{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_33321/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_33321","id":"gutenberg_33321","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33321","summary":null,"tags":["Category: British Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Plays/Films/Dramas","Ireland -- Drama","Nobel Prizes in Literature"],"text":"Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images generously made available by The\nInternet Archive/American Libraries.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                         TWO PLAYS FOR DANCERS\n\n                             BY W. B. YEATS\n\n\n                            THE CUALA PRESS\n                                 MCMXIX\n\n\n\n\n                         TWO PLAYS FOR DANCERS\n\n                                PREFACE\n\n\nIn a note at the end of my last book 'The Wild Swans at Coole' (Cuala\nPress.) I explained why I preferred this kind of drama, and where I had\nfound my models, and where and how my first play after this kind was\nperformed, and when and how I would have it performed in the future.\nI can but refer the reader to the note or to the long introduction to\n'Certain Noble Plays of Japan' (Cuala Press.)\n\n                                     W. B. Yeats. October 11th. 1918\n\n    P. S. That I might write 'The Dreaming of the Bones,' Mr. W. A.\n    Henderson with great kindness wrote out for me all historical\n    allusions to Dervorgilla.\n\n\n\n\n                       THE DREAMING OF THE BONES\n\n\nThe stage is any bare place in a room close to the wall. A screen with\na pattern of mountain and sky can stand against the wall, or a curtain\nwith a like pattern hang upon it, but the pattern must only symbolize\nor suggest. One musician enters and then two others, the first stands\nsinging while the others take their places. Then all three sit down\nagainst the wall by their instruments, which are already there--a drum,\na zither, and a flute. Or they unfold a cloth as in 'The Hawk's Well,'\nwhile the instruments are carried in.\n\nFIRST MUSICIAN\n\n            (or all three musicians, singing)\n  Why does my heart beat so?\n  Did not a shadow pass?\n  It passed but a moment ago.\n  Who can have trod in the grass?\n  What rogue is night-wandering?\n  Have not old writers said\n  That dizzy dreams can spring\n  From the dry bones of the dead?\n  And many a night it seems\n  That all the valley fills\n  With those fantastic dreams.\n  They overflow the hills,\n  So passionate is a shade,\n  Like wine that fills to the top\n  A grey-green cup of jade,\n  Or maybe an agate cup.\n  (speaking) The hour before dawn and the moon covered up.\n  The little village of Abbey is covered up;\n  The little narrow trodden way that runs\n  From the white road to the Abbey of Corcomroe\n  Is covered up; and all about the hills\n  Are like a circle of Agate or of Jade.\n  Somewhere among great rocks on the scarce grass\n  Birds cry, they cry their loneliness.\n  Even the sunlight can be lonely here,\n  Even hot noon is lonely. I hear a footfall--\n  A young man with a lantern comes this way.\n  He seems an Aran fisher, for he wears\n  The flannel bawneen and the cow-hide shoe.\n  He stumbles wearily, and stumbling prays.\n\n  (A young man enters, praying in Irish)\n\n  Once more the birds cry in their loneliness,\n  But now they wheel about our heads; and now\n  They have dropped on the grey stone to the north-east.\n\n  (A man and a girl both in the costume of a past time, come in. They\n  wear heroic masks)\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                        (raising his lantern)\n  Who is there? I cannot see what you are like,\n  Come to the light.\n\nSTRANGER\n\n                   But what have you to fear?\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n  And why have you come creeping through the dark.\n\n  (The Girl blows out lantern)\n\n  The wind has blown my lantern out. Where are you?\n  I saw a pair of heads against the sky\n  And lost them after, but you are in the right\n  I should not be afraid in County Clare;\n  And should be or should not be have no choice,\n  I have to put myself into your hands,\n  Now that my candle's out.\n\nSTRANGER\n\n                   You have fought in Dublin?\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n  I was in the Post Office, and if taken\n  I shall be put against a wall and shot.\n\nSTRANGER\n\n  You know some place of refuge, have some plan\n  Or friend who will come to meet you?\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                                  I am to lie\n  At daybreak on the mountain and keep watch\n  Until an Aran coracle puts in\n  At Muckanish or at the rocky shore\n  Under Finvarra, but would break my neck\n  If I went stumbling there alone in the dark.\n\nSTRANGER\n\n  We know the pathways that the sheep tread out,\n  And all the hiding-places of the hills,\n  And that they had better hiding-places once.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n  You'd say they had better before English robbers\n  Cut down the trees or set them upon fire\n  For fear their owners might find shelter there.\n  What is that sound?\n\nSTRANGER\n\n                     An old horse gone astray\n  He has been wandering on the road all night.