John Millington Synge was a great Playwright who died too early, at age 38, of Hodgkin’s disease.  Synge was also a poet and a musician.  W.B. Yeats was a bit of a mentor to him, and Yeats told Synge that, in order to be a fine writer, he needed to expand his understanding of the world around him and then write about the experience. That advice is what led Synge to Galway Bay and the Aran Islands.  That travelogue, written in 1901 and published in 1907, still sings with a Gaelic heart that murmurs with life and mesmerizes today.

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