William Butler Yeats
The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 3 of 8. The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the Stars

ACT III

Before dawn. A wild rocky place, NANNY and BIDDY LALLY squatting by a fire. Rich stuffs, etc., strewn about. PAUDEEN watching by MARTIN, who is lying as if dead, a sack over him.

NANNY [to PAUDEEN]

Well, you are great heroes and great warriors and great lads altogether, to have put down the Brownes the way you did, yourselves and the Whiteboys of the quarry. To have ransacked the house and have plundered it! Look at the silks and the satins and the grandeurs I brought away! Look at that now! [Holds up a velvet cloak.] It’s a good little jacket for myself will come out of it. It’s the singers will be stopping their songs and the jobbers turning from their cattle in the fairs to be taking a view of the laces of it and the buttons! It’s my far-off cousins will be drawing from far and near!

BIDDY

There was not so much gold in it all as what they were saying there was. Or maybe that fleet of Whiteboys had the place ransacked before we ourselves came in. Bad cess to them that put it in my mind to go gather up the full of my bag of horseshoes out of the forge. Silver they were saying they were, pure white silver; and what are they in the end but only hardened iron! A bad end to them! [Flings away horseshoes.] The time I will go robbing big houses again it will not be in the light of the full moon I will go doing it, that does be causing every common thing to shine out as if for a deceit and a mockery. It’s not shining at all they are at this time, but duck yellow and dark.

NANNY

To leave the big house blazing after us, it was that crowned all! Two houses to be burned to ashes in the one night. It is likely the servant-girls were rising from the feathers and the cocks crowing from the rafters for seven miles around, taking the flames to be the whitening of the dawn.

BIDDY

It is the lad is stretched beyond you have to be thankful to for that. There was never seen a leader was his equal for spirit and for daring. Making a great scatter of the guards the way he did. Running up roofs and ladders, the fire in his hand, till you’d think he would be apt to strike his head against the stars.

NANNY

I partly guessed death was near him, and the queer shining look he had in his two eyes, and he throwing sparks east and west through the beams. I wonder now was it some inward wound he got, or did some hardy lad of the Brownes give him a tip on the skull unknownst in the fight? It was I myself found him, and the troop of the Whiteboys gone, and he lying by the side of a wall as weak as if he had knocked a mountain. I failed to waken him trying him with the sharpness of my nails, and his head fell back when I moved it, and I knew him to be spent and gone.

BIDDY

It’s a pity you not to have left him where he was lying and said no word at all to Paudeen or to that son you have, that kept us back from following on, bringing him here to this shelter on sacks and upon poles.

NANNY

What way could I help letting a screech out of myself, and the life but just gone out of him in the darkness, and not a living Christian by his side but myself and the great God?

BIDDY

It’s on ourselves the vengeance of the red soldiers will fall, they to find us sitting here the same as hares in a tuft. It would be best for us follow after the rest of the army of the Whiteboys.

NANNY

Whisht! I tell you. The lads are cracked about him. To get but the wind of the word of leaving him, it’s little but they’d knock the head off the two of us. Whisht!

Enter JOHNNY BACACH with candles

JOHNNY [standing over MARTIN]

Wouldn’t you say now there was some malice or some venom in the air, that is striking down one after another the whole of the heroes of the Gael?

PAUDEEN

It makes a person be thinking of the four last ends, death and judgment, heaven and hell. Indeed and indeed my heart lies with him. It is well I knew what man he was under his by-name and his disguise.

 
[Sings.] Oh, Johnny Gibbons, it’s you were the prop to us.
You to have left us, we are put astray!
 

JOHNNY

It is lost we are now and broken to the end of our days. There is no satisfaction at all but to be destroying the English, and where now will we get so good a leader again? Lay him out fair and straight upon a stone, till I will let loose the secret of my heart keening him!

[Sets out candles on a rock, propping them up with stones.

NANNY

Is it mould candles you have brought to set around him, Johnny Bacach? It is great riches you should have in your pocket to be going to those lengths and not to be content with dips.

JOHNNY

It is lengths I will not be going to the time the life will be gone out of your own body. It is not your corpse I will be wishful to hold in honour the way I hold this corpse in honour.

NANNY

That’s the way always, there will be grief and quietness in the house if it is a young person has died, but funning and springing and tricking one another if it is an old person’s corpse is in it. There is no compassion at all for the old.

PAUDEEN

It is he would have got leave for the Gael to be as high as the Gall. Believe me, he was in the prophecies. Let you not be comparing yourself with the like of him.

NANNY

Why wouldn’t I be comparing myself? Look at all that was against me in the world. Would you be matching me against a man of his sort, that had the people shouting him and that had nothing to do but to die and to go to heaven?

