The Aran Islands

My sister just returned from the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland. I was captivated by her travels and beautiful pictures. I had to learn more. I immediately went to the library and borrowed this book, first published in 1907. I was soon time traveling, transported somewhere else. The stor......more

The Aran Islands are a small and isolated enclave to the west of the Irish mainland, separated from the rest of Ireland by some highly treacherous seas. The Irish playwright John Millington Synge brought the distinctive culture of the Aran islanders to the world through classic plays like Riders to......more

A lovely book that is incredibly evocative of a way of life that has long since passed away through its stories and reflections of the fishermen and women who lived on the Aran islands. Synge went there to learn Irish and return to his gaelic roots. He seems to have been one of a long parade of anth......more

Playwright JM Synge was one of the key figures in the Gaelic Revival. He was a mainstay at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in the early years of the 20th Century, and hugely controversial. His Playboy of the Western World provoked rioting and the police had to be called to break up the ensuing disorder. L......more

If you go to the Aran Islands today, you find that a few thousand people live there, mostly tending B&Bs or tourist shops. The only remnant of the old Ireland is the hundreds of miles of stone walls that still divide the land into tiny plots. Synge's diary is hardly a masterwork of ethnography. ("The......more