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n  I took him for a man and horse. Police\n  Are out upon the roads. In the late Rising\n  I think there was no man of us but hated\n  To fire at soldiers who but did their duty\n  And were not of our race, but when a man\n  Is born in Ireland and of Irish stock\n  When he takes part against us--\n\nSTRANGER\n\n                         I will put you safe,\n  No living man shall set his eyes upon you.\n  I will not answer for the dead.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                                    The dead?\n\nSTRANGER\n\n  For certain days the stones where you must lie\n  Have in the hour before the break of day\n  Been haunted.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n              But I was not born at midnight.\n\nSTRANGER\n\n  Many a man born in the full daylight\n  Can see them plain, will pass them on the high-road\n  Or in the crowded market-place of the town,\n  And never know that they have passed.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                                   My Grandam\n  Would have it they did penance everywhere\n  Or lived through their old lives again.\n\nSTRANGER\n\n                                  In a dream;\n  And some for an old scruple must hang spitted\n  Upon the swaying tops of lofty trees;\n  Some are consumed in fire, some withered up\n  By hail and sleet out of the wintry North,\n  And some but live through their old lives again.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n  Well, let them dream into what shape they please\n  And fill waste mountains with the invisible tumult\n  Of the fantastic conscience. I have no dread;\n  They cannot put me into jail or shoot me,\n  And seeing that their blood has returned to fields\n  That have grown red from drinking blood like mine\n  They would not if they could betray.\n\nSTRANGER\n\n                                 This pathway\n  Runs to the ruined Abbey of Corcomroe;\n  The Abbey passed, we are soon among the stone\n  And shall be at the ridge before the cocks\n  Of Aughanish or Bailevlehan\n  Or grey Aughtmana shake their wings and cry.\n\n  (They go round the stage once)\n\nFIRST MUSICIAN\n\n  (speaking) They've passed the shallow well and the flat stone\n  Fouled by the drinking cattle, the narrow lane\n  Where mourners for five centuries have carried\n  Noble or peasant to his burial.\n  An owl is crying out above their heads.\n  (singing) Why should the heart take fright\n  What sets it beating so?\n  The bitter sweetness of the night\n  Has made it but a lonely thing.\n  Red bird of March, begin to crow,\n  Up with the neck and clap the wing,\n  Red cock, and crow.\n\n  (They go once round the stage. The first musician speaks.)\n\n  And now they have climbed through the long grassy field\n  And passed the ragged thorn trees and the gap\n  In the ancient hedge; and the tomb-nested owl\n  At the foot's level beats with a vague wing.\n  (singing) My head is in a cloud;\n  I'd let the whole world go.\n  My rascal heart is proud\n  Remembering and remembering.\n  Red bird of March, begin to crow,\n  Up with the neck and clap the wing\n  Red cock and crow.\n\n  (They go round the stage. The first musician speaks.)\n\n  They are among the stones above the ash\n  Above the briar and thorn and the scarce grass;\n  Hidden amid the shadow far below them\n  The cat-headed bird is crying out.\n  (singing) The dreaming bones cry out\n  Because the night winds blow\n  And heaven's a cloudy blot;\n  Calamity can have its fling.\n  Red bird of March begin to crow,\n  Up with the neck and clap the wing\n  Red cock and crow.\n\nTHE STRANGER\n\n  We're almost at the summit and can rest.\n  The road is a faint shadow there; and there\n  The abbey lies amid its broken tombs.\n  In the old days we should have heard a bell\n  Calling the monks before day broke to pray;\n  And when the day has broken on the ridge,\n  The crowing of its cocks.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                            Is there no house\n  Famous for sanctity or architectural beauty\n  In Clare or Kerry, or in all wide Connacht\n  The enemy has not unroofed?\n\nSTRANGER\n\n                           Close to the altar\n  Broken by wind and frost and worn by time\n  Donogh O'Brien has a tomb, a name in Latin.\n  He wore fine clothes and knew the secrets of women\n  But he rebelled against the King of Thomond\n  And died in his youth.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                     And why should he rebel?\n  The King of Thomond was his rightful master.\n  It was men like Donogh who made Ireland weak--\n  My curse on all that troop, and when I die\n  I'll leave my body, if I have any choice,\n  Far from his ivy tod and his owl; have those\n  Who, if your tale is true, work out a penance\n  Upon the mountain-top where I am to hide,\n  Come from the Abbey graveyard?\n\nTHE GIRL\n\n                     They have not that luck,\n  But are more lonely, those that are buried there,\n  Warred in the heat of the blood; if they were rebels\n  Some momentary impulse made them rebels\n  Or the comandment of some petty king\n  Who hated Thomond. Being but common sinners,\n  No callers in of the alien from oversea\n  They and their enemies of Thomond's party\n  Mix in a brief dream battle above their bones,\n  Or make one drove or drift in amity,\n  Or in the hurry of the heavenly round\n  Forget their earthly names; these are alone\n  Being accursed.