JOHNNY

The day you go to heaven that you may never come back alive out of it! But it is not yourself will ever hear the saints hammering at their musics! It is you will be moving through the ages, chains upon you, and you in the form of a dog or a monster. I tell you that one will go through Purgatory as quick as lightning through a thorn-bush.

NANNY

That’s the way, that the way.

 
[Croons.] Three that are watching my time to run,
The worm, the devil, and my son,
To see a loop around their neck
It’s that would make my heart to lep!
 

JOHNNY

Five white candles. I wouldn’t begrudge them to him indeed. If he had held out and held up it is my belief he would have freed Ireland!

PAUDEEN

Wait till the full light of the day and you’ll see the burying he’ll have. It is not in this place we will be waking him. I’ll make a call to the two hundred Ribbons he was to lead on to the attack on the barracks at Aughanish. They will bring him marching to his grave upon the hill. He had surely some gift from the other world, I wouldn’t say but he had power from the other side.

ANDREW [coming in very shaky]

Well, it was a great night he gave to the village, and it is long till it will be forgotten. I tell you the whole of the neighbours are up against him. There is no one at all this morning to set the mills going. There was no bread baked in the night-time, the horses are not fed in the stalls, the cows are not milked in the sheds. I met no man able to make a curse this night but he put it on my head and on the head of the boy that is lying there before us.. Is there no sign of life in him at all?

JOHNNY

What way would there be a sign of life and the life gone out of him this three hours or more?

ANDREW

He was lying in his sleep for a while yesterday, and he wakened again after another while.

NANNY

He will not waken, I tell you. I held his hand in my own and it getting cold as if you were pouring on it the coldest cold water, and no running in his blood. He is gone sure enough and the life is gone out of him.

ANDREW

Maybe so, maybe so. It seems to me yesterday his cheeks were bloomy all the while, and now he is as pale as wood ashes. Sure we all must come to it at the last. Well, my white-headed darling, it is you were the bush among us all, and you to be cut down in your prime. Gentle and simple, everyone liked you. It is no narrow heart you had, it is you were for spending and not for getting. It is you made a good wake for yourself, scattering your estate in one night only in beer and in wine for the whole province; and that you may be sitting in the middle of Paradise and in the chair of the Graces!

JOHNNY

Amen to that. It’s pity I didn’t think the time I sent for yourself to send the little lad of a messenger looking for a priest to overtake him. It might be in the end the Almighty is the best man for us all!

ANDREW

Sure I sent him on myself to bid the priest to come. Living or dead I would wish to do all that is rightful for the last and the best of my own race and generation.

BIDDY [jumping up]

Is it the priest you are bringing in among us? Where is the sense in that? Aren’t we robbed enough up to this with the expense of the candles and the like?

JOHNNY

If it is that poor starved priest he called to that came talking in secret signs to the man that is gone, it is likely he will ask nothing for what he has to do. There is many a priest is a Whiteboy in his heart.

NANNY

I tell you, if you brought him tied in a bag he would not say an Our Father for you, without you having a half-crown at the top of your fingers.

BIDDY

There is no priest is any good at all but a spoiled priest. A one that would take a drop of drink, it is he would have courage to face the hosts of trouble. Rout them out he would, the same as a shoal of fish from out the weeds. It’s best not to vex a priest, or to run against them at all.

NANNY

It’s yourself humbled yourself well to one the time you were sick in the gaol and had like to die, and he bade you to give over the throwing of the cups.

BIDDY

Ah, plaster of Paris I gave him. I took to it again and I free upon the roads.

NANNY

Much good you are doing with it to yourself or any other one. Aren’t you after telling that corpse no later than yesterday that he was coming within the best day of his life?

JOHNNY

Whisht, let ye. Here is the priest coming.

FATHER JOHN comes in

FATHER JOHN

It is surely not true that he is dead?

JOHNNY

The spirit went from him about the middle hour of the night. We brought him here to this sheltered place. We were loth to leave him without friends.

FATHER JOHN

Where is he?

JOHNNY [taking up sacks]

Lying there stiff and stark. He has a very quiet look as if there was no sin at all or no great trouble upon his mind.

FATHER JOHN [kneels and touches him]

He is not dead.

BIDDY [pointing to NANNY]

He is dead. If it was letting on he was, he would not have let that one rob him and search him the way she did.

FATHER JOHN

It has the appearance of death, but it is not death. He is in a trance.

PAUDEEN

Is it Heaven and Hell he is walking at this time to be bringing back newses of the sinners in pain?

BIDDY

I was thinking myself it might away he was, riding on white horses with the riders of the forths.

JOHNNY

He will have great wonders to tell out the time he will rise up from the ground. It is a pity he not to waken at this time and to lead us on to overcome the troop of the English. Sure those that are in a trance get strength, that they can walk on water.

