Riders to the Sea, Synge

• SCENE. An Island off the West of Ireland.
• [NORA comes in softly, and takes a bundle from under her shawl.]
• NORA. The young priest is after bringing them. It's a shirt and a plain stocking were got off a drowned man in Donegal.
• NORA. The young priest says he's known the like of it. "If it's Michael's they are," says he, "you can tell herself that he's got a clean burial by the grace of God, and if they're not his, let no one say a word about them, for she'll be getting her death," says he, "with crying and laughing."
• NORA. "I won't stop him," says he, "but lest you not be afraid. Herself does be saying prayers half through the night, and the Almighty God won't leave her destitute," says he, "with no son living."
• 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 if he'd be floating from the east.
• BARTLEY [comes in and looks round the room. Speaking sadly and quietly]. Where is the bit of new rope, Cathleen, was brought in Connemara?
• BARTLEY. How would it be washed up, and we after looking each day for nine days, and a strong wind blowing a while back from the west and south?
• MAURYA. ... If it was a hundred horses, or a thousand horses you had itself, what is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is only one son only?
• MAURYA [turning round to the fire, and putting her shawl over her head]. Isn't it a hard and cruel man won't hear a word from an old woman, and she holding him from the sea?
• [CATHLEEN opens the bundle and takes out a bit of stocking. They look at them eagerly.]
• NORA [who has taken up the stocking and counted the stitches, crying out]. It's Michael, Cathleen, it's Michael; God spare his soul, and what will herself say when she hears this story, and Bartley on the sea?
• CATHLEEN. Put these things away before she'll come in. Maybe it's easier she'll be after giving her blessing to Bartley, and we won't let on we've heard anything the time he's on the sea.
• MAURYA [with a weak voice]. My heart's broken from this day.
• MAURYA. I went down to the spring well, and I stood there saying a prayer to myself. Then Bartley came along, and he riding on the red mare with the gray pony behind him. [She puts up her hands, as if to hide something from her eyes.] The Son of God spare us, Nora!
• MAURYA. I seen Michael himself.
• CATHLEEN [speaking softly]. You did not, mother; It wasn't Michael you seen, for his body is after being found in the far north, and he's got a clean burial by the grace of God.
• NORA. They're carrying a thing among them and there's water dripping out of it and leaving a track by the big stones.
• MAURYA [in a low voice, but clearly]. It's little the like of him knows of the sea. ... Bartley will be lost now, and let you call in Eamon and make me a good coffin out of the white boards, for I won't live after them. I've had a husband, and a husband's father, and six sons in this house--six fine men, though it was a hard birth I had with every one of them and they coming to the world--and some of them were found and some of them were not found, but they're gone now the lot of them. ... There were Stephen, and Shawn, were lost in the great wind, and found after in the Bay of Gregory of the Golden Mouth, and carried up the two of them on the one plank, and in by that the door.
• [Two younger WOMEN come in and pull out the table. Then MEN carry in the body of BARTLEY, laid on a plank, with a bit of sail over it, and lay it on the table.]
• ONE OF THE WOMEN. The gray pony knocked him into the sea, and he was washed out where there is a great surf on the white rocks.
• CATHLEEN [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.
• MAURYA [continuing]. Michael has a clean burial in the far north, by the grace of the Almighty God. Bartley will have a fine coffin out of the white boards, and a deep grave surely. What more can we want than that? No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.
• [She kneels down again and the curtain falls slowly.]