THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS

AND OTHER PLAYS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANYNEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGOATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO. , LIMITEDLONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTAMELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO

THE UNICORN FROM THE STARS

AND OTHER PLAYS

BY

WILLIAM B. YEATS

AND

LADY GREGORY

New YorkTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY1908

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1904, 1908, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

New edition. Set up and electrotyped. Published April, 1908. 

Norwood PressJ. 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 toLady Gregory. My eyesight had become so bad that I feared I couldhenceforth write nothing with my own hands but verses, which, asTheophile Gautier has said, can be written with a burnt match. OurIrish Dramatic movement was just passing out of the hands of EnglishActors, hired because we knew of no Irish ones, and our little troop ofIrish amateurs--as they were at the time--could not have too manyPlays, for they would come to nothing without continued playing. Besides, it was exciting to discover, after the unpopularity of blankverse, what one could do with three Plays written in prose and foundedon three public interests deliberately chosen, --religion, humour, patriotism. I planned in those days to establish a dramatic movementupon the popular passions, as the ritual of religion is established inthe emotions that surround birth and death and marriage, and it wasonly the coming of the unclassifiable, uncontrollable, capricious, uncompromising genius of J. M. Synge that altered the direction of themovement and made it individual, critical, and combative. If his hadnot, some other stone would have blocked up the old way, for the publicmind of Ireland, stupefied by prolonged intolerant organisation, cantake but brief pleasure in the caprice that is in all art, whatever itssubject, and, more commonly, can but hate unaccustomed personalreverie. 

I had dreamed the subject of "Cathleen ni Houlihan, " but found when Ilooked for words that I could not create peasant dialogue that would gonearer to peasant life than the dialogue in "The Land of Heart'sDesire" or "The Countess Cathleen. " Every artistic form has its ownancestry, and the more elaborate it is, the more is the writerconstrained to symbolise rather than to represent life, until perhapshis ladies of fashion are shepherds and shepherdesses, as when ColinClout came home again. I could not get away, no matter how closely Iwatched the country life, from images and dreams which had all tooroyal blood, for they were descended like the thought of every poetfrom all the conquering dreams of Europe, and I wished to make thathigh life mix into some rough contemporary life without ceasing to beitself, 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 hadwritten no Plays, but had, I discovered, a greater knowledge of thecountry mind and country speech than anybody I had ever met with, andnothing but a burden of knowledge could keep "Cathleen ni Houlihan"from the clouds. I needed less help for the "Hour-Glass, " for thespeech there is far from reality, and so the Play is almost whollymine. When, however, I brought to her the general scheme for the "Potof Broth, " a little farce which seems rather imitative to-day, thoughit plays well enough, and of the first version of "The Unicorn, " "Wherethere is Nothing, " a five-act Play written in a fortnight to save itfrom a plagiarist, and tried to dictate them, her share grew more andmore considerable. She would not allow me to put her name to thesePlays, though I have always tried to explain her share in them, but hassigned "The Unicorn from the Stars, " which but for a good deal of thegeneral 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 beencapable of expressing completely in criticism alone, of bringingtogether the rough life of the road and the frenzy that the poets havefound in their ancient cellar, --a prophecy, as it were, of the timewhen it will be once again possible for a Dickens and a Shelley to beborn in the one body. 

The chief person of the earlier Play was very dominating, and I havegrown to look upon this as a fault, though it increases the dramaticeffect in a superficial way. We cannot sympathise with the man who setshis anger at once lightly and confidently to overthrow the order of theworld, for such a man will seem to us alike insane and arrogant. Butour 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 andarchangels have spoken in the cloud, and whatever wildness come uponhis life, feet of theirs may well have trod the clusters. But a man soplunged in trance is of necessity somewhat still and silent, though itbe perhaps the silence and the stillness of a lamp; and the movement ofthe Play as a whole, if we are to have time to hear him, must bewithout hurry or violence. 

NOTES

I cannot give the full cast of "Cathleen ni Houlihan, " which was firstplayed at St. Teresa's Hall, Dublin, on April 3, 1902, for I have beensearching the cupboard of the Abbey Theatre, where we keep oldPlay-bills, and can find no record of it, nor did the newspapers of thetime mention more than the principals. Mr. W. G. Fay played the oldcountryman, and Miss Quinn his wife, while Miss Maude Gonne wasCathleen ni Houlihan, and very magnificently she played. The Play hasbeen constantly revived, and has, I imagine, been played more oftenthan any other, except perhaps Lady Gregory's "Spreading the News, " atthe Abbey Theatre, Dublin. 

The "Hour-Glass" was first played at the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, onMarch 14, 1903, with the following cast:--

The Wise Man J. W. DiggesBridget, his wife Maire T. QuinnHer children Eithne and Padragan ni Shiubhlaigh { P. I. KellyHer pupils { Seumas O'Sullivan { P. Colum { P. MacShiubhlaighThe Angel Maire ni ShiubhlaighThe Fool F. J. Fay

The Play has been revived many times since then as a part of therepertoire at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. 

"The Unicorn from the Stars" was first played at the Abbey Theatre onNovember 23, 1907, with the following cast:--

Father John Ernest VaughanThomas Hearne Arthur SinclairAndrew Hearne J. A. O'RourkeMartin Hearne F. J. FayJohnny Bacach W. G. FayPaudeen J. M. KerriganBiddy Lally Maire O'NeillNanny 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 gildedcoach, among them an ornament representing the lion and the unicorn. _THOMAS _working at a wheel. _ FATHER JOHN _coming from door of innerroom. _

FATHER JOHN. I have prayed over Martin. I have prayed a long time, butthere is no move in him yet. 

THOMAS. You are giving yourself too much trouble, Father. It's as goodfor you to leave him alone till the doctor's bottle will come. If thereis any cure at all for what is on him, it is likely the doctor willhave it. 

FATHER JOHN. I think it is not doctor's medicine will help him in thiscase. 

THOMAS. It will, it will. The doctor has his business learned well. IfAndrew had gone to him the time I bade him, and had not turned again tobring yourself to the house, it is likely Martin would be walking atthis time. I am loth to trouble you, Father, when the business is notof your own sort. Any doctor at all should be able, and well able, tocure 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 whenshaking him and roaring at him failed to rouse him, I knew well it wasthe falling sickness. Believe me, the doctor will reach it with hisdrugs. 

FATHER JOHN. Nothing but prayer can reach a soul that is so far beyondthe 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 ourimaginings. He is fallen into a trance. 

THOMAS. He used to be queer as a child, going asleep in the fields andcoming back with talk of white horses he saw, and bright people likeangels or whatever they were. But I mended that. I taught him torecognise stones beyond angels with a few strokes of a rod. I wouldnever give in to visions or to trances. 

FATHER JOHN. We who hold the faith have no right to speak againsttrance 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 goneout of the world now. Those that do their work fair and honest have nooccasion to let the mind go rambling. What would send my nephew, MartinHearne, into a trance, supposing trances to be in it, and he rubbingthe gold on the lion and unicorn that he had taken in hand to make agood 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 adisposition to it into a trance. There was a very saintly man, thoughhe was not of our church, he wrote a great book called "MysteriumMagnum, " 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 hiswork. It was a ray of sunlight on a pewter vessel that was thebeginning of all. [_Goes to the door of inner room. _] There is no stirin him yet. It is either the best thing or the worst thing can happento anyone that is happening to him now. 

THOMAS. And what in the living world can happen to a man that is asleepon his bed?

FATHER JOHN. There are some would answer you that it is to those whoare awake that nothing happens, and it is they that know nothing. He isgone where all have gone for supreme truth. 

THOMAS [_sitting down again and taking up tools_]. Well, maybe so. Butwork must go on and coach building must go on, and they will not go onthe time there is too much attention given to dreams. A dream is a sortof a shadow, no profit in it to anyone at all. A coach now is a realthing and a thing that will last for generations and be made use of thelast, 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 ledto the making of that coach. 

THOMAS. Well, I believe he saw gold in some dream, and it led him towant to make some golden thing, and coaches being the handiest, nothingwould do him till he put the most of his fortune into the making ofthis golden coach. It turned out better than I thought, for some of thelawyers came looking at it at assize time, and through them it washeard of at Dublin Castle . .. And who now has it ordered but the LordLieutenant! [FATHER JOHN _nods. _] Ready it must be and sent off it mustbe by the end of the month. It is likely King George will be visitingDublin, 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, nearever 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 thoughthis mind was only set on books. 

THOMAS. He should be thankful to myself for that. Any person I willtake in hand I make a clean job of them the same as I would make of anyother 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 itwith 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 themonastery in France for to learn the language and to see the wideworld; 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 andteaching, 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, goingagainst the Government, maybe, the same as Johnny Gibbons that is atthis time an outlaw having a price upon his head. 

FATHER JOHN. That is so. That imagination of his might have taken firehere at home. It was better putting him with the Brothers, to turn itto imaginings of heaven. 

THOMAS. Well, I will soon have a good hardy tradesman made of him nowthat will live quiet and rear a family, and maybe be appointed coachbuilder to the royal family at the last. 

