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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays, by
+William B. Yeats and Lady Gregory
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays
+
+Author: William B. Yeats
+        Lady Gregory
+
+Release Date: July 29, 2008 [EBook #26144]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNICORN FROM THE STARS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by K Nordquist and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS
+
+AND OTHER PLAYS
+
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
+ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
+
+MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
+MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS
+
+AND OTHER PLAYS
+
+
+
+BY
+
+WILLIAM B. YEATS
+
+AND
+
+LADY GREGORY
+
+
+
+New York
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+1908
+
+_All rights reserved_
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1904, 1908,
+BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+New edition. Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1908.
+
+Norwood Press
+J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+About seven years ago I began to dictate the first of these Plays to
+Lady Gregory. My eyesight had become so bad that I feared I could
+henceforth write nothing with my own hands but verses, which, as
+Theophile Gautier has said, can be written with a burnt match. Our
+Irish Dramatic movement was just passing out of the hands of English
+Actors, hired because we knew of no Irish ones, and our little troop of
+Irish amateurs--as they were at the time--could not have too many
+Plays, for they would come to nothing without continued playing.
+Besides, it was exciting to discover, after the unpopularity of blank
+verse, what one could do with three Plays written in prose and founded
+on three public interests deliberately chosen,--religion, humour,
+patriotism. I planned in those days to establish a dramatic movement
+upon the popular passions, as the ritual of religion is established in
+the emotions that surround birth and death and marriage, and it was
+only the coming of the unclassifiable, uncontrollable, capricious,
+uncompromising genius of J. M. Synge that altered the direction of the
+movement and made it individual, critical, and combative. If his had
+not, some other stone would have blocked up the old way, for the public
+mind of Ireland, stupefied by prolonged intolerant organisation, can
+take but brief pleasure in the caprice that is in all art, whatever its
+subject, and, more commonly, can but hate unaccustomed personal
+reverie.
+
+I had dreamed the subject of "Cathleen ni Houlihan," but found when I
+looked for words that I could not create peasant dialogue that would go
+nearer to peasant life than the dialogue in "The Land of Heart's
+Desire" or "The Countess Cathleen." Every artistic form has its own
+ancestry, and the more elaborate it is, the more is the writer
+constrained to symbolise rather than to represent life, until perhaps
+his ladies of fashion are shepherds and shepherdesses, as when Colin
+Clout came home again. I could not get away, no matter how closely I
+watched the country life, from images and dreams which had all too
+royal blood, for they were descended like the thought of every poet
+from all the conquering dreams of Europe, and I wished to make that
+high life mix into some rough contemporary life without ceasing to be
+itself, as so many old books and Plays have mixed it and so few modern,
+and to do this I added another knowledge to my own. Lady Gregory had
+written no Plays, but had, I discovered, a greater knowledge of the
+country mind and country speech than anybody I had ever met with, and
+nothing but a burden of knowledge could keep "Cathleen ni Houlihan"
+from the clouds. I needed less help for the "Hour-Glass," for the
+speech there is far from reality, and so the Play is almost wholly
+mine. When, however, I brought to her the general scheme for the "Pot
+of Broth," a little farce which seems rather imitative to-day, though
+it plays well enough, and of the first version of "The Unicorn," "Where
+there is Nothing," a five-act Play written in a fortnight to save it
+from a plagiarist, and tried to dictate them, her share grew more and
+more considerable. She would not allow me to put her name to these
+Plays, though I have always tried to explain her share in them, but has
+signed "The Unicorn from the Stars," which but for a good deal of the
+general plan and a single character and bits of another is wholly hers.
+I feel indeed that my best share in it is that idea, which I have been
+capable of expressing completely in criticism alone, of bringing
+together the rough life of the road and the frenzy that the poets have
+found in their ancient cellar,--a prophecy, as it were, of the time
+when it will be once again possible for a Dickens and a Shelley to be
+born in the one body.
+
+The chief person of the earlier Play was very dominating, and I have
+grown to look upon this as a fault, though it increases the dramatic
+effect in a superficial way. We cannot sympathise with the man who sets
+his anger at once lightly and confidently to overthrow the order of the
+world, for such a man will seem to us alike insane and arrogant. But
+our hearts can go with him, as I think, if he speak with some humility,
+so far as his daily self carry him, out of a cloudy light of vision;
+for whether he understand or not, it may be that 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. But a man so
+plunged in trance is of necessity somewhat still and silent, though it
+be perhaps the silence and the stillness of a lamp; and the movement of
+the Play as a whole, if we are to have time to hear him, must be
+without hurry or violence.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+I cannot give the full cast of "Cathleen ni Houlihan," which was first
+played at St. Teresa's Hall, Dublin, on April 3, 1902, for I have been
+searching the cupboard of the Abbey Theatre, where we keep old
+Play-bills, and can find no record of it, nor did the newspapers of the
+time mention more than the principals. Mr. W. G. Fay played the old
+countryman, and Miss Quinn his wife, while Miss Maude Gonne was
+Cathleen ni Houlihan, and very magnificently she played. The Play has
+been constantly revived, and has, I imagine, been played more often
+than any other, except perhaps Lady Gregory's "Spreading the News," at
+the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.
+
+The "Hour-Glass" was first played at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, on
+March 14, 1903, with the following cast:--
+
+The Wise Man                             J. W. Digges
+Bridget, his wife                      Maire T. Quinn
+Her children       Eithne and Padragan ni Shiubhlaigh
+                                  { P. I. Kelly
+Her pupils                        { Seumas O'Sullivan
+                                  { P. Colum
+                                  { P. MacShiubhlaigh
+The Angel                        Maire ni Shiubhlaigh
+The Fool                                    F. J. Fay
+
+The Play has been revived many times since then as a part of the
+repertoire at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.
+
+
+"The Unicorn from the Stars" was first played at the Abbey Theatre on
+November 23, 1907, with the following cast:--
+
+Father John                            Ernest Vaughan
+Thomas Hearne                         Arthur Sinclair
+Andrew Hearne                          J. A. O'Rourke
+Martin Hearne                               F. J. Fay
+Johnny Bacach                               W. G. Fay
+Paudeen                                J. M. Kerrigan
+Biddy Lally                             Maire O'Neill
+Nanny                               Bridget O'Dempsey
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                       PAGE
+
+THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS                                1
+    By Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats.
+
+CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN                                    135
+    By W. B. Yeats.
+
+THE HOUR-GLASS                                          169
+    By W. B. Yeats.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+
+FATHER JOHN
+
+THOMAS HEARNE                    _a coach builder._
+
+ANDREW HEARNE                        _his brother._
+
+MARTIN. HEARNE                        _his nephew._
+
+JOHNNY BACACH }
+PAUDEEN       }
+BIDDY LALLY   }                          _beggars._
+NANNY         }
+
+
+
+
+ACT I
+
+SCENE: _Interior of a coach builder's workshop. Parts of a gilded
+coach, among them an ornament representing the lion and the unicorn._
+THOMAS _working at a wheel._ FATHER JOHN _coming from door of inner
+room._
+
+
+FATHER JOHN. I have prayed over Martin. I have prayed a long time, but
+there is no move in him yet.
+
+THOMAS. You are giving yourself too much trouble, Father. It's as good
+for you to leave him alone till the doctor's bottle will come. If there
+is any cure at all for what is on him, it is likely the doctor will
+have it.
+
+FATHER JOHN. I think it is not doctor's medicine will help him in this
+case.
+
+THOMAS. It will, it will. The doctor has his business learned well. If
+Andrew had gone to him the time I bade him, and had not turned again to
+bring yourself to the house, it is likely Martin would be walking at
+this time. I am loth to trouble you, Father, when the business is not
+of your own sort. Any doctor at all should be able, and well able, to
+cure the falling sickness.
+
+FATHER JOHN. It is not any common sickness that is on him now.
+
+THOMAS. I thought at the first it was gone asleep he was. But when
+shaking him and roaring at him failed to rouse him, I knew well it was
+the falling sickness. Believe me, the doctor will reach it with his
+drugs.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Nothing but prayer can reach a soul that is so far beyond
+the world as his soul is at this moment.
+
+THOMAS. You are not saying that the life is gone out of him!
+
+FATHER JOHN. No, no, his life is in no danger. But where he himself,
+the spirit, the soul, is gone, I cannot say. It has gone beyond our
+imaginings. He is fallen into a trance.
+
+THOMAS. He used to be queer as a child, going asleep in the fields and
+coming back with talk of white horses he saw, and bright people like
+angels or whatever they were. But I mended that. I taught him to
+recognise stones beyond angels with a few strokes of a rod. I would
+never give in to visions or to trances.
+
+FATHER JOHN. We who hold the faith have no right to speak against
+trance or vision. St. Teresa had them, St. Benedict, St. Anthony, St.
+Columcille. St. Catherine of Sienna often lay a long time as if dead.
+
+THOMAS. That might be so in the olden time, but those things are gone
+out of the world now. Those that do their work fair and honest have no
+occasion to let the mind go rambling. What would send my nephew, Martin
+Hearne, into a trance, supposing trances to be in it, and he rubbing
+the gold on the lion and unicorn that he had taken in hand to make a
+good job of for the top of the coach?
+
+FATHER JOHN [_taking it up_]. It is likely it was that sent him off.
+The flashing of light upon it would be enough to throw one that had a
+disposition to it into a trance. There was a very saintly man, though
+he was not of our church, he wrote a great book called "Mysterium
+Magnum," was seven days in a trance. Truth, or whatever truth he found,
+fell upon him like a bursting shower, and he a poor tradesman at his
+work. It was a ray of sunlight on a pewter vessel that was the
+beginning of all. [_Goes to the door of inner room._] There is no stir
+in him yet. It is either the best thing or the worst thing can happen
+to anyone that is happening to him now.
+
+THOMAS. And what in the living world can happen to a man that is asleep
+on his bed?
+
+FATHER JOHN. There are some would answer you that it is to those who
+are awake that nothing happens, and it is they that know nothing. He is
+gone where all have gone for supreme truth.
+
+THOMAS [_sitting down again and taking up tools_]. Well, maybe so. But
+work must go on and coach building must go on, and they will not go on
+the time there is too much attention given to dreams. A dream is a sort
+of a shadow, no profit in it to anyone at all. A coach now is a real
+thing and a thing that will last for generations and be made use of the
+last, and maybe turn to be a hen-roost at its latter end.
+
+FATHER JOHN. I think Andrew told me it was a dream of Martin's that led
+to the making of that coach.
+
+THOMAS. Well, I believe he saw gold in some dream, and it led him to
+want to make some golden thing, and coaches being the handiest, nothing
+would do him till he put the most of his fortune into the making of
+this golden coach. It turned out better than I thought, for some of the
+lawyers came looking at it at assize time, and through them it was
+heard of at Dublin Castle ... and who now has it ordered but the Lord
+Lieutenant! [FATHER JOHN _nods._] Ready it must be and sent off it must
+be by the end of the month. It is likely King George will be visiting
+Dublin, and it is he himself will be sitting in it yet.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Martin has been working hard at it, I know.
+
+THOMAS. You never saw a man work the way he did, day and night, near
+ever since the time, six months ago, he first came home from France.
+
+FATHER JOHN. I never thought he would be so good at a trade. I thought
+his mind was only set on books.
+
+THOMAS. He should be thankful to myself for that. Any person I will
+take in hand I make a clean job of them the same as I would make of any
+other thing in my yard, coach, half coach, hackney-coach, ass car,
+common car, post-chaise, calash, chariot on two wheels, on four wheels.
+Each one has the shape Thomas Hearne put on it, and it in his hands;
+and what I can do with wood and iron, why would I not be able to do it
+with flesh and blood, and it in a way my own?
+
+FATHER JOHN. Indeed I know you did your best for Martin.
+
+THOMAS. Every best. Checked him, taught him the trade, sent him to the
+monastery in France for to learn the language and to see the wide
+world; but who should know that if you did not know it, Father John,
+and I doing it according to your own advice?
+
+FATHER JOHN. I thought his nature needed spiritual guidance and
+teaching, the best that could be found.
+
+THOMAS. I thought myself it was best for him to be away for a while.
+There are too many wild lads about this place. He to have stopped here,
+he might have taken some fancies and got into some trouble, going
+against the Government, maybe, the same as Johnny Gibbons that is at
+this time an outlaw having a price upon his head.
+
+FATHER JOHN. That is so. That imagination of his might have taken fire
+here at home. It was better putting him with the Brothers, to turn it
+to imaginings of heaven.
+
+THOMAS. Well, I will soon have a good hardy tradesman made of him now
+that will live quiet and rear a family, and maybe be appointed coach
+builder to the royal family at the last.
+
+FATHER JOHN [_at window_]. I see your brother Andrew coming back from
+the doctor; he is stopping to talk with a troop of beggars that are
+sitting by the side of the road.
+
+THOMAS. There now is another that I have shaped. Andrew used to be a
+bit wild in his talk and in his ways, wanting to go rambling, not
+content to settle in the place where he was reared. But I kept a guard
+over him; I watched the time poverty gave him a nip, and then I settled
+him into the business. He never was so good a worker as Martin; he is
+too fond of wasting his time talking vanities. But he is middling
+handy, and he is always steady and civil to customers. I have no
+complaint worth while to be making this last twenty years against
+Andrew. [ANDREW _comes in._]
+
+ANDREW. Beggars there are outside going the road to the Kinvara fair.
+They were saying there is news that Johnny Gibbons is coming back from
+France on the quiet. The king's soldiers are watching the ports for
+him.
+
+THOMAS. Let you keep now, Andrew, to the business you have in hand.
+Will the doctor be coming himself, or did he send a bottle that will
+cure Martin?
+
+ANDREW. The doctor can't come, for he is down with lumbago in the back.
+He questioned me as to what ailed Martin, and he got a book to go
+looking for a cure, and he began telling me things out of it, but I
+said I could not be carrying things of that sort in my head. He gave me
+the book then, and he has marks put in it for the places where the
+cures are ... wait now ... [_Reads._] "Compound medicines are usually
+taken inwardly, or outwardly applied. Inwardly taken they should be
+either liquid or solid; outwardly they should be fomentations or
+sponges wet in some decoctions."
+
+THOMAS. He had a right to have written it out himself upon a paper.
+Where is the use of all that?
+
+ANDREW. I think I moved the mark maybe ... here now is the part he was
+reading to me himself ... "the remedies for diseases belonging to the
+skins next the brain: headache, vertigo, cramp, convulsions, palsy,
+incubus, apoplexy, falling sickness."
+
+THOMAS. It is what I bid you to tell him--that it was the falling
+sickness.
+
+ANDREW [_dropping book_]. O my dear, look at all the marks gone out of
+it. Wait now, I partly remember what he said ... a blister he spoke of
+... or to be smelling hartshorn ... or the sneezing powder ... or if
+all fails, to try letting the blood.
+
+FATHER JOHN. All this has nothing to do with the real case. It is all
+waste of time.
+
+ANDREW. That is what I was thinking myself, Father. Sure it was I was
+the first to call out to you when I saw you coming down from the
+hillside and to bring you in to see what could you do. I would have
+more trust in your means than in any doctor's learning. And in case you
+might fail to cure him, I have a cure myself I heard from my
+grandmother ... God rest her soul ... and she told me she never knew it
+to fail. A person to have the falling sickness, to cut the top of his
+nails and a small share of the hair of his head, and to put it down on
+the floor and to take a harry-pin and drive it down with that into the
+floor and to leave it there. "That is the cure will never fail," she
+said, "to rise up any person at all having the falling sickness."
