Maire Chatach: MAW-reh KHOTT-ukh
Manus: MAAH-nuss
Mullach Dearg: MULL-ukh JA-rug (hard
J as inJohn)
Poll na gCaorach: POW L nuh GAY-rukh
(POW L rhymes with cowl)
Port: purt (rhymes with hurt)
Poteen: puh-TCHEEN
Ruadh: ROO-uh
Seamus: SHAY-muss
Sean: shawn
Tobair Bhriain: TUB-er vr-EE-un
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FRIEL: TRANSLATIONS, ACT 1 / 247 7
Tobair Vree: TUB-er vrEE (the letter V is Tra Bhan: trAW VAWN
an anglicization) Tukc h Ajainn; xULL-ukh AW-linn
Tor: tur (as in the first syllable of the
English word turret)
Translations
MANUS BRIDGET
SARAH HUGH
JIMMY JACK OWEN
MAIRE CAPTAIN LANCEY
DOALTY LIEUTENANT YOLLAND
The action takes place in a hedge-school' in the townland of Baile Beag/Ballybeg, an Irish-speaking community in County Donegal.2
ACT ONE An afternoon in late August 1833.
ACT TWO A few days later.
ACT THREE The evening of the following day.
Act One
The hedge-school is held in a disused ham or hay-shed or byre. Along the back wall are the remains of five or six stalls?wooden posts and chains?where cows were once milked and bedded. A double door left, large enough to allow a cart to enter. A window right. A wooden stairway without a banister leads to the upstairs living-quarters (off ) of the schoolmaster and his son. Around the room are broken and forgotten implements: a cart-wheel, some lobster-pots, farming tools, a battle3 of hay, a churn, etc. There are also the stools and bench-seats which the pupils use and a table and chair for the master. At the door a pail of water and a soiled towel. The room is comfortless and dusty and functional? there is no trace of a woman's hand.
When the play opens, MANUS is teaching SARAH to speak. He kneels beside her. She is sitting on a low stool, her head down, very tense, clutching a slate on her knees. He is coaxing her gently and firmly and?as with everything he does? with a kind of zeal.
MANUS is in his late twenties/early thirties; the master's older son. He is pale- faced, lightly built, intense, and works as an unpaid assistant?a monitor?to his father. His clothes are shabby; and when he moves we see that he is lame.
SARAHS speech defect is so bad that all her life she has been considered locally to be dumb and she has accepted this: when she wishes to communicate, she grunts and makes unintelligible nasal sounds. She has a waiflike4 appearance and coidd be any age from seventeen to thirty-five.
JIMMY JACK CASSIE?known as the Infant Prodigy?sits by himself, contentedly
reading Homer in Greek and smiling to himself. He is a bachelor in his sixties,
1. Peasant school in which the Irish language was 2. In the northwest corner of Ireland, now in the the primary medium of instruction; the hedge Republic of Ireland. Baile Beag/Ballybeg is the school was so called because it was beside a hedge imaginary community in which many of Friel's (or in the open air or in a barn). Such schools were plays are set. formed because education of Roman Catholics in 3. Compact bundle. Ireland had been officially proscribed by the Penal 4. Like a homeless child. Laws passed in the 17th and 18th centuries.
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247 8 / NATION AND LANGUAGE
lives alone, and comes to these evening classes partly for the company and partly for the intellectual stimidation. He is fluent in Latin and Greek hut is in no way pedantic?to him it is perfectly normal to speak these tongues.5 He never washes. His clothes?heavy top coat, hat, mittens, which he wears ncnv?are filthy and he lives in them summer and winter, day and night. He now reads in a quiet voice and smiles in profound satisfaction. For JIMMY the world of the gods and the ancient myths is as real and as immediate as everyday life in the townland of Baile Beag.