FATHER JOHN [_at window_]. I see your brother Andrew coming back fromthe doctor; he is stopping to talk with a troop of beggars that aresitting by the side of the road. 

THOMAS. There now is another that I have shaped. Andrew used to be abit wild in his talk and in his ways, wanting to go rambling, notcontent to settle in the place where he was reared. But I kept a guardover him; I watched the time poverty gave him a nip, and then I settledhim into the business. He never was so good a worker as Martin; he istoo fond of wasting his time talking vanities. But he is middlinghandy, and he is always steady and civil to customers. I have nocomplaint worth while to be making this last twenty years againstAndrew. [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 fromFrance on the quiet. The king's soldiers are watching the ports forhim. 

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 willcure 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 golooking for a cure, and he began telling me things out of it, but Isaid I could not be carrying things of that sort in my head. He gave methe book then, and he has marks put in it for the places where thecures are . .. Wait now . .. [_Reads. _] "Compound medicines are usuallytaken inwardly, or outwardly applied. Inwardly taken they should beeither liquid or solid; outwardly they should be fomentations orsponges 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 wasreading to me himself . .. "the remedies for diseases belonging to theskins 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 fallingsickness. 

ANDREW [_dropping book_]. O my dear, look at all the marks gone out ofit. Wait now, I partly remember what he said . .. A blister he spoke of. .. Or to be smelling hartshorn . .. Or the sneezing powder . .. Or ifall fails, to try letting the blood. 

FATHER JOHN. All this has nothing to do with the real case. It is allwaste of time. 

ANDREW. That is what I was thinking myself, Father. Sure it was I wasthe first to call out to you when I saw you coming down from thehillside and to bring you in to see what could you do. I would havemore trust in your means than in any doctor's learning. And in case youmight fail to cure him, I have a cure myself I heard from mygrandmother . .. God rest her soul . .. And she told me she never knew itto fail. A person to have the falling sickness, to cut the top of hisnails and a small share of the hair of his head, and to put it down onthe floor and to take a harry-pin and drive it down with that into thefloor and to leave it there. "That is the cure will never fail, " shesaid, "to rise up any person at all having the falling sickness. "

FATHER JOHN [_hands on ears_]. I will go back to the hillside, I willgo back to the hillside, but no, no, I must do what I can, I will goagain, I will wrestle, I will strive my best to call him back withprayer. [_Goes into room and shuts door. _]

ANDREW. It is queer Father John is sometimes, and very queer. There aretimes when you would say that he believes in nothing at all. 

THOMAS. If you wanted a priest, why did you not get our own parishpriest that is a sensible man, and a man that you would know what histhoughts are? You know well the Bishop should have something againstFather John to have left him through the years in that poor mountainyplace, minding the few unfortunate people that were left out of thelast 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 hewould have done more for Martin than what he is doing. To read a Massover him I thought he would, and to be convulsed in the reading it, andsome strange thing to have gone out with a great noise through thedoorway. 

THOMAS. It would give no good name to the place such a thing to behappening in it. It is well enough for labouring men and for half-acremen. It would be no credit at all such a thing to be heard of in thishouse, that is for coach building the capital of the county. 

ANDREW. If it is from the devil this sickness comes, it would be bestto put it out whatever way it would be put out. But there might no badthing be on the lad at all. It is likely he was with wild companionsabroad, and that knocking about might have shaken his health. I wasthat 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 seemore than other people would see, the same as I myself might be seeinga split in a leather car hood that no other person would find out atall. 

ANDREW. If it is the falling sickness is on him, I have no objection tothat . .. A plain, straight sickness that was cast as a punishment onthe unbelieving Jews. It is a thing that might attack one of a familyand one of another family and not to come upon their kindred at all. Aperson to have it, all you have to do is not to go between him and thewind or fire or water. But I am in dread trance is a thing might runthrough the house, the same as the cholera morbus. 

THOMAS. In my belief there is no such thing as a trance. Letting onpeople do be to make the world wonder the time they think well to riseup. To keep them to their work is best, and not to pay much attentionto them at all. 

ANDREW. I would not like trances to be coming on myself. I leave it inmy will if I die without cause, a holly stake to be run through myheart the way I will lie easy after burial, and not turn my facedownwards 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 mindto the business. Did the smith put the irons yet on to the shafts ofthis coach?

ANDREW. I'll go see did he. 

THOMAS. Do so, and see did he make a good job of it. Let the shafts besound and solid if they _are_ to be studded with gold. 

ANDREW. They are, and the steps along with them . .. Glass sides for thepeople to be looking in at the grandeur of the satin within . .. Thelion and the unicorn crowning all . .. It was a great thought Martin hadthe time he thought of making this coach!

THOMAS. It is best for me go see the smith myself . .. And leave it tono other one. You can be attending to that ass car out in the yardwants 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 fillup every minute of time, shaping whatever you have to do, that is theway to build up a business. [_They go out. _]

FATHER JOHN [_bringing in_ MARTIN]. They are gone out now . .. The airis fresher here in the workshop . .. You can sit here for a while. Youare 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 overyou 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 brokenfruit . .. 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 someonecaught me up and put me upon him, and we rode away, with the wind, likethe wind. .. . 

FATHER JOHN. That is a common imagining. I know many poor persons haveseen that. 

MARTIN. We went on, on, on . .. We came to a sweet-smelling garden witha gate to it . .. And there were wheat-fields in full ear around . .. Andthere 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 thehorses we were on had changed to unicorns, and they began trampling thegrapes and breaking them . .. I tried to stop them, but I could not. 

FATHER JOHN. That is strange, that is strange. What is it that bringsto mind . .. I heard it in some place, _Monocoros di Astris_, theUnicorn from the Stars. 

MARTIN. They tore down the wheat and trampled it on stones, and thenthey tore down what were left of the grapes and crushed and bruised andtrampled them . .. I smelt the wine, it was flowing on every side . .. Then everything grew vague . .. I cannot remember clearly . .. Everythingwas silent . .. The trampling now stopped . .. We were all waiting forsome command. Oh! was it given! I was trying to hear it . .. There wassome one dragging, dragging me away from that . .. I am sure there was acommand 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 thewine 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. Theunicorns . .. 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 theirtrampling!

FATHER JOHN. And the grapes . .. What did they mean?. .. It puts me inmind of the psalm . .. _Ex calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est. _ Itwas 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 hasfar more of temptation in it than the common life. Perhaps it wouldhave been best for you to stay under rules in the monastery. 

MARTIN. I could not see anything so clearly there. It is back here inmy own place the visions come, in the place where shining people usedto laugh around me and I a little lad in a bib. 

FATHER JOHN. You cannot know but it was from the Prince of this worldthe vision came. How can one ever know unless one follows thediscipline of the church? Some spiritual director, some wise, learnedman, that is what you want. I do not know enough. What am I but a poorbanished priest with my learning forgotten, my books never handled, andspotted with the damp?

MARTIN. I will go out into the fields where you cannot come to me toawake me . .. I will see that townland again . .. I will hear thatcommand. I cannot wait, I must know what happened, I must bring thatcommand to mind again. 

FATHER JOHN [_putting himself between_ MARTIN _and the door_]. Youmust 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 toreceive it. 

MARTIN. Must I live here forty years, fifty years . .. To grow as old asmy uncles, seeing nothing but common things, doing work . .. Somefoolish work?

FATHER JOHN. Here they are coming. It is time for me to go. I mustthink and I must pray. My mind is troubled about you. [_To_ THOMAS _ashe and_ ANDREW _come in. _] Here he is; be very kind to him, for he hasstill 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 notbelieve me if I tell you. 

ANDREW. I would believe it, Martin. I used to have very long sleepsmyself and very queer dreams. 

THOMAS. You had, till I cured you, taking you in hand and binding youto 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 goldencoach, 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 Isaw, something that I heard, that I was told to do. 

THOMAS. No, but put it out of your mind. There is no man doing businessthat can keep two things in his head. A Sunday or a Holyday now youmight go see a good hurling or a thing of the kind, but to be spreadingout your mind on anything outside of the workshop on common days, allcoach building would come to an end. 

MARTIN. I don't think it is building I want to do. I don't think thatis what was in the command. 

THOMAS. It is too late to be saying that the time you have put the mostof 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 coachas 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 arethe great things; they never come to an end. They are the same as theserpent 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 greatestate is called to, is to work. Sure the world itself could not go onwithout 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 Munsterpoet call it . .. "this crowded slippery coach-loving world. " I don'tthink I was told to work for that. 

ANDREW. I often thought that myself. It is a pity the stock of theHearnes to be asked to do any work at all. 

THOMAS. Rouse yourself, Martin, and don't be talking the way a fooltalks. You started making that golden coach, and you were set upon it, and you had me tormented about it. You have yourself wore out workingat 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 bringit to Dublin Castle, you go falling into sleeps and blathering aboutdreams, and we run to a great danger of letting the profit and the salego 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 tomake 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 itoutside makes it no different. 

THOMAS. That is right now. You had some good plan for making the axlerun smooth. 

MARTIN [_letting wheel fall and putting his hands to his head_]. It isno use. [_Angrily. _] Why did you send the priest to awake me? My soulis my own and my mind is my own. I will send them to where I like. Youhave no authority over my thoughts. 