+
+FATHER JOHN [_hands on ears_]. I will go back to the hillside, I will
+go back to the hillside, but no, no, I must do what I can, I will go
+again, I will wrestle, I will strive my best to call him back with
+prayer. [_Goes into room and shuts door._]
+
+ANDREW. It is queer Father John is sometimes, and very queer. There are
+times when you would say that he believes in nothing at all.
+
+THOMAS. If you wanted a priest, why did you not get our own parish
+priest that is a sensible man, and a man that you would know what his
+thoughts are? You know well the Bishop should have something against
+Father John to have left him through the years in that poor mountainy
+place, minding the few unfortunate people that were left out of the
+last famine. A man of his learning to be going in rags the way he is,
+there must be some good cause for that.
+
+ANDREW. I had all that in mind and I bringing him. But I thought he
+would have done more for Martin than what he is doing. To read a Mass
+over him I thought he would, and to be convulsed in the reading it, and
+some strange thing to have gone out with a great noise through the
+doorway.
+
+THOMAS. It would give no good name to the place such a thing to be
+happening in it. It is well enough for labouring men and for half-acre
+men. It would be no credit at all such a thing to be heard of in this
+house, that is for coach building the capital of the county.
+
+ANDREW. If it is from the devil this sickness comes, it would be best
+to put it out whatever way it would be put out. But there might no bad
+thing be on the lad at all. It is likely he was with wild companions
+abroad, and that knocking about might have shaken his health. I was
+that way myself one time....
+
+THOMAS. Father John said that it was some sort of a vision or a trance,
+but I would give no heed to what he would say. It is his trade to see
+more than other people would see, the same as I myself might be seeing
+a split in a leather car hood that no other person would find out at
+all.
+
+ANDREW. If it is the falling sickness is on him, I have no objection to
+that ... a plain, straight sickness that was cast as a punishment on
+the unbelieving Jews. It is a thing that might attack one of a family
+and one of another family and not to come upon their kindred at all. A
+person to have it, all you have to do is not to go between him and the
+wind or fire or water. But I am in dread trance is a thing might run
+through the house, the same as the cholera morbus.
+
+THOMAS. In my belief there is no such thing as a trance. Letting on
+people do be to make the world wonder the time they think well to rise
+up. To keep them to their work is best, and not to pay much attention
+to them at all.
+
+ANDREW. I would not like trances to be coming on myself. I leave it in
+my will if I die without cause, a holly stake to be run through my
+heart the way I will lie easy after burial, and not turn my face
+downwards in my coffin. I tell you I leave it on you in my will.
+
+THOMAS. Leave thinking of your own comforts, Andrew, and give your mind
+to the business. Did the smith put the irons yet on to the shafts of
+this coach?
+
+ANDREW. I'll go see did he.
+
+THOMAS. Do so, and see did he make a good job of it. Let the shafts be
+sound and solid if they _are_ to be studded with gold.
+
+ANDREW. They are, and the steps along with them ... glass sides for the
+people to be looking in at the grandeur of the satin within ... the
+lion and the unicorn crowning all ... it was a great thought Martin had
+the time he thought of making this coach!
+
+THOMAS. It is best for me go see the smith myself ... and leave it to
+no other one. You can be attending to that ass car out in the yard
+wants a new tyre in the wheel ... out in the rear of the yard it is.
+[_They go to door._] To pay attention to every small thing, and to fill
+up every minute of time, shaping whatever you have to do, that is the
+way to build up a business. [_They go out._]
+
+FATHER JOHN [_bringing in_ MARTIN]. They are gone out now ... the air
+is fresher here in the workshop ... you can sit here for a while. You
+are now fully awake; you have been in some sort of a trance or a sleep.
+
+MARTIN. Who was it that pulled at me? Who brought me back?
+
+FATHER JOHN. It is I, Father John, did it. I prayed a long time over
+you and brought you back.
+
+MARTIN. You, Father John, to be so unkind! O leave me, leave me alone!
+
+FATHER JOHN. You are in your dream still.
+
+MARTIN. It was no dream, it was real ... do you not smell the broken
+fruit ... the grapes ... the room is full of the smell.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Tell me what you have seen where you have been.
+
+MARTIN. There were horses ... white horses rushing by, with white,
+shining riders ... there was a horse without a rider, and someone
+caught me up and put me upon him, and we rode away, with the wind, like
+the wind....
+
+FATHER JOHN. That is a common imagining. I know many poor persons have
+seen that.
+
+MARTIN. We went on, on, on ... we came to a sweet-smelling garden with
+a gate to it ... and there were wheat-fields in full ear around ... and
+there were vineyards like I saw in France, and the grapes in bunches
+... I thought it to be one of the town-lands of heaven. Then I saw the
+horses we were on had changed to unicorns, and they began trampling the
+grapes and breaking them ... I tried to stop them, but I could not.
+
+FATHER JOHN. That is strange, that is strange. What is it that brings
+to mind ... I heard it in some place, _Monocoros di Astris_, the
+Unicorn from the Stars.
+
+MARTIN. They tore down the wheat and trampled it on stones, and then
+they tore down what were left of the grapes and crushed and bruised and
+trampled them ... I smelt the wine, it was flowing on every side ...
+then everything grew vague ... I cannot remember clearly ... everything
+was silent ... the trampling now stopped ... we were all waiting for
+some command. Oh! was it given! I was trying to hear it ... there was
+some one dragging, dragging me away from that ... I am sure there was a
+command given ... and there was a great burst of laughter. What was it?
+What was the command? Everything seemed to tremble around me.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Did you awake then?
+
+MARTIN. I do not think I did ... it all changed ... it was terrible,
+wonderful. I saw the unicorns trampling, trampling ... but not in the
+wine troughs.... Oh, I forget! Why did you waken me?
+
+FATHER JOHN. I did not touch you. Who knows what hands pulled you away?
+I prayed; that was all I did. I prayed very hard that you might awake.
+If I had not, you might have died. I wonder what it all meant. The
+unicorns ... what did the French monk tell me ... strength they meant
+... virginal strength, a rushing, lasting, tireless strength.
+
+MARTIN. They were strong.... Oh, they made a great noise with their
+trampling!
+
+FATHER JOHN. And the grapes ... what did they mean?... It puts me in
+mind of the psalm ... _Ex calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est._ It
+was a strange vision, a very strange vision, a very strange vision.
+
+MARTIN. How can I get back to that place?
+
+FATHER JOHN. You must not go back, you must not think of doing that;
+that life of vision, of contemplation, is a terrible life, for it has
+far more of temptation in it than the common life. Perhaps it would
+have been best for you to stay under rules in the monastery.
+
+MARTIN. I could not see anything so clearly there. It is back here in
+my own place the visions come, in the place where shining people used
+to laugh around me and I a little lad in a bib.
+
+FATHER JOHN. You cannot know but it was from the Prince of this world
+the vision came. How can one ever know unless one follows the
+discipline of the church? Some spiritual director, some wise, learned
+man, that is what you want. I do not know enough. What am I but a poor
+banished priest with my learning forgotten, my books never handled, and
+spotted with the damp?
+
+MARTIN. I will go out into the fields where you cannot come to me to
+awake me ... I will see that townland again ... I will hear that
+command. I cannot wait, I must know what happened, I must bring that
+command to mind again.
+
+FATHER JOHN [_putting himself between_ MARTIN _and the door_]. You
+must have patience as the saints had it. You are taking your own way.
+If there is a command from God for you, you must wait His good time to
+receive it.
+
+MARTIN. Must I live here forty years, fifty years ... to grow as old as
+my uncles, seeing nothing but common things, doing work ... some
+foolish work?
+
+FATHER JOHN. Here they are coming. It is time for me to go. I must
+think and I must pray. My mind is troubled about you. [_To_ THOMAS _as
+he and_ ANDREW _come in._] Here he is; be very kind to him, for he has
+still the weakness of a little child.
+
+          [_Goes out._]
+
+THOMAS. Are you well of the fit, lad?
+
+MARTIN. It was no fit. I was away ... for a while ... no, you will not
+believe me if I tell you.
+
+ANDREW. I would believe it, Martin. I used to have very long sleeps
+myself and very queer dreams.
+
+THOMAS. You had, till I cured you, taking you in hand and binding you
+to the hours of the clock. The cure that will cure yourself, Martin,
+and will waken you, is to put the whole of your mind on to your golden
+coach, to take it in hand, and to finish it out of face.
+
+MARTIN. Not just now. I want to think ... to try and remember what I
+saw, something that I heard, that I was told to do.
+
+THOMAS. No, but put it out of your mind. There is no man doing business
+that can keep two things in his head. A Sunday or a Holyday now you
+might go see a good hurling or a thing of the kind, but to be spreading
+out your mind on anything outside of the workshop on common days, all
+coach building would come to an end.
+
+MARTIN. I don't think it is building I want to do. I don't think that
+is what was in the command.
+
+THOMAS. It is too late to be saying that the time you have put the most
+of your fortune in the business. Set yourself now to finish your job,
+and when it is ended, maybe I won't begrudge you going with the coach
+as far as Dublin.
+
+ANDREW. That is it; that will satisfy him. I had a great desire myself,
+and I young, to go travelling the roads as far as Dublin. The roads are
+the great things; they never come to an end. They are the same as the
+serpent having his tail swallowed in his own mouth.
+
+MARTIN. It was not wandering I was called to. What was it? What was it?
+
+THOMAS. What you are called to, and what everyone having no great
+estate is called to, is to work. Sure the world itself could not go on
+without work.
+
+MARTIN. I wonder if that is the great thing, to make the world go on.
+No, I don't think that is the great thing ... what does the Munster
+poet call it ... "this crowded slippery coach-loving world." I don't
+think I was told to work for that.
+
+ANDREW. I often thought that myself. It is a pity the stock of the
+Hearnes to be asked to do any work at all.
+
+THOMAS. Rouse yourself, Martin, and don't be talking the way a fool
+talks. You started making that golden coach, and you were set upon it,
+and you had me tormented about it. You have yourself wore out working
+at it and planning it and thinking of it, and at the end of the race,
+when you have the winning post in sight, and horses hired for to bring
+it to Dublin Castle, you go falling into sleeps and blathering about
+dreams, and we run to a great danger of letting the profit and the sale
+go by. Sit down on the bench now, and lay your hands to the work.
+
+MARTIN [_sitting down_]. I will try. I wonder why I ever wanted to
+make it; it was no good dream set me doing that. [_He takes up wheel._]
+What is there in a wooden wheel to take pleasure in it? Gilding it
+outside makes it no different.
+
+THOMAS. That is right now. You had some good plan for making the axle
+run smooth.
+
+MARTIN [_letting wheel fall and putting his hands to his head_]. It is
+no use. [_Angrily._] Why did you send the priest to awake me? My soul
+is my own and my mind is my own. I will send them to where I like. You
+have no authority over my thoughts.
+
+THOMAS. That is no way to be speaking to me. I am head of this
+business. Nephew or no nephew, I will have no one come cold or
+unwilling to the work.
+
+MARTIN. I had better go. I am of no use to you. I am going.... I must
+be alone.... I will forget if I am not alone. Give me what is left of
+my money, and I will go out of this.
+
+THOMAS [_opening a press and taking out a bag and throwing it to
+him_]. There is what is left of your money! The rest of it you have
+spent on the coach. If you want to go, go, and I will not have to be
+annoyed with you from this out.
+
+ANDREW. Come now with me, Thomas. The boy is foolish, but it will soon
+pass over. He has not my sense to be giving attention to what you will
+say. Come along now; leave him for a while; leave him to me, I say; it
+is I will get inside his mind.
+
+          [_He leads_ THOMAS _out._ MARTIN, _when they have gone, sits
+          down, taking up lion and unicorn._]
+
+MARTIN. I think it was some shining thing I saw.... What was it?
+
+ANDREW [_opening door and putting in his head_]. Listen to me, Martin.
+
+MARTIN. Go away--no more talking--leave me alone.
+
+ANDREW [_coming in_]. Oh, but wait. I understand you. Thomas doesn't
+understand your thoughts, but I understand them. Wasn't I telling you I
+was just like you once?
+
+MARTIN. Like me? Did you ever see the other things, the things beyond?
+
+ANDREW. I did. It is not the four walls of the house keep me content.
+Thomas doesn't know, oh, no, he doesn't know.
+
+MARTIN. No, he has no vision.
+
+ANDREW. He has not, nor any sort of a heart for frolic.
+
+MARTIN. He has never heard the laughter and the music beyond.
+
+ANDREW. He has not, nor the music of my own little flute. I have it
+hidden in the thatch outside.
+
+MARTIN. Does the body slip from you as it does from me? They have not
+shut your window into eternity?
+
+ANDREW. Thomas never shut a window I could not get through. I knew you
+were one of my own sort. When I am sluggish in the morning Thomas says,
+"Poor Andrew is getting old." That is all he knows. The way to keep
+young is to do the things youngsters do. Twenty years I have been
+slipping away, and he never found me out yet!
+
+MARTIN. That is what they call ecstasy, but there is no word that can
+tell out very plain what it means. That freeing of the mind from its
+thoughts. Those wonders we know; when we put them into words, the words
+seem as little like them as blackberries are like the moon and sun.
+
+ANDREW. I found that myself the time they knew me to be wild, and used
+to be asking me to say what pleasure did I find in cards, and women,
+and drink.
+
+MARTIN. You might help me to remember that vision I had this morning,
+to understand it. The memory of it has slipped from me. Wait; it is
+coming back, little by little. I know that I saw the unicorns
+trampling, and then a figure, a many-changing figure, holding some
+bright thing. I knew something was going to happen or to be said, ...
+something that would make my whole life strong and beautiful like the
+rushing of the unicorns, and then, and then....
+
+JOHNNY BACACH'S VOICE [_at window_]. A poor person I am, without food,
+without a way, without portion, without costs, without a person or a
+stranger, without means, without hope, without health, without
+warmth....
+
+ANDREW [_looking towards window_]. It is that troop of beggars;
+bringing their tricks and their thieveries they are to the Kinvara
+fair.
+
+MARTIN [_impatiently_]. There is no quiet ... come to the other room.
+I am trying to remember....
+
+          [_They go to door of inner room, but_ ANDREW _stops him._]
+
+ANDREW. They are a bad-looking fleet. I have a mind to drive them away,
+giving them a charity.
+
+MARTIN. Drive them away or come away from their voices.
+
+ANOTHER VOICE. I put under the power of my prayer,
+
+    All that will give me help,
+    Rafael keep him Wednesday;
+    Sachiel feed him Thursday;
+    Hamiel provide him Friday;
+    Cassiel increase him Saturday.
+
+Sure giving to us is giving to the Lord and laying up a store in the
+treasury of heaven.
+
+ANDREW. Whisht! He is coming in by the window! [JOHNNY B. _climbs in._]
+
+JOHNNY B. That I may never sin, but the place is empty!
+
+PAUDEEN. Go in and see what can you make a grab at.
