No More Learning

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.

Whispering were enough.


First Musician.

Into the secret wilderness of their love.


Second Musician.

A high grey cairn.
What more to be said?


First Musician.

Eagles have gone into their cloudy bed.




DEIRDRE.


_MUSICIANS' SONG. _--III.

SARAH ALLGOOD.


FIRST MUSICIAN

They are gone:
They are gone; the proud may lie by the proud.


SECOND MUSICIAN

Though we are bidden to sing, cry nothing loud.


FIRST MUSICIAN

They are gone, they are gone.


SECOND MUSICIAN

Whispering were enough.


FIRST MUSICIAN.

Into the secret wilderness of their love.


SECOND MUSICIAN

A high grey cairn.
What more is to be said?


FIRST MUSICIAN

Eagles have gone into their cloudy bed.




SHADOWY WATERS.

ARTHUR DARLEY.


Sailors. And I! And I! And I!


Dectora. Protect me now, gods, that my people swear by.


Dectora. I will end all your magic on the instant. [C]

This sword is to lie beside him in the grave.
It was in all his battles.
I will spread my hair, and wring my hands, and wail him bitterly,
For I have heard that he was proud and laughing, blue-eyed, and
a quick runner on bare feet,
And that he died a thousand years ago.

O! O! O!

But no, that is not it.
I knew him well, and while I heard him laughing they killed him at
my feet.

O! O! O! O!

For golden-armed Iollan that I loved.


Forgael. Have buried nothing by my golden arms.


Forgael. And knitted mesh to mesh we grow immortal.

FOOTNOTE:

[C] The Violinist should time the music so as to finish when Aibric
says "For everything is gone".




THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS.

_IRISH TRADITIONAL AIRS. _


"The Airy Bachelor. "

Oh come all ye airy bachelors,
come listen unto me.
A sergeant caught mefowling,
and he fired his gun so free . . .
His comrades came to his relief,
And I was soon trapanned. . .
And bound up like a wood-cock
That had fallen into their hands.




"Johnnie Gibbons. "


1.

Oh Johnnie Gibbons my five hundred healths to you,
Its long you're away from us over the sea.

2.

Oh Johnnie Gibbons its you were the prop to us,
You to have left us, we're fools put astray.




"The Lion shall lose his strength. "


Oh the Lion shall lose his strength,
And the bracket thistle pine . . .
And the harp shall sound sweet, sweet at length
Between the eight and nine.




THE HOUR-GLASS.


_TRADITIONAL ARAN AIR. _

I was going the road one day . . .
O! the brown and the yellow beer,
And I met with a man that was no right man, . . .
Oh my dear, my dear.




CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN.

FLORENCE FARR.


I.

I will go cry with the woman,
For yellow-haired Donough is dead,
With a hempen rope for a neck-cloth,
And a white cloth on his head.




II.


Do not make a great keening
When the graves have been dug tomorrow.




III.


They shall be remembered forever
[repeat 3 times]
The people shall hear them forever.




MUSIC FOR LYRICS.


Three of the following settings are by Miss Farr, and she accompanies
the words upon her psaltery for the most part. She has a beautiful
speaking-voice, and, an almost rarer thing, a perfect ear for verse;
and nothing but the attempting of it will show how far these things
can be taught or developed where they exist but a little. I believe
that they should be a part of the teaching of all children, for the
beauty of the speaking-voice is more important to our lives than that
of the singing, and the rhythm of words comes more into the structure
of our daily being than any abstract pattern of notes. The relation
between formal music and speech will yet become the subject of science,
not less than the occasion of artistic discovery; for I am certain
that all poets, even all delighted readers of poetry, speak certain
kinds of poetry to distinct and simple tunes, though the speakers may
be, perhaps generally are, deaf to ordinary music, even what we call
tone-deaf. I suggest that we will discover in this relation a very
early stage in the development of music, with its own great beauty, and
that those who love lyric poetry but cannot tell one tune from another
repeat a state of mind which created music and yet was incapable of the
emotional abstraction which delights in patterns of sound separated
from words. To it the music was an unconscious creation, the words a
conscious, for no beginnings are in the intellect, and no living thing
remembers its own birth.

I give after Miss Farr's settings three others, two taken down by Mr.
Arnold Dolmetsch from myself, and one from a fine scholar in poetry,
who hates all music but that of poetry, and knows of no instrument that
does not fill him with rage and misery. Mr. Arnold Dolmetsch, when he
took up the subject at my persuasion, wrote down the recitation of
another lyric poet, who like myself knows nothing of music, and found
little tunes that delighted him; and Mr. George Russell ('A. E. ') writes
all his lyrics, a musician tells me, to two little tunes which sound
like old Arabic music. I do not mean that there is only one way of
reciting a poem that is correct, for different tunes will fit different
speakers or different moods of the same speaker, but as a rule the more
the music of the verse becomes a movement of the stanza as a whole,
at the same time detaching itself from the sense as in much of Mr.
Swinburne's poetry, the less does the poet vary in his recitation. I
mean in the way he recites when alone, or unconscious of an audience,
for before an audience he will remember the imperfection of his ear in
note and tone, and cling to daily speech, or something like it.

Sometimes one composes to a remembered air. I wrote and I still speak
the verses that begin 'Autumn is over the long leaves that love us' to
some traditional air, though I could not tell that air or any other on
another's lips, and _The Ballad of Father Gilligan_ to a modification
of the air _A Fine Old English Gentleman_. When, however, the rhythm is
more personal than it is in these simple verses, the tune will always
be original and personal, alike in the poet and in the reader who has
the right ear; and these tunes will now and again have great beauty.