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                    And if what seems is true\n  And there are more upon the other side\n  Than on this side of death, many a ghost\n  Must meet them face to face and pass the word\n  Even upon this grey and desolate hill.\n\nYOUNG GIRL\n\n  Until this hour no ghost or living man\n  Has spoken though seven centuries have run\n  Since they, weary of life and of men's eyes,\n  Flung down their bones in some forgotten place\n  Being accursed.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n            I have heard that there are souls\n  Who, having sinned after a monstrous fashion\n  Take on them, being dead, a monstrous image\n  To drive the living, should they meet its face,\n  Crazy, and be a terror to the dead.\n\nYOUNG GIRL\n\n                                    But these\n  Were comely even in their middle life\n  And carry, now that they are dead, the image\n  Of their first youth, for it was in that youth\n  Their sin began.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                 I have heard of angry ghosts\n  Who wander in a wilful solitude.\n\nTHE GIRL\n\n  These have no thought but love; nor joy\n  But that upon the instant when their penance\n  Draws to its height and when two hearts are wrung\n  Nearest to breaking, if hearts of shadows break,\n  His eyes can mix with hers; nor any pang\n  That is so bitter as that double glance,\n  Being accursed.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n           But what is this strange penance--\n  That when their eyes have met can wring them most?\n\nTHE GIRL\n\n  Though eyes can meet, their lips can never meet.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n  And yet it seems they wander side by side.\n  But doubtless you would say that when lips meet\n  And have not living nerves, it is no meeting.\n\nTHE GIRL\n\n  Although they have no blood or living nerves\n  Who once lay warm and live the live-long night\n  In one another's arms, and know their part\n  In life, being now but of the people of dreams,\n  Is a dreams part; although they are but shadows\n  Hovering between a thorn tree and a stone\n  Who have heaped up night on winged night; although\n  No shade however harried and consumed\n  Would change his own calamity for theirs,\n  Their manner of life were blessed could their lips\n  A moment meet; but when he has bent his head\n  Close to her head or hand would slip in hand\n  The memory of their crime flows up between\n  And drives them apart.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                      The memory of a crime--\n  He took her from a husband's house it may be,\n  But does the penance for a passionate sin\n  Last for so many centuries?\n\nTHE GIRL\n\n                                      No, no,\n  The man she chose, the man she was chosen by\n  Cared little and cares little from whose house\n  They fled towards dawn amid the flights of arrows\n  Or that it was a husband's and a king's;\n  And how if that were all could she lack friends\n  On crowded roads or on the unpeopled hill?\n  Helen herself had opened wide the door\n  Where night by night she dreams herself awake\n  And gathers to her breast a dreaming man.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n  What crime can stay so in the memory?\n  What crime can keep apart the lips of lovers\n  Wandering and alone?\n\nTHE GIRL\n\n                           Her king and lover\n  Was overthrown in battle by her husband\n  And for her sake and for his own, being blind\n  And bitter and bitterly in love, he brought\n  A foreign army from across the sea.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n  You speak of Dermot and of Dervorgilla\n  Who brought the Norman in?\n\nTHE GIRL\n\n                             Yes, yes I spoke\n  Of that most miserable, most accursed pair\n  Who sold their country into slavery, and yet\n  They were not wholly miserable and accursed\n  If somebody of their race at last would say:\n  'I have forgiven them.'\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                             Oh, never, never\n  Will Dermot and Dervorgilla be forgiven.\n\nTHE GIRL\n\n  If someone of their race forgave at last\n  Lip would be pressed on lip.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n                             Oh, never, never\n  Will Dermot and Dervorgilla be forgiven.\n  You have told your story well, so well indeed\n  I could not help but fall into the mood\n  And for a while believe that it was true\n  Or half believe, but better push on now.\n  The horizon to the East is growing bright.\n\n  (They go once round stage)\n\n  So here we're on the summit. I can see\n  The Aran Islands, Connemara Hills,\n  And Galway in the breaking light; there too\n  The enemy has toppled wall and roof\n  And torn from ancient walls to boil his pot\n  The oaken panelling that had been dear\n  To generations of children and old men.\n  But for that pair for whom you would have my pardon\n  It might be now like Bayeux or like Caen\n  Or little Italian town amid its walls\n  For though we have neither coal nor iron ore\n  To make us rich and cover heaven with smoke\n  Our country, if that crime were uncommitted\n  Had been most beautiful. Why do you dance?