Act 1

It’s an afternoon in late August 1833. At a hedge school held in a disused barn in the townland of Baile Beag, an Irish-speaking community in County Donegal, Ireland, MANUS is teaching SARAH to speak. Manus is the son of the schoolmaster and Sarah is a local resident with a speech impediment. Also in the barn is JIMMY JACK, an older man who sits reading The Odyssey by Homer in Greek to himself. Sarah is able to say “My name is Sarah” for the first time, and Jimmy shares his love for the goddess Athena. They are all waiting for the schoolmaster, HUGH, to arrive, and are sure he stopped off at the pub after the christening of a local newborn. MAIRE, another local Irishwoman, arrives for class. She laments her lack of English and wishes it was being taught at the hedge school, instead of Latin and Greek. Manus clearly has feelings for Maire. Two more locals arrive, Doalty and Bridget. Doalty performs an impression of Hugh, the intoxicated schoolmaster they passed coming up the road. They also share that they’ve seen the British Royal Engineers working in the area, and some of the locals have been sabotaging the British’s equipment. Two of the army’s horses have also gone missing. 

The students start to settle into working on their assignments. Doalty is practicing his multiplication tables, Bridget is practicing her handwriting, Sarah is doing arithmetic, and Maire is learning geography. Maire tells Manus that she has finally saved up enough money to pay for passage on a ship to America. Manus is upset she would think about leaving Baile Beag, but Maire is upset that Manus isn’t applying for a teaching job at the new national school that the British are building nearby because his father is pursuing the job. The new school is a threat to the future of hedge schools like Hugh and Manus’s, since attending them will be free and they will teach English. 

Hugh arrives in grand fashion and begins quizzing the students on their progress while ordering Manus around. The schoolmaster also shares that he ran into Captain LANCEY, the leader of the British troops, who expressed an interest in speaking to the hedge school students about the ordnance survey that the British are here to conduct. Hugh cautioned Lancey that most of the Irish don’t speak English, and Lancey confirmed that he and his soldiers do not speak Irish. Maire again voices her support that they all learn English, which Hugh dismisses. 

OWEN enters unexpectedly. The younger son of Hugh, Owen lives and works as a businessman in Dublin. He greets his father, brother and the other locals and tells them he’s come up to Baile Beag to help the British with the Ordnance Survey as their Irish translator. He brings in Captain Lancey and another man, Lieutenant YOLLAND. Lancey speaks to the room and Owen translates his words into Irish. The Captain explains the British are here to make a detailed map of Ireland, working from north to south over the next few years. Yolland’s job is to label all the places on the map in English, with Owen helping him understand what the Irish placenames are and their meaning. Manus argues with his brother about the work and if it will mean the erasure of Irish words in favor of English ones. 

Act 2, Scene 1

Several days later, Owen and Yolland are at work in the hedge school. Owen reads aloud the Irish names of local landmarks and explains what each root translates to in English. Yolland decides how best to anglicize the word based on this information. The work is slow-going and they’re already behind schedule. Yolland has become infatuated with the Irish, their language, landscape and culture. He and Owen begin to argue over whether to keep traditional names or anglicize them. Yolland fantasizes about living in Baile Beag. He shares with Owen that he only ended up here by accident. His father had gotten him a job with the East India Company in South Asia, but he missed his boat in London and joined the army instead. He’d always felt directionless in life before now. Owen feels Yolland is romanticizing the situation and it’s impractical for the Irish to hold onto their language now that the country is part of the United Kingdom. He also mocks Yolland for getting his name wrong and calling him Roland the whole time they’ve been working together. 

Manus returns with news; he’s been offered a teaching position at a hedge school fifty miles away that will pay him quite well. He’s set to start next week. Maire arrives and Manus is excited to tell her the news, thinking it would mean her staying in Ireland and the two of them getting married. However, it’s clear that Maire and Yolland are enamored with each other and the two use Owen as a go-between to communicate, since they can’t speak each other’s language. Maire invites Yolland to a dance at her house later that night.  

Act 2, Scene 2

Later that evening, Maire and Yolland run in hand-in-hand, having snuck away from the festivities. They futilely try to communicate with each other, eventually resorting to the only words they each know in English and Irish. Yolland begins naming Irish placenames he’s learned from his work with Owen. They express their love, knowing the other can’t understand what it is they’re saying. Yolland says he wants to live here with Maire always, but she doesn’t know what “always” means. They kiss and Sarah, who has followed them, sees it. She runs off to tell Manus. 

Act 3

The following afternoon, Owen is working in the hedge school while a sad-looking Sarah sits in the corner. Manus enters, frantically packing a bag with clothes and books, intending to flee Baile Beag after witnessing Maire’s betrayal the previous evening. Owen cautions him against leaving right now because Yolland is currently missing, and Lancey may come to think Manus had something to do with it if he runs away. Manus can’t be talked out of it, however, and leaves instructions with Owen about how to support and care for their father. Manus briefly repeats the speaking lesson with a devastated Sarah, and then rushes off. 

Bridget and Doalty arrive for class and share the news that the British troops are fanning out across the area searching for Yolland. Owen questions them about what they know about Yolland’s disappearance. They mention seeing him go off with Maire at the dance and later seeing him walking her home. When pushed further they start to get evasive in their answers, but they do mention that local troublemakers the Donnelly Twins (who were likely responsible for the missing British horses) were about. Maire arrives, clearly distraught over Yolland’s disappearance. She draws a map on the barn floor of England and shows all the places Yolland taught her about in Norwich, where he’s from. Maire also reveals that the baby who was getting christened in Act 1 died overnight and a wake is being held in town. 

Captain Lancey arrives to address the locals and orders Owen to translate for him. If Yolland is not found within 24 hours, the British will kill all livestock in Baile Beag. If he’s still missing after 48 hours, the Irish will begin being evicted from their homes and their buildings destroyed until there is nothing left standing. Doalty is looking out the window and sees the British tents in flames. Lancey rushes off. Bridget begins to panic about how to save her family’s livestock; she also mistakes the smell of the burning tents for the sweet smell rumored to portend the arrival of potato blight. Doalty tells Owen that he and others like him won’t give up without a fight. Sarah, Bridget and Doalty leave and Owen heads upstairs. 

Hugh and Jimmy Jack return from the wake for the local baby, both quite drunk. Hugh reveals that he did not get the teaching job at the local national school. Jimmy Jack starts talking about how he is now engaged to the goddess Athena and how much he’s longed for companionship before falling asleep. Hugh finds Owen’s namebook and begins reading aloud the new English names for local landmarks. Owen returns and says his working for the British was a mistake. Hugh believes that the Irish must learn English and submit to their new status in the British Empire. Owen is newly resistant and leaves to find Doalty. 

Alone with Jimmy Jack, Hugh recounts how the two of them left home in 1798 to join the Irish revolutionaries who were staging an uprising against the British. But after marching 25 miles, the two found themselves homesick and returned home without joining the rebels. Maire returns, lost at where to go and Hugh agrees to begin teaching her English. He tells her what the word “always” means, calling it “a silly word.” Maire sits reading Owen’s namebook. Jimmy Jack wakes and starts talking about Athena again. Hugh starts to recite the opening of Virgil’s Aeneid, about how the city of Carthage, though beloved by the goddess Juno, was destined to be destroyed by Trojan refugees who would eventually found Rome. However, Hugh finds he can’t remember how the epic poem goes. He tries again as the lights fade.