The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 3 of 8. The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the Stars

FATHER JOHN

That is a common imagining. I know many poor persons have seen that.

MARTIN

We went on, on, on. We came to a sweet-smelling garden with a gate to it, and there were wheatfields in full ear around, and there were vineyards like I saw in France, and the grapes in bunches. I thought it to be one of the townlands of heaven. Then I saw the horses we were on had changed to unicorns, and they began trampling the grapes and breaking them. I tried to stop them but I could not.

FATHER JOHN

That is strange, that is strange. What is it that brings to mind? I heard it in some place, monoceros de astris, the unicorn from the stars.

MARTIN

They tore down the wheat and trampled it on stones, and then they tore down what were left of grapes and crushed and bruised and trampled them. I smelt the wine, it was flowing on every side – then everything grew vague. I cannot remember clearly, everything was silent; the trampling now stopped, we were all waiting for some command. Oh! was it given! I was trying to hear it; there was someone dragging, dragging me away from that. I am sure there was a command given, and there was a great burst of laughter. What was it? What was the command? Everything seemed to tremble round me.

FATHER JOHN

Did you awake then?

MARTIN

I do not think I did, it all changed – it was terrible, wonderful! I saw the unicorns trampling, trampling, but not in the wine troughs. Oh, I forget! Why did you waken me?

FATHER JOHN

I did not touch you. Who knows what hands pulled you away? I prayed, that was all I did. I prayed very hard that you might awake. If I had not, you might have died. I wonder what it all meant? The unicorns – what did the French monk tell me? – strength they meant, virginal strength, a rushing, lasting, tireless strength.

MARTIN

They were strong. Oh, they made a great noise with their trampling.

FATHER JOHN

And the grapes, what did they mean? It puts me in mind of the psalm, Et calix meus inebrians quam præclarus est. It was a strange vision, a very strange vision, a very strange vision.

MARTIN

How can I get back to that place?

FATHER JOHN

You must not go back, you must not think of doing that. That life of vision, of contemplation, is a terrible life, for it has far more of temptation in it than the common life. Perhaps it would have been best for you to stay under rules in the monastery.

MARTIN

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

FATHER JOHN

You cannot know but it was from the Prince of this world the vision came. How can one ever know unless one follows the discipline of the Church? Some spiritual director, some wise learned man, that is what you want. I do not know enough. What am I but a poor banished priest, with my learning forgotten, my books never handled and spotted with the damp!

MARTIN

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

FATHER JOHN[Putting himself between MARTIN and the door.]

You must have patience as the saints had it. You are taking your own way. If there is a command from God for you, you must wait His good time to receive it.

MARTIN

Must I live here forty years, fifty years.. to grow as old as my uncles, seeing nothing but common things, doing work.. some foolish work?

FATHER JOHN

Here they are coming; it is time for me to go. I must think and I must pray. My mind is troubled about you. [To THOMAS as he and ANDREW come in.] Here he is; be very kind to him for he has still the weakness of a little child.

[Goes out.THOMAS

Are you well of the fit, lad?

MARTIN

It was no fit. I was away – for awhile – no, you will not believe me if I tell you.

ANDREW

I would believe it, Martin. I used to have very long sleeps myself and very queer dreams.

THOMAS

You had, till I cured you, taking you in hand and binding you to the hours of the clock. The cure that will cure yourself, Martin, and will waken you, is to put the whole of your mind on to your golden coach; to take it in hand and to finish it out of face.

MARTIN

Not just now. I want to think – to try and remember what I saw, something that I heard, that I was told to do.

THOMAS

No, but put it out of your mind. There is no man doing business that can keep two things in his head. A Sunday or a holy-day, now, you might go see a good hurling or a thing of the kind, but to be spreading out your mind on anything outside of the workshop on common days, all coachbuilding would come to an end.

MARTIN

I don’t think it is building I want to do. I don’t think that is what was in the command.

THOMAS

It is too late to be saying that, the time you have put the most of your fortune in the business. Set yourself now to finish your job, and when it is ended maybe I won’t begrudge you going with the coach as far as Dublin.