\n  Why do you gaze and with so passionate eyes\n  One on the other and then turn away\n  Covering your eyes and weave it in a dance,\n  Who are you? what are you? you are not natural.\n\nTHE GIRL\n\n  Seven hundred years our lips have never met.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n  Why do you look so strangely at one another,\n  So strangely and so sweetly?\n\nTHE GIRL\n\n                         Seven hundred years.\n\nYOUNG MAN\n\n  So strangely and so sweetly. All the ruin,\n  All, all their handiwork is blown away\n  As though the mountain air had blown it away\n  Because their eyes have met. They cannot hear,\n  Being folded up and hidden in their dance.\n  The dance is changing now. They have dropped their eyes,\n  They have covered up their eyes as though their hearts\n  Had suddenly been broken--never, never\n  Shall Dermot and Dervorgilla be forgiven.\n  They have drifted in the dance from rock to rock.\n  They have raised their hands as though to snatch the sleep\n  That lingers always in the abyss of the sky\n  Though they can never reach it. A cloud floats up\n  And covers all the mountain head in a moment.\n  And now it lifts and they are swept away.\n  I had almost yielded and forgiven it all--\n  This is indeed a place of terrible temptation.\n\n  (The Musicians begin unfolding and folding a black cloth. The First\n  Musician comes forward to the front of the stage, at the centre. He\n  holds the cloth before him. The other two come one on either side\n  and unfold it. They afterwards fold it up in the same way. While it\n  is unfolded, the Young Man leaves the stage.)\n\nTHE MUSICIANS\n\nI\n\n  (singing) At the grey round of the hill\n  Music of a lost kingdom\n  Runs, runs and is suddenly still.\n  The winds out of Clare-Galway\n  Carry it: suddenly it is still.\n\n  I have heard in the night air\n  A wandering airy music;\n  And moidered in that snare\n  A man is lost of a sudden,\n  In that sweet wandering snare.\n\n  What finger first began\n  Music of a lost kingdom.\n  They dreamed that laughed in the sun.\n  Dry bones that dream are bitter,\n  They dream and darken our sun.\n\n  Those crazy fingers play\n  A wandering airy music;\n  Our luck is withered away,\n  And wheat in the wheat-ear withered,\n  And the wind blows it away.\n\nII\n\n  My heart ran wild when it heard\n  The curlew cry before dawn\n  And the eddying cat-headed bird;\n  But now the night is gone.\n  I have heard from far below\n  The strong March birds a-crow,\n  Stretch neck and clap the wing,\n  Red cocks, and crow.\n\n\n\n\n                       THE ONLY JEALOUSY OF EMER\n\n\nEnter Musicians, who are dressed as in the earlier play. They have the\nsame musical instruments, which can either be already upon the stage or\nbe brought in by the First Musician before he stands in the centre with\nthe cloth between his hands, or by a player when the cloth is unfolded.\nThe stage as before can be against the wall of any room.\n\nFIRST MUSICIAN\n\n  (During the unfolding and folding of the cloth)\n\n  A woman's beauty is like a white\n  Frail bird, like a white sea-bird alone\n  At daybreak after stormy night\n  Between two furrows upon the ploughed land:\n  A sudden storm and it was thrown\n  Between dark furrows upon the ploughed land.\n  How many centuries spent\n  The sedentary soul\n  In toils of measurement\n  Beyond eagle or mole,\n  Beyond hearing or seeing,\n  Or Archimedes guess,\n  To raise into being\n  That loveliness?\n\n  A strange unserviceable thing,\n  A fragile, exquisite, pale shell,\n  That the vast troubled waters bring\n  To the loud sands before day has broken.\n  The storm arose and suddenly fell\n  Amid the dark before day had broken.\n  What death? what discipline?\n  What bonds no man could unbind\n  Being imagined within\n  The labyrinth of the mind?\n  What pursuing or fleeing?\n  What wounds, what bloody press?\n  Dragged into being\n  This loveliness.\n\n  (When the cloth is folded again the Musicians take their place\n  against wall. The folding of the cloth shows on one side of the\n  stage the curtained bed or litter on which lies a man in his\n  grave-clothes. He wears an heroic mask. Another man with exactly\n  similar clothes and mask crouches near the front. Emer is sitting\n  beside the bed.)\n\nFIRST MUSICIAN\n\n  (speaking) I call before the eyes a roof\n  With cross-beams darkened by smoke.\n  A fisher's net hangs from a beam,\n  A long oar lies against the wall.\n  I call up a poor fisher's house.\n  A man lies dead or swooning,\n  That amorous man,\n  That amorous, violent man, renowned Cuchulain,\n  Queen Emer at his side.\n  At her own bidding all the rest have gone.\n  But now one comes on hesitating feet,\n  Young Eithne Inguba, Cuchulain's mistress.\n  She stands a moment in the open door,\n  Beyond the open door the bitter sea,\n  The shining, bitter sea is crying out,\n  (singing) White shell, white wing\n  I will not choose for my friend\n  A frail unserviceable thing\n  That drifts and dreams, and but knows\n  That waters are without end\n  And that wind blows.\n\nEMER\n\n  (speaking) Come hither, come sit down beside the bed\n  You need not be afraid, for I myself\n  Sent for you, Eithne Inguba.