by W. B. Yeats
Have bedded with their fancy-man
Whether a king or clown;
Gave their bodies, emptied purses
For praise of clown or king,
Gave all the love that women know!
O they had their fling,
But never stood before a stake
And heard the dead lips sing.
[The Queen is discovered standing exactly as before, the dropped veil at her side, but she holds above her head the severed head of the Swineherd. Her hands are red. There are red blotches upon her dress, not realistically represented: red gloves, some pattern of red cloth.
FIRST ATTENDANT. Her lips are moving.
SECOND ATTENDANT. — She has begun to sing.
FIRST ATTENDANT. I cannot hear what she is singing.
Ah, now I can hear.
[singing as Queen]
Child and darling, hear my song,
Never cry I did you wrong;
Cry that wrong came not from me
But my virgin cruelty.
Great my love before you came,
Greater when I loved in shame,
Greatest when there broke from me
Storm of virgin cruelty.
[The Queen dances to drum-taps and in the dance lays the head upon the throne.
SECOND ATTENDANT. She is waiting.
FIRST ATTENDANT. — She is waiting for his song.
The song he has come so many miles to sing.
She has forgotten that no dead man sings.
SECOND ATTENDANT [laughs softly as Head]. He has begun to laugh.
FIRST ATTENDANT. NO; he has begun to sing.
SECOND ATTENDANT [singing as Head].
I sing a song of Jack and Jill.
Jill had murdered Jack;
The moon shone brightly;
Ran up the hill, and round the hill,
Round the hill and back.
A full moon in March.
Jack had a hollow heart, for Jill
Had hung his heart on high;
The moon shone brightly;
Had hung his heart beyond the hill,
A twinkle in the sky.
A full moon in March.
[The Queen in her dance moves away from the head, alluring and refusing.
FIRST ATTENDANT [laughs as Queen].
SECOND ATTENDANT. She is laughing. How can she laugh,
Loving the dead?
FIRST ATTENDANT. She is crazy. That is why she is laughing.
[Laughs again as Queen.
[Queen takes up the head and lays it upon the ground. She dances before it — a dance of adoration. She takes the head up and dances with it to drum-taps, which grow quicker and quicker. As the drum-taps approach their climax, she presses her lips to the lips of the head. Her body shivers to very rapid drum-taps. The drum-taps cease. She sinks slowly down, holding the head to her breast. The Attendants close inner curtain singing and then stand one on either side while the stage curtain descends.
SECOND ATTENDANT. Why must those holy, haughty feet descend
From emblematic niches, and what hand
Ran that delicate raddle through their white?
My heart is broken, yet must understand.
What do they seek for? Why must they descend?
FIRST ATTENDANT. For desecration and the lover’s night.
SECOND ATTENDANT. I cannot face that emblem of the moon
Nor eyelids that the unmixed heavens dart,
Nor stand upon my feet, so great a fright
Descends upon my savage, sunlit heart.
What can she lack whose emblem is the moon?
FIRST ATTENDANT. But desecration and the lover’s night.
SECOND ATTENDANT. Delight my heart with sound; speak yet again.
But look and look with understanding eyes
Upon the pitchers that they carry; tight
Therein all time’s completed treasure is:
What do they lack? O cry it out again.
FIRST ATTENDANT. Their desecration and the lover’s night.
Curtain
THE HERNE’S EGG
CONTENTS
PERSONS IN THE PLAY
SCENE I
SCENE II
SCENE III
SCENE IV
SCENE V
SCENE VI
PERSONS IN THE PLAY
Congal, King of Connaugbt —
Attracta, A Priestess
Aedh, King of Tara —
Kate, Agnes, Mary, Friends
Corney, Attracta’s servant of Attracta
Mike, Pat, Malachi, Mathias, James
Soldiers of Tara
John, Connaught soldiers —
A Fool
THE HERNE’S EGG
SCENE I
Mist and rocks; high up on backcloth a rock, its base hidden in mist; on this rock stands a great heme. All should be suggested, not painted realistically. Many men fighting with swords and shields, but sword and sword, shield and sword, never meet. The men move rhythmically as if in a dance; when swords approach one another cymbals clash; when swords and shields approach drums boom. The battle flows out at one side; two Kings are left fighting in the centre of the stage; the battle returns and flows out at the other side. The two Kings remain, but are now face to face and motionless. They are Congal, King of Connaught, and Aedh, King of Tara.
CONGAL. HOW many men have you lost?
