative would be to compare his way of representing the dialect with the technique used by another playwright of the same period who worked on the same idiom as Synge – that is Lady Gregory[111]. By comparing their own particular methods of dealing with the representation of language in a play, we may be able to reach a conclusion as to the degree of realism in the language of Synge’s characters.
There are two main criteria to determine the realism of a speech. First of all, the relevance of the features used by the author is very important, and we have already analysed some of them[112]as far as Synge is concerned. A speech can be said to be realistic if it is made of actual linguistic features, which have to be properly used with regards to syntax and context.
But it is also important for these features to be used with a rather reasonable frequency, which remains in keeping with the frequency of the speech of an actual speaker. However, we have just said that it would be really hard to decide on the average frequency of occurrence of a certain feature at Synge’s time, because of the lack of data. So as far as Synge and Lady Gregory are concerned, it would be interesting to concentrate on a few linguistic features and see how each makes use of them.
One well-known Hiberno-English syntactic feature which we have not analysed yet is the non-standard use of relative pronouns. Unlike in Standard English, there is a general avoidance of wh_ forms. Filpulla (Filpulla (1999)) records no occurrence of “whom” in his corpus; “who” is said to be quasi non-existent in rural dialects and “which” is slightly more common, although it is mainly used in urban dialects. “That” is by far the most often occurring relativisation device, but on the whole, the use of relative pronouns in general is rather rare. The most frequent form of relativisation in Hiberno-English is in fact the use of what Filpulla calls “contact clause” – that is the omission of the relative word. (Filpulla (1999)).
In the light of these facts, we can compare two of Lady Gregory’s plays (Kathleen Na Houlihan[113] and Spreading the News) with the Playboy of the Western World and see how each playwright uses relative pronouns.[114]
| |Use of “contact clause” |Use of “that” |Use of “who” and “which” |
|Kathleen Na Houlihan |7.5 % |92.5 % |0 % |
|Spreading the News |12.5 % |87.5 % |0 % |
|The Playboy of the Western World |92 % |5.5 % |2.5 % |
Both playwrights seem to have decided to include this non-standard feature in their representation of Hiberno-English, but each put the emphasis on a different occurrence. For instance, the figures for Kathleen and The Playboy are almost reversed if we consider the use of “that” and of a “contact clause”. Indeed, the dialect of Lady Gregory’s characters sounds much tamer insofar as she concentrates on the use of “that” instead of “who” or “whom”, but she does not go as far as Synge, who definitely decides to suppress relative pronouns as often as he can. This can mean that he was aiming at a very radical representation of Hiberno-English, and Bliss (Bliss, A. (1971)) even describes this quasi systematic suppression of relative pronouns as an obsession. However, Synge still retains a few occurrences of “who” and “which”, as if he wanted his representation to be as comprehensive as possible; his method is here opposed to that of Gregory, who goes for an average dialect much less violent in its choice of features and especially of the frequency of occurrence of these features.
Another interesting point is the use of reflexive pronouns and the difference between bound and unbound pronouns[115]. Synge and Lady Gregory have a very different way of representing this non-standard feature, as the numbers given by Taniguchi (Taniguchi (1972; 28) underline it.[116]
| |Bound reflexive pronouns |Unbound reflexive pronouns |
|LADY GREGORY | | |
|The Wrens |3 |2 |
|Hyacinth Halvey |6 |0 |
|The Travelling Man |1 |2 |
|The Jackdaw |4 |0 |
|The Rising of the Moon |0 |3 |
|The Gaol Gate |1 |1 |
|SYNGE | | |
|Riders to the Sea |0 |6 |
|The Shadow of the Glen |0 |6 |
Once again, the radicalism of Synge’s representation can be noticed, for there is no record of a single bound reflexive pronoun in his two plays, whereas Lady Gregory tries to merge the standard and non-standard uses in her representation. This can of course be one more proof of her idea of an “average” dialect, but the figures also suggest a certain inconsistency. Indeed, she does not really seem to be able to decide whether she wants to put the emphasis on the non-standard feature or not. For instance, in Hyacinth Halvey, there are no unbound pronouns, whereas in the Rising of the Moon, there are no bound relative pronouns. Likewise, in the Wrens, there are more bound than unbound pronouns, and it is the contrary in the Travelling Man. Eventually, the Gaol Gate presents us with an equal number of occurrences for each feature. Moreover, this practice has been described as unnecessary by Hail and Farewell (quoted from Taniguchi (1972; 28)): “She writes ‘he, himself’ instead of omitting the parasitical ‘he’ as she might very well have done.” This may be explainable by the fact that Synge had a much more precise knowledge of Hiberno-English and of Irish than Lady Gregory had, but it must also be because they had different conceptions of the representation of a dialect.
Lady Gregory was basically using was she considered as “Kiltartan dialect”, which was used by the people who lived where she grew up and lived. Elizabeth Coxhead (Coxhead, E. (1969)) describes it as a “delicious trot and lilt of its own”. In his biography, Colm Tóibín (Tóibín, C. (2002; 40) admits that: “She translated it[117] into the English of Kiltartan, she said, the area around Coole, but much of it, in fact, is quite plain and natural, almost neutral in its tone.”
She was probably more realistic than Synge in her representation insofar as she tried to remain moderate in every respect; the frequency of occurrence of non–standard features is not surprising high, and she does not try to widen her range of Hiberno-English features as much as possible. However, this leads to a rather neutral, if not sometimes awkward portrayal of Hiberno-English.
On the contrary, Synge manages to design a language which is rough and colourful, by underlining every non-standard feature, often without any regards to the average frequency of occurrence of this very feature. As W.B. Yeats said, he loved all “that has edge, that is salt in the mouth, that is rough to the hand, that heightens the emotions by contest, that strings into life the sense of tragedy”. (Quoted from Price, A. (1961)). He is clearly only relying on the notion of realism as far as the choice of linguistic features is concerned, but the result reads rather like a drastic concentration of Hiberno-English than like a simple representation of it. “Synge made a selection from the idiom of the peasants and created a language authentic and credible and more exact, compact and beautiful than the actual utterance of anyone.” (Bliss, A. (1971))
So, in terms of realism, we can say that Strong is right to write: “The language of Synge’s plays is not the language of the peasants, insomuch as no peasant talks consistently as Synge’s characters talk; it is the language of peasants, in that it contains no word or phrase a peasant did not actually use.” (Quoted from Bliss, A. (1971)).
In a way, he was as right as his critics as far as realism was concerned, because they did not have the same definition of the word. He was aiming at the essence of peasant speech, whereas his critics were looking for an actual transcription of Hiberno-English.
b) Representations
Synge’s radicalism as opposed Lady Gregory’s moderation are also quite noticeable in the very themes of their plays as well as in their goals as writers, so that in a way, the representation of language is telling as to the whole literary and cultural project of the author.
Of course, at first glance, their plays have many things in common. Their characters are both peasants living in the West of Ireland, and they speak in dialect. “Rejecting the traditional double plot structure that had consigned the rustics, or the ‘downstairs’ people, to comic relief, they placed the historically marginalized figures of Irish country people in the centre of the new drama.” (McDiarmuid and Waters, (1995; XXX))So one could refer to their plays as peasant dramas, but it would be without sensing all the differences and the nuances between these two playwrights.
Although they actually take place in rural Ireland, it is not possible to describe Synge’s plays as mere peasant drama, because of all the irony and the tragedy with which they are infused. On the contrary, Lady Gregory’s plots are much more straightforward, especially as far as nationalism and society are concerned. Her comedies are witty and cheerful, and plays like Kathleen na Houlihan read like an allegorical textbook for nationalists to be.
Let’s compare for instance The Playboy of the Western World and Spreading the News.
In the former, Christie Mahon becomes a hero in a Mayo village because of a voluntary lie – that he has killed his father with a shovel – and his transformation allows him to get away from the angry villagers and to remain the “playboy” in the end. So there is an actual reflection on the power of history and narration, and on the dangers of worship, as well as a vitriolic representation of the idealised West of Ireland.
Spreading the News is much more traditional in its approach of life in the West, and in its conception of comedy. The pattern of fictitious murder is to be found here as well, but the whole story originates in a casual misunderstanding at a fair. As a result, the innocent Barley Fallon is accused of having murdered a neighbour, and run off to America with his wife. Contrary to Christie he doesn’t get away in the end, and is taken to prison with the man he is supposed to have murdered. Basically, in the play, the only existing criticisms are aimed at the English presence in Ireland, which is for example personified by the character of the magistrate, and they are often more awkward and obvious than ironic.
The goals of these two writers were also quite different, and totally in keeping with the way they chose to represent Hiberno-English.
Lady Gregory had always been very influenced by folklore, and for Henry Glassie, for instance, she is “one of the first great folklorists”. (McDiarmid and Waters, (1995; XXV)) Her point was to give value to the stories, to the minds and imagination of Irish people. But she did it with this very same moderation[118] we were talking about before, for she thought that this was the best way to give a higher standard to Irish traditions and culture.
In the light of this, we can see that Lady Gregory’s and Synge’s ways of dealing with the contradictions in Irish culture are very similar to their conceptions of representation of language. “Synge’s was in truth a carrion vision, but he was always critically aware of its costs: and this is what distinguishes him ultimately from a writer like Lady Gregory” (Kiberd (1993; XIII)).
What Kiberd means is that Gregory had for example noticed the strange discrepancy between the poverty of the storytellers and the magnificence of their tales. However, being more interested in the folklore itself than in the cultural and social implications of her analysis, she did not push it any further, apparently pleased with the paradox. On the contrary, Synge, who aimed at representing the entire reality of life, made his best to explore and underline the gap between the richness of Irish culture and the poverty underlying it (Kiberd (1993)). For instance, Mary King noticed that most of Synge’s characters are obsessed with the price of everything and that their personalities are often absorbed by the work and striving necessary to acquire or produce these items. Indeed, in Riders to the Sea, for example, a drowned man cannot be identified by his bruised body, but by a dropped stitch in his stocking, which is a mere object.
