An Craoibhin’s Plays
I hold that the beginning of modern Irish drama was in the winter of 1898, at a school feast at Coole, when Douglas Hyde and Miss Norma Borthwick acted in Irish in a Punch and Judy show; and the delighted children went back to tell their parents what grand curses An Craoibhin had put on the baby and the policeman.
A little time after that, when a play was wanted for our Literary Theatre, Dr. Hyde wrote, and then acted in, ‘The Twisting of the Rope,’ the first Irish play ever given in a Dublin theatre.
It has been acted many times since then, in Dublin, in London, in Galway, in Galway Workhouse, in Cornamona, Ballaghaderreen, Ballymoe, and other places. It has always given great delight, and its success is very natural; for the Irish-speakers, who are its audience, have an inborn love of drama, as is shown by their handing down of such long dramatic dialogues as those between Oisin and St. Patrick, from century to century. At country gatherings, those old dialogues, and the newer ones between Death and Raftery, or between the farmers of two provinces, are followed with a patient joy; and the creation of acting plays is the natural outcome of this living tradition. And Douglas Hyde’s dramas grow directly from the folk-memory. The tradition and the beautiful old air, and the song of ‘The Twisting of the Rope,’ are very well known:—
‘What was the dead cat that put me in this place,
And all the pretty young girls I left after me?
I came into the house where was the bright love of my heart,
And the old hag put me out by the Twisting of the Rope.
‘If you are mine, be mine by day and by night;
If you are mine, be mine before the world;
If you are mine, be mine with every inch of your heart;
It is my grief you are not with me as a wife this evening.
‘It is down in Sligo I got knowledge of my love;
It is up in Galway I drank my fill with her.
By the strength of my hands, if they do not leave me as I am,
I will do a trick will set these women walking.’
Mr. Yeats made Red Hanrahan the hero of this song in a story in ‘The Secret Rose’; and it is Hanrahan Douglas Hyde has kept in the play, with his passion, his exaggerations, his wheedling tongue, his roving heart, that all but coax the girl from her mother and her sweetheart; but that fail after all in their attack on the settled order of things, and leave their owner homeless and restless, and angry and chiding, like the stormy west wind outside the door.
‘The Marriage’ is founded on the story of Raftery at the poor wedding at Cappaghtagle. It was acted in Galway, at the Feis, last summer. There had been some delay or misunderstanding in the giving of parts; and on the morning of the Feis, it was announced that the play would not be given. But the disappointment was so great, that we all begged An Craoibhin to take the chief part himself, as he had done in ‘The Twisting of the Rope’; and when his kindness made him agree to this, we went in search of the other players. They were all at work in shops or stores, one wheeling sacks on a barrow; and it was a busy market-day, and it was hard for them to get away for a rehearsal. But, for all that, the play was given in the evening; in the very town where some still remember Raftery, and where he and Death had their first talk together.
It will be hard to forget the blind poet, as he was represented on the stage by the living poet, so full of kindly humour, of humorous malice, of dignity under his poor clothing, or the wistful, ghostly sigh with which he went out of the door at the end. ‘Is fear marḃ do ḃi ann]’—‘It is a dead man was in it.’
It has been acted in Dublin since then; and many places are asking for the loan of the one manuscript in which it exists; but I am glad Connacht had it first.
‘The Lost Saint’ was written last summer. An Craoibhin was staying with us at Coole; and one morning I went for a long drive to the sea, leaving him with a bundle of blank paper before him. When I came back at evening, I was told that Dr. Hyde had finished his play, and was out shooting wild duck. The hymn, however, was not quite ready, and was put into rhyme next day, while he was again watching for wild duck beside Inchy marsh.
When he read it to us in the evening, we were all left with a feeling as if some beautiful white blossom had suddenly fallen at our feet.
It was acted the other day at Ballaghaderreen; and, at the end, a very little girl, who wanted to let the author know how much she had liked his play, put out her hand, and put a piece of toffee into his.
The ‘Nativity’ did not appear in time for Christmas acting; but Ireland, which now and then finds herself possessed of some accidental freedom, has no censor; and a play so beautiful and reverent, and so much in the tradition of the people, is sure to be acted and received reverently.
An Craoibhin has written other plays besides these—a pastoral play which has been acted in Dublin and Belfast, a match-making comedy, a satire on Trinity College.
Other Irish plays have been acted here and there through the country during the last year or two, some written by priests; the last I saw in manuscript was by a workhouse schoolmaster; and all have had their share of success. But it is to the poet-scholar who has become actor-dramatist that we must still, as Raftery would put it, ‘give the branch.