Des qu'elle eut appris que des mecreants
profitaient
de
la misere publique pour derober des coeurs a Dieu, elle fit appeler son
majordome.
la misere publique pour derober des coeurs a Dieu, elle fit appeler son
majordome.
Yeats
Are you deaf?
FATHER JOHN.
What is it? What is it?
MARTIN.
There on the mountain, a thousand white unicorns trampling; a thousand
riders with their swords drawn--the swords clashing! Oh, the sound of
the swords, the sound of the clashing of the swords!
[_He goes slowly off stage. JOHNNY takes up a stone to
throw at him. _
FATHER JOHN [_seizing his arm_].
Stop--do you not see he is beyond the world?
BIDDY.
Keep your hand off him, Johnny Bacach. If he is gone wild and cracked,
that's natural. Those that have been wakened from a trance on a sudden
are apt to go bad and light in the head.
PAUDEEN.
If it is madness is on him, it is not he himself should pay the penalty.
BIDDY.
To prey on the mind it does, and rises into the head. There are some
would go over any height and would have great power in their madness.
It is maybe to some secret cleft he is going, to get knowledge of the
great cure for all things, or of the Plough that was hidden in the old
times, the Golden Plough.
PAUDEEN.
It seemed as if he was talking through honey. He had the look of one
that had seen great wonders. It is maybe among the old heroes of
Ireland he went raising armies for our help.
FATHER JOHN.
God take him in his care and keep him from lying spirits and from all
delusions!
JOHNNY.
We have got candles here, Father. We had them to put around his body.
Maybe they would keep away the evil things of the air.
PAUDEEN.
Light them so, and he will say out a Mass for him the same as in a
lime-washed church.
[_They light the candles. _
_THOMAS comes in. _
THOMAS.
Where is he? I am come to warn him. The destruction he did in the
night-time has been heard of. The soldiers are out after him and the
constables--there are two of the constables not far off--there are others
on every side--they heard he was here in the mountain--where is he?
FATHER JOHN.
He has gone up the path.
THOMAS.
Hurry after him! Tell him to hide himself--this attack he had a hand in
is a hanging crime. Tell him to hide himself, to come to me when all is
quiet--bad as his doings are, he is my own brother's son; I will get him
on to a ship that will be going to France.
FATHER JOHN.
That will be best, send him back to the Brothers and to the wise
Bishops. They can unravel this tangle, I cannot. I cannot be sure of
the truth.
THOMAS.
Here are the constables, he will see them and get away. Say no word.
The Lord be praised that he is out of sight.
_Constables_ come in. _
CONSTABLE.
The man we are looking for, where is he? He was seen coming here along
with you. You have to give him up into the power of the law.
JOHNNY.
We will not give him up. Go back out of this or you will be sorry.
PAUDEEN.
We are not in dread of you or the like of you.
BIDDY.
Throw them down over the rocks!
NANNY.
Give them to the picking of the crows!
ALL.
Down with the law!
FATHER JOHN.
Hush! He is coming back. [_To _Constables. _] Stop, stop--leave him
to himself. He is not trying to escape, he is coming towards you.
PAUDEEN.
There is a sort of a brightness about him. I misjudged him calling him
a traitor. It is not to this world he belongs at all. He is over on the
other side.
MARTIN.
[_Standing beside the rock where the lighted candles
are. _]
_Et calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est! _
FATHER JOHN.
I must know what he has to say. It is not from himself he is speaking.
MARTIN.
Father John, Heaven is not what we have believed it to be. It is not
quiet, it is not singing and making music, and all strife at an end.
I have seen it, I have been there. The lover still loves but with a
greater passion, and the rider still rides but the horse goes like the
wind and leaps the ridges, and the battle goes on always, always. That
is the joy of Heaven, continual battle. I thought the battle was here,
and that the joy was to be found here on earth, that all one had to do
was to bring again the old wild earth of the stories--but no, it is not
here; we shall not come to that joy, that battle, till we have put out
the senses, everything that can be seen and handled, as I put out this
candle. [_He puts out candle. _] We must put out the whole world as I
put out this candle [_puts out another candle_]. We must put out the
light of the stars and the light of the sun and the light of the moon
[_puts out the rest of the candles_], till we have brought everything
to nothing once again. I saw in a broken vision, but now all is clear
to me. Where there is nothing, where there is nothing--there is God!
CONSTABLE.
Now we will take him!
JOHNNY.
We will never give him up to the law!
PAUDEEN.
Make your escape! We will not let you be followed.
[_They struggle with _Constables_; the women help
them; all disappear struggling. There is a shot. MARTIN
stumbles and falls. _Beggars_ come back with a
shout. _
JOHNNY.
We have done for them, they will not meddle with you again.
PAUDEEN.
Oh, he is down!
FATHER JOHN.
He is shot through the breast. Oh, who has dared meddle with a soul
that was in the tumults on the threshold of sanctity?
JOHNNY.
It was that gun went off and I striking it from the constable's hand.
MARTIN.
[_Looking at his hand, on which there is blood. _]
Ah, that is blood! I fell among the rocks. It is a hard climb. It is
a long climb to the vineyards of Eden. Help me up. I must go on. The
Mountain of Abiegnos is very high--but the vineyards--the vineyards!
[_He falls back dead. The men uncover their heads. _
PAUDEEN [_to BIDDY_].
It was you misled him with your foretelling that he was coming within
the best day of his life.
JOHNNY.
Madness on him or no madness, I will not leave that body to the law to
be buried with a dog's burial or brought away and maybe hanged upon a
tree. Lift him on the sacks, bring him away to the quarry; it is there
on the hillside the boys will give him a great burying, coming on
horses and bearing white rods in their hands.
[_NANNY lays the velvet cloak over him. _
_They lift him and carry the body away singing:_
Our hope and our darling, our heart dies with you,
You to have failed us, we are foals astray!
FATHER JOHN.
He is gone and we can never know where that vision came from. I cannot
know--the wise Bishops would have known.
THOMAS [_taking up banner_].
To be shaping a lad through his lifetime, and he to go his own way
at the last, and a queer way. It is very queer the world itself is,
whatever shape was put upon it at the first.
ANDREW.
To be too headstrong and too open, that is the beginning of trouble. To
keep to yourself the thing that you know, and to do in quiet the thing
you want to do. There would be no disturbance at all in the world, all
people to bear that in mind!
APPENDIX.
_THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN. _
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
THE present version of _The Countess Cathleen_ is not quite the version
adopted by the Irish Literary Theatre a couple of years ago, for our
stage and scenery were capable of little; and it may differ still more
from any stage version I make in future, for it seems that my people
of the waters and my unhappy dead, in the third act, cannot keep their
supernatural essence, but must put on too much of our mortality, in
any ordinary theatre. I am told that I must abandon a meaning or two
and make my merchants carry away the treasure themselves. The act was
written long ago, when I had seen so few plays that I took pleasure
in stage effects. Indeed, I am not yet certain that a wealthy theatre
could not shape it to an impressive pageantry, or that a theatre
without any wealth could not lift it out of pageantry into the mind,
with a dim curtain, and some dimly robed actors, and the beautiful
voices that should be as important in poetical as in musical drama. The
Elizabethan stage was so little imprisoned in material circumstance
that the Elizabethan imagination was not strained by god or spirit, nor
even by Echo herself--no, not even when she answered, as in _The Duchess
of Malfi_, in clear, loud words which were not the words that had been
spoken to her. We have made a prison-house of paint and canvas, where
we have as little freedom as under our own roofs, for there is no
freedom in a house that has been made with hands. All art moves in the
cave of the Chimaera, or in the garden of the Hesperides, or in the more
silent house of the gods, and neither cave, nor garden, nor house can
show itself clearly but to the mind's eye.
