Riders to The Sea - 3

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Old legend refers to the trance state in mystic matters. It seems Synge's  friends Yeats and Lady Gregory were most interested and learned in these matters, and no doubt, the three often discussed them.

 

The text and link below refer to some of these works of Irish folklore:

 "I have taken Grania's sleepy song and the description of Finn's shield and of Cumhal's treasure-bag, and the fact of Finn's descent from Ethlinn, from Duanaire Finn, now being edited for the Irish Texts Society by Mr. John MacNeil, the proofs of which I have been kindly allowed to see. And I have used sometimes parts of stories, or comments on them gathered directly from the people, who have kept these heroes so much in mind. The story of Caoilte coming to the help of the King of Ireland in a dark wood is the only one I have given without either a literary or a folk ancestry. It was heard or read by Mr. Yeats, he cannot remember where, but he had, with it in his mind..."

This a quote by Lady Gregory.

 

(http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/gafm/gafm91.htm)

Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition...I have taken Grania's sleepy song...

Gods and Fighting Men by Lady Gregory

Grania Uaile (Grace O'Malley)

The Celtic myths of Ireland have similar themes and gods as those of the Norse. Sometimes the folklore is nearly interchangeable. The Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, reads:

 

"These conditions have not been matched elsewhere in the Celtic fringe, though in Cornwall as late as 1829 there were professional droll tellers, who enjoyed the hospitality of the cottages and taverns, and fiddled, sang ballads, purveyed news, and related brief tales of haunting, piskies, giants, and so forth. It may justly be claimed that Ireland has the finest  body of folklore in the world...Several  of the tales still current in Ireland are descended from the oldest strata of mythological and heroic fiction. Both methods are combined in The Barestripping Hangman... [and] The hung-up Naked man" (Leach, 200).

 

English Fairies and Piskies

Piskies and other Forest Folk look like they are related to the Green Man motif.

Roud Folk Song Index

These "droll" stories about ropes, hanging, and hanged persons originate from traditions as old as rope itself.  What is the game of jump rope?  Has it anything to do with those persons who "dance at the end of a rope"? And the sing-song jump rope songs, don't they sound like a formalized incantation of instructions?

Spanish Dancer: Skipping and Jump Rope Songs

Little House Under The Hill

The Word Museum describes a droll booth as being "A traveling theater; a place of exhibition for puppet shows" (Kacirk, 61).

The Word Museum also gives an interesting definition for "Bill-winks A child's term for 'sleepy'. Said of a sleepy child: 'Billy-winks is comin' [Taylor] See wink-a-peeps" (Kacirk, 27).

 

Maurya seems to drowse at the fire, so much so at times, the question arises whether she is in a trance.

 

Of course, Billy-winks is a device of personification for sleep as the Grim Reaper is for death, but anything about winks and "just kidding" makes us ask what kind of tomfoolery might be hinted about.

 

There is also the thought of the Land of Nod and 40 winks.

hypnagogic

At Tara, every year on Samhain Eve, a Danann named Aillen lulled everyone asleep with his beautiful music and then, breathing flames like a dragon, set the place on fire. Finn MacCool offered to guard Tara in exchange for anything he wanted. By means of magic, he succeeded in staying awake and defeating Aillen.
 
It turned out that his heart's desire was to be the leader of an elite group of warriors that guarded Ireland, the Fianna. The Fianna was led by a man named Goll at the time. "Goll means one-eyed" (Fleming, 65).
 
While it was certainly possible to have lost an eye or any other number of body parts given the savage nature of constant battle, but it is also possible that this was a reference to the cult of Odin.

Before monotheism in the form of Christianity, people of the world believed that life was controlled by mysterious unseen forces that could be manipulated  to their advantage by certain prescribed practices and rites.

This belief led to the invention of many pagan religions and gods, called polytheism.

Through the centuries, these gods and practices evolved to suit new ideas and were influenced by newcomers to the land and their languages, but underneath, the main force of these was the same.

These practices were so ingrained that even today, after centuries of Christianity, many of the old pagan customs still appear, although in a somewhat disguised or slightly altered form.

