Synge And The Ireland Of His Time

(1911)

WITH A NOTE CONCERNING A WALK THROUGH CONNEMARA WITH HIM
BY JACK BUTLER YEATS

CHURCHTOWN
DUNDRUM
MCMXI

PREFACE

At times during Synge's last illness, Lady Gregory and I would speak of
his work and always find some pleasure in the thought that unlike
ourselves, who had made our experiments in public, he would leave to the
world nothing to be wished away--nothing that was not beautiful or
powerful in itself, or necessary as an expression of his life and
thought. When he died we were in much anxiety, for a letter written
before his last illness, and printed in the selection of his poems
published at the Cuala Press, had shown that he was anxious about the
fate of his manuscripts and scattered writings. On the evening of the
night he died he had asked that I might come to him the next day; and my
diary of the days following his death shows how great was our anxiety.
Presently however, all seemed to have come right, for the Executors sent
me the following letter that had been found among his papers, and
promised to carry out his wishes.

'May 4th, 1908

'Dear Yeats,

'This is only to go to you if anything should go wrong with me under the
operation or after it. I am a little bothered about my 'papers.' I have a
certain amount of verse that I think would be worth preserving, possibly
also the 1st and 3rd acts of 'Deirdre,' and then I have a lot of Kerry
and Wicklow articles that would go together into a book. The other early
stuff I wrote I have kept as a sort of curiosity, but I am anxious that
it should not get into print. I wonder could you get someone--say ... who
is now in Dublin to go through them for you and do whatever you and Lady
Gregory think desirable. It is rather a hard thing to ask you but I do
not want my good things destroyed or my bad things printed rashly--
especially a morbid thing about a mad fiddler in Paris which I hate. Do
what you can--Good luck.

'J.M. Synge'

In the summer of 1909, the Executors sent me a large bundle of papers,
cuttings from newspapers and magazines, manuscript and typewritten prose
and verse, put together and annotated by Synge himself before his last
illness. I spent a portion of each day for weeks reading and re-reading
early dramatic writing, poems, essays, and so forth, and with the
exception of ninety pages which have been published without my consent,
made consulting Lady Gregory from time to time the Selection of his work
published by Messrs. Maunsel. It is because of these ninety pages, that
neither Lady Gregory's name nor mine appears in any of the books, and
that the Introduction which I now publish, was withdrawn by me after it
had been advertised by the publishers. Before the