THOMAS. That is no way to be speaking to me. I am head of thisbusiness. Nephew or no nephew, I will have no one come cold orunwilling to the work. 

MARTIN. I had better go. I am of no use to you. I am going. .. . I mustbe alone. .. . I will forget if I am not alone. Give me what is left ofmy money, and I will go out of this. 

THOMAS [_opening a press and taking out a bag and throwing it tohim_]. There is what is left of your money! The rest of it you havespent on the coach. If you want to go, go, and I will not have to beannoyed with you from this out. 

ANDREW. Come now with me, Thomas. The boy is foolish, but it will soonpass over. He has not my sense to be giving attention to what you willsay. Come along now; leave him for a while; leave him to me, I say; itis 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'tunderstand your thoughts, but I understand them. Wasn't I telling you Iwas 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 ithidden in the thatch outside. 

MARTIN. Does the body slip from you as it does from me? They have notshut your window into eternity?

ANDREW. Thomas never shut a window I could not get through. I knew youwere 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 keepyoung is to do the things youngsters do. Twenty years I have beenslipping away, and he never found me out yet!

MARTIN. That is what they call ecstasy, but there is no word that cantell out very plain what it means. That freeing of the mind from itsthoughts. Those wonders we know; when we put them into words, the wordsseem 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 usedto 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 iscoming back, little by little. I know that I saw the unicornstrampling, and then a figure, a many-changing figure, holding somebright thing. I knew something was going to happen or to be said, . .. Something that would make my whole life strong and beautiful like therushing 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 astranger, without means, without hope, without health, withoutwarmth. .. . 

ANDREW [_looking towards window_]. It is that troop of beggars;bringing their tricks and their thieveries they are to the Kinvarafair. 

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 thetreasury 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 acurse on them that left the place so bare! [_He turns things over. _] Imight chance something in this chest if it was open. .. . [ANDREW _beginscreeping towards him. _]

NANNY [_outside_]. Hurry on now, you limping crabfish, you! We can'tbe 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 sentyou here with that command?

JOHNNY B. It was misery sent me in and starvation and the hard ways ofthe 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 spokethat 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 thevessel fell and was broken with a great crash . .. Then I saw theunicorns trampling it. They were breaking the world to pieces . .. WhenI 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 yourgold. 

MARTIN. How could I forget it or mistake it? It has all come upon menow . .. 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 thefright 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, thething, 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 highhearts 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 yourmeaning?. .. If you will take the blame of it all, I'll do what youwant. Give me the bag of money, then. [_He takes it up. _] Oh, I've aheart like your own! I'll lift the world too! The people will berunning 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 youstrength and courage; gather your people together here; bring them allin. We have a great thing to do. I have to begin . .. I want to tell itto the whole world. Bring them in, bring them in, I will make the houseready. 

ACT II

SCENE: The same workshop a few minutes later. MARTIN. Seen arrangingmugs and bread, etc. , on a table. FATHER JOHN comes in, knocking atopen door as he comes. 

MARTIN. Come in, come in, I have got the house ready. Here is bread andmeat . .. Everybody is welcome. [Hearing no answer, turns round. ]

FATHER JOHN. Martin, I have come back. .. . There is something I want tosay to you. 

MARTIN. You are welcome; there are others coming. .. . They are not ofyour sort, but all are welcome. 

FATHER JOHN. I have remembered suddenly something that I read when Iwas in the seminary. 

MARTIN. You seem very tired. 

FATHER JOHN [_sitting down_]. I had almost got back to my own placewhen 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 fromabove, either in trance or in contemplation, one remembers afterwardsall that one has seen and read. I think there must be something aboutit in St. Thomas. I know that I have read a long passage about it yearsago. But, Martin, there is another kind of inspiration, or rather anobsession or possession. A diabolical power comes into one's body orovershadows it. Those whose bodies are taken hold of in this way, jugglers and witches and the like, can often tell what is happening indistant places, or what is going to happen, but when they come out ofthat 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 greatsleep; there are dangerous and evil spirits in her dreams, but God isabove Nature. She is a darkness, but He makes everything clear--He islight. 

MARTIN. All is clear now. I remember all, or all that matters to me. Apoor 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 haveread of such things. God sometimes uses some common man as Hismessenger. 

MARTIN. You may have passed the man who brought it on the road. He leftme 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 breakingthe 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 oldsplendour. 

FATHER JOHN. You are not the first that dream has come to. [_Gets upand walks up and down. _] It has been wandering here and there, callingnow 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, therewas reverence, but now it is all work, business, how to live a longtime. Ah, if one could change it all in a minute, even by war andviolence. .. . There is a cell where St. Ciaran used to pray, if onecould 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 thatI 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 yourvision. 

MARTIN. And what happened?

FATHER JOHN [_harshly_]. It was stopped. That was an end. I was sentto the lonely parish where I am, where there was no one I could leadastray. They have left me there. We must have patience; the world wasdestroyed by water, it has yet to be consumed by fire. 

MARTIN. Why should we be patient? To live seventy years, and others tocome 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 acart or a shaft, is that life? It is not. Sitting at a desk writingletters to the man that wants a coach or to the man that won't pay forthe one he has got, is that life, I ask you? Thomas arguing at you andputting you down, "Andrew, dear Andrew, did you put the tyre on thatwheel yet?" Is that life? No, it is not. I ask you all what do youremember when you are dead? It's the sweet cup in the corner of thewidow's drinking house that you remember. Ha, ha, listen to thatshouting! That is what the lads in the village will remember to thelast 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 theirhearts, and I did lift them. There is not one among them but will havehis head like a blazing tar barrel before morning. What did yourfriend, 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 Martinbade 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? Goout 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 aremy 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 ownplace. I have taken the command. It is better, perhaps, for you thatyou did not take it. [MARTIN _and_ FATHER JOHN _go out. _]

BIDDY. It is well for that old lad he didn't come between ourselves andour luck. It would be right to have flayed him and to have made bags ofhis skin. 

NANNY. What a hurry you are in to get your enough! Look at the greaseon 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 thatdecent son of yours that had the yard of the gaol wore with walking ittill this morning!

NANNY. If he had, he had a mother to come to, and he would know herwhen he did see her, and that is what no son of your own could do, andhe to meet you at the foot of the gallows!

JOHNNY B. If I did know you, I knew too much of you since the firstbeginning 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 Iget from you by day or by night but your own bad character to be joinedon to my own, and I following at your heels, and your bags tied roundabout me?

NANNY. Disgrace and torment on you! Whatever you got from me, it wasmore than any reward or any bit I ever got from the father you had, orany honourable thing at all, but only the hurt and the harm of theworld 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 theditch. 

NANNY. Begging or sharing, the curse of my heart upon you! It's betteroff I was before ever I met with you, to my cost! What was on me at allthat I did not cut a scourge in the wood to put manners and decency onyou the time you were not hardened as you are!

JOHNNY B. Leave talking to me of your rods and your scourges! All youtaught me was robbery, and it is on yourself and not on myself thescourges will be laid at the day of the recognition of tricks. 

PAUDEEN. Faith, the pair of you together is better than Hector fightingbefore Troy!

NANNY. Ah, let you be quiet. It is not fighting we are craving, but theeasing of the hunger that is on us and of the passion of sleep. Lend mea graineen of tobacco till I'll kindle my pipe--a blast of it will takethe 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 apipe this forty year without saying the tobacco prayer. Let that onesay, did ever she do that much?

NANNY. That the pain of your front tooth may be in your back tooth, youto be grabbing my share! [_They snap at tobacco. _]

ANDREW. Pup, pup, pup. Don't be snapping and quarrelling now, and youso well treated in this house. It is strollers like yourselves shouldbe for frolic and for fun. Have you ne'er a good song to sing, a songthat will rise all our hearts?

PAUDEEN. Johnny Bacach is a good singer; it is what he used to be doingin the fairs, if the oakum of the gaol did not give him a hoarseness inthe throat. 

ANDREW. Give it out so, a good song; a song will put courage and spiritinto 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'das lief be listening to a saw going through timber. Wait, now, till youwill 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 agreat scarcity of good comrades in this place, a man like thatyoungster having means in his hand to be bringing ourselves and ourrags into the house. 

PAUDEEN. You think yourself very wise, Johnny Bacach. Can you tell menow who that man is?

JOHNNY B. Some decent lad, I suppose, with a good way of living and amind to send up his name upon the roads. 

PAUDEEN. You that have been gaoled this eight months know little ofthis countryside. .. . It isn't a limping stroller like yourself the boyswould let come among them. But I know. I went to the drill a fewnights, and I skinning kids for the mountainy men. In a quarry beyondthe drill is . .. They have their plans made. .. . It's the square houseof the Browns is to be made an attack on and plundered. Do you know nowwho 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 JohnGibbons 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 askingquestions, " says he; "take the treat he gives you, " says he. "If a ladthat 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 Francehe learned it, " says he, "the place he is but lately come from, andwhere the wine does be standing open in tubs. Take your treat when youget it, " says he, "and make no delay, or all might be discovered andput an end to. "

JOHNNY B. He came over the sea from France! It is Johnny Gibbonssurely, 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 betelling it out to us that he never saw before, and we with that clutchof chattering women along with us? Here he is coming now. Wait till yousee is he the lad I think him to be. 