One example of this is the myriad of place names that contain some form of the word Odin.


Many of these stories have associations with the old gods and stories about them.


 An Irish Deity that corresponded to Odin was Oghma. He was a god of war and magic. Like Odin, he can be linked with the Gaulish Ogmios. Eliade gives us this account:


 "In their mother tongue the Celts call Herakles Ogmios and depict him in a most singular manner. He is a very very old man..."(Eliade, 59).


 The poetic mind can imagine each white-capped wave as a white-haired or fair-haired woman coming in to meet the shore, one by one by one, eternally.


 An adjunct thought concerning these wave-daughters is in Old Norse. It is about a character named Heimdallr, he:


 "...watches the rainbow bridge, Bifrost, for the coming of the frost giants at the Ragnarok, at which time he will sound his horn Gjallar.  In the Ragnarok, he and Loki will kill each other.  He never sleeps, can see in the dark, and can hear sheep's wool growing. His dwelling place is Himinbjorg [heavenly mountains]. Nine sisters, signifying the waves, gave birth to him. As Rig, he begets Thrall, Carl, and Earl, representing the three classes of man: slave, freeman, and noble"

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimdall).


Ogma, the poet, was considered to be a descendant of the Tuatha De Danann. He "was said to have invented the Irish ogham alphabet and is clearly related to Ogmios, the Gaulish god of eloquence" (Fleming, 52).

"The wind is fierce tonight. It tosses the sea's white hair. I fear no wild Vikings, sailing the quiet main",

The wave-daughters represent a kind of balance. They bring death to some, but they have given life as well. The ancient tribes of the Norse and the Irish sensed that there must be a balance in the universe.

 

The ancients learned from the natural world, although they lacked the sophisticated measurement instruments of the 20th century. Looking at their world from our perspective, we can see that the type becomes the prototype. The waves of the ocean represent certain physical laws of the universe, just as light waves and radio waves.

 

An ocean-going people would know quite a bit about waves and could discern certain things from observation. Given any similarities in the properties of waves, Synge could have inferred certain qualities about them.

 

In the book Teleportation, The Impossible Leap:

 

"Everett sidestepped the whole issue of how and why wave functions collapse by arguing that they never collapse. In his view, every time an observation is made, the wave function simply splits apart to take account of all the possible outcomes. No longer does the observer stand outside the system but instead enters a superposition of the various future realities” (Darling,  ).

The concept of the number three was important, not only to the Celts, but was also important to the Greeks. The latter had Three Fates, Three Graces, and Three Furies.This concept of three being sufficient for all situations is seen in the "I'll give you three guesses" or "three wishes" and "third times charm".

 

In children's stories and rhymes, there are Three Blind Mice, Three Little Kittens Who Lost Their Mittens, Three Bears, and Three Billy Goats Gruff. In mythology, there is the three-headed dog of the Underworld. The concept of pagan tri-gods were was later directed to the Christian Trinity, since the sacredness of three was a belief they already held.

 

"But the number's connection with the superlative is older and is expressed in the Greek word trismegistos ('thrice-greatest', superlatively great) and the Latin ter felix ('thrice-happy', happiest). The notion of the superlative involves the third term in a series of  3 - good, better, best" (Cavendish, 2613).

 Like Odin, Oghma is linked to symbol writing. He is credited with inventing the ogham symbols.

 

Writing was the equal of magic, mystery, and power for  ancient people. A man who could read stood far apart from the common man. In fact, The Word Museum tells us that grammar-folk once was understood to mean "Educated people [Warrack]" (Kacirk, 84).

Oghma is also one half of a symbolic and balanced dualism. Thus concept of dualism seems to have much importance, both in mythology and in the play:

 "Oghma is the dark side of the sovereign divinity of which Daghdha is the bright side. The Irish epics describe a hero wielding a bloody poisoned lance who is preceded by a cauldron of blood...The hero's face is bipartite: amiable and smiling on the right, dark and menacing on the left" (59).

