Summary
Maire tells Bridget that she saw her boyfriend, Seamus, going to the Port fair that morning. Bridget says that Seamus told her he smelled the "sweet smell" just over the gap at Cnoc na Mona, suggesting that the crops are coming in. "They say that's the way it snakes in, don't they? First they smell; and then one morning the stalks are all black and limp," Bridget says.
Doalty contradicts her, suggesting that it's the rotting stalks that smell sweet, and Maire becomes impatient, reminding everyone that the crops in Baile Beag are always fine, but people are always "looking for disaster." "Honest to God, some of you people aren't happy unless you're miserable and you'll not be right content until you're dead!" she says, impatiently.
Doalty asks Jimmy if he thinks he would make a good head of the new national school. Maire encourages Doalty to apply, as Bridget discusses the fact that the new national is very strict and regimented, but entirely free. She adds that everyone at the new national school speaks English and not a word of Irish. Suddenly, Sarah grunts to warn them that the schoolmaster is on his way. Everyone gets to work, and Doalty asks Maire to switch seats so he can sit in the back of the room.
Hugh, the schoolmaster finally enters, "shabbily dressed, carrying a stick." He has had a lot to drink, but he is not drunk. He suggests that he is sober enough to teach, before greeting everyone and handing his coat, stick and hat to Manus, "as if to a footman." Bridget asks Hugh what Nellie named her baby, and he tells her he named her Eamon. He begins a Latin lesson.
Suddenly, Hugh asks the students where some of the other students are; Sean Beag is mising and Nora Dan has stopped coming after learning to spell her name. Hugh tells his students that he was speaking to Captain Lancey, a Red Coat, about some missing horses and the fact that some of his equipment was mislaid. He tells the students that Lancey only speaks English, and that he told Lancey that he didn't think English could adequately express Irish-ness.
"We should all be learning to speak English," Maire says, quoting an acquaintance, Dan O'Connell, a politician who has been advocating the adoption of English culture. "I don't want Greek. I don't want Latin. I want English," Maire says, before adding that the reason she wants to learn English is because she is going to America soon, once the harvest is ready. Hugh takes out a flask of whiskey, downs some, then continues on with the lesson.
Hugh tells the class that he has been offered a position running the new national school, but that he said he would only like to do it if he can run it as he has run the hedge-school for the last 35 years. He then tells the group that he is tired and that Manus will take over the lesson.
Owen, Hugh's handsome younger son, "a city man," enters with a traveling bag and greets everyone warmly. When he greets his father, Hugh's eyes get watery, partly from sentiment and partly from drinking. Owen invites his father to go out drinking with him at Anna na mBreag's, even though everyone says she puts frogs in her poteen.
When Manus comes down the stairs, Owen greets him coolly, and tells everyone that nothing has changed since he left six years prior. Maire asks Owen if the rumors are true about him owning 10 shops in Dublin, and Owen tells her that he only owns 9. He then tells the class that he has two friends waiting outside that want to meet everyone: Captain Lancey, a cartographer, and Lieutenant Yolland, an orthographer. As Owen goes to fetch them, he introduces himself to Sarah, whom he has never met. She is able to introduce herself and give her full name, Sarah Johnny Sally.
Before he brings in the men, Owen tells Hugh that he is on his friend's payroll, implying that he is employed as a civilian interpreter. He says, "My job is to translate the quaint, archaic tongue you people persist in speaking into the King's good English." Sarah is delighted that she was able to speak, but Manus ignores her excitement, listening to Owen instead.
After Owen goes out, Manus approaches Maire and asks her about the fact that she did not tell him she was definitely going to America. She expresses her frustration with Manus and the fact that he wants to marry her, but has no ambitions and no means of supporting them.
Owen enters with Lancey, a somewhat awkward cartographer, and Yolland, "a soldier by accident." Owen introduces them to Hugh and the others, and Hugh offers them a drink, but they decline. "Do they speak any English, Roland?" Lancey says to Owen, getting his name wrong. Lancey speaks to the Irish people "as if he were addressing children—a shade too loudly and enunciating excessively." Condescendingly, he tells them about his plans to make a map of the area. When James speaks Latin, jokingly, Lancey insists that he does not speak Gaelic.
As Doalty, Bridget, and Sarah begin to laugh at Lancey, Owen suggests that he speak in a way that assumes they understand him. When Lancey is finished giving a detailed explanation of his task as a cartographer, Owen simply translates it as, "A new map is being made of the whole country." Lancey tells them that the job is being done by the military, and that it is being done to lower taxes and to clarify how the land is organized in the region.
Owen encourages Yolland to speak, and Yolland says that he is embarrassed not to speak Gaelic, but intends to learn. Yolland says that he loves Ireland and he hopes they are not making too crude an intrusion. Hugh, now drunk, welcomes the soldiers heartily and the formalities end.
Manus confronts Owen about the fact that he was only loosely translating the words of the Englishmen. He suggests that there was nothing uncertain about Lancey's words, or about the fact that the entire intrusion of the Englishmen is a military operation, and that they plan to change the names of places to English names.
Analysis
At the beginning of this section of the play, we learn more about the new national school, the fact that it is completely free and very rigorous, but that it includes no English-language instruction. The incursion of English influence in Ireland is happening on the level of language, and the language that the characters of the play speak is literally being educated out of the school system. English colonialism is thus happening on the level of communication and language, certain to completely overpower the historical and traditional values of the community.
Different characters feel differently about the changing linguistic trends of the country. While Hugh, the schoolmaster, recounts an interaction with a Red Coat in which he asserted that English was not adequate to express the character of Ireland, Maire agrees with a politician who suggested that "The old language is a barrier to modern progress." These differing attitudes towards tradition and innovation seem to exist on a generational basis, with the older characters like Hugh favoring the old ways, and the younger students more invested in new modes. At the same time, certain younger characters also see the need to protect the old language.
In this section, we are introduced to Owen, the younger brother of Manus. The two brothers could not be more different; where Manus is studious, Owen is charming, and where Manus is disabled, Owen is handsome and spritely. They are foils for one another, as indeed, Manus has stuck around to tend the home and follow in his father's footsteps, while Owen has set out into the world to try and become more successful than his father. Owen, like Maire, is irreverent towards the traditional Irish language, and works as an interpreter for the British.
The British soldiers who accompany Owen, Yolland and Lancey, have a comical ignorance of traditional Irish customs, and speak to the Irish natives with a mixture of condescension and embarrassment that befits their status as colonizers. They seek to bridge the gap between the Irish and the English, but only for strategic purposes, not from any real respect for Irish culture and tradition. While they imagine that the Irish people to whom they speak are impressed by them, the attendants of the hedge-school maintain a certain skepticism about the newcomers.
Owen and Manus have very different ideas about what is good for Ireland, representing two ends of the spectrum on the debate about Irish nationalism. Where Owen thinks that the English soldiers are doing good for the country, Manus is disappointed when he realizes that Owen is obscuring the English soldier's plans to anglicize the country in his translation to the students at the hedge-school. Owen insists that their differing views complement one another, but Manus is less sure.