Besides re-writing a lyric or two, I have much enlarged the note on
_The Countess Cathleen_, as there has been some discussion in Ireland
about the origin of the story, but the other notes[A] are as they have
always been. They are short enough, but I do not think that anybody who
knows modern poetry will find obscurities in this book. In any case, I
must leave my myths and symbols to explain themselves as the years go
by and one poem lights up another, and the stories that friends, and
one friend in particular, have gathered for me, or that I have gathered
myself in many cottages, find their way into the light. I would, if I
could, add to that great and complicated inheritance of images which
written literature has substituted for the greater and more complex
inheritance of spoken tradition, to that majestic heraldry of the poets
some new heraldic images gathered from the lips of the common people.
Christianity and the old nature faith have lain down side by side in
the cottages, and I would proclaim that peace as loudly as I can among
the kingdoms of poetry, where there is no peace that is not joyous,
no battle that does not give life instead of death; I may even try to
persuade others, in more sober prose, that there can be no language
more worthy of poetry and of the meditation of the soul than that which
has been made, or can be made, out of a subtlety of desire, an emotion
of sacrifice, a delight in order, that are perhaps Christian, and myths
and images that mirror the energies of woods and streams, and of their
wild creatures. Has any part of that majestic heraldry of the poets
had a very different fountain? Is it not the ritual of the marriage of
heaven and earth?
These details may seem to many unnecessary; but after all one writes
poetry for a few careful readers and for a few friends, who will not
consider such details very unnecessary. When Cimabue had the cry it
was, it seems, worth thinking of those that run; but to-day, when they
can write as well as read, one can sit with one's companions under the
hedgerow contentedly. If one writes well and has the patience, somebody
will come from among the runners and read what one has written quickly,
and go away quickly, and write out as much as he can remember in the
language of the highway.
W. B. YEATS.
_January, 1901. _
FOOTNOTE:
[A] I have left them out of this edition as Lady Gregory's _Cuchulain
of Muirthemne_ and _Gods and Fighting Men_ have made them unnecessary.
When I began to write, the names of the Irish heroes were almost
unknown even in Ireland.
NOTES
_The Countess Cathleen. _--I found the story of the Countess Cathleen
in what professed to be a collection of Irish folklore in an Irish
newspaper some years ago. I wrote to the compiler, asking about its
source, but got no answer, but have since heard that it was translated
from _Les Matinees de Timothe Trimm_ a good many years ago, and has
been drifting about the Irish press ever since. Leo Lespes gives it
as an Irish story, and though the editor of _Folklore_ has kindly
advertised for information, the only Christian variant I know of is
a Donegal tale, given by Mr. Larminie in his _West Irish Folk Tales
and Romances_, of a woman who goes to hell for ten years to save her
husband and stays there another ten, having been granted permission
to carry away as many souls as could cling to her skirt. Leo Lespes
may have added a few details, but I have no doubt of the essential
antiquity of what seems to me the most impressive form of one of the
supreme parables of the world. The parable came to the Greeks in the
sacrifice of Alcestis, but her sacrifice was less overwhelming, less
apparently irremediable. Leo Lespes tells the story as follows:--
'Ce que je vais vous dire est un recit du careme Irlandais. Le boiteux,
l'aveugle, le paralytique des rues de Dublin ou de Limerick, vous le
diraient mieux que moi, cher lecteur, si vous alliez le leur demander,
un sixpence d'argent a la main. --Il n'est pas une jeune fille catholique
a laquelle on ne l'ait appris, pendant les jours de preparation a la
communion sainte, pas un berger des bords de la Blackwater qui ne le
puisse redire a la veillee.
'Il y a bien longtemps qu'il apparut tout-a-coup dans la vieille
Irlande deux marchands inconnus dont personne n'avait oui parler, et
qui parlaient neanmoins avec la plus grande perfection la langue du
pays. Leurs cheveux etaient noirs et ferres avec de l'or et leurs robes
d'une grande magnificence.
Tous deux semblaient avoir le meme age: ils paraissaient etre des
hommes de cinquante ans, car leur barbe grisonnait un peu.
Or, a cette epoque, comme aujourd'hui, l'Irlande etait pauvre, car le
soleil avait ete rare, et des recoltes presque nulles. Les indigents ne
savaient a quel saint se vouer, et la misere devenait de plus en plus
terrible.
Dans l'hotellerie ou descendirent les marchands fastueux on chercha
a penetrer leurs desseins: mais ce fut en vain, ils demeurerent
silencieux et discrets.
Et pendant qu'ils demeurerent dans l'hotellerie, ils ne cesserent de
compter et de recompter des sacs de pieces d'or, dont la vive clarte
s'apercevait a travers les vitres du logis.
Gentlemen, leur dit l'hotesse un jour, d'ou vient que vous etes si
opulents, et que, venus pour secourir la misere publique, vous ne
fassiez pas de bonnes oeuvres?
--Belle hotesse, repondit l'un d'eux, nous n'avons pas voulu aller
au-devant d'infortunes honorables, dans la crainte d'etre trompes par
des miseres fictives: que la douleur frappe a la porte, nous ouvrirons.
Le lendemain, quand on sut qu'il existait deux opulents etrangers
prets a prodiguer l'or, la foule assiegea leur logis; mais les figures
des gens qui en sortaient etaient bien diverses. Les uns avaient la
fierte dans le regard, les autres portaient la honte au front. Les deux
trafiquants achetaient des ames pour le demon. L'ame d'un vieillard
valait vingt pieces d'or, pas un penny de plus; car Satan avait eu le
temps d'y former hypotheque. L'ame d'une epouse en valait cinquante
quand elle etait jolie, ou cent quand elle etait laide. L'ame d'une
jeune fille se payait des prix fous: les fleurs les plus belles et les
plus pures sont les plus cheres.
Pendant ce temps, il existait dans la ville un ange de beaute, la
comtesse Ketty O'Donnor. Elle etait l'idole du peuple, et la providence
des indigents.
Des qu'elle eut appris que des mecreants profitaient de
la misere publique pour derober des coeurs a Dieu, elle fit appeler son
majordome.
--Master Patrick, lui dit elle, combien ai-je de pieces d'or dans mon
coffre?
--Cent mille.
--Combien de bijoux?
--Pour autant d'argent.
--Combien de chateaux, de bois et de terres?
--Pour le double de ces sommes.
--Eh bien! Patrick, vendez tout ce qui n'est pas or et apportez-m'en
le montant. Je ne veux garder a moi que ce castel et le champ qui
l'entoure.
Deux jours apres, les ordres de la pieuse Ketty etaient executes et le
tresor etait distribue aux pauvres au fur et a mesure de leurs besoins.
Ceci ne faisait pas le compte, dit la tradition, des commis-voyageurs
du malin esprit, qui ne trouvaient plus d'ames a acheter.
Aides par un valet infame, ils penetrerent dans la retraite de la noble
dame et lui deroberent le reste de son tresor . . en vain lutta-t-elle
de toutes ses forces pour sauver le contenu de son coffre, les larrons
diaboliques furent les plus forts. Si Ketty avait eu les moyens de
faire un signe de croix, ajoute la legende Irlandaise, elle les eut mis
en fuite, mais ses mains etaient captives--Le larcin fut effectue. Alors
les pauvres solliciterent en vain pres de Ketty depouillee, elle ne
pouvait plus secourir leur misere;--elle les abandonnait a la tentation.
Pourtant il n'y avait plus que huit jours a passer pour que les grains
et les fourrages arrivassent en abondance des pays d'Orient. Mais, huit
jours, c'etait un siecle: huit jours necessitaient une somme immense
pour subvenir aux exigences de la disette, et les pauvres allaient ou
expirer dans les angoisses de la faim, ou, reniant les saintes maximes
de l'Evangile, vendre a vil prix leur ame, le plus beau present de la
munificence du Seigneur tout-puissant.
Et Ketty n'avait plus une obole, car elle avait abandonne son chateau
aux malheureux.