But Christie Mahon is the best representation of Synge’s concern for the discrepancies underlying Irish culture. Indeed, he has often been described as the image of a Gaelic pagan myth hero emerging from a Christianised, anglicised and impoverished society, whose language intensifies all through his evolution from a subhuman to the “playboy of the western world”. In the Playboy, as well as in his other plays, the representation of a heroic language trying to survive in an impoverished environment can be seen as the metaphor of human vitality striving under the pressure of institutional forces. (Deane, S. (1971))
Eventually, it becomes clearer now that Synge’s radical conception of realism in language is echoed in the way he built his plots as well as in his goals as a playwright.
2) Pronunciation
a) Synge and Sean O’Casey
In terms of realism and accurateness of representation, one could also wonder why Synge did not provide any precisions about the phonetics of Hiberno-English. According to Bliss, the only time Synge used non-standard spellings to denote the pronunciation which was current in Ireland at the time was in his first attempt at writing in Hiberno-English; it was a poem he wrote in 1895 called “Ballad of a pauper”.
This never happened in his plays, except for the word “devil”, spelt “divil” throughout all his plays. Bliss suggests that it is his way of underlining that the fact of using this word was not considered to be an act of profanity for the peasants of the West.
This might be explained, on a purely pragmatic dimension, by the historical evolution of the Abbey theatre. Indeed, when it was first created, English acting troupes were hired to perform in Dublin. But at Synge’s time, the theatre had managed to find Irish troupes; so Synge might have thought that they did not need any phonetic indications because they were supposed to be familiar to the accent of the characters. However, Bliss remarks that except for the “ballad of a pauper”, Synge did not use phonetic representation in his poems either, although he was using Hiberno-English in his translations of Villon’s poems for example. Thus, the explanation seems to be somewhere else, perhaps in what he aimed at representing along with the language itself. Let’s compare his method and motivation with those of another playwright of the time, Sean O’Casey.
Contrary to Synge, Sean O’Casey[119], who wrote his plays in Dublin dialect, decided to make pronunciation part of his representation of Hiberno-English. He did not give any scenic indications about it, but used variations of spelling to render the variations in pronunciation. Here is an extract from one of his early plays, called the Plough and the Stars:
“Fluther They seem to get on well together, all th’ same.
Mrs Gogan Ah, they do, an’ they don’t. The pair o’ them used to be like two turtle doves always billin’ an’ cooin’. You couldn’t come into th’ room but you’d feel, instinctive like, that they’d just been afther kissin’ an’ cuddlin’ each other…. It often made me shiver, for, afther all, there’s kissin’ an’ cuddlin’ in it. But I’m thinkin’ he’s beginnin’ to take things more quietly; the mysthery of havin’ a woman’s a mysthery no longer…. She dhresses herself to keep him with her, but it’s no use – afther one month or two, th’ wondher of a woman wears off.” (The Plough and the Stars, 154)
In this extract, O’Casey underlines two main phonetic features of Hiberno-English.
First of all, the numerous occurrences of _ing verbal forms and their phonetic transcriptions suggest that there is a tendency to replace /ŋ/ by a simple /n/ when this phoneme occurs at the end of a word. This feature has a great influence on the rhythm of the sentence, just as the occurrence of “an’” instead of “and” and of “th’” instead of “the”. It gives Mrs Gogan’s speech a bouncy and dynamic quality.
The playwright also represents an important characteristic of Hiberno-English pronunciation in this passage with words such as “mysthery” or “dhresses”. Indeed, Hiberno-English speakers have a tendency to aspirate alveolar plosives ( /t/ and /d/ being pronounced most of the time [th ] and [dh ]).
Thus, to a certain extent, one could say that O’Casey’s representation is more thorough and more precise than Synge’s, because he included the representation of pronunciation, whereas Synge did not. But is there a reason why Synge decided not to use this side of language in his plays?
b) A different sense of time and place
It seems that each playwright had a different idea of the way they wanted to represent Hiberno-English, and of what they wanted to represent in their plays.
Indeed, O’Casey’s plays are set in Dublin whereas Synge’s characters come from the Irish countryside. Moreover, Synge’s plays take place at the beginning of the twentieth century but the atmosphere is still that of a colonised country – he is trying to take a snapshot of a society which is about to disappear – whereas O’Casey’s Dublin is a city fighting for independence, from 1915 to 1923, where the gap between the labouring class and the middle-class is easy to sense. So in a way, Synge is aiming at describing a whole period of time, whereas O’Casey is concentrating on a particular place at a very precise point in history[120]. This may be one of the reasons why their methods of representing language are different.
Indeed, O’Casey’s characters are all Dubliners, so the community they are part of is much more precise and restricted[121]than that of Synge’s characters[122]. Thus it is not surprising that the former can use a particular accent to stress the fact that his characters belong to the same place and community, whereas the latter decides to focus on syntax and vocabulary, which enable him to present his characters as having a common national identity thanks to their language, and not a regional identity thanks to their accent; for accent is too changeable to help building any kind of national identity – a Dublin accent is very different from a Galway accent, as well as there is a great difference between a London and a Liverpool accent.
3) Representing and transforming
a) Representation and art
In fact, Synge’s conception of realism is in close relation with the way he wanted to represent life in general. When reading the Aran Islands, it becomes rather clear that Synge was more interested in special events in the lives of the islanders, in stories they could tell to him and reflections they had about language than in everyday life activities on the islands, such as fishing for example:
“On our way home he gave me the Catholic theory of the fairies” (AA, 260)
“After Mass this morning an old woman was buried” (AA, 279)
“In the fury of her speech I seem to look again into the strangely reticent temperament of the islanders, and to feel the passionate spirit that expresses itself, at odd moments only, with magnificent words and gestures.” (AA, 294)
So, in a way, as the Aran Islands read like a distillation of special events in the lives of the islanders, the speech of Synge’s characters could be analysed as a distillation of special events of language, especially designed to suit his artistic and cultural purposes throughout the plays. This is probably why his idiom seems to have a rhythm of its own, which was even hard for his actors to understand. Yeats himself testifies of this fact:
“He made word and phrase dance to a very strange rhythm, which will always, till his plays plays have created their own tradition, be difficult to actors who have not learned it from his own lips… The players were puzzled by the rhythm… Perhaps no Irish countryman had ever that exact rhythm in his voice.” (Quoted from Bliss (1971; 44))
But the most acute witness is probably Máire Nic Shiubhlaigh, one of the actresses, who said of Synge’s representation of Hiberno-English:
“At first I found Synge’s lines almost impossible to learn and deliver… It was neither verse nor prose. The speeches had a musical lilt, absolutely different from anything I had heard before. Every passage brought some new difficulty and we would all stumble through the speeches until the tempo in which they were written was finally discovered.” (Quoted from Bliss (1971; 44))
However, if it is true that he cannot be labelled as a true realist, there is no way his representation of Hiberno-English can be discarded as purely unrealistic and fantastical. Indeed, according to Todd Loreto (Loreto (1989)), an accurate transcription of unrehearsed speech – as what would be used as data by a sociolinguist such as Filpulla for instance – lacks in the cohesion and logical development normally required in a play. He describes the language of a character as the “idealisation of the essential characteristics of the speech of a group or an individual.” Thus an idiom suited for a play needs to be more precise and richer than reality and the reason why it does not constitute a complete representation of the actual dialect is because is still remains a literary device. (Sullivan, J.P. (1976))
This can be linked to Aristotle’s conception of the role of the artist, who for him is not confined to what is or what was, but can also concentrate on what should be, because an work of art is a self-contained whole with its own laws. (Price, A. (1961)). Likewise, Synge, Yeats and Lady Gregory greatly admired a dictum by Goethe: “Art is art because it is not nature”, and in a way, one could describe Synge’s attempt at creating his own representation of Hiberno-English an attempt at producing “an art more beautiful than nature”. (Kiberd (1993; 214)). However, he manages to infuse the idiom of his characters with the very spirit of Irish life, and this is probably the best way to advocate for his realism.
“The words chosen are, like the things they express, direct and dreadful, by themselves intolerable to conventional taste, yet full or vital beauty in their truth to their conditions of life, to the characters they depict, and to the sympathies they suggest.” (Irving D. Suss, quoted from Price, A. (1961))
Dialect and language
But the emphasis he puts on the non-standard characteristics of his characters’ language is also very interesting as far as Synge’s definition of Hiberno-English is concerned, for his way of highlighting the non-standard mechanisms of the idiom allows him to give it the status of a proper language.
Let’s take a look at Quin’s attempt at defending Synge’s realism:
“It was of course this quality [or great originality and vividness] that earlier attracted J.M. Synge, and which, in the highly concentrated form in which he used it in the Playboy of the Western World, so astonished his hearers that he found it necessary to devote a whole preface to affirming its very existence in the mouths of Irish speakers of English. No one who reads Dr. Henry’s book need have any further doubt about Synge’s highly-coloured language.” (Quoted from Bliss, A.J. (1971; 44)).
Quin was alluding to a book about one form of Hiberno-English, called an Anglo Irish Dialect of North Roscommon, where Henry analyses many striking features of this idiom. According to Bliss, there is no way the comparison Quin draws between “an anthology of out-of-the-way idioms” and Synge’s plays can advocate for any kind of realism on the part of the playwright. On the contrary, Henry himself suggests that highlighting the structure of a dialect gives it a higher status, because it shows how its inner mechanism is not just due to chance or a “chaos theory” (Kallen), but how there is a linguistic coherence, which allows the dialect to sound like a valid interpretation of language, instead of just an incorrect version of a standard language.
Consequently, Synge’s emphasis on the non-standard elements of the language is far more serious than many critics seem to acknowledge. Indeed, if he is not realistic in terms of frequency of occurrence, he manages to highlight the Irish reality of the dialect, and to demonstrate how such an idiom has a consistent and coherent mechanism of its own.
