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In Ireland long ago, after the death of someone close to them, the Irish mourned their dead with high pitched crying called
keening (caoine). When Synge first put his play into production, he hired women who knew the authentic way of keening to teach
the actresses in the play how to portray it in a realistic way.
The following is dialogue taken from the play:
"CATHLEEN (begins to keen). It's destroyed we are from this day. It's destroyed, surely.
CATHLEEN (slowly and clearly). An old woman will be soon tired with anything she will do, and isn't it nine days herself
is after crying and keening, and making great sorrow in the house?
MAURYA (puts the empty cup mouth downwards on the table, and lays her hands together on Bartley's feet). They're all together
this time, and the end is come. May the Almighty God have mercy on Bartley's soul, and on Michael's soul, and on the souls
of Sheamus and Patch, and Stephen and Shawn (bending her head); and may He have mercy on my soul, Nora, and on the soul of
every one is left living in the world.
[She pauses, and the keen rises a little more loudly from the women, then sinks away.]"
When a storm or some other sea catastrophe bereaved Irish families of their loved ones, the Irish held wakes for them before
the burial:
"When Christianity took control, the ceremony was accompanied by lamentations or the caoine, commonly anglicized
as keening..." (Ellis, 137).
Keening
They gave "Aithirne a great burial and keened him, and it was Amergin that made a lament over his grave.
During modern times when many Irish were immigrating to America, they sometimes held "American wakes". These American
Wakes were the same as they were for the dead, except that they were for living people who were leaving Ireland and might
not ever be seen again by their families. The wake began in the evening of one day and lasted throughout the entire night
and came to a close as the sun began to rise the next day:
"As the morning drew nigh, the music slowed to a mournful dirge and the singing slipped from melody to the old practice
of keening - a high wail" (McCourt, 61).
As noted in Classic Through Modern Drama, An Introductory Anthology, Synge expresses himself in this way: "This grief
of the keen is no personal complaint...but it 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... " (Reinhart, 590).
The reader would have to understand the loss that the islanders felt so often and the ways they expressed their grief,
as they did in keening.
Synge wrote Riders to The Sea and presented it at the Abbey Theater in Dublin.
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