Many Young Men of Twenty

Many Young Men of Twenty, a play, deals with emigration and the lack of jobs at home that forced people to leave their native Ireland for England. It describes the emigrants ‘longing for home - ‘Everyone is lonesome leaving home’ - their annual homecomings and their return to jobs and places they disliked - ‘back to their night shifts, an ‘filthy digs ...with their long faces leanin’ out o’ the carriage windows with the thoughts of what’s waitin’ over’.