I vividly recall reading this remarkable play during my university days, yet the title had eluded my memory. Through the power of Google and some strategic keyword trials, I finally unearthed it and embarked on a rereading journey. From this moment forward, "Riders to the Sea" will forever be etched in my mind.
The narrative centers around Maurya, a woman who has endured the heart-wrenching loss of her husband, father-in-law, and five sons to the unforgiving sea. As the play commences, Nora and Cathleen, Maurya's daughters, receive word that a body, potentially their brother Michael, has washed ashore in Donegal, far to the north. Meanwhile, Bartley, another son, is determined to sail to Connemara to sell a horse, despite Maurya's desperate pleas for him to stay. Maurya foresees that by nightfall, she will have no living sons, and her daughters scold her for sending Bartley off with an ill word. Maurya races after Bartley to bless his voyage, and Nora and Cathleen receive clothing from the drowned corpse, confirming it is indeed their brother. Maurya returns home, claiming to have witnessed the ghost of Michael riding behind Bartley, and begins to lament the profound loss of the men in her family to the sea. Shortly thereafter, some villagers bring in the corpse of Bartley, who has fallen off his horse into the sea and drowned.
(raising her head and speaking as if she did not see the people around her) "They're all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me.... I'll have no call now to be up crying and praying when the wind breaks from the south, and you can hear the surf is in the east, and the surf is in the west, making a great stir with the two noises, and they hitting one on the other. I'll have no call now to be going down and getting Holy Water in the dark nights after Samhain, and I won't care what way the sea is when the other women will be keening."
(Maurya)