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n                                   No, Madam,\n  I have too deeply wronged you to sit there.\n\nEMER\n\n  Of all the people in the world we two,\n  And we alone, may watch together here,\n  Because we have loved him best.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n                              And is he dead?\n\nEMER\n\n  Although they have dressed him out in his grave-clothes\n  And stretched his limbs, Cuchulain is not dead;\n  The very heavens when that day's at hand,\n  So that his death may not lack ceremony,\n  Will throw out fires, and the earth grow red with blood.\n  There shall not be a scullion but foreknows it\n  Like the world's end.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n                     How did he come to this?\n\nEMER\n\n  Towards noon in the assembly of the kings\n  He met with one who seemed a while most dear.\n  The kings stood round; some quarrel was blown up;\n  He drove him out and killed him on the shore\n  At Baile's tree, and he who was so killed\n  Was his own son begot on some wild woman\n  When he was young, or so I have heard it said;\n  And thereupon, knowing what man he had killed,\n  And being mad with sorrow, he ran out;\n  And after to his middle in the foam\n  With shield before him and with sword in hand,\n  He fought the deathless sea. The kings looked on\n  And not a king dared stretch an arm, or even\n  Dared call his name, but all stood wondering\n  In that dumb stupor like cattle in a gale,\n  Until at last, as though he had fixed his eyes\n  On a new enemy, he waded out\n  Until the water had swept over him;\n  But the waves washed his senseless image up\n  And laid it at this door.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n                           How pale he looks!\n\nEMER\n\n  He is not dead.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n                 You have not kissed his lips\n  Nor laid his head upon your breast.\n\nEMER\n\n                                    It may be\n  An image has been put into his place,\n  A sea-born log bewitched into his likeness,\n  Or some stark horseman grown too old to ride\n  Among the troops of Mananan, Son of the Sea,\n  Now that his joints are stiff.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n                            Cry out his name.\n  All that are taken from our sight, they say,\n  Loiter amid the scenery of their lives\n  For certain hours or days, and should he hear\n  He might, being angry drive the changeling out.\n\nEMER\n\n  It is hard to make them hear amid their darkness,\n  And it is long since I could call him home;\n  I am but his wife, but if you cry aloud\n  With that sweet voice that is so dear to him\n  He cannot help but listen.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n                            He loves me best,\n  Being his newest love, but in the end\n  Will love the woman best who loved him first\n  And loved him through the years when love seemed lost.\n\nEMER\n\n  I have that hope, the hope that some day and somewhere\n  We'll sit together at the hearth again.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n  Women like me when the violent hour is over\n  Are flung into some corner like old nut shells.\n  Cuchulain, listen.\n\nEMER\n\n                        No, not yet for first\n  I'll cover up his face to hide the sea;\n  And throw new logs upon the hearth and stir\n  The half burnt logs until they break in flame.\n  Old Mananan's unbridled horses come\n  Out of the sea and on their backs his horsemen\n  But all the enchantments of the dreaming foam\n  Dread the hearth fire.\n\n  (She pulls the curtains of the bed so as to hide the sick man's\n  face, that the actor may change his mask unseen. She goes to one\n  side of platform and moves her hand as though putting logs on a fire\n  and stirring it into a blaze. While she makes these movements the\n  Musicians play, marking the movements with drum and flute perhaps.\n\n  Having finished she stands beside the imaginary fire at a distance\n  from Cuchulain & Eithne Inguba.)\n\nCall on Cuchulain now.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n  Can you not hear my voice.\n\nEMER\n\n                               Bend over him.\n  Call out dear secrets till you have touched his heart\n  If he lies there; and if he is not there\n  Till you have made him jealous.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n                           Cuchulain, listen.\n\nEMER\n\n  You speak too timidly; to be afraid\n  Because his wife is but three paces off\n  When there is so great a need were but to prove\n  The man that chose you made but a poor choice.\n  We're but two women struggling with the sea.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n  O my beloved pardon me, that I\n  Have been ashamed and you in so great need.\n  I have never sent a message or called out,\n  Scarce had a longing for your company\n  But you have known and come; and if indeed\n  You are lying there stretch out your arms and speak;\n  Open your mouth and speak for to this hour\n  My company has made you talkative.\n  Why do you mope, and what has closed your ears.\n  Our passion had not chilled when we were parted\n  On the pale shore under the breaking dawn.