II) Exploiting gaps
The other major criticism which was made to Synge, especially about the language he used was that his plays were obscene and blasphemous, and thus insulting for Irish people and more particularly for Irish girls. Although it may seem really hard to understand the reaction of the audience nowadays, this was taken very seriously by most Irish people who were familiar to the plays – especially to the Playboy of the Western World – and triggered out a great debate after the play was staged. The “Playboy riots” (Kain, R. M. (1979)) are here to prove that Synge’s position as far as national identity and cultural representation of Ireland are concerned is far from traditional; he can hardly be called a revivalist in the strict sense of the word, as Douglas Hyde can. He is way too critical and inquisitive about the society he is describing to be seen as a playwright of mere peasant dramas designed to glorify the West of Ireland. Once again, W.B. Yeats found the exact words to illustrate this situation in a passage from “the Death of Synge” in the Autobiographies:
“Ireland […] has given itself to apologetics. Every impression of life or impulse of imagination has been examined to see if it helped or hurt the glory of Ireland. A sincere impression of life became at last impossible, all was apologetics. There was no longer an impartial imagination, delighting in whatever is naturally exciting. Synge was the rushing up of the buried fire, an explosion of all that had been denied or refused, a furious impartiality, an indifferent turbulent sorrow.” (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 175-176))
You can sense Synge’s radical view of life in these words.(“rushing up”, “explosion”, “furious impartiality”) For Yeats, there definitely is a gap between him and the nationalists who thought every field in society had to be working for the glory of Ireland; to a certain extent, he opposes Synge’s works to Maud Gonne’s conception of a national literature, in which there is no question of art, but only of politics and of utilitarian literature[123]. She was certainly pleased with plays glorifying the heroic past of Ireland, but forgetting all the details which were not positively arguing for the honour of her country and her countrymen. On the contrary, Synge went for the full reality of life, poetic notes as well as Rabelaisian notes; his aim was not to please the Gaelic League and its supporters, but to build a cultural identity which would not be idealised and unreliable. Not only did he want to underline the coloniser’s shortcomings, but he also wanted his audience to be critical of the way Irish society was evolving. As Synge said himself about the Playboy of the Western World: “a great deal that is in it, and a great deal more that is behind it, is perfectly serious, when looked at in a certain light.” (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 182))
Under the cover of obscenity and blasphemy, this is probably one of the main reasons why this very play triggered out so many violent debates, politics as well as culture-wise. Dublin audiences raved about the insulting content of the play, and its lack of nationalistic feelings, whereas Yeats and the supporters of Synge thought they were advocating for free speech and fighting for the liberty of the new nation against the dictates of “societies, clubs and leagues” (Yeats, quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 179)). Indeed, this is how the debate Yeats organised on the week following the first staging was advertised in Dublin:
“SUPPORT
ABBEY THEATRE
AGAINST ORGANISED OPPOSITION
___________
HE WHO STRIKES AT
FREEDOM OF JUDGEMENT
STRIKES
AT THE SOUL OF THE NATION”
(Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 180))
Dramatic and unilateral as this announcement sounds – Yeas and his followers do not seem to acknowledge any other kind of opposition than organised opposition, thus taking the whole controversy to a very political level – it nonetheless underlines how seriously all the accusations against Synge’s plays were taken at the time.
Because his plays, and more precisely his use of language can be read as an accurate criticism of Irish society in general and not only of the coloniser’s presence, Synge may be considered as being one of the first Irish artists belonging to a post-colonial movement as far as cultural nationalism is concerned. In his article “The National Longing for Form”, Timothy Brennan (Brennan, T. (1990)) explains that post-colonial nationalism implies that authors do not only have to create an aura of national community – mostly because the states have already been bequeathed – but it is also necessary for them to expose the excesses that the people chasing a national identity have created at home. It is true that at the time Synge wrote his plays, Ireland had not reached independence yet, nonetheless, his concern for a true and solid Irish cultural identity seems to suggest that he was looking ahead of his time insofar as he considered that independence was inevitable and thought it was perhaps more important for writers to prepare the future of the new Republic. In this respect he can be compared to later post-colonial writers, such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Salman Rushdie: “His postcolonial vision was that of a man who was not so much working for Irish independence as assuming its inevitability, and seeking to provide in art images and ideas appropriate to a liberated people.” (Kiberd, (1993; XXX))
So we can now study Synge’s representation of Hiberno-English in the light of this definition, as opposed to the accusations which were experienced by his Playboy at the time of its first staging.
1) Debunking stereotypes and ideals
Synge was gifted with a wonderful sense of irony, which he managed to incorporate in his representation of language in his plays. It lead to many criticisms and accusations at the beginning of the twentieth century, for he was definitely expressing a position which was not mainstream. The language of his characters is neither British English, nor the Irish the Gaelic League was trying to revive[124]. It is not only an attempt at bridging gaps thanks to a faithful translation of Irish past into English, but it is also a very skilful exploitation of cultural clashes – between Irish and English cultures as well as within Irish culture – which allows him to prove a master at debunking several theatrical and cultural stereotypes.
a) The Stage Irishman and English traditions
Up until the end of the nineteenth century, Ireland had been more exploited than expressed as far as literature was concerned. Indeed, the audience for most writing was primarily in England, and their expectations had to be satisfied. Thus Irish people were hardly ever presented other than as rude drunkards who could not speak properly or obedient but awkward servants to rich Englishmen. Many writers were relying on what Kiberd calls “paddy-whackery, rollicking notes and stage-Irish effects”. (Kiberd, D. (1995; 136)).
Susan Mitchell, a minor poet who knew native Ireland quite well despite her being a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, wrote an impassioned conclusion to her “Ballad of Dermody and Hynes” to express Irish resentment towards all those years of mockery and misrepresentation:
“We are a pleasant people, the laugh upon our lip
Gives answer back to your laugh in gay good fellowship;
We dance unto your piping, we weep when you want tears;
Wear a clown’s dress to please you, and to your friendly jeers
Turn up a broad fool’s face and wave a flag of green –
But the naked heart of Ireland, who, who has ever seen?”
(Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 174))
In these lines, one can clearly sense the opposition between “we” – Irishmen – and “you” – Englishmen, the former going through a hardship of self-degradation to please the latter in a cruel comedy (the expression “friendly jeers” is quite telling in this respect). Mitchell humorously underlines the ridicule to which most Irish characters were assigned in English plays (“a clown’s dress”, “a broad fool’s face”) as well as the stereotypical description of Ireland (“piping” and “a flag of green”). But her point in this extract is to show how all this representation of Ireland is purely artificial and far from reality, and to suggest that no Englishman ever tried to look behind the masks of foolish clowns Irishmen were forced to wear to please their colonisers. (“the naked heart of Ireland” being of course opposed to the disguises described earlier on in the poem.)
This passage makes it quite understandable why Irish people should be quite sensitive as soon as there was a question of their being represented in a play. Ironically enough, many people accused Synge of re-enacting this English tradition of the stage-Irishman in his representations of his fellow-countrymen, mainly because of the language they were speaking. It had such strength that it intensified the hostility of the first Dublin audiences. On the contrary, it turns out that Synge was proclaiming the death of the stage-Irishman with the words he put in the mouths of his characters, and especially Christie Mahon, the Playboy of the Western World. Synge was well aware of the dangers of what he called the “rollicking note” (Kiberd, (1993; 204)). In 1902, he wrote a review of Seumas MacManus’s Donegal Fairy stories, and criticised the author because he had failed to “bring out the finer notes of the language spoken by the peasants”. (Quoted from Kiberd, (1993; 204)) For him there was a clear-cut difference between comedy and mockery, which could be sensed in the language. Still about MacManus’s book, he said: “the language of several of the stories has a familiarity that is not amusing, while it is without the intimate distinction good humorous writing requires.” (Quoted from Kiberd, (1993; 204)).
A closer analysis of a short extract from a play presenting an example of Irish “brogue” will definitely underline how Synge’s dialect is “a far cry from the stage-Irishman” (Quoted from Kiberd, (1993; 204))
In Dekker’s play called the Honest Whore, part II[125], the Irish character id called Bryan, and he speaks approximately 30 lines out of the 2600 of the whole play. Here is one of his speeches:
“I, do predy, I had rather have thee make a scabbard of my guts, and let out all the Irish puddings in my poore belly, den to be a false knave to de I faat, I will see dyne own sweet face more.” (Quoted from Sullivan, J.P. (1976))
Clearly, the linguistic portrayal of an Irishman underlines the author’s lack of competence in the variety he is trying to parody, more than to represent. Indeed, it is limited to doubtful phonological and lexical levels, thus not even attempting to reach the structure of the language, which must have been totally unknown to Dekker. Moreover, the poor Bryan is also tagged with many expressions which sound awkward and do obviously not belong to Hiberno-English, such as “dyne own sweet face”, or the highly prejudiced “the Irish puddings in my poor belly”.