+
+JOHNNY B. [_getting in_]. That every blessing I gave may be turned to a
+curse on them that left the place so bare! [_He turns things over._] I
+might chance something in this chest if it was open.... [ANDREW _begins
+creeping towards him._]
+
+NANNY [_outside_]. Hurry on now, you limping crabfish, you! We can't
+be stopping here while you'll boil stirabout!
+
+JOHNNY B. [_seizing bag of money and holding it up in both hands_].
+Look at this now, look! [ANDREW _comes behind and seizes his arm._]
+
+JOHNNY B. [_letting bag fall with a crash_]. Destruction on us all!
+
+MARTIN [running forward, seizes him. Heads disappear]. That is it! Oh,
+I remember! That is what happened! That is the command! Who was it sent
+you here with that command?
+
+JOHNNY B. It was misery sent me in and starvation and the hard ways of
+the world.
+
+NANNY [_outside_]. It was that, my poor child, and my one son only.
+Show mercy to him now, and he after leaving gaol this morning.
+
+MARTIN [_to_ ANDREW.]. I was trying to remember it ... when he spoke
+that word it all came back to me. I saw a bright, many-changing figure
+... it was holding up a shining vessel ... [_holds up arms_] then the
+vessel fell and was broken with a great crash ... then I saw the
+unicorns trampling it. They were breaking the world to pieces ... when
+I saw the cracks coming, I shouted for joy! And I heard the command,
+"Destroy, destroy; destruction is the life-giver; destroy."
+
+ANDREW. What will we do with him? He was thinking to rob you of your
+gold.
+
+MARTIN. How could I forget it or mistake it? It has all come upon me
+now ... the reasons of it all, like a flood, like a flooded river.
+
+JOHNNY B. [_weeping_]. It was the hunger brought me in and the drouth.
+
+MARTIN. Were you given any other message? Did you see the unicorns?
+
+JOHNNY B. I saw nothing and heard nothing; near dead I am with the
+fright I got and with the hardship of the gaol.
+
+MARTIN. To destroy ... to overthrow all that comes between us and God,
+between us and that shining country. To break the wall, Andrew, the
+thing, whatever it is that comes between, but where to begin?...
+
+ANDREW. What is it you are talking about?
+
+MARTIN. It may be that this man is the beginning. He has been sent ...
+the poor, they have nothing, and so they can see heaven as we cannot.
+He and his comrades will understand me. But now to give all men high
+hearts that they may all understand.
+
+JOHNNY B. It's the juice of the grey barley will do that.
+
+ANDREW. To rise everybody's heart, is it? Is it that was your
+meaning?... If you will take the blame of it all, I'll do what you
+want. Give me the bag of money, then. [_He takes it up._] Oh, I've a
+heart like your own! I'll lift the world too! The people will be
+running from all parts. Oh, it will be a great day in this district.
+
+JOHNNY B. Will I go with you?
+
+MARTIN. No, you must stay here; we have things to do and to plan.
+
+JOHNNY B. Destroyed we all are with the hunger and the drouth.
+
+MARTIN. Go then, get food and drink, whatever is wanted to give you
+strength and courage; gather your people together here; bring them all
+in. We have a great thing to do. I have to begin ... I want to tell it
+to the whole world. Bring them in, bring them in, I will make the house
+ready.
+
+
+ACT II
+
+SCENE: The same workshop a few minutes later. MARTIN. seen arranging
+mugs and bread, etc., on a table. FATHER JOHN comes in, knocking at
+open door as he comes.
+
+
+MARTIN. Come in, come in, I have got the house ready. Here is bread and
+meat ... everybody is welcome. [Hearing no answer, turns round.]
+
+FATHER JOHN. Martin, I have come back.... There is something I want to
+say to you.
+
+MARTIN. You are welcome; there are others coming.... They are not of
+your sort, but all are welcome.
+
+FATHER JOHN. I have remembered suddenly something that I read when I
+was in the seminary.
+
+MARTIN. You seem very tired.
+
+FATHER JOHN [_sitting down_]. I had almost got back to my own place
+when I thought of it. I have run part of the way. It is very important.
+It is about the trance that you have been in. When one is inspired from
+above, either in trance or in contemplation, one remembers afterwards
+all that one has seen and read. I think there must be something about
+it in St. Thomas. I know that I have read a long passage about it years
+ago. But, Martin, there is another kind of inspiration, or rather an
+obsession or possession. A diabolical power comes into one's body or
+overshadows it. Those whose bodies are taken hold of in this way,
+jugglers and witches and the like, can often tell what is happening in
+distant places, or what is going to happen, but when they come out of
+that state, they remember nothing. I think you said----
+
+MARTIN. That I could not remember.
+
+FATHER JOHN. You remembered something, but not all. Nature is a great
+sleep; there are dangerous and evil spirits in her dreams, but God is
+above Nature. She is a darkness, but He makes everything clear--He is
+light.
+
+MARTIN. All is clear now. I remember all, or all that matters to me. A
+poor man brought me a word, and I know what I have to do.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Ah, I understand; words were put into his mouth. I have
+read of such things. God sometimes uses some common man as His
+messenger.
+
+MARTIN. You may have passed the man who brought it on the road. He left
+me but now.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Very likely, very likely, that is the way it happened.
+Some plain, unnoticed man has sometimes been sent with a command.
+
+MARTIN. I saw the unicorns trampling in my dream. They were breaking
+the world. I am to destroy, that is the word the messenger spoke.
+
+FATHER JOHN. To destroy?
+
+MARTIN. To bring again the old disturbed exalted life, the old
+splendour.
+
+FATHER JOHN. You are not the first that dream has come to. [_Gets up
+and walks up and down._] It has been wandering here and there, calling
+now to this man, now to that other. It is a terrible dream.
+
+MARTIN. Father John, you have had the same thought.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Men were holy then; there were saints everywhere, there
+was reverence, but now it is all work, business, how to live a long
+time. Ah, if one could change it all in a minute, even by war and
+violence.... There is a cell where St. Ciaran used to pray, if one
+could bring that time again.
+
+MARTIN. Do not deceive me. You have had the command.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Why are you questioning me? You are asking me things that
+I have told to no one but my confessor.
+
+MARTIN. We must gather the crowds together, you and I.
+
+FATHER JOHN. I have dreamed your dream; it was long ago. I had your
+vision.
+
+MARTIN. And what happened?
+
+FATHER JOHN [_harshly_]. It was stopped. That was an end. I was sent
+to the lonely parish where I am, where there was no one I could lead
+astray. They have left me there. We must have patience; the world was
+destroyed by water, it has yet to be consumed by fire.
+
+MARTIN. Why should we be patient? To live seventy years, and others to
+come after us and live seventy years it may be, and so from age to age,
+and all the while the old splendour dying more and more.
+
+          [A noise of shouting. ANDREW, who has been standing at the
+          door for a moment, comes in.]
+
+ANDREW. Martin says truth, and he says it well. Planing the side of a
+cart or a shaft, is that life? It is not. Sitting at a desk writing
+letters to the man that wants a coach or to the man that won't pay for
+the one he has got, is that life, I ask you? Thomas arguing at you and
+putting you down, "Andrew, dear Andrew, did you put the tyre on that
+wheel yet?" Is that life? No, it is not. I ask you all what do you
+remember when you are dead? It's the sweet cup in the corner of the
+widow's drinking house that you remember. Ha, ha, listen to that
+shouting! That is what the lads in the village will remember to the
+last day they live!
+
+MARTIN. Why are they shouting? What have you told them?
+
+ANDREW. Never you mind. You left that to me. You bade me to lift their
+hearts, and I did lift them. There is not one among them but will have
+his head like a blazing tar barrel before morning. What did your
+friend, the beggar, say? The juice of the grey barley, he said.
+
+FATHER JOHN. You accursed villain! You have made them drunk!
+
+ANDREW. Not at all, but lifting them to the stars. That is what Martin
+bade me to do, and there is no one can say I did not do it.
+
+          [_A shout at door and beggars push in a barrel. They all cry,
+          "Hi! for the noble master!" and point at_ ANDREW.]
+
+JOHNNY B. It's not him, it's that one!
+
+          [_Points at_ MARTIN.]
+
+FATHER JOHN. Are you bringing this devil's work in at the very door? Go
+out of this, I say! Get out! Take these others with you!
+
+MARTIN. No, no, I asked them in; they must not be turned out. They are
+my guests.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Drive them out of your uncle's house!
+
+MARTIN. Come, Father, it is better for you to go. Go back to your own
+place. I have taken the command. It is better, perhaps, for you that
+you did not take it. [MARTIN _and_ FATHER JOHN _go out._]
+
+BIDDY. It is well for that old lad he didn't come between ourselves and
+our luck. It would be right to have flayed him and to have made bags of
+his skin.
+
+NANNY. What a hurry you are in to get your enough! Look at the grease
+on your frock yet with the dint of the dabs you put in your pocket!
+Doing cures and foretellings, is it? You starved pot picker, you!
+
+BIDDY. That you may be put up to-morrow to take the place of that
+decent son of yours that had the yard of the gaol wore with walking it
+till this morning!
+
+NANNY. If he had, he had a mother to come to, and he would know her
+when he did see her, and that is what no son of your own could do, and
+he to meet you at the foot of the gallows!
+
+JOHNNY B. If I did know you, I knew too much of you since the first
+beginning of my life! What reward did I ever get travelling with you?
+What store did you give me of cattle or of goods? What provision did I
+get from you by day or by night but your own bad character to be joined
+on to my own, and I following at your heels, and your bags tied round
+about me?
+
+NANNY. Disgrace and torment on you! Whatever you got from me, it was
+more than any reward or any bit I ever got from the father you had, or
+any honourable thing at all, but only the hurt and the harm of the
+world and its shame!
+
+JOHNNY B. What would he give you, and you going with him without leave?
+Crooked and foolish you were always, and you begging by the side of the
+ditch.
+
+NANNY. Begging or sharing, the curse of my heart upon you! It's better
+off I was before ever I met with you, to my cost! What was on me at all
+that I did not cut a scourge in the wood to put manners and decency on
+you the time you were not hardened as you are!
+
+JOHNNY B. Leave talking to me of your rods and your scourges! All you
+taught me was robbery, and it is on yourself and not on myself the
+scourges will be laid at the day of the recognition of tricks.
+
+PAUDEEN. Faith, the pair of you together is better than Hector fighting
+before Troy!
+
+NANNY. Ah, let you be quiet. It is not fighting we are craving, but the
+easing of the hunger that is on us and of the passion of sleep. Lend me
+a graineen of tobacco till I'll kindle my pipe--a blast of it will take
+the weight of the road off my heart.
+
+          [ANDREW _gives her some_. NANNY. _grabs at it._]
+
+BIDDY. No, but it's to myself you should give it. I that never smoked a
+pipe this forty year without saying the tobacco prayer. Let that one
+say, did ever she do that much?
+
+NANNY. That the pain of your front tooth may be in your back tooth, you
+to be grabbing my share! [_They snap at tobacco._]
+
+ANDREW. Pup, pup, pup. Don't be snapping and quarrelling now, and you
+so well treated in this house. It is strollers like yourselves should
+be for frolic and for fun. Have you ne'er a good song to sing, a song
+that will rise all our hearts?
+
+PAUDEEN. Johnny Bacach is a good singer; it is what he used to be doing
+in the fairs, if the oakum of the gaol did not give him a hoarseness in
+the throat.
+
+ANDREW. Give it out so, a good song; a song will put courage and spirit
+into any man at all.
+
+JOHNNY B. [_singing_].
+
+    Come, all ye airy bachelors,
+    A warning take by me:
+    A sergeant caught me fowling,
+    And fired his gun so free.
+
+    His comrades came to his relief,
+    And I was soon trepanned;
+    And, bound up like a woodcock,
+    Had fallen into their hands.
+
+    The judge said transportation;
+    The ship was on the strand;
+    They have yoked me to the traces
+    For to plough Van Dieman's land!
+
+ANDREW. That's no good of a song, but a melancholy sort of a song. I'd
+as lief be listening to a saw going through timber. Wait, now, till you
+will hear myself giving out a tune on the flute. [_Goes out for it._]
+
+JOHNNY B. It is what I am thinking there must be a great dearth and a
+great scarcity of good comrades in this place, a man like that
+youngster having means in his hand to be bringing ourselves and our
+rags into the house.
+
+PAUDEEN. You think yourself very wise, Johnny Bacach. Can you tell me
+now who that man is?
+
+JOHNNY B. Some decent lad, I suppose, with a good way of living and a
+mind to send up his name upon the roads.
+
+PAUDEEN. You that have been gaoled this eight months know little of
+this countryside.... It isn't a limping stroller like yourself the boys
+would let come among them. But I know. I went to the drill a few
+nights, and I skinning kids for the mountainy men. In a quarry beyond
+the drill is ... they have their plans made.... It's the square house
+of the Browns is to be made an attack on and plundered. Do you know now
+who is the leader they are waiting for?
+
+JOHNNY B. How would I know that?
+
+PAUDEEN [_singing_].
+
+    Oh, Johnny Gibbons, my five hundred healths to you.
+    It is long you are away from us over the sea!
+
+JOHNNY B. [_standing up excitedly_]. Sure that man could not be John
+Gibbons that is outlawed.
+
+PAUDEEN. I asked news of him from the old lad [_points after_ ANDREW],
+and I bringing in the drink along with him. "Don't be asking
+questions," says he; "take the treat he gives you," says he. "If a lad
+that had a high heart has a mind to rouse the neighbours," says he,
+"and to stretch out his hand to all that pass the road, it is in France
+he learned it," says he, "the place he is but lately come from, and
+where the wine does be standing open in tubs. Take your treat when you
+get it," says he, "and make no delay, or all might be discovered and
+put an end to."
+
+JOHNNY B. He came over the sea from France! It is Johnny Gibbons
+surely, but it seems to me they were calling him by some other name.
+
+PAUDEEN. A man on his keeping might go by a hundred names. Would he be
+telling it out to us that he never saw before, and we with that clutch
+of chattering women along with us? Here he is coming now. Wait till you
+see is he the lad I think him to be.
+
+MARTIN [_coming in_]. I will make my banner; I will paint the Unicorn
+on it. Give me that bit of canvas; there is paint over here. We will
+get no help from the settled men--we will call to the lawbreakers, the
+tinkers--the sievemakers--the sheep-stealers. [_He begins to make
+banner._]
+
+BIDDY. That sounds to be a queer name of an army. Ribbons I can
+understand, Whiteboys, Rightboys, Threshers, and Peep-o'-day, but
+Unicorns I never heard of before.
+
+JOHNNY B. It is not a queer name, but a very good name. [_Takes up Lion
+and Unicorn._] It is often you saw that before you in the dock. There
+is the Unicorn with the one horn, and what is it he is going against?
+The Lion of course. When he has the Lion destroyed, the Crown must fall
+and be shivered. Can't you see? It is the League of the Unicorns is the
+league that will fight and destroy the power of England and King
+George.
+
+PAUDEEN. It is with that banner we will march and the lads in the
+quarry with us; it is they will have the welcome before him! It won't
+be long till we'll be attacking the Square House! Arms there are in it;
+riches that would smother the world; rooms full of guineas--we will put
+wax on our shoes walking them; the horses themselves shod with no less
+than silver!
