Riders to the sea is an amazing play by John Millington
Synge. It is a modern tragedy in one act. The play narrates the calamities
inflicted by the sea on a family that lived in Aran Islands.
The play begins with the conversation between the two
Sisters Cathleen and Nora. Cathleen is a girl about twenty. They talk about
their brother Michael who was drowned in the sea. In order to hide his death
from Maurya their old mother, they kept his clothes in the turf loft.
The next son Bartley wanted
to go to Connemara. His mother requested him not to go as she had already last
her son in the sea. She said.
" what is the price of a
thousand horses against the son where there
is one son only?"
but he didn't give need to
his mothers words. He rode on a red mare to catch the boat waiting near the
sea. Maurya uttered some bad words on his departure.
Cathleen scolded her mother for that. Then she sent her
with the bread to give him a blessing. While their mother went out, the sisters
unwrapped the bundle in the loft. They were very sure that the clothes belong
to Michael.
Meanwhile Maurya returned back home with a strange
story. She saw Bartley in a red mare followed by Michael in a grey pony. She
felt sorry for having lost all her six sons, her husband and her husband's
father in the sea. Suddenly Cathleen and Nora notice a woman entering their
house with a sad face. After her some men brought the dead body of Bartley. The
broken mother sat by the side of his dead son and prayed for his soul.
Thus the play ends on a
tragic note of gentle submission to the role of fate.
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