Elle passa douze heures dans les larmes et le deuil, arrachant ses
cheveux couleur de soleil et meurtrissant son sein couleur du lis: puis
elle se leva resolue, animee par un vif sentiment de desespoir.
Elle se rendit chez les marchands d'ames.
--Que voulez-vous? dirent ils.
--Vous achetez des ames?
--Oui, un peu malgre vous, n'est ce pas, sainte aux yeux de saphir?
--Aujourd'hui je viens vous proposer un marche, reprit elle.
--Lequel?
--J'ai une ame a vendre; mais elle est chere.
--Qu'importe si elle est precieuse? l'ame, comme le diamant, s'apprecie
a sa blancheur.
--C'est la mienne, dit Ketty.
Les deux envoyes de Satan tressaillirent. Leurs griffes s'allongerent
sous leurs gants de cuir; leurs yeux gris etincelerent:--l'ame, pure,
immaculee, virginale de Ketty! . . . c'etait une acquisition inappreciable.
--Gentille dame, combien voulez-vous?
--Cent cinquante mille ecus d'or.
--C'est fait, dirent les marchands; et ils tendirent a Ketty un
parchemin cachete de noir, qu'elle signa en frissonnant.
La somme lui fut comptee.
Des qu'elle fut rentree, elle dit au majordome:
--Tenez, distribuez ceci. Avec la somme que je vous donne les pauvres
attendront la huitaine necessaire et pas une de leurs ames ne sera
livree au demon.
Puis elle s'enferma et recommanda qu'on ne vint pas la deranger.
Trois jours se passerent; elle n'appela pas; elle ne sortit pas.
Quand on ouvrit sa porte, on la trouva raide et froide: elle etait
morte de douleur.
Mais la vente de cette ame si adorable dans sa charite fut declaree
nulle par le Seigneur: car elle avait sauve ses concitoyens de la mort
eternelle.
Apres la huitaine, des vaisseaux nombreux amenerent a l'Irlande affamee
d'immenses provisions de grains.
La famine n'etait plus possible. Quant aux marchands, ils disparurent
de leur hotellerie, sans qu'on sut jamais ce qu'ils etaient devenus.
Toutefois, les pecheurs de la Blackwater pretendent qu'ils sont
enchaines dans une prison souterraine par ordre de Lucifer jusqu'au
moment ou ils pourront livrer l'ame de Ketty qui leur a echappe. Je
vous dis la legende telle que je la sais.
--Mais les pauvres l'ont raconte d'age en age et les enfants de Cork et
de Dublin chantent encore la ballade dont voici les derniers couplets:--
Pour sauver les pauvres qu'elle aime
Ketty donna
Son esprit, sa croyance meme;
Satan paya
Cette ame au devoument sublime,
En ecus d'or,
Disons pour racheter son crime
_Confiteor_.
Mais l'ange qui se fit coupable
Par charite
Au sejour d'amour ineffable
Est remonte.
Satan vaincu n'eut pas de prise
Sur ce coeur d'or;
Chantons sous la nef de l'eglise,
_Confiteor_.
N'est ce pas que ce recit, ne de l'imagination des poetes catholiques
de la verte Erin, est une veritable recit de careme?
_The Countess Cathleen_ was acted in Dublin in 1899 with Mr. Marcus St.
John and Mr. Trevor Lowe as the First and Second Demon, Mr. Valentine
Grace as Shemus Rua, Master Charles Sefton as Teig, Madame San Carola
as Maire, Miss Florence Farr as Aleel, Miss Anna Mather as Oona, Mr.
Charles Holmes as the Herdsman, Mr. Jack Wilcox as the Gardener, Mr.
Walford as a Peasant, Miss Dorothy Paget as a Spirit, Miss M. Kelly as
a Peasant Woman, Mr. T. E. Wilkenson as a Servant, and Miss May Whitty
as the Countess Cathleen. They had to face a very vehement opposition
stirred up by a politician and a newspaper, the one accusing me in
a pamphlet, the other in long articles day after day, of blasphemy
because of the language of the demons in the first act, and because I
made a woman sell her soul and yet escape damnation, and of a lack of
patriotism because I made Irish men and women, who it seems never did
such a thing, sell theirs. The politician or the newspaper persuaded
some forty Catholic students to sign a protest against the play, and a
Cardinal, who avowed that he had not read it, to make another, and both
politician and newspaper made such obvious appeals to the audience to
break the peace, that some score of police[B] were sent to the theatre
to see that they did not. I have, however, no reason to regret the
result, for the stalls, containing almost all that was distinguished
in Dublin, and a gallery of artisans, alike insisted on the freedom of
literature, and I myself have the pleasure of recording strange events.
The play has since been revived in New York by Miss Wycherley, but I
did not see her performance.
* * * * *
_The Land of Heart's Desire. _--This little play was produced at the
Avenue Theatre in the spring of 1894, with the following cast:--Maurteen
Bruin, Mr. James Welch; Shawn Bruin, Mr. A. E. W. Mason; Father Hart,
Mr. G. R. Foss; Bridget Bruin, Miss Charlotte Morland; Maire Bruin,
Miss Winifred Fraser; A Faery Child, Miss Dorothy Paget. It ran for a
little over six weeks. It was revived in America in 1901, when it was
taken on tour by Mrs. Lemoyne. It was again played, under the auspices
of the Irish Literary Society of New York, in 1903, and has lately been
played in San Francisco.
* * * * *
_The Unicorn from the Stars. _--Some years ago I wrote in a fortnight
with the help of Lady Gregory and another friend a five act tragedy
called _Where there is Nothing_. I wrote at such speed that I might
save from a plagiarist a subject that seemed worth the keeping till
greater knowledge of the stage made an adequate treatment possible.
I knew that my first version was hurried and oratorical, with events
cast into the plot because they seemed lively or amusing in themselves,
and not because they grew out of the characters and the plot; and I
came to dislike a central character so arid and so dominating. We
cannot sympathise with a man who sets his anger at once lightly and
confidently to overthrow the order of the world; but our hearts can go
out to him, as I think, if he speak with some humility, so far as his
daily self carries him, out of a cloudy light of vision. Whether he
understand or know, it may be that the voices of Angels and Archangels
have spoken in the cloud and whatever wildness come upon his life,
feet of theirs may well have trod the clusters. I began with this new
thought to dictate the play to Lady Gregory, but since I had last
worked with her, her knowledge of the stage and her mastery of dialogue
had so increased that my imagination could not go neck to neck with
hers. I found myself, too, with an old difficulty, that my words flow
freely alone when my people speak in verse, or in words that are like
those we put into verse; and so after an attempt to work alone I gave
my scheme to her. The result is a play almost wholly hers in handiwork,
which I can yet read, as I have just done after the stories of _The
Secret Rose_, and recognize thoughts, a point of view, an artistic aim
which seem a part of my world. Her greatest difficulty was that I had
given her for chief character a man so plunged in trance that he could
not be otherwise than all but still and silent, though perhaps with the
stillness and the silence of a lamp; and the movement of the play as
a whole, if we were to listen to hear him, had to be without hurry or
violence. The strange characters, her handiwork, on whom he sheds his
light, delight me. She has enabled me to carry out an old thought for
which my own knowledge is insufficient and to commingle the ancient
phantasies of poetry with the rough, vivid, ever-contemporaneous
tumult of the road-side; to create for a moment a form that otherwise
I could but dream of, though I do that always, an art that prophesies
though with worn and failing voice of the day when Quixote and Sancho
Panza long estranged may once again go out gaily into the bleak air.
Ever since I began to write I have awaited with impatience a linking,
all Europe over, of the hereditary knowledge of the country-side, now
becoming known to us through the work of wanderers and men of learning,
with our old lyricism so full of ancient frenzies and hereditary
wisdom, a yoking of antiquities, a Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
_The Unicorn from the Stars_ was first played at the Abbey Theatre
on November 23rd, 1907, with the following cast:--Father John, Ernest
Vaughan; Thomas Hearne, a coachbuilder, Arthur Sinclair; Andrew Hearne,
brother of Thomas, J. A. O'Rourke; Martin Hearne, nephew of Thomas, F.