+
+MARTIN [_holding up the banner_]. There it is ready! We are very few
+now, but the army of the Unicorns will be a great army! [_To_ JOHNNY
+B.] Why have you brought me the message? Can you remember any more? Has
+anything more come to you? Who told you to come to me? Who gave you the
+message?... Can you see anything or hear anything that is beyond the
+world?
+
+JOHNNY B. I cannot. I don't know what do you want me to tell you at
+all.
+
+MARTIN. I want to begin the destruction, but I don't know where to
+begin ... you do not hear any other voice?
+
+JOHNNY B. I do not. I have nothing at all to do with freemasons or
+witchcraft.
+
+PAUDEEN. It is Biddy Lally has to do with witchcraft. It is often she
+threw the cups and gave out prophecies the same as Columcille.
+
+MARTIN. You are one of the knowledgeable women. You can tell me where
+it is best to begin, and what will happen in the end.
+
+BIDDY. I will foretell nothing at all. I rose out of it this good
+while, with the stiffness and the swelling it brought upon my joints.
+
+MARTIN. If you have foreknowledge, you have no right to keep silent. If
+you do not help me, I may go to work in the wrong way. I know I have to
+destroy, but when I ask myself what I am to begin with, I am full of
+uncertainty.
+
+PAUDEEN. Here now are the cups handy and the leavings in them.
+
+BIDDY [_taking cups and pouring one from another_]. Throw a bit of
+white money into the four corners of the house.
+
+MARTIN. There! [_Throwing it._]
+
+BIDDY. There can be nothing told without silver. It is not myself will
+have the profit of it. Along with that I will be forced to throw out
+gold.
+
+MARTIN. There is a guinea for you. Tell me what comes before your eyes.
+
+BIDDY. What is it you are wanting to have news of?
+
+MARTIN. Of what I have to go out against at the beginning ... there is
+so much ... the whole world, it may be.
+
+BIDDY [_throwing from one cup to another and looking_]. You have no
+care for yourself. You have been across the sea; you are not long back.
+You are coming within the best day of your life.
+
+MARTIN. What is it? What is it I have to do?
+
+BIDDY. I see a great smoke, I see burning ... there is a great smoke
+overhead.
+
+MARTIN. That means we have to burn away a great deal that men have
+piled up upon the earth. We must bring men once more to the wildness of
+the clean green earth.
+
+BIDDY. Herbs for my healing, the big herb and the little herb; it is
+true enough they get their great strength out of the earth.
+
+JOHNNY B. Who was it the green sod of Ireland belonged to in the olden
+times? Wasn't it to the ancient race it belonged? And who has
+possession of it now but the race that came robbing over the sea? The
+meaning of that is to destroy the big houses and the towns, and the
+fields to be given back to the ancient race.
+
+MARTIN. That is it. You don't put it as I do, but what matter? Battle
+is all.
+
+PAUDEEN. Columcille said the four corners to be burned, and then the
+middle of the field to be burned. I tell you it was Columcille's
+prophecy said that.
+
+BIDDY. Iron handcuffs I see and a rope and a gallows, and it maybe is
+not for yourself I see it, but for some I have acquaintance with a good
+way back.
+
+MARTIN. That means the law. We must destroy the law. That was the first
+sin, the first mouthful of the apple.
+
+JOHNNY B. So it was, so it was. The law is the worst loss. The ancient
+law was for the benefit of all. It is the law of the English is the
+only sin.
+
+MARTIN. When there were no laws men warred on one another and man to
+man, not with one machine against another as they do now, and they grew
+hard and strong in body. They were altogether alive like Him that made
+them in His image, like people in that unfallen country. But presently
+they thought it better to be safe, as if safety mattered, or anything
+but the exaltation of the heart and to have eyes that danger had made
+grave and piercing. We must overthrow the laws and banish them!
+
+JOHNNY B. It is what I say, to put out the laws is to put out the whole
+nation of the English. Laws for themselves they made for their own
+profit and left us nothing at all, no more than a dog or a sow.
+
+BIDDY. An old priest I see, and I would not say is he the one was here
+or another. Vexed and troubled he is, kneeling fretting, and ever
+fretting, in some lonesome, ruined place.
+
+MARTIN. I thought it would come to that. Yes, the church too ... that
+is to be destroyed. Once men fought with their desires and their fears,
+with all that they call their sins, unhelped, and their souls became
+hard and strong. When we have brought back the clean earth and
+destroyed the law and the church, all life will become like a flame of
+fire, like a burning eye.... Oh, how to find words for it all ... all
+that is not life will pass away!
+
+JOHNNY B. It is Luther's church he means, and the humpbacked discourse
+of Seaghan Calvin's Bible. So we will break it and make an end of it.
+
+MARTIN [_rising_]. We will go out against the world and break it and
+unmake it. We are the army of the Unicorn from the Stars! We will
+trample it to pieces. We will consume the world, we will burn it away.
+Father John said the world has yet to be consumed by fire. Bring me
+fire.
+
+ANDREW. Here is Thomas coming! [_All except_ MARTIN _hurry into next
+room._ THOMAS _comes in._]
+
+THOMAS. Come with me, Martin. There is terrible work going on in the
+town! There is mischief gone abroad! Very strange things are happening!
+
+MARTIN. What are you talking of? What has happened?
+
+THOMAS. Come along, I say; it must be put a stop to! We must call to
+every decent man!... It is as if the devil himself had gone through the
+town on a blast and set every drinking house open!
+
+MARTIN. I wonder how that has happened. Can it have anything to do with
+Andrew's plan?
+
+THOMAS. Are you giving no heed to what I'm saying? There is not a man,
+I tell you, in the parish, and beyond the parish, but has left the work
+he was doing, whether in the field or in the mill.
+
+MARTIN. Then all work has come to an end? Perhaps that was a good
+thought of Andrew's.
+
+THOMAS. There is not a man has come to sensible years that is not drunk
+or drinking! My own labourers and my own serving-man are sitting on
+counters and on barrels! I give you my word the smell of the spirits
+and the porter and the shouting and the cheering within made the hair
+to rise up on my scalp.
+
+MARTIN. And there is not one of them that does not feel that he could
+bridle the four winds.
+
+THOMAS [_sitting down in despair_]. You are drunk, too. I never
+thought you had a fancy for it.
+
+MARTIN. It is hard for you to understand. You have worked all your
+life. You have said to yourself every morning, "What is to be done
+to-day?" and when you are tired out you have thought of the next day's
+work. If you gave yourself an hour's idleness, it was but that you
+might work the better. Yet it is only when one has put work away that
+one begins to live.
+
+THOMAS. It is those French wines that did it.
+
+MARTIN. I have been beyond the earth, in paradise, in that happy
+townland. I have seen the shining people. They were all doing one thing
+or another, but not one of them was at work. All that they did was but
+the overflowing of their idleness, and their days were a dance bred of
+the secret frenzy of their hearts, or a battle where the sword made a
+sound that was like laughter.
+
+THOMAS. You went away sober from out of my hands; they had a right to
+have minded you better.
+
+MARTIN. No man can be alive, and what is paradise but fulness of life,
+if whatever he sets his hand to in the daylight cannot carry him from
+exaltation to exaltation, and if he does not rise into the frenzy of
+contemplation in the night silence. Events that are not begotten in joy
+are misbegotten and darken the world, and nothing is begotten in joy if
+the joy of a thousand years has not been crushed into a moment.
+
+THOMAS. And I offered to let you go to Dublin in the coach! [ANDREW
+_and the beggars have returned cautiously._]
+
+MARTIN [_giving banner to_ PAUDEEN]. Give me the lamp. The lamp has
+not yet been lighted, and the world is to be consumed! [_Goes into
+inner room._]
+
+THOMAS [_seeing_ ANDREW]. Is it here you are, Andrew? What are the
+beggars doing? Was this door thrown open, too?... Why did you not keep
+order? I will go for the constables to help us!
+
+ANDREW. You will not find them to help you. They were scattering
+themselves through the drinking houses of the town; and why wouldn't
+they?
+
+THOMAS. Are you drunk, too? You are worse than Martin. You are a
+disgrace.
+
+ANDREW. Disgrace yourself! Coming here to be making an attack on me and
+badgering me and disparaging me. And what about yourself that turned me
+to be a hypocrite?
+
+THOMAS. What are you saying?
+
+ANDREW. You did, I tell you. Weren't you always at me to be regular and
+to be working and to be going through the day and the night without
+company and to be thinking of nothing but the trade? What did I want
+with a trade? I got a sight of the fairy gold one time in the
+mountains. I would have found it again and brought riches from it but
+for you keeping me so close to the work.
+
+THOMAS. Oh, of all the ungrateful creatures! You know well that I
+cherished you, leading you to live a decent, respectable life.
+
+ANDREW. You never had respect for the ancient ways. It is after the
+mother you take it, that was too soft and too lumpish, having too much
+of the English in her blood. Martin is a Hearne like myself. It is he
+has the generous heart! It is not Martin would make a hypocrite of me
+and force me to do night walking secretly, watching to be back by the
+setting of the seven stars! [_He begins to play his flute._]
+
+THOMAS. I will turn you out of this, yourself and this filthy troop! I
+will have them lodged in gaol.
+
+JOHNNY B. Filthy troop, is it? Mind yourself! The change is coming! The
+pikes will be up and the traders will go down!
+
+          [_All seize him and sing._]
+
+    When the Lion shall lose his strength,
+    And the braket thistle begin to pine,--
+    The harp shall sound sweet, sweet at length
+    Between the eight and the nine!
+
+THOMAS. Let me out of this, you villains!
+
+NANNY. We'll make a sieve of holes of you, you old bag of treachery!
+
+BIDDY. How well you threatened us with gaol! You skim of a weasel's
+milk!
+
+JOHNNY B. You heap of sicknesses! You blinking hangman! That you may
+never die till you'll get a blue hag for a wife!
+
+          [MARTIN _comes back with lighted lamp._]
+
+MARTIN. Let him go. [_They let_ THOMAS _go and fall back._] Spread out
+the banner. The moment has come to begin the war.
+
+JOHNNY B. Up with the Unicorn and destroy the Lion! Success to Johnny
+Gibbons and all good men!
+
+MARTIN. Heap all those things together there. Heap those pieces of the
+coach one upon another. Put that straw under them. It is with this
+flame I will begin the work of destruction. All nature destroys and
+laughs.
+
+THOMAS. Destroy your own golden coach!
+
+MARTIN [_kneeling_]. I am sorry to go a way that you do not like, and
+to do a thing that will vex you. I have been a great trouble to you
+since I was a child in the house, and I am a great trouble to you yet.
+It is not my fault. I have been chosen for what I have to do. [_Stands
+up._] I have to free myself first and those that are near me. The love
+of God is a very terrible thing!
+
+          [THOMAS _tries to stop him, but is prevented by tinkers_.
+          MARTIN _takes a wisp of straw and lights it._]
+
+We will destroy all that can perish! It is only the soul that can
+suffer no injury. The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of
+the stars!
+
+          [_He throws his wisp into the heap. It blazes up._]
+
+
+ACT III
+
+SCENE: _Before dawn a few hours later. A wild, rocky place._ NANNY
+_and_ BIDDY LALLY _squatting by fire. Rich stuffs, etc., strewn about._
+PAUDEEN _sitting, watching by_ MARTIN, _who is lying, as if dead, a
+sack over him._
+
+
+NANNY [_to_ PAUDEEN]. Well, you are great heroes and great warriors
+and great lads altogether to have put down the Browns the way you did,
+yourselves and the Whiteboys of the quarry. To have ransacked the house
+and have plundered it! Look at the silks and the satins and the
+grandeurs I brought away! Look at that now! [_Holds up a velvet
+cloak._] It's a good little jacket for myself will come out of it. It's
+the singers will be stopping their songs and the jobbers turning from
+their cattle in the fairs to be taking a view of the laces of it and
+the buttons! It's my far-off cousins will be drawing from far and near!
+
+BIDDY. There was not so much gold in it all as what they were saying
+there was. Or maybe that fleet of Whiteboys had the place ransacked
+before we ourselves came in. Bad cess to them that put it in my mind to
+go gather up the full of my bag of horseshoes out of the forge. Silver
+they were saying they were, pure white silver; and what are they in the
+end but only hardened iron! A bad end to them! [_Flings away
+horseshoes._] The time I will go robbing big houses again it will not
+be in the light of the full moon I will go doing it, that does be
+causing every common thing to shine out as if for a deceit and a
+mockery. It's not shining at all they are at this time, but duck yellow
+and dark.
+
+NANNY. To leave the big house blazing after us, it was that crowned
+all! Two houses to be burned to ashes in the one night. It is likely
+the servant-girls were rising from the feathers, and the cocks crowing
+from the rafters for seven miles around, taking the flames to be the
+whitening of the dawn.
+
+BIDDY. It is the lad is stretched beyond you have to be thankful to for
+that. There was never seen a leader was his equal for spirit and for
+daring! Making a great scatter of the guards the way he did! Running up
+roofs and ladders, the fire in his hand, till you'd think he would be
+apt to strike his head against the stars.
+
+NANNY. I partly guessed death was near him, and the queer shining look
+he had in his two eyes, and he throwing sparks east and west through
+the beams. I wonder now was it some inward wound he got, or did some
+hardy lad of the Browns give him a tip on the skull unknownst in the
+fight? It was I myself found him, and the troop of the Whiteboys gone,
+and he lying by the side of a wall as weak as if he had knocked a
+mountain. I failed to waken him, trying him with the sharpness of my
+nails, and his head fell back when I moved it, and I knew him to be
+spent and gone.
+
+BIDDY. It's a pity you not to have left him where he was lying, and
+said no word at all to Paudeen or to that son you have, that kept us
+back from following on, bringing him here to this shelter on sacks and
+upon poles.
+
+NANNY. What way could I help letting a screech out of myself and the
+life but just gone out of him in the darkness, and not a living
+Christian by his side but myself and the great God?
+
+BIDDY. It's on ourselves the vengeance of the red soldiers will fall,
+they to find us sitting here the same as hares in a tuft. It would be
+best for us follow after the rest of the army of the Whiteboys.
+
+NANNY. Whist, I tell you! The lads are cracked about him. To get but
+the wind of the word of leaving him, it's little but they'd knock the
+head off the two of us. Whist!
+
+          [_Enter_ JOHNNY B. _with candles._]
+
+JOHNNY B. [_standing over_ MARTIN]. Wouldn't you say now there was some
+malice or some venom in the air, that is striking down one after the
+other the whole of the heroes of the Gael?
+
+PAUDEEN. It makes a person be thinking of the four last ends, death and
+judgment, heaven and hell. Indeed and indeed my heart lies with him. It
+is well I knew what man he was under his by-name and his disguise.
+[_Sings._]
+
+    Oh, Johnny Gibbons, it's you were the prop to us!
+    You to have left us we are put astray!
+
+JOHNNY B. It is lost we are now and broken to the end of our days.
+There is no satisfaction at all but to be destroying the English; and
+where now will we get so good a leader again? Lay him out fair and
+straight upon a stone, till I will let loose the secret of my heart
+keening him! [_Sets out candles on a rack, propping them with stones._]
+
+NANNY. Is it mould candles you have brought to set around him, Johnny
+Bacach? It is great riches you should have in your pocket to be going
+to those lengths and not to be content with dips.
