In Germanic mythology, people did not possess free moral agency. Instead, their fate was predetermined by women called Norns. They "wrote your life's plan".

The Norns were spinners who spun their yarn, weaving the fate of individuals over whom they watched, into the fabric. "His thread of life was cut short" is a phrase that described the fate of one who died.

With the image of a cozy rustic home in mind, you can imagine a spinner working at the spinning wheel to make yarn for warm and durable garments. Even the spinning wheel itself conjures the image of hearth and home in mythology.

The pattern of the knit had something to tell.

The Norse Norns could be compared to the Greek goddesses of fate. These supernatural spinning women tended the tree Yggdrasil and determined fate. Their names were: Urd (fate), Skuld (necessity)], and Verdandi (being).

There were more than three Norns. It was believed that a Norn is present at a person’s birth to determine his or her fate, much like a Guardian Angel.

How closely related are the diverse myths from many cultures? The book
Carrots Love Tomatoes, page 37, tells about the herb Elecampane (Inula helenium):

"My German heritage bids me have great respect for elecampane, sometimes called horseheal or horse alder. This herb was under the protection of the goddess Hulda, who first taught mortals the art of spinning and weaving flax. Candied elecampane, according to a 17th-century herbal, as thought to 'cause mirth'".

The Hulda Lady, the Norns, and spinning seem to have much in common.

During one point in the play Riders to The Sea, Maurya appears to be having a vision and sees two of her sons on horseback. One of them has been dead for some time and the other is Patch, presumed dead.

The two brothers seem to be racing in some sort of otherworldly Triple Crown race or, to make a pun, the Irish race.

A literal reading of the ghostly ride isn't likely. Perhaps they were riding as if the demons were chasing them.

Celtic Myths by Miranda Jane Green has this to say about the goddess Epona, "Her imagery is distinctive: she is always depicted in company with horses, either riding side-saddle on a mare or between two or more horses or ponies" (60).

Since Epona is described as riding between two ponies, could it be interpreted that she was riding between the two sons? Synge may have alluded to this goddess as if she were between the sons’ horses in a figurative sense. Then again, those two horses may have appeared to be an eight-legged horse like Odin's Sleipnir from a distance, especially if one had been having a pint, as they say, and viewed from ground level, which would explain why two heads were not reported.

Elements of the Wild Hunt, the Green Man, and Herne the Hunter are suggested by these riders.

The horse as an element and symbol appears in both a literal and symbolic sense and is linked to various other cult symbols and practices. Always valued by man for its proverbial horse-sense and for its usefulness, the horse was also worshiped as a deity at times and used to play out mystical dramas. The Gaulish Celts worshiped the Mare Goddess, appearing in other cultures as Epona and associated with The Three Epona and the Triple Goddesses.

The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft describes one cult practice in twelfth-century Ireland involving a local king acting out a re-birth ritual in a "white mare ceremony". Afterward, the mare was slaughtered and eaten. We read of the culmination of the ceremony by the king. "He stood on an inauguration stone and received a straight white wand, which he held while turning three times left and three times right in honor of the trinity" (165).

There are other horse symbols in mythology.

The Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, edited by Maria Leach, adds further to our understanding, "The beginning of winter (Samhain) was the occasion for the lighting of bonfires and for processions from house to house to solicit contributions of coin and food. In County Cork, the procession was led by a man called the White Mare (Lair Bhan) wearing a white robe. The fairies and the spirits of the dead were supposed to be abroad" (202).

Standard Dictionary goes on to relate, "One of the oldest Irish sagas states that the barrows where the fairies dwelt were open about Samhain. According to Keating, in heathen times the druids on Ireland assembled to sacrifice to the gods and burn their victims on Samhain Eve. All other fires were extinguished to be rekindled only from that fire" (Leach, 968).

Another custom exemplifying the use of a symbolic figure of the horse to ensure fertility for the upcoming harvest was called the "horse dance".