 

This duality, in psychological terms, might represent balance. It might represent being "of two frames of mind", or, at its utmost point, could suggest a divided mind. The implications of the Norse and Irish mythology is that there is a tense balance between pagan and Christian beliefs and between the rational mind and the irrational, superstitious mind.

 

Additionally, as is the case with Odin, Oghma is identified as a leader, or psychopomp, of the dead  "Ogmios is a name taken from the Greek and specifically refers to his role as psychopomp."

 

"Like Odin, he is formidable and often is thought to be without a name, an unnamed god or no-man, since none has dared to speak his name."

 

A similar prohibition arose among the Israelites in Biblical times. The personal name for their God Yahweh was thought to be so sacred that it  eventually became taboo to speak it aloud, except on certain ceremonial occasions and by only a few. Thus, other names and designations arose to refer to the Supreme Being.

 

Another Irish Deity who depicts ideas from the play is Manannan. The Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends tells this about him:

"A shape changer and magician...he could drive his chariot over the waves...Manannan also possessed a magic coracle, the Wave-Sweeper...Manannan is credited with looking after the Tuatha De Danaan (the people of the goddess Dana)  when they were settling into the fairy mounds of Ireland...His concern for their welfare is not surprising.  He had fostered their champion, the sun god LUGH, after Balor has thrown him into the sea" (Cotterel,  ).

About Balor it says:

 

"Nuada fell under Balor's evil eye...However, with the help of a magic stone ball, which pierced through the eyes drooping lid, Lugh killed Balor."

 

This image is reminiscent, not only of Odin's missing eye, but of David killing Goliath with stone and slingshot, and Odysseus blinding the Cyclops.

 

Questions arise, not only about Balor's evil eye, but about whether this feature of the evil eye was also attributed to Odin.

horsc means "quick, ready, acive, valiant"

Epona, Roman Goddess of Horses

The pronunciation of a word plays an important part of the understanding of it. However it might be spelled, the sound of the word called certain images to mind, and Samhain, pronounced aloud, has the sound of sow in it. Curiously, there were festivals that Maurya would likely have knowledge of that involved sows:

Death is a pre-eminent theme in Riders to The Sea with an underlying theme of resurrection.  In this way the elements are balanced.

 

Including a discussion of Samhain is most appropriate. In fact, the ramifications of the celebrations are so many and so varied, that the word is loaded with information, much of it so deeply rooted in history that many of the readers or members of the audience would not actually know the original source of the customs and ideas. The pre-Christians had their own ideas about death and an afterlife, and conversion to Christianity did not erase those ideas completely. 

 

The mystical shadow of the Druids in Europe and Ireland still fell upon the Irish people.  Druids were the keepers of the sacred fire for which a fee was levied to restart all the snuffed hearth fires at Samhain.

 

The folk aspects of the holiday appear in the play as every day items and events. Irish legends allude to this most precarious of times, when mischief might be done as well as magic. In Holiday Symbols we read:

 

"An old legend associated with Samhain tells the story of the annual destruction of Tara...Every year at Samhain a goblin called Aillen played the harp so skillfully that everyone was charmed into sleep, allowing him to set fire to the palace."

 

Still another death and resurrection legend included in the same book is this: "According to Irish folklore, a god named Cenghus fell in love with a young girl Caer (also known as Rhiannon), who was capable of taking the form of a swan at the festival of Samhain...the only way he could be with her was to wait for the festival and then transform himself into a swan. United at last, the pair flew three times around the lake putting everyone else into a dream-sleep that lasted three days and three nights...The festival of Samhain may have celebrated, through the legend of people and gods shape-shifting into swans, the transformation of life from one state to another" (Thompson, 430).

The festival of Samhain may have celebrated, through the legend of people and gods, shape-shifting into swans, the transformation of life from one state to another. About Cuchulainn's mother Dechtire, “Legend recounts how on swallowing a fly which flew into her cup at her wedding feast, Dechtire fell into a deep sleep” (Thompson, 431).

 

Where did the children's song that begins with,

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly originate?