+
+JOHNNY B. It is lengths I will not be going to the time the life will
+be gone out of your own body. It is not your corpse I will be wishful
+to hold in honour the way I hold this corpse in honour.
+
+NANNY. That's the way always: there will be grief and quietness in the
+house if it is a young person has died, but funning and springing and
+tricking one another if it is an old person's corpse is in it. There is
+no compassion at all for the old.
+
+PAUDEEN. It is he would have got leave for the Gael to be as high as
+the Gall. Believe me, he was in the prophecies. Let you not be
+comparing yourself with the like of him.
+
+NANNY. Why wouldn't I be comparing myself? Look at all that was against
+me in the world; would you be matching me against a man of his sort
+that had the people shouting for him and that had nothing to do but to
+die and to go to heaven?
+
+JOHNNY B. The day you go to heaven that you may never come back alive
+out of it! But it is not yourself will ever hear the saints hammering
+at their musics! It is you will be moving through the ages chains upon
+you, and you in the form of a dog or a monster! I tell you, that one
+will go through purgatory as quick as lightning through a thorn bush.
+
+NANNY. That's the way, that's the way:
+
+           Three that are watching my time to run
+           The worm, the devil, and my son.
+           To see a loop around their neck
+           It's that would make my heart to leap!
+
+JOHNNY B. Five white candles. I wouldn't begrudge them to him, indeed.
+If he had held out and held up, it is my belief he would have freed
+Ireland!
+
+PAUDEEN. Wait till the full light of the day and you'll see the burying
+he'll have. It is not in this place we will be waking him. I'll make a
+call to the two hundred Ribbons he was to lead on to the attack on the
+barracks at Aughanish. They will bring him marching to his grave upon
+the hill. He had surely some gift from the other world, I wouldn't say
+but he had power from the other side.
+
+ANDREW [_coming in, very shaky_]. Well, it was a great night he gave
+to the village, and it is long till it will be forgotten. I tell you
+the whole of the neighbours are up against him. There is no one at all
+this morning to set the mills going. There was no bread baked in the
+night-time; the horses are not fed in the stalls; the cows are not
+milked in the sheds. I met no man able to make a curse this night but
+he put it on my own head and on the head of the boy that is lying there
+before us.... Is there no sign of life in him at all?
+
+JOHNNY B. What way would there be a sign of life and the life gone out
+of him this three hours or more?
+
+ANDREW. He was lying in his sleep for a while yesterday, and he wakened
+again after another while.
+
+NANNY. He will not waken. I tell you I held his hand in my own and it
+getting cold as if you were pouring on it the coldest cold water, and
+no running in his blood. He is gone sure enough, and the life is gone
+out of him.
+
+ANDREW. Maybe so, maybe so. It seems to me yesterday his cheeks were
+bloomy all the while, and now he is as pale as wood-ashes. Sure we all
+must come to it at the last. Well, my white-headed darling, it is you
+were the bush among us all, and you to be cut down in your prime.
+Gentle and simple, everyone liked you. It is no narrow heart you had;
+it is you were for spending and not for getting. It is you made a good
+wake for yourself, scattering your estate in one night only in beer and
+in wine for the whole province; and that you may be sitting in the
+middle of paradise and in the chair of the graces!
+
+JOHNNY B. Amen to that. It's pity I didn't think the time I sent for
+yourself to send the little lad of a messenger looking for a priest to
+overtake him. It might be in the end the Almighty is the best man for
+us all!
+
+ANDREW. Sure I sent him on myself to bid the priest to come. Living or
+dead, I would wish to do all that is rightful for the last and the best
+of my own race and generation.
+
+BIDDY [_jumping up_]. Is it the priest you are bringing in among us?
+Where is the sense in that? Aren't we robbed enough up to this with the
+expense of the candles and the like?
+
+JOHNNY B. If it is that poor, starved priest he called to that came
+talking in secret signs to the man that is gone, it is likely he will
+ask nothing for what he has to do. There is many a priest is a Whiteboy
+in his heart.
+
+NANNY. I tell you, if you brought him tied in a bag he would not say an
+Our Father for you, without you having a half crown at the top of your
+fingers.
+
+BIDDY. There is no priest is any good at all but a spoiled priest; a
+one that would take a drop of drink, it is he would have courage to
+face the hosts of trouble. Rout them out he would, the same as a shoal
+of fish from out the weeds. It's best not to vex a priest, or to run
+against them at all.
+
+NANNY. It's yourself humbled yourself well to one the time you were
+sick in the gaol and had like to die, and he bade you to give over the
+throwing of the cups.
+
+BIDDY. Ah, plaster of Paris I gave him. I took to it again and I free
+upon the roads.
+
+NANNY. Much good you are doing with it to yourself or any other one.
+Aren't you after telling that corpse no later than yesterday that he
+was coming within the best day of his life?
+
+JOHNNY B. Whist, let ye! Here is the priest coming.
+
+          [FATHER JOHN _comes in._]
+
+FATHER JOHN. It is surely not true that he is dead?
+
+JOHNNY B. The spirit went from him about the middle hour of the night.
+We brought him here to this sheltered place. We were loth to leave him
+without friends.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Where is he?
+
+JOHNNY B. [_taking up sacks_]. Lying there, stiff and stark. He has a
+very quiet look, as if there was no sin at all or no great trouble upon
+his mind.
+
+FATHER JOHN [_kneels and touches him_]. He is not dead.
+
+BIDDY [_pointing to_ NANNY]. He is dead. If it was letting on he was,
+he would not have let that one rob him and search him the way she did.
+
+FATHER JOHN. It has the appearance of death, but it is not death. He is
+in a trance.
+
+PAUDEEN. Is it heaven and hell he is walking at this time to be
+bringing back newses of the sinners in pain?
+
+BIDDY. I was thinking myself it might away he was, riding on white
+horses with the riders of the forths.
+
+JOHNNY B. He will have great wonders to tell out the time he will rise
+up from the ground. It is a pity he not to waken at this time and to
+lead us on to overcome the troop of the English. Sure those that are in
+a trance get strength that they can walk on water.
+
+ANDREW. It was Father John wakened him yesterday the time he was lying
+in the same way. Wasn't I telling you it was for that I called to him?
+
+BIDDY. Waken him now till they'll see did I tell any lie in my
+foretelling. I knew well by the signs he was coming within the best day
+of his life.
+
+PAUDEEN. And not dead at all! We'll be marching to attack Dublin itself
+within a week. The horn will blow for him, and all good men will gather
+to him. Hurry on, Father, and waken him.
+
+FATHER JOHN. I will not waken him. I will not bring him back from where
+he is.
+
+JOHNNY B. And how long will it be before he will waken of himself?
+
+FATHER JOHN. Maybe to-day, maybe to-morrow; it is hard to be certain.
+
+BIDDY. If it is _away_ he is, he might be away seven years. To be lying
+like a stump of a tree and using no food and the world not able to
+knock a word out of him, I know the signs of it well.
+
+JOHNNY B. We cannot be waiting and watching through seven years. If the
+business he has started is to be done, we have to go on here and now.
+The time there is any delay, that is the time the Government will get
+information. Waken him now, Father, and you'll get the blessing of the
+generations.
+
+FATHER JOHN. I will not bring him back. God will bring him back in His
+own good time. For all I know he may be seeing the hidden things of
+God.
+
+JOHNNY B. He might slip away in his dream. It is best to raise him up
+now.
+
+ANDREW. Waken him, Father John. I thought he was surely dead this time;
+and what way could I go face Thomas through all that is left of my
+lifetime after me standing up to face him the way I did? And if I do
+take a little drop of an odd night, sure I'd be very lonesome if I did
+not take it. All the world knows it's not for love of what I drink, but
+for love of the people that do be with me! Waken him, Father, or maybe
+I would waken him myself. [_Shakes him._]
+
+FATHER JOHN. Lift your hand from touching him. Leave him to himself and
+to the power of God.
+
+JOHNNY B. If you will not bring him back, why wouldn't we ourselves do
+it? Go on now, it is best for you to do it yourself.
+
+FATHER JOHN. I woke him yesterday. He was angry with me; he could not
+get to the heart of the command.
+
+JOHNNY B. If he did not, he got a command from myself that satisfied
+him, and a message.
+
+FATHER JOHN. He did ... he took it from you ... and how do I know what
+devil's message it may have been that brought him into that devil's
+work, destruction and drunkenness and burnings! That was not a message
+from heaven! It was I awoke him; it was I kept him from hearing what
+was maybe a divine message, a voice of truth; and he heard you speak,
+and he believed the message was brought by you. You have made use of
+your deceit and his mistaking ... you have left him without house or
+means to support him, you are striving to destroy and to drag him to
+entire ruin. I will not help you, I would rather see him die in his
+trance and go into God's hands than awake him and see him go into
+hell's mouth with vagabonds and outcasts like you!
+
+JOHNNY B. [_turning to_ BIDDY]. You should have knowledge, Biddy Lally,
+of the means to bring back a man that is away.
+
+BIDDY. The power of the earth will do it through its herbs, and the
+power of the air will do it kindling fire into flame.
+
+JOHNNY B. Rise up and make no delay. Stretch out and gather a handful
+of an herb that will bring him back from whatever place he is in.
+
+BIDDY. Where is the use of herbs and his teeth clenched the way he
+could not use them?
+
+JOHNNY B. Take fire so in the devil's name and put it to the soles of
+his feet. [_Takes lighted sod from fire._]
+
+FATHER JOHN. Let him alone, I say!
+
+          [_Dashes away the sod._]
+
+JOHNNY B. I will not leave him alone! I will not give in to leave him
+swooning there and the country waiting for him to awake!
+
+FATHER JOHN. I tell you I awoke him! I sent him into thieves' company!
+I will not have him wakened again and evil things, it may be, waiting
+to take hold of him! Back from him, back, I say! Will you dare to lay a
+hand on me? You cannot do it! You cannot touch him against my will!
+
+BIDDY. Mind yourself; don't be bringing us under the curse of the
+church.
+
+          [JOHNNY _falls back_. MARTIN _moves._]
+
+FATHER JOHN. It is God has him in His care. It is He is awaking him.
+[MARTIN _has risen to his elbow._] Do not touch him, do not speak to
+him, he may be hearing great secrets.
+
+MARTIN. That music, I must go nearer ... sweet, marvellous music ...
+louder than the trampling of the unicorns ... far louder, though the
+mountain is shaking with their feet ... high, joyous music.
+
+FATHER JOHN. Hush, he is listening to the music of heaven!
+
+MARTIN. Take me to you, musicians, wherever you are! I will go nearer
+to you; I hear you better now, more and more joyful; that is strange,
+it is strange.
+
+FATHER JOHN. He is getting some secret.
+
+MARTIN. It is the music of paradise, that is certain, somebody said
+that. It is certainly the music of paradise. Ah, now I hear, now I
+understand. It is made of the continual clashing of swords!
+
+JOHNNY B. That is the best music. We will clash them sure enough. We
+will clash our swords and our pikes on the bayonets of the red
+soldiers. It is well you rose up from the dead to lead us! Come on now,
+come on!
+
+MARTIN. Who are you? Ah, I remember.... Where are you asking me to come
+to?
+
+PAUDEEN. To come on, to be sure, to the attack on the barracks at
+Aughanish. To carry on the work you took in hand last night.
+
+MARTIN. What work did I take in hand last night? Oh, yes, I remember
+... some big house ... we burned it down.... But I had not understood
+the vision when I did that. I had not heard the command right. That was
+not the work I was sent to do.
+
+PAUDEEN. Rise up now and bid us what to do. Your great name itself will
+clear the road before you. It is you yourself will have freed all
+Ireland before the stooks will be in stacks!
+
+MARTIN. Listen, I will explain ... I have misled you. It is only now I
+have the whole vision plain. As I lay there I saw through everything, I
+know all. It was but a frenzy, that going out to burn and to destroy.
+What have I to do with the foreign army? What I have to pierce is the
+wild heart of time. My business is not reformation but revelation.
+
+JOHNNY B. If you are going to turn back now from leading us, you are no
+better than any other traitor that ever gave up the work he took in
+hand. Let you come and face now the two hundred men you brought out,
+daring the power of the law last night, and give them your reason for
+failing them.
+
+MARTIN. I was mistaken when I set out to destroy church and law. The
+battle we have to fight is fought out in our own minds. There is a
+fiery moment, perhaps once in a lifetime, and in that moment we see the
+only thing that matters. It is in that moment the great battles are
+lost and won, for in that moment we are a part of the host of heaven.
+
+PAUDEEN. Have you betrayed us to the naked hangman with your promises
+and with your drink? If you brought us out here to fail us and to
+ridicule us, it is the last day you will live!
+
+JOHNNY B. The curse of my heart on you! It would be right to send you
+to your own place on the flagstone of the traitors in hell. When once I
+have made an end of you, I will be as well satisfied to be going to my
+death for it as if I was going home!
+
+MARTIN. Father John, Father John, can you not hear? Can you not see?
+Are you blind? 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 B. _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 B. 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 on the rock._ 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 B. 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 _has come in. He stands higher than the others upon
+          some rocks._]
+
+MARTIN. _Ex 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 [_he puts out candle_]; we must put out
+the light of the stars and the light of the sun and the light of the
+moon [_he puts out the remaining candles and comes down to where the
+others are_], 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 B. 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 _falls dead.
+          Beggars come back with a shout._]
+
+JOHNNY B. 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 B. 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 B. 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.
+
+          [_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!
+
+
+CURTAIN
+
+
+
+
+CATHLEEN NI HOULIHAN
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+
+PETER GILLANE.
+
+MICHAEL GILLANE            _his son, going to be married_.
+
+PATRICK GILLANE      _a lad of twelve, Michael's brother_.
+
+BRIDGET GILLANE                            _Peter's wife_.
+
+DELIA CAHEL                        _engaged to_ MICHAEL.
+
+THE POOR OLD WOMAN.
+
+NEIGHBOURS.
+
+
+SCENE: _Interior of a cottage close to Killala, in 1798._ BRIDGET _is
+standing at a table undoing a parcel._ PETER _is sitting at one side of
+the fire,_ PATRICK _at the other_.
+
+
+PETER. What is that sound I hear?
+
+PATRICK. I don't hear anything. [_He listens._] I hear it now. It's
+like cheering. [_He goes to the window and looks out._] I wonder what
+they are cheering about. I don't see anybody.
+
+PETER. It might be a hurling match.
+
+PATRICK. There's no hurling to-day. It must be down in the town the
+cheering is.
+
+BRIDGET. I suppose the boys must be having some sport of their own.
+Come over here, Peter, and look at Michael's wedding-clothes.
+
+PETER [_shifts his chair to table_]. Those are grand clothes, indeed.
+
+BRIDGET. You hadn't clothes like that when you married me, and no coat
+to put on of a Sunday any more than any other day.
+
+PETER. That is true, indeed. We never thought a son of our own would be
+wearing a suit of that sort for his wedding, or have so good a place to
+bring a wife to.
+
+PATRICK [_who is still at the window_]. There's an old woman coming
+down the road. I don't know, is it here she's coming?
+
+BRIDGET. It will be a neighbour coming to hear about Michael's wedding.
+Can you see who it is?
+
+PATRICK. I think it is a stranger, but she's not coming to the house.