J. Fay; Johnny Bacach, a beggar, W. G. Fay; Paudeen, J. M. Kerrigan;
Biddy Lally, Maire O'Neill; Nanny, Brigit O'Dempsey.
W. B. YEATS.
_March, 1908. _
FOOTNOTE:
[B] Mr. Synge has outdone me with his _Play Boy of the Western World_,
which towards the end of the week had more than three times the number
in the pit alone. Counting the police inside and outside the theatre,
there were, according to some evening papers, five hundred. --_March,
1908. _
THE MUSIC FOR USE IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THESE PLAYS.
All the music that is printed here, with the exception of Mr. Arthur
Darley's, is of that kind which I have described in _Samhain_ and in
_Ideas of Good and Evil_. Some of it is old Irish music made when all
songs were but heightened speech, and some of it composed by modern
musicians is none the less to be associated with words that must
never lose the intonation of passionate speech. No vowel must ever be
prolonged unnaturally, no word of mine must ever change into a mere
musical note, no singer of my words must ever cease to be a man and
become an instrument.
The degree of approach to ordinary singing depends on the context, for
one desires a greater or lesser amount of contrast between the lyrics
and the dialogue according to situation and emotion and the qualities
of players. The words of Cathleen ni Houlihan about the 'white-scarfed
riders' must be little more than regulated declamation; the little song
of Leagerie when he seizes the 'Golden Helmet' should in its opening
words be indistinguishable from the dialogue itself. Upon the other
hand, Cathleen's verses by the fire, and those of the pupils in the
_Hour-Glass_, and those of the beggars in the _Unicorn_, are sung as
the country people understand song. Modern singing would spoil them for
dramatic purposes by taking the keenness and the salt out of the words.
The songs in _Deirdre_, in Miss Farr's and in Miss Allgood's setting,
need fine speakers of verse more than good singers; and in these,
and still more in the song of the Three Women in _Baile's Strand_,
the singers must remember the natural speed of words. If the lyric
in _Baile's Strand_ is sung slowly it is like church-singing, but if
sung quickly and with the right expression it becomes an incantation
so old that nobody can quite understand it. That it may give this
sense of something half-forgotten, it must be sung with a certain lack
of minute feeling for the meaning of the words, which, however, must
always remain words. The songs in _Deirdre_, especially the last dirge,
which is supposed to be the creation of the moment, must, upon the
other hand, at any rate when Miss Farr's or Miss Allgood's music is
used, be sung or spoken with minute passionate understanding. I have
rehearsed the part of the Angel in the _Hour-Glass_ with recorded notes
throughout, and believe this is the right way; but in practice, owing
to the difficulty of finding a player who did not sing too much the
moment the notes were written down, have left it to the player's own
unrecorded inspiration, except at the 'exit,' where it is well for the
player to go nearer to ordinary song.
I have not yet put Miss Farr's _Deirdre_ music to the test of
performances, but, as she and I have worked out all this art of spoken
song together, I have little doubt but I shall find it all I would have
it. Mr. Darley's music was used at the first production of the play and
at its revival last spring, and was dramatically effective. I could
hear the words perfectly, and I think they must have been audible to
anyone hearing the play for the first or second time. They had not,
however, the full animation of speech, as one heard it in the dirge
at the end of the play set by Miss Allgood herself, who played the
principal musician. It is very difficult for a musician who is not a
speaker to do exactly what I want. Mr. Darley has written for singers
not for speakers. His music is, perhaps, too elaborate, simple though
it is. I have not had sufficient opportunity to experiment with the
play to find out the exact distance from ordinary speech necessary in
the first two lyrics, which must prolong the mood of the dialogue while
being a rest from its passions. Miss Farr's music will be used at the
next revival of the play.
Mr. Darley's music for _Shadowy Waters_ was supposed to be played
upon Forgael's magic harp, and it accompanied words of Dectora's and
Aibric's. It was played in reality upon a violin, always pizzicato,
and gave the effect of harp playing, at any rate of a magic harp. The
'cues' are all given and the words are printed under the music. The
violinist followed the voice, except in the case of the 'O', where it
was the actress that had to follow.
W. B. YEATS.
_March, 1908. _
THE KING'S THRESHOLD.
_THE FOUR RIVERS. _
FLORENCE FARR.
The four rivers that run there,
Through well-mown level ground
Have come out of a blessed well
That is all bound and wound
By the great roots of an apple,
And all fowls of the air
Have gathered in the wide branches
And Keep singing there.
ON BAILE'S STRAND.
_THE FOOL'S SONG. _
FLORENCE FARR.
Cuchulain has killed kings,
Kings and sons of kings,
Dragons out of the water and witches out of the air,
Banachas and Bonachas and people of the woods.
Witches that steal the milk,
Fomor that steal the children,
Hags that have heads like hares,
Hares that have claws like witches,
All riding a-cock-horse,
Out of the very bottom of the bitter black north.
ON BAILE'S STRAND.
_SONG OF THE WOMEN. _
FLORENCE FARR.
May this fire have driven out
The shape-changers that can put
Ruin on a great king's house,
Until all be ruinous.
Names whereby a man has known
The threshold and the hearthstone,
Gather on the wind and drive
Women none can kiss and thrive,
For they are but whirling wind,
Out of memory and mind.
They would make a prince decay
With light images of clay
Planted in the running wave;
Or for many shapes they have,
They would change them into hounds
Until he had died of his wounds
Though the change were but a whim;
Or they'd hurl a spell at him,
That he follow with desire
Bodies that can never tire
Or grow kind, for they anoint
All their bodies joint by joint
With a miracle-working juice
That is made out of the grease
Of the ungoverned unicorn;
But the man is thrice forlorn
Emptied, ruined, wracked, and lost,
That they follow, for at most
They will give him kiss for kiss
While they murmur "After this
Hatred may be sweet to the taste;"
Those wild hands that have embraced
All his body can but shove
At the burning wheel of love
Till the side of hate comes up.
Therefore in this ancient cup
May the sword-blades drink their fill
Of the home-brew there, until
They will have for master none
But the threshold and hearthstone.
_THE FOOL'S SONG. _--II.
FLORENCE FARR.
When you were an acorn on the tree top,
Then was I an eagle-cock;
Now that you are a withered old block,
Still am I an eagle-cock.
DEIRDRE.
_MUSICIANS' SONG. _--I.
FLORENCE FARR.
First Musician.
"Why is it," Queen Edain said,
"If I do but climb the stair
To the tower overhead
When the winds are calling there,
Or the gannets calling out,
In waste places of the sky,
There is so much to think about,
That I cry, that I cry? "
Second Musician.
But her goodman answered her:
"Love would be a thing of naught
Had not all his limbs a stir
Born out of immoderate thought.
Were he any thing by half,
Were his measure running dry,
Lovers, if they may not laugh,
Have to cry, have to cry. "
The Three Musicians together.
But is Edain worth a song
Now the hunt begins anew?
Praise the beautiful and strong;
Praise the redness of the yew;
Praise the blossoming apple-stem.
But our silence had been wise.
What is all our praise to them
That have one another's eyes?
DEIRDRE.
_MUSICIANS' SONG. _--II.
FLORENCE FARR.
Love is an immoderate thing
And can never be content
Till it dip an ageing wing,
Where some laughing element
Leaps and Time's old lanthorn dims.
What's the merit in love-play,
In the tumult of the limbs
That dies out before 'tis day,
Heart on heart or mouth on mouth
All that mingling of our breath,
When love-longing is but drouth
For the things that follow death?
_MUSICIANS' SONG. _--III.
FLORENCE FARR.
First Musician.
They are gone, they are gone
The proud may lie by the proud.
Second Musician.