Leech describes it in the Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, "Ritual riding on a live horse or a hobby horse...at the grave of the goddess Talltiu in Taillten, Ireland, they race to give chthonic spirits an access of vigor for crop production" (504).

The question arises about the origin of the stick horses that children pretend to ride on. Sticks and horses are both elements in the play Riders to The Sea.

In all of these examples, we find a connection to festivals, the fairies, and horses.

Since times long ago, man has believed in rebirth and regeneration of life after death, and many pagan rituals were developed upon this theme, accompanied by stories of gods and heroes to whom this resurrection applied, gods and myths intertwined.

Confusion over names can occur, since the fertility figures, connected to themes of resurrection, act out basically the same role no matter which culture they appear in or by what name the god is called. There are myriads of stories on this theme.

From long ago times, man has believed in rebirth or regeneration. Pagan rituals were developed, accompanied by stories of gods and heroes to whom this resurrection applied.

The Green Man, god of vegetation, appears in English myth. Also called Jack-in-the-Green or Green Knight, the Green Man was closely linked to the Savage Man, also called the Wild Man, and Herne the Hunter. The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits by Rosemary Ellen Guilley says that Herne is the leader of the Wild Hunt, a nocturnal procession of the dead and is linked to the old god Cernunnos. Odin is also pictured in legend as leading a wild howling ghostly host across a stormy night sky. Since a storm often manifested itself with thunder and lightning, Odin's host might have included Thor, the Norse god of thunder.

These characters are closely tied to the agrarian year with its seasonal festivals and to forests, since they are the habitat of the Green Man motifs in their various forms. Some of these characters such as Herne, associated with Windsor Forest, are alleged to have once lived as actual historical people, and some are merely re-makes of archetypes that reach back to the cradle of civilization. Even as late as 1990, this kind of festival is recorded taking place in Hastings, England.

One such festival is described in The Green Man, The Archetype of Our Oneness With the Earth by William Anderson:

"The Jack in the Green has erupted from beside the sea. He is escorted by several Green Men. They are accompanied by a girl carrying a high spray of flowers. She is completely black and very comely. The crowd follows the procession along the sea front and turns up to the castle on the cliff above the town for the purpose of the ceremony: the release of the spirit of summer. This happens in the last dance, for which the Jack descends from his mound and bobs up and down on the edge of a side of Morris dancers performing a stick dance. They crack their wooden swords together. Jack in the Green falls dead "(9).

Continuing in the book The Green Man, it says:

"Having made the point that the evidence for linking the Green Man as he appears with the leaf-covered figure of folk ritual is often patchy, the archetypal force behind both the Green Man of art and the leafy figures of custom is the same. They are different manifestations of the same primal urge."

Long ago, the sacrifice of the Green Man archetype was believed to ensure a fruitful harvest. The Green Man was dead and reborn, again and again, spring after spring. The harvest festival was celebrated later in the year, and then the dark period of the declining year, Samhain with its deep gloom, appears near the time of winter's longest days. In the spring, the people were once again happy to renew their pact with the pagan cult of fecundity and reenact the story yet again: life, death, and rebirth.

Lots of people might think history and myth are boring subjects, but a little reading shows that these are some of the wildest and scariest stories ever told, and they resonate with a certain truth because this is the history of people from whom many of us have descended.

The pronunciation of a word plays an important part of the understanding of it. However it might be spelled, the sound of a word calls certain images to mind. Samhain, pronounced aloud, has the sound of sow in it. In the play Riders to The Sea, there were festivals that Maurya would likely have had knowledge of that involved the idea of the word sow, and that festival was known as hogmanay.

Death is the preeminent theme in Riders to The Sea, with an underlying theme of resurrection. In this way, the elements are balanced.

Including a discussion of Samhain is appropriate to the themes in Riders to The Sea. In fact, the ramifications of the celebrations are so many and so varied that the word is loaded with associations, much of it so deeply rooted in history that many of the readers or members of the play's audience would not actually know the original source of the customs and ideas, although Synge's audience was probably a little sharper about some things than today's audience might be.