ANDREW

That is it, that will satisfy him. I had a great desire myself, and I young, to go travelling the roads as far as Dublin. The roads are the great things, they never come to an end. They are the same as the serpent having his tail swallowed in his own mouth.

MARTIN

It was not wandering I was called to. What was it? what was it?

THOMAS

What you are called to, and what everyone having no great estate is called to, is to work. Sure the world itself could not go on without work.

MARTIN

I wonder if that is the great thing, to make the world go on? No, I don’t think that is the great thing – what does the Munster poet call it? – ‘this crowded slippery coach-loving world.’ I don’t think I was told to work for that.

ANDREW

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

THOMAS

Rouse yourself, Martin, and don’t be talking the way a fool talks. You started making that golden coach, and you were set upon it, and you had me tormented about it. You have yourself wore out working at it, and planning it, and thinking of it, and at the end of the race, when you have the winning-post in sight, and horses hired for to bring it to Dublin Castle, you go falling into sleeps and blathering about dreams, and we run to a great danger of letting the profit and the sale go by. Sit down on the bench now, and lay your hands to the work.

MARTIN [sitting down]

I will try. I wonder why I ever wanted to make it; it was no good dream set me doing that. [He takes up wheel.] What is there in a wooden wheel to take pleasure in it? Gilding it outside makes it no different.

THOMAS

That is right, now. You had some good plan for making the axle run smooth.

MARTIN[Letting wheel fall and putting his hands to his head.]

It is no use. [Angrily.] Why did you send the priest to awake me? My soul is my own and my mind is my own. I will send them to where I like. You have no authority over my thoughts.

THOMAS

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

MARTIN

I had better go; I am of no use to you. I am going – I must be alone – I will forget if I am not alone. Give me what is left of my money and I will go out of this.

THOMAS[Opening a press and taking out a bag and throwing it to him.]

There is what is left of your money! The rest of it you have spent on the coach. If you want to go, go, and I will not have to be annoyed with you from this out.

ANDREW

Come now with me, Thomas. The boy is foolish, but it will soon pass over. He has not my sense to be giving attention to what you will say. Come along now, leave him for awhile; leave him to me I say, it is I will get inside his mind.

[He leads THOMAS out. MARTIN bangs door angrily after them and 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

O, but wait. I understand you. Thomas doesn’t understand your thoughts, but I understand them. Wasn’t I telling you I was just like you once?

MARTIN

Like me? Did you ever see the other things, the things beyond?

ANDREW

I did. It is not the four walls of the house keep me content. Thomas doesn’t know. Oh, no, he doesn’t know.

MARTIN

No, he has no vision.

ANDREW

He has not, nor any sort of a heart for a frolic.

MARTIN

He has never heard the laughter and the music beyond.

ANDREW

He has not, nor the music of my own little flute. I have it hidden in the thatch outside.

MARTIN

Does the body slip from you as it does from me? They have not shut your window into eternity?

ANDREW

Thomas never shut a window I could not get through. I knew you were one of my own sort. When I am sluggish in the morning, Thomas says, ‘Poor Andrew is getting old.’ That is all he knows. The way to keep young is to do the things youngsters do. Twenty years I have been slipping away, and he never found me out yet!

MARTIN

That is what they call ecstasy, but there is no word that can tell out very plain what it means. That freeing of the mind from its thoughts, those wonders we know when we put them into words; the words seem as little like them as blackberries are like the moon and sun.

ANDREW

I found that myself the time they knew me to be wild, and used to be asking me to say what pleasure did I find in cards, and women, and drink.

MARTIN

You might help me to remember that vision I had this morning, to understand it. The memory of it has slipped from me. Wait, it is coming back, little by little. I know that I saw the unicorns trampling, and then a figure, a many-changing figure, holding some bright thing. I knew something was going to happen or to be said, something that would make my whole life strong and beautiful like the rushing of the unicorns, and then, and then —

JOHNNY BACACH’S voice at window

A poor person I am, without food, without a way, without portion, without costs, without a person or a stranger, without means, without hope, without health, without warmth —

ANDREW [looking towards window]

It is that troop of beggars. Bringing their tricks and their thieveries they are to the Kinvara Fair.

