The Dead 1987

On January 6, 1904, spinster sisters Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia Morkan and their unmarried niece, Mary Jane, host their annual Epiphany dinner party at their townhouse in Dublin. Horse-drawn carriages arrive with guests on the snowy night, and the hall fills with music, chatter, and the hum of anticipation. Three of Mary Jane’s music students—Miss O’Callaghan, Miss Furlong, and Miss Higgins—enter, accompanied by the young bachelors Raymond Bergin and others who Miss Furlong formally introduces to Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia. Amid the warmth of welcome, the looming chill of the Irish winter seems to press in from the windows as the guests settle into a night of reunion, music, and memories.

Dan Brown the only Protestant invited to the party arrives, followed by Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta Conroy. Kate worries that Freddy Malins will arrive drunk, and when he does, [Gabriel Conroy] steps in to escort the man to the restroom and help him sober up. After a few more drinks with [Dan Brown], Gabriel delivers a stirring tribute to the warmth and generosity of their Irish hosts, praising the hospitality of the sisters and Mary Jane. The mood dances between light humor and fluttering tensions, as the evening unfolds with music, conversation, and a sense of shared history.

The guests take their places for the feast, and conversation ranges from opera to morality. Molly Ivors, a keen Irish nationalist colleague of Gabriel, teases him about his writing for an English newspaper and his lack of Irish language pride, prompting a testy yet affectionate exchange where Gabriel declares he is tired of Ireland in a moment of defensiveness. The room hums with competing loyalties and personal pride, even as Freddy’s jittery nerves persist and Bartell D’Arcy, a celebrated tenor who had not sung all evening, finally performs the stirring air “The Lass of Aughrim” for Miss O’Callaghan. Gabriel watches Gretta with a mix of reverence and unresolved yearning as she listens intently from the stairs, and the scene settles into a quiet, contemplative hush.

As the night draws to a close, Mrs. Malins asks Gabriel to look after Freddy when she returns to Scotland, and he bundles the younger man into a carriage with the Malins. The party thins, and the couple retreat to a hotel where the night will be spent. In the dim hotel room, Gabriel asks Gretta what she is thinking, and she opens a window into a memory from her youth: a boy she once knew named Michael Furey stood outside her grandmother’s Galway home in the cold rain to say goodbye, singing “The Lass of Aughrim” just before he died at seventeen. Gretta’s memory stirs something ancient and intimate in both of them, and she confesses that Michael’s passionate farewell feels more real to her than any ordinary endurance of life. She breaks down in tears, and Gabriel listens with a mixture of awe and ache as he realizes he has never felt love like the kind Michael must have felt for her. He gazes out at the winter night, imagining snow falling across all of Ireland—upon the living and the dead—and suddenly the world feels both larger and smaller than before, a stark reminder of mortality, memory, and the fragile beauty of ordinary moments.