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WELCOME TO THE 2009 SYNGE SUMMER SCHOOL 28 JUNE - 3 JULY 2009 |
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Synge and Wicklow Although John Millington Synge was born in Rathfarnham, Co. Dublin and he grew up in the city, there
was always a sense of attachment to Wicklow, where his family had been
landowners. Each summer his widowed mother Mrs Synge would take him and
his four siblings for extended holidays in the county in rented houses close
to the Synge estate of Glanmore: Castle Kevin, Avonmore House, one summer in Tomriland,
the famous Wicklow cottage with its chink in the floorboards where Synge was
to write Riders to the Sea. It was on these summer vacations, that John
Synge walked and cycled round the hills and glens of Wicklow and came to know
them intimately. He fished in the mountain lakes, climbed Lugnaquilla, and stopped to talk to the people he met on
the roads. One area in particular attracted him, the beautiful valley of
Avonbeg starting up in Glenmalure,
where he set the haunting The Shadow of the Glen, down through the
cross-roads of Greenane, setting for The Well of
the Saints, to the village of Ballinaclash, scene
for the farcical Tinker’s Wedding. Though his visits to the Aran
Islands gave him his breakthrough as a writer, Wicklow was home territory for
John Synge, and his plays and his atmospheric essays about the county are the
lasting tribute to its inspiration for him. Professor Nicky Grene |
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Page Updated 12
March, 2009 |
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