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The ocean gave a living to the people, the price of keeping them captive, but in the manner of the old religion, it took its
requisite number of sacrificial victims from those who made their living on the waters. The reverence and fear of the sea
was mirrored in the waters of the many sacred wells in Ireland, all holy to the Irish before the arrival of St. Patrick. The
pagan names of these wells were changed after the acceptance of Christianity.
It's important to see that nature created a complex picture more encompassing than the scene in Maurya's cottage.
Forces larger than man work to bring about the destruction of the Irish family in this play.
The ocean is the strongest natural force in the play. Each of its waves, however beautiful, was treacherous and powerful
against mortal man, each filled with danger, each a potential call to the pagan Lord of the Dead.
Donn, Lord of the Dead, is not to be confused with the god Samhain, Lord of Darkness.
Donn Lord of the Dead
Samhain the lord of Darkness
Samhain
The inhabitants of the Aran Islands were cut off from Irish life on the mainland, but boats called hookers joined the island
to the mainland:
"Till recently there was no communication with the mainland except by hookers, which were usually slow, and could
only make the voyage in tolerably fine weather, so that if an islander went to a fair it was often three weeks before he could
return. Now, however, the steamer comes here twice a week, and the voyage is made in three or four hours.
(http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/tai/tai03.htm)
Synge makes references to these ferry boats in the play:
"NORA. He went down to see would there be another boat sailing in the week, and I'm thinking it won't be long till
he's here now, for the tide's turning at the green head, and the hooker's tacking from the east."
"The hooker was developed for the strong seas there. It is identified by the sail formation, which is extremely distinctive
and quite beautiful. It consisted of a single mast with a main sail and two foresails. Traditionally, the boat is black (being
coated in pitch) and the sails are a dark red-brown" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galway_Hooker).
The Galway Hooker
It's interesting to note that besides the boats that were called hookers, there are also hooks. In the play, Nora has to remove
a hook from the flannel cloth to match it with clothing that is hanging in the cottage:
"NORA. I'll get his shirt off the hook the way we can put the one flannel on the other. (She looks through some clothes
hanging in the corner.) It's not with them, Cathleen, and where will it be?"
Seafaring was a theme of the play because it was the main livelihood of the people in the Aran islands. The husband, father-in-law,
and the sons of Maurya were fishermen who had lost their lives at sea.
Riders to The Sea is about sorrow and suffering, at least on the surface. The idea that sorrow and suffering were invaluable
to the individual spirit and the community was strongly held by the Irish before Christianity arrived and was certainly not
mitigated by the teachings of the Church.The pagan beliefs and practices attest to this.
It would be reasonable to think that the cult of Odin's ordeal of suffering, whose cult practices permeated so much of
Northern Europe's religion, was not unlike Christ's, a concept that was easy to transfer when the Norse pagans were introduced
and converted to Christianity.
The theme of the clash of the new religion, Christianity, with the old pagan religions was, and historically is, of great
importance.
Synge's experience on the Aran Islands emphasized the sadness and peril that the villagers lived with on an everyday basis.
All the beauty and terror of making a living from the sea became a unified force of dread and longing, extreme opposites
balanced against each other. Together, they formed a status quo of living conditions for the islanders. Synge may have been
able to developed an acceptance of his own death as the fate of all men as a result.
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