\n  He will not hear me: or his ears are closed\n  And no sound reaches him.\n\nEMER\n\n                         Then kiss that image\n  The pressure of your mouth upon his mouth\n  May reach him where he is.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n                (starting back) It is no man.\n  I felt some evil thing that dried my heart\n  When my lips touched it.\n\nEMER\n\n                          No, his body stirs;\n  The pressure of your mouth has called him home;\n  He has thrown the changeling out.\n\nEITHNE INGUBA\n\n         (going further off) Look at that arm\n  That arm is withered to the very socket.\n\nEMER\n\n                        (going up to the bed)\n  What do you come for and from where?\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n                                  I have come\n  From Mananan's court upon a bridleless horse.\n\nEMER\n\n  What one among the Sidhe has dared to lie\n  Upon Cuchulain's bed and take his image?\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  I am named Bricriu--not the man--that Bricriu,\n  Maker of discord among gods and men,\n  Called Bricriu of the Sidhe.\n\nEMER\n\n                       Come for what purpose?\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  (sitting up and showing its distorted face. Eithne Inguba goes out)\n\n  I show my face and everything he loves\n  Must fly away.\n\nEMER\n\n                       You people of the wind\n  Are full of lying speech and mockery.\n  I have not fled your face.\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n                           You are not loved.\n\nEMER\n\n  And therefore have no dread to meet your eyes\n  And to demand him of you.\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n                        For that I have come.\n  You have but to pay the price and he is free.\n\nEMER\n\n  Do the Sidhe bargain?\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n                 When they set free a captive\n  They take in ransom a less valued thing.\n  The fisher when some knowledgeable man\n  Restores to him his wife, or son, or daughter,\n  Knows he must lose a boat or net, or it may be\n  The cow that gives his children milk; and some\n  Have offered their own lives. I do not ask\n  Your life, or any valuable thing;\n  You spoke but now of the mere chance that some day\n  You'd sit together by the hearth again;\n  Renounce that chance, that miserable hour,\n  And he shall live again.\n\nEMER\n\n                            I do not question\n  But you have brought ill luck on all he loves\n  And now, because I am thrown beyond your power\n  Unless your words are lies, you come to bargain.\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  You loved your power when but newly married\n  And I love mine although I am old and withered;\n  You have but to put yourself into that power\n  And he shall live again.\n\nEMER\n\n                            No, never, never.\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  You dare not be accursed yet he has dared.\n\nEMER\n\n  I have but two joyous thoughts, two things I prize,\n  A hope, a memory, and now you claim that hope.\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  He'll never sit beside you at the hearth\n  Or make old bones, but die of wounds and toil\n  On some far shore or mountain, a strange woman\n  Beside his mattress.\n\nEMER\n\n                      You ask for my one hope\n  That you may bring your curse on all about him.\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  You've watched his loves and you have not been jealous\n  Knowing that he would tire, but do those tire\n  That love the Sidhe?\n\nEMER\n\n                     What dancer of the Sidhe\n  What creature of the reeling moon has pursued him?\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  I have but to touch your eyes and give them sight;\n  But stand at my left side.\n\n  (He touches her eyes with his left hand, the right being withered)\n\nEMER\n\n                            My husband there.\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  But out of reach--I have dissolved the dark\n  That hid him from your eyes but not that other\n  That's hidden you from his.\n\nEMER\n\n                            Husband, husband!\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  Be silent, he is but a phantom now\n  And he can neither touch, nor hear, nor see;\n  The longing and the cries have drawn him hither.\n  He heard no sound, heard no articulate sound;\n  They could but banish rest, and make him dream,\n  And in that dream, as do all dreaming shades\n  Before they are accustomed to their freedom,\n  He has taken his familiar form, and yet\n  He crouches there not knowing where he is\n  Or at whose side he is crouched.\n\n  (a Woman of the Sidhe has entered and stands a little inside the door)\n\nEMER\n\n                           Who is this woman?\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  She has hurried from the Country-Under-Wave\n  And dreamed herself into that shape that he\n  May glitter in her basket; for the Sidhe\n  Are fishers also and they fish for men\n  With dreams upon the hook.\n\nEMER\n\n                            And so that woman\n  Has hid herself in this disguise and made\n  Herself into a lie.