AEDH. Some five-and-twenty men.
CONGAL. NO need to ask my losses.
AEDH. Your losses equal mine.
CONGAL. They always have and must.
AEDH. Skill, strength, arms matched.
CONGAL. Where is the wound this time?
AEDH. There, left shoulder-blade.
CONGAL. Here, right shoulder-blade.
AEDH. Yet we have fought all day.
CONGAL. This is our fiftieth battle.
AEDH. And all were perfect battles.
CONGAL. Come, sit upon this stone.
Come and take breath awhile.
AEDH. From day-break until noon,
Hopping among these rocks.
CONGAL. Nothing to eat or drink.
AEDH. A story is running round
Concerning two rich fleas.
CONGAL. We hop like fleas, but war
Has taken all our riches.
AEDH. Rich, and rich, so rich that they
Retired and bought a dog.
CONGAL. Finish the tale and say
What kind of dog they bought.
AEDH. Heaven knows.
CONGAL. — YOU must have thought
What kind of dog they bought.
AEDH. Heaven knows.
CONGAL. — Unless you say,
I’ll up and fight all day.
AEDH. A fat, square, lazy dog,
No sort of scratching dog.
SCENE II
The same place as in previous scene. Corney enters, leading a donkey, a donkey on wheels like a child’s toy, but life-size.
CORNEY. A tough, rough mane, a tougher skin,
Strong legs though somewhat thin,
A strong body, a level line
Up to the neck along the spine.
All good points, and all are spoilt
By that rapscallion Clareman’s eye!
What if before your present shape
You could slit purses and break hearts,
You are a donkey now, a chattel,
A taker of blows, not a giver of blows.
No tricks, you’re not in County Clare,
No, not one kick upon the shin.
Congal, Fat, Mike, James, Mathias, [Malachi], John, enter, in the dress and arms of the previous scene but without shields.
CONGAL. I have learned of a great hernery
Among these rocks, and that a woman,
Prophetess or priestess, named Attracta,
Owns it — take this donkey and man,
Look for the creels, pack them with eggs.
MIKE. Manners!
CONGAL. — This man is in the right.
I will ask Attracta for the eggs
If you will tell how to summon her.
CORNEY. A flute lies there upon the rock
Carved out of a heme’s thigh.
Go pick it up and play the tune
My mother calls ‘The Great Heme’s Feather’.
If she has a mind to come, she will come.
CONGAL. That’s a queer way of summoning.
CORNEY. This is a holy place and queer;
But if you do not know that tune,
Custom permits that I should play it,
But you must cross my hand with silver.
[Congal gives money, and Corney plays flute.
CONGAL. Go pack the donkey creels with eggs.
[All go out except Congal and Mike. Attracta enters.
ATTRACTA. For a thousand or ten thousand years,
For who can count so many years,
Some woman has lived among these rocks,
The Great Heme’s bride, or promised bride,
And when a visitor has played the flute
Has come or not. What would you ask?
CONGAL. Tara and I have made a peace;
Our fiftieth battle fought, there is need
Of preparation for the next;
He and all his principal men,
I and all my principal men,
Take supper at his principal house
This night, in his principal city, Tara,
And we have set our minds upon
A certain novelty or relish.
MIKE. Heme’s eggs.
CONGAL. — This man declares our need;
A donkey, both creels packed with eggs,
Somebody that knows the mind of a donkey
For donkey-boy.
ATTRACTA. — Custom forbids:
Only the women of these rocks,
Betrothed or married to the Heme,
The god or ancestor of hemes,
Can eat, handle, or look upon those eggs.
CONGAL. Refused! Must old campaigners lack
The one sole dish that takes their fancy,
My cooks what might have proved their skill,
Because a woman thinks that she
Is promised or married to a bird?
MIKE. Mad!
CONGAL. — Mad! This man is right,
But you are not to blame for that.
Women thrown into despair
By the winter of their virginity
Take its abominable snow,
As boys take common snow, and make
An image of god or bird or beast
To feed their sensuality:
Ovid had a literal mind,
And though he sang it neither knew
What lonely lust dragged down the gold
That crept on Danaë’s lap, nor knew
What rose against the moony feathers
When Leda lay upon the grass.
ATTRACTA. There is no reality but the Great Heme.
MIKE. The cure.
CONGAL. — Why, that is easy said;
An old campaigner is the cure
For everything that woman dreams —
Even I myself, had I but time.
MIKE. Seven men.