MARTIN [_coming in_]. I will make my banner; I will paint the Unicornon it. Give me that bit of canvas; there is paint over here. We willget no help from the settled men--we will call to the lawbreakers, thetinkers--the sievemakers--the sheep-stealers. [_He begins to makebanner. _]

BIDDY. That sounds to be a queer name of an army. Ribbons I canunderstand, Whiteboys, Rightboys, Threshers, and Peep-o'-day, butUnicorns I never heard of before. 

JOHNNY B. It is not a queer name, but a very good name. [_Takes up Lionand Unicorn. _] It is often you saw that before you in the dock. Thereis 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 falland be shivered. Can't you see? It is the League of the Unicorns is theleague that will fight and destroy the power of England and KingGeorge. 

PAUDEEN. It is with that banner we will march and the lads in thequarry with us; it is they will have the welcome before him! It won'tbe 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 putwax on our shoes walking them; the horses themselves shod with no lessthan silver!

MARTIN [_holding up the banner_]. There it is ready! We are very fewnow, but the army of the Unicorns will be a great army! [_To_ JOHNNYB. ] Why have you brought me the message? Can you remember any more? Hasanything more come to you? Who told you to come to me? Who gave you themessage?. .. Can you see anything or hear anything that is beyond theworld?

JOHNNY B. I cannot. I don't know what do you want me to tell you atall. 

MARTIN. I want to begin the destruction, but I don't know where tobegin . .. You do not hear any other voice?

JOHNNY B. I do not. I have nothing at all to do with freemasons orwitchcraft. 

PAUDEEN. It is Biddy Lally has to do with witchcraft. It is often shethrew the cups and gave out prophecies the same as Columcille. 

MARTIN. You are one of the knowledgeable women. You can tell me whereit is best to begin, and what will happen in the end. 

BIDDY. I will foretell nothing at all. I rose out of it this goodwhile, with the stiffness and the swelling it brought upon my joints. 

MARTIN. If you have foreknowledge, you have no right to keep silent. Ifyou do not help me, I may go to work in the wrong way. I know I have todestroy, but when I ask myself what I am to begin with, I am full ofuncertainty. 

PAUDEEN. Here now are the cups handy and the leavings in them. 

BIDDY [_taking cups and pouring one from another_]. Throw a bit ofwhite money into the four corners of the house. 

MARTIN. There! [_Throwing it. _]

BIDDY. There can be nothing told without silver. It is not myself willhave the profit of it. Along with that I will be forced to throw outgold. 

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 isso much . .. The whole world, it may be. 

BIDDY [_throwing from one cup to another and looking_]. You have nocare 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 smokeoverhead. 

MARTIN. That means we have to burn away a great deal that men havepiled up upon the earth. We must bring men once more to the wildness ofthe clean green earth. 

BIDDY. Herbs for my healing, the big herb and the little herb; it istrue enough they get their great strength out of the earth. 

JOHNNY B. Who was it the green sod of Ireland belonged to in the oldentimes? Wasn't it to the ancient race it belonged? And who haspossession of it now but the race that came robbing over the sea? Themeaning of that is to destroy the big houses and the towns, and thefields to be given back to the ancient race. 

MARTIN. That is it. You don't put it as I do, but what matter? Battleis all. 

PAUDEEN. Columcille said the four corners to be burned, and then themiddle of the field to be burned. I tell you it was Columcille'sprophecy said that. 

BIDDY. Iron handcuffs I see and a rope and a gallows, and it maybe isnot for yourself I see it, but for some I have acquaintance with a goodway back. 

MARTIN. That means the law. We must destroy the law. That was the firstsin, the first mouthful of the apple. 

JOHNNY B. So it was, so it was. The law is the worst loss. The ancientlaw was for the benefit of all. It is the law of the English is theonly sin. 

MARTIN. When there were no laws men warred on one another and man toman, not with one machine against another as they do now, and they grewhard and strong in body. They were altogether alive like Him that madethem in His image, like people in that unfallen country. But presentlythey thought it better to be safe, as if safety mattered, or anythingbut the exaltation of the heart and to have eyes that danger had madegrave 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 wholenation of the English. Laws for themselves they made for their ownprofit 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 hereor another. Vexed and troubled he is, kneeling fretting, and everfretting, in some lonesome, ruined place. 

MARTIN. I thought it would come to that. Yes, the church too . .. Thatis to be destroyed. Once men fought with their desires and their fears, with all that they call their sins, unhelped, and their souls becamehard and strong. When we have brought back the clean earth anddestroyed the law and the church, all life will become like a flame offire, like a burning eye. .. . Oh, how to find words for it all . .. Allthat is not life will pass away!

JOHNNY B. It is Luther's church he means, and the humpbacked discourseof 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 andunmake it. We are the army of the Unicorn from the Stars! We willtrample 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 mefire. 

ANDREW. Here is Thomas coming! [_All except_ MARTIN _hurry into nextroom. _ THOMAS _comes in. _]

THOMAS. Come with me, Martin. There is terrible work going on in thetown! 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 toevery decent man!. .. It is as if the devil himself had gone through thetown on a blast and set every drinking house open!

MARTIN. I wonder how that has happened. Can it have anything to do withAndrew'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 workhe was doing, whether in the field or in the mill. 

MARTIN. Then all work has come to an end? Perhaps that was a goodthought of Andrew's. 

THOMAS. There is not a man has come to sensible years that is not drunkor drinking! My own labourers and my own serving-man are sitting oncounters and on barrels! I give you my word the smell of the spiritsand the porter and the shouting and the cheering within made the hairto rise up on my scalp. 

MARTIN. And there is not one of them that does not feel that he couldbridle the four winds. 

THOMAS [_sitting down in despair_]. You are drunk, too. I neverthought you had a fancy for it. 

MARTIN. It is hard for you to understand. You have worked all yourlife. You have said to yourself every morning, "What is to be doneto-day?" and when you are tired out you have thought of the next day'swork. If you gave yourself an hour's idleness, it was but that youmight work the better. Yet it is only when one has put work away thatone begins to live. 

THOMAS. It is those French wines that did it. 

MARTIN. I have been beyond the earth, in paradise, in that happytownland. I have seen the shining people. They were all doing one thingor another, but not one of them was at work. All that they did was butthe overflowing of their idleness, and their days were a dance bred ofthe secret frenzy of their hearts, or a battle where the sword made asound that was like laughter. 

THOMAS. You went away sober from out of my hands; they had a right tohave 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 fromexaltation to exaltation, and if he does not rise into the frenzy ofcontemplation in the night silence. Events that are not begotten in joyare misbegotten and darken the world, and nothing is begotten in joy ifthe 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 hasnot yet been lighted, and the world is to be consumed! [_Goes intoinner room. _]

THOMAS [_seeing_ ANDREW]. Is it here you are, Andrew? What are thebeggars doing? Was this door thrown open, too?. .. Why did you not keeporder? I will go for the constables to help us!

ANDREW. You will not find them to help you. They were scatteringthemselves through the drinking houses of the town; and why wouldn'tthey?

THOMAS. Are you drunk, too? You are worse than Martin. You are adisgrace. 

ANDREW. Disgrace yourself! Coming here to be making an attack on me andbadgering me and disparaging me. And what about yourself that turned meto be a hypocrite?

THOMAS. What are you saying?

ANDREW. You did, I tell you. Weren't you always at me to be regular andto be working and to be going through the day and the night withoutcompany and to be thinking of nothing but the trade? What did I wantwith a trade? I got a sight of the fairy gold one time in themountains. I would have found it again and brought riches from it butfor you keeping me so close to the work. 

THOMAS. Oh, of all the ungrateful creatures! You know well that Icherished you, leading you to live a decent, respectable life. 

ANDREW. You never had respect for the ancient ways. It is after themother you take it, that was too soft and too lumpish, having too muchof the English in her blood. Martin is a Hearne like myself. It is hehas the generous heart! It is not Martin would make a hypocrite of meand force me to do night walking secretly, watching to be back by thesetting of the seven stars! [_He begins to play his flute. _]

THOMAS. I will turn you out of this, yourself and this filthy troop! Iwill have them lodged in gaol. 

JOHNNY B. Filthy troop, is it? Mind yourself! The change is coming! Thepikes 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'smilk!

JOHNNY B. You heap of sicknesses! You blinking hangman! That you maynever 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 outthe banner. The moment has come to begin the war. 

JOHNNY B. Up with the Unicorn and destroy the Lion! Success to JohnnyGibbons and all good men!

MARTIN. Heap all those things together there. Heap those pieces of thecoach one upon another. Put that straw under them. It is with thisflame I will begin the work of destruction. All nature destroys andlaughs. 

THOMAS. Destroy your own golden coach!

