J.M. Synge was a tireless traveller who, while celebrating the beauties of the Irish landscape, never flinched from describing the harsh, unromantic reality of rural life. <br><br>Capturing the embers of a dying culture, the great playwright walks, drinks and talks with a rich assortment of country people, offering unforgettable descriptions of the Puck Fair at Killorglin and horse-racing on the strand near Dingle, of remote cottages and isolated fishing villages. Seamus Heaney wrote of Synge in 'Glanmore Eclogue' that he<br><br>Was never happier than when he was on the road<br>With people on their uppers. Loneliness<br>Was his passport through the world. Midge-angels<br>On the face of water, the first drop before thunder…<br>His spirit lives for me in things like that.<br><br>Synge's wandering spirit, as well as the farmers and tinkers, weavers and boat-builders he befriended, live on in these pages, which cannot fail to delight anyone who loves Ireland and her literature.
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John Millington Synge. Travels in Wicklow, West Kerry and Connemara
Foreword
In Wicklow
The Vagrants of Wicklow
The Oppression of the Hills
On the Road
The People of the Glens
At a Wicklow Fair
The Place and the People
A Landlord’s Garden in County Wicklow
Glencree
In West Kerry
In Connemara
From Galway to Gorumna
Between the Bays of Carraroe
Among the Relief Works
The Ferryman of Dinish Island
The Kelp Makers
The Boat Builders
The Homes of the Harvestmen
The Smaller Peasant Proprietors
Erris
The Inner Lands of Mayo
The Village Shop
The Small Town
Possible Remedies
Publisher’s Note
Serif Travel Library
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❖
You’ll find no poetry here,’ a Wicklow farmer told me when, aged twenty, I was rash enough to tell him about my literary ambitions. His tone was matter-of-fact, utterly lacking in ironic intent. He was speaking just as a fiery dawn extended its mantle from behind the Great Sugar Loaf mountain and down onto the Calary Bog, where we had already started mending a ditch in the half-light.
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January 2005
1. Elmer Andrews, The Poetry of Seamus Heaney, London 1988, p.125.