Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1989. 19/3. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 19)

Bertha, Csilla: Distortions of Character in John B. Keane's Peasant Plays

- 51people or Yeats's peasant and legendary Jigures. 1ST The field

? when in the course of the investigation the priest becomes associated with the police, he loses the people's respect. So much so that tie is asked to leave the house: "I'll have to ask you to go now, Fattier. What will the village think if ye don't leave? We have a family to think of. ... You'll have us disgraced." (75) The author does not suggest an unequivocal judgment, nor does tie simplify the story into a parable. The sergeant and the priest, the representatives of the modern State and Church, are obviously right in trying to fiod and punish the murderer, but on the other hand, the Bull's attack on them is the expression of basic social injustices, the eternal complaint of the oppressed: "There's two laws. There's a Inw for them that's priests and doctors and lawmen. But there's no law for us. The man with the law behind him is the law... and it don't change and it never will." (75) However, this truth is given witti an ironic overtone again, as it is said just by the person who makes the objective work of the law impossible. This ambiguity is best seen in the figure of the Bull. Despite his immorality and his bullying, threatening, bribing, cheating the villagers, there is something impressive in his insistence on the land. He has some ancient passions and dignity in him, the dignity of ttie primary contact with the soil. In this region one lias to fight first wit

h the soil to be fertile, and only then fo

r it with the people. But tie also has a great love for his land: "I watched ttiis field for forty years and my fattier before me watctied it for forty more. I know every rib of grass and every thistle and whitehorn bush that bounds it. ... There's shamrock in the southwest corner. Shamrock, imagine! ... This is a sweet little field..." (22-23) (Ttie shamrock, as the national emblem of the Irish, suggests patriotic feelings, also.) He listens to the grass growing even on the night of the murder: "Listen and you can hear the first growth of the grass. The first music that was ever heard." (47) This way of looking at the land combines the practical view of it as ttie source of life with that of its being ttie roots and ttie pledge of consistency and continuity. In contrst with ttie rootless priest and policeman, to whom he says: "Wtien you'll be gone, Father, to be a Canon