MARTIN [_kneeling_]. I am sorry to go a way that you do not like, andto do a thing that will vex you. I have been a great trouble to yousince 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. [_Standsup. _] I have to free myself first and those that are near me. The loveof 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 cansuffer no injury. The soul of man is of the imperishable substance ofthe 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, asack over him. _

NANNY [_to_ PAUDEEN]. Well, you are great heroes and great warriorsand great lads altogether to have put down the Browns the way you did, yourselves and the Whiteboys of the quarry. To have ransacked the houseand have plundered it! Look at the silks and the satins and thegrandeurs I brought away! Look at that now! [_Holds up a velvetcloak. _] It's a good little jacket for myself will come out of it. It'sthe singers will be stopping their songs and the jobbers turning fromtheir cattle in the fairs to be taking a view of the laces of it andthe 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 sayingthere was. Or maybe that fleet of Whiteboys had the place ransackedbefore we ourselves came in. Bad cess to them that put it in my mind togo gather up the full of my bag of horseshoes out of the forge. Silverthey were saying they were, pure white silver; and what are they in theend but only hardened iron! A bad end to them! [_Flings awayhorseshoes. _] The time I will go robbing big houses again it will notbe in the light of the full moon I will go doing it, that does becausing every common thing to shine out as if for a deceit and amockery. It's not shining at all they are at this time, but duck yellowand dark. 

NANNY. To leave the big house blazing after us, it was that crownedall! Two houses to be burned to ashes in the one night. It is likelythe servant-girls were rising from the feathers, and the cocks crowingfrom the rafters for seven miles around, taking the flames to be thewhitening of the dawn. 

BIDDY. It is the lad is stretched beyond you have to be thankful to forthat. There was never seen a leader was his equal for spirit and fordaring! Making a great scatter of the guards the way he did! Running uproofs and ladders, the fire in his hand, till you'd think he would beapt to strike his head against the stars. 

NANNY. I partly guessed death was near him, and the queer shining lookhe had in his two eyes, and he throwing sparks east and west throughthe beams. I wonder now was it some inward wound he got, or did somehardy lad of the Browns give him a tip on the skull unknownst in thefight? 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 amountain. I failed to waken him, trying him with the sharpness of mynails, and his head fell back when I moved it, and I knew him to bespent and gone. 

BIDDY. It's a pity you not to have left him where he was lying, andsaid no word at all to Paudeen or to that son you have, that kept usback from following on, bringing him here to this shelter on sacks andupon poles. 

NANNY. What way could I help letting a screech out of myself and thelife but just gone out of him in the darkness, and not a livingChristian 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 bebest 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 butthe wind of the word of leaving him, it's little but they'd knock thehead off the two of us. Whist!

 [_Enter_ JOHNNY B. _with candles. _]

JOHNNY B. [_standing over_ MARTIN]. Wouldn't you say now there was somemalice or some venom in the air, that is striking down one after theother the whole of the heroes of the Gael?

PAUDEEN. It makes a person be thinking of the four last ends, death andjudgment, heaven and hell. Indeed and indeed my heart lies with him. Itis 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; andwhere now will we get so good a leader again? Lay him out fair andstraight upon a stone, till I will let loose the secret of my heartkeening him! [_Sets out candles on a rack, propping them with stones. _]

NANNY. Is it mould candles you have brought to set around him, JohnnyBacach? It is great riches you should have in your pocket to be goingto those lengths and not to be content with dips. 

JOHNNY B. It is lengths I will not be going to the time the life willbe gone out of your own body. It is not your corpse I will be wishfulto hold in honour the way I hold this corpse in honour. 

NANNY. That's the way always: there will be grief and quietness in thehouse if it is a young person has died, but funning and springing andtricking one another if it is an old person's corpse is in it. There isno compassion at all for the old. 

PAUDEEN. It is he would have got leave for the Gael to be as high asthe Gall. Believe me, he was in the prophecies. Let you not becomparing yourself with the like of him. 

NANNY. Why wouldn't I be comparing myself? Look at all that was againstme in the world; would you be matching me against a man of his sortthat had the people shouting for him and that had nothing to do but todie and to go to heaven?

JOHNNY B. The day you go to heaven that you may never come back aliveout of it! But it is not yourself will ever hear the saints hammeringat their musics! It is you will be moving through the ages chains uponyou, and you in the form of a dog or a monster! I tell you, that onewill 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 freedIreland!

PAUDEEN. Wait till the full light of the day and you'll see the buryinghe'll have. It is not in this place we will be waking him. I'll make acall to the two hundred Ribbons he was to lead on to the attack on thebarracks at Aughanish. They will bring him marching to his grave uponthe hill. He had surely some gift from the other world, I wouldn't saybut he had power from the other side. 

ANDREW [_coming in, very shaky_]. Well, it was a great night he gaveto the village, and it is long till it will be forgotten. I tell youthe whole of the neighbours are up against him. There is no one at allthis morning to set the mills going. There was no bread baked in thenight-time; the horses are not fed in the stalls; the cows are notmilked in the sheds. I met no man able to make a curse this night buthe put it on my own head and on the head of the boy that is lying therebefore 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 outof him this three hours or more?

ANDREW. He was lying in his sleep for a while yesterday, and he wakenedagain after another while. 

NANNY. He will not waken. I tell you I held his hand in my own and itgetting cold as if you were pouring on it the coldest cold water, andno running in his blood. He is gone sure enough, and the life is goneout of him. 

ANDREW. Maybe so, maybe so. It seems to me yesterday his cheeks werebloomy all the while, and now he is as pale as wood-ashes. Sure we allmust come to it at the last. Well, my white-headed darling, it is youwere 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 goodwake for yourself, scattering your estate in one night only in beer andin wine for the whole province; and that you may be sitting in themiddle 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 foryourself to send the little lad of a messenger looking for a priest toovertake him. It might be in the end the Almighty is the best man forus all!

ANDREW. Sure I sent him on myself to bid the priest to come. Living ordead, I would wish to do all that is rightful for the last and the bestof 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 theexpense of the candles and the like?

JOHNNY B. If it is that poor, starved priest he called to that cametalking in secret signs to the man that is gone, it is likely he willask nothing for what he has to do. There is many a priest is a Whiteboyin his heart. 

NANNY. I tell you, if you brought him tied in a bag he would not say anOur Father for you, without you having a half crown at the top of yourfingers. 

BIDDY. There is no priest is any good at all but a spoiled priest; aone that would take a drop of drink, it is he would have courage toface the hosts of trouble. Rout them out he would, the same as a shoalof fish from out the weeds. It's best not to vex a priest, or to runagainst them at all. 

NANNY. It's yourself humbled yourself well to one the time you weresick in the gaol and had like to die, and he bade you to give over thethrowing of the cups. 

BIDDY. Ah, plaster of Paris I gave him. I took to it again and I freeupon 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 hewas 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 himwithout friends. 

FATHER JOHN. Where is he?

JOHNNY B. [_taking up sacks_]. Lying there, stiff and stark. He has avery quiet look, as if there was no sin at all or no great trouble uponhis 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 isin a trance. 

PAUDEEN. Is it heaven and hell he is walking at this time to bebringing back newses of the sinners in pain?

BIDDY. I was thinking myself it might away he was, riding on whitehorses with the riders of the forths. 

JOHNNY B. He will have great wonders to tell out the time he will riseup from the ground. It is a pity he not to waken at this time and tolead us on to overcome the troop of the English. Sure those that are ina trance get strength that they can walk on water. 

ANDREW. It was Father John wakened him yesterday the time he was lyingin 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 myforetelling. I knew well by the signs he was coming within the best dayof his life. 

PAUDEEN. And not dead at all! We'll be marching to attack Dublin itselfwithin a week. The horn will blow for him, and all good men will gatherto him. Hurry on, Father, and waken him. 

FATHER JOHN. I will not waken him. I will not bring him back from wherehe 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 lyinglike a stump of a tree and using no food and the world not able toknock a word out of him, I know the signs of it well. 

JOHNNY B. We cannot be waiting and watching through seven years. If thebusiness 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 getinformation. Waken him now, Father, and you'll get the blessing of thegenerations. 

FATHER JOHN. I will not bring him back. God will bring him back in Hisown good time. For all I know he may be seeing the hidden things ofGod. 

JOHNNY B. He might slip away in his dream. It is best to raise him upnow. 

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 mylifetime after me standing up to face him the way I did? And if I dotake a little drop of an odd night, sure I'd be very lonesome if I didnot take it. All the world knows it's not for love of what I drink, butfor love of the people that do be with me! Waken him, Father, or maybeI would waken him myself. [_Shakes him. _]

FATHER JOHN. Lift your hand from touching him. Leave him to himself andto the power of God. 

JOHNNY B. If you will not bring him back, why wouldn't we ourselves doit? 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 notget to the heart of the command. 

JOHNNY B. If he did not, he got a command from myself that satisfiedhim, and a message. 

FATHER JOHN. He did . .. He took it from you . .. And how do I know whatdevil's message it may have been that brought him into that devil'swork, destruction and drunkenness and burnings! That was not a messagefrom heaven! It was I awoke him; it was I kept him from hearing whatwas 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 ofyour deceit and his mistaking . .. You have left him without house ormeans to support him, you are striving to destroy and to drag him toentire ruin. I will not help you, I would rather see him die in histrance and go into God's hands than awake him and see him go intohell'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 thepower of the air will do it kindling fire into flame. 