NOTE BY FLORENCE FARR.

I made an interesting discovery after I had been elaborating the art
of speaking to the psaltery for some time. I had tried to make it
more beautiful than the speaking by priests at High Mass, the singing
of recitative in opera and the speaking through music of actors in
melodrama. My discovery was that those who had invented these arts
had all said about them exactly what Mr. Arnold Dolmetsch and Mr. W.
B. Yeats said about my art. Anyone can prove this for himself who
will go to a library and read the authorities that describe how early
liturgical chant, plain-song and jubilations or melismata were adapted
from the ancient traditional music; or if they read the history of the
beginning of opera and the 'nuove musiche' by Caccini, or study the
music of Monteverde and Carissimi, who flourished at the beginning of
the seventeenth century, they will find these masters speak of doing
all they can to give an added beauty to the words of the poet, often
using simple vowel sounds when a purely vocal effect was to be made
whether of joy or sorrow. There is no more beautiful sound than the
alternation of carolling or keening and a voice speaking in regulated
declamation. The very act of alternation has a peculiar charm.

Now to read these records of music of the eighth and seventeenth
centuries one would think that the Church and the opera were united in
the desire to make beautiful speech more beautiful, but I need not say
if we put such a hope to the test we discover it is groundless. There
is no ecstasy in the delivery of ritual, and recitative is certainly
not treated by opera-singers in a way that makes us wish to imitate
them.

When beginners attempt to speak to musical notes they fall naturally
into the intoning as heard throughout our lands in our various
religious rituals. It is not until they have been forced to use their
imaginations and express the inmost meaning of the words, not until
their thought imposes itself upon all listeners and each word invokes a
special mode of beauty, that the method rises once more from the dead
and becomes a living art.

It is the belief in the power of words and the delight in the purity of
sound that will make the arts of plain-chant and recitative the great
arts they are described as being by those who first practised them.




_THE WIND BLOWS OUT OF THE GATES OF THE DAY. _[A]

FLORENCE FARR.


The wind blows out of the gates of the day,
The wind blows over the lonely of heart,
And the lonely of heart is withered away,
While the fairies dance in a place apart,
Shaking their milkwhite feet in a ring,
Tossing their milkwhite arms in the air
For they hear the wind laugh and murmur and sing
Of a land where even the old are fair
And even the wise are merry of tongue.
But I heard a reed of Coolaney say,
When the wind has laughed and murmured and sung,
The lovely of heart must wither away.




_THE HAPPY TOWNLAND. _[D]

FLORENCE FARR.


O Death's old bony finger
Will never find us there
In the high hollow townland
Where love's to give and to spare;
Where boughs have fruit and blossom
at all times of the year;
Where rivers are running over
With red beer and brown beer.
An old man plays the bagpipes
In a gold and silver wood;
Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,
Are dancing in a crowd.

Chorus.

The little fox he murmured,
'O what of the world's bane? '
The sun was laughing sweetly,
The moon plucked at my rein;
But the little red fox murmured,
'O do not pluck at his rein,
He is riding to the townland
That is the world's bane. '

FOOTNOTE:

[D] The music as written suits my speaking voice if played an octave
lower than the notation. --F. F.




_I HAVE DRUNK ALE FROM THE COUNTRY OF THE YOUNG. _[E]

FLORENCE FARR.


I have drunk ale from the Country of the Young
And weep because I know all things now:
I have been a hazel tree and they hung
The Pilot Star and the Crooked Plough
Among my leaves in times out of mind:
I became a rush that horses tread:
I became a man, a hater of the wind,
Knowing one, out of all things, alone, that his head
Would not lie on the breast or his lips on the hair
Of the woman that he loves, Until he dies;
Although the rushes and the fowl of the air
Cry of his love with their pitiful cries.




_THE SONG OF WANDERING AENGUS. _

W. B. Y.


I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream,
And caught a little silver trout.




_THE HOST OF THE AIR. _

A. H. B.


O'Driscoll drove with a song
The wild duck and the drake
From the tall and tree tufted reeds
Of the drear Hart Lake.

FOOTNOTE:

[E] To be spoken an octave lower than it would be sung. --F. F.




_THE SONG OF THE OLD MOTHER. _

W. B. Y.


I rise in the dawn, and I kneel and blow
Till the seed of the fire flicker and glow;
And then I must scrub and bake and sweep
Till stars are beginning to blink and peep;
And the young lie long and dream in their bed
Of the matching of ribbons for bosom and head,
And their day goes over in idleness,
And they sigh if the wind but lift a tress;
While I must work because I am old,
And the seed of the fire gets feeble and cold.




_Printed by_ A. H. BULLEN, _at The Shakespeare Head Press,
Stratford-on-Avon_.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 25, stage direction, mixed case "TEIg" was changed to "TEIG" (TEIG
and SHEMUS go out)

Page 70, "marhsalled" changed to "marshalled" (marshalled into rude
order)

Page 112, "The CHILD" changed to "THE CHILD" to match rest of usage in
text (THE CHILD makes a)

Page 214, "_Les Matinees de Timothe Trimm_" was retained as printed as
it appears spelled this way in more than one text. More common is "_Les
Matinees de Timothee Trimm_. "

Page 216, "apre" changed to "apres" (Deux jours apres)

Page 217, "Des" changed to "Des" (Des qu'elle fut)

Page 218, "enchaines" changed to "enchaines" (enchaines dans une prison)


Music Transcriber's Notes:

Rhythms have been added to all songs where words are to be spoken on a
single note, to match the rhythm of speech.