\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n                             A dream is body;\n  The dead move ever towards a dreamless youth\n  And when they dream no more return no more;\n  And those more holy shades that never lived\n  But visit you in dreams.\n\nEMER\n\n                             I know her sort.\n  They find our men asleep, weary with war,\n  Or weary with the chase and kiss their lips\n  And drop their hair upon them, from that hour\n  Our men, who yet knew nothing of it all,\n  Are lonely, and when at fall of night we press\n  Their hearts upon our hearts their hearts are cold.\n\n  (She draws a knife from her girdle)\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  And so you think to wound her with a knife.\n  She has an airy body. Look and listen;\n  I have not given you eyes and ears for nothing.\n\n  (The Woman of the Sidhe moves round the crouching Ghost of Cuchulain\n  at front of stage in a dance that grows gradually quicker, as he\n  slowly awakes. At moments she may drop her hair upon his head but\n  she does not kiss him. She is accompanied by string and flute and\n  drum. Her mask and clothes must suggest gold or bronze or brass or\n  silver so that she seems more an idol than a human being. This\n  suggestion may be repeated in her movements. Her hair too, must keep\n  the metallic suggestion.)\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n  Who is it stands before me there\n  Shedding such light from limb and hair\n  As when the moon complete at last\n  With every labouring crescent past,\n  And lonely with extreme delight,\n  Flings out upon the fifteenth night?\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n  Because I long I am not complete.\n  What pulled your hands about your feet\n  And your head down upon your knees,\n  And hid your face?\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n                                Old memories:\n  A dying boy, with handsome face\n  Upturned upon a beaten place;\n  A sacred yew-tree on a strand;\n  A woman that held in steady hand\n  In all the happiness of her youth\n  Before her man had broken troth,\n  A burning wisp to light the door;\n  And many a round or crescent more;\n  Dead men and women. Memories\n  Have pulled my head upon my knees.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n  Could you that have loved many a woman\n  That did not reach beyond the human,\n  Lacking a day to be complete,\n  Love one that though her heart can beat,\n  Lacks it but by an hour or so.\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n  I know you now for long ago\n  I met you on the mountain side,\n  Beside a well that seemed long dry,\n  Beside old thorns where the hawk flew.\n  I held out arms and hands but you,\n  That now seem friendly, fled away\n  Half woman and half bird of prey.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n  Hold out your arms and hands again\n  You were not so dumbfounded when\n  I was that bird of prey and yet\n  I am all woman now.\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n                                     I am not\n  The young and passionate man I was\n  And though that brilliant light surpass\n  All crescent forms, my memories\n  Weigh down my hands, abash my eyes.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n  Then kiss my mouth. Though memory\n  Be beauty's bitterest enemy\n  I have no dread for at my kiss\n  Memory on the moment vanishes:\n  Nothing but beauty can remain.\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n  And shall I never know again\n  Intricacies of blind remorse?\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n  Time shall seem to stay his course,\n  For when your mouth and my mouth meet\n  All my round shall be complete\n  Imagining all its circles run;\n  And there shall be oblivion\n  Even to quench Cuchulain's drouth,\n  Even to still that heart.\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n                                  Your mouth.\n\n  (They are about to kiss, he turns away)\n\n  O Emer, Emer.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n                            So then it is she\n  Made you impure with memory.\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n  Still in that dream I see you stand,\n  A burning wisp in your right hand,\n  To wait my coming to the house,\n  As when our parents married us.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n  Being among the dead you love her\n  That valued every slut above her\n  While you still lived.\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n                              O my lost Emer.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n  And there is not a loose-tongued schemer\n  But could draw you if not dead,\n  From her table and her bed.\n  How could you be fit to wive\n  With flesh and blood, being born to live\n  Where no one speaks of broken troth\n  For all have washed out of their eyes\n  Wind blown dirt of their memories\n  To improve their sight?\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n                      Your mouth, your mouth.\n\n  (Their lips approach but Cuchulain turns away as Emer speaks.)\n\nEMER\n\n  If he may live I am content,\n  Content that he shall turn on me,\n  If but the dead will set him free\n  That I may speak with him at whiles,\n  Eyes that the cold moon or the harsh sea\n  Or what I know not's made indifferent.