APPENDIX

iiiAPPENDIX

THE SINGER

The following is the version of a passage in this play, which was with the Author’s manuscript:

Colm. Is it to die like rats you’d have us because the word is not given?

Cuimin. Our plans are not finished. Our orders are not here.

Colm. Our plans will never be finished. Our orders may never be here.

Cuimin. We’ve no one to lead us.

Colm. Didn’t you elect me your captain?

Cuimin. We did, but not to bid us rise out when the whole country is quiet. We were to get the word from the men that are over the people. They’ll speak when the time comes. (The door opens again and Feichin comes in with two or three others.) Am I speaking lie or truth, men? Colm here wants us to rise out before the word comes. I say we must wait for the word. What do you say, Feichin, you that’s got a wiser head than these young fellows?

Feichin. God forgive me if I’m wrong, but I say we should wait for our orders.

Cuimin. What do you say, Diarmaid?

Diarmaid. I like you, Colm, for the way you spoke so well and bravely; but I’m slow to give my voice to ivsend out the boys of this mountain—our poor little handful—to stand with their poor little pikes against the big guns of the Gall. If we had news that they were rising in the other countrysides; but we’ve got no news.

Colm. Master, you haven’t spoken yet. I’m afraid to ask you to speak.

Maoilsheachlainn. Cuimin is right when he says that we must not rise out until we get the word; but what do you say, neighbours, if the man that’ll give the word is under the roof of this house?

Diarmaid. What do you mean?

Maoilsheachlainn (going to the door of the room and throwing it open). Let you rise out, MacDara, and reveal yourself to the men that are waiting your word!

Feichin. Has MacDara come home?

MacDara comes out of the room, Maire ni Fhiannachta and Sighle stand behind him in the doorway.

Diarmaid (starting up). That is the man that stood among the people in the fair of Uachtar Ard! (He goes up to MacDara and kisses his hand.) I could not get near you yesterday, MacDara, the crowds were so great. What was on me that I didn’t know you? Sure I ought to have known that sad, proud head. Maire, men and women yet unborn will bless the pains of your first childing.

Maire (comes forward and takes her son’s hand and kisses it). Soft hand that played at my breast, strong hand that will fall heavy on the Gall, brave hand that will break the yoke! Men of the mountain, my son, MacDara, is the Singer that has quickened the dead years and the young blood. Let the horsemen that sleep in Aileach rise up to-day and follow him into the war!

They come forward, one by one, and kiss his hand, Colm and Sighle last.

Colm. The Gall have marched from Clifden, vMacDara. I wanted to rise out to-day, but these old men think it is not yet time.

Cuimin. We were waiting for the word.

MacDara. And must I speak the word? Old men, you have left me no choice. I had hoped that more would not be asked of me than to sow the secret word of hope, and that the toil of the reaping would be for others. But I see that one does not serve

IOSAGAN

Author’s Foreword to Iosagán agus Sgealta eile, which is here translated by Mr. Joseph Campbell:

Putting these stories in order, it is no wonder that my thoughts are on the friends that told them to me, and on the lonely place on the edge of Ireland where they live. I see before my eyes a countryside, hilly, crossed with glens, full of rivers, brimming with lakes; great horns threatening their tops on the verge of the sky in the north-west; a narrow, moaning bay stretching in from the sea on each side of a “ross;” the “ross” rising up from the round of the bay, but with no height compared with the nigh-hand hills or the horns far off; a little cluster of houses in each little glen and mountain gap, and a solitary cabin here and there on the shoulder of the hills. I think I hear the ground-bass of the waterfalls and rivers, the sweet cry of the golden plover and curlew, and the low voice of the people in talk by the fireside…. My blessing with you little book, to Rossnageeragh and to them in it, my friends!

It is from the “patairidhe beaga,” the “little soft young things” that Old Matthias used see making visport to themselves on the green that I heard the greater part of the first story. They do be there always, every sunny evening and every fine Sunday morning, running and throwing leaps exactly as they would be when Old Matthias would sit looking on them. I never saw Iosagan among them, but it’s like He does be there, for all that. Isn’t His wish to be rejoicing on the earth, and isn’t His delight to be along with His Father’s children?… I have told in the story itself the place and the time I heard The Priest. It’s well I remember Nora’s little house, and the kindly little woman herself, and the three children. Paraig is serving Mass now, and I hear Taimeen has “Fromsó Framsó,” by heart…. It was from Brideen herself that I heard the adventures of Barbara. One evening that we went in on Oilean ni Raithnighe (the Ferny Island), I and she, it was she told it to me, and we sitting on the brink of the lake looking over on the Big Rock. She showed me Barbara’s grave the same evening after our coming home, and she took a promise from me that I’d say a prayer for her friend’s soul every night of my life. Brideen will be going to school next year, and she will be able to read the story of Barbara out of this, I hope she will like it…. As for Eoineen of the Birds, I don’t know who it was I heard it from, unless it was from the swallows themselves. Yes, I think it was they told it to me one evening that I was stretched in the heather looking at them flying here and there over Loch Eireamhlach. From what mouth the swallows heard the start of the story, I don’t know. From the song-thrush and from that yellow-bunting that have their nests in a ditch of the garden, it’s like.