Though we were bidden to sing, cry nothing Loud.
First Musician.
They are gone, they are gone.
Second Musician.
FATHER JOHN.
What is it? What is it?
MARTIN.
There on the mountain, a thousand white unicorns trampling; a thousand
riders with their swords drawn--the swords clashing! Oh, the sound of
the swords, the sound of the clashing of the swords!
[_He goes slowly off stage. JOHNNY takes up a stone to
throw at him. _
FATHER JOHN [_seizing his arm_].
Stop--do you not see he is beyond the world?
BIDDY.
Keep your hand off him, Johnny Bacach. If he is gone wild and cracked,
that's natural. Those that have been wakened from a trance on a sudden
are apt to go bad and light in the head.
PAUDEEN.
If it is madness is on him, it is not he himself should pay the penalty.
BIDDY.
To prey on the mind it does, and rises into the head. There are some
would go over any height and would have great power in their madness.
It is maybe to some secret cleft he is going, to get knowledge of the
great cure for all things, or of the Plough that was hidden in the old
times, the Golden Plough.
PAUDEEN.
It seemed as if he was talking through honey. He had the look of one
that had seen great wonders. It is maybe among the old heroes of
Ireland he went raising armies for our help.
FATHER JOHN.
God take him in his care and keep him from lying spirits and from all
delusions!
JOHNNY.
We have got candles here, Father. We had them to put around his body.
Maybe they would keep away the evil things of the air.
PAUDEEN.
Light them so, and he will say out a Mass for him the same as in a
lime-washed church.
[_They light the candles. _
_THOMAS comes in. _
THOMAS.
Where is he? I am come to warn him. The destruction he did in the
night-time has been heard of. The soldiers are out after him and the
constables--there are two of the constables not far off--there are others
on every side--they heard he was here in the mountain--where is he?
FATHER JOHN.
He has gone up the path.
THOMAS.
Hurry after him! Tell him to hide himself--this attack he had a hand in
is a hanging crime. Tell him to hide himself, to come to me when all is
quiet--bad as his doings are, he is my own brother's son; I will get him
on to a ship that will be going to France.
FATHER JOHN.
That will be best, send him back to the Brothers and to the wise
Bishops. They can unravel this tangle, I cannot. I cannot be sure of
the truth.
THOMAS.
Here are the constables, he will see them and get away. Say no word.
The Lord be praised that he is out of sight.
_Constables_ come in. _
CONSTABLE.
The man we are looking for, where is he? He was seen coming here along
with you. You have to give him up into the power of the law.
JOHNNY.
We will not give him up. Go back out of this or you will be sorry.
PAUDEEN.
We are not in dread of you or the like of you.
BIDDY.
Throw them down over the rocks!
NANNY.
Give them to the picking of the crows!
ALL.
Down with the law!
FATHER JOHN.
Hush! He is coming back. [_To _Constables. _] Stop, stop--leave him
to himself. He is not trying to escape, he is coming towards you.
PAUDEEN.
There is a sort of a brightness about him. I misjudged him calling him
a traitor. It is not to this world he belongs at all. He is over on the
other side.
MARTIN.
[_Standing beside the rock where the lighted candles
are. _]
_Et calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est! _
FATHER JOHN.
I must know what he has to say. It is not from himself he is speaking.
MARTIN.
Father John, Heaven is not what we have believed it to be. It is not
quiet, it is not singing and making music, and all strife at an end.
I have seen it, I have been there. The lover still loves but with a
greater passion, and the rider still rides but the horse goes like the
wind and leaps the ridges, and the battle goes on always, always. That
is the joy of Heaven, continual battle. I thought the battle was here,
and that the joy was to be found here on earth, that all one had to do
was to bring again the old wild earth of the stories--but no, it is not
here; we shall not come to that joy, that battle, till we have put out
the senses, everything that can be seen and handled, as I put out this
candle. [_He puts out candle. _] We must put out the whole world as I
put out this candle [_puts out another candle_]. We must put out the
light of the stars and the light of the sun and the light of the moon
[_puts out the rest of the candles_], till we have brought everything
to nothing once again. I saw in a broken vision, but now all is clear
to me. Where there is nothing, where there is nothing--there is God!
CONSTABLE.
Now we will take him!
JOHNNY.
We will never give him up to the law!
PAUDEEN.
Make your escape! We will not let you be followed.
[_They struggle with _Constables_; the women help
them; all disappear struggling. There is a shot. MARTIN
stumbles and falls. _Beggars_ come back with a
shout. _
JOHNNY.
We have done for them, they will not meddle with you again.
PAUDEEN.
Oh, he is down!
FATHER JOHN.
He is shot through the breast. Oh, who has dared meddle with a soul
that was in the tumults on the threshold of sanctity?
JOHNNY.
It was that gun went off and I striking it from the constable's hand.
MARTIN.
[_Looking at his hand, on which there is blood. _]
Ah, that is blood! I fell among the rocks. It is a hard climb. It is
a long climb to the vineyards of Eden. Help me up. I must go on. The
Mountain of Abiegnos is very high--but the vineyards--the vineyards!
[_He falls back dead. The men uncover their heads. _
PAUDEEN [_to BIDDY_].
It was you misled him with your foretelling that he was coming within
the best day of his life.
JOHNNY.
Madness on him or no madness, I will not leave that body to the law to
be buried with a dog's burial or brought away and maybe hanged upon a
tree. Lift him on the sacks, bring him away to the quarry; it is there
on the hillside the boys will give him a great burying, coming on
horses and bearing white rods in their hands.
[_NANNY lays the velvet cloak over him. _
_They lift him and carry the body away singing:_
Our hope and our darling, our heart dies with you,
You to have failed us, we are foals astray!
FATHER JOHN.
He is gone and we can never know where that vision came from. I cannot
know--the wise Bishops would have known.
THOMAS [_taking up banner_].
To be shaping a lad through his lifetime, and he to go his own way
at the last, and a queer way. It is very queer the world itself is,
whatever shape was put upon it at the first.
ANDREW.
To be too headstrong and too open, that is the beginning of trouble. To
keep to yourself the thing that you know, and to do in quiet the thing
you want to do. There would be no disturbance at all in the world, all
people to bear that in mind!
APPENDIX.
_THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN. _
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
THE present version of _The Countess Cathleen_ is not quite the version
adopted by the Irish Literary Theatre a couple of years ago, for our
stage and scenery were capable of little; and it may differ still more
from any stage version I make in future, for it seems that my people
of the waters and my unhappy dead, in the third act, cannot keep their
supernatural essence, but must put on too much of our mortality, in
any ordinary theatre. I am told that I must abandon a meaning or two
and make my merchants carry away the treasure themselves. The act was
written long ago, when I had seen so few plays that I took pleasure
in stage effects. Indeed, I am not yet certain that a wealthy theatre
could not shape it to an impressive pageantry, or that a theatre
without any wealth could not lift it out of pageantry into the mind,
with a dim curtain, and some dimly robed actors, and the beautiful
voices that should be as important in poetical as in musical drama. The
Elizabethan stage was so little imprisoned in material circumstance
that the Elizabethan imagination was not strained by god or spirit, nor
even by Echo herself--no, not even when she answered, as in _The Duchess
of Malfi_, in clear, loud words which were not the words that had been
spoken to her. We have made a prison-house of paint and canvas, where
we have as little freedom as under our own roofs, for there is no
freedom in a house that has been made with hands. All art moves in the
cave of the Chimaera, or in the garden of the Hesperides, or in the more
silent house of the gods, and neither cave, nor garden, nor house can
show itself clearly but to the mind's eye.