ANDREW

It was Father John wakened him yesterday the time he was lying in the same way. Wasn’t I telling you it was for that I called to him?

BIDDY

Waken him now till they’ll see did I tell any lie in my foretelling. I knew well by the signs, he was coming within the best day of his life.

PAUDEEN

And not dead at all! We’ll be marching to attack Dublin itself within a week. The horn will blow for him, and all good men will gather to him. Hurry on, Father, and waken him.

FATHER JOHN

I will not waken him. I will not bring him back from where he is.

JOHNNY

And how long will it be before he will waken of himself?

FATHER JOHN

Maybe to-day, maybe to-morrow, it is hard to be certain.

BIDDY

If it is away he is he might be away seven years. To be lying like a stump of a tree and using no food and the world not able to knock a word out of him, I know the signs of it well.

JOHNNY

We cannot be waiting and watching through seven years. If the business he has started is to be done we have to go on here and now. The time there is any delay, that is the time the Government will get information. Waken him now, Father, and you’ll get the blessing of the generations.

FATHER JOHN

I will not bring him back. God will bring him back in his own good time. For all I know he may be seeing the hidden things of God.

JOHNNY

He might slip away in his dream. It is best to raise him up now.

ANDREW

Waken him, Father John. I thought he was surely dead this time, and what way could I go face Thomas through all that is left of my lifetime, after me standing up to face him the way I did? And if I do take a little drop of an odd night, sure I’d be very lonesome if I did not take it. All the world knows it’s not for love of what I drink, but for love of the people that do be with me! Waken him, Father, or maybe I would waken him myself. [Shakes him.]

FATHER JOHN

Lift your hand from touching him. Leave him to himself and to the power of God.

JOHNNY

If you will not bring him back why wouldn’t we ourselves do it? Go on now, it is best for you to do it yourself.

FATHER JOHN

I woke him yesterday. He was angry with me, he could not get to the heart of the command.

JOHNNY

If he did not, he got a command from myself that satisfied him, and a message.

FATHER JOHN

He did – he took it from you – and how do I know what devil’s message it may have been that brought him into that devil’s work, destruction and drunkenness and burnings! That was not a message from heaven! It was I awoke him, it was I kept him from hearing what was maybe a divine message, a voice of truth, and he heard you speak and he believed the message was brought by you. You have made use of your deceit and his mistaking – you have left him without house or means to support him, you are striving to destroy and to drag him to entire ruin. I will not help you, I would rather see him die in his trance and go into God’s hands than awake him and see him go into hell’s mouth with vagabonds and outcasts like you!

JOHNNY [turning to BIDDY]

You should have knowledge, Biddy Lally, of the means to bring back a man that is away.

BIDDY

The power of the earth will do it through its herbs, and the power of the air will do it kindling fire into flame.

JOHNNY

Rise up and make no delay. Stretch out and gather a handful of an herb that will bring him back from whatever place he is in.

BIDDY

Where is the use of herbs, and his teeth clenched the way he could not use them?

JOHNNY

Take fire so in the devil’s name, and put it to the soles of his feet.

[Takes a lighted sod from fire.

FATHER JOHN

Let him alone, I say! [Dashes away the sod.

JOHNNY

I will not leave him alone! I will not give in to leave him swooning there and the country waiting for him to awake!

FATHER JOHN

I tell you I awoke him! I sent him into thieves’ company! I will not have him wakened again and evil things it maybe waiting to take hold of him! Back from him, back, I say! Will you dare to lay a hand on me! You cannot do it! You cannot touch him against my will!

BIDDY

Mind yourself, do not be bringing us under the curse of the Church.

[JOHNNY steps back. MARTIN moves.

FATHER JOHN

It is God has him in His care. It is He is awaking him. [MARTIN has risen to his elbow.] Do not touch him, do not speak to him, he may be hearing great secrets.

MARTIN

That music, I must go nearer – sweet marvellous music – louder than the trampling of the unicorns; far louder, though the mountain is shaking with their feet – high joyous music.

FATHER JOHN

Hush, he is listening to the music of Heaven!

MARTIN

Take me to you, musicians, wherever you are! I will go nearer to you; I hear you better now, more and more joyful; that is strange, it is strange.

FATHER JOHN

He is getting some secret.

MARTIN

It is the music of Paradise, that is certain, somebody said that. It is certainly the music of Paradise. Ah, now I hear, now I understand. It is made of the continual clashing of swords!

JOHNNY

That is the best music. We will clash them sure enough. We will clash our swords and our pikes on the bayonets of the red soldiers. It is well you rose up from the dead to lead us! Come on, now, come on!

MARTIN

Who are you? Ah, I remember – where are you asking me to come to?

PAUDEEN

To come on, to be sure, to the attack on the barracks at Aughanish. To carry on the work you took in hand last night.