On the contrary, we have studied Synge’s idiom thoroughly enough to say that he had a very clear knowledge of what Hiberno-English was, as well as a commendable mastery of Irish. He seemed fascinated, if not obsessed by the structure of the dialect he wanted to represent in his plays, and thus he was actually debunking the stereotype of the stage-Irishman by showing that Hiberno-English was not at all an English spoken with a bad accent and a lot of mistakes, but a proper variety of English capable of the greatest poetical effects. To a certain extent, one could suggest that the only tokens of stage-Irishmen on the night of the first staging of the Playboy were the violent people in the audience. Ellen Duncan, in a letter to the Irish Times, noted the “total lack of self-control, the gross ignorance, and childish stupidity of the crowd” that day, which might have been more likely to lead the English to regard such behaviour “a truer example of Irish culture and Irish manners.” (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 181)
But however concerned Synge was with the problem of misrepresentation of Irish people, he could not be called a staunch nationalist, for he did not dismiss English linguistic traditions altogether, and tried to exploit the culture of the colonisers as best he could. At the time the Playboy was staged for the first time, W.G. Fay said that one had to excuse Synge for his play on the ground that he “has had no joy in life”, and attribute his “vigorous speech” to the influence of Elizabethan drama. (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 182-183)). If his contemptuous and rather illogical first remark deserves no attention, he was not completely wrong about Elizabethan influence. First of all because we have already seen that Elizabethan English is what is called a “superstratum” for Hiberno-English, which means that there obviously is a direct linguistic link between these two varieties of English. Furthermore, if Synge’s language can sometimes be compared to Rabelais’s use of words, he is not far from Shakespearian speech either. Far from the Victorian restrictions, there is in Synge’s idiom all the exuberance and joy for words which can be found in Shakespeare’s epiphanies of language. The plays of the Elizabethan writer are always full of linguistic surprises and he is never afraid to shock his audience with bawdy allusions and puns, probably because his was one of the freest periods in England as far as language and wit were concerned.
b) “Cuchulainoid” theatre
Staunch Irish nationalists had designed their own way to fight against the image of this stage-Irishman we have just described. They decided to invent a counterpart to “Paddy”, a hero who was somewhat like a surreal Cuchulain of the twentieth century – tall, strong, manly and handsome, with such heroism in his actions and behaviour that one could imagine he had just come out of an old Irish book of tales and epics: “the unreal, impossibly virtuous, benign Irishman so popular with the Dublin audience”. (Holder, quoted from Strand, G. (1996)) Of course, there was no way such a character could possibly speak anything but a language as pure as his own invented image; so he would rather speak Irish[126] or an ethereal form of English[127] than use the raw material provided by Hiberno-English.
But this was exactly the definition of revivalism Synge despised, and against which he was fighting. He is being very explicit about it in the following exchange of letters between him and his friend Stephen MacKenna[128].
MacKenna thought it was necessary to distinguish between the freedom of the artist and the responsibility of a national theatre:
“You should be free as artist, penseur. Whether you should be played I do not know. I think art has many mansions… I mean vaguely that I like the philistine idea of a purely fantastic unmodern – forgive me if I borrow “unIbsenified” – ideal, breezy-spring-dayish Cuchulainoid […] national theatre. […] I confess I believe in the ripeness and unripeness of nations and class Ireland blessedly unripe. Modern problem even in peasant robes I do not like to see made public property in Ireland yet. Give us our own literary nationhood first, then let us rise to our frieze-clad Ibsens.” (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 174))
In his answer, Synge denied that Irish people were any more innocent than the Norwegians or Germans, with their Ibsen and Sudermann. He underlined that he was not advocating for “morbid, sex-obsessed drama in Ireland” because he thought it was “bad as drama”, but not on the grounds of the Irish having “any particular sanctity, which I utterly deny.” For him, “no drama can grow out of anything other than the fundamental realities of life which are never fantastic, are neither modern nor unmodern and, as I see them, rarely spring-dayish, or breezy or Cuchulainoid.” (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 175))[129]
He was convinced that “squeamishness is a disease, and that Ireland will gain if Irish writers deal manfully, directly and decently with the entire reality of life.” (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 175))
No wonder then his own representations of Irish mythical heroes are steeped into mock-heroism and reality of life. His “Cuchulain” is called Christie Mahon – the Playboy of the Western World[130] – and his language as well as his actions is definitely more ironically down-to-earth but also more poetical than the standards of the Gaelic League would have wished them to be.
For instance, let’s have a look at an extract from the famous love-scene between Pegeen and Christie:
“PEGEEN: And what is it I have, Christy Mahon, to make me fitting entertainment for the like of you, that has such poet’s talking, and such bravery of heart.
CHRISTIE: Isn’t there the light of seven heavens in your heart alone, the way you’ll be an angel’s lamp to me from this out, and I abroad in the darkness, spearing salmons in the Owen or the Carrowmore?” (PWW, p.155)
Pegeen clearly defines Christie as her hero, gifted with a poet’s talk and bravery of heart. And Christie seems to come up to her expectations then, and to fit the role to which he has been assigned, according to his accurate and passionate choice of words.
However, the most poetical metaphors can turn into Rabelaisian insults in the mouth of Old Mahon, describing his son:
“… when it was I did tend him from his hour of birth, and he a dunce never reached his second book, the way he’d come from school, many’s the day, with his legs lamed under him, and he blackened with his beatings like a tinker’s ass.” (PWW, p.150)
The comparison between the “wonder of the western world” and the tinker’s ass is the epitome of Synge’s taste for mock-heroism and irony; as soon as a myth is emerging from the poetic words of his Hiberno-English speaking characters, he manages to debunk it by exploiting the roughness of the dialect, which is also part of its essential definition.
As Kiberd says about the Playboy: “The play is not simply a critic of Yeats’s and Lady Gregory’s Cuchulain, nor is it just another sally against the Gaelic League idealisation of the countryman. It is a challenge to both schools to concede the essential continuity of both traditions and to recognize the savagery, as well as the beauty, which lies in their heart.” (Kiberd (1993; 114))
But this method consisting getting the best of different traditions and being critically aware of their flaws earned Synge many criticisms; as far as the idea of “Cuchulainoid drama” was concerned, nationalists who were “hardening themselves into hypermasculinity, in preparation of an uprising” (Kiberd (1993; XXV)) accused him of “betraying the forces of virile nationalism” to a movement of decadence (Kiberd (1993; XXV)), without understanding that his plays and especially his mischievous myth debunking were aiming at providing a coherent cultural identity for the future nation.
2) Celtic roughness and Victorian chastity
This indictment of Synge’s lack of respect for the image of the Irish hero is in fact just one small part of a bigger opposition between the author of the Playboy and Deirdre and staunch Irish nationalists.
Indeed, it has already been said that revivalism was proving very rigid and selective about which part of Irish culture were worthy to be revived and made popular again. And Synge’s goal was to underline the growing gap between a nineteenth century society in which people were thinking in Irish while speaking English and a twentieth century Ireland where it was more likely that people would end up “thinking Victorian English” even when they were still speaking Irish. To a certain extent, his plea for cultural dynamism resembles Yeats’s conception of the anti-self:
“… I think the law-maker and the law-breaker are both needful in society – as the lively and volcanic forces are needed to make earth’s crust habitable – and I think the law-maker is tending to reduce Ireland, or parts of Ireland, to a dismal, morbid hypocrisy that is not a blessed unripeness.” (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 175))
However, Synge’s crusade against hypocrisy lead people to discard his plays as obscene and blasphemous. But there is nothing more interesting than people’s attitudes towards a certain brand of language to learn more about the society from which this language emerged, and about the idiom itself…
a) Obscenity (analysis of “shift”)
An analysis of the origins of the “Playboy riots” (Kain, R. M. (1979)) may help understand why Synge’s plays – which now seem very tame compared to some contemporary theatrical performances insofar as they do not include any visual piece likely to be criticised as being “obscene” – were felt to be so offensive to Irish people.
Amazingly enough, the audience at the Saturday night opening of the Playboy of the Western World, stayed rather calm during the first two acts, so that Lady Gregory dispatched a telegram to Yeats, “Play great success”. But during the third act, in the middle of an extravagant piece of poetry in praise of Pegeen, Christie’s words were responded with boos and cat-calls filling the theatre:
“It’s Pegeen I’m seeking only, and what’d I care if you brought me a driven of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself maybe, from this place to the Eastern World.” (PWW, p. 163)
Nobody could hear the rest of the play that night. Lady Gregory had to send another telegram to Yeats: “Audience broke up in disorder at the word shift.” (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 177))
Thus, a closer analysis of the attitudes of audiences and of Irish people in general regarding this very word – “shift” – would be quite useful to grasp how people felt about decency and obscenity at that time in Ireland.
First of all, “shift” in this situation means of course “underwear”. However, the whole outrage the word created might have been only a problem of register of language. Indeed, according to the Oxford Dictionary of English, the meaning and the connotations of “shift” changed with time and places, and when Synge wrote his plays, it was only recently that it had gained an obscene connotation, apparently because of its most frequent association with the female body[131]. So, seeing that linguistic evolutions of this kind usually start in large cities before they spread in more remote areas, one could assume that what was considered to be utterly indecent by a Dublin audience was still seen as a very innocent word in a small Mayo village. (Greene, N. (2003))
However, it is true that what really shocked the Dublin audiences was the fact that this word was associated with the women of Ireland, all the more so as Christie was alluding to the women of the West, who were supposed to be eternally chaste and pure, according to the revivalist motto of the time. For instance, shortly after the beginning of the riots, an Irish newspaper published the letter of a “western girl” giving her opinion on the whole “shift” debate, and confessing that Synge was absolutely unfair with the girls from the West, for she would not even dare uttering the word “shift” when she was alone in her room…(Greene, N. (2003)) Susan Mitchell, in her poem “Oh, No! We Never Mention It!” suggests the absurd prudery of such an attitude:
“Then by those early memories, hearken to one who prays
The right to mention once again the word of other days,
Without Police Protection onece more her voice to lift –
The right to tell (even to herself) that still she wears – a shift!”
(Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 185))
It is more than likely that Synge was trying to confront Irish people with their true past and culture, contrary to what the Gaelic League was trying to do for example. For instance, T.R. Henn’s can illustrate this situation very acutely:
“… in an access of outraged modesty, Victorian in character, but connected somehow with the idea that the very word was insulting to the womanhood of Ireland, whose chastity and purity had become a national myth, even as the saintliness of the island as a whole. It is probable that the audience, in their bewilderment at the more subtle ironies of the play, missed the full point of the phrase.” (Quoted from Strand, G. (1996))
Yeats and Lady Gregory had sensed the problem while the play was being rehearsed, and they tried to make a few cuts in the text. But it was Synge himself who was directing it, so it was impossible for them to make the text Victorian enough for the prude ears sitting in the theatre. Jack Yeats even wittily suggested to Synge to install a drummer in the wings and ask him to cover the words likely to shock the audience:
“If you don’t want to have to leave out all the coloured language in your play, you’ll have to station a drummer in the wings, to welt the drums every time the language gets too high for the stomachs of the audience. They used to do so in the old music-halls,
Thus
Get out of that ye son of a – rub, a dub, dub, dub –”
(Quoted from Benow, H. (1971))
Apparently, Synge was not too willing to indulge into censoring the Gaelic past on which Irish people were trying to build a new cultural identity; he wanted Irish people to be proud of their past and heritage, and not to try to turn it into a Victorian artefact. In fact, Synge’s image of women in their shifts is inspired by the legend of Cuchulain; in the original manuscript, the hero was permitted the vision of thirty naked virgins[132], so it seems that Synge, under Yeats’s advice (Kiberd (1995)) tried to appease the prudish members of the Abbey by cladding his maids in “shifts”[133]. Thus, his use of this word and the violent reactions it triggered out are an ironic way of underlining how Victorian and prudish Irish people had become.
b) Blasphemy and violence
Synge was calling Irish people’s attention to the linguistic freedom which their ancestors had and which they risked to lose because of their conception of the English language. Synge aimed at uncovering the whole reality of the Irish past, and the liberal relation the Irish had towards language was one of the most important points he wanted to underline in his plays[134].
This is one of the main reasons why the language of Synge’s characters is so lively and full of colours. The Evening Mail reviewer, called H.S.D. at the time, said that the dialogue was “racy of the soil”, and that the characters were “all conversationalists of abounding imagination and riotously opulent in flashing phrases.” (Quoted from Kain, R. M. (1979; 179))
But it is at the same time and for this very same reason outrageously out of conventions, because linguistic conventions at the time were becoming more and more English – and more than ever Victorian[135] – whereas Synge was trying to infuse the language of his characters with all the possible Irish freedom of speech and Gaelic liberal traditions; so he did not only rely on bawdy allusions to remind people that even Gaelic heroes and heroines had bodies and talked about them, but thanks to the language of his characters, one can say that he brilliantly managed to infuse controversial elements of Irish culture in his representation of Hiberno-English. Opposing the attitudes of people towards language at the time, he put the emphasis on the pagan idiom of Irish beliefs, and his use of Hiberno-English helps him make a realistic analysis of the relation people held to violence.
Christie seems to be the epitome of the association between paganism and Catholic beliefs in Synge’s plays:
“CHRISTY: They’re coming. Will you swear to aid and save me, for the love of Christ?
WIDOW QUIN: If I aid you, will you swear to give me a right of way I want, and a mountainy ram, and a load of dung at Michaelmas, the time that you’ll be master here?
CHRISTY: I will, by the elements and stars of night.” (PWW, p.147)
Here Christie gives two very different examples of phrases of swearing and blessing (“for the love of Christ” and “by the elements and stars of night”), which suggest a kind of equivalent between pagan and catholic language because of the parallelism of structure in the two sentences. This is a perfect illustration of the fact that Synge manages to infuse the language of his characters with Irish traditions, and to underline their contradictions by exploiting their richness.
But the language of Irish religion can also be used to emphasise the direct link between violence and religion in Irish traditions. Here is, for example, how Christie confesses that he killed his father:
“CHRISTY: Don’t strike me. I killed my poor father, Tuesday was a week, for doing the like of that.
PEGEEN: Is it killed your father?
CHRISTY: With the help of God I did, surely, and that of the Holy Immaculate Mother may intercede for his soul.” (PWW, p. 121)
Here we can see that Synge wittily juxtaposes a confession of murder with traditional catholic phrases of blessing. This mixing of two very different fields of language allows him to merge two different aspects of Irish life and highlight how paradoxical this union can sound. Violence and religion, however antithetic, are intricately linked in Irish culture, as well as in what Synge wanted to define as the Irish attitudes towards language.
The logical link between the religious field of language and the language of violence is even more obvious Michael’s blessing of Christie and Pegeen after the Playboy has proposed to Pegeen:
“A daring fellow is the jewel of the world, and a man did split his father’s middle with a single clout should have the bravery of ten, so may God and Mary and St Patrick bless you and increase you from this mortal day.
CHRISTY and PEGEEN: Amen, O Lord!” (PWW, p.160)
This almost sounds like the closing blessing of a wedding ceremony (especially because of Christy and Pegeen’s answer), except for the reason which triggered out the benediction. Once again, Synge manages to pervert catholic language habits and to leave room for the violent side of Irish culture to show, especially when the audience expects solemnity and purity. Thus it becomes quite clearer as to why the audiences of Synge’s time were so shocked by the language of the play, and why they taxed it of blasphemy and exaggerated coarseness. The playwright was mischievously disrupting their tame language attitudes with true resurgences of Irish past.
Violence is present all through Synge’s plays, and is not always justified by a glorious and nationalistic ideal.
Some of the characters have a rather cruel appetite for violence, which underlines that peasant life in the West was not that idyllic after all:
“… you’d have a right so to follow after him, Sara Tansey, and you the one yoked the ass cart and drove ten miles to set your eyes on the man bit the yellow lady’s nostril on the northern shore.” (PWW, p.132)
No wonder then prudish people sitting in the Abbey could feel offended by the crudeness of the speech of Synge’s characters!
In a way, one could go as far as saying that the way Synge conceived his representation of Hiberno-English is violent in itself, for it is almost over-loaded with HE syntactical features and colourful vocabulary, filling the audiences’ ears with a stronger rhythm than what they are used to, and drowning them under a never-ending flow of images and colours. It is as if Synge were trying to underline the evil side of Irish culture not by presenting actual acts of cruelty and violence on stage, but by designing the most violently Irish version of English possible; this allows him to be faithful to Irish past because he is not concealing its inherent crudeness, but he was also convinced that this was the best way of underlining the poetry of Irish culture, for as he declares in the Preface to his own Collected poems, which he submitted for editing and publication to Yeats: “…before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal.” (Quoted from Kiberd (1995; 169))
He was trying to show how a Gaelic past could endlessly disturb a revivalist present; in a way, Synge’s conception of Irish identity and the criticisms it triggered out could be illustrated by this oxymoron taken from the Playboy, at the beginning of the second act:
“Well, this’d be a fine place to be my whole life talking out with swearing Christians …” (PWW, p.130)
c) Gallous stories and dirty deeds
The nationalist description of Synge has long been quite similar to those words of Fanon about the pitfalls of national consciousness:
“The native intellectual who comes back to his people by the ways of cultural achievements behaves in fact like a foreigner. Sometimes, he has no hesitations in using a dialect in order to show his will to be as near as possible to the people… The culture that the intellectual leans towards is often no more than a stock of particularisms. He wishes to attach himself to the people; but instead he only catches hold of their outer garments.” (Quoted from Kiberd, (1993; XXVIII))
On the contrary, Synge catches so much more than the outer garments of folk culture. He never behaves like a foreigner. He knew that “there’s a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed” (PWW, p.164), insofar as he was well aware that a never-ending flow of talking, however brilliant and poetical, is often a poor compensation for a failure to act. (Kiberd, (1993)) Talking about the Playboy, Kiberd says that “the play’s counterpoising of fine words and failed action makes it a caustic study of the fatal Irish gift for the gab.” (Kiberd, (1993; XXVIII))
Indeed, in this play, there is a torrent of talk about a murder which never takes place in the end. Likewise, in Deirdre of the Sorrows, the heroine is caught in the hands of fate, and her only consolation is that her words allow her to imagine how her currents exploits will be told forever. Once again, the striking beauty of this character’s language is in direct opposition with its ineffectuality. (Kiberd, (1993))
In a way, thanks to his analysis of language attitudes in Ireland, Synge suggests that people should always keep a critical eye on themselves, even if they are part of a brand new Irish nation. And this is what he does for his own country, often with irony and humour. In his preface to the Tinker’s Wedding, he declares:
“…where a country loses its humour, as some towns in Ireland are doing, there will be morbidity of the mind…” (Synge (1999; 37))
For all these reasons, he can certainly be considered as a post-colonial writer, as far as his representation of language is concerned. He was aware of the evils of colonisation and was opposed to it, but he did not hesitate to use his characters’ language to tackle his countrymen’s as well as his own shortcomings.
But doesn’t this also reveal a kind of scepticism regarding the whole cultural revolution which was going on at the time, or at least a very sharp lucidity concerning its flaws and contradictions?
3) The inefficiency of the “backward look”?
Indeed, the very idea of representing the inefficiency of a brilliant language suggests that Synge knew the limits of the movement he was part of, as well as his own limits. His imaginative representation of Hiberno-English, which was however quite faithful to Irish spirit and culture, did not create a new school of writing, even though some Irish writers kept on exploiting the richness of their dialect, like Sean O’Casey for example.
Synge was working for a new Irish cultural identity, and yet he seemed much more realistic about it than Yeats for example. The author of “a land of heart’s desire” was definitely expecting his country to transfigure and be born again, as in Kathleen Na Houlihan, where in the end of the play, the old woman personifying Ireland is transformed into a young queen-like girl:
“PETER: Did you see an old woman going down the path?
PATRICK: I did not; but I saw a young girl, and she had the walk of a queen.” (Yeats selected plays, p.256)
On the contrary, we can see that ironically enough, in the Playboy, for instance, the only transfiguration taking place is Christie’s, and it is done through the “power of a lie”:
“… you’re after making a mighty man of me this day by the power of a lie.” (PWW, p.162)
Being a plain young man without any existence of his own at the beginning of the play, he transforms into the Irish hero of the village and then becomes an independent and proud man who can leave the village with a sneer. Nonetheless, this representation of the birth of individuality and identity is not based on any magical or heroic device, but on the lie that Christie killed his father.
So in a way, one can say that Synge was conscious that his country needed transformation and independence, but he was also aware of the dangers of Gaelic and heroic illusions and knew the flaws of the cultural movement in which he took part. In his plays, he seems brilliantly at ease when he carries his ideas and convictions through his representation of Hiberno-English, because of the signification of the dialect itself but also because of the different reactions the use of a language can trigger out.
