Famine grips the Irish countryside and peasants whisper that the graves are walking. Two strange merchants arrive with bags of gold, offering to buy the souls of the starving, and the Countess Cathleen empties her own treasury to keep her people from selling. Yeats writes it in blank verse and asks that the scenery look like the painting in a missal.
An early verse drama by Yeats, first staged in 1899 by the Irish Literary Theatre, for readers of the Celtic Revival. Download the free EPUB.