JOHNNY B. Rise up and make no delay. Stretch out and gather a handfulof 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 hecould not use them?

JOHNNY B. Take fire so in the devil's name and put it to the soles ofhis 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 himswooning 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, waitingto take hold of him! Back from him, back, I say! Will you dare to lay ahand 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 thechurch. 

 [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 tohim, 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 themountain 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 nearerto 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 saidthat. It is certainly the music of paradise. Ah, now I hear, now Iunderstand. It is made of the continual clashing of swords!

JOHNNY B. That is the best music. We will clash them sure enough. Wewill clash our swords and our pikes on the bayonets of the redsoldiers. 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 cometo?

PAUDEEN. To come on, to be sure, to the attack on the barracks atAughanish. 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 understoodthe vision when I did that. I had not heard the command right. That wasnot the work I was sent to do. 

PAUDEEN. Rise up now and bid us what to do. Your great name itself willclear the road before you. It is you yourself will have freed allIreland before the stooks will be in stacks!

MARTIN. Listen, I will explain . .. I have misled you. It is only now Ihave the whole vision plain. As I lay there I saw through everything, Iknow 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 thewild 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 nobetter than any other traitor that ever gave up the work he took inhand. 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 forfailing them. 

MARTIN. I was mistaken when I set out to destroy church and law. Thebattle we have to fight is fought out in our own minds. There is afiery moment, perhaps once in a lifetime, and in that moment we see theonly thing that matters. It is in that moment the great battles arelost 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 promisesand with your drink? If you brought us out here to fail us and toridicule us, it is the last day you will live!

JOHNNY B. The curse of my heart on you! It would be right to send youto your own place on the flagstone of the traitors in hell. When once Ihave made an end of you, I will be as well satisfied to be going to mydeath 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; athousand riders with their swords drawn . .. The swords clashing! Oh, the sound of the swords, the sound of the clashing of the swords! [_Hegoes 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 beyondthe world?

BIDDY. Keep your hand off him, Johnny Bacach. If he is gone wild andcracked, that's natural. Those that have been wakened from a trance ona 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 paythe penalty. 

BIDDY. To prey on the mind it does, and rises into the head. There aresome would go over any height and would have great power in theirmadness. It is maybe to some secret cleft he is going to get knowledgeof the great cure for all things, or of the Plough that was hidden inthe old times, the Golden Plough. 

PAUDEEN. It seemed as if he was talking through honey. He had the lookof one that had seen great wonders. It is maybe among the old heroes ofIreland he went raising armies for our help. 

FATHER JOHN. God take him in His care and keep him from lying spiritsand from all delusions. 

JOHNNY B. We have got candles here, Father. We had them to put aroundhis 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 sameas 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 inthe night-time has been heard of. The soldiers are out after him andthe constables . .. There are two of the constables not far off . .. There are others on every side . .. They heard he was here in themountain . .. Where is he?

FATHER JOHN. He has gone up the path. 

THOMAS. Hurry after him! Tell him to hide himself . .. This attack hehad a hand in is a hanging crime. .. . Tell him to hide himself, to cometo me when all is quiet . .. Bad as his doings are, he is my ownbrother's son; I will get him on to a ship that will be going toFrance. 

FATHER JOHN. That will be best; send him back to the Brothers and tothe wise Bishops. They can unravel this tangle. I cannot; I cannot besure of the truth. 

THOMAS. Here are the constables; he will see them and get away. .. . Sayno 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 cominghere 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 besorry. 

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 towardsyou. 

PAUDEEN. There is a sort of a brightness about him. I misjudged himcalling him a traitor. It is not to this world he belongs at all. He isover 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 heis speaking. 

MARTIN. Father John, heaven is not what we have believed it to be. Itis not quiet; it is not singing and making music and all strife at anend. I have seen it, I have been there. The lover still loves, but witha greater passion; and the rider still rides, but the horse goes likethe wind and leaps the ridges; and the battle goes on always, always. That is the joy of heaven, continual battle. I thought the battle washere, and that the joy was to be found here on earth, that all one hadto do was to bring again the old, wild earth of the stories, but no, itis not here; we shall not come to that joy, that battle, till we haveput out the senses, everything that can be seen and handled, as I putout this candle. [_He puts out candle. _] We must put out the wholeworld as I put out this candle [_he puts out candle_]; we must put outthe light of the stars and the light of the sun and the light of themoon [_he puts out the remaining candles and comes down to where theothers are_], till we have brought everything to nothing once again. Isaw in a broken vision, but now all is clear to me. Where there isnothing, 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 meddlewith 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 theconstable's hand. 

MARTIN [_looking at his hand, on which there is blood_]. Ah, that isblood! I fell among the rocks. It is a hard climb. It is a long climbto the vineyards of Eden. Help me up. I must go on. The Mountain ofAbiegnos 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 thathe was coming within the best day of his life. 

JOHNNY B. Madness on him or no madness, I will not leave that body tothe law to be buried with a dog's burial or brought away and maybehanged upon a tree. Lift him on the sacks; bring him away to thequarry; it is there on the hillside the boys will give him a greatburying, 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 camefrom. 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 queerthe world itself is, whatever shape was put upon it at the first!

ANDREW. To be too headstrong and too open, that is the beginning oftrouble. To keep to yourself the thing that you know, and to do inquiet the thing you want to do, there would be no disturbance at all inthe 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 _isstanding at a table undoing a parcel. _ PETER _is sitting at one side ofthe 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'slike cheering. [_He goes to the window and looks out. _] I wonder whatthey 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 thecheering 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 coatto 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 bewearing a suit of that sort for his wedding, or have so good a place tobring a wife to. 

PATRICK [_who is still at the window_]. There's an old woman comingdown 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 areshearing sheep. [_He turns towards_ BRIDGET. ] Do you remember whatWinny of the Cross Roads was saying the other night about the strangewoman that goes through the country whatever time there's war ortrouble coming?

BRIDGET. Don't be bothering us about Winny's talk, but go and open thedoor for your brother. I hear him coming up the path. 

PETER. I hope he has brought Delia's fortune with him safe, for fearher people might go back on the bargain and I after making it. Troubleenough I had making it. 

 [PATRICK _opens the door and_ MICHAEL _comes in. _]

BRIDGET. What kept you, Michael? We were looking out for you this longtime. 

MICHAEL. I went round by the priest's house to bid him be ready tomarry us to-morrow. 

BRIDGET. Did he say anything?

MICHAEL. He said it was a very nice match, and that he was never betterpleased 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 themoney_]. Yes, I made the bargain well for you, Michael. Old John Cahelwould sooner have kept a share of this awhile longer. "Let me keep thehalf of it till the first boy is born, " says he. "You will not, " saysI. "Whether there is or is not a boy, the whole hundred pounds must bein Michael's hands before he brings your daughter in the house. " Thewife 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, ortwenty pounds itself, with the wife I married. 

BRIDGET. Well, if I didn't bring much I didn't get much. What had youthe day I married you but a flock of hens and you feeding them, and afew lambs and you driving them to the market at Ballina? [_She is vexedand bangs a jug on the dresser. _] If I brought no fortune, I worked itout in my bones, laying down the baby, Michael that is standing therenow, on a stook of straw, while I dug the potatoes, and never askingbig 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 thatis to come into it. 

PETER. You are the best woman in Ireland, but money is good, too. [_Hebegins handling the money again and sits down. _] I never thought to seeso much money within my four walls. We can do great things now we haveit. We can take the ten acres of land we have a chance of since JamsieDempsey died, and stock it. We will go to the fair of Ballina to buythe 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 ofit, or to look at it at all. 

BRIDGET. That's no wonder. Why would she look at it when she hadyourself to look at, a fine, strong young man? It is proud she must beto get you, a good steady boy that will make use of the money, and notbe running through it or spending it on drink like another. 

PETER. It's likely Michael himself was not thinking much of the fortuneeither, but of what sort the girl was to look at. 

MICHAEL [_coming over towards the table_]. Well, you would like a nicecomely girl to be beside you, and to go walking with you. The fortuneonly lasts for a while, but the woman will be there always. 

 [_Cheers. _]

PATRICK [_turning round from the window_]. They are cheering againdown in the town. Maybe they are landing horses from Enniscrone. Theydo be cheering when the horses take the water well. 

MICHAEL. There are no horses in it. Where would they be going and nofair 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 thethreshold_]. Will Delia remember, do you think, to bring the greyhoundpup 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, buthe 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 withus, and the Cahels such a good back to us in the district, and Delia'sown uncle a priest, we might be put in the way of making Patrick apriest some day, and he so good at his books. 

PETER. Time enough, time enough; you have always your head full ofplans, Bridget. 

BRIDGET. We will be well able to give him learning, and not to send himtrampling 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 sawawhile ago. 

MICHAEL. I don't think it's one of the neighbours anyway, but she hasher cloak over her face. 

BRIDGET. It might be some poor woman heard we were making ready for thewedding and came to look for her share. 

PETER. I may as well put the money out of sight. There is no useleaving 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 windowslowly; she looks at_ MICHAEL _as she passes. _] I'd sooner a strangernot 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 travelledso 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, butthey 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 roadssince 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, butthere is no quiet in my heart. When the people see me quiet, they thinkold age has come on me and that all the stir has gone out of me. Butwhen 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 Caseythat was put out of her holding at Kilglass awhile ago?