 

Maurya seems to be in a daze after realizing that her remaining son was doomed. An important religious theme underlies all of this: the hope of rebirth or resurrection. Whether Christian or pagan, people of the Islands needed to bolster their belief that there was some kind of hope in their hard lives. The mere mention of Samhain was enough to call to mind all of the associations of the Otherworld or afterlife, thus offering a spiritual tone, albeit barbaric. Celtic Myths offers this insight to the delicate balance in the world:

 

"The somber aspect of the Otherworld is equally represented in myth. Samhain at the beginning of November is a dangerous time, a kind of limbo where the barriers between the real and supernatural worlds are temporarily dissolved and where humans and spirits can penetrate each others space, thus upsetting the normal balance" (Green, 74).

 

The idea of symmetry and balance, like the scale of Justice, is also included in this context, making the two dimensions or worlds delicately balanced, aligned with one another, separated, as it were, by a veil that was dangerously permeable during the Eve of Samhain.  During this time, according to legend, the spirits of the dead were free to roam, often returning to their former homes.

During the festival of Samhain, held on November 1, Morrigan would sleep with Dagda.

Hypopompic Paralysis

The home hearth was often the center of family life during ancient times.  It was the place where food was given as well as warmth from fire and family fellowship.  In The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer we read about this theme.

The fire of the lives of Maurya’s household has been extinguished. Their hope for the future may have been extinguished, but the question of the bundle arises.  Although its first meaning is a literal bundle of clothes, the phrase bundle of joy comes to mind. If one of Maurya's two daughters, like the Biblical Mara with her two daughters-in-law in the book of Ruth, should find that one of them marries and provides a new husband and heir, their future hope could be rekindled with new providers.

 

There is also the idea of sacrifice. Though, perhaps, underplayed, the thought is there as we have seen in the loss of men in the family and from historical reference.

Beltane

Beltane Fire Festival

St. John's Eve

The fire of the lives of Maurya’s household has been extinguished. Their hope for the future may have been extinguished, but the question of the bundle arises.  Although its first meaning is a literal bundle of clothes, the phrase bundle of joy comes to mind. If one of Maurya's two daughters, like the Biblical Mara with her two daughters-in-law in the book of Ruth, should find that one of them marries and provides a new husband and heir, the fire is rekindled.

 

There is also the idea of sacrifice. Perhaps underplayed, the thought is there, as we have seen in the loss of men in the family and from historical reference.

In Celtic Myths this thought ties the cult of Odin to Samhain, "one Irish tradition involved the triple killing of a king, by burning, wounding and drowning, at the feast of Samhain" (Green, 69).

 

Odin as a type could be disguised in the play.  He might be playing the part of the old man who makes the coffin, a paradox that portrays Odin as the long dead mythical hero, and yet, alive enough to build a coffin. The door opens to ideas of rebirth and resurrection available to Maurya from the ancient past into Christianity.

The three times turning may have been ascribed to Christianity, but we have seen that three played an important role for pre-Christians as well as its cube: nine.

 

As with the Norse funeral rites, a stick or wand was an important part of the ceremony.  Recalling the whispering secrets between Maurya's daughters, the sticks could infer that the secret divining runes were in play, and the bundle, if it were tied up with a stick, would resemble a vagabond's pack. 

 

In today's terms Odin could be the ultimate hobo.  Traveling in disguise he might even be playing the part of the old man who makes the coffin, quite a paradox if one remembers that he is a long-dead mythical hero and yet is alive enough to build a coffin, a man both dead and alive. And here the door opens to examine the ideas of rebirth and resurrection available to Maurya from the ancient past into Christianity. 

There is a rivalry between the old religion and the new one, Christianity. The new religion is barely mentioned and is represented by the young priest. The old religion of pagan gods and goddesses is hidden by a cloak of obscurity.
 
"Christians naturally picked on the other gods as old enemies...but the battle was far from over by 1050..."
 