MARTIN

What work did I take in hand last night? Oh, yes, I remember – some big house – we burned it down – but I had not understood the vision when I did that. I had not heard the command right. That was not the work I was sent to do.

PAUDEEN

Rise up now and bid us what to do. Your great name itself will clear the road before you. It is you yourself will have freed all Ireland before the stooks will be in stacks!

MARTIN

Listen, I will explain – I have misled you. It is only now I have the whole vision plain. As I lay there I saw through everything, I know all. It was but a frenzy that going out to burn and to destroy. What have I to do with the foreign army? What I have to pierce is the wild heart of time. My business is not reformation but revelation.

JOHNNY

If you are going to turn back now from leading us, you are no better than any other traitor that ever gave up the work he took in hand. Let you come and face now the two hundred men you brought out daring the power of the law last night, and give them your reason for failing them.

MARTIN

I was mistaken when I set out to destroy Church and Law. The battle we have to fight is fought out in our own mind. There is a fiery moment, perhaps once in a lifetime, and in that moment we see the only thing that matters. It is in that moment the great battles are lost and won, for in that moment we are a part of the host of heaven.

PAUDEEN

Have you betrayed us to the naked hangman with your promises and with your drink? If you brought us out here to fail us and to ridicule us, it is the last day you will live!

JOHNNY

The curse of my heart on you! It would be right to send you to your own place on the flagstone of the traitors in hell. When once I have made an end of you I will be as well satisfied to be going to my death for it as if I was going home!

MARTIN

Father John, Father John, can you not hear? Can you not see? Are you blind? Are you deaf?

FATHER JOHN

What is it? What is it?

MARTIN

There on the mountain, a thousand white unicorns trampling; a thousand riders with their swords drawn – the swords clashing! Oh, the sound of the swords, the sound of the clashing of the swords!

[He goes slowly off stage. JOHNNY takes up a stone to throw at him.

FATHER JOHN [seizing his arm]

Stop – do you not see he is beyond the world?

BIDDY

Keep your hand off him, Johnny Bacach. If he is gone wild and cracked, that’s natural. Those that have been wakened from a trance on a sudden are apt to go bad and light in the head.

PAUDEEN

If it is madness is on him, it is not he himself should pay the penalty.

BIDDY

To prey on the mind it does, and rises into the head. There are some would go over any height and would have great power in their madness. It is maybe to some secret cleft he is going, to get knowledge of the great cure for all things, or of the Plough that was hidden in the old times, the Golden Plough.

PAUDEEN

It seemed as if he was talking through honey. He had the look of one that had seen great wonders. It is maybe among the old heroes of Ireland he went raising armies for our help.

FATHER JOHN

God take him in his care and keep him from lying spirits and from all delusions!

JOHNNY

We have got candles here, Father. We had them to put around his body. Maybe they would keep away the evil things of the air.

PAUDEEN

Light them so, and he will say out a Mass for him the same as in a lime-washed church.

[They light the candles.

THOMAS comes in

THOMAS

Where is he? I am come to warn him. The destruction he did in the night-time has been heard of. The soldiers are out after him and the constables – there are two of the constables not far off – there are others on every side – they heard he was here in the mountain – where is he?

FATHER JOHN

He has gone up the path.

THOMAS

Hurry after him! Tell him to hide himself – this attack he had a hand in is a hanging crime. Tell him to hide himself, to come to me when all is quiet – bad as his doings are, he is my own brother’s son; I will get him on to a ship that will be going to France.

FATHER JOHN

That will be best, send him back to the Brothers and to the wise Bishops. They can unravel this tangle, I cannot. I cannot be sure of the truth.

THOMAS

Here are the constables, he will see them and get away. Say no word. The Lord be praised that he is out of sight.

Constables come in

CONSTABLE

The man we are looking for, where is he? He was seen coming here along with you. You have to give him up into the power of the law.

JOHNNY

We will not give him up. Go back out of this or you will be sorry.

PAUDEEN

We are not in dread of you or the like of you.

BIDDY

Throw them down over the rocks!

NANNY

Give them to the picking of the crows!

ALL

Down with the law!

FATHER JOHN

Hush! He is coming back. [To Constables.] Stop, stop – leave him to himself. He is not trying to escape, he is coming towards you.

PAUDEEN

There is a sort of a brightness about him. I misjudged him calling him a traitor. It is not to this world he belongs at all. He is over on the other side.

MARTIN

[Standing beside the rock where the lighted candles are.]

Et calix meus inebrians quam præclarus est!

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 [puts out another candle]. We must put out the light of the stars and the light of the sun and the light of the moon [puts out the rest of the candles], 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

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 stumbles and falls. Beggars come back with a shout.

JOHNNY

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

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

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.

[NANNY lays the velvet cloak over him.

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!