BRIDGET. She is not. I saw the widow Casey one time at the market inBallina, a stout fresh woman. 

PETER [_to_ OLD WOMAN]. Did you hear a noise of cheering, and youcoming up the hill?

OLD WOMAN. I thought I heard the noise I used to hear when my friendscame 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-hairedDonough, that was hanged in Galway. [_She goes on singing, muchlouder. _]

 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 gothis death?

OLD WOMAN. Not long, not long. But there were others that died for loveof 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 theO'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, andthere were a great many in the west, some that died hundreds of yearsago, 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 theworld?

PETER. She doesn't know well what she's talking about, with the wantand 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 bringher on her way. A few pence, or a shilling itself, and we with so muchmoney in the house. 

PETER. Indeed I'd not begrudge it to her if we had it to spare, but ifwe go running through what we have, we'll soon have to break thehundred pounds, and that would be a pity. 

BRIDGET. Shame on you, Peter. Give her the shilling, and your blessingwith 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, hemust 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 hopeof 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 tohelp me now. I am not afraid. If they are put down to-day, they willget the upper hand to-morrow. [_She gets up. _] I must be going to meetmy friends. They are coming to help me, and I must be there to welcomethem. 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; itis the girl coming into the house you have to welcome. You have plentyto do, it is food and drink you have to bring to the house. The womanthat is coming home is not coming with empty hands; you would not havean 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 forhelp. 

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 thatcall 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 thatthere were songs made for me; there have been many songs made for me. Iheard 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 Ican 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 arered-cheeked now will be pale-cheeked; many that have been free to walkthe hills and the bogs and the rushes will be sent to walk hard streetsin far countries; many a good plan will be broken; many that havegathered 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. Theythat had red cheeks will have pale cheeks for my sake; and for allthat, 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 manthat has got the touch. [_Raising her voice. _] Look here, Michael, atthe wedding-clothes. Such grand clothes as these are. You have a rightto 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 theroom and fit them on. [_She puts them on his arm. _]

MICHAEL. What wedding are you talking of? What clothes will I bewearing to-morrow?

BRIDGET. These are the clothes you are going to wear when you marryDelia 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 hashappened?

 [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 towardsher. _] 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 theFrench. 

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 oldwoman going down the path?

PATRICK. I did not, but I saw a young girl, and she had the walk of aqueen. 

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 orelse a curtained place where the persons can enter by parting thecurtains. A desk and a chair at one side. An hour-glass on a stand nearthe door. A creepy stool near it. Some benches. A_ WISE MAN _sitting athis desk. _

WISE M. [_turning over the pages of a book_]. Where is that passage Iam to explain to my pupils to-day? Here it is, and the book says thatit was written by a beggar on the walls of Babylon: "There are twoliving countries, the one visible and the one invisible; and when it iswinter with us it is summer in that country, and when the Novemberwinds are up among us it is lambing time there. " I wish that my pupilshad asked me to explain any other passage. [_The_ FOOL _comes in andstands at the door holding out his hat. He has a pair of shears in theother 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 somany images and so many deep colours and so much fine gilding, if ithad been foolishness. 

FOOL. Give me a penny. 

WISE M. [_turns to another page_]. Here he has written: "The learned inold times forgot the visible country. " That I understand, but I havetaught 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 teachyou much. 

FOOL. Such a great wise teacher as you are will not refuse a penny to aFool. 

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 thebreak of every day, I could hear nothing but the people snoring intheir houses. When I went by Tubbervanach where the young men used tobe climbing the hill to the blessed well, they were sitting at thecrossroads playing cards. When I went by Carrigoras, where the friarsused to be fasting and serving the poor, I saw them drinking wine andobeying their wives. And when I asked what misfortune had brought allthese changes, they said it was no misfortune, but it was the wisdomthey had learned from your teaching. 

WISE M. Run round to the kitchen, and my wife will give you somethingto 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 buybacon in the shops, and nuts in the market, and strong drink for thetime when the sun is weak. And I want snares to catch the rabbits andthe 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 youpennies. 

FOOL. Give me a penny and I will bring you luck. Bresal the Fishermanlets me sleep among the nets in his loft in the winter-time because hesays I bring him luck; and in the summer-time the wild creatures let mesleep near their nests and their holes. It is lucky even to look at meor to touch me, but it is much more lucky to give me a penny. [_Holdsout 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'ttell 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 anylonger. 

FOOL. Let me come close to you where nobody will hear me. But first youmust promise you will not drive them away. [WISE M. _nods. _] Every daymen 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 theangels fly away. 

WISE M. Ah, now I know that you are Teigue the Fool. You have told methat 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 ifone 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 peoplego by, happy and laughing, and their clothes are the colour of burningsods. 

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, andthere was something shining about its head. 

WISE M. Well, there are your four pennies. You, a fool, say "glory beto God, " but before I came the wise men said it. 

FOOL. Four pennies! That means a great deal of luck. Great teacher, Ihave brought you plenty of luck!

 [_He goes out shaking the bag. _]

WISE M. Though they call him Teigue the Fool, he is not more foolishthan everybody used to be, with their dreams and their preachings andtheir three worlds; but I have overthrown their three worlds with theseven sciences. [_He touches the books with his hands. _] WithPhilosophy that was made from the lonely star, I have taught them toforget Theology; with Architecture, I have hidden the ramparts of theircloudy heaven; with Music, the fierce planets' daughter whose hair isalways on fire, and with Grammar that is the moon's daughter, I haveshut their ears to the imaginary harpings and speech of the angels; andI have made formations of battle with Arithmetic that have put thehosts of heaven to the rout. But, Rhetoric and Dialectic, that havebeen born out of the light star and out of the amorous star, you havebeen my spear-man and my catapult! Oh! my swift horsemen! Oh! my keendarting arguments, it is because of you that I have overthrown thehosts of foolishness! [_An_ Angel, _in a dress the colour of embers, and carrying a blossoming apple bough in her hand and a gilded haloabout her head, stands upon the threshold. _] Before I came, men's mindswere stuffed with folly about a heaven where birds sang the hours, andabout angels that came and stood upon men's thresholds. But I havelocked the visions into heaven and turned the key upon them. Well, Imust consider this passage about the two countries. My mother used tosay something of the kind. She would say that when our bodies sleep oursouls awake, and that whatever withers here ripens yonder, and thatharvests are snatched from us that they may feed invisible people. Butthe meaning of the book may be different, for only fools and women havethoughts like that; their thoughts were never written upon the walls ofBabylon. 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 mydreams when I was a child--that bright thing, that dress that is thecolour 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 grainshave 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 youngwife and children that I cannot leave. Why must I die?

ANGEL. You must die because no souls have passed over the threshold ofHeaven since you came into this country. The threshold is grassy, andthe 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 deniedthe existence of Heaven; and the doors of Purgatory will not open toyou, 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 taughtothers 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, Iwould have believed, I would have asked forgiveness. Maybe you do notknow how easy it is to doubt. Storm, death, the grass rotting, manysicknesses, those are the messengers that came to me. Oh! why are yousilent? You carry the pardon of the Most High; give it to me! I wouldkiss 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 seein their dreams. Maybe it is as hard for you to understand why wedisbelieve as it is for us to believe. Oh! what have I said! You knoweverything! Give me time to undo what I have done. Give me a year--amonth--a day--an hour! Give me to this hour's end, that I may undo whatI have done!

ANGEL. You cannot undo what you have done. Yet I have this power withmy 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 onefiery seed, watched over by those that sent me, the harvest can comeagain to heap the golden threshing floor. But now farewell, for I amweary of the weight of time. 

WISE M. Blessed be the Father, blessed be the Son, blessed be theSpirit, blessed be the Messenger They have sent!

ANGEL [_at the door and pointing at the hour-glass_]. In a littlewhile the uppermost glass will be empty. [_Goes out. _]

WISE M. Everything will be well with me. I will call my pupils; theyonly say they doubt. [_Pulls the bell. _] They will be here in a moment. They want to please me; they pretend that they disbelieve. Belief istoo old to be overcome all in a minute. Besides, I can prove what Ionce disproved. [_Another pull at the bell. _] They are coming now. Iwill 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'tthey 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 waistis heavy. 

FOOL. I want to buy bacon in the shops, and nuts in the market, andstrong drink for the time when the sun is weak, and snares to catchrabbits and the squirrels that steal the nuts, and hares, and a greatpot 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 threetimes 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 youlessons? No, he goes to school for nothing on the mountains. Tell uswhat 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 youtell 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? Orin 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 notbe 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 remainsunchanged 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 andnot 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 talkabout the words the beggar wrote upon the walls of Babylon. 

WISE M. If there is one amongst you that believes, he will be my bestfriend. Surely there is one amongst you. [_They are all silent. _]Surely what you learned at your mother's knees has not been so soonforgotten. 

A YOUNG M. Master, till you came, no teacher in this land was able toget rid of foolishness and ignorance. But every one has listened toyou, every one has learned the truth. You have had your lastdisputation. 

