In Riders to the Sea, Synge attempts to capture the everyday realities of the people living on the Aran Islands, a place where he spent years doing research on the culture and customs. One of the ways he does this is by giving his characters an Irish English (or Hiberno-English) dialect. The following passage—in which Nora tells Cathleen about the bundle of clothes the young priest gave her—shows a few different stylistic strategies Synge uses in order to capture the dialect:
We’re to find out if it’s Michael’s they are, some time herself will be down looking by the sea […] The young priest says he’s known the like of it. ‘If it’s Michael’s they are,’ says he, ‘you can tell herself he’s got a clean burial by the grace of God, and if they’re not his, let no one say a word about them, for she’ll be getting her death,’ says he, ‘with crying and lamenting’.
One of the ways that Synge communicates the characters’ dialect is in specific sentence structures. Here Nora says, “We’re to find out if it’s Michael’s they are” and repeats the priest saying, “If it’s Michael’s they are.” The repetition here—in which the clothing bundle is first an “it” and then later a “they”—communicates that this is a common speech pattern related to their particular dialect. The phrase “some time herself” is also an example of the Irish dialect and translates to something like “when she.” Without the dialect, the first sentence would therefore become “We’re to find out if the clothes are Michael’s when Maurya is by the sea.”
The phrase “she’ll be getting her death” is also an example of the dialect and is the priest’s way of warning Nora and Cathleen that, if Maurya were to learn that Michael died, she too might die. It is hard to say if this is an exaggeration or not as, at the end of the play, Synge hints that Maurya most likely will pass away from grief.
