by W. B. Yeats
CUCHULAIN. — I make the truth.
I say she brings a message from my wife.
SERVANT. What if I make her swallow poppy juice?
CUCHULAIN. What herbs seem suitable, but protect her life
As it were your own and should I not return
Give her to Conal Cearnach because the women
Have called him a good lover.
EITHNE. — I might have peace that know
The Morrigu, the woman like a crow,
Stands to my defence and cannot lie,
But that Cuchulain is about to die.
[Pipe and drum. The stage is dark for a moment. When it lights up again it is empty. Cuchulain enters wounded. He tries to fasten himself to a pillar-stone with his belt. Aoife, an erect white-haired woman, enters.
AOIFE. Am I recognised, Cuchulain?
CUCHULAIN. — YOU fought with a sword,
It seemed that we should kill each other; then
Your body wearied and I took your sword.
AOIFE. But look again, Cuchulain! Look again!
CUCHULAIN. Your hair is white.
AOIFE. — That time was long ago,
And now it is my time. I have come to kill you.
CUCHULAIN. Where am I? Why am I here?
AOIFE. — YOU asked their leave,
When certain that you had six mortal wounds,
To drink out of the pool.
CUCHULAIN. — I have put my belt
About this stone and want to fasten it
And die upon my feet, but am too wèak.
Fasten this belt.
[She helps him to do so.
And now I know your name,
Aoife, the mother of my son. We met
At the Hawk’s Well under the withered trees.
I killed him upon Baile’s Strand, that is why
Maeve parted ranks that she might let you through.
You have a right to kill me.
AOIFE. — Though I have
Her army did not part to let me through.
The grey of Macha, that great horse of yours
Killed in the battle, came out of the pool
As though it were alive, and went three times
In a great circle round you and that stone,
Then leaped into the pool and not a man
Of all that terrified army dare approach,
But I approach.
CUCHULAIN. — Because you have the right.
AOIFE. But I am an old woman now and that
Your strength may not start up when the time comes
I wind my veil about this ancient stone
And fasten down your hands.
CUCHULAIN. — But do not spoil your veil:
Your veils are beautiful, some with threads of gold.
AOIFE. I am too old to care for such things now.
[She has wound the veil about him.
CUCHULAIN. There was no reason so to spoil your veil:
I am weak from loss of blood.
AOIFE. — I was afraid,
But now that I have wound you in the veil
I am not afraid. Our son — how did he fight?
CUCHULAIN. Age makes more skilful but not better men.
AOIFE. I have been told you did not know his name,
And wanted, because he had a look of me,
To be his friend, but Conchubar forbade it.
CUCHULAIN. Forbade it and commanded me to fight;
That very day I had sworn to do his will,
Yet I refused him and spoke about a look;
But somebody spoke of witchcraft and I said
Witchcraft had made the look, and fought and killed him.
Then I went mad, I fought against the sea.
AOIFE. I seemed invulnerable; you took my sword;
You threw me on the ground and left me there.
I searched the mountain for your sleeping-place
And laid my virgin body at your side,
And yet, because you had left me, hated you
And thought that I would kill you in your sleep
And yet begot a son that night between
Two black thorn trees.
CUCHULAIN. — I cannot understand.
AOIFE. Because about to die.
Somebody comes.
Some countryman, and when he finds you there,
And none to protect him, will be terrified.
I will keep out of his sight for I have things
That I must ask questions on before I kill you.
[She goes. The Blind Man of “On Baile’s Strand” comes in. He moves his stick about until he finds the standing stone; he lays his stick down, stoops and touches Cuchulain’s feet. He feels the legs.
BLIND MAN. Ah! Ah!
CUCHULAIN. — I think you are a blind old man.
BLIND MAN. A blind old beggar-man. What is your name?
CUCHULAIN. Cuchulain.
BLIND MAN. — They say that you are weak with wounds.
I stood between a fool and the sea at Baile’s Strand
When you went mad. What’s bound about your hands
So that they cannot move? Some womanish stuff.
I have been fumbling with my stick since the dawn
And then heard many voices. I began to beg.
Somebody said that I was in Maeve’s tent,
And somebody else, a big man by his voice,
That if I brought Cuchulain’s head in a bag
I would be given twelve pennies; I had the bag
To carry what I get at kitchen doors,
Somebody told me how to find the place;
I thought it would have taken till the night
But this has been my lucky day.
CUCHULAIN. — Twelve pennies!
BLIND MAN. I would not promise anything until the woman,
The great Queen Maeve herself, repeated the words.
CUCHULAIN. Twelve pennies. What better reason for killing a man?
You have a knife, but have you sharpened it?
BLIND MAN. I keep it sharp because it cuts my food.
[He lays bag on ground and begins feeling Cuchulain’s body, his hands mounting upward.
CUCHULAIN. I think that you know everything, Blind Man,
My mother or my nurse said that the blind
Know everything.
BLIND MAN. — NO, but they have good sense.
How could I have got twelve pennies for your head
If I had not good sense?
CUCHULAIN. — There floats out there
The shape that I shall take when I am dead,
My soul’s first shape, a soft feathery shape,
And is not that a strange shape for the soul
Of a great fighting-man?
BLIND MAN. — Your shoulder is there,
This is your neck. Ah! Ah! Are you ready, Cuchulain?
CUCHULAIN. I say it is about to sing.
[The stage darkens.
BLIND MAN. — Ah! Ah!
[Music of pipe and drum, the curtain falls, the music ceases as the curtain rises upon a bare stage. There is nobody upon the stage except a woman with a crow’s head. She is the Morrigu. She stands towards the back. She holds a black parallelogram the size of a man’s head. There are six other parallelograms near the backcloth.
MORRIGU. The dead can hear me and to the dead I speak.
This head is great Cuchulain’s, those other six
Gave him six mortal wounds. This man came first,
Youth lingered though the years ran on, that season
A woman loves the best, Maeve’s latest lover;
This man had given him the second wound,
He had possessed her once; these were her sons,
Two valiant men that gave the third and fourth;
These other men were men of no account,
They saw that he was weakening and crept in,
One gave him the sixth wound and one the fifth.
Conall avenged him.
I arranged the dance.
[Emer enters. The Morrigu places the head of Cuchulain upon the ground and goes out. Emer runs in and begins to dance. She so moves that she seems to rage against the heads of those that had wounded Cuchulain, perhaps makes movements as though to strike them, going three times round the circle of the heads. She then moves towards the head of Cuchulain, — It may, if need be, be raised above the others on a pedestal — she moves as if in adoration or in triumph. She is about to prostrate herself before it, perhaps does so, then rises, looking up as though listening. She seems to hesitate between the head and what she hears. Then she stands motionless. There is silence and in the silence a few faint bird notes. The stage darkens slowly. Then comes loud music, but now it is quite different. It is the music of some Irish fair of our day. The stage brightens. Emer and the head are gone. There is none there but the three Musicians. They are in ragged streetsingers’ clothes; two of them play pipe and drum. They cease. The Street-Singer begins to sing.
SINGER. The harlot sang to the beggar-man.
I meet them face to face,
Conall, Cuchulain, Usna’s boys,
All that most ancient race;
Maeve had three in an hour they say;
I adore those clever eyes,
Those muscular bodies, but can get
No grip upon their thighs.
I meet those long pale faces,
Hear their great horses, then
Recall what centuries have passed
Since they were living men,
That there are still some living
That do my limbs unclothe,
But that the flesh my flesh has gripped
I both adore and loathe.
[Pipe and drum music.
SINGER. Are those things that men adore and loathe
Their sole reality?
What stood in the Post Office
With Pearse and Connolly?
What comes out of the mountain
Where men first shed their blood?
Who thought Cuchulain till it seemed
He stood where they had stood?
No body like his body
Has modern woman borne,
But an old man looking back on life
Imagines it in scorn.
A statue’s there to mark the place
By Oliver Sheppard done.
So ends the tale that the harlot
Sang to the beggar-man.
[Music from pipe and drum.
Curtain
The Autobiographies
Ben Bulben, Sligo, where Yeats requested to be buried. The poet was staying in France when he passed away and he was buried at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. After World War II, Yeats’ remains were moved to Drumcliffe, County Sligo, by the foot of Ben Bulben.
REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
CONTENTS
PREFACE
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
PREFACE
Sometimes when I remember a relative that I have been fond of, or a strange incident of the past, I wander here and there till I have somebody to talk to. Presently I notice that my listener is bored; but now that I have written it out, I may even begin to forget it all. In any case, because one can always close a book, my friend need not be bored.
I have changed nothing to my knowledge, and yet it must be that I have changed many things without my knowledge, for I am writing after so many years, and have consulted neither friend nor letter nor old newspaper and describe what comes oftenest into my memory.
I say this fearing that some surviving friend of my youth may remember something in a different shape and be offended with my book.
Christmas Day, 1914.
I
My first memories are fragmentary and isolated and contemporaneous, as though one remembered vaguely some early day of the Seven Days. It seems as if time had not yet been created, for all are connected with emotion and place and without sequence.
I remember sitting upon somebody’s knee, looking out of a window at a wall covered with cracked and falling plaster, but what wall I do not remember, and being told that some relation once lived there. I am looking out of another window in London. It is at Fitzroy Road. Some boys are playing in the road and among them a boy in uniform, a telegraph boy perhaps. When I ask who the boy is, a servant tells me that he is going to blow the town up, and I go to sleep in terror.
After that come memories of Sligo, where I live with my grandparents. I am sitting on the ground looking at a mastless toy boat, with the paint rubbed and scratched, and I say to myself in great melancholy, “it is further away than it used to be,” and while I am saying it I am looking at a long scratch in the stern, for it is especially the scratch which is further away. Then one day at dinner my great-uncle William Middleton says, “we should not make light of the troubles of children. They are worse than ours, because we can see the end of our trouble and they can never see any end,” and I feel grateful for I know that I am very unhappy and have often said to myself, “when you grow up, never talk as grown-up people do of the happiness of childhood.” I may have already had the night of misery when, having prayed for several days that I might die, I had begun to be afraid that I was dying and prayed that I might live. There was no reason for my unhappiness. Nobody was unkind, and my grandmother has still after so many years my gratitude and my reverence. The house was so big that there was always a room to hide in, and I had a red pony and a garden where I could wander, and there were two dogs to follow at my heels, one white with some black spots on his head and the other with long black hair all over him. I used to think about God and fancy that I was very wicked, and one day when I threw a stone and hit a duck in the yard by mischance and broke its wing, I was full of wonder when I was told that the duck would be cooked for dinner and that I should not be punished.
Some of my misery was loneliness and some of it fear of old William Pollexfen my grandfather. He was never unkind, and I cannot remember that he ever spoke harshly to me, but it was the custom to fear and admire him. He had won the freedom of some Spanish city for saving life, but was so silent that his wife never knew it till he was near eighty, and then from the chance visit of some old sailor. She asked him if it was true and he said it was true, but she knew him too well to question and his old shipmate had left the town. She too had the habit of fear. We knew that he had been in many parts of the world, for there was a great scar on his hand made by a whaling-hook, and in the dining-room was a cabinet with bits of coral in it and a jar of water from the Jordan for the baptising of his children and Chinese pictures upon rice-paper and an ivory walking-stick from India that came to me after his death. He had great physical strength and had the reputation of never ordering a man to do anything he would not do himself. He owned many sailing ships and once, when a captain just come to anchor at Rosses Point reported something wrong with the rudder, had sent a messenger to say “send a man down to find out what’s wrong.” “The crew all refuse” was the answer. “Go down yourself” was my grandfather’s order, and when that was not obeyed, he dived from the main deck, all the neighbourhood lined along the pebbles of the shore. He came up with his skin torn but well informed about the rudder. He had a violent temper and kept a hatchet at his bedside for burglars and would knock a man down instead of going to law, and I once saw him hunt a group of men with a hors
ewhip. He had no relation for he was an only child, and being solitary and silent, he had few friends. He corresponded with Campbell of Islay who had befriended him and his crew after a shipwreck, and Captain Webb, the first man who had swum the Channel and who was drowned swimming the Niagara Rapids, had been a mate in his employ and became a close friend. That is all the friends I can remember and yet he was so looked up to and admired that when he returned from taking the waters at Bath his men would light bonfires along the railway line for miles, while his partner William Middleton whose father after the great famine had attended the sick for weeks, and taken cholera from a man he carried in his arms into his own house and died of it, and was himself civil to everybody and a cleverer man than my grandfather, came and went without notice. I think I confused my grandfather with God, for I remember in one of my attacks of melancholy praying that he might punish me for my sins, and I was shocked and astonished when a daring little girl — a cousin I think — having waited under a group of trees in the avenue, where she knew he would pass near four o’clock on the way to his dinner, said to him, “if I were you and you were a little girl, I would give you a doll.”
Yet for all my admiration and alarm, neither I nor anyone else thought it wrong to outwit his violence or his rigour; and his lack of suspicion and a certain helplessness made that easy while it stirred our affection. When I must have been still a very little boy, seven or eight years old perhaps, an uncle called me out of bed one night, to ride the five or six miles to Rosses Point to borrow a railway-pass from a cousin. My grandfather had one, but thought it dishonest to let another use it, but the cousin was not so particular. I was let out through a gate that opened upon a little lane beside the garden away from ear-shot of the house, and rode delighted through the moonlight, and awoke my cousin in the small hours by tapping on his window with a whip. I was home again by two or three in the morning and found the coachman waiting in the little lane. My grandfather would not have thought such an adventure possible, for every night at eight he believed that the stable-yard was locked, and he knew that he was brought the key. Some servant had once got into trouble at night and so he had arranged that they should all be locked in. He never knew, what everybody else in the house knew, that for all the ceremonious bringing of the key the gate was never locked.