by W. B. Yeats
Father John. I must know what he has to say. It is not from himself he is speaking.
Martin. Father John, heaven is not what we have believed it to be. It is not quiet; it is not singing and making music and all strife at an end. I have seen it, I have been there. The lover still loves, but with a greater passion; and the rider still rides, but the horse goes like the wind and leaps the ridges; and the battle goes on always, always. That is the joy of heaven, continual battle. I thought the battle was here, and that the joy was to be found here on earth, that all one had to do was to bring again the old, wild earth of the stories, but no, it is not here; we shall not come to that joy, that battle, till we have put out the senses, everything that can be seen and handled, as I put out this candle. [He puts out candle.] We must put out the whole world as I put out this candle [he puts out candle]; we must put out the light of the stars and the light of the sun and the light of the moon [he puts out the remaining candles and comes down to where the others are], till we have brought everything to nothing once again. I saw in a broken vision, but now all is clear to me. Where there is nothing, where there is nothing ... there is God!
Constable. Now we will take him!
Johnny B. We will never give him up to the law!
Paudeen. Make your escape! We will not let you be followed.
[They struggle with Constables; the women help them; all disappear, struggling. There is a shot. Martin falls dead. Beggars come back with a shout.]
Johnny B. We have done for them; they will not meddle with you again.
Paudeen. Oh, he is down!
Father John. He is shot through the breast. Oh, who has dared meddle with a soul that was in the tumults on the threshold of sanctity?
Johnny B. It was that gun went off and I striking it from the constable’s hand.
Martin [looking at his hand, on which there is blood]. Ah, that is blood! I fell among the rocks. It is a hard climb. It is a long climb to the vineyards of Eden. Help me up. I must go on. The Mountain of Abiegnos is very high ... but the vineyards ... the vineyards!
[He falls back, dead. The men uncover their heads.]
Paudeen [to Biddy]. It was you misled him with your foretelling that he was coming within the best day of his life.
Johnny B. Madness on him or no madness, I will not leave that body to the law to be buried with a dog’s burial or brought away and maybe hanged upon a tree. Lift him on the sacks; bring him away to the quarry; it is there on the hillside the boys will give him a great burying, coming on horses and bearing white rods in their hands.
[They lift him and carry the body away, singing.]
Our hope and our darling, our heart dies with you.
You to have failed us, we are foals astray!
Father John. He is gone, and we can never know where that vision came from. I cannot know; the wise Bishops would have known.
Thomas [taking up banner]. To be shaping a lad through his lifetime, and he to go his own way at the last, and a queer way. It is very queer the world itself is, whatever shape was put upon it at the first!
Andrew. To be too headstrong and too open, that is the beginning of trouble. To keep to yourself the thing that you know, and to do in quiet the thing you want to do, there would be no disturbance at all in the world, all people to bear that in mind!
Curtain
THE GREEN HELMET
PERSONS OF THE PLAY
LAEGAIRE
LAEGAIRE’S WIFE
CONALL
CONALL’S WIFE
CUCHULAIN
LAEG, Cuchulain’s chariot-driver
EMER
RED MAN, A Spirit
Horse Boys and Scullions, Black Men, etc.
THE GREEN HELMET
SCENE: A house made of logs. There are two windows at the back and a door which cuts off one of the corners of the room. Through the door one can see low rocks which make the ground outside higher than it is within, and beyond the rocks a misty moon-lit sea. Through the windows one can see nothing but the sea. There is a great chair at the opposite side to the door, and in front of it a table with cups and a flagon of ale. Here and there are stools.
At the Abbey Theatre the house is orange red and the chairs and tables and flagons black, with a slight purple tinge which is not clearly distinguishable from the black. The rocks are black with a few green touches. The sea is green and luminous, and all the characters except the RED MAN and the Black Men are dressed in various shades of green, one or two with touches of purple which look nearly black. The Black Men all wear dark purple and have eared caps, and at the end their eyes should look green from the reflected light of the sea. The RED MAN is altogether in red. He is very tall, and his height increased by horns on the Green Helmet. The effect is intentionally violent and startling.
LAEGAIRE
What is that? I had thought that I saw, though but in the wink of an
eye,
A cat-headed man out of Connaught go pacing and spitting by;
But that could not be.
CONALL
You have dreamed it--there’s nothing out there.