The old gods and their shrines were hidden in groves and forgotten forest places, but they were still attended, but not openly. Their reminders were to be found in carvings and amulets and folk sayings. These gods, with their esoteric symbols, could accompany the people as they traveled the world, poets and warriors and trader merchants, "without demanding obedience to a moral code" (Christiansen, 259-261).

Man, Myth & Magic, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion and the Unknown, tells of an interesting custom that used the number nine:

 

"Logans and 'chairs" are natural formations...The most famous of them is at Madron, near Penzance. Here there are three standing stones, the middle larger one pierced with a hole in its centre.  Until this century, the country people used to crawl through this hole for the cure of lumbago, sciatica and cricks in the back. It also possessed curative powers for rickets. Children afflicted with this defect were passed nine times through the hole" (Cavendish, 458).

The Men-An-Tol Stone

The Tolven Stone

Dewer's (Devil's) Stone

In Dartmoor England, there is a large stone with a hole in the center called The Druid's Stone:

“A local legend says that the Druids were baptized by being passed through the hole into the stream below” (Streeter, 59).

From long ago times, man has believed in rebirth or regeneration of life after death, and many pagan rituals were developed in line with this theme accompanied by stories of gods and heroes to whom this resurrection applied. Confusion over names can occur, since the fertility figure acts out basically the same role no matter which culture he appears in or by what name he is called.  

The horse was a symbol in myth.

 

Livestock would be a vital part of the Old English homestead. The Old English word horsc means wise.

Sir Richard Tempest, buried at St. Akelda's, Giggleswick

In Riders to The Sea, the two brothers are racing in some sort of otherworldly Triple Crown race or, to make a pun- the Irish race. Celtic Myths by Miranda Jane Green has this to say about the goddess Epona:

 

"Her imagery is distinctive: she is always depicted in company with horses, either riding side-saddle on a mare or between two or more horses or ponies" (Green, 60).

 

Interestingly, she often is described as riding between two ponies. Was she invisibly riding between the two sons? Synge may have alluded to this goddess as if she were between the sons on their horses.

Since both Maurya's sons are seen riding together on horses, one of them already counted among the known dead, a literal reading of the ghostly ride isn't likely.

The Celtic goddess Epona is often understood to be riding between two horses.
 
In a Southern Siberian ceremony, the Tailgan:
 
"First the horse is purified by being led between the fires (there must be either three, nine, or twenty-seven fires)"
 
The horse, rather than the goddess, is led between two fires which have been lit as soon as the congregants are assembled.  Comparing these elements to Maurya's vision, the goddess Epona could be viewed as riding on the horse to be sacrificed, while the sons are in the positions of the two fires.
 

The sacrifice of horses was sacred to the Vanir, men of the north. Man, Myth & Magic tells of this:


"The horse was also sacred to the Vanir, and there are references to horses sacrificed to Freyr, and of a horse dedicated to the god by its owner, which no man was able to ride" (Cavendish, 966).

Horse sacrifice was practiced by many cultures. In Norse culture, there was a ritual sacrifice that involved the killing of a horse. The horse's head was then put on a pole and used for a curse. The specific nature of the curse could be carved in runes on the wooden pole.
 
"A freshly cut horse head was also used in setting up anything pole for a Norse curse" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_sacrifice).
 
This horse-head on a pole, sometimes with the hide draped over the length of the pole, must have looked like a crude hobby horse that children still play with today as they ride with the pole between their legs and holding the reins attached to the horse's head.
 
Further on in history in England, condemned persons' heads were frequently put on poles or pikes and exhibited to the public. They were considered accursed.
 
For the Norse, "A nithing pole (old Norse: níðstang), sometimes normalized as nithstang or nidstang, was a pole used for cursing an enemy in Germanic pagan tradition"  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nithing_pole).
 
Cursing a nith was a ritual based on the practice of magic because of fearing a sorcerer believed to take practical matters into his own hands and harm people. This kind of sorcerer, a nithing, was believed to be a monster requiring a powerful spell or curse. The word nith literally meant envy, hate, and malice.(http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Nithstang+Curse)
 
Horses were valuable and useful animals, so their slaughter was delegated to the most important or most desperate circumstances.
 
