A good many years ago cultivated people and others began to take an interest in the Irish peasant; it added something to the gaiety of London and Dublin drawing-rooms. But socialism and communism, the labour party and anarchy, had not then been invented to teach people the seriousness of starving poverty. So Carleton and other writers set to work to exploit the Irish peasant and make him into something “fit for a lady’s chamber.” Hence has arisen the foolish tradition that the Irish are all gentleness and innocence, and, though wildly amusing, still within the bounds of good taste; hence also came the comic Irishman, a buffoon without seriousness who lived by making laughter for his patrons.
Synge’s plays exist to prove the contrary of all this. And yet there is some truth in the picture. The Irish character has a side which is turned toward spirituality and poetry, a musical instrument exquisitely attuned to the beauties of nature and life. Among this fighting race, square-chinned and with short features, is scattered another type, with long, oval faces and soft eyes, born to all hoping gentleness and affection, with imagination fed on the mysteries of life and death and religion. This type Stella might have discovered had she not been too English; Swift could not, because probably he frightened it away. Yet Dr. Goldsmith was as true an Irishman as Dr. Swift. How vividly Synge knew this side of the Irish mind is shown in his book on the Aran Islands. The other side is in his plays.
“A picture,” said Blake, “should be like a lawyer presenting a writ.” Synge presents us with such a picture. Let us be patient; people brought up on the literature of good taste cannot be expected all at once to enjoy the literature of power.
“I can look at a knot in a piece of wood until I am frightened by it,” so spake William Blake. This is the creative imagination, and it is that of folklore and of the Aran Islands. These people know no distinction between natural and supernatural; they believe everything to be carried on by miracle; and the civilized man who does not know that behind all science and reason and all moral systems there is a something transcending all knowledge and which is a continued miracle of love and beauty is not only incapable of culture, he is incapable of desiring it. To him the Bible is as inscrutable as Shelley. These peasants are not as well educated as, say, Mr. Rockefeller, yet they have this feeling, this feeling which is the religion of children and poets, and which is not subject for reason at all--even though it be the source of our whole intellectual life.