Besides re-writing a lyric or two, I have much enlarged the note on
_The Countess Cathleen_, as there has been some discussion in Ireland
about the origin of the story, but the other notes[A] are as they have
always been. They are short enough, but I do not think that anybody who
knows modern poetry will find obscurities in this book. In any case, I
must leave my myths and symbols to explain themselves as the years go
by and one poem lights up another, and the stories that friends, and
one friend in particular, have gathered for me, or that I have gathered
myself in many cottages, find their way into the light. I would, if I
could, add to that great and complicated inheritance of images which
written literature has substituted for the greater and more complex
inheritance of spoken tradition, to that majestic heraldry of the poets
some new heraldic images gathered from the lips of the common people.
Christianity and the old nature faith have lain down side by side in
the cottages, and I would proclaim that peace as loudly as I can among
the kingdoms of poetry, where there is no peace that is not joyous,
no battle that does not give life instead of death; I may even try to
persuade others, in more sober prose, that there can be no language
more worthy of poetry and of the meditation of the soul than that which
has been made, or can be made, out of a subtlety of desire, an emotion
of sacrifice, a delight in order, that are perhaps Christian, and myths
and images that mirror the energies of woods and streams, and of their
wild creatures. Has any part of that majestic heraldry of the poets
had a very different fountain? Is it not the ritual of the marriage of
heaven and earth?
These details may seem to many unnecessary; but after all one writes
poetry for a few careful readers and for a few friends, who will not
consider such details very unnecessary. When Cimabue had the cry it
was, it seems, worth thinking of those that run; but to-day, when they
can write as well as read, one can sit with one's companions under the
hedgerow contentedly. If one writes well and has the patience, somebody
will come from among the runners and read what one has written quickly,
and go away quickly, and write out as much as he can remember in the
language of the highway.
W. B. YEATS.
_January, 1901. _
FOOTNOTE:
[A] I have left them out of this edition as Lady Gregory's _Cuchulain
of Muirthemne_ and _Gods and Fighting Men_ have made them unnecessary.
When I began to write, the names of the Irish heroes were almost
unknown even in Ireland.
NOTES
_The Countess Cathleen. _--I found the story of the Countess Cathleen
in what professed to be a collection of Irish folklore in an Irish
newspaper some years ago. I wrote to the compiler, asking about its
source, but got no answer, but have since heard that it was translated
from _Les Matinees de Timothe Trimm_ a good many years ago, and has
been drifting about the Irish press ever since. Leo Lespes gives it
as an Irish story, and though the editor of _Folklore_ has kindly
advertised for information, the only Christian variant I know of is
a Donegal tale, given by Mr. Larminie in his _West Irish Folk Tales
and Romances_, of a woman who goes to hell for ten years to save her
husband and stays there another ten, having been granted permission
to carry away as many souls as could cling to her skirt. Leo Lespes
may have added a few details, but I have no doubt of the essential
antiquity of what seems to me the most impressive form of one of the
supreme parables of the world. The parable came to the Greeks in the
sacrifice of Alcestis, but her sacrifice was less overwhelming, less
apparently irremediable. Leo Lespes tells the story as follows:--
'Ce que je vais vous dire est un recit du careme Irlandais. Le boiteux,
l'aveugle, le paralytique des rues de Dublin ou de Limerick, vous le
diraient mieux que moi, cher lecteur, si vous alliez le leur demander,
un sixpence d'argent a la main. --Il n'est pas une jeune fille catholique
a laquelle on ne l'ait appris, pendant les jours de preparation a la
communion sainte, pas un berger des bords de la Blackwater qui ne le
puisse redire a la veillee.
'Il y a bien longtemps qu'il apparut tout-a-coup dans la vieille
Irlande deux marchands inconnus dont personne n'avait oui parler, et
qui parlaient neanmoins avec la plus grande perfection la langue du
pays. Leurs cheveux etaient noirs et ferres avec de l'or et leurs robes
d'une grande magnificence.
Tous deux semblaient avoir le meme age: ils paraissaient etre des
hommes de cinquante ans, car leur barbe grisonnait un peu.
Or, a cette epoque, comme aujourd'hui, l'Irlande etait pauvre, car le
soleil avait ete rare, et des recoltes presque nulles. Les indigents ne
savaient a quel saint se vouer, et la misere devenait de plus en plus
terrible.
Dans l'hotellerie ou descendirent les marchands fastueux on chercha
a penetrer leurs desseins: mais ce fut en vain, ils demeurerent
silencieux et discrets.
Et pendant qu'ils demeurerent dans l'hotellerie, ils ne cesserent de
compter et de recompter des sacs de pieces d'or, dont la vive clarte
s'apercevait a travers les vitres du logis.
Gentlemen, leur dit l'hotesse un jour, d'ou vient que vous etes si
opulents, et que, venus pour secourir la misere publique, vous ne
fassiez pas de bonnes oeuvres?
--Belle hotesse, repondit l'un d'eux, nous n'avons pas voulu aller
au-devant d'infortunes honorables, dans la crainte d'etre trompes par
des miseres fictives: que la douleur frappe a la porte, nous ouvrirons.
Le lendemain, quand on sut qu'il existait deux opulents etrangers
prets a prodiguer l'or, la foule assiegea leur logis; mais les figures
des gens qui en sortaient etaient bien diverses. Les uns avaient la
fierte dans le regard, les autres portaient la honte au front. Les deux
trafiquants achetaient des ames pour le demon. L'ame d'un vieillard
valait vingt pieces d'or, pas un penny de plus; car Satan avait eu le
temps d'y former hypotheque. L'ame d'une epouse en valait cinquante
quand elle etait jolie, ou cent quand elle etait laide. L'ame d'une
jeune fille se payait des prix fous: les fleurs les plus belles et les
plus pures sont les plus cheres.
Pendant ce temps, il existait dans la ville un ange de beaute, la
comtesse Ketty O'Donnor. Elle etait l'idole du peuple, et la providence
des indigents.
Des qu'elle eut appris que des mecreants profitaient de
la misere publique pour derober des coeurs a Dieu, elle fit appeler son
majordome.
--Master Patrick, lui dit elle, combien ai-je de pieces d'or dans mon
coffre?
--Cent mille.
--Combien de bijoux?
--Pour autant d'argent.
--Combien de chateaux, de bois et de terres?
--Pour le double de ces sommes.
--Eh bien! Patrick, vendez tout ce qui n'est pas or et apportez-m'en
le montant. Je ne veux garder a moi que ce castel et le champ qui
l'entoure.
Deux jours apres, les ordres de la pieuse Ketty etaient executes et le
tresor etait distribue aux pauvres au fur et a mesure de leurs besoins.
Ceci ne faisait pas le compte, dit la tradition, des commis-voyageurs
du malin esprit, qui ne trouvaient plus d'ames a acheter.
Aides par un valet infame, ils penetrerent dans la retraite de la noble
dame et lui deroberent le reste de son tresor . . en vain lutta-t-elle
de toutes ses forces pour sauver le contenu de son coffre, les larrons
diaboliques furent les plus forts. Si Ketty avait eu les moyens de
faire un signe de croix, ajoute la legende Irlandaise, elle les eut mis
en fuite, mais ses mains etaient captives--Le larcin fut effectue. Alors
les pauvres solliciterent en vain pres de Ketty depouillee, elle ne
pouvait plus secourir leur misere;--elle les abandonnait a la tentation.
Pourtant il n'y avait plus que huit jours a passer pour que les grains
et les fourrages arrivassent en abondance des pays d'Orient. Mais, huit
jours, c'etait un siecle: huit jours necessitaient une somme immense
pour subvenir aux exigences de la disette, et les pauvres allaient ou
expirer dans les angoisses de la faim, ou, reniant les saintes maximes
de l'Evangile, vendre a vil prix leur ame, le plus beau present de la
munificence du Seigneur tout-puissant.
Et Ketty n'avait plus une obole, car elle avait abandonne son chateau
aux malheureux.
Elle passa douze heures dans les larmes et le deuil, arrachant ses
cheveux couleur de soleil et meurtrissant son sein couleur du lis: puis
elle se leva resolue, animee par un vif sentiment de desespoir.