 

The Tailgan or Horse Sacrifice

Elements of the Wild Hunt, the Green Man and Herne the Hunter are suggested by these riders. The horse as an element and symbol appears in both a literal and symbolic sense and linked to various other cultic symbols and practices. 

 

Always valued by man for its proverbial horse-sense and for its usefulness, the horse was also worshipped as a deity at times and used to play out mystical dramas.  The Gaulish Celts worshipped the Mare Goddess, appearing in other cultures as Epona and associated with The Three Epona and the Triple Goddesses.

 

One cultic practice in twelfth century Ireland involved a local king acting out a re-birth in a white mare ceremony.  Afterward, the mare was slaughtered and eaten.  We read of the culmination of the ceremony by the king:

 

"He stood on an inauguration stone and received a straight white wand, which he held while turning three times left and three times right in honor of the trinity" (The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, 165).

"Giraldus Cambrensis (c. AD 1146-1220)... describes a ritual during the inauguration of a king in a northern Irish kingdom which could well be a survival from Druidic times. he speaks of the ritual slaughter of a mare. The king-elect eats its flesh, drinks and bathes in a broth made from the carcass" (Ellis, 138).

Horses sometimes symbolized other things, some mythical, others archetypical. The word hobby, as in hobby horse, calls to mind other ancient symbols:
 
"But the Old French term is apparently adopted from English rather than vice versa. OED connects it to "the by-name Hobin, Hobby", a variant of Robin" (compare the abbreviation Hob for Robert)"  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_horse).
 
The words hob and Robin had many connections with legend and myth, such as hob goblin and Robin Hood.

Hobby Horse

'obby 'orse festival

Padstow Hobby Horse Photos

May Pole
cole.jpg
Cole Camp, MO USA

Here are some archaic words from The Word Museum, which may have some impact on understanding the play:

 

"hunt the whistle  A romping game in which a blinded person has a whistle fastened to him. The other players blow this from time to time, and the blinded one tries to catch the blower..." (Kacirk, 94).

 

"horse chaunter  A dealer who takes worthless horses to country fairs and disposes of them by artifice. He is an unprincipled fellow, and will put in a glass eye..." (Kacirk, 93).

 

"jow-fair  A wedding broken off at the last moment...a race broken off at the appointed day... (Kacirk, 103).

 

'midwife-gallop  Full gallop; a great speed... " (Kacirk, 122).

 

"stalking horse  If the fowl are so shy...that there be no way to come at them fairly, you must lead forth your stalking horse, being some old jade, trained up for that purpose, that will not startle much at the report of a gun..." (Kacirk, 183).

 

"stang  To ride the stang is to be carried on a pole on men's shoulders through the town for the amusement of a hooting crowd. This is a derisive punishment for a breech of decorum or morality, especially on the part of a married man.." (Kacirk, 183).

 

"whores-hunting  When a wife left her husband to live with another man, the villagers would assemble outside the guilty couple's house with a horse's head stuck on a pole, and would pull the jaw down by means of a string tied through the animal's lower lip..." (Kacirk, 216).

The Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend edited by Maria Leech adds further to our understanding:

 

"...the beginning of winter (Samhain) was the occasion for the lighting of bonfires and for processions from house to house to solicit contributions of coin and food. In County Cork the procession was led by a man called the White Mare (Lair Bhan) wearing a white robe… The fairies and the spirits of the dead were supposed to be abroad" (Leach, 202).

Another custom exemplifying the use of a symbolic figure, in this case the horse to ensure fertility for the upcoming harvest, was called the horse dance.

 

Maurice Leech defines it in the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend:

 

"Ritual riding on a live horse or a hobby horse...at the grave of the goddess Talltiu in Taillten, Ireland, they race to give chthonic spirits an access of vigor for crop production" (Leech, 504).

 

One could rightly wonder: where is the origin of the stick horses children pretend to ride at play, for stick and horses are both elements of the play and could it have any bearing on our understanding of it?  In these sources we find a connection to festival, the fairies, and horses. 