I killed them all before daybreak--I hoked them out of their lair;
I cut off a hundred heads with a single stroke of my sword,
And then I danced on their graves and carried away their hoard.
LAEGAIRE
Does anything stir on the sea?
CONALL
Not even a fish or a gull:
I can see for a mile or two, now that the moon’s at the full.
[A distant shout.]
LAEGAIRE
Ah--there--there is someone who calls us.
CONALL
But from the landward side,
And we have nothing to fear that has not come up from the tide;
The rocks and the bushes cover whoever made that noise,
But the land will do us no harm.
LAEGAIRE
It was like Cuchulain’s voice.
CONALL
But that’s an impossible thing.
LAEGAIRE
An impossible thing indeed.
CONALL
For he will never come home, he has all that he could need
In that high windy Scotland--good luck in all that he does.
Here neighbour wars on neighbour and why there is no man knows,
And if a man is lucky all wish his luck away,
And take his good name from him between a day and a day.
LAEGAIRE
I would he’d come for all that, and make his young wife know
That though she may be his wife, she has no right to go
Before your wife and my wife, as she would have gone last night
Had they not caught at her dress, and pulled her as was right;
And she makes light of us though our wives do all that they can.
She spreads her tail like a peacock and praises none but her man.
CONALL
A man in a long green cloak that covers him up to the chin
Comes down through the rocks and hazels.
LAEGAIRE
Cry out that he cannot come in.
CONALL
He must look for his dinner elsewhere, for no one alive shall stop
Where a shame must alight on us two before the dawn is up.
LAEGAIRE
No man on the ridge of the world must ever know that but us two.
CONALL
[Outside door]
Go away, go away, go away.
YOUNG MAN
[Outside door]
I will go when the night is through
And I have eaten and slept and drunk to my heart’s delight.
CONALL
A law has been made that none shall sleep in this house to-night.
YOUNG MAN
Who made that law?
CONALL
We made it, and who has so good a right?
Who else has to keep the house from the Shape-Changers till day?
YOUNG MAN
Then I will unmake the law, so get you out of the way.
[He pushes past CONALL and goes into house]
CONALL
I thought that no living man could have pushed me from the door,
Nor could any living man do it but for the dip in the floor;
And had I been rightly ready there’s no man living could do it,
Dip or no dip.
LAEGAIRE
Go out--if you have your wits, go out,
A stone’s throw further on you will find a big house where
Our wives will give you supper, and you’ll sleep sounder there,
For it’s a luckier house.
YOUNG MAN
I’ll eat and sleep where I will.
LAEGAIRE
Go out or I will make you.
YOUNG MAN
[Forcing up LAEGAIRE’S arm, passing him and putting his shield on
the wall over the chair]
Not till I have drunk my fill.
But may some dog defend me for a cat of wonder’s up.
Laegaire and Conall are here, the flagon full to the top,
And the cups--
LAEGAIRE
It is Cuchulain.
CUCHULAIN
The cups are dry as a bone.
[He sits on chair and drinks]
CONALL
Go into Scotland again, or where you will, but begone
From this unlucky country that was made when the devil spat.
CUCHULAIN
If I lived here a hundred years, could a worse thing come than that
Laegaire and Conall should know me and bid me begone to my face?
CONALL
We bid you begone from a house that has fallen on shame and disgrace.
CUCHULAIN
I am losing patience, Conall--I find you stuffed with pride,
The flagon full to the brim, the front door standing wide;
You’d put me off with words, but the whole thing’s plain enough,
You are waiting for some message to bring you to war or love
In that old secret country beyond the wool-white waves,
Or it may be down beneath them in foam-bewildered caves
Where nine forsaken sea queens fling shuttles to and fro;
But beyond them, or beneath them, whether you will or no,
I am going too.
LAEGAIRE
Better tell it all out to the end;
He was born to luck in the cradle, his good luck may amend
The bad luck we were born to.
CONALL
I’ll lay the whole thing bare.
You saw the luck that he had when he pushed in past me there.
Does anything stir on the sea?
LAEGAIRE
Not even a fish or a gull.
CONALL
You were gone but a little while. We were there and the ale-cup full.
We were half drunk and merry, and midnight on the stroke
When a wide, high man came in with a red foxy cloak,
With half-shut foxy eyes and a great laughing mouth,
And he said when we bid him drink, that he had so great a drouth
He could drink the sea.