\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n  What a wise silence has fallen in this dark!\n  I know you now in all your ignorance\n  Of all whereby a lover's quiet is rent.\n  What dread so great as that he should forget\n  The least chance sight or sound, or scratch or mark\n  On an old door, or frail bird heard and seen\n  In the incredible clear light love cast\n  All round about her some forlorn lost day?\n  That face, though fine enough, is a fool's face\n  And there's a folly in the deathless Sidhe\n  Beyond man's reach.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n                         I told you to forget\n  After my fashion; you would have none of it;\n  So now you may forget in a man's fashion.\n  There's an unbridled horse at the sea's edge.\n  Mount; it will carry you in an eye's wink\n  To where the King of Country-Under-Wave,\n  Old Mananan, nods above the board and moves\n  His chessmen in a dream. Demand your life\n  And come again on the unbridled horse.\n\nGHOST of CUCHULAIN\n\n  Forgive me those rough words. How could you know\n  That man is held to those whom he has loved\n  By pain they gave, or pain that he has given,\n  Intricacies of pain.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n                                 I am ashamed\n  That being of the deathless shades I chose\n  A man so knotted to impurity.\n\n  (The Ghost of Cuchulain goes out)\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE (to Figure of Cuchulain)\n\n  To you that have no living light, but dropped\n  From a last leprous crescent of the moon,\n  I owe it all.\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n                      Because you have failed\n  I must forego your thanks, I that took pity\n  Upon your love and carried out your plan\n  To tangle all his life and make it nothing\n  That he might turn to you.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n                             Was it from pity\n  You taught the woman to prevail against me?\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n  You know my nature--by what name I am called.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n  Was it from pity that you hid the truth\n  That men are bound to women by the wrongs\n  They do or suffer?\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n                    You know what being I am.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n  I have been mocked and disobeyed--your power\n  Was more to you than my good-will, and now\n  I'll have you learn what my ill-will can do;\n  I lay you under bonds upon the instant\n  To stand before our King and face the charge\n  And take the punishment.\n\nFIGURE of CUCHULAIN\n\n                      I'll stand there first.\n  And tell my story first, and Mananan\n  Knows that his own harsh sea made my heart cold.\n\nWOMAN of the SIDHE\n\n  My horse is there and shall outrun your horse.\n\n  (The Figure of Cuchulain falls back, the Woman of the Sidhe goes out.\n  Drum taps, music resembling horse hoofs.)\n\nEITHNE INGUBA (entering quickly)\n\n  I heard the beat of hoofs, but saw no horse,\n  And then came other hoofs and after that\n  I heard low angry cries and thereupon\n  I ceased to be afraid.\n\nEMER\n\n                             Cuchulain wakes.\n\n  (The figure turns round. It once more wears the heroic mask.)\n\nCUCHULAIN\n\n  Eithne Inguba take me in your arms,\n  I have been in some strange place and am afraid.\n\n  (The First Musician comes to the front of stage, the others from each\n  side and unfold the cloth singing)\n\nTHE MUSICIANS\n\n  What makes her heart beat thus,\n  Plain to be understood\n  I have met in a man's house\n  A statue of solitude,\n  Moving there and walking;\n  Its strange heart beating fast\n  For all our talking.\n  O still that heart at last.\n\n  O bitter reward!\n  Of many a tragic tomb!\n  And we though astonished are dumb\n  And give but a sigh and a word\n  A passing word.\n\n  Although the door be shut\n  And all seem well enough,\n  Although wide world hold not\n  A man but will give you his love.\n  The moment he has looked at you,\n  He that has loved the best\n  May turn from a statue\n  His too human breast.\n\n  O bitter reward!\n  Of many a tragic tomb!\n  And we though astonished are dumb\n  Or give but a sigh and a word\n  A passing word.\n\n  What makes your heart so beat?\n  Some one should stay at her side.\n  When beauty is complete\n  Her own thought will have died\n  And danger not be diminished;\n  Dimmed at three quarter light\n  When moon's round is finished\n  The stars are out of sight.\n\n  O bitter reward!\n  Of many a tragic tomb!\n  And we though astonished are dumb\n  Or give but a sigh and a word\n  A passing word.\n\n  (When the cloth is folded again the stage is bare.)\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nHere ends, 'Two Plays for Dancers,' by William Butler Yeats. Four\nhundred copies of this book have been printed and published by Elizabeth\nCorbet Yeats on paper made in Ireland, at the Cuala Press, Churchtown,\nDundrum, in the County of Dublin, Ireland. Finished on the tenth day of\nJanuary in the year nineteen hundred and nineteen.","title":"Two plays for dancers","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":6591}