To you, sweet friends, people of the telling of my stories, both little and big, I give and dedicate this little book.

viiCHRONOLOGICAL NOTE

The Singer was written in the late Autumn of 1915. Joseph Plunkett was profoundly impressed when he read it. “If Pearse were dead,” he said, “this would cause a sensation.” Mr. Pearse rather deprecated his view that the play was entirely a personal revelation. No Irish MS. is extant. The two poems The Rebel and The Fool also belong to the same period, and are in no sense translations. The same may be said of On the Strand of Howth and The Mother. With the exceptions of Song for Mary Magdalene, Rann of the Little Playmate (both taken from The Master), Christ’s Coming, Christmas 1915, Dord Feinne, and the Wayfarer (written in Kilmainham Jail, May, 1916), the remaining Poems are translations of Suantraide agus Goltraide (1914). These twelve poems, Dord Feinne, and Christ’s Coming, are the only poems in this volume originally written in Irish.

The King was first produced as an open air play upon the banks of the river which runs through the Hermitage, Rathfarnham, by the students of St. Enda’s College. In reference to its subsequent production at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, 17th May, 1913, Mr. Pearse wrote in An Macaomh, Vol. II, No. 2, 1913: “The play we decided to produce along with The Post Office, was my morality An Rí. We had enacted it during the previous summer with much pageantry of horses and marchings, at a place in our grounds where an old castellated bridge, not unlike an viiientrance to a monastery, is thrown across a stream. Since that performance I had added some speeches with the object of slightly deepening the characterization.” William Pearse played the Abbot’s part.

The Master was produced Whitsuntide, 1915, at the Irish Theatre, Hardwicke Street, Dublin, with William Pearse as Ciaran. No Irish MS. is extant. Iosagán, the dramatization of the author’s story of the same name, was first acted in Cullenswood House, Rathmines, Dublin, in February, 1910, by St. Enda students. Mr. Pearse writes in An Macaomh, Vol. I., No. 2, 1909: “In Iosagán I have religiously followed the phraseology of the children and old men in Iar-Connacht from whom I have learned the Irish I speak. I have put no word, no speech into the mouths of my little boys which the real little boys of the parish I have in mind—boys whom I know as well as I know my pupils in Sgoil Eanna—would not use in the same circumstances. I have given their daily conversation, anglicism, vulgarisms and all; if I gave anything else my picture would be a false one. Iosagán is not a play for ordinary theatres or for ordinary players. It requires a certain atmosphere and a certain attitude of mind on the part of the actors. It has in fact been written for performance in a particular place and by particular players. I know that in that place and by those players it will be treated with the reverence due to a prayer.”

The first six stories here given are translations of An Mátair (1916). The last four stories are translations of Iosagán agus Sgéalta eile, some of which were published in An Claideam Soluis in 1905-6, re-published a few years later in book-form.

D. R.

Transcriber’s Notes

In some cases, Irish words appear to be printed with grave accents rather than the acute síneadh fada. In this edition all Irish words use only the modern standard fada.

The page images used to create this ebook are inconsistent as to whether there is a fada over the “a” in “Pádraic”, and it is not always clear whether the fadas that do appear were printed with the volume or added in afterwards. As there is no fada the majority of the time, the fadas appearing in the front matter of the volumes have been omitted.

On page 102, the words “Íosa” and “Ísuccán” were printed in cló Gaelach, Irish script. They are presented here in boldface Roman script.

The end of the Appendix section on The Singer, on page v, ends with no punctuation; this has been left as is.

New original cover art included with this ebook is granted to the public domain.

The following changes and corrections have been made:

Table of Contents: Added question mark after title “WHY DO YE TORTURE ME?” to match title above poem.

p. xii: Replaced “Paraic” with “Paraig” in phrase “Paraig wearing a surplice.”

p. 24: Replaced period with comma in phrase “I meant this to be a home-coming, but it seems….”

p. 51: Added period after phrase “It is not, but mine.”

p. 72: Removed second period before phrase “He is fond of little Iollann.”

p. 76: Replaced “ladybird” with “lady-bird” before phrase “We watch the wee lady-bird fly far away.”

p. 81: Replaced “Ciarnn” with “Ciaran” before phrase “What do you call your rann?”

p. 91: Added comma in phrase “Bid him to come in, Iollann.”

p. 105: Replaced comma with period before phrase “Yon one gave me enough.”

p. 106: Added period before phrase “I’ll make a lúrabóg of you!”

p. 189: Added opening double quotation mark before phrase “I’d rather it than anything I have in the world.”

p. 221: Removed opening quotation mark before phrase “Do you think, Sean.”

p. 225: Added opening double quotation mark before phrase “that she didn’t know the railway.”

p. 225: Moved closing double quotation mark from after to before phrase “says my father.”

p. 266: Changed comma to period after phrase “but that’s not the fairing.”

p. 269: Replaced “Padaric” with “Padraic” in phrase “bless my Uncle Padaric that’s now in America”

p. 276: Changed single to double closing quotation mark after phrase “Niamh of the Golden Head.”

p. 280: Changed “its” to “it’s” and “head” to “Head” in phrase “it’s Niamh Goldy-Head would go out on the hill.”

Appendix p. iii: Changed “the the” to “the” in phrase “because the word is not given.”

Appendix p. iii: Changed “do do” to “do” in phrase “What do you say, Feichin.”

Appendix p. vii: Removed closing double quotation mark after phrase “my morality An Rí.”