The Mystery of Dun Aengus

Check out my latest post on the Aran Islands Blog.

In this post - decoding the mystery of Dun Aengus! Metalworks, ritual, power...

Bronze Age Hillfort, Dun Aengus, Inis Mor, Aran Islands

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Synge Scorned

Wow. When Synge didn't like you, he REALLY didn't like you. Here's a poem he wrote after Molly Allgood's sister expressed her negative reaction to The Playboy of the Western World

The Curse

To a sister of an enemy of the author's who disapproved of 'The Playboy'

Lord, confound this surly sister,

Blight her brow with blotch and blister,

Cramp her larynx, lung, and liver,

In her guts a galling give her.

Let her live to earn her dinners

In Mountjoy with other sinners:

Lord, this judgment quickly bring,

And I'm your servant, J. M. Synge.

The earlier drafts of the poem went like this:

With corns and bunions cramp her toes

Deck with pimples brown and nose

Contort her liver lungs and brain

For all her parts receive a pain

Contrive for every inch

Till devils though she wake or sleep

Through her flesh with horror creep

Till her breakfast, supper, dinner.

And the poem was actually published in 1909! Probably after Synge's death, since he didn't want his poetry published at all, let alone during his lifetime. But he first sent this poem to Molly in a letter. He wrote:

I have written a lovely curse on the 'flighty' one but I'm half afraid to send it to you...

Yeah. Sending a poem to your girlfriend about how much you hate her sister. Good move, J.M.

Synge Snippet: There could be no more terror in my life

I seemed to traverse whole epochs of desolation and bliss. All secrets were open before me, and simple as the universe to its God. Now and then something recalled my physical life, and I smiled at what seemed a moment of sickly infancy. At other times I felt I might return to earth, and laughed aloud to think what a god I should be among men. For there could be no more terror in my life. I was a light, a joy.

- From "Under Ether," Synge's essay recollecting of the effects of the anesthetic given to him during his neck surgery in 1897.

Synge grew up sickly (from asthma), and this was the first of a few surgeries he underwent to remove a swelling in his neck, which was diagnosed too late as a lymphoma. He seems to have lived with much physical discomfort, and probably a lot of fear from not knowing what was wrong with him.

This was the year before Synge went to Aran, when he witnessed the islanders' strength against the elements firsthand, and was moved by their relationship to mortality. It no doubt made him reflect on his own.

The Aran Islands in Living Color

The Aran Islands are often described as gray and barren, but I discovered a world of color there.

Yes, Synge makes it out to be this way at times: "They live here in a world of grey, where there are wild rains and mists every week in the year."

But he also writes about the "red petticoats" worn by the women, the "faint yellow roofs" of the houses, the "green glittering waves" and "the blue chasm of the waves," the "bars of purple cloud" in the sky, and the "heavy indigo stockings" worn by the women. In fact, he mentions the color red more than gray (according to my word search function on my Kindle for Mac)!


The colors I found last summer on Aran...

Red plants sprouting out of the stone:

Orange lichen clinging to rock:

Yellow seaweed crawling onto the beach:

Green algae growing on the southern coast:

Blue paint chipping off a curragh:

Indigo hues streaked in the sky:

And violet flowers braving a life on the cliffs:

Aran FOOD

Not so literary, but can I just say I'm really looking forward to the FOOD on this trip?

Lamb and potatoes at the Aran Fisherman

The Aran Islands probably weren't fun places to eat when Synge was there, of course. Here's what he wrote:

...during the day they simply drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of bread, or some potatoes, whenever they are hungry. For men who live in the open air they eat strangely little. Often when Michael has been out weeding potatoes for eight of nine hours without food, he comes in and eats a few slices of home-made bread, and then he is ready to go out with me and wander for hours about the island. They use no animal food except a little bacon and salt fish. The old woman says she would be very ill if she ate fresh meat.

I can't speak to the general daily food of the people who live on the islands. There was one grocery store on Inis Mor that seemed very well stocked, though the vegetables and fruits were somewhat lacking, and I was surprised not to find a fish counter at the store. I was told that most people have a friend who fishes who brings them their fresh catch of the day.

Last year I didn't have a kitchen so I ate out a lot, but this time I will have a kitchen while I'm on Inis Mor, so maybe I'll make friends with a fisherman and get some fresh fish to cook at the house.

While I'm on Inis meain I'll be staying at my fellow Aran Islands blogger Elisabeth Koopman's house. I hear she has her own vegetable garden, so I'm really looking forward to seeing it, and to eating fresh organic food there.

Last year on Inis Mor I HAD to try different foods at the restaurants. Yes, pricey, because mostly tourists eat at the restaurants. Hence why I'm glad to have a kitchen this time. But trying the seafood was a must. Here's what was good:

• Fish sandwich and chowder at the seafood restaurant across from the American Bar (I can't recall the name)
• Lamb stew at the Aran Fisherman
• Pizza at Bayview Restaurant
• Oysters at Joe Wattie's
• The coffee and hot chocolate at the internet cafe was very good

Last year I also indulged in Irish breakfast at the Dormer House

brown bread

Crab claws in butter sauce at the Aran Fisherman

And lunch one day with Helmut and Irmtraud at the Killeany Lodge, with vegetables from their organic garden.

Getting hungry now...

You'd Rave And Rend Them With Your Teeth

A Question

I asked if I got sick and died, would you

With my black funeral go walking too,

If you'd stand close to hear them talk or pray

While I'm let down in that steep bank of clay.

And, No, you said, for if you saw a crew

Of living idiots, pressing round that new

Oak coffin - they alive, I dead beneath

That board, - you'd rave and rend them with your teeth.

Written 1908, Published 1909

This poem, written not long before Synge's death, was sent in a letter to Molly Allgood. He had in fact asked her if she'd go to his funeral, to which she replied, "No, for I could not bear to see you dead and the others living."

This poem reminds me so much of the way Synge describes the way the Aran Islanders at the turn of the 20th century mourn:

"While the grave was being opened the women sat down among the flat tombstones, bordered with a pale fringe of early bracken, and began the wild keen, or crying for the dead. Each old woman, as she took her turn in the leading recitative, seemed possessed for the moment with a profound ecstasy of grief, swaying to and fro, and bending her forehead to the stone before her, while she called out to the dead with a perpetually recurring chant of sobs." - The Aran Islands 


I love how Synge always draws from his life in his art, and lets his art inform his life. It makes for much self reflection and serious engagement with subject matter.

Hillforts and History

Read my latest post on the Aran Islands Blog!

In this piece I begin to talk about the history of the Aran forts. They are spectacular sites. Synge spent time in one fort on Inishmaan in particular (Dun Conor). I found the one that I loved the best to be Dun Duchathair - the Black Fort - which has never been excavated. The excavations at Dun Aengus have given us some clues as to what life might have been like for the early Aran Islanders. Check out my post to learn more!