Riders to the Sea is a play written by an Irish playwright J.M. Synge and performed in the year 1904 in Dublin. This story is about an Irish woman Maurya, who lost her husband and five sons to the sea. The story begins when Nora brings a small bundle of clothes and tells her sister Cathleen, that these might be of their brother Michael who was drowned. She came to know from a priest that a drowned body ha been found, but they do tell about this to their mother, Maurya. Their brother Michael has been missing from a week, and their family has already lost four sons to the sea.Both of them hide the bundle in the loft of the cottage. In the meantime, Maurya plans a funeral for Michael and discusses about her last remaining son Bartley with both her daughters. Bartley plans to go accross the sea to sell their family horses as they needed money. Maurya has high hopes that the priest will stop him from going to the sea as the tides of the sea were very dangerous.
Bartley is determined to go to the sea, he enters the cottage and searches for a rope. Maurya tries to stop him by showing the preparations going on for Michael’s funeral, but he ignores her. Before leaving he says good bye to his sisters but his mother refuses to give her blessings to him. Both his sisters did not like that their mother broke the Irish tradition of blessing their son before they leave. After Bartley leaves, Cathleen notices that he did not take food with him. Cathleen sends Maurya to give him food and blessings. After Maurya leaves, both sisters take out the hidden bundle from the loft and check whether they were Micheal’s or not. After recognizing the stitches on the clothes, they get a confirmation that the body was of Michael and has been buried by the priest.
They hide the clothes again before Maurya comes back. They thought that she would have been in good mood as she might have blessed Bartley. But she comes back panicking and tells her daughters that she saw Michael on a grey pony and so she couldn’t bless Bartley. Both the girls try to calm her and show her the bundle of clothes and tell her that Michael got a proper burial. She started grieving and at that time some villagers came into the cottage with Bartley’s dead body which was drowned in the sea. Maurya gets on her knees and sprinkles some holy water on his body. She says that the sea has taken away every man in her family and there is nothing else left. The play ends with Maurya praying for the souls for husband, his father and her four sons to rest in peace.
