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. 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.
ATTRIBUTION:
J.M. (John Millington) Synge (1871–1909), Irish poet, dramatist. The Aran Islands, pt. 1.
referring to the burial of an inhabitant of Inishmaan, one of the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland. Synge made several visits to the Aran Islands after his return from Paris, where W.B. Yeats encouraged him to go back to Ireland to study and assimilate the country’s folk culture and dialects.