CONGAL. — This man of learning means
That seven men packed into a day
Or dawdled out through seven years
And not a weather-stained, war-battered
Old campaigner such as I,
Are needed to melt down the snow
That’s fallen among these wintry rocks.
ATTRACTA. There is no happiness but the Great Heme.
CONGAL. It may be that life is suffering,
But youth that has not yet known pleasure
Has not the right to say so; pick,
Or be picked by seven men,
And we shall talk it out again.
ATTRACTA. Being betrothed to the Great Heme
I know what may be known: I burn
Not in the flesh but in the mind;
Chosen out of all my kind
That I may lie in a blazing bed
And a bird take my maidenhead,
To the unbegotten I return,
All a womb and a funeral urn.
Enter Corney, Pat, James, Mathias, etc., with Donkey. A creel packed with eggs is painted upon the side of the Donkey.
CORNEY. Think of yourself; think of the songs:
Bride of the Heme, and the Great Heme’s bride,
Grow terrible: go into a trance.
ATTRACTA. Stop!
CORNEY. — Bring the god out of your gut;
Stand there asleep until the rascals
Wriggle upon his beak like eels.
ATTRACTA. Stop!
CORNEY. — The country calls them rascals,
I, sacrilegious rascals that have taken
Every new-laid egg in the hernery.
ATTRACTA. Stop! When have I permitted you
To say what I may, or may not do?
But you and your donkey must obey
All big men who can say their say.
CONGAL. And bid him keep a civil tongue.
ATTRACTA. Those eggs are stolen from the god.
It is but right that you hear said
A curse so ancient that no man
Can say who made it, or any thing at all
But that it was nailed upon a post
Before a heme had stood on one leg.
CORNEY. Hemes must stand on one leg when they fish
In honour of the bird who made it.
“This they nailed upon a post
On the night my leg was lost,”
Said the old, old heme that had but one leg.
“He that a heme’s egg dare steal
Shall be changed into a fool,”
Said the old, old heme that had but one leg.
“And to end his fool breath
At a fool’s hand meet his death,”
Said the old, old heme that had but one leg.
I think it was the Great Heme made it
Pretending that he had but the one leg
To fool us all but Great Heme or another
It has not failed these thousand years.
CONGAL. That I shall live and die a fool,
And die upon some battlefield
At some fool’s hand, is but natural,
And needs no curse to bring it.
MIKE. — Pickled!
CONGAL. He says that I am an old campaigner
Robber of sheepfolds and cattle trucks,
So cursed from morning until midnight
There is not a quarter of an inch
To plaster a new curse upon.
CORNEY. — Luck!
CONGAL. Adds that your luck begins when you
Recall that though we took those eggs
We paid with good advice; and then
Take to your bosom seven men.
[Congal, Mike, Corney, Mathias, James, [John, Malachi,]
and Donkey go out. Enter timidly three girls, Kate,
Agnes, Mary.
MARY. Have all those fierce men gone?
ATTRACTA. All those fierce men have gone.
AGNES. But they will come again?
ATTRACTA. NO, never again.
KATE. We bring three presents.
[All except Attracta kneel.
MARY. This is a jug of cream.
AGNES. This is a bowl of butter.
KATE. This is a basket of eggs.
[They lay jug, bowl and basket on the ground.
ATTRACTA. I know what you would ask.
Sit round upon these stones.
Children, why do you fear
A woman but little older,
A child yesterday?
All, when I am married,
Shall have good husbands. Kate
Shall marry a black-headed lad.
AGNES. She swore but yesterday
That
she would marry black.
ATTRACTA. But Agnes there shall marry
A honey-coloured lad.
AGNES. O!
ATTRACTA. — Mary shall be married
When I myself am married
To the lad that is in her mind.
MARY. Are you not married yet?
ATTRACTA. NO. But it is almost come,
May come this very night.
MARY. And must he be all feathers?
AGNES. Have a terrible beak?
KATE. Great terrible claws?
ATTRACTA. Whatever shape he choose,
Though that be terrible,
Will best express his love.
AGNES. When he comes — will he? —
ATTRACTA. Child, ask what you please.
AGNES. DO all that a man does?
ATTRACTA. Strong sinew and soft flesh
Are foliage round the shaft
Before the arrowsmith
Has stripped it, and I pray
That I, all foliage gone,
May shoot into my joy —
[Sound of a flute, playing ‘The Great Heme’s
Feather’.
MARY. Who plays upon that flute?
AGNES. Her god is calling her.
KATE. Look, look, she takes