Elle se rendit chez les marchands d'ames.
--Que voulez-vous? dirent ils.
--Vous achetez des ames?
--Oui, un peu malgre vous, n'est ce pas, sainte aux yeux de saphir?
--Aujourd'hui je viens vous proposer un marche, reprit elle.
--Lequel?
--J'ai une ame a vendre; mais elle est chere.
--Qu'importe si elle est precieuse? l'ame, comme le diamant, s'apprecie
a sa blancheur.
--C'est la mienne, dit Ketty.
Les deux envoyes de Satan tressaillirent. Leurs griffes s'allongerent
sous leurs gants de cuir; leurs yeux gris etincelerent:--l'ame, pure,
immaculee, virginale de Ketty! . . . c'etait une acquisition inappreciable.
--Gentille dame, combien voulez-vous?
--Cent cinquante mille ecus d'or.
--C'est fait, dirent les marchands; et ils tendirent a Ketty un
parchemin cachete de noir, qu'elle signa en frissonnant.
La somme lui fut comptee.
Des qu'elle fut rentree, elle dit au majordome:
--Tenez, distribuez ceci. Avec la somme que je vous donne les pauvres
attendront la huitaine necessaire et pas une de leurs ames ne sera
livree au demon.
Puis elle s'enferma et recommanda qu'on ne vint pas la deranger.
Trois jours se passerent; elle n'appela pas; elle ne sortit pas.
Quand on ouvrit sa porte, on la trouva raide et froide: elle etait
morte de douleur.
Mais la vente de cette ame si adorable dans sa charite fut declaree
nulle par le Seigneur: car elle avait sauve ses concitoyens de la mort
eternelle.
Apres la huitaine, des vaisseaux nombreux amenerent a l'Irlande affamee
d'immenses provisions de grains.
La famine n'etait plus possible. Quant aux marchands, ils disparurent
de leur hotellerie, sans qu'on sut jamais ce qu'ils etaient devenus.
Toutefois, les pecheurs de la Blackwater pretendent qu'ils sont
enchaines dans une prison souterraine par ordre de Lucifer jusqu'au
moment ou ils pourront livrer l'ame de Ketty qui leur a echappe. Je
vous dis la legende telle que je la sais.
--Mais les pauvres l'ont raconte d'age en age et les enfants de Cork et
de Dublin chantent encore la ballade dont voici les derniers couplets:--
Pour sauver les pauvres qu'elle aime
Ketty donna
Son esprit, sa croyance meme;
Satan paya
Cette ame au devoument sublime,
En ecus d'or,
Disons pour racheter son crime
_Confiteor_.
Mais l'ange qui se fit coupable
Par charite
Au sejour d'amour ineffable
Est remonte.
Satan vaincu n'eut pas de prise
Sur ce coeur d'or;
Chantons sous la nef de l'eglise,
_Confiteor_.
N'est ce pas que ce recit, ne de l'imagination des poetes catholiques
de la verte Erin, est une veritable recit de careme?
_The Countess Cathleen_ was acted in Dublin in 1899 with Mr. Marcus St.
John and Mr. Trevor Lowe as the First and Second Demon, Mr. Valentine
Grace as Shemus Rua, Master Charles Sefton as Teig, Madame San Carola
as Maire, Miss Florence Farr as Aleel, Miss Anna Mather as Oona, Mr.
Charles Holmes as the Herdsman, Mr. Jack Wilcox as the Gardener, Mr.
Walford as a Peasant, Miss Dorothy Paget as a Spirit, Miss M. Kelly as
a Peasant Woman, Mr. T. E. Wilkenson as a Servant, and Miss May Whitty
as the Countess Cathleen. They had to face a very vehement opposition
stirred up by a politician and a newspaper, the one accusing me in
a pamphlet, the other in long articles day after day, of blasphemy
because of the language of the demons in the first act, and because I
made a woman sell her soul and yet escape damnation, and of a lack of
patriotism because I made Irish men and women, who it seems never did
such a thing, sell theirs. The politician or the newspaper persuaded
some forty Catholic students to sign a protest against the play, and a
Cardinal, who avowed that he had not read it, to make another, and both
politician and newspaper made such obvious appeals to the audience to
break the peace, that some score of police[B] were sent to the theatre
to see that they did not. I have, however, no reason to regret the
result, for the stalls, containing almost all that was distinguished
in Dublin, and a gallery of artisans, alike insisted on the freedom of
literature, and I myself have the pleasure of recording strange events.
The play has since been revived in New York by Miss Wycherley, but I
did not see her performance.
* * * * *
_The Land of Heart's Desire. _--This little play was produced at the
Avenue Theatre in the spring of 1894, with the following cast:--Maurteen
Bruin, Mr. James Welch; Shawn Bruin, Mr. A. E. W. Mason; Father Hart,
Mr. G. R. Foss; Bridget Bruin, Miss Charlotte Morland; Maire Bruin,
Miss Winifred Fraser; A Faery Child, Miss Dorothy Paget. It ran for a
little over six weeks. It was revived in America in 1901, when it was
taken on tour by Mrs. Lemoyne. It was again played, under the auspices
of the Irish Literary Society of New York, in 1903, and has lately been
played in San Francisco.
* * * * *
_The Unicorn from the Stars. _--Some years ago I wrote in a fortnight
with the help of Lady Gregory and another friend a five act tragedy
called _Where there is Nothing_. I wrote at such speed that I might
save from a plagiarist a subject that seemed worth the keeping till
greater knowledge of the stage made an adequate treatment possible.
I knew that my first version was hurried and oratorical, with events
cast into the plot because they seemed lively or amusing in themselves,
and not because they grew out of the characters and the plot; and I
came to dislike a central character so arid and so dominating. We
cannot sympathise with a man who sets his anger at once lightly and
confidently to overthrow the order of the world; but our hearts can go
out to him, as I think, if he speak with some humility, so far as his
daily self carries him, out of a cloudy light of vision. Whether he
understand or know, it may be that the voices of Angels and Archangels
have spoken in the cloud and whatever wildness come upon his life,
feet of theirs may well have trod the clusters. I began with this new
thought to dictate the play to Lady Gregory, but since I had last
worked with her, her knowledge of the stage and her mastery of dialogue
had so increased that my imagination could not go neck to neck with
hers. I found myself, too, with an old difficulty, that my words flow
freely alone when my people speak in verse, or in words that are like
those we put into verse; and so after an attempt to work alone I gave
my scheme to her. The result is a play almost wholly hers in handiwork,
which I can yet read, as I have just done after the stories of _The
Secret Rose_, and recognize thoughts, a point of view, an artistic aim
which seem a part of my world. Her greatest difficulty was that I had
given her for chief character a man so plunged in trance that he could
not be otherwise than all but still and silent, though perhaps with the
stillness and the silence of a lamp; and the movement of the play as
a whole, if we were to listen to hear him, had to be without hurry or
violence. The strange characters, her handiwork, on whom he sheds his
light, delight me. She has enabled me to carry out an old thought for
which my own knowledge is insufficient and to commingle the ancient
phantasies of poetry with the rough, vivid, ever-contemporaneous
tumult of the road-side; to create for a moment a form that otherwise
I could but dream of, though I do that always, an art that prophesies
though with worn and failing voice of the day when Quixote and Sancho
Panza long estranged may once again go out gaily into the bleak air.
Ever since I began to write I have awaited with impatience a linking,
all Europe over, of the hereditary knowledge of the country-side, now
becoming known to us through the work of wanderers and men of learning,
with our old lyricism so full of ancient frenzies and hereditary
wisdom, a yoking of antiquities, a Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
_The Unicorn from the Stars_ was first played at the Abbey Theatre
on November 23rd, 1907, with the following cast:--Father John, Ernest
Vaughan; Thomas Hearne, a coachbuilder, Arthur Sinclair; Andrew Hearne,
brother of Thomas, J. A. O'Rourke; Martin Hearne, nephew of Thomas, F.