+She's turned into the gap that goes down where Murteen and his sons are
+shearing sheep. [_He turns towards_ BRIDGET.] Do you remember what
+Winny of the Cross Roads was saying the other night about the strange
+woman that goes through the country whatever time there's war or
+trouble coming?
+
+BRIDGET. Don't be bothering us about Winny's talk, but go and open the
+door for your brother. I hear him coming up the path.
+
+PETER. I hope he has brought Delia's fortune with him safe, for fear
+her people might go back on the bargain and I after making it. Trouble
+enough I had making it.
+
+          [PATRICK _opens the door and_ MICHAEL _comes in._]
+
+BRIDGET. What kept you, Michael? We were looking out for you this long
+time.
+
+MICHAEL. I went round by the priest's house to bid him be ready to
+marry us to-morrow.
+
+BRIDGET. Did he say anything?
+
+MICHAEL. He said it was a very nice match, and that he was never better
+pleased to marry any two in his parish than myself and Delia Cahel.
+
+PETER. Have you got the fortune, Michael?
+
+MICHAEL. Here it is.
+
+          [_He puts bag on table and goes over and leans against the
+          chimney-jamb._ BRIDGET, _who has been all this time examining
+          the clothes, pulling the seams and trying the lining of the
+          pockets, etc., puts the clothes on the dresser._]
+
+PETER [_getting up and taking the bag in his hand and turning out the
+money_]. Yes, I made the bargain well for you, Michael. Old John Cahel
+would sooner have kept a share of this awhile longer. "Let me keep the
+half of it till the first boy is born," says he. "You will not," says
+I. "Whether there is or is not a boy, the whole hundred pounds must be
+in Michael's hands before he brings your daughter in the house." The
+wife spoke to him then, and he gave in at the end.
+
+BRIDGET. You seem well pleased to be handling the money, Peter.
+
+PETER. Indeed, I wish I had had the luck to get a hundred pounds, or
+twenty pounds itself, with the wife I married.
+
+BRIDGET. Well, if I didn't bring much I didn't get much. What had you
+the day I married you but a flock of hens and you feeding them, and a
+few lambs and you driving them to the market at Ballina? [_She is vexed
+and bangs a jug on the dresser._] If I brought no fortune, I worked it
+out in my bones, laying down the baby, Michael that is standing there
+now, on a stook of straw, while I dug the potatoes, and never asking
+big dresses or anything but to be working.
+
+PETER. That is true, indeed. [_He pats her arm._]
+
+BRIDGET. Leave me alone now till I ready the house for the woman that
+is to come into it.
+
+PETER. You are the best woman in Ireland, but money is good, too. [_He
+begins handling the money again and sits down._] I never thought to see
+so much money within my four walls. We can do great things now we have
+it. We can take the ten acres of land we have a chance of since Jamsie
+Dempsey died, and stock it. We will go to the fair of Ballina to buy
+the stock. Did Delia ask any of the money for her own use, Michael?
+
+MICHAEL. She did not, indeed. She did not seem to take much notice of
+it, or to look at it at all.
+
+BRIDGET. That's no wonder. Why would she look at it when she had
+yourself to look at, a fine, strong young man? It is proud she must be
+to get you, a good steady boy that will make use of the money, and not
+be running through it or spending it on drink like another.
+
+PETER. It's likely Michael himself was not thinking much of the fortune
+either, but of what sort the girl was to look at.
+
+MICHAEL [_coming over towards the table_]. Well, you would like a nice
+comely girl to be beside you, and to go walking with you. The fortune
+only lasts for a while, but the woman will be there always.
+
+          [_Cheers._]
+
+PATRICK [_turning round from the window_]. They are cheering again
+down in the town. Maybe they are landing horses from Enniscrone. They
+do be cheering when the horses take the water well.
+
+MICHAEL. There are no horses in it. Where would they be going and no
+fair at hand? Go down to the town, Patrick, and see what is going on.
+
+PATRICK [_opens the door to go out, but stops for a moment on the
+threshold_]. Will Delia remember, do you think, to bring the greyhound
+pup she promised me when she would be coming to the house?
+
+MICHAEL. She will surely.
+
+          [PATRICK _goes out, leaving the door open._]
+
+PETER. It will be Patrick's turn next to be looking for a fortune, but
+he won't find it so easy to get it and he with no place of his own.
+
+BRIDGET. I do be thinking sometimes, now things are going so well with
+us, and the Cahels such a good back to us in the district, and Delia's
+own uncle a priest, we might be put in the way of making Patrick a
+priest some day, and he so good at his books.
+
+PETER. Time enough, time enough; you have always your head full of
+plans, Bridget.
+
+BRIDGET. We will be well able to give him learning, and not to send him
+trampling the country like a poor scholar that lives on charity.
+
+          [_Cheers._]
+
+MICHAEL. They're not done cheering yet.
+
+          [_He goes over to the door and stands there for a moment,
+          putting up his hand to shade his eyes._]
+
+BRIDGET. Do you see anything?
+
+MICHAEL. I see an old woman coming up the path.
+
+BRIDGET. Who is it, I wonder. It must be the strange woman Patrick saw
+awhile ago.
+
+MICHAEL. I don't think it's one of the neighbours anyway, but she has
+her cloak over her face.
+
+BRIDGET. It might be some poor woman heard we were making ready for the
+wedding and came to look for her share.
+
+PETER. I may as well put the money out of sight. There is no use
+leaving it out for every stranger to look at.
+
+          [_He goes over to a large box in the corner, opens it, and
+          puts the bag in and fumbles at the lock._]
+
+MICHAEL. There she is, father! [_An_ Old Woman _passes the window
+slowly; she looks at_ MICHAEL _as she passes._] I'd sooner a stranger
+not to come to the house the night before my wedding.
+
+BRIDGET. Open the door, Michael; don't keep the poor woman waiting.
+
+          [_The_ OLD WOMAN _comes in._ MICHAEL _stands aside to make
+          way for her._]
+
+OLD WOMAN. God save all here!
+
+PETER. God save you kindly!
+
+OLD WOMAN. You have good shelter here.
+
+PETER. You are welcome to whatever shelter we have.
+
+BRIDGET. Sit down there by the fire and welcome.
+
+OLD WOMAN [_warming her hands_]. There is a hard wind outside.
+
+          [MICHAEL _watches her curiously from the door_. PETER _comes
+          over to the table._]
+
+PETER. Have you travelled far to-day?
+
+OLD WOMAN. I have travelled far, very far; there are few have travelled
+so far as myself, and there's many a one that doesn't make me welcome.
+There was one that had strong sons I thought were friends of mine, but
+they were shearing their sheep, and they wouldn't listen to me.
+
+PETER. It's a pity indeed for any person to have no place of their own.
+
+OLD WOMAN. That's true for you indeed, and it's long I'm on the roads
+since I first went wandering.
+
+BRIDGET. It is a wonder you are not worn out with so much wandering.
+
+OLD WOMAN. Sometimes my feet are tired and my hands are quiet, but
+there is no quiet in my heart. When the people see me quiet, they think
+old age has come on me and that all the stir has gone out of me. But
+when the trouble is on me I must be talking to my friends.
+
+BRIDGET. What was it put you wandering?
+
+OLD WOMAN. Too many strangers in the house.
+
+BRIDGET. Indeed you look as if you'd had your share of trouble.
+
+OLD WOMAN. I have had trouble indeed.
+
+BRIDGET. What was it put the trouble on you?
+
+OLD WOMAN. My land that was taken from me.
+
+PETER. Was it much land they took from you?
+
+OLD WOMAN. My four beautiful green fields.
+
+PETER [_aside to_ BRIDGET]. Do you think could she be the widow Casey
+that was put out of her holding at Kilglass awhile ago?
+
+BRIDGET. She is not. I saw the widow Casey one time at the market in
+Ballina, a stout fresh woman.
+
+PETER [_to_ OLD WOMAN]. Did you hear a noise of cheering, and you
+coming up the hill?
+
+OLD WOMAN. I thought I heard the noise I used to hear when my friends
+came to visit me. [_She begins singing half to herself._]
+
+    I will go cry with the woman,
+    For yellow-haired Donough is dead,
+    With a hempen rope for a neckcloth,
+    And a white cloth on his head,--
+
+MICHAEL [_coming from the door_]. What is that you are singing, ma'am?
+
+OLD WOMAN. Singing I am about a man I knew one time, yellow-haired
+Donough, that was hanged in Galway. [_She goes on singing, much
+louder._]
+
+    I am come to cry with you, woman,
+    My hair is unwound and unbound;
+    I remember him ploughing his field,
+    Turning up the red side of the ground,
+
+    And building his barn on the hill
+    With the good mortared stone;
+    O! we'd have pulled down the gallows
+    Had it happened in Enniscrone!
+
+MICHAEL. What was it brought him to his death?
+
+OLD WOMAN. He died for love of me: many a man has died for love of me.
+
+PETER [_aside to_ BRIDGET]. Her trouble has put her wits astray.
+
+MICHAEL. Is it long since that song was made? Is it long since he got
+his death?
+
+OLD WOMAN. Not long, not long. But there were others that died for love
+of me a long time ago.
+
+MICHAEL. Were they neighbours of your own, ma'am?
+
+OLD WOMAN. Come here beside me and I'll tell you about them. [MICHAEL
+_sits down beside her at the hearth._] There was a red man of the
+O'Donnells from the north, and a man of the O'Sullivans from the south,
+and there was one Brian that lost his life at Clontarf by the sea, and
+there were a great many in the west, some that died hundreds of years
+ago, and there are some that will die to-morrow.
+
+MICHAEL. Is it in the west that men will die to-morrow?
+
+OLD WOMAN. Come nearer, nearer to me.
+
+BRIDGET. Is she right, do you think? Or is she a woman from beyond the
+world?
+
+PETER. She doesn't know well what she's talking about, with the want
+and the trouble she has gone through.
+
+BRIDGET. The poor thing, we should treat her well.
+
+PETER. Give her a drink of milk and a bit of the oaten cake.
+
+BRIDGET. Maybe we should give her something along with that, to bring
+her on her way. A few pence, or a shilling itself, and we with so much
+money in the house.
+
+PETER. Indeed I'd not begrudge it to her if we had it to spare, but if
+we go running through what we have, we'll soon have to break the
+hundred pounds, and that would be a pity.
+
+BRIDGET. Shame on you, Peter. Give her the shilling, and your blessing
+with it, or our own luck will go from us.
+
+          [PETER _goes to the box and takes out a shilling._]
+
+BRIDGET [_to the_ OLD WOMAN]. Will you have a drink of milk?
+
+OLD WOMAN. It is not food or drink that I want.
+
+PETER [_offering the shilling_]. Here is something for you.
+
+OLD WOMAN. That is not what I want. It is not silver I want.
+
+PETER. What is it you would be asking for?
+
+OLD WOMAN. If anyone would give me help he must give me himself, he
+must give me all.
+
+          [PETER _goes over to the table, staring at the shilling in
+          his hand in a bewildered way, and stands whispering to_
+          BRIDGET.]
+
+MICHAEL. Have you no one to care you in your age, ma'am?
+
+OLD WOMAN. I have not. With all the lovers that brought me their love,
+I never set out the bed for any.
+
+MICHAEL. Are you lonely going the roads, ma'am?
+
+OLD WOMAN. I have my thoughts and I have my hopes.
+
+MICHAEL. What hopes have you to hold to?
+
+OLD WOMAN. The hope of getting my beautiful fields back again; the hope
+of putting the strangers out of my house.
+
+MICHAEL. What way will you do that, ma'am?
+
+OLD WOMAN. I have good friends that will help me. They are gathering to
+help me now. I am not afraid. If they are put down to-day, they will
+get the upper hand to-morrow. [_She gets up._] I must be going to meet
+my friends. They are coming to help me, and I must be there to welcome
+them. I must call the neighbours together to welcome them.
+
+MICHAEL. I will go with you.
+
+BRIDGET. It is not her friends you have to go and welcome, Michael; it
+is the girl coming into the house you have to welcome. You have plenty
+to do, it is food and drink you have to bring to the house. The woman
+that is coming home is not coming with empty hands; you would not have
+an empty house before her. [_To the_ OLD WOMAN.] Maybe you don't know,
+ma'am, that my son is going to be married to-morrow.
+
+OLD WOMAN. It is not a man going to his marriage that I look to for
+help.
+
+PETER [_to_ BRIDGET]. Who is she, do you think, at all?
+
+BRIDGET. You did not tell us your name yet, ma'am.
+
+OLD WOMAN. Some call me the Poor Old Woman, and there are some that
+call me Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.
+
+PETER. I think I knew someone of that name once. Who was it, I wonder?
+It must have been someone I knew when I was a boy. No, no, I remember,
+I heard it in a song.
+
+OLD WOMAN [_who is standing in the doorway_]. They are wondering that
+there were songs made for me; there have been many songs made for me. I
+heard one on the wind this morning. [_She sings._]
+
+    Do not make a great keening
+    When the graves have been dug to-morrow.
+    Do not call the white-scarfed riders
+    To the burying that shall be to-morrow.
+
+    Do not spread food to call strangers
+    To the wakes that shall be to-morrow;
+    Do not give money for prayers
+    For the dead that shall die to-morrow ...
+
+they will have no need of prayers, they will have no need of prayers.
+
+MICHAEL. I do not know what that song means, but tell me something I
+can do for you.
+
+PETER. Come over to me, Michael.
+
+MICHAEL. Hush, father, listen to her.
+
+OLD WOMAN. It is a hard service they take that help me. Many that are
+red-cheeked now will be pale-cheeked; many that have been free to walk
+the hills and the bogs and the rushes will be sent to walk hard streets
+in far countries; many a good plan will be broken; many that have
+gathered money will not stay to spend it; many a child will be born,
+and there will be no father at its christening to give it a name. They
+that had red cheeks will have pale cheeks for my sake; and for all
+that, they will think they are well paid.
+
+          [_She goes out; her voice is heard outside singing._]
+
+    They shall be remembered for ever,
+    They shall be alive for ever,
+    They shall be speaking for ever,
+    The people shall hear them for ever.
+
+BRIDGET [_to_ PETER]. Look at him, Peter; he has the look of a man
+that has got the touch. [_Raising her voice._] Look here, Michael, at
+the wedding-clothes. Such grand clothes as these are. You have a right
+to fit them on now; it would be a pity to-morrow if they did not fit.
+The boys would be laughing at you. Take them, Michael, and go into the
+room and fit them on. [_She puts them on his arm._]
+
+MICHAEL. What wedding are you talking of? What clothes will I be
+wearing to-morrow?
+
+BRIDGET. These are the clothes you are going to wear when you marry
+Delia Cahel to-morrow.
+
+MICHAEL. I had forgotten that.
+
+          [_He looks at the clothes and turns towards the inner room,
+          but stops at the sound of cheering outside._]
+
+PETER. There is the shouting come to our own door. What is it has
+happened?
+
+          [PATRICK _and_ DELIA _come in._]
+
+PATRICK. There are ships in the Bay; the French are landing at Killala!
+
+          [PETER _takes his pipe from his mouth and his hat off, and
+          stands up. The clothes slip from_ MICHAEL's _arm._]
+
+DELIA. Michael! [_He takes no notice._] Michael! [_He turns towards
+her._] Why do you look at me like a stranger?