The pre-Christians had their own ideas about death and afterlife, and conversion to Christianity did not erase those ideas completely. The mystical shadow of the Druids in Europe and Ireland still fell upon the Irish people. Druids were the keepers of the sacred fire for which a fee was levied to restart all the quenched hearth fires at Samhain.

The folk aspects of the holiday appear in the play as everyday items or events. Irish legend alludes to this most precarious of times, when mischief might be done as well as magic. In Holiday Symbols it says:

"An old legend associated with Samhain tells the story of the annual destruction of Tara...Every year at Samhain a goblin called Aillen played the harp so skillfully that everyone was charmed into sleep, allowing him to set fire to the palace" (Thompson, 430).

Still another death and resurrection legend included in the same book is this:

"According to Irish folklore, a god named Cenghus fell in love with a young girl Caer (also known as Rhiannon), who was capable of taking the form of a swan at the festival of Samhain...the only way he could be with her was to wait for the festival and then transform himself into a swan. United at last, the pair flew three times around the lake putting everyone else into a dream-sleep that lasted three days and three nights...The festival of Samhain may have celebrated, through the legend of people and gods shape-shifting into swans, the transformation of life from one state to another" (Thompson, 431).

About Cuchulainn's mother Dechtire, Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia of Myths and Legends tells that "Legend recounts how on swallowing a fly which flew into her cup at her wedding feast, Dechtire fell into a deep sleep." A deep sleep sets the scene for many an act of mischief in legend. Where did the children's song that begins with, "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly” originate?

An important religious theme underlies all of this: the hope of rebirth or resurrection. Whether Christian or pagan, people of the Aran Islands during Synge's stay there needed to bolster their belief that there was some kind of hope in their hard lives. The mere mention of Samhain was enough to call to mind all of the associations of the Otherworld or afterlife, thus offering a spiritual tone, albeit barbaric.

Celtic Myths, written by Miranda Jane Green offers this insight to the delicate balance in the world:

"The somber aspect of the Otherworld is equally represented in myth. Samhain at the beginning of November is a dangerous time, a kind of limbo where the barriers between the real and supernatural worlds are temporarily dissolved and where humans and spirits can penetrate each other's space, thus upsetting the normal balance" (74).

The idea of symmetry and balance, like the symbolic Scale of Justice, is also included in this context, making the two dimensions or worlds delicately balanced, aligned with one another and separated, as it were, by a veil that was dangerously permeable during the Eve of Samhain. During this time, according to legend, the spirits of the dead were free to roam, often thought of as returning to their former homes.

The home hearth was often the center of family life during ancient times. It was the place where food was given as well as warmth from the fire and family fellowship. In The Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer, this theme is discussed:

"The festival of Samhain and Hogmany had similar themes, one of which was the lighting of the hearth fire."

The fire of many of the lives of Maurya’s household has been extinguished. Their hope for the future may have been doused, but the question of the bundle arises. Although its first meaning is a literal bundle of clothes, the phrase "bundle of joy" comes to mind. If one of Maurya's two daughters, like the Biblical Mara with her two daughters-in-law in the book of Ruth, should find that one of them marries and provides a new husband and heir, the fire would then be rekindled. This is not a likely option for Maurya, and she doesn't sound optimistic about her daughters' luck turning for the better.

There is the underlying idea of sacrifice in these festivals. The thought is that, as seen by the loss of men in the family and from historical reference, the ocean may give a sparse living, but it wreaks the most terrible havoc on the peasants of Aran.

In Celtic Myths this thought ties the cult of Odin to Samhain. "One Irish tradition involved the triple killing of a king, by burning, wounding and drowning, at the feast of Samhain" (Green, 69). Not only are the natural elements vicious, but their so-called celebrations are equally horrible.

If Odin appeared in the play, it would be in disguise. He might be playing the part of the old man who makes the coffin in Riders to The Sea, a paradox that portrays Odin as the long dead mythical hero, and yet, alive enough to build a coffin.

