"Bull" McCabe has been tending the same Irish field as a tenant farmer since he was a child, & has come to view it as is own, regardless of the rights of the legal owner. When the...

"Bull" McCabe has been tending the same Irish field as a tenant farmer since he was a child, & has come to view it as is own, regardless of the rights of the legal owner. When the landlord, a young widow, decides to auction the land, McCabe intimidates the locals into letting him have it, but doesn't count on an American who has plans to develop the land for the economic benefit of the community. Accustomed to getting what he wants, by violence if necessary, Bull forces a fight between his son Tadgh & the American, in which Bull himself accidentally kills the American. A conspiracy of silence ensues, until the killing & Bull's obsession with the land causes a confrontation with the local priest. Bull jumps to paranoid conclusions about who informed on him, goes completely mad with guilt about his first son's death 18 years before, & drives his livestock over a cliff. In trying to stop his father, Tadgh is run over by the stampede & falls to his death on the rocks below. Bull, now completely insane, assaults the sea in a mad effort to keep it from taking his son.