Conclusion
Thus, far from being the dreamer with very little interest in politics whom Yeats liked to picture, Synge could be described as a rather radical figure in the Irish debate about the cultural identity of the nation (Kiberd, (1993)); his literary representation of Hiberno-English could easily be a textbook case in this respect.
Indeed, the author of Deirdre and the Playboy had sensed how central the issue of language was to the whole debate. As he was no revivalist at heart, he knew that glorifying Irish only meant asking the people of Ireland to live in an artificially reconstructed past. And even though his works can be partly analysed as several snapshots from a dying civilisation and society, he was all but opposed to the forces of change; he describes himself as “someone who wanted to change things root and branch” (Kiberd, (1995; 175)). He knew that you could not ignore the evolution of a society, especially as far as linguistic matters were concerned.
So his choice to use Hiberno-English in his plays seems more than natural because it was quite representative of the actual linguistic evolution which Ireland had been going through for more than fifty years. Indeed, contrary to what was happening in politics, as far as nationalism and fight for independence were concerned, most Irish people seemed to believe that the key to linguistic bliss was the merging of English and Irish traditions. Hiberno-English could easily be interpreted as the direct translation of Irish past and traditions into the English language, each antagonistic culture gaining something in the process, for the new-born variety has been described as something more than the sum of its parts (Kiberd (1993)). However, the language of Synge’s characters is not at all an attempt at discarding the heritage which the Irish language carries in its words and sounds. Indeed, what is Hiberno-English but the most Irish version of English possible, the English first spoken by those who were still thinking in Irish? So in a way, Synge’s regeneration of the Irish past into a creative present – which gave birth to the representation of a variety of English naturally infused with ancient sagas and Gaelic traditions – underlines his belonging to what we have defined as “romantic nationalism”, where a new Irish identity was considered to take roots in the rich past of the country.
But Synge’s representation of Hiberno-English was way too radical to be accepted by everyone. He was determined to be realistic as long as it allowed him to be critical, not only of the coloniser, but also of the new structures and systems of thoughts which were being elaborated by Irish people themselves. He was being as objective as possible with the new nation in the building, and tried to highlight what staunch revivalists were trying to conceal. Thus, because his representation of language had this realistic post-colonial quality about it, it was wildly discredited for many years as being obscene and unrepresentative of the Irish nation, whereas Synge’s language was in fact one of the more faithful representation of Irish life and spirit available at the time.
Of course, as far as scientifically proven realism is concerned, Synge was being way too imaginative to be true, but on the other hand, he managed to represent the essence of what for him was to be at the roots of the new nation’s cultural identity – a rich Irish past and an inseparable English heritage.
And as this representation was achieved thanks to his own version of a regional variety of English, one could suggest that Synge’s actual achievement is much more interesting than a scientifically correct transcription of the dialect spoken by Irish people at the beginning of the twentieth century. Indeed, he managed to express a whole conception of life and culture with a variety of English which had not – and still has not – obtained any official existence. Thus he really gave Hiberno-English a new status, insofar as he presented it as a perfect means of expression which was supposed to give the Irish a clearer identity without any separatist idea, for it was expressing Irish life and merging two antithetic cultures at the same time.
These are factors which T.S. Elliott had certainly not taken into account when he said that “the language of Synge is not available except for plays set among the same people.” For Synge’s representation of Hiberno-English is so much more than just folklorism. Indeed, the language of his characters helps to recreate an identity for Ireland thanks to its eternal past, but it also displays several examples of how English as a whole is to be enriched and revitalised by its non-standard varieties. (Kiberd, (1993)) This is probably one of the reasons why Hiberno-English sounds so perfectly adequate even when it has to express the eternity of a myth like Deirdre’s.
Once again, Synge’s literary representation of Hiberno-English skilfully demonstrates how incredibly rich and significant a non-standard variety of English can be, and how, especially as far as a post-colonial point of view is concerned, it can even be taken far beyond the level of a single nation towards universality, for as Salman Rushdie says, talking about post-colonial writers in general:
“Those of us who use English do so in spite of our ambiguity towards it, or perhaps because of that, perhaps because we can find in that linguistic struggle a reflection of other struggles taking place in the real world.” (Quoted from Kiberd, (1995; 163))
Documents
Document 2 : Filpulla’s figures
(Filpulla, Markku (1999). The grammar of Irish English. London: Routledge.)
Frequencies of « after » perfects in the HE corpus
|Area (size of corpus, words) |N |N/10,000 |
|Clare (30,000) |3 |1.0 |
|Kerry (44,000) |1 |0.2 |
|Wicklow (42,000) |9 |2.1 |
|Dublin (42,000) |12 |2.9 |
| | | |
|HE total (158,000) |25 |1.6 |
Frequencies of the “extended-now” perfects in the HE corpus
|Area (size of corpus, words) |N |N/10,000 |
|Clare (30,000) |23 |7.7 |
|Kerry (44,000) |24 |5.5 |
|Wicklow (42,000) |17 |4.0 |
|Dublin (42,000) |17 |4.0 |
| | | |
|HE total (158,000) |81 |5.1 |
Frequencies of the temporal uses of “with” in the HE corpus
|Area (size of corpus, words) |N |N/10,000 |
|Clare (30,000) |8 |2.7 |
|Kerry (44,000) |21 |4.8 |
|Wicklow (42,000) |2 |0.5 |
|Dublin (42,000) |1 |0.2 |
| | | |
|HE total (158,000) |32 |2.0 |
Frequencies of periphrastic do in the HE corpus
|Area (size of corpus, words) |Do+V |Do be |
|Clare (30,000) |8 |1.8 |
|Kerry (44,000) |18 |6.0 |
|Wicklow (42,000) |17 |4.0 |
|Dublin (42,000) |5 |1.0 |
| | | |
|HE total (158,000) |48 |3.0 |
Frequencies of topicalisation in the HE corpus
|Area (size of corpus, words) |N |N/10,000 |
|Clare (30,000) |33 |11.0 |
|Kerry (44,000) |70 |15.9 |
|Wicklow (42,000) |59 |14.0 |
|Dublin (42,000) |36 |8.6 |
| | | |
|HE total (158,000) |198 |12.5 |
Non-standard occurrences of the definite article in the HE corpus
|Area (size of corpus, words) |N |N/10,000 |
|Clare (30,000) |116 |38.7 |
|Kerry (44,000) |155 |35.2 |
|Wicklow (42,000) |135 |32.1 |
|Dublin (42,000) |80 |19.0 |
| | | |
|HE total (158,000) |486 |30.8 |
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[1] Ireland actually became a free state in 1921 and a republic in 1949.
[2] This Irish character was often known as « Paddy », and it is still the name given to the Irish in jokes, pub names or tourist attractions for instance.
[3] In the Playboy of the Western World, Christie Mahon is told by Pegeen Mike that he is the true descendent of the poets of the ancient times ; “and I’ve heard all times it’s the poets are your like – fine, fiery fellows with great rages when their temper’s roused.” (Synge, J.M.(1999). Collected Plays and Poems and the Aran Islands. Everyman paperbacks, 125)
[4] When English, Norman French and Gaelic became the “three rivals for linguistic supremacy in medieval Ireland” (Curtis, quoted from Sullivan, J.P. (1976))
[5] If one excludes the Ulster plantations, the figures change to 88.5% of Irish speakers versus only 11.5% of English speakers.
[6] That is less than a third of the total population.
[7] But 32.7% if the Ulster plantations are not taken into account.
[8] Don’t you speak Irish?
[9] Area in the West of Ireland where the influence of Gaelic is still very strong.
[10] It can take the form of a reliance on magic, as for American Indian tribes with the Sun Dance and the Ghost Dance.
[11] The Penal Laws is the name given to the code of laws passed by the Protestant Parliament of Ireland in the late 17th century. Also called “Popery Laws”, their declared purpose was to disenfranchise the native majority from all power, both political and economic, and their ideal was to entice the colonised Irish into wholesale conversion to Protestantism. By these laws Catholics were deprived of all civil life, reduced to ignorance and dissociated with the soil. Catholic schoolmasters and priests became hunted men and women, and an unfaithful wife could take everything a man owned by switching to the Protestant religion. For instance, the Penal Laws forbid Catholics from exercising their religion, receiving a Catholic education, entering a profession, voting, buying or leasing land, etc…
They remained in the books and were still legally binding until Catholic Emancipation in 1829.
[12] Cf I) 1) b) ; especially the quotation of Lord Macaulay
[13] The tally stick was later to be cited as a weapon of British cultural terror although it was designed by the Irish themselves, as Sir William Wilde (the father of Oscar) observed in a Galway schoolhouse in the middle of the nineteenth century : “The man called the child to him, said nothing, but drawing forth from its dress a little stick, commonly called a scoreen or tally, which was suspended by a string round the neck, put an additional notch in it with its pencil knife. Upon our enquiry on the cause of these proceedings, we were told that it was done to prevent the child from speaking Irish; for every time he attempted to do so a new nick was put on his tally, and, when these amounted to a certain number, summary punishment was inflicted on him by the schoolmaster”. (quoted from Kiberd, D. (1995; 143)
[14] This was an alternative to the tally stick, and the child was supposed to stand in the corner of the classroom holding the wooden gag between his teeth.
[15] More than often children were encouraged to spy on their brothers and sisters, or on the children of neighbouring townlands.
[16] Many people died of hunger and of diseases related to it. As a matter of fact, it was among the sections of the population most affected by death and exile that the Irish language had been the strongest.
[17] Parnell’s party split “amid terrible rancour” (Kiberd, D.(1995; 25)) after this quarrel.
[18] He had nonetheless been cited as a co-respondent during the divorce. As a result, Gladstone abandoned him an he was denounced as a public sinner unfit for leadership by the Catholic church.
[19] “nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self consciousness : it invents nations where they do not exist.” (Ernest Gellner, quoted from Bhabha, H. (1990))
[20] 1744 – 1803
[21] Thus each community is a nation; it has its own national culture as well as its own language”
[22] In 1906, the League had secured the use of Irish in Gaeltacht schools, and by 1909 Irish had been made compulsory for matriculation at the National University; this was just one year after Hyde’s appointment to professorship there.. (Kiberd, D. (1995; 147))
[23] His writings were a great support during the 1906 campaign to secure the use of Irish in Gaeltacht schools as a subject in itself and as the usual language of instruction.