CUCHULAIN
I thought he had come from one of you
Out of some Connaught rath, and would lap up milk and mew;
But if he so loved water I have the tale awry.
CONALL
You would not be so merry if he were standing by,
For when we had sung or danced as he were our next of kin
He promised to show us a game, the best that ever had been;
And when we had asked what game, he answered, “Why, whip off my head!
Then one of you two stoop down, and I’ll whip off his,” he said.
“A head for a head,” he said, “that is the game that I play.”
CUCHULAIN
How could he whip off a head when his own had been whipped away?
CONALL
We told him it over and over, and that ale had fuddled his wit,
But he stood and laughed at us there, as though his sides would split,
Till I could stand it no longer, and whipped off his head at a blow,
Being mad that he did not answer, and more at his laughing so,
And there on the ground where it fell it went on laughing at me.
LAEGAIRE
Till he took it up in his hands--
CONALL
And splashed himself into the sea.
CUCHULAIN
I have imagined as good when I’ve been as deep in the cup.
LAEGAIRE
You never did.
CUCHULAIN
And believed it.
CONALL
Cuchulain, when will you stop
Boasting of your great deeds, and weighing yourself with us two,
And crying out to the world whatever we say or do,
That you’ve said or done a better?--Nor is it a drunkard’s tale,
Though we said to ourselves at first that it all came out of the ale,
And thinking that if we told it we should be a laughing-stock,
Swore we should keep it secret.
LAEGAIRE
But twelve months upon the clock.
CONALL
A twelvemonth from the first time.
LAEGAIRE
And the jug full up to the brim:
For we had been put from our drinking by the very thought of him.
CONALL
We stood as we’re standing now.
LAEGAIRE
The horns were as empty.
CONALL
When
He ran up out of the sea with his head on his shoulders again.
CUCHULAIN
Why, this is a tale worth telling.
CONALL
And he called for his debt and his right,
And said that the land was disgraced because of us two from that night
If we did not pay him his debt.
LAEGAIRE
What is there to be said
When a man with a right to get it has come to ask for your head?
CONALL
If you had been sitting there you had been silent like us.
LAEGAIRE
He said that in twelve months more he would come again to this house
And ask his debt again. Twelve months are up to-day.
CONALL
He would have followed after if we had run away.
LAEGAIRE
Will he tell every mother’s son that we have broken our word?
CUCHULAIN
Whether he does or does not we’ll drive him out with the sword,
And take his life in the bargain if he but dare to scoff.
CONALL
How can you fight with a head that laughs when you’ve whipped it off?
LAEGAIRE
Or a man that can pick it up and carry it out in his hand?
CONALL
He is coming now, there’s a splash and a rumble along the strand
As when he came last.
CUCHULAIN
Come, and put all your backs to the door.
[A tall, red-headed, red-cloaked man stands upon the threshold
against the misty green of the sea; the ground, higher without than
within the house, makes him seem taller even than he is. He leans
upon a great two-handed sword]
LAEGAIRE
It is too late to shut it, for there he stands once more
And laughs like the sea.
CUCHULAIN
Old herring--You whip off heads! Why, then
Whip off your own, for it seems you can clap it on again.
Or else go down in the sea, go down in the sea, I say,
Find that old juggler Manannan and whip his head away;
Or the Red Man of the Boyne, for they are of your own sort,
Or if the waves have vexed you and you would find a sport
Of a more Irish fashion, go fight without a rest
A caterwauling phantom among the winds of the west.
But what are you waiting for? into the water, I say!
If there’s no sword can harm you, I’ve an older trick to play,
An old five-fingered trick to tumble you out of the place;
I am Sualtim’s son Cuchulain--what, do you laugh in my face?
RED MAN
So you too think me in earnest in wagering poll for poll!
A drinking joke and a gibe and a juggler’s feat, that is all,
To make the time go quickly--for I am the drinker’s friend,
The kindest of all Shape-Changers from here to the world’s end,
The best of all tipsy companions. And now I bring you a gift:
I will lay it there on the ground for the best of you all to lift,
[He lays his Helmet on the ground]
And wear upon his own head, and choose for yourselves the best.
O! Laegaire and Conall are brave, but they were afraid of my jest.
Well, maybe I jest too grimly when the ale is in the cup.
There, I’m forgiven now--
