The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 4 of 8. The Hour-glass. Cathleen ni Houlihan. The Golden Helmet. The Irish Dramatic Movement

CUCHULAIN [laughs]

I have imagined as good, when I had as much ale, and believed it too.

LEAGERIE [at table]

I tell you, Cuchulain, you never did. You never imagined a story like this.

CONAL

Why must you be always putting yourself up against Leagerie and myself? and what is more, it was no imagination at all. We said to ourselves that all came out of the flagon, and we laughed, and we said we will tell nobody about it. We made an oath to tell nobody. But twelve months after when we were sitting by this table, the flagon between us —

LEAGERIE

But full up to the brim —

CONAL

The thought of that story had put us from our drinking —

LEAGERIE

We were telling it over to one another —

CONAL

Suddenly that man came in with his head on his shoulders again, and the big sword in his hand. He asked for payment of his debt, and because neither I nor Leagerie would let him cut off our heads he began abusing us and making little of us, and saying that we were a disgrace, and that all Ireland was disgraced because of us. We had not a word to say.

LEAGERIE

If you had been here you would have been as silent as we were.

CONAL

At last he said he would come again in twelve months and give us one more chance to keep our word and pay our debt. After that he went down into the sea again. Will he tell the whole world of the disgrace that has come upon us, do you think?

CUCHULAIN

Whether he does or does not, we will stand there in the door with our swords out and drive him down to the sea again.

CONAL

What is the use of fighting with a man whose head laughs when it has been cut off?

LEAGERIE

We might run away, but he would follow us everywhere.

CONAL

He is coming; the sea is beginning to splash and rumble as it did before he came the last time.

CUCHULAIN

Let us shut the door and put our backs against it.

LEAGERIE

It is too late. Look, there he is at the door. He is standing on the threshold.

[A MAN dressed in red, with a great sword and red ragged hair, and having a Golden Helmet on his head, is standing on the threshold.

CUCHULAIN

Go back into the sea, old red head! If you will take off heads, take off the head of the sea turtle of Muirthemne, or of the pig of Connaught that has a moon in his belly, or of that old juggler Manannan, son of the sea, or of the red man of the Boyne, or of the King of the Cats, for they are of your own sort, and it may be they understand your ways. Go, I say, for when a man’s head is off it does not grow again. What are you standing there for? Go down, I say. If I cannot harm you with the sword I will put you down into the sea with my hands. Do you laugh at me, old red head? Go down before I lay my hands upon you.

RED MAN

So you also believe I was in earnest when I asked for a man’s head? It was but a drinker’s joke, an old juggling feat, to pass the time. I am the best of all drinkers and tipsy companions, the kindest there is among the Shape-changers of the world. Look, I have brought this Golden Helmet as a gift. It is for you or for Leagerie or for Conal, for the best man, and the bravest fighting-man amongst you, and you yourselves shall choose the man. Leagerie is brave, and Conal is brave. They risk their lives in battle, but they were not brave enough for my jokes and my juggling. [He lays the Golden Helmet on the ground.] Have I been too grim a joker? Well, I am forgiven now, for there is the Helmet, and let the strongest take it.

[He goes out.CONAL [taking Helmet]

It is my right. I am a year older than Leagerie, and I have fought in more battles.

LEAGERIE [strutting about stage, sings]Leagerie of the BattleHas put to the swordThe cat-headed menAnd carried awayTheir hidden gold.[He snatches Helmet at the last word.CONAL

Give it back to me, I say. What was the treasure but withered leaves when you got to your own door?

CUCHULAIN[Taking the Helmet from LEAGERIE.]

Give it to me, I say.

CONAL

You are too young, Cuchulain. What deeds have you to be set beside our deeds?

CUCHULAIN

I have not taken it for myself. It will belong to us all equally. [He goes to table and begins filling Helmet with ale.] We will pass it round and drink out of it turn about and no one will be able to claim that it belongs to him more than another. I drink to your wife, Conal, and to your wife, Leagerie, and I drink to Emer my own wife. [Shouting and blowing of horns in the distance.] What is that noise?

CONAL

It is the horseboys and the huntboys and the scullions quarrelling. I know the sound, for I have heard it often of late. It is a good thing that you are home, Cuchulain, for it is your own horseboy and chariot-driver, Laeg, that is the worst of all, and now you will keep him quiet. They take down the great hunting-horns when they cannot drown one another’s voices by shouting. There – there – do you hear them now? [Shouting so as to be heard above the noise.] I drink to your good health, Cuchulain, and to your young wife, though it were well if she did not quarrel with my wife.