+
+          [_She drops his arm_. BRIDGET _goes over towards her._]
+
+PATRICK. The boys are all hurrying down the hillsides to join the
+French.
+
+DELIA. Michael won't be going to join the French.
+
+BRIDGET [_to_ PETER]. Tell him not to go, Peter.
+
+PETER. It's no use. He doesn't hear a word we're saying.
+
+BRIDGET. Try and coax him over to the fire.
+
+DELIA. Michael! Michael! You won't leave me! You won't join the French,
+and we going to be married!
+
+          [_She puts her arms about him; he turns towards her as if
+          about to yield._ OLD WOMAN's _voice outside._]
+
+    They shall be speaking for ever,
+    The people shall hear them for ever.
+
+          [MICHAEL _breaks away from_ DELIA _and goes out._]
+
+PETER [_to_ PATRICK, _laying a hand on his arm_]. Did you see an old
+woman going down the path?
+
+PATRICK. I did not, but I saw a young girl, and she had the walk of a
+queen.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOUR-GLASS:
+
+A MORALITY
+
+
+
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+
+A WISE MAN.
+
+SOME PUPILS.
+
+A FOOL.
+
+AN ANGEL.
+
+THE WISE MAN'S WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN.
+
+
+SCENE: _A large room with a door at the back and another at the side or
+else a curtained place where the persons can enter by parting the
+curtains. A desk and a chair at one side. An hour-glass on a stand near
+the door. A creepy stool near it. Some benches. A_ WISE MAN _sitting at
+his desk._
+
+
+WISE M. [_turning over the pages of a book_]. Where is that passage I
+am to explain to my pupils to-day? Here it is, and the book says that
+it was written by a beggar on the walls of Babylon: "There are two
+living countries, the one visible and the one invisible; and when it is
+winter with us it is summer in that country, and when the November
+winds are up among us it is lambing time there." I wish that my pupils
+had asked me to explain any other passage. [_The_ FOOL _comes in and
+stands at the door holding out his hat. He has a pair of shears in the
+other hand._] It sounds to me like foolishness; and yet that cannot be,
+for the writer of this book, where I have found so much knowledge,
+would not have set it by itself on this page, and surrounded it with so
+many images and so many deep colours and so much fine gilding, if it
+had been foolishness.
+
+FOOL. Give me a penny.
+
+WISE M. [_turns to another page_]. Here he has written: "The learned in
+old times forgot the visible country." That I understand, but I have
+taught my learners better.
+
+FOOL. Won't you give me a penny?
+
+WISE M. What do you want? The words of the wise Saracen will not teach
+you much.
+
+FOOL. Such a great wise teacher as you are will not refuse a penny to a
+Fool.
+
+WISE M. What do you know about wisdom?
+
+FOOL. Oh, I know! I know what I have seen.
+
+WISE M. What is it you have seen?
+
+FOOL. When I went by Kilcluan where the bells used to be ringing at the
+break of every day, I could hear nothing but the people snoring in
+their houses. When I went by Tubbervanach where the young men used to
+be climbing the hill to the blessed well, they were sitting at the
+crossroads playing cards. When I went by Carrigoras, where the friars
+used to be fasting and serving the poor, I saw them drinking wine and
+obeying their wives. And when I asked what misfortune had brought all
+these changes, they said it was no misfortune, but it was the wisdom
+they had learned from your teaching.
+
+WISE M. Run round to the kitchen, and my wife will give you something
+to eat.
+
+FOOL. That is foolish advice for a wise man to give.
+
+WISE M. Why, Fool?
+
+FOOL. What is eaten is gone. I want pennies for my bag. I must buy
+bacon in the shops, and nuts in the market, and strong drink for the
+time when the sun is weak. And I want snares to catch the rabbits and
+the squirrels and the hares, and a pot to cook them in.
+
+WISE M. Go away. I have other things to think of now than giving you
+pennies.
+
+FOOL. Give me a penny and I will bring you luck. Bresal the Fisherman
+lets me sleep among the nets in his loft in the winter-time because he
+says I bring him luck; and in the summer-time the wild creatures let me
+sleep near their nests and their holes. It is lucky even to look at me
+or to touch me, but it is much more lucky to give me a penny. [_Holds
+out his hand._] If I wasn't lucky, I'd starve.
+
+WISE M. What have you got the shears for?
+
+FOOL. I won't tell you. If I told you, you would drive them away.
+
+WISE M. Whom would I drive away?
+
+FOOL. I won't tell you.
+
+WISE M. Not if I give you a penny?
+
+FOOL. No.
+
+WISE M. Not if I give you two pennies?
+
+FOOL. You will be very lucky if you give me two pennies, but I won't
+tell you!
+
+WISE M. Three pennies?
+
+FOOL. Four, and I will tell you!
+
+WISE M. Very well, four. But I will not call you Teigue the Fool any
+longer.
+
+FOOL. Let me come close to you where nobody will hear me. But first you
+must promise you will not drive them away. [WISE M. _nods._] Every day
+men go out dressed in black and spread great black nets over the hills,
+great black nets.
+
+WISE M. Why do they do that?
+
+FOOL. That they may catch the feet of the angels. But every morning,
+just before the dawn, I go out and cut the nets with my shears, and the
+angels fly away.
+
+WISE M. Ah, now I know that you are Teigue the Fool. You have told me
+that I am wise, and I have never seen an angel.
+
+FOOL. I have seen plenty of angels.
+
+WISE M. Do you bring luck to the angels too?
+
+FOOL. Oh, no, no! No one could do that. But they are always there if
+one looks about one; they are like the blades of grass.
+
+WISE M. When do you see them?
+
+FOOL. When one gets quiet, then something wakes up inside one,
+something happy and quiet like the stars--not like the seven that move,
+but like the fixed stars. [_He points upward._]
+
+WISE M. And what happens then?
+
+FOOL. Then all in a minute one smells summer flowers, and tall people
+go by, happy and laughing, and their clothes are the colour of burning
+sods.
+
+WISE M. Is it long since you have seen them, Teigue the Fool?
+
+FOOL. Not long, glory be to God! I saw one coming behind me just now.
+It was not laughing, but it had clothes the colour of burning sods, and
+there was something shining about its head.
+
+WISE M. Well, there are your four pennies. You, a fool, say "glory be
+to God," but before I came the wise men said it.
+
+FOOL. Four pennies! That means a great deal of luck. Great teacher, I
+have brought you plenty of luck!
+
+          [_He goes out shaking the bag._]
+
+WISE M. Though they call him Teigue the Fool, he is not more foolish
+than everybody used to be, with their dreams and their preachings and
+their three worlds; but I have overthrown their three worlds with the
+seven sciences. [_He touches the books with his hands._] With
+Philosophy that was made from the lonely star, I have taught them to
+forget Theology; with Architecture, I have hidden the ramparts of their
+cloudy heaven; with Music, the fierce planets' daughter whose hair is
+always on fire, and with Grammar that is the moon's daughter, I have
+shut their ears to the imaginary harpings and speech of the angels; and
+I have made formations of battle with Arithmetic that have put the
+hosts of heaven to the rout. But, Rhetoric and Dialectic, that have
+been born out of the light star and out of the amorous star, you have
+been my spear-man and my catapult! Oh! my swift horsemen! Oh! my keen
+darting arguments, it is because of you that I have overthrown the
+hosts of foolishness! [_An_ Angel, _in a dress the colour of embers,
+and carrying a blossoming apple bough in her hand and a gilded halo
+about her head, stands upon the threshold._] Before I came, men's minds
+were stuffed with folly about a heaven where birds sang the hours, and
+about angels that came and stood upon men's thresholds. But I have
+locked the visions into heaven and turned the key upon them. Well, I
+must consider this passage about the two countries. My mother used to
+say something of the kind. She would say that when our bodies sleep our
+souls awake, and that whatever withers here ripens yonder, and that
+harvests are snatched from us that they may feed invisible people. But
+the meaning of the book may be different, for only fools and women have
+thoughts like that; their thoughts were never written upon the walls of
+Babylon. I must ring the bell for my pupils. [_He sees the_ ANGEL.]
+What are you? Who are you? I think I saw some that were like you in my
+dreams when I was a child--that bright thing, that dress that is the
+colour of embers! But I have done with dreams, I have done with dreams.
+
+ANGEL. I am the Angel of the Most High God.
+
+WISE M. Why have you come to me?
+
+ANGEL. I have brought you a message.
+
+WISE M. What message have you got for me?
+
+ANGEL. You will die within the hour. You will die when the last grains
+have fallen in this glass. [_She turns the hour-glass._]
+
+WISE M. My time to die has not come. I have my pupils. I have a young
+wife and children that I cannot leave. Why must I die?
+
+ANGEL. You must die because no souls have passed over the threshold of
+Heaven since you came into this country. The threshold is grassy, and
+the gates are rusty, and the angels that keep watch there are lonely.
+
+WISE M. Where will death bring me to?
+
+ANGEL. The doors of Heaven will not open to you, for you have denied
+the existence of Heaven; and the doors of Purgatory will not open to
+you, for you have denied the existence of Purgatory.
+
+WISE M. But I have also denied the existence of Hell!
+
+ANGEL. Hell is the place of those who deny.
+
+WISE M. [_kneels_]. I have, indeed, denied everything, and have taught
+others to deny. I have believed in nothing but what my senses told me.
+But, oh! beautiful Angel, forgive me, forgive me!
+
+ANGEL. You should have asked forgiveness long ago.
+
+WISE M. Had I seen your face as I see it now, oh! beautiful angel, I
+would have believed, I would have asked forgiveness. Maybe you do not
+know how easy it is to doubt. Storm, death, the grass rotting, many
+sicknesses, those are the messengers that came to me. Oh! why are you
+silent? You carry the pardon of the Most High; give it to me! I would
+kiss your hands if I were not afraid--no, no, the hem of your dress!
+
+ANGEL. You let go undying hands too long ago to take hold of them now.
+
+WISE M. You cannot understand. You live in that country people only see
+in their dreams. Maybe it is as hard for you to understand why we
+disbelieve as it is for us to believe. Oh! what have I said! You know
+everything! Give me time to undo what I have done. Give me a year--a
+month--a day--an hour! Give me to this hour's end, that I may undo what
+I have done!
+
+ANGEL. You cannot undo what you have done. Yet I have this power with
+my message. If you can find one that believes before the hour's end,
+you shall come to Heaven after the years of Purgatory. For, from one
+fiery seed, watched over by those that sent me, the harvest can come
+again to heap the golden threshing floor. But now farewell, for I am
+weary of the weight of time.
+
+WISE M. Blessed be the Father, blessed be the Son, blessed be the
+Spirit, blessed be the Messenger They have sent!
+
+ANGEL [_at the door and pointing at the hour-glass_]. In a little
+while the uppermost glass will be empty. [_Goes out._]
+
+WISE M. Everything will be well with me. I will call my pupils; they
+only say they doubt. [_Pulls the bell._] They will be here in a moment.
+They want to please me; they pretend that they disbelieve. Belief is
+too old to be overcome all in a minute. Besides, I can prove what I
+once disproved. [_Another pull at the bell._] They are coming now. I
+will go to my desk. I will speak quietly, as if nothing had happened.
+
+          [_He stands at the desk with a fixed look in his eyes. The
+          voices of the pupils are heard outside singing these words._]
+
+    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
+    O my dear, O my dear.
+
+          [_The sound grows louder as they come nearer, but ceases on
+          the threshold._]
+
+               _Enter_ PUPILS _and the_ FOOL.
+
+FOOL. Leave me alone. Leave me alone. Who is that pulling at my bag?
+King's son, do not pull at my bag.
+
+A YOUNG MAN. Did your friends the angels give you that bag? Why don't
+they fill your bag for you?
+
+FOOL. Give me pennies! Give me some pennies!
+
+A YOUNG M. What do you want pennies for?--that great bag at your waist
+is heavy.
+
+FOOL. I want to buy bacon in the shops, and nuts in the market, and
+strong drink for the time when the sun is weak, and snares to catch
+rabbits and the squirrels that steal the nuts, and hares, and a great
+pot to cook them in.
+
+A YOUNG M. Why don't your friends tell you where buried treasures are?
+Why don't they make you dream about treasures? If one dreams three
+times there is always treasure.
+
+FOOL [_holding out his hat_]. Give me pennies! Give me pennies!
+
+          [_They throw pennies into his hat. He is standing close to
+          the door, that he may hold out his hat to each newcomer._]
+
+A YOUNG M. Master, will you have Teigue the Fool for a scholar?
+
+ANOTHER YOUNG M. Teigue, will you give us your pennies if we teach you
+lessons? No, he goes to school for nothing on the mountains. Tell us
+what you learn on the mountains, Teigue.
+
+WISE M. Be silent all! [_He has been standing silent, looking away._]
+Stand still in your places, for there is something I would have you
+tell me.
+
+          [_A moment's pause. They all stand round in their places._
+          TEIGUE _still stands at the door._]
+
+WISE M. Is there anyone amongst you who believes in God? In Heaven? Or
+in Purgatory? Or in Hell?
+
+ALL THE YOUNG MEN. No one, Master! No one!
+
+WISE M. I knew you would all say that; but do not be afraid. I will not
+be angry. Tell me the truth. Do you not believe?
+
+A YOUNG M. We once did, but you have taught us to know better.
+
+WISE M. Oh, teaching! teaching does not go very deep! The heart remains
+unchanged under it all. You have the faith that you have always had,
+and you are afraid to tell me.
+
+A YOUNG M. No, no, Master!
+
+WISE M. If you tell me that you have not changed, I shall be glad and
+not angry.
+
+A YOUNG M. [_to his_ NEIGHBOUR]. He wants somebody to dispute with.
+
+HIS NEIGHBOUR. I knew that from the beginning.
+
+A YOUNG M. That is not the subject for to-day; you were going to talk
+about the words the beggar wrote upon the walls of Babylon.
+
+WISE M. If there is one amongst you that believes, he will be my best
+friend. Surely there is one amongst you. [_They are all silent._]
+Surely what you learned at your mother's knees has not been so soon
+forgotten.
+
+A YOUNG M. Master, till you came, no teacher in this land was able to
+get rid of foolishness and ignorance. But every one has listened to
+you, every one has learned the truth. You have had your last
+disputation.
+
+ANOTHER. What a fool you made of that monk in the market-place! He had
+not a word to say.
+
+WISE M. [_comes from his desk and stands among them in the middle of
+the room_]. Pupils, dear friends, I have deceived you all this time. It
+was I myself who was ignorant. There is a God. There is a Heaven. There
+is fire that passes and there is fire that lasts for ever.
+
+          [TEIGUE, _through all this, is sitting on a stool by the
+          door, reckoning on his fingers what he will buy with his
+          money._]
+
+A YOUNG M. [_to_ Another]. He will not be satisfied till we dispute
+with him. [_To the_ WISE MAN.] Prove it, Master. Have you seen them?
+
+WISE M. [_in a low, solemn voice_]. Just now, before you came in,
+someone came to the door, and when I looked up I saw an angel standing
+there.
+
+A YOUNG M. You were in a dream. Anybody can see an angel in his dreams.
+
+WISE M. Oh, my God! It was not a dream! I was awake, waking as I am
+now. I tell you I was awake as I am now.
