Page:John M. Synge - Masefield - Dublin 1915.djvu/43

 music, piano, flute and violin. All through his youth, he passed his summer holidays in Annamoe, Co. Wicklow, a strange place, which influenced him.

He entered Trinity College, Dublin, on June 18, 1888, won prizes in Hebrew and Irish in Trinity Term, 1892, and took his B. A. degree (second class) in December, 1892. While at Trinity he studied music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, where he won a scholarship in Harmony and Counterpoint.

He left College undecided about a career, but was inclined to make music his profession. He went to Germany (Coblentz and Wiirtzburg) to study music; but in 1894, owing to a disappointed love, he gave up this, and went to Paris, with some thought of becoming a writer. He was much in France for the next few years writing constantly to little purpose; he went to Italy in 1896 ,and in May 1898 made his first visit to the Aran Islands. During this visit he began the first drafts of the studies which afterwards grew to be his book, ‘The Aran Islands.’