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Nails are first mentioned in Riders to The Sea when Bartley
is getting ready to ride down to the Galway fair:
"BARTLEY (comes in and looks round the room. Speaking sadly and quietly).
Where is the bit of new rope, Cathleen, was bought in Connemara?
CATHLEEN (coming down). Give it to him, Nora; it's on a nail by the white boards. I hung it up
this morning, for the pig with the black feet was eating it.
NORA (giving him a rope). Is that it, Bartley? "
When Maurya learns of her son's death, she hires an "old man" to make
the coffin. Nails for the coffin become the subject:
"[To an old man.]
Maybe yourself and Eamon would make a coffin
when the sun rises. We have fine white boards herself bought, God help her, thinking Michael would be found, and I have a
new cake you can eat while you’ll be working.
THE OLD MAN
[Looking at the boards.]
Are there
nails with them?"
Nails were once a relatively precious item, since they had to be made one at
a time.
Thor
was a companion of Odin, one of a trinity of Norse gods. He was a man of the people, sometimes a clown, and inseparably
linked to his hammer. He was not as mysterious as Odin and considered more approachable to the common man. Hammer and
nails go together as do bread and butter. So, in the play, Bartley needs his bread as Thor does his hammer.
There
is some mention in the play of nails in two separate instances. First, the rope that Bartley is looking for was hanging
on a nail, just as his life, if he had only known, was hanging by a thread. In the second instance, Maurya has
forgotten to buy new nails for the coffin, although she has new white boards.
There
is an image of the nails used on Christ's cross concealed in this imagery just as the image of the women weeping at the foot
of the cross is implied when he is laid out on the table and viewed by the women that come in, but there might also be another
reference for the Irish audience.
In
The Viking it says:
"The
Erlyggia Saga thus describes a 'temple' of Thor erected by an Icelandic settler: It was a mighty building. There was a door
in the side wall nearer to one end of it; inside this door stood the posts of the high seat and in them were the nails called
the Divine Nails...on the stand there must also lie the bowl for the blood of sacrifice, and in it the blood-twig, like a
holy water sprinkler...and all around that stand the gods were set out in that holy place" (Simpson, 166).
The
Viking kings sat in large stone chairs, elevated from ground level. Like their gods, they sat in the high seat above the crowd.
The blood-twigs in the temple sound like the very same items lit in the Norse funeral rites and weddings.
At St.
Botholph's Church, Hadstock, England, nails were put to a
use both pagan and Christian if you consider that:
"Tradition
also has it that a Dane was flayed alive for sacrilege at about that time, and his skin was nail on the door - and in this
case there is evidence to prove it. When the door was repaired, a piece of human skin was found under one of its hinges" (Timson,
39).
A more sinister use of a nail was in its use for a curse. "...you can harm an enemy by driving
into his footprint a nail from an old coffin...You hammer the nail well in with a stone...(Cavendish, 234).
The use of a nail from a coffin reminds the reader
of Riders to The Sea that the old man who comes to build a coffin is connected to the nail by the white boards
where the rope is hanging at the beginning of the play.
Stave churches were common in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. They were descended
from the kinds of temples the Vikings built.
"Archaeological excavations have shown that stave churches, best represented today by the
Borgund stave church, descend from palisade constructions and later churches with earth-bound posts.
Similar palisade constructions are known from buildings from the Viking era. Logs were split
in two halves, rammed into the ground, and given a roof. This was a simple form of construction but very strong. If set in
gravel, the wall could last for decades, even centuries. Remains of buildings of this type are found over much of Europe"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stave_church".
Noewegian Stave Church
The Word Museum gives
us the expression drawing the nail, a term not now commonly known, but at one time was understood to mean:
"Absolving oneself of a vow.
In Cheshire, two or more persons would agree to do something, or to abstain from something,...they would go into a wood and
register their vow by driving a nail into a tree, swearing to keep their vow as long as the nail remained in the tree" (Kacirk,
60).
Though
there is no proof, it is possible that the use of a nail in a solemn oath to seal a vow could have had its origin in Thor's
temple.
The Viking temples were built with a high platform for the high god, just as
their chief's chair was elevated from the rest.
In England, among other places, the Rood of the church was built where the congregation
had to lift their eyes to view it.
Viking High Seat
There is a loft in Maurya's cottage. The girls hide the bundle there:
"CATHLEEN
Give me the ladder, and I’ll put them up in the turf-loft, the way she won’t know of them at all, and maybe
when the tide turns she’ll be going down to see would he be floating from the east.[They put the ladder against the
gable of the chimney; Cathleen goes up a few steps and hides the bundle in the turf-loft. Maurya comes from the inner room.]MAURYA
[Looking
up at Cathleen and speaking querulously.]"
What other associations might Synge have had in mind about lofts?
What is a Rood Loft?
Stairs that once led to the rood loft.
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