Many men, among whom is LAEG, chariot-driver of CUCHULAIN, come in with great horns of many fantastic shapesLAEG

I am Cuchulain’s chariot-driver, and I say that my master is the best.

ANOTHER

He is not, but Leagerie is.

ANOTHER

No, but Conal is.

LAEG

Make them listen to me, Cuchulain.

ANOTHER

No, but listen to me.

LAEG

When I said Cuchulain should have the Helmet, they blew the horns.

ANOTHER

Conal has it. The best man has it.

CUCHULAIN

Silence, all of you. What is all this uproar, Laeg, and who began it?

[The Scullions and the Horseboys point at LAEG and cry, ‘He began it.’ They keep up an all but continual murmur through what follows.

LAEG

A man with a red beard came where we were sitting, and as he passed me he cried out that they were taking a golden helmet or some such thing from you and denying you the championship of Ireland. I stood up on that and I cried out that you were the best of the men of Ireland. But the others cried for Leagerie or Conal, and because I have a big voice they got down the horns to drown my voice, and as neither I nor they would keep silent we have come here to settle it. I demand that the Helmet be taken from Conal and be given to you.

[The Horseboys and the Scullions shout, ‘No, no; give it to Leagerie,’ ‘The best man has it,’ etc.CUCHULAIN

It has not been given to Conal or to anyone. I have made it into a drinking-cup that it may belong to all. I drank and then Conal drank. Give it to Leagerie, Conal, that he may drink. That will make them see that it belongs to all of us.

A SCULLION OR HORSEBOY

Cuchulain is right.

ANOTHER

Cuchulain is right, and I am tired blowing on the big horn.

LAEG

Cuchulain, you drank first.

ANOTHER

He gives it to Leagerie now, but he has taken the honour of it for himself. Did you hear him say he drank the first? He claimed to be the best by drinking first.

ANOTHER

Did Cuchulain drink the first?

LAEG [triumphantly]

You drank the first, Cuchulain.

CONAL

Did you claim to be better than us by drinking first?

[LEAGERIE and CONAL draw their swords.CUCHULAIN

Is it that old dried herring, that old red juggler who has made us quarrel for his own comfort? [The Horseboys and the Scullions murmur excitedly.] He gave the Helmet to set us by the ears, and because we would not quarrel over it, he goes to Laeg and tells him that I am wronged. Who knows where he is now, or who he is stirring up to make mischief between us? Go back to your work and do not stir from it whatever noise comes to you or whatever shape shows itself.

A SCULLION

Cuchulain is right. I am tired blowing on the big horn.

CUCHULAIN

Go in silence.

[The Scullions and Horseboys turn towards the door, but stand still on hearing the voice of LEAGERIE’S WIFE outside the door.

LEAGERIE’S WIFE

My man is the best. I will go in the first. I will go in the first.

EMER

My man is the best, and I will go in first.

CONAL’S WIFE

No, for my man is the best, and it is I that should go first.

[LEAGERIE’S WIFE and CONAL’S WIFE struggle in the doorway.LEAGERIE’S WIFE singsMy man is the best.What other has foughtThe cat-headed menThat mew in the seaAnd carried awayTheir long-hidden gold?They struck with their clawsAnd bit with their teeth,But Leagerie my husbandPut all to the sword.CONAL’S WIFE[Putting her hand over the other’s mouth and getting in front of her.]My husband has foughtWith strong men in armour.Had he a quarrelWith cats, it is certainHe’d war with noneBut the stout and heavyWith good claws on them.What glory in warringWith hollow shadowsThat helplessly mew?EMER[Thrusting herself between them and forcing both of them back with her hands.]

I am Emer, wife of Cuchulain, and no one shall go in front of me, or sing in front of me, or praise any that I have not a mind to hear praised.

[CUCHULAIN puts his spear across the door.CUCHULAIN

All of our three wives shall come in together, and by three doors equal in height and in breadth and in honour. Break down the bottoms of the windows.

[While CONAL and LEAGERIE are breaking down the bottoms of the windows each of their wives goes to the window where her husband is.

While the windows are being broken down EMER singsMy man is the best.And Conal’s wifeAnd the wife of LeagerieKnow that they lieWhen they praise their ownOut of envy of me.My man is the best,First for his own sake,Being the bravestAnd handsomest manAnd the most belovedBy the women of IrelandThat envy me,And then for his wife’s sakeBecause I’m the youngestAnd handsomest queen.