[24] Who once said to one of his fellow students at Trinity College Dublin that he dreamt in Irish.
[25] Such prejudices were even present among people who were considered to have more sympathy for the League and its linguistic project. George Moore, for example, once said that when Hyde used his “incoherent brand of English”, it was more than easy to figure out why he wanted Irish to become the national language. Once again, this was a very common idea about Irish, that it was only used by illiterate people, and especially by those Irish people who could not speak English. (Kiberd, D. (1995))
[26] This lecture was given in November 1892 to the Irish Literary Society.
[27] This title was taken from a quotation by Pearse in 1913: “The Gaelic League, as the Gaelic League, is a spent force.”
[28] Basically, Irish has does not come from the same family of languages as English; Irish has Celtic origins, whereas English has Germanic origins. This means that the two languages are very different in terms of structure, as well as vocabulary and pronunciation.
[29] In an account of his life written in 1905 for his German translator, he wrote: “In 1898 I went to the Aran Islands to learn Gaelic and lived with the peasants. Ever since then I have spent part of my year among the Irish-speaking peasantry, in various localities, as I am doing now once more.” (Kiberd, D.(1993))
[30] Here is one other example, which occurred when a friend of his was telling him the story of an unfaithful wife: “Unfortunately it was carried so rapidly in Gaelic that I lost most of the points.” (AA, p.275)
[31] This extract was taken from a vitriolic letter written to the Gaelic League which was subtitled “Can we go back into our mother’s womb?”
[32] All the more so as he was very doubtful as to the quality of Irish taught in the League’s classes. He said it was nothing more than an “incoherent twaddle passed off as Irish.” (quoted from Kiberd, D.(1993; 223))
[33]Diglossia is a phenomenon in which bilingual people make the difference in their use of language between « a high language, on the one hand, utilized in conjunction with religion, education and other aspects of high culture, and a low language on the other hand, utilized in conjunction with everyday pursuits of hearth, home and work. » (Fishman, 1967 / quoted from genesis of he)
[34] The word “no”, which is used as a transition, means “or” in Irish.
[35] Carrigfergus, for exemple.
[36] To some extent, it also contradicts the description Hyde gave of the Irish countrymen being completely confused between two languages and two cultures; however, this is understandable because P.L. Henry was scientifically analysing facts, whereas Hyde’s observations those of a theorist who was giving out a lecture meant to convince the people to change their ways of life.
[37] Kallen, in his lecture on “New directions in Irish-English: Hiberno-English in a post-modern world” (Trinity College Dublin, October 2002), makes the distinction between Irish-English, Hiberno-English and Anglo-Irish on historical, sociological , nationalistic and geographical grounds. One could summarize the distinctions as follows:
Irish English is the most general term used to describe the English language spoken in Ireland. Anglo-Irish is more precisely describing the English spoken during colonisation, and Hiberno-English is mostly symbol of Irishness. However, Kallen underlines the existence of confusion in the terminology, and remarks that there is no linguistic evidence of any sort which would justify the use of one of these terms over the others.
[38] One can notice the precision given when standard English is alluded to: Yeats doesn’t merely say “excellent English”, but he says “what is called excellent English”. This clearly means that he was aware of the many prejudices associated with non-standard varieties, and that he wanted to underline the relativity of the opinion people usually have about standard English as opposed to all the other varieties of English.
[39] In the Aran Islands, Synge is given a copy of the book by a young man on the island (AA, p.311) and Michael, one of Synge’s friends on the island, is reading Hyde’s Beside the fire(AA, p.329).
[40] See previous page for terminology.
[41] Thomas Davis was a son of the Protestant Ascendancy, and thus he knew very little Irish. (Kiberd, D. (1995; 196)
[42] Nonetheless, Yeats’s attempts at rendering the Irish spirit were not more successful. In his Wanderings of Oisin, he wanted to recreate a Gaelic golden age, but he was working on the version of a version, and hardly attained the “Celtic colouring of a late nineteenth century poem”. (Kiberd, D. (1993))
[43] As far as artistic potential of dialect is concerned, he was also very influenced by the writings of people such as Guy de Maupassant, George Sand and Anatole France. Furthermore, he had learnt from his Parisian lecturer in phonetics that a dialect could indeed have a literary as well as a philological value.
[44] In Ireland as well as in the rest of Europe.
[45] See II) 2) a)
[46] cf II Introduction
[47] Synge was convinced that at his time, these two characteristics could never be found together : “One has, on one side, Mallarme and Huysmans producing this [rich and imaginative] literature; and on the other, Ibsen and Zola, dealing with the reality of life in joyless and pallid works.” (PWW, p.112)
[48] The Irish Literary Theatre is also well known as the Abbey Theatre.
[49] cf I) 1) a)
[50] All the founding members of the Irish Literary Theatre came from protestant upper classes, and thus they had to justify their will to appeal to all the people in Ireland.
[51] The most famous ones were written by Synge and Lady Gregory, although these two writers have different ways of staging language.
[52] To some extent, Synge’s visits to the Aran Islands, and the brilliant book he wrote of it, are actual proofs that the merging between English and Irish cultures could successfully work. Indeed, Synge came from a traditional middle-class family, and had a very formal education at university in Dublin. On the contrary, the islanders he visited and got acknowledged to were mostly rural, catholic and tentacularly rooted people whose education had mostly been achieved by oral learning. However, these incredibly different people managed to get to know each other and to coexist on the Aran Islands. (O’ Tuama, S. (1971))
[53] English is a SVO language. (Subject – Verb – Object), whereas Irish is a VSO language.
[54] Do + be + verb_ing is often considered as a characteristic of HE, but it is hardly to be found in contemporary language. (It was much more frequent at Synge’s time, as we will see later on.)
[55] A country public house.
[56] “Deirdre is the beautiful, tragic heroin of the legend of the Fate of the Sons of Usna, found in its earlier form in the twelfth century Book of Leinster. Deirdre was the daughter of Fedlimid, who was Conchubor’s harper and storyteller. At her birth Cathbad the Druid foretold that she would bring tragedy and death to kings and heroes. She was chosen to be the wife of Conchubor, the wise warrior king of Ulster who had the right to choose any bride in the land, and he had her removed and brought up in solitude in the country. But one day she caught sight of the sons of Usna, fell in love with Naisi, and they planned elopement. Deirdre, Naisi and his brothers fled to Scotland. They lived there until they were tricked into returning to Ireland by Conchubor, feigning to relent. Conchubor then had the brothers summarily and treacherously put to death. The heartbroken Deirdre killed herself.” (Note from Deirdre of the Sorrows, in Synge, J.M.(1999; 217-218))
[57] Indeed, one can form a perfective with other features than “have” or one of its equivalents. French offers a good counterexample with its use of the verb “être”. So Sullivan’s assumption is only one possible explanation of the phenomenon described.
[58] I will go into more details for this construction because it is the one of the famous ones in the grammar of Hiberno-English, as well as the most widely used one in Synge’s plays.
[59] Most of the examples are taken from the handout of a lecture by Jeffrey Kallen called “Some major features of Irish English”, which he gave at Trinity College Dublin on the 16th of July 2001.
[60] Filpulla argues that both the present and the past tenses can be used in this case, whereas Kallen explains that there is a predominance of the use of the present tense – he calls it “extended-present” perfect.
[61] See Harris’s article “The Hiberno-English ‘I’ve it eaten’ construction: What is it and where does it come from?”
[62] Deirdre’s conscience of death is almost ironic, for she is the heroine of a mythic tragedy, but at the same time she acts as if she had already seen her life played on stage. There are constant references throughout the play of a “story being told”, and she is the one who names herself after the title of the play:
“Naisi! Do not leave me, Naisi. I am Deirdre of the Sorrows.” (Deirdre of the Sorrows, p.188)
[63] As far as emphasis is concerned, this extract from a translation by Synge himself seems to be self explanatory:
“It’s the like of that that we old hags do be thinking” (quoted from Bliss, A.J.(1971; 49)). Here the most important element of the sentence is placed at the beginning and is preceded by an introductory expression. It helps recording a special emphasis even in the written form; this would only have been achievable in Standard English in the oral form, with the use of a special stress.
[64] In this section I will try to focus on the Irish origins of the grammatical structures, in order to show that Synge was definitely conscious of the great influence of the Irish language on the creation of Hiberno-English.
[65] This explanation is more precise than to talk of an anaphoric relation only, for most of the time the reflexive pronoun does refer to someone or something mentioned earlier in the conversation, or even in the sentence.
[66] One can also note that the pronoun “itself” is usually employed instead of the adverb “even”.
Ex: If you were the devil itself I wouldn’t accept. This obviously means: Even if you were the devil I wouldn’t accept.
[67] See I)2)b)
[68] The determinants between brackets are the ones a Standard English speaker would use instead of “the”
[69] The second clause is usually a non finite verb phrase, an adjectival or noun phrase, or a prepositional phrase.
[70] “The Irish verbal noun, functionnally synonymous with both the English infinitive and present participle, may fulfill either of their respective functions depending upon the syntactical means employed. That is, the verbal noun when preceded by the preposition ‘ag’ performs the function of the English present participle; and when appearing alone or preceded by another preposition exclusive of ‘ag’, it performs the function of the English infinitive.” (Sullivan, J.P. (1976; 134))
[71] His words also refer to an ancient Irish tale, “the Cold May Night”, narrating the search for information about the coldest night which has ever occurred. This story includes visits to an old otter, an aged eagle (or hawk or crow, depending on the version) and to the oldest of all, a salmon in Assaroe, Co. Donegal. (Seán Ó Súilleabhaín, (1971))
[72] The last occurrence of « and » in this sentence is of course introducing a subordinate clause (see I)3)a) ), thus it has not been highlighted as the others.
