soldiers and of the most beautiful women!' It was as I believe, to seek
that old Ireland which took its mould from the duellists and scholars of
the 18th century and from generations older still, that Synge returned
again and again to Aran, to Kerry, and to the wild Blaskets.




IX


'When I got up this morning' he writes, after he had been a long time in
Innismaan, 'I found that the people had gone to Mass and latched the
kitchen door from the outside, so that I could not open it to give myself
light.

'I sat for nearly an hour beside the fire with a curious feeling that I
should be quite alone in this little cottage. I am so used to sitting
here with the people that I have never felt the room before as a place
where any man might live and work by himself. After a while as I waited,
with just light enough from the chimney to let me see the rafters and the
greyness of the walls, I became indescribably mournful, for I felt that
this little corner on the face of the world, and the people who live in
it, have a peace and dignity from which we are shut for ever.' This life,
which he describes elsewhere as the most primitive left in Europe,
satisfied some necessity of his nature. Before I met him in Paris he had
wandered over much of Europe, listening to stories in the Black Forest,
making friends with servants and with poor people, and this from an
aesthetic interest, for he had gathered no statistics, had no money to
give, and cared nothing for the wrongs of the poor, being content to pay