+
+A YOUNG M. Some dream when they are awake, but they are the crazy, and
+who would believe what they say? Forgive me, Master, but that is what
+you taught me to say. That is what you said to the monk when he spoke
+of the visions of the saints and the martyrs.
+
+ANOTHER YOUNG M. You see how well we remember your teaching.
+
+WISE M. Out, out from my sight! I want someone with belief. I must find
+that grain the Angel spoke of before I die. I tell you I must find it,
+and you answer me with arguments. Out with you, out of my sight! [_The_
+YOUNG MEN _laugh._]
+
+A YOUNG M. How well he plays at faith! He is like the monk when he had
+nothing more to say.
+
+WISE M. Out, out, this is no time for laughter! Out with you, though
+you are a king's son! [_They begin to hurry out._]
+
+A YOUNG M. Come, come; he wants us to find someone who will dispute
+with him.
+
+          [_All go out._]
+
+WISE M. [_alone; he goes to the door at the side_]. I will call my
+wife. She will believe; women always believe. [_He opens the door and
+calls._] Bridget! Bridget! [BRIDGET _comes in, wearing her apron, her
+sleeves turned up from her floury arms._] Bridget, tell me the truth;
+do not say what you think will please me. Do you sometimes say your
+prayers?
+
+BRIDGET. Prayers! No, you taught me to leave them off long ago. At
+first I was sorry, but I am glad now, for I am sleepy in the evening.
+
+WISE M. But do you not believe in God?
+
+BRIDGET. Oh, a good wife only believes what her husband tells her!
+
+WISE M. But sometimes, when you are alone, when I am in the school and
+the children asleep, do you not think about the saints, about the
+things you used to believe in? What do you think of when you are alone?
+
+BRIDGET [_considering_]. I think about nothing. Sometimes I wonder if
+the linen is bleaching white, or I go out to see if the cows are
+picking up the chickens' food.
+
+WISE M. Oh, what can I do! Is there nobody who believes he can never
+die? I must go and find somebody! [_He goes towards the door, but stops
+with his eyes fixed on the hour-glass._] I cannot go out; I cannot
+leave that; go and call my pupils again--I will make them understand--I
+will say to them that only amid spiritual terror, or only when all that
+laid hold on life is shaken can we see truth--but no, do not call them,
+they would answer as I have bid.
+
+BRIDGET. You want somebody to get up an argument with.
+
+WISE M. Oh, look out of the door and tell me if there is anybody there
+in the street! I cannot leave this glass; somebody might shake it! Then
+the sand would fall more quickly.
+
+BRIDGET. I don't understand what you are saying. [_Looks out._] There
+is a great crowd of people talking to your pupils.
+
+WISE M. Oh, run out, Bridget, and see if they have found somebody that
+all the time while I was teaching understood nothing or did not listen.
+
+BRIDGET [_wiping her arms in her apron and pulling down her sleeves_].
+It's a hard thing to be married to a man of learning that must be
+always having arguments. [_Goes out and shouts through the kitchen
+door._] Don't be meddling with the bread, children, while I'm out.
+
+WISE M. [_kneels down_]. "_Confiteor Deo omnipotente beatae Mariae...._"
+I have forgotten it all. It is thirty years since I have said a prayer.
+I must pray in the common tongue, like a clown begging in the market,
+like Teigue the Fool! [_He prays._] Help me, Father, Son, and Spirit!
+
+          [BRIDGET _enters, followed by the_ FOOL, _who is holding out
+          his hat to her._]
+
+FOOL. Give me something; give me a penny to buy bacon in the shops, and
+nuts in the market, and strong drink for the time when the sun is weak.
+
+BRIDGET. I have no pennies. [_To the_ WISE MAN.] Your pupils cannot
+find anybody to argue with you. There is nobody in the whole country
+who has enough belief to fill a pipe with since you put down the monk.
+Can't you be quiet now and not always wanting to have arguments? It
+must be terrible to have a mind like that.
+
+WISE M. I am lost! I am lost!
+
+BRIDGET. Leave me alone now; I have to make the bread for you and the
+children.
+
+WISE M. Out of this, woman, out of this, I say! [BRIDGET _goes through
+the kitchen door._] Will nobody find a way to help me! But she spoke of
+my children. I had forgotten them. They will believe. It is only those
+who have reason that doubt; the young are full of faith. Bridget,
+Bridget, send my children to me.
+
+BRIDGET [_inside_]. Your father wants you; run to him now.
+
+          [_The two_ CHILDREN _come in. They stand together a little
+          way from the threshold of the kitchen door, looking timidly
+          at their father._]
+
+WISE M. Children, what do you believe? Is there a Heaven? Is there a
+Hell? Is there a Purgatory?
+
+FIRST CHILD. We haven't forgotten, father.
+
+THE OTHER CHILD. Oh, no, father. [_They both speak together, as if in
+school._] There is nothing we cannot see; there is nothing we cannot
+touch.
+
+FIRST CHILD. Foolish people used to think that there was, but you are
+very learned and you have taught us better.
+
+WISE M. You are just as bad as the others, just as bad as the others!
+Do not run away; come back to me. [_The_ CHILDREN _begin to cry and run
+away._] Why are you afraid? I will teach you better--no, I will never
+teach you again. Go to your mother! no, she will not be able to teach
+them.... Help them, O God!... The grains are going very quickly. There
+is very little sand in the uppermost glass. Somebody will come for me
+in a moment; perhaps he is at the door now! All creatures that have
+reason doubt. O that the grass and the plants could speak! Somebody has
+said that they would wither if they doubted. O speak to me, O grass
+blades! O fingers of God's certainty, speak to me! You are millions and
+you will not speak. I dare not know the moment the messenger will come
+for me. I will cover the glass. [_He covers it and brings it to the
+desk. Sees the_ FOOL, _who is sitting by the door playing with some
+flowers which he has stuck in his hat. He has begun to blow a dandelion
+head._] What are you doing?
+
+FOOL. Wait a moment. [_He blows._] Four, five, six.
+
+WISE M. What are you doing that for?
+
+FOOL. I am blowing at the dandelion to find out what time it is.
+
+WISE M. You have heard everything! That is why you want to find out
+what hour it is! You are waiting to see them coming through the door to
+carry me away. [FOOL _goes on blowing._] Out through the door with you!
+I will have no one here when they come. [_He seizes the_ FOOL _by the
+shoulders, and begins to force him out through the door, then suddenly
+changes his mind._] No, I have something to ask you. [_He drags him
+back into the room._] Is there a Heaven? Is there a Hell? Is there a
+Purgatory?
+
+FOOL. So you ask me now. When you were asking your pupils, I said to
+myself, if he would ask Teigue the Fool, Teigue could tell him all
+about it, for Teigue has learned all about it when he has been cutting
+the nets.
+
+WISE M. Tell me; tell me!
+
+FOOL. I said, Teigue knows everything. Not even the cats or the hares
+that milk the cows have Teigue's wisdom. But Teigue will not speak; he
+says nothing.
+
+WISE M. Tell me, tell me! For under the cover the grains are falling,
+and when they are all fallen I shall die; and my soul will be lost if I
+have not found somebody that believes! Speak, speak!
+
+FOOL [_looking wise_]. No, no, I won't tell you what is in my mind,
+and I won't tell you what is in my bag. You might steal away my
+thoughts. I met a bodach on the road yesterday, and he said, "Teigue,
+tell me how many pennies are in your bag; I will wager three pennies
+that there are not twenty pennies in your bag; let me put in my hand
+and count them." But I pulled the strings tighter, like this; and when
+I go to sleep every night I hide the bag where no one knows.
+
+WISE M. [_goes towards the hour-glass as if to uncover it_]. No, no, I
+have not the courage. [_He kneels._] Have pity upon me, Fool, and tell
+me!
+
+FOOL. Ah! Now, that is different. I am not afraid of you now. But I
+must come nearer to you; somebody in there might hear what the Angel
+said.
+
+WISE M. Oh, what did the Angel tell you?
+
+FOOL. Once I was alone on the hills, and an angel came by and he said,
+"Teigue the Fool, do not forget the Three Fires; the Fire that
+punishes, the Fire that purifies, and the Fire wherein the soul
+rejoices for ever!"
+
+WISE M. He believes! I am saved! The sand has run out.... [FOOL _helps
+him to his chair._] I am going from the country of the seven wandering
+stars, and I am going to the country of the fixed stars!... I
+understand it all now. One sinks in on God; we do not see the truth;
+God sees the truth in us. Ring the bell. [FOOL _rings bell._] Are they
+coming? Tell them, Fool, that when the life and the mind are broken the
+truth comes through them like peas through a broken peascod. Pray,
+Fool, that they may be given a sign and carry their souls alive out of
+the dying world. Your prayers are better than mine.
+
+          [FOOL _bows his head_. WISE MAN's _head sinks on his arm on
+          the books_. PUPILS _are heard singing as before, but now they
+          come right into the room before they cease their song._]
+
+A YOUNG MAN. Look at the Fool turned bell-ringer!
+
+ANOTHER. What have you called us in for, Teigue? What are you going to
+tell us?
+
+ANOTHER. No wonder he has had dreams! See, he is fast asleep now.
+[_Goes over and touches him._] Oh, he is dead!
+
+FOOL. Do not stir! He asked for a sign that you might be saved. [_All
+are silent for a moment._] ... Look what has come from his mouth ... a
+little winged thing ... a little shining thing.... It is gone to the
+door. [_The_ ANGEL _appears in the doorway, stretches out her hands and
+closes them again._] The Angel has taken it in her hands.... She will
+open her hands in the Garden of Paradise. [_They all kneel._]
+
+
+CURTAIN
+
+
+                     *      *      *      *      *
+
+
+BY ALFRED NOYES
+
+Poems
+
+With an Introduction by HAMILTON W. MABIE
+
+_Cloth, 12mo, $1.25 net_
+
+
+"Imagination, the capacity to perceive vividly and feel sincerely, and
+the gift of fit and beautiful expression in verse-form--if these may be
+taken as the equipment of a poet, nearly all of this volume is poetry.
+And if to the sum of these be added the indescribable increment of
+charm which comes occasionally to the work of some poet, quite unearned
+by any of these catalogued qualities of his, you have a fair measure of
+Mr. Noyes at his best.... Two considerations render Mr. Noyes
+interesting above most poets: the wonderful degree in which the
+personal charm illumines what he has already written, and the surprises
+which one feels may be in store in his future work. His feelings have
+already so much variety and so much apparent sincerity that it is
+impossible to tell in what direction his genius will develop. In
+whatever style he writes,--the mystical, the historical-dramatic, the
+impassioned description of natural beauty, the ballad, the love
+lyric,--he has the peculiarity of seeming in each style to have found
+the truest expression of himself."--_Louisville Courier-Journal._
+
+
+_PUBLISHED BY_
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+MR. ALFRED NOYES'S POEMS
+
+The Flower of Old Japan
+
+
+Contains also "Forest of Wild Thyme," of which the _Argonaut_ says: "It
+is not only an exquisite piece of work, but it is a psychological
+analysis of the child-mind so daring and yet so convincing as to lift
+it to the plane where the masterpieces of literature dwell. It can be
+read with delight by a child of ten. It is put into the mouth of a
+child of about that age, but the adult must be strangely constituted
+who can remain indifferent to its haunting spell or who can resist the
+fascination which lies in its every page."
+
+
+"We are reminded both of Stevenson--to whom Mr. Noyes pays a glowing
+tribute--and Lewis Carroll; yet there is no imitation; Mr. Noyes has a
+distinct poetic style of his own.... In a matter-of-fact age such verse
+as this is an oasis in a desert land."--_Providence Journal._
+
+
+"It has seemed to us from the first that Noyes has been one of the most
+hope-inspiring figures in our latter-day poetry. He, almost alone, of
+the younger men seems to have the true singing voice, the gift of
+uttering in authentic lyric cry some fresh, unspoiled
+emotion."--_Post._
+
+
+Mr. Richard Le Gallienne in the _North American Review_ pointed out
+recently "their spontaneous power and freshness, their imaginative
+vision, their lyrical magic." He adds: "Mr. Noyes is surprisingly
+various. I have seldom read one book, particularly by so young a
+writer, in which so many different things are done, and all done so
+well.... But that for which one is most grateful to Mr. Noyes in his
+strong and brilliant treatment of all his rich material, is the gift by
+which, in my opinion, he stands alone among the younger poets of the
+day, his lyrical gift."
+
+_Cloth, 12mo, $1.25 net_
+
+
+_PUBLISHED BY_
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+Lyrical and Dramatic Poems
+
+BY W. B. YEATS
+
+_In two volumes; each, $1.75 net_
+
+
+The two-volume edition of the Irish poet's works includes everything he
+has done in verse up to the present time. The first volume contains his
+lyrics; the second includes all of his five dramas in verse: "The
+Countess Cathleen," "The Land of Heart's Desire," "The King's
+Threshold," "On Baile's Strand," and "The Shadowy Waters."
+
+William Butler Yeats stands among the few men to be reckoned with in
+modern poetry, especially of a dramatic character. The _New York Sun_,
+for example, refers to him as "an important factor in English
+literature," and continues:--
+
+    "'Cathleen ni Hoolihan' is a perfect piece of artistic work, poetic
+    and wonderfully dramatic to read, and, we should imagine, far more
+    dramatic in the acting. Maeterlinck has never done anything so true
+    or effective as this short prose drama of Mr. Yeats's. There is not
+    a superfluous word in the play and no word that does not tell. It
+    must be dangerous to represent it in Ireland, for it is an Irish
+    Marseillaise.... In 'The Hour Glass' a noble and poetic idea is
+    carried out effectively, while 'A Pot of Broth' is merely a
+    dramatized humorous anecdote. But 'Cathleen ni Hoolihan' stirs the
+    blood, and in itself establishes Mr. Yeats's reputation for good."
+
+The _New York Herald_ remarks:--
+
+    "Mr. Yeats is probably the most important as well as the most
+    widely known of the men concerned directly in the so-called Celtic
+    renaissance. More than this, he stands among the few men to be
+    reckoned with in modern poetry."
+
+
+_PUBLISHED BY_
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+A History of English Poetry
+
+BY W. J. COURTHOPE, C.B., D.Litt., LL.D.
+
+Late Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford
+
+_Cloth, 8vo, $3.25 net per volume_
+
+
+VOLUME I. The Middle Ages--Influence of the Roman Empire--The
+Encyclopaedic Education of the Church--The Feudal System.
+
+VOLUME II. The Renaissance and the Reformation--Influence of the Court
+and the Universities.
+
+VOLUME III. English Poetry in the Seventeenth Century--Decadent
+Influence of the Feudal Monarchy--Growth of the National Genius.
+
+VOLUME IV. Development and Decline of the Poetic Drama--Influence of
+the Court and the People.
+
+VOLUME V. The Constitutional Compromise of the Eighteenth
+Century--Effects of the Classical Renaissance--Its Zenith and
+Decline--The Early Romantic Renaissance.
+
+                            *     *     *
+
+"It is his privilege to have made a contribution of great value and
+signal importance to the history of English Literature."--_Pall Mall
+Gazette._
+
+
+_PUBLISHED BY_
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Unicorn from the Stars and Other
+Plays, by William B. Yeats and Lady Gregory
+
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