On the Orkney Islands at Yule Tide, old customs whose origins most people do not know or cannot remember, were celebrated. These celebrations were in closely tied with Scottish and Irish custom.

Worship of a Goddess or Mother Figure took many forms. The Norse "seer" or volva was involved with supernatural events and might have been viewed as possessing the spirit of the Goddess when she was in a trance. It was during the visitation of this lady that the people conducted a feast. Religion and feasts were closely linked. The pleasure of plenteous food for people who often did not have enough to eat created a bond with the religious observation.

Similar customs go back to Biblical times and originated in the land of the Babylonians.

Alexander Hislop wrote:

"To show the connection between country and country, and the inveterate endurance of old customs, it is worthy of remark, that Jerome, commenting on the very words of Isaiah already quoted, about spreading 'a table for Gad', and 'pouring out a drink-offering to Meni', observes that it 'was the custom so late as his time [in the fourth century], in all cities especially in Egypt and at Alexandria, to set tables, and furnish them with various luxurious articles of food, and with goblets containing a mixture of new wine, on the last day of the month and the year, and that the people drew omens from them in respect of the fruitfulness of the year.'"

The Norse tradition of "seeing” is featured in the 1957 film by Ingmar Bergman titled The Seventh Seal. The story line is something like this: A knight who has come back from the Crusades plays chess with Death, a figure in a hooded black robe. This is a time of Plague. An itinerant entertainer and his wife Mary are two of the survivors, although the knight and his companions are not.

At the conclusion of the film, the player looks into the distance and remarks on the specters he sees:

"I see them. Mary! over against the stormy sky. They are all there, the smith and Lisa, the knight, Raval, Jons, and Skat, and the strict Lord Death bids them dance. He wants them to hold hands and to tread the dance in a long line. At the head goes the strict Lord with scythe and hour glass, but the Fool brings up the rear with his lute. They move away from the dawn in a solemn dance. Away towards the dark lands, while the rain cleanses their cheeks from the salt of their bitter tears."

His wife, Mary, sees nothing and says to him: "You with your visions."

These words from the film show that the same feature found in Riders to The Sea, in which Maurya falls into a trance state and sees her dead sons is typified.

The old prayers and customs are still in the conscious memory of the Northern people even in this century.

"Watch your back." "Turn your back on them." Those are idiomatic expressions. It's an uncomfortable thing to always be looking over your shoulder. You hope someone has "got your back".

In the play Riders to The Sea, there are a couple of instances when there is talk about "keeping your back to the door" (or audience) just as the twig-bearers do in historical Norse funeral rites.

Talking together like magpies, Cathleen tells Nora to conceal the bundle from Maurya, saying, "Keep your back to the door the way the light'll not be on you." She means it is a dark secret, a covert matter, or maybe she means that what they are about to discuss "won't stand the light of day". Christianity was known as "The Way", so perhaps the light of the faith would not reach whatever it was they were concealing, indicating the transitional time when supposedly Christianized people still clung to their forbidden pagan practices in secret.

We also read this stage direction, (Nora sits down at the chimney corner, with her back to the door). What significance is there in Norah sitting with her back to the door? Does the modern reader know where the door is on the set in relation to the play's audience?

After Maurya sees her vision of her sons on horseback, she behaves in this way according to stage directions: "Maurya begins to keen softly, without turning round." Keening is an old custom of loud crying and mourning. Is she keeping her back to the door still?

At the conclusion of the play, the stage directions describe the physical action of the mourners, the women who enter the cottage:

"The old women begin to come in, crossing themselves on the threshold and kneeling down in front of the stage with their backs to the people, and the white waist bands of the red petticoats they wear on their heads just seen from behind".

There is something unsettling, even sinister, about this scene, something lurking beneath the surface. Red petticoats were distinctive dress were worn by the women of the Aran Islands, but in other contexts this may indicate another meaning.

Like the daughter-waves of Lir, these women mourners convey the idea that there is more here than simply meets the eye. The play ends in the same manner as the previously described funeral rites, with backs to the people.

Is there something going on behind their backs? Of course.