ANOTHER. What a fool you made of that monk in the market-place! He hadnot a word to say. 

WISE M. [_comes from his desk and stands among them in the middle ofthe room_]. Pupils, dear friends, I have deceived you all this time. Itwas I myself who was ignorant. There is a God. There is a Heaven. Thereis 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 disputewith 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 standingthere. 

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 amnow. I tell you I was awake as I am now. 

A YOUNG M. Some dream when they are awake, but they are the crazy, andwho would believe what they say? Forgive me, Master, but that is whatyou taught me to say. That is what you said to the monk when he spokeof 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 findthat 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 hadnothing more to say. 

WISE M. Out, out, this is no time for laughter! Out with you, thoughyou are a king's son! [_They begin to hurry out. _]

A YOUNG M. Come, come; he wants us to find someone who will disputewith him. 

 [_All go out. _]

WISE M. [_alone; he goes to the door at the side_]. I will call mywife. She will believe; women always believe. [_He opens the door andcalls. _] Bridget! Bridget! [BRIDGET _comes in, wearing her apron, hersleeves turned up from her floury arms. _] Bridget, tell me the truth;do not say what you think will please me. Do you sometimes say yourprayers?

BRIDGET. Prayers! No, you taught me to leave them off long ago. Atfirst 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 andthe children asleep, do you not think about the saints, about thethings you used to believe in? What do you think of when you are alone?

BRIDGET [_considering_]. I think about nothing. Sometimes I wonder ifthe linen is bleaching white, or I go out to see if the cows arepicking up the chickens' food. 

WISE M. Oh, what can I do! Is there nobody who believes he can neverdie? I must go and find somebody! [_He goes towards the door, but stopswith his eyes fixed on the hour-glass. _] I cannot go out; I cannotleave that; go and call my pupils again--I will make them understand--Iwill say to them that only amid spiritual terror, or only when all thatlaid 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 therein the street! I cannot leave this glass; somebody might shake it! Thenthe sand would fall more quickly. 

BRIDGET. I don't understand what you are saying. [_Looks out. _] Thereis a great crowd of people talking to your pupils. 

WISE M. Oh, run out, Bridget, and see if they have found somebody thatall 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 bealways having arguments. [_Goes out and shouts through the kitchendoor. _] Don't be meddling with the bread, children, while I'm out. 

WISE M. [_kneels down_]. "_Confiteor Deo omnipotente beatę Marię. .. . _"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, andnuts 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 cannotfind anybody to argue with you. There is nobody in the whole countrywho 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? Itmust 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 thechildren. 

WISE M. Out of this, woman, out of this, I say! [BRIDGET _goes throughthe kitchen door. _] Will nobody find a way to help me! But she spoke ofmy children. I had forgotten them. They will believe. It is only thosewho 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 aHell? Is there a Purgatory?

FIRST CHILD. We haven't forgotten, father. 

THE OTHER CHILD. Oh, no, father. [_They both speak together, as if inschool. _] There is nothing we cannot see; there is nothing we cannottouch. 

FIRST CHILD. Foolish people used to think that there was, but you arevery 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 runaway. _] Why are you afraid? I will teach you better--no, I will neverteach you again. Go to your mother! no, she will not be able to teachthem. .. . Help them, O God!. .. The grains are going very quickly. Thereis very little sand in the uppermost glass. Somebody will come for mein a moment; perhaps he is at the door now! All creatures that havereason doubt. O that the grass and the plants could speak! Somebody hassaid that they would wither if they doubted. O speak to me, O grassblades! O fingers of God's certainty, speak to me! You are millions andyou will not speak. I dare not know the moment the messenger will comefor me. I will cover the glass. [_He covers it and brings it to thedesk. Sees the_ FOOL, _who is sitting by the door playing with someflowers which he has stuck in his hat. He has begun to blow a dandelionhead. _] 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 outwhat hour it is! You are waiting to see them coming through the door tocarry 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 theshoulders, and begins to force him out through the door, then suddenlychanges his mind. _] No, I have something to ask you. [_He drags himback into the room. _] Is there a Heaven? Is there a Hell? Is there aPurgatory?

FOOL. So you ask me now. When you were asking your pupils, I said tomyself, if he would ask Teigue the Fool, Teigue could tell him allabout it, for Teigue has learned all about it when he has been cuttingthe nets. 

WISE M. Tell me; tell me!

FOOL. I said, Teigue knows everything. Not even the cats or the haresthat milk the cows have Teigue's wisdom. But Teigue will not speak; hesays 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 Ihave 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 mythoughts. 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 penniesthat there are not twenty pennies in your bag; let me put in my handand count them. " But I pulled the strings tighter, like this; and whenI 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, Ihave not the courage. [_He kneels. _] Have pity upon me, Fool, and tellme!

FOOL. Ah! Now, that is different. I am not afraid of you now. But Imust come nearer to you; somebody in there might hear what the Angelsaid. 

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 thatpunishes, the Fire that purifies, and the Fire wherein the soulrejoices for ever!"

WISE M. He believes! I am saved! The sand has run out. .. . [FOOL _helpshim to his chair. _] I am going from the country of the seven wanderingstars, and I am going to the country of the fixed stars!. .. Iunderstand 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 theycoming? Tell them, Fool, that when the life and the mind are broken thetruth comes through them like peas through a broken peascod. Pray, Fool, that they may be given a sign and carry their souls alive out ofthe 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 totell 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. [_Allare silent for a moment. _] . .. Look what has come from his mouth . .. Alittle winged thing . .. A little shining thing. .. . It is gone to thedoor. [_The_ ANGEL _appears in the doorway, stretches out her hands andcloses them again. _] The Angel has taken it in her hands. .. . She willopen 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, andthe gift of fit and beautiful expression in verse-form--if these may betaken 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 ofcharm which comes occasionally to the work of some poet, quite unearnedby any of these catalogued qualities of his, you have a fair measure ofMr. Noyes at his best. .. . Two considerations render Mr. Noyesinteresting above most poets: the wonderful degree in which thepersonal charm illumines what he has already written, and the surpriseswhich one feels may be in store in his future work. His feelings havealready so much variety and so much apparent sincerity that it isimpossible to tell in what direction his genius will develop. Inwhatever style he writes, --the mystical, the historical-dramatic, theimpassioned description of natural beauty, the ballad, the lovelyric, --he has the peculiarity of seeming in each style to have foundthe truest expression of himself. "--_Louisville Courier-Journal. _

_PUBLISHED BY_THE MACMILLAN COMPANY64-66 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: "Itis not only an exquisite piece of work, but it is a psychologicalanalysis of the child-mind so daring and yet so convincing as to liftit to the plane where the masterpieces of literature dwell. It can beread with delight by a child of ten. It is put into the mouth of achild of about that age, but the adult must be strangely constitutedwho can remain indifferent to its haunting spell or who can resist thefascination which lies in its every page. "

"We are reminded both of Stevenson--to whom Mr. Noyes pays a glowingtribute--and Lewis Carroll; yet there is no imitation; Mr. Noyes has adistinct poetic style of his own. .. . In a matter-of-fact age such verseas 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 mosthope-inspiring figures in our latter-day poetry. He, almost alone, ofthe younger men seems to have the true singing voice, the gift ofuttering in authentic lyric cry some fresh, unspoiledemotion. "--_Post. _

Mr. Richard Le Gallienne in the _North American Review_ pointed outrecently "their spontaneous power and freshness, their imaginativevision, their lyrical magic. " He adds: "Mr. Noyes is surprisinglyvarious. I have seldom read one book, particularly by so young awriter, in which so many different things are done, and all done sowell. .. . But that for which one is most grateful to Mr. Noyes in hisstrong and brilliant treatment of all his rich material, is the gift bywhich, in my opinion, he stands alone among the younger poets of theday, his lyrical gift. "

_Cloth, 12mo, $1. 25 net_

_PUBLISHED BY_THE MACMILLAN COMPANY64-66 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 hehas done in verse up to the present time. The first volume contains hislyrics; the second includes all of his five dramas in verse: "TheCountess Cathleen, " "The Land of Heart's Desire, " "The King'sThreshold, " "On Baile's Strand, " and "The Shadowy Waters. "

William Butler Yeats stands among the few men to be reckoned with inmodern poetry, especially of a dramatic character. The _New York Sun_, for example, refers to him as "an important factor in Englishliterature, " 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 COMPANY64-66 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--TheEncyclopędic Education of the Church--The Feudal System. 

VOLUME II. The Renaissance and the Reformation--Influence of the Courtand the Universities. 

VOLUME III. English Poetry in the Seventeenth Century--DecadentInfluence of the Feudal Monarchy--Growth of the National Genius. 

VOLUME IV. Development and Decline of the Poetic Drama--Influence ofthe Court and the People. 

VOLUME V. The Constitutional Compromise of the EighteenthCentury--Effects of the Classical Renaissance--Its Zenith andDecline--The Early Romantic Renaissance. 

 * * *

"It is his privilege to have made a contribution of great value andsignal importance to the history of English Literature. "--_Pall MallGazette. _

_PUBLISHED BY_THE MACMILLAN COMPANY64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK