SAMHAIN

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 Moore joined us; and, looking back now upon our work, I doubt if it could have been done at all without his great 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. We must also thank those who are doing, this year, as in previous years, and without seeking public recognition, the thousand and one things an adventure like ours makes necessary.

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 Usheen 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 4should 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 5door 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 one sees twisted towards 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 gave 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.

6I 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, and that others may have had in their heads for all I know, I want to get back 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 it. I hope to get our heroic age into verse, and to solve, for all Mr. Moore’s unbelief, 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, breaking up the emotion and sending one’s thoughts astray, in a farce of thirty minutes. 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 7woman 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.

If the Diarmuid and Grania and the Casadh an t-sugain are not well constructed, it is not because Mr. Moore and Dr. Hyde and myself do not understand the importance of construction, and Mr. Martyn has shown by the triumphant construction of The Heather Field how much thought he has given to the matter; but for the most part our Irish plays read as if they were made without a plan, without a “scenario,” as it is called. European drama began so, but the European drama had centuries for its growth, while our art must grow to perfection in a generation or two if it is not to be smothered before it is well above the earth by the commercial art of England.

Let us learn construction from the masters, and dialogue from ourselves. A relation of mine has just written me a letter, in which he says: “It is natural 8to an Irishman to write plays, he has an inborn love of dialogue and sound about him, of a dialogue as lively, gallant, and passionate as in the times of great Eliza. In these days an Englishman’s dialogue is that of an amateur, that is to say, it is never spontaneous. I mean in real life. Compare it with an Irishman’s, above all a poor Irishman’s, reckless abandonment and naturalness, or compare it with the only fragment that has come down to us of Shakespeare’s own conversation.” (He is thinking of a passage in, I think, Ben Johnson’s Underwoods.) “Petty commerce and puritanism have brought to the front the wrong type of Englishman; the lively, joyous, yet tenacious man has transferred himself to Ireland. We have him and we will keep him unless the combined nonsense of … and … and … succeed in suffocating him.”

The names I have crossed out are the names of three eminent authorities on education. They no longer matter to us Irish, for we have for good and all taken over the intellectual government of our country, and if the degeneration of England goes on as quickly as it has these last years, we shall take over for certain generations the intellectual government of that country also whether we will or no; and because we believe, when others have ceased to believe, we have, I think, taken up the wheel of life in our hands that we may set it to whirl upon a new axle tree.

In Dublin the other day I saw a poster advertising a play by a Miss Lefanu, under the patronage of certain lords and marquises. I had little hope of finding any reality in it, but I sat out two acts. Its dialogue was above the average, although the characters were the old rattle-traps of the stage, the wild Irish girl, and the Irish servant, and the bowing Frenchman, and the situations had all been squeezed dry generations ago. One saw everywhere the shadowy mind of a woman of the Irish upper classes, but under it all there was a kind of life, though it was but the life of a string and a wire. I do not know who Miss Lefanu is, but I know that she is young, for I saw her portrait in a weekly paper, and I think that she is clever enough to make her work of some importance. If she goes on doing bad work she will make money, perhaps a great deal of money, but she will do a little harm to her country. If, on the other hand, she gets into an original relation with life, she will, perhaps, make no money, and she will certainly have her class against her.

9The Irish upper classes put everything into a money measure. When anyone among them begins to write or paint they ask him ‘How much money have you made?’ ‘Will it pay?’ Or they say ‘If you do this or that you will make more money.’ The poor Irish clerk or shop boy, who writes verses or articles in his brief leisure, writes for the glory of God and of his country, and because his motive is high, there is not one vulgar thought in the countless little ballad books that have been written from Callinan’s day to this. They are often clumsily written for they are in English and if you have not read a great deal, it is difficult to write well in a language which has been long separated from the ‘folk-speech’; but they have not a thought, a proud and simple man would not have written. The writers were poor men, but they left that money measure to the Irish upper classes. All Irish writers have to choose whether they will write as the upper classes have done, not to express but to exploit this country; or join the intellectual movement which has raised the cry that was heard in Russia in the seventies, the cry ‘to the people.’

Moses was little good to his people until he had killed an Egyptian; and for the most part a writer or public man of the upper classes is useless to this country till he has done something that separates him from his class. We wish to grow peaceful crops, but we must dig our furrows with the sword.

Our plays this year will be produced by Mr. Benson at the Gaiety Theatre on October the 21st., and on some of the succeeding days. They are Dr. Douglas Hyde’s Casadh an t-Sugain, which is founded on a well known Irish story of a wandering poet; and Diarmuid and Grania, a play in three acts and in prose by Mr. George Moore and myself, which is founded on the most famous of all Irish stories, the story of the lovers whose beds were the cromlechs. The first scene is in the great banqueting hall of Tara, and the second and third on the slopes of Ben Bulben in Sligo. We do not think there is anything in either play to offend anybody, but we make no promises. We thought our plays inoffensive last year and the year before, but we were accused the one year of sedition, and the other of heresy. We await the next accusation with a cheerful curiosity.

As Dr. Douglas Hyde does not reserve the Irish acting rights of his play, any friends of the language who like may play it after October 26th.

10I have called this little collection of writings Samhain, the old name for the beginning of winter, because our plays this year are in October, and because our Theatre is coming to an end in its present shape. The profits on the sale of Samhain will be given to the Gaelic League. The three numbers of Beltaine may still be had from the Unicorn Press, bound together into one volume. They contain a record of our first two years, and a good deal of dramatic criticism.

It is now nearly three years since Mr. Yeats and Mr. Martyn explained to me their project of The Irish Literary Theatre. I imagine that they were moved by a disinterested love of Ireland; by a desire to create a sort of rallying point for the many literary enthusiasms and aspirations they saw beginning in Ireland. I was moved to join them because I had come to know the hopelessness of all artistic effort in England. I discovered the English decadence before I discovered my conscience; at that time I merely despaired of any new literary movement ever rising in England. I saw nothing about me but intellectual decay and moral degradation, so I said: “Well, my friends, let us try.” I knew Mr. Edward Martyn’s play, The Heather Field, and his Maive, and I knew Mr. Yeats’ Countess Cathleen; “these,” I said, “will do for a start, but what have we got to follow them?” They answered. “You will write us a play, and somebody else will write after you. One must not look too far ahead.”

And then began the most disagreeable part of the adventure: excursions to theatrical clubs in the Strand and in the streets leading from the Strand; the long drives to ladies who lived in flats in picturesque neighbourhoods, and arranging for these men and women to come to Dublin. I took upon myself the greater part of these petty annoyances—Mr. Martyn taking upon himself, perhaps, the greatest annoyance, distributing of tickets, and keeping the accounts. I think that this kind of theatrical management must be very like the endeavour of kind-hearted ladies to bring some fifty and odd children into the country for a holiday. In both, there is a great deal of “Has Johnny lost his cap?” and “Will Jimmy arrive in time?”

During the rehearsal, I often asked myself why I had consented to waste my time in this fashion; the reason was hidden from me; even now I know, only through faith, that I acted rightly and that if the collecting of the actors and the rehearsals of the plays had proved ten times more troublesome, it would still have been worth the trouble. And this, for some reason that is still hidden from me, and not altogether because The Heather Field has been admitted to be the most thoughtful of modern prose plays written in English, the best constructed, the most endurable to a thoughtful audience. It was played in a hall, on a platform amid ludicrous scenery. But, being a prose play, it did not suffer so much from 12want of space as The Countess Cathleen, and it was the better acted play, for it is always easier to find actors who can act plays of modern life than it is to find actors who can speak verse and embody vast sentiments. For the adequate representation of such a play, something like a gulf should separate the actors from the audience, and there should be a large, deep stage full of vague shadows. Green landscapes are not required in Rembrandt’s portraits, and I have often wondered why they are used as a background for actors. The more elaborate the scenery, the worse it is for the purpose of the poet and the actor; and new scenery, harsh as a newly-painted signboard, like that amid which The Countess Cathleen was played, is the worst scenery of all. The Countess Cathleen met with every disadvantage. Here is a list which must not, however, be considered exhaustive:—First, the author’s theory that verse should be chanted^[1] and not spoken; second, the low platform insufficiently separated from the audience; third, a set of actors and actresses unaccustomed to speak verse; fourth, harsh, ridiculous scenery; fifth, absurd costumes.

The theories of the author regarding the speaking of verse I hold to be mistaken; I do not think they are capable to realization even by trained actors and actresses, but the attempt of our “poor mummers of a time-worn spring,” was, indeed, lamentable. Many times I prayed during the last act that the curtain might come down at once. Nevertheless, the performance of The Countess Cathleen was not in vain. The beauty of the play was so intense that it was seen through the ridiculous representation as the outline of a Greek statue through the earth it is being dug out of. The Countess Cathleen awakened in all who saw it a sense of beauty. I think a sense of beauty once awakened is immortal. I do not think anyone who ponders over a piece of antique sculpture, shall we say a broken bas-relief from Pompeii, ever forgets that keen sense of beauty which arises in his heart, and the imperfect and broken representations of The Countess Cathleen awakened in me just such a sense of beauty as I have experienced in dim museums, looking at some worn and broken bas-relief.

The performances of our plays were so successful that the managers of the Gaiety Theatre asked us to produce our next plays in their theatre, and so confident were they of the ultimate success of our enterprise that they offered us their theatre on the same terms they gave to an ordinary troop of mummers. It is more difficult for me to speak of the second performances than of the first, because I undertook to re-write Mr. Martyn’s play, A Tale of a Town, a play which the Irish Literary Theatre did not think advisable to produce. The public will soon have an opportunity of judging our judgment, for Mr. Martyn has decided to 13publish the original text of his play. So much of the character of his play was lost in my rewriting that the two plays have very little in common, except the names of the personages and the number of acts. The Comedy, entitled, The Bending of the Bough, was written in two months, and two months are really not sufficient time to write a five act comedy in; and, at Mr. Martyn’s request, my name alone was put on the title page. Mr. Martyn’s Maive did not gain by representation, it was inadequately acted, and the idea of the play is clearer in the printed text than it was on the stage. But all who saw the play will remember it; it will flash across their minds, and will become more and more realizable with time.

This year Diarmuid and Grania will be given, and though it is longer by two acts than Dr. Hyde’s play, it is not so important, for the three act play is written in English, and the one act play is written in Irish. Dr. Hyde’s play will be the first Irish play produced in a Dublin theatre: I thought till the other day that it would be the first Irish play produced in Dublin, but now I hear that the organization called Inghean na h-Eireann has produced at the Antient Concert Rooms (it was in this room that The Countess Cathleen and The Heather Field were performed), a play in Irish. In a way it would have pleased our vanity to have been the first in Dublin with an Irish play, but this would have been a base vanity, and unworthy a Gaelic Leaguer. There has been no more disinterested movement than the Gaelic League. It has worked for the sake of the language without hope of reward or praise; and if I were asked why I put my faith in the movement I would answer that to believe that a movement distinguished by so much self sacrifice could fail, would be like believing in the failure of goodness itself.

Since we began our work plays have been written, some in Irish and some in English, and we shall be forgiven if we take a little credit for having helped to awaken intellectual life in Ireland. Many will think I am guilty of exaggeration when I say that The Irish Literary Theatre has done more to awaken intellectual life in Ireland than Trinity College. The Irish Literary Theatre is the centre of a literary movement, and our three years have shown that an endowed theatre may be of more intellectual service to a community than a university or a public library.

There are many movements now for the encouragement of Irish manufacture in all its branches and for preventing the scandalous outpouring of Irish money into the pockets of Englishmen and other foreigners. Quite recently a movement has been started to turn the enormous demand for church art from the workshop of the foreign tradesman, and to get it supplied by the native Irish artist. It is impossible to calculate the sum of money that this will save the country. It will be enormous. Two such able and practical men as Mr. Horace Plunkett, and Mr. T. P. Gill are so convinced of this that they have decided to form a school for teaching the making of stained glass as a branch of the School of Art in Dublin, and have procured a teacher from probably the greatest master of the art in modern times. We shall thus have stained glass of the highest excellence executed by Irishmen in Ireland.

But there is another form of art besides church art in Ireland which needs reform, and for which there is an equally large demand, supplied, as usual, by the foreigner, and, as usual, badly supplied, almost invariably. I refer to the plays supplied to our theatres by strolling English companies of actors. It would be interesting to know how much money yearly those companies take out of Ireland as a reward for Anglicising and corrupting the taste of the Irish people. It must be as enormous even as the sum we pay the foreign purveyor of church art for disfiguring our churches. We have grappled with and, I think, solved the problem of nationalising church art. Is it not time that our dramatic art also should be placed on a national basis? Are we so degenerate that we cannot meet this demand also by a supply of national art? The first requisite is to provide a stock company of native artists because the foreign strollers are too wedded to the debased art of England to fall in with the change. This can only be done by instituting a school for the training of actors and actresses, a most important branch of which should be devoted to teaching them to act plays in the Irish language. Now it is quite legal and feasible to obtain a grant from the Department of Technical Instruction for this purpose which is the same in principle as the teaching of stained glass manufacture. It is a home industry in the best sense, and means a vast economic saving to the country, besides being a most refining educational influence 15upon the artistic and moral character of the nation. I think it will not be difficult to make the enlightened Vice-President and Secretary of the Department understand this.

With a company of artists such as I have described we might put before the people of Ireland native works, also translations of the dramatic masterworks of all lands, for it is only by accustoming a public to the highest art that it can be led to appreciate art, and that dramatists may be inspired to work in the great art tradition.

At the time that Finn MacCumhail was getting to be old, and Oisin his son was a strong grown man, it came into his mind to find another wife, for it was a long time since his wife that was daughter of Maighneis Mac Moirne had died from him. And the one he set his mind on was Grania, daughter of Cormac, King of Tara, the most beautiful of the women of Ireland. Her father was willing to give her, for Finn had a great name in Ireland, and all was settled, and a feast was made ready.

But when Finn, and the chief men of the Fianna, came for the wedding, and Grania saw him, and that he looked to be older than her father, Cormac, with the hardships and the fighting he had gone through, she had no mind to marry him, but she looked around at the men that were with him, and she set her mind there and then upon Diarmuid, grand-son of Duibhne, that was young and comely, and that was called the best lover of woman to be found in the whole world.

So she called for a vessel of ale, and she put an enchantment of sleep in the ale, and then she gave a drink of it to Finn, and to the most of the men that were there, and they had no sooner tasted it than a deep sleep came upon them.

But she gave none of the ale to Diarmuid, but she bade him to bring her away out of the house before Finn and her father would awake. And he was not willing at first to meddle with a woman that was promised to Finn MacCumhail, but in the end he brought her away, and all in the house lying in their sleep, but only Oisin and Caoilte and Oscar.

When Finn awoke from his sleep there was great anger on him, and he sent his men to follow the tracks of Diarmuid and Grania, and it is what he told them, that if they did not come up with them at the first ford, he would hang them from each side of it. And this was the beginning of the hunting of Diarmuid and Grania by Finn all through Ireland, that lasted seven years. And all through that time they had many hardships and many escapes, and it is a wonder how they went through all they did, but there were some that helped them.

One time they were at Doire dha Bhoth, and Finn came very near them and was pressing on; but Oisin sent a warning to them through Finn’s own hound, Bran, that had as great a love for Diarmuid as he had for his 17own master. And the hound found them in their sleep in an enclosed place they had made, with seven doors to it, and he thrust his head into Diarmuid’s bosom and awaked him. But it would have gone hard with them even then, but Angus Og, son of the Dagda, that knew of their danger, came and brought Grania away with him to Dos da Shoileach under the cover of his cloak. And as for Diarmuid, he took his sword, and stood up like a straight pillar in the enclosed place. And Finn put a man at every one of the seven doors to guard it, and Diarmuid would not go out by any door but the one Finn himself was guarding, for the other men of the Fianna were some of them his dear friends, and he would not bring Finn’s anger on them by escaping through the door they had in their charge. But he took the shaft of his spear in his hand, and gave a very high light leap over the door where Finn was, and slipped away beyond him and his people, and then he looked back and called out to them that he had passed them, and he slung his shield upon his back, and followed Grania westwards.

And then they two went on by themselves, and it was the advice Angus gave them, not to go into a cave that had but one opening, or into an island that had but one harbour, and wherever they would cook their food, not to eat it there, and wherever they would eat, not to sleep in that place, for all the time Finn would be following after them.

And after that they went along the Siona to the marshy bog of Finnliath, and there they met with a young man, and he said his name was Muadhan, and that he would serve them by day and watch for them by night. And that evening he made a bed of soft rushes and birch tops for them in a cave, and then he broke off a straight rod from a quicken tree, and he put a hair on it and a fork, and a berry on the fork, and went and stood by a stream, and with the three berries he dropped in the stream, he brought up three fishes. And he cooked the three fishes on a spit, and he gave the biggest to Diarmuid and the second biggest to Grania, and the one that was smallest he kept for himself. And after a while Muadhan left them, and they travelled on to Slieve Echtge, and Grania began to be tired out, but Diarmuid made a hut in the very heart of the wood, and killed a deer, and he and Grania eat and drank their fill of meat and of pure water. And Diarmuid went to the Searbhan Lochlannach, the surly one of Lochlinn, that kept the wood, and got leave from him to hunt and kill deer, so long as he would not meddle with the berries, that grew on the quicken-tree of Dubhros. That was a tree that had grown from a berry that was dropped by the Tuatha De Danaan one time when they were playing a game of hurling with the Fianna, and whoever eat these berries was free from all sickness after, and felt like as if he had been drinking wine. But the Tuatha De Danaan had sent the Searbhan Lochlannach to guard over the tree, and he slept in its top by night and stopped at its foot by day, and no one dared come near it. But when Grania heard of these berries a great desire and longing came on her, and she said 18she would never lie down on a bed again, but would lose her life, if she could not get some of them, to taste them.

So Diarmuid went to the fierce giant, the Searbhan, that had made a desert of the place about him, and asked some of the berries, but he would not give them. And Diarmuid would not do treachery on him, but he attacked him then and there, and they fought fair, and the Searbhan gave him great strokes with his club, but Diarmuid killed him in the end.

Then Grania came to the tree, and he plucked berries from the branches and he gave them to her. And then they went up into the top of the tree where the Searbhan had made his bed, and the berries below were but bitter berries beside those that were above in the tree.

And Finn was following close after them, and he came to the foot of the tree, and he and his men eat their fill of the berries, and they sat down to rest through the heat of the day. And Finn asked for a chessboard, and himself and Oisin sat down to play. And after they had played awhile, Finn had come near to win, and there was only one move for Oisin to make, and he did not see it. Then Diarmuid, from the top of the tree, took aim with a berry at the man that should be moved, and hit it; and Oisin moved that man and turned the game against Finn. And the same thing happened a second and a third time, and then Diarmuid struck the third berry on the man that would win the game, and Oisin moved it, and all the Fianna let out a great shout. Then Diarmuid stood up in the top of the tree, and caught Grania to him and gave her three kisses, and the seven battalions of the Fianna standing around. And great anger and jealousy and a great weakness came on Finn when he saw that, and he called out to Diarmuid that he would lose his life for those three kisses.

And he would have made an end of him then and there, but Angus came to their help again, and he took Diarmuid’s shape and appearance on him, and came to the foot of the tree, so that Finn’s men attacked him, and Diarmuid gave a light leap from the tree and went away from them. And then Angus took Grania under his druid mantle, and brought her away to the Brugh na Buinne, and Diarmuid followed them there. And while they were there, Finn sent an old hag that was his foster-mother, and that had knowledge of witchcraft, to try could she make an end of Diarmuid. And he chanced to be out by himself, hunting. And the hag took a drowned leaf, and rose on it in a blast of cold wind, and came near Diarmuid, and began to strike at him from above, so that he was never in such great danger before, but at the last he made a cast of his spear that reached to the hag through the leaf, so that she fell dead on the spot.

But after that, Angus made a peace between Diarmuid and Grania on the one side, and Finn on the other side. And the place they settled in was Rath Grania in Ben Bulben, and the people used to be saying there was no man in Ireland richer in sheep and cattle and gold and silver than Diarmuid was at that time.

19But after a while Grania said it was a shame that the two best men in Ireland, her father Cormac and Finn Mac Cumhail, had never come to her house. And she made a great feast and brought them there.

Now it had been foretold that it was by a wild boar Diarmuid would get his death, and he was put under bonds never to join in the hunting of one. But one day he was hunting with Finn, and they came on the track of a boar, and Diarmuid left Finn and followed after the boar by himself, and it stopped and faced him. And Diarmuid made a cast of his spear at it, but it did not so much as give it a wound or a scratch. But at the last he killed it with the hilt of his sword, for the sword itself was broken, but before he did that, the boar had given him a deadly wound.

It was at this time Finn came up with him, and looked at him, and it is what he said, that he was glad to see his beauty turned to ugliness, and that he would like all the women of Ireland to be looking at him now. And Diarmuid asked him for a drink from the palms of his hands, that might cure him. And Finn was bringing him the water, but when the thought of Grania came upon him, he let it spill through his fingers, and the life went out from Diarmuid. When Grania heard of that, she made a great mourning and a great keening. And she gave it out that she was making all ready to bring a great vengeance on Finn, and to get satisfaction for Diarmuid’s death.

But after a while, Finn went secretly to the place where she was and got to see her, in spite of all her high words. And whatever she said to him or he said to her, when he came back to the seven battalions of the Fianna that were waiting for him, there was Grania coming with him, like any new wife with her husband. And when the Fianna saw that, they gave three great shouts of laughter and mockery. And some said the change had come on her because the mind of every woman changes like the water in a running stream; but some said it was Finn that had put enchantment on her.

“He seems to have a real imagination, a faculty that works directly upon the report of the eyes, and converts it into an expression of the feelings.”