[73] See II)1)
[74] - God bless you
- God and Mary bless you
[75] This play is set long before there was any talk of catholicism in Ireland. This is why the characters have a different way of alluding to religion: “The gods save you, Deirdre” (p.180), “the gods shield you, Deirdre”
[76] The striking number of relative clauses that are not pronominally marked is another characteristic feature of Hiberno-English, and will be dealt with in Chapter 3.
[77] A unique word is a word which does not appear more than once in Synge’s plays.
[78] See I)1)a)
[79] The only exception would be of course that the only irrelevances in syntax appear in his two earliest plays, Riders to the Sea and the Shadow of the Glen.
[80] This is all the more true as most English speaking Irishmen were not very comfortable even with Irish grammar. For instance, here is a short poem about a lecturer at Trinity College:
“Atkinson of TCD
Doesn’t know the verb to be”
(Kiberd, D.(1993))
[81] The origin of an element of the lexicon may also be clearer than a syntactic feature. Indeed, sociolinguists are constantly arguing whether this or that HE syntactic feature comes from Old English or Irish or both (see, for example, Filpulla, Markku (1999)), whereas etymology is usually a much stronger argument. However, Bliss draws attention to the fact that one can never be completely certain of the origin of a word either: “In no individual instance is certainty possible”. (Bliss, Alan J. (1979))
[82] Patrick Weston Joyce (1827 – 1914) was brought up speaking both Irish and English, and received his early education in hedge-schools in Fanningstown. At eighteen he was appointed as a teacher by the Commissioners of National Education. In 1856 he was one of the fifteen teachers selected for training by the Government to reorganize the National School System. In 1861 he was awarded a B.A. at Trinity College Dublin, and a L.L.D. in 1871. He was Principal of the Board of Education Training College from 1876 to 1893. His twenty-one years of retirement were almost entirely dedicated to writing. (Introduction by Terence Dolan in Joyce, P. W. (1910))
[83] Chapter IV: “ Idioms derived from the Irish language”, and Chapter VII: “Grammar and pronunciation.”
[84] Synge aimed at artistic representation whereas Joyce wanted to give a description of the variety. This is particularly noticeable in the fact that Synge feels the need to argue for realism, whereas Joyce, who did nothing but report what he heard, does not.
[85] See Chapter 1, I)2)
[86] Bliss also record the word “Horney” for a policeman.
[87] The « ended war » Michael is talking about is probably the Boer war, which is on the contrary a hint at Irish resistance against the coloniser. (It is mentioned more clearly later on during the play: “fighting bloody wars for Kruger and the freedom of the Boers”). The Boers were Dutch colonists in South Africa. The Boer War (1899-1902) was the war of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State against Great Britain. A number of Irish nationalists went to fight for the Boers; it was seen as fighting for the rights of small nations against British imperialism.
[88] See Chapter 1, I)2) for the link between this period and the linguistic shift in Ireland.
[89] See I)3)b)
[90] Joyce also records that Protestants are said to go to “Church”, whereas Catholics go to the “chapel”. He also underlines that Catholics could be called “back of the hill people”, in reference to the period when under James the 1st, catholic lands were given to Scottish Presbyterian planters, and thus catholic people had to get a living in the glens. (Joyce, P. W. (1910). English as we speak it in Ireland. Reprinted (1988), Dublin : Wolfhound Press)
[91][92] Joyce mentions the Mayday festival, with the Beltane celebration, in honour of the god Bel. (Joyce, P. W. (1910))
[93] In “sailing from Mayo to the Western World”, the meaning seems to be sailing from Mayo to America. (Bliss, Alan J. (1979))
[94] Curiosity man means “human prodigy”.
[95] Meaning loutish, or clumsy.
[96] Meaning « total enigma », although the New English Dictionary on Historical principles (Oxford 1884-1933) records somewhat similar combinations such as puzzle-brain or puzzle-wit.
[97] This is apparently a portmanteau word combining swing and wriggle.
[98] See Chapter 1 II)2)a)
[99] Bourgeois calls them « jaw-breakers », accusing Synge of inaccuracy in his representation of HE. (Bliss, Alan J. (1971))
[100]See I)3)a)
[101] See I)2)a)
[102] This structure is a direct translation from an Irish structure, deriving from the fact that there is no verb equivalent to « to have » in Irish. (Sullivan, J.P (1976))
[103] In both plays, Synge concentrates on an episode of the Ulster cycle: the life of Cuchulain for the Playboy, and the Exile and death of the sons of Usna for Deirdre. (Gantz, J. (1981))
[104] See I)3)b) for a complete analysis of this sentence.
[105] Even when it is the subject of a relative clause.
[106] As an author such as Leahy did in his version of the myth.
[107] elopements
[108] « The Freeman’s Journal supported Parliamentary nationalism, with deference to the hierarchy. » (Kain, R. M. (1979; 174))
[109] See Chapter 2, II)1)a)
[110] See Filpulla’s data for a few linguistic features
[111]« Lady Gregory (1852-1932) was one of the most important writers of the period when Irish writing started achieving international prominence and one of the most important presences on the cultural scene in the period when cultural nationalism flourished. […] She has figured in recent Irish cultural debate only as a playwright and Abbey Theatre director, although her folklore collections, journals and translations constitute equally important parts of her life’s work.” (McDiarmuid L. and Waters, M. (1995; 11-12)) She wrote some forty plays including Spreading the news, the Rising of the Moon and the Gaol Gate. She made folklore material central to her dramatic work, but her writings also show an effort to dramatize Irish history. One of her most famous literary collaborations is the nationalistic play Kathleen Na Houlihan, which she wrote with W.B.Yeats; her co-authorship was so obvious, although not acknowledged by Yeats, that the editors of her Selected Writings decided to include it in the volume.
[112] See Chapter 2
[113] As it has already been said, Kathleen Na Houlihan is the product of the collaboration between Lady Gregory and W.B. Yeats. However, Yeats admitted himself that he was not able to write in peasant speech, and so if the story is said to be taken from a vision he had in a dream, the language itself is to be attributed to Lady Gregory. Joseph Holloway, who kept a diary of Dublin theatre life, wrote: “The odd thing is that Fay told me Lady Gregory wrote the whole of it except the part of ‘Cathleen’”. (quoted from Tóibín, C. (2002; 63))
[114] I decided to give the results of my counts in percentages, because the plays are of very variable lengths and I felt that the average number of occurrences per page – which Taniguchi uses for example (Taniguchi (1972)) – was not clear enough.
[115] For thorough analysis, see Chapter II, I)2)b)
[116] All the dramatic works used in this table consist of from 300 to 500 words, which allows a direct comparison of the various figures. (Taniguchi (1972))
[117] The story of Cuchulain
[118] Sometimes this moderation even went as far as censorship, as with her interpretation of the story of Cuchulain, Cuchulain of Muirthemne, of which she removed all signs of rough violence and erotism. For her the book might be used as a school book, and she was very careful about not shocking the prudish. (Tóibín, C. (2002))
[119] Sean O’Casey (1880-1964) was an Irish dramatist who involved himself in the Irish political struggle both for independence and the betterment of conditions for the poor. He is mostly famous for his early plays, which were produced at the Abbey: The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock and the Plough and the Stars. (Sean O’Casey (1998))
[120] The Plough and the Stars, for example, takes place during the Easter Rising in 1916.
[121] Geographically as well as historically.
[122] His plays are not set in the same place in Ireland: the Shadow of the Glen takes place in “County Wicklow”, which is not far south from Dublin, whereas the Playboy of the Western World takes place on a wild coast of Mayo.
[123] « A play which pleases the men and women of Ireland who have sold their country for ease and wealth, who fraternise with their country’s oppressors or have taken service with them, a play that will please the host of English functionaries and the English garnison, is a play that can never claim to be part of a national literature. » (Quoted from Harrington, J.P. (1996))
[124] Synge despised the Irish of the Gaelic League and the national newspapers as being fake and having nothing of the authenticity he was himself aiming at.
[125] Written in 1604.
[126] As was the wish of the Gaelic League
[127] We have seen that this was the case in Yeats’s version of Deirdre. (See Chapter 2, III)2)a))
[128] MacKenna was a journalist and a student of philosophy.
[129] Paradoxically enough, most revivals of Synge’s plays have been presented as Cuchulainoid drama, to avoid the revolutionary side of the play. Actors and directors deliberately put the emphasis and the lyrical side of language, almost annihilating the violence and irony of most lines. (Kiberd (1993))
[130] Declan Kiberd, in his chapter about « Synge and Irish literature – saga, myth and romance » draws several parallels between the two characters, but also underlines how skilfully Synge manages to distort the original story and give it an ironical and mock-heroic slant. (Kiberd, (1993))
[131] For apparently it was thought indecent to allude to the fact that women actually had bodies at the beginning of the twentieth century.
[132] “The hero regularly returns from combat filled with a “battle rage”, which leads the men of Ulster to forbid his entry into the city of Emain Macha. They fear that his spasms might destroy peace and damage city buildings, and so they conduct earnest discussions of the ways in which his ardour might be cooled. This is finally achieved by sending thirty women, stark naked, across the plain of Macha in serried ranks: and when the hero sees them, he blushes to his roots, casts down his eyes, and with that “the wildness went out of him”.” (Kiberd (1995; 183))
[133] In his typescript version, Synge had his women “stripped itself” instead of in “shifts itself”, but Yeats told him that the more puritanical members of the Abbey would not tolerate such an image. (Kiberd, (1995; 183))
[134] Apparently, it was much easier to swear and not sound rude in Irish than in English (Kiberd (1995)), and Synge aimed at endowing his representation of Hiberno-English with this Irish uninhibited use of language.
[135] Kiberd, for instance, underlines that most revivalists had become more Victorians than Victorians themselves, because they had a very obsolete vision that the English society they were trying to oppose – they saw it as a decadent society, corrupted by industrialisation, and not at all as the prude Victorian England of the time.
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