The democratic ideal is that the law should reflect the will of the people. The author quickly makes it clear that Ireland is not a democracy, but a colony oppressed by a hostile foreign power. The three police officers are all, to some extent, in conflict with themselves, because they are Irishmen representing and serving the English. They come from the people, but they have sworn to uphold the law, which does not enjoy popular support. Policeman X remarks that even their own relations are likely to oppose them in their pursuit of a fugitive who enjoys the status of a popular hero.

The sergeant’s dialogue with the ragged man, which occupies the majority of the play, explores covertly, and then more explicitly, the status of a law which is opposed by the majority of the people. The ragged man raises the dichotomy overtly when he tells the sergeant that he believes “it was with the people you were, and not with the law you were, when you were a young man.” The sergeant does not deny this, merely saying that if he was foolish then “that time’s gone.” At the end of the play, he wonders if he has been foolish now, not for failing in his duty, but for giving up a financial reward. The purely practical, pragmatic value of adhering to and upholding the law is revealed in this reflection. The conflict between the people and the law is not a moral one, since the sergeant has no qualms about having acted immorally, only against his own self-interest. The law in Ireland does not represent justice, merely money and power.

The Rising of the Moon is a short play in prose, interspersed with lyrics sung by the ragged man. The first is a love song about an Irish farmer’s daughter who marries a soldier. The sergeant brusquely tells the ragged man to stop making noise. The second song refers to Grace O’Malley, or “Granuaile,” a sixteenth-century heroine of Irish folklore also known as “the Pirate Queen.” This time, the sergeant’s rebuke is more pointedly political, as he tells the ragged man that this is “no song to be singing in these times,” since it is likely to arouse nationalist sentiments.

Ironically, the song seems to have stirred such sentiments in the sergeant himself, since he soon invited the ragged man to continue his song about Granuaile. When he does so, the sergeant corrects him, showing that he knows the song. The ragged man affects to be surprised at “a man like you knowing a song like that,” but it is clear by this time that he is using his songs to stir up the sergeant’s memories of youth and his nationalist sympathies, which have long lain dormant.

The ragged man’s final song is the most controversial and overtly seditious, as well as the one that gives the play its name. “The Rising of the Moon” is a ballad about a battle between the revolutionary United Irishmen, led by Wolfe Tone, and the British Army during the 1798 Irish Rebellion. The sergeant angrily orders the man to stop on pain of arrest, but by this time his own revolutionary sympathies have been stirred, and the fugitive knows he is safe and can reveal his true identity without fear, due to the power of his songs.

Both the principal characters in the play have fluid identities. For the ragged man, this is a matter of practical necessity. He is an escaped convict, hunted by the police, and must travel by night and in...