 

Leech goes on to relate:

 

"One of the oldest Irish sagas states that the barrows where the fairies dwelt were open about Samhain... According to Keating, in heathen times the druids on Ireland assembled to sacrifice to the gods and burn their victims on Samhain Eve. All other fires were extinguished to be rekindled only from that fire" (Leech, 968).

The Wild Hunt, Wikipedia

People have a natural curiosity and apprehension about what the future holds for them.  Any number of means of divining truth and future events have been devised through the ages for this purpose, most arising from the simple desire to know some personal matter or the need of rulers to shape their battle plans. 

 

Omens and symbols that seem to predict future events were also given much attention. Maurya and her daughters wonder what their fate will be “what with the last man of the house dead and gone”. Who will provide for them?

 

It is easy to find these symbolic elements: a great wind blowing on the feet of Maurya's dead son as he lies upon the table.  The play is replete with other symbolism.  In view of these traditions, it could be rightly wondered if Maurya might imagine herself as the next on the table, possibly contributing to her ideas about “the great sleep she will be having”.

 

The Norse invasions were exhaustive upon the Irish, and since the Norse were Odin worshippers, the New Christianity was comparatively restful, although all traces of the old religion had by no means disappeared. The fact that Samhain is mentioned in conversation in a much later period of history shows that this old festival still existed.

 

There is every reason to think that the audience to which the play opened would be familiar with the cultural context.  There are also implications of other pagan practices connected to this third and final harvest festival.  The Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, edited by Maria Leach, adds further to our understanding:

 

"...the beginning of winter (Samhain) was the occasion for the lighting of bonfires and for processions from house to house to solicit contributions of coin and food. In County Cork the procession was led by a man called the White Mare (Lair Bhan) wearing a white robe and carrying a rude representation of a horse's head. On this same eve the peat fires in the cottages were put out to be lighted afresh the following morning. The fairies and the spirits of the dead were supposed to be abroad" (Leach, 202).

 

No absolute statement can be made stating exactly which legend might be attached to horses and the otherworldly ride of Maurya's sons, but the mentality is so rife with implications that some connections must be valid.

It is remarkable to see how the elements of drowsy enchanted sleep, a white mare, and a fairy tale are woven together time after time with slightly different names. A similar account seeming to provide the same elements, rearranged, is the story off Snow White, who is much the same as Grimm's Briar Rose. Both characters fell into a death-like sleep, but were revived to life later in the story.

Briar Rose or Sleeping Beauty

Perceforest, containing the theme of Sleeping Beauty

The story of Briar Rose is a very old folk tale and contains themes that are found in other stories and ballads. For instance, the folk ballad called Barbara Allen, of which there are many variations, tells of a couple who died, were buried next to each other, and "from William's grave there grew a rose, from Barbara's a green briar".

Barbara Allen lyrics

A remarkable example of the theme of Briar Rose was found in an archeological dig in Ur of the Chaldees.
 
In an archeological excavation of Ur in Mesopotamia, Charles Leonard Wooley, in the 1920's, sank some deep shafts beneath Ur and made an amazing find:
 
"...that led him to the royal cemeteries. When opened,  the tombs displayed an enternment of king and queen accompanied by human sacrifice on an extravagant scale. The entire retinue of the ancient court - its servants, soldiers of the guard, muscians, the ox that pulled the funeral cart, the driver and grooms - had been laid out as if they had fallen asleep under a spell at the foot of the wooden bier upon which the monarch lay, with the queen on her own platform wearing a floral headdress  made of paper-thin leaves and flowers of gold, silver, and electrum. Every individual appeared poised to accompany the regent into the afterlife..." (Ryan, 54).

One Version of Banbury Cross:

Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross

To see a fine lady upon a white horse.

With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,

She shall have music wherever she goes.

 

Maura seems as weary as if she had withstood a siege of Berserkers, those strange battle-bear warriors of the North who worked themselves into such an adrenaline frenzy that they had superhuman strength. 