MARTIN [impatiently]

There is no quiet – come to the other room. I am trying to remember.

[They go to door of inner room, but ANDREW stops him.

ANDREW

They are a bad-looking fleet. I have a mind to drive them away, giving them a charity.

MARTIN

Drive them away or come away from their voices.

ANOTHER VOICE

I put under the power of my prayer

All that will give me help.Rafael keep him Wednesday,Sachiel feed him Thursday,Hamiel provide him Friday,Cassiel increase him Saturday.

Sure giving to us is giving to the Lord and laying up a store in the treasury of heaven.

ANDREW

Whisht! He is entering by the window!

[JOHNNY climbs up.JOHNNY

That I may never sin, but the place is empty.

PAUDEEN

Go in and see what can you make a grab at.

JOHNNY [getting in]

That every blessing I gave may be turned to a curse on them that left the place so bare! [He turns things over.] I might chance something in this chest if it was open.

[ANDREW begins creeping towards him.NANNY [outside]

Hurry on, now, you limping crabfish you! We can’t be stopping here while you’ll boil stirabout!

JOHNNY[Seizing bag of money and holding it up high in both hands.]

Look at this, now, look!

[ANDREW comes behind, seizes his arm.JOHNNY [letting bag fall with a crash]

Destruction on us all!

MARTIN[Running forward, seizes him. Heads disappear.]

That is it! O, I remember. That is what happened. That is the command. Who was it sent you here with that command?

JOHNNY

It was misery sent me in, and starvation, and the hard ways of the world.

NANNY [outside]

It was that, my poor child, and my one son only. Show mercy to him now and he after leaving gaol this morning.

MARTIN [to ANDREW]

I was trying to remember it – when he spoke that word it all came back to me. I saw a bright many-changing figure; it was holding up a shining vessel [holds up arms]; then the vessel fell and was broken with a great crash; then I saw the unicorns trampling it. They were breaking the world to pieces – when I saw the cracks coming I shouted for joy! And I heard the command ‘Destroy, destroy, destruction is the life-giver! destroy!’

ANDREW

What will we do with him? He was thinking to rob you of your gold.

MARTIN

How could I forget it or mistake it? It has all come upon me now; the reasons of it all, like a flood, like a flooded river.

JOHNNY [weeping]

It was the hunger brought me in and the drouth.

MARTIN

Were you given any other message? Did you see the unicorns?

JOHNNY

I saw nothing and heard nothing; near dead I am with the fright I got and with the hardship of the gaol.

MARTIN

To destroy, to overthrow all that comes between us and God, between us and that shining country. To break the wall, Andrew, to break the thing – whatever it is that comes between, but where to begin —

ANDREW

What is it you are talking about?

MARTIN

It may be that this man is the beginning. He has been sent – the poor, they have nothing, and so they can see heaven as we cannot. He and his comrades will understand me. But how to give all men high hearts that they may all understand?

JOHNNY

It’s the juice of the grey barley will do that.

ANDREW

To rise everybody’s heart, is it? Is it that was your meaning all the time? If you will take the blame of it all, I’ll do what you want. Give me the bag of money then. [He takes it up.] O, I’ve a heart like your own. I’ll lift the world, too. The people will be running from all parts. O, it will be a great day in this district.

JOHNNY

Will I go with you?

MARTIN

No, you must stay here; we have things to do and to plan.

JOHNNY

Destroyed we all are with the hunger and the drouth.

MARTIN

Go, then, get food and drink, whatever is wanted to give you strength and courage. Gather your people together here, bring them all in. We have a great thing to do. I have to begin – I want to tell it to the whole world. Bring them in, bring them in, I will make the house ready.

[He stands looking up as if in ecstasy; ANDREW and JOHNNY BACACH go out.