[When the windows have been made into doors, CUCHULAIN takes his spear from the door where EMER is, and all three come in at the same moment.

EMER

I am come to praise you and to put courage into you, Cuchulain, as a wife should, that they may not take the championship of the men of Ireland from you.

LEAGERIE’S WIFE

You lie, Emer, for it is Cuchulain and Conal who are taking the championship from my husband.

CONAL’S WIFE

Cuchulain has taken it.

CUCHULAIN

Townland against townland, barony against barony, kingdom against kingdom, province against province, and if there be but two door-posts to a door the one fighting against the other. [He takes up the Helmet which LEAGERIE had laid down upon the table when he went to break out the bottom of the window.] This Helmet will bring no more wars into Ireland. [He throws it into the sea.]

LEAGERIE’S WIFE

You have done that to rob my husband.

CONAL’S WIFE

You could not keep it for yourself, and so you threw it away that nobody else might have it.

CONAL

You should not have done that, Cuchulain.

LEAGERIE

You have done us a great wrong.

EMER

Who is for Cuchulain?

CUCHULAIN

Let no one stir.

EMER

Who is for Cuchulain, I say?

[She draws her dagger from her belt and sings the same words as before, flourishing it about. While she has been singing, CONAL’S WIFE and LEAGERIE’S WIFE have drawn their daggers and run at her to kill her, but CUCHULAIN has forced them back. CONAL and LEAGERIE have drawn their swords to strike CUCHULAIN.

CONAL’S WIFE[While EMER is still singing.]

Silence her voice, silence her voice, blow the horns, make a noise!

[The Scullions and Horseboys blow their horns or fight among themselves. There is a deafening noise and a confused fight. Suddenly three black hands holding extinguishers come through the window and extinguish the torches. It is now pitch dark but for a very faint light outside the house which merely shows that there are moving forms, but not who or what they are, and in the darkness one can hear low terrified voices.

FIRST VOICE

Did you see them putting out the torches?

ANOTHER VOICE

They came up out of the sea, three black men.

ANOTHER VOICE

They have heads of cats upon them.

ANOTHER VOICE

They came up mewing out of the sea.

ANOTHER VOICE

How dark it is! one of them has put his hand over the moon.

[A light gradually comes into the windows as if shining from the sea. The RED MAN is seen standing in the midst of the house.

RED MAN

I demand the debt that is owing. I demand that some man shall stoop down that I may cut his head off as my head was cut off. If my debt is not paid, no peace shall come to Ireland, and Ireland shall lie weak before her enemies. But if my debt is paid there shall be peace.

CUCHULAIN

The quarrels of Ireland shall end. What is one man’s life? I will pay the debt with my own head. [EMER wails.] Do not cry out, Emer, for if I were not myself, if I were not Cuchulain, one of those that God has made reckless, the women of Ireland had not loved me, and you had not held your head so high. [He stoops, bending his head. Three Black Men come to the door. Two hold torches, and one stooping between them holds up the Golden Helmet. The RED MAN gives one of the Black Men his sword and takes the Helmet.] What do you wait for, old man? Come, raise up your sword!

RED MAN

I will not harm you, Cuchulain. I am the guardian of this land, and age after age I come up out of the sea to try the men of Ireland. I give you the championship because you are without fear, and you shall win many battles with laughing lips and endure wounding and betrayal without bitterness of heart; and when men gaze upon you, their hearts shall grow greater and their minds clear; until the day come when I darken your mind, that there may be an end to the story, and a song on the harp-string.

THE IRISH DRAMATIC MOVEMENT

The Irish dramatic movement began in May, 1899, with the performance of certain plays by English actors who were brought to Dublin for the purpose; and in the spring of the following year and in the autumn of the year after that, performances of like plays were given by like actors at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. In the third year I started Samhain to defend the work, and on re-reading it and reading it for the first time throughout, have found it best to reprint my part of it unchanged. A number has been published about once a year till very lately, and the whole series of notes are a history of a movement which is important because of the principles it is rooted in whatever be its fruits, and these principles are better told of in words that rose out of the need, than were I to explain all again and with order and ceremony now that the old enmities and friendships are ruffled by new ones that have other things to be done and said.

March, 1908.

SAMHAIN: 1901

When Lady Gregory, Mr. Edward Martyn, and myself planned the Irish Literary Theatre, we decided that it should be carried on in the form we had projected for three years. We thought that three years would show whether the country desired to take up the project, and make it a part of the national life, and that we, at any rate, could return to our proper work, in which we did not include theatrical management, at the end of that time. A little later, Mr. George Moore1 joined us; and, looking back now upon our work, I doubt if it could have been done at all without his knowledge of the stage; and certainly if the performances of this present year bring our adventure to a successful close, a chief part of the credit will be his. Many, however, have helped us in various degrees, for in Ireland just now one has only to discover an idea that seems of service to the country for friends and helpers to start up on every hand. While we needed guarantors we had them in plenty, and though Mr. Edward Martyn’s public spirit made it unnecessary to call upon them, we thank them none the less.

Whether the Irish Literary Theatre has a successor made on its own model or not, we can claim that a dramatic movement which will not die has been started. When we began our work, we tried in vain to get a play in Gaelic. We could not even get a condensed version of the dialogue of Oisin and Patrick. We wrote to Gaelic enthusiasts in vain, for their imagination had not yet turned towards the stage, and now there are excellent Gaelic plays by Dr. Douglas Hyde, by Father O’Leary, by Father Dineen, and by Mr. MacGinlay; and the Gaelic League has had a competition for a one-act play in Gaelic, with what results I do not know. There have been successful performances of plays in Gaelic at Dublin and at Macroom, and at Letterkenny, and I think at other places; and Mr. Fay has got together an excellent little company which plays both in Gaelic and English. I may say, for I am perhaps writing an epitaph, and epitaphs should be written in a genial spirit, that we have turned a great deal of Irish imagination towards the stage. We could not have done this if our movement had not opened a way of expression for an impulse that was in the people themselves. The truth is that the Irish people are at that precise stage of their history when imagination, shaped by many stirring events, desires dramatic expression. One has only to listen to a recitation of Raftery’s Argument with Death at some country Feis to understand this. When Death makes a good point, or Raftery a good point, the audience applaud delightedly, and applaud, not as a London audience would, some verbal dexterity, some piece of smartness, but the movements of a simple and fundamental comedy. One sees it too in the reciters themselves, whose acting is at times all but perfect in its vivid simplicity. I heard a little Claddagh girl tell a folk-story at Galway Feis with a restraint and a delightful energy that could hardly have been bettered by the most careful training.

The organization of this movement is of immediate importance. Some of our friends propose that somebody begin at once to get a small stock company together, and that he invite, let us say, Mr. Benson, to find us certain well-trained actors, Irish if possible, but well trained of a certainty, who will train our actors, and take the more difficult parts at the beginning. These friends contend that it is necessary to import our experts at the beginning, for our company must be able to compete with travelling English companies, but that a few years will be enough to make many competent Irish actors. The Corporation of Dublin should be asked, they say, to give a small annual sum of money, such as they give to the Academy of Music; and the Corporations of Cork and Limerick and Waterford, and other provincial towns, to give small endowments in the shape of a hall and attendants and lighting for a week or two out of every year; and the Technical Board to give a small annual sum of money to a school of acting which would teach fencing and declamation, and gesture and the like. The stock company would perform in Dublin perhaps three weeks in spring, and three weeks in autumn, and go on tour the rest of the time through Ireland, and through the English towns where there is a large Irish population. It would perform plays in Irish and English, and also, it is proposed, the masterpieces of the world, making a point of performing Spanish and Scandinavian, and French, and perhaps Greek masterpieces rather more than Shakespeare, for Shakespeare one sees, not well done indeed, but not unendurably ill done in the Theatre of Commerce. It would do its best to give Ireland a hardy and shapely national character by opening the doors to the four winds of the world, instead of leaving the door that is towards the east wind open alone. Certainly, the national character, which is so essentially different from the English that Spanish and French influences may well be most healthy, is at present like one of those miserable thorn bushes by the sea that are all twisted to one side by some prevailing wind.

It is contended that there is no reason why the company should not be as successful as similar companies in Germany and Scandinavia, and that it would be even of commercial advantage to Dublin by making it a pleasanter place to live in, besides doing incalculable good to the whole intellect of the country. One, at any rate, of those who press the project on us has much practical knowledge of the stage and of theatrical management, and knows what is possible and what is not possible.