J. Fay; Johnny Bacach, a beggar, W. G. Fay; Paudeen, J. M. Kerrigan;
Biddy Lally, Maire O'Neill; Nanny, Brigit O'Dempsey.
W. B. YEATS.
_March, 1908. _
FOOTNOTE:
[B] Mr. Synge has outdone me with his _Play Boy of the Western World_,
which towards the end of the week had more than three times the number
in the pit alone. Counting the police inside and outside the theatre,
there were, according to some evening papers, five hundred. --_March,
1908. _
THE MUSIC FOR USE IN THE PERFORMANCE OF THESE PLAYS.
All the music that is printed here, with the exception of Mr. Arthur
Darley's, is of that kind which I have described in _Samhain_ and in
_Ideas of Good and Evil_. Some of it is old Irish music made when all
songs were but heightened speech, and some of it composed by modern
musicians is none the less to be associated with words that must
never lose the intonation of passionate speech. No vowel must ever be
prolonged unnaturally, no word of mine must ever change into a mere
musical note, no singer of my words must ever cease to be a man and
become an instrument.
The degree of approach to ordinary singing depends on the context, for
one desires a greater or lesser amount of contrast between the lyrics
and the dialogue according to situation and emotion and the qualities
of players. The words of Cathleen ni Houlihan about the 'white-scarfed
riders' must be little more than regulated declamation; the little song
of Leagerie when he seizes the 'Golden Helmet' should in its opening
words be indistinguishable from the dialogue itself. Upon the other
hand, Cathleen's verses by the fire, and those of the pupils in the
_Hour-Glass_, and those of the beggars in the _Unicorn_, are sung as
the country people understand song. Modern singing would spoil them for
dramatic purposes by taking the keenness and the salt out of the words.
The songs in _Deirdre_, in Miss Farr's and in Miss Allgood's setting,
need fine speakers of verse more than good singers; and in these,
and still more in the song of the Three Women in _Baile's Strand_,
the singers must remember the natural speed of words. If the lyric
in _Baile's Strand_ is sung slowly it is like church-singing, but if
sung quickly and with the right expression it becomes an incantation
so old that nobody can quite understand it. That it may give this
sense of something half-forgotten, it must be sung with a certain lack
of minute feeling for the meaning of the words, which, however, must
always remain words. The songs in _Deirdre_, especially the last dirge,
which is supposed to be the creation of the moment, must, upon the
other hand, at any rate when Miss Farr's or Miss Allgood's music is
used, be sung or spoken with minute passionate understanding. I have
rehearsed the part of the Angel in the _Hour-Glass_ with recorded notes
throughout, and believe this is the right way; but in practice, owing
to the difficulty of finding a player who did not sing too much the
moment the notes were written down, have left it to the player's own
unrecorded inspiration, except at the 'exit,' where it is well for the
player to go nearer to ordinary song.
I have not yet put Miss Farr's _Deirdre_ music to the test of
performances, but, as she and I have worked out all this art of spoken
song together, I have little doubt but I shall find it all I would have
it. Mr. Darley's music was used at the first production of the play and
at its revival last spring, and was dramatically effective. I could
hear the words perfectly, and I think they must have been audible to
anyone hearing the play for the first or second time. They had not,
however, the full animation of speech, as one heard it in the dirge
at the end of the play set by Miss Allgood herself, who played the
principal musician. It is very difficult for a musician who is not a
speaker to do exactly what I want. Mr. Darley has written for singers
not for speakers. His music is, perhaps, too elaborate, simple though
it is. I have not had sufficient opportunity to experiment with the
play to find out the exact distance from ordinary speech necessary in
the first two lyrics, which must prolong the mood of the dialogue while
being a rest from its passions. Miss Farr's music will be used at the
next revival of the play.
Mr. Darley's music for _Shadowy Waters_ was supposed to be played
upon Forgael's magic harp, and it accompanied words of Dectora's and
Aibric's. It was played in reality upon a violin, always pizzicato,
and gave the effect of harp playing, at any rate of a magic harp. The
'cues' are all given and the words are printed under the music. The
violinist followed the voice, except in the case of the 'O', where it
was the actress that had to follow.
W. B. YEATS.
_March, 1908. _
THE KING'S THRESHOLD.
_THE FOUR RIVERS. _
FLORENCE FARR.
The four rivers that run there,
Through well-mown level ground
Have come out of a blessed well
That is all bound and wound
By the great roots of an apple,
And all fowls of the air
Have gathered in the wide branches
And Keep singing there.
ON BAILE'S STRAND.
_THE FOOL'S SONG. _
FLORENCE FARR.
Cuchulain has killed kings,
Kings and sons of kings,
Dragons out of the water and witches out of the air,
Banachas and Bonachas and people of the woods.
Witches that steal the milk,
Fomor that steal the children,
Hags that have heads like hares,
Hares that have claws like witches,
All riding a-cock-horse,
Out of the very bottom of the bitter black north.
ON BAILE'S STRAND.
_SONG OF THE WOMEN. _
FLORENCE FARR.
May this fire have driven out
The shape-changers that can put
Ruin on a great king's house,
Until all be ruinous.
Names whereby a man has known
The threshold and the hearthstone,
Gather on the wind and drive
Women none can kiss and thrive,
For they are but whirling wind,
Out of memory and mind.
They would make a prince decay
With light images of clay
Planted in the running wave;
Or for many shapes they have,
They would change them into hounds
Until he had died of his wounds
Though the change were but a whim;
Or they'd hurl a spell at him,
That he follow with desire
Bodies that can never tire
Or grow kind, for they anoint
All their bodies joint by joint
With a miracle-working juice
That is made out of the grease
Of the ungoverned unicorn;
But the man is thrice forlorn
Emptied, ruined, wracked, and lost,
That they follow, for at most
They will give him kiss for kiss
While they murmur "After this
Hatred may be sweet to the taste;"
Those wild hands that have embraced
All his body can but shove
At the burning wheel of love
Till the side of hate comes up.
Therefore in this ancient cup
May the sword-blades drink their fill
Of the home-brew there, until
They will have for master none
But the threshold and hearthstone.
_THE FOOL'S SONG. _--II.
FLORENCE FARR.
When you were an acorn on the tree top,
Then was I an eagle-cock;
Now that you are a withered old block,
Still am I an eagle-cock.
DEIRDRE.
_MUSICIANS' SONG. _--I.
FLORENCE FARR.
First Musician.
"Why is it," Queen Edain said,
"If I do but climb the stair
To the tower overhead
When the winds are calling there,
Or the gannets calling out,
In waste places of the sky,
There is so much to think about,
That I cry, that I cry? "
Second Musician.
But her goodman answered her:
"Love would be a thing of naught
Had not all his limbs a stir
Born out of immoderate thought.
Were he any thing by half,
Were his measure running dry,
Lovers, if they may not laugh,
Have to cry, have to cry. "
The Three Musicians together.
But is Edain worth a song
Now the hunt begins anew?
Praise the beautiful and strong;
Praise the redness of the yew;
Praise the blossoming apple-stem.
But our silence had been wise.
What is all our praise to them
That have one another's eyes?
DEIRDRE.
_MUSICIANS' SONG. _--II.
FLORENCE FARR.
Love is an immoderate thing
And can never be content
Till it dip an ageing wing,
Where some laughing element
Leaps and Time's old lanthorn dims.
What's the merit in love-play,
In the tumult of the limbs
That dies out before 'tis day,
Heart on heart or mouth on mouth
All that mingling of our breath,
When love-longing is but drouth
For the things that follow death?
_MUSICIANS' SONG. _--III.
FLORENCE FARR.
First Musician.
They are gone, they are gone
The proud may lie by the proud.
Second Musician.
Though we were bidden to sing, cry nothing Loud.
First Musician.
They are gone, they are gone.
Second Musician.