 

In their state of angry arousal, they were almost impossible to kill, and they could fight for long periods of time with inhuman stamina. After their battle they would fall into a stuperous state of sleep for abnormally long periods of time. So extreme was their two states of mind, either a lethargic stupor after a battle or hyper-energetic bloodletting, that you could almost think of them as manic-depressive, with very little middle ground.

Oisin and Niam

He wishes for the cloths of heaven by Yeats

With the image of a cozy rustic home in mind, there would often be the spinner working at the wheel to make the warm and durable Aran knits.  Even the spinning wheel conjures the images of mythology".

 

These Norms could be compared to the Greek goddesses of fate,  These supernatural women tended the Yggdrasil and determined fate. Their names were: Urd [fate], Skuld [necessity], and Verdandi [being].

 

There are more than three Norns. It is believed that a Norn is present at a person’s birth to determine his or her fate.

Norns

The Norns spun their yarn, weaving the fate of individuals over whom they watched into the yarn.  "His thread of life was cut short" is a phrase that described their work.

How closely related are the diverse myths from many cultures?  The book Carrots Love Tomatoes, tells about the herb Elecampane (Inula helenium):

 

"My German heritage bids me have great respect for elecampane, sometimes called horseheal or horse alder. This herb was under the protection of the goddess Hulda, who first taught mortals the art of spinning and weaving flax. Candied elecampane, according to a 17th-century herbal, as thought to 'cause mirth'" (Riotte, 37).

 

The Hulda Lady and the Norns seem to have much in common.

The Hulda in Folklore

A Scottish custom called first-footing is still remembered. A tall, dark and handsome man is considered the luckiest of first-footers to cross the threshold at the stroke of midnight during Hogmany.


(http://www.rampantscotland.com/know/blknow12.htm)

Hogmanay and First-Footing

"In all countries Halloween seems to have been the great season...of prying into the future; all kinds of divination were put into practice that night.  In Wales, Halloween was the weirdest of all the Teir Nos Ysbrydion, or Three Spirit Nights, when the wind, blowing over the feet of corpses, bore sighs to the houses of those who were to die within the year.".


"In Wales Hallowe’en was the weirdest of all the Teir Nos Ysbrydion, or Three Spirit Nights, when the wind, “blowing over the feet of the corpses,” bore sighs to the houses of those who were to die within the year."  http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/12261/181.html#gsc.tab=0


The symbolism of feet is important in Bible accounts of Christ, from the washing of his disciples' feet to the nails pounded into is feet on the cross. We think of the feet of Bartley as he lies on the table. 

Another mythical figure is called to mind as we think of Bartley's now unshod feet, Njord. This link tells us:

His home was called Noatun [harbour] and his wife was the giantess Zkadi who married him because he had beautiful feet. She later left him because they couldn't decide in whose dwelling they should live.

The Demiurge's Laugh by Robert Frost

"The one-eyed Arimaspians were everlastingly on the prowl for the treasured gold of the Hyperborean . Griffins rode, it is said, on horses, suggesting that they were men of intellect."

 

The two eyes typified, respectively, Knowledge and Love, and one may reasonably infer from the very marked mention of horses, that the solitary eye possessed by the Arimaspians was the Eye of Intellect and the missing eye was the Eye of Love (  ,286).

 

The image of Odin and how he became empowered comes forward, but with a cost, and maybe the cost was not only the loss of his eye but the cost also was being hardened to adversity by the experience, thereby losing the Eye of Love. Knowledge is tempered by Love and reports a complete story, just as Odin's two ravens whispered into each of his ears, and since there was one on each side, probably not in one ear and out the other. Will Maurya and her daughters become embittered and lose their proverbial Eye of Love?

Riders To The Sea, Part 1

Riders To The Sea 2

Riders To The Sea, 4

Riders To The Sea: The Play

Between Two Hills by Carl Sandburg

On The Way by Carl Sandburg

I heard a fly buzz when I died, By Emily Dickenson


Balder the Beautiful, Volume I. by Sir James George Frazer, Project Gutenberg

Tennyson's "The Lotus Eaters"