Others among our friends, and among these are some who have had more than their share of the hard work which has built up the intellectual movement in Ireland, argue that a theatre of this kind would require too much money to be free, that it could not touch on politics, the most vital passion and vital interest of the country, as they say, and that the attitude of continual compromise between conviction and interest, which it would necessitate, would become demoralising to everybody concerned, especially at moments of political excitement. They tell us that the war between an Irish Ireland and an English Ireland is about to become much fiercer, to divide families and friends it may be, and that the organisations that will lead in the war must be able to say everything the people are thinking. They would have Irishmen give their plays to a company like Mr. Fay’s, when they are within its power, and if not, to Mr. Benson or to any other travelling company which will play them in Ireland without committees, where everybody compromises a little. In this way, they contend, we would soon build up an Irish theatre from the ground, escaping to some extent the conventions of the ordinary theatre, and English voices which give a foreign air to one’s words. And though we might have to wait some years, we would get even the masterpieces of the world in good time. Let us, they think, be poor enough to whistle at the thief who would take away some of our thoughts, and after Mr. Fay has taken his company, as he plans, through the villages and the country towns, he will get the little endowment that is necessary, or if he does not some other will.

I do not know what Lady Gregory or Mr. Moore think of these projects. I am not going to say what I think. I have spent much of my time and more of my thought these last ten years on Irish organisation, and now that the Irish Literary Theatre has completed the plan I had in my head ten years ago, I want to go down again to primary ideas. I want to put old stories into verse, and if I put them into dramatic verse it will matter less to me henceforward who plays them than what they play, and how they play. I hope to get our heroic age into verse, and to solve some problems of the speaking of verse to musical notes.

There is only one question which is raised by the two projects I have described on which I will give an opinion. It is of the first importance that those among us who want to write for the stage study the dramatic masterpieces of the world. If they can get them on the stage so much the better, but study them they must if Irish drama is to mean anything to Irish intellect. At the present moment, Shakespeare being the only great dramatist known to Irish writers has made them cast their work too much on the English model. Miss Milligan’s Red Hugh, which was successfully acted in Dublin the other day, had no business to be in two scenes; and Father O’Leary’s Tadg Saor, despite its most vivid and picturesque, though far too rambling dialogue, shows in its half dozen changes of scene the influence of the same English convention which arose when there was no scene painting, and is often a difficulty where there is, and is always an absurdity in a farce of thirty minutes, breaking up the emotion and sending one’s thoughts here and there. Mr. MacGinlay’s Elis agus an bhean deirce has not this defect, and though I had not Irish enough to follow it when I saw it played, and excellently played, by Mr. Fay’s company, I could see from the continual laughter of the audience that it held them with an unbroken emotion. The best Gaelic play after Dr. Hyde’s is, I think, Father Dineen’s Creideamh agus gorta, and though it changes the scene a little oftener than is desirable under modern conditions, it does not remind me of an English model. It reminds me of Calderon by its treatment of a religious subject, and by something in Father Dineen’s sympathy with the people that is like his. But I think if Father Dineen had studied that great Catholic dramatist he would not have failed, as he has done once or twice, to remember some necessary detail of a situation. In the first scene he makes a servant ask his fellow-servants about things he must have known as well as they; and he loses a dramatic moment in his third scene by forgetting that Seagan Gorm has a pocket-full of money which he would certainly, being the man he was, have offered to the woman he was urging into temptation. The play towards the end changes from prose to verse, and the reverence and simplicity of the verse makes one think of a mediæval miracle play. The subject has been so much a part of Irish life that it was bound to be used by an Irish dramatist, though certainly I shall always prefer plays which attack a more eternal devil than the proselytiser. He has been defeated, and the arts are at their best when they are busy with battles that can never be won. It is possible, however, that we may have to deal with passing issues until we have re-created the imaginative tradition of Ireland, and filled the popular imagination again with saints and heroes. These short plays (though they would be better if their writers knew the masters of their craft) are very dramatic as they are, but there is no chance of our writers of Gaelic, or our writers of English, doing good plays of any length if they do not study the masters. If Irish dramatists had studied the romantic plays of Ibsen, the one great master the modern stage has produced, they would not have sent the Irish Literary Theatre imitations of Boucicault, who had no relation to literature, and Father O’Leary would have put his gift for dialogue, a gift certainly greater than, let us say, Mr. Jones’ or Mr. Grundy’s, to better use than the writing of that long rambling dramatisation of the Tain bo Cuailgne, in which I hear in the midst of the exuberant Gaelic dialogue the worn-out conventions of English poetic drama. The moment we leave even a little the folk-tradition of the peasant, as we must in drama, if we do not know the best that has been said and written in the world, we do not even know ourselves. It is no great labour to know the best dramatic literature, for there is very little of it. We Irish must know it all, for we have, I think, far greater need of the severe discipline of French and Scandinavian drama than of Shakespeare’s luxuriance.