Nr. 3 (32) anul IX / iulie-septembrie 2011 - ROMDIDAC

Baile Beag means small town; it is a typical rural community whose old Irish
traditions, values and culture have been eroded form the eighteenth century
to the present. The creation of Ballybeg may integrate in the Irish tradition
of the dinshenchas, i.e. place-name poetry, expressing the lore of the place,
the beauties of nature and local narratives. The location is typically Irish – an
imaginary place in a real county, Donegal, a rural, western and poor area. It
is August 1936, in the house of the Mundy sisters, all unmarried and aged
between 26 and 40, Kate, Maggie, Agnes, Rose and Christina; there are also
Jack, their brother, Michael, Christina’s son and Gerry, Michael’s father. The
sisters are mostly seen in the kitchen of their home, a stereotypical location
of the Irish plays in the 1950s.
One of Friel’s theatrical modes is storytelling, so the narrator is Michael,
who, as an adult, recounts two days in the summer of 1936 in his aunts’
house, when he was seven years old. As a child, Michael Evans is depicted as
surrounded by the love of all the sisters. Michael, the narrator (25 years old),
dictates as the action goes on and reveals the future of the other characters.
The time is around the festival of Lughnasa, the holiday of fruits and harvest
in Celtic folklore. That was also the time when the sisters got their first radio,
nicknamed Marconi, which works intermittently, but when it does it brings
1930s dance music and Irish folk music and the sisters dance and sing. Maggie
suggested that the wireless be named Lugh:
She wanted to call it Lugh after the old Celtic God of the Harvest.
Because in the old days August the First was Là Lughnasa, the feast
day of the pagan god, Lugh; and the days and weeks of harvesting that
followed were called the Festival of Lughnasa. But aunt Kate – she was
a national schoolteacher and a very proper woman – she said it would
be sinful to christen an inanimate object with any kind of name, not to talk
of a pagan god. So we just called it Marconi because that was the name
emblazoned on the set. (Friel 1)
Thus, the references to the harvest rituals, symbolical of key moment in
the play, are illuminated by Michael’s exposition. Michael delivers his narrative
monologue to the audience. Though he does not dwell on in-depth details
about it, one should be aware of the kind of celebration represented by the
Celtic festival, which involved bonfires, dances – sometimes associated with
competitive dancing and courtship, the picking of bilberries, like the berries
picked by Agnes and Rose, when Rose meets Danny Bradley. Storytelling and
looking back, as a long tradition in Irish literature, are a form of self-expression
and self-assessment for the Irish, to which the narrator seems to adhere.
Kate (40 years old), the oldest, is a schoolteacher, the only woman with
a well paid job. She is known at school, because of her strict behavior, as
the “Gander” (“And d’you know what your nickname at school is Gander!
Everybody calls you the Gander” (Friel 24)). However, she will prove her
sensitivity and, according to Michael, she is inconsolable when Jack dies.
Agnes (35 years old) and Rose (32 years old) knit gloves to be sold in town,
earning some extra money for the household. Agnes is quiet; she defends
Gerry and due to her sense of duty to Rose, she runs away with her. Both
sisters break off contact with the family and Agnes dies in poverty in London
in the 1950s. Rose is suffering from a developmental disability and her
condition seems to have made her vulnerable to a guy, Danny Bradley, who
Ex Ponto nr. 3, 2011
173