ACT II

The same workshop. MARTIN seen arranging mugs and bread, etc., on a table. FATHER JOHN comes in, knocking at open door as he comes; his mind intensely absorbed.

MARTIN

Come in, come in, I have got the house ready. Here is bread and meat – everybody is welcome.

[Hearing no answer, turns round.FATHER JOHN

Martin, I have come back. There is something I want to say to you.

MARTIN

You are welcome, there are others coming. They are not of your sort, but all are welcome.

FATHER JOHN

I have remembered suddenly something that I read when I was in the seminary.

MARTIN

You seem very tired.

FATHER JOHN [sitting down]

I had almost got back to my own place when I thought of it. I have run part of the way. It is very important; it is about the trance that you have been in. When one is inspired from above, either in trance or in contemplation, one remembers afterwards all that one has seen and read. I think there must be something about it in St. Thomas. I know that I have read a long passage about it years ago. But, Martin, there is another kind of inspiration, or rather an obsession or possession. A diabolical power comes into one’s body, or overshadows it. Those whose bodies are taken hold of in this way, jugglers, and witches, and the like, can often tell what is happening in distant places, or what is going to happen, but when they come out of that state they remember nothing. I think you said —

MARTIN

That I could not remember.

FATHER JOHN

You remembered something, but not all. Nature is a great sleep; there are dangerous and evil spirits in her dreams, but God is above Nature. She is a darkness, but He makes everything clear; He is light.

MARTIN

All is clear now. I remember all, or all that matters to me. A poor man brought me a word, and I know what I have to do.

FATHER JOHN

Ah, I understand, words were put into his mouth. I have read of such things. God sometimes uses some common man as his messenger.

MARTIN

You may have passed the man who brought it on the road. He left me but now.

FATHER JOHN

Very likely, very likely, that is the way it happened. Some plain, unnoticed man has sometimes been sent with a command.

MARTIN

I saw the unicorns trampling in my dream. They were breaking the world. I am to destroy, destruction was the word the messenger spoke.

FATHER JOHN

To destroy?

MARTIN

To bring again the old disturbed exalted life, the old splendour.

FATHER JOHN

You are not the first that dream has come to. [Gets up, and walks up and down.] It has been wandering here and there, calling now to this man, now to that other. It is a terrible dream.

MARTIN

Father John, you have had the same thought.

FATHER JOHN

Men were holy then, there were saints everywhere. There was reverence; but now it is all work, business, how to live a long time. Ah, if one could change it all in a minute, even by war and violence! There is a cell where Saint Ciaran used to pray; if one could bring that time again!

MARTIN

Do not deceive me. You have had the command.

FATHER JOHN

Why are you questioning me? You are asking me things that I have told to no one but my confessor.

MARTIN

We must gather the crowds together, you and I.

FATHER JOHN

I have dreamed your dream, it was long ago. I had your vision.

MARTIN

And what happened?

FATHER JOHN [harshly]

It was stopped; that was an end. I was sent to the lonely parish where I am, where there was no one I could lead astray. They have left me there. We must have patience; the world was destroyed by water, it has yet to be consumed by fire.

MARTIN

Why should we be patient? To live seventy years, and others to come after us and live seventy years it may be; and so from age to age, and all the while the old splendour dying more and more.

[A noise of shouting. ANDREW, who has been standing at the door, comes in.

ANDREW

Martin says truth, and he says it well. Planing the side of a cart or a shaft, is that life? It is not. Sitting at a desk writing letters to the man that wants a coach, or to the man that won’t pay for the one he has got, is that life, I ask you? Thomas arguing at you and putting you down – ‘Andrew, dear Andrew, did you put the tyre on that wheel yet?’ Is that life? Not, it is not. I ask you all, what do you remember when you are dead? It’s the sweet cup in the corner of the widow’s drinking-house that you remember. Ha, ha, listen to that shouting! That is what the lads in the village will remember to the last day they live.

MARTIN

Why are they shouting? What have you told them?

