William Butler Yeats
Two plays for dancers
But all the enchantments of the dreaming foam
Dread the hearth fire.
(She pulls the curtains of the bed so as to hide the sick man's face, that the actor may change his mask unseen. She goes to one side of platform and moves her hand as though putting logs on a fire and stirring it into a blaze. While she makes these movements the Musicians play, marking the movements with drum and flute perhaps.
Having finished she stands beside the imaginary fire at a distance from Cuchulain & Eithne Inguba.)
Call on Cuchulain now
EITHNE INGUBA
Can you not hear my voice.
EMER
Bend over him.
Call out dear secrets till you have touched his heart
If he lies there; and if he is not there
Till you have made him jealous.
EITHNE INGUBA
Cuchulain, listen.
EMER
You speak too timidly; to be afraid
Because his wife is but three paces off
When there is so great a need were but to prove
The man that chose you made but a poor choice.
We're but two women struggling with the sea.
EITHNE INGUBA
O my beloved pardon me, that I
Have been ashamed and you in so great need.
I have never sent a message or called out,
Scarce had a longing for your company
But you have known and come; and if indeed
You are lying there stretch out your arms and speak;
Open your mouth and speak for to this hour
My company has made you talkative.
Why do you mope, and what has closed your ears.
Our passion had not chilled when we were parted
On the pale shore under the breaking dawn.
He will not hear me: or his ears are closed
And no sound reaches him.
EMER
Then kiss that image
The pressure of your mouth upon his mouth
May reach him where he is.
EITHNE INGUBA
(starting back) It is no man.
I felt some evil thing that dried my heart
When my lips touched it.
EMER
No, his body stirs;
The pressure of your mouth has called him home;
He has thrown the changeling out.
EITHNE INGUBA
(going further off) Look at that arm
That arm is withered to the very socket.
EMER
(going up to the bed)
What do you come for and from where?
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
I have come
From Mananan's court upon a bridleless horse.
EMER
What one among the Sidhe has dared to lie
Upon Cuchulain's bed and take his image?
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
I am named Bricriu – not the man – that Bricriu,
Maker of discord among gods and men,
Called Bricriu of the Sidhe.
EMER
Come for what purpose?
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
(sitting up and showing its distorted face. Eithne Inguba goes out)
I show my face and everything he loves
Must fly away.
EMER
You people of the wind
Are full of lying speech and mockery.
I have not fled your face.
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
You are not loved.
EMER
And therefore have no dread to meet your eyes
And to demand him of you.
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
For that I have come.
You have but to pay the price and he is free.
EMER
Do the Sidhe bargain?
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
When they set free a captive
They take in ransom a less valued thing.
The fisher when some knowledgeable man
Restores to him his wife, or son, or daughter,
Knows he must lose a boat or net, or it may be
The cow that gives his children milk; and some
Have offered their own lives. I do not ask
Your life, or any valuable thing;
You spoke but now of the mere chance that some day
You'd sit together by the hearth again;
Renounce that chance, that miserable hour,
And he shall live again.
EMER
I do not question
But you have brought ill luck on all he loves
And now, because I am thrown beyond your power
Unless your words are lies, you come to bargain.
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
You loved your power when but newly married
And I love mine although I am old and withered;
You have but to put yourself into that power
And he shall live again.
EMER
No, never, never.
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
You dare not be accursed yet he has dared.
EMER
I have but two joyous thoughts, two things I prize,
A hope, a memory, and now you claim that hope.
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
He'll never sit beside you at the hearth
Or make old bones, but die of wounds and toil
On some far shore or mountain, a strange woman
Beside his mattress.
EMER
You ask for my one hope
That you may bring your curse on all about him.
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
You've watched his loves and you have not been jealous
Knowing that he would tire, but do those tire
That love the Sidhe?
EMER
What dancer of the Sidhe
What creature of the reeling moon has pursued him?
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
I have but to touch your eyes and give them sight;
But stand at my left side.
(He touches her eyes with his left hand, the right being withered)
EMER
My husband there.
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
But out of reach – I have dissolved the dark
That hid him from your eyes but not that other
That's hidden you from his.
EMER
Husband, husband!
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
Be silent, he is but a phantom now
And he can neither touch, nor hear, nor see;
The longing and the cries have drawn him hither.
He heard no sound, heard no articulate sound;
They could but banish rest, and make him dream,
And in that dream, as do all dreaming shades
Before they are accustomed to their freedom,
He has taken his familiar form, and yet
He crouches there not knowing where he is
Or at whose side he is crouched.
(a Woman of the Sidhe has entered and stands a little inside the door)
EMER
Who is this woman?
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
She has hurried from the Country-Under-Wave
And dreamed herself into that shape that he
May glitter in her basket; for the Sidhe
Are fishers also and they fish for men
With dreams upon the hook.
EMER
And so that woman
Has hid herself in this disguise and made
Herself into a lie.
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
A dream is body;
The dead move ever towards a dreamless youth
And when they dream no more return no more;
And those more holy shades that never lived
But visit you in dreams.
EMER
I know her sort.
They find our men asleep, weary with war,
Or weary with the chase and kiss their lips
And drop their hair upon them, from that hour
Our men, who yet knew nothing of it all,
Are lonely, and when at fall of night we press
Their hearts upon our hearts their hearts are cold.
(She draws a knife from her girdle)
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
And so you think to wound her with a knife.
She has an airy body. Look and listen;
I have not given you eyes and ears for nothing.
(The Woman of the Sidhe moves round the crouching Ghost of Cuchulain at front of stage in a dance that grows gradually quicker, as he slowly awakes. At moments she may drop her hair upon his head but she does not kiss him. She is accompanied by string and flute and drum. Her mask and clothes must suggest gold or bronze or brass or silver so that she seems more an idol than a human being. This suggestion may be repeated in her movements. Her hair too, must keep the metallic suggestion.)
GHOST of CUCHULAIN
Who is it stands before me there
Shedding such light from limb and hair
As when the moon complete at last