ANDREW

Never you mind; you left that to me. You bade me to lift their hearts and I did lift them. There is not one among them but will have his head like a blazing tar-barrel before morning. What did your friend the beggar say? The juice of the grey barley, he said.

FATHER JOHN

You accursed villain! You have made them drunk!

ANDREW

Not at all, but lifting them to the stars. That is what Martin bade me to do, and there is no one can say I did not do it.

[A shout at door, and beggars push in a barrel. They cry, ‘Hi! for the noble master!’ and point at ANDREW.

JOHNNY

It’s not him, it’s that one! [Points at MARTIN.

FATHER JOHN

Are you bringing this devil’s work in at the very door? Go out of this, I say! get out! Take these others with you!

MARTIN

No, no; I asked them in, they must not be turned out. They are my guests.

FATHER JOHN

Drive them out of your uncle’s house!

MARTIN

Come, Father, it is better for you to go. Go back to your own place. I have taken the command. It is better perhaps for you that you did not take it.

[FATHER JOHN and MARTIN go out.BIDDY

It is well for that old lad he didn’t come between ourselves and our luck. Himself to be after his meal, and ourselves staggering with the hunger! It would be right to have flayed him and to have made bags of his skin.

NANNY

What a hurry you are in to get your enough! Look at the grease on your frock yet, with the dint of the dabs you put in your pocket! Doing cures and foretellings is it? You starved pot-picker, you!

BIDDY

That you may be put up to-morrow to take the place of that decent son of yours that had the yard of the gaol wore with walking it till this morning!

NANNY

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

JOHNNY

If I did know you, I knew too much of you since the first beginning of my life! What reward did I ever get travelling with you? What store did you give me of cattle or of goods? What provision did I get from you by day or by night but your own bad character to be joined on to my own, and I following at your heels, and your bags tied round about me!

NANNY

Disgrace and torment on you! Whatever you got from me, it was more than any reward or any bit I ever got from the father you had, or any honourable thing at all, but only the hurt and the harm of the world and its shame!

JOHNNY

What would he give you, and you going with him without leave! Crooked and foolish you were always, and you begging by the side of the ditch.

NANNY

Begging or sharing, the curse of my heart upon you! It’s better off I was before ever I met with you to my cost! What was on me at all that I did not cut a scourge in the wood to put manners and decency on you the time you were not hardened as you are!

JOHNNY

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

PAUDEEN

’Faith, the pair of you together is better than Hector fighting before Troy!

NANNY

Ah, let you be quiet. It is not fighting we are craving, but the easing of the hunger that is on us and of the passion of sleep. Lend me a graineen of tobacco now till I’ll kindle my pipe – a blast of it will take the weight of the road off my heart.

[ANDREW gives her some, NANNY grabs at it.BIDDY

No, but it’s to myself you should give it. I that never smoked a pipe this forty year without saying the tobacco prayer. Let that one say did ever she do that much.

NANNY

That the pain of your front tooth may be in your back tooth, you to be grabbing my share!

[They snap at tobacco.ANDREW

Pup, pup, pup! Don’t be snapping and quarrelling now, and you so well treated in this house. It is strollers like yourselves should be for frolic and for fun. Have you ne’er a good song to sing, a song that will rise all our hearts?

PAUDEEN

Johnny Bacach is a good singer, it is what he used to be doing in the fairs, if the oakum of the gaol did not give him a hoarseness within the throat.

ANDREW

Give it out so, a good song, a song will put courage and spirit into any man at all.

JOHNNY [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 woodcockHad fallen into their hands.The judge said transportation,The ship was on the strand;They have yoked me to the tracesFor to plough Van Dieman’s Land!ANDREW

That’s no good of a song but a melancholy sort of a song. I’d as lief be listening to a saw going through timber. Wait, now, till you will hear myself giving out a tune on the flute.

[Goes out for it.JOHNNY

It is what I am thinking there must be a great dearth and a great scarcity of good comrades in this place, a man like that youngster, having means in his hand, to be bringing ourselves and our rags into the house.

PAUDEEN

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

JOHNNY

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