through powers other than those of the senses, that in "The Winged
Destiny" he can look forward to a time "when the imagination shall lay
aside words and pigments and clay, as raiment needless during the
festivals of the spirit, and express itself in the thoughts which
inhabit words--as light inhabits water or as greenness inhabits grass."
Not only does he foresee such a time, but he foreshadows it, heralds it
in some of his sketches, "Aileen" for one, by attempting it. Perhaps he
has succeeded, perhaps not. To me the attempt is a failure, not, I
think, because he is writing for to-morrow, for that age when the
spiritual awakening he so often prophesied shall have come, but because
he is attempting what cannot be done in any age. If he were seeking only
suggestion, well and good. But he seeks more, and fails, I think, to
attain more. It seems to me impossible that the suggestions he creates
can ever be more than suggestions. They cannot become definite concepts
that will mean the same thing to all men. Suggestion, the opening-up of
vistas, is a high attribute of the art he follows; but he is not content
with suggestion, he would seek more definite expression of what, after
all, is not thought but mood. So it is that he is most successful when
conveying mood and less successful when conveying esoteric thought. As a
critic, of course, on a plane easier for the conveyance of thought,
Sharp is definite enough, completely successful in conveying the ideas
that he intends to convey.
Often, I fear, when Sharp intends "spiritual history," either in a tale
wholly devoted to this purpose, as "The Divine Adventure," or as
explanatory to the incidents of some more tangible tale, he is really
only playing with words, beautiful words, words sometimes so beautiful
that we are apt to forget that words are to be used not alone for
beauty's sake. Often, again, I fear, he will introduce beautiful symbols
simply for their beauty and not because they have a real purpose, not
because they will more intimately convey, even to the initiated, the
intent of his writing. That these practices are the result of
carelessness, sometimes, as well as of his subservience to beauty, the
fascination that words merely as words or visions merely as visions
exert upon him, is, I think, true. It is but seldom, I believe, that the
underlying thought is incoherent. In almost all of his earlier writing,
however, even in the earlier "Fiona" writing, he is very careless. He
contradicts himself in his short stories as to facts, he gets his family
relationships tangled in a way that cannot be explained by any process
of nature, and so, too, I think, he gets his symbols mixed, or deludes
himself into the belief that something that was hastily written "came to
him" that way and so should be preserved in that exact expression, even
though to him at the second reading it meant nothing definite. He jumps
to conclusions again and again in what he writes about birds, where I
can follow him on a certain footing of knowledge. If he is so careless
about facts, if he can, even though it is a slip, confuse Mary Magdalene
and the Virgin Mary, if he can mention birds in a description of
Highland landscape that is characteristic of a certain time of year when
birds of that species would be in the Highlands only by accident at that
time of year, it is more than likely, slips though these may be, that
there will be similar slips in all he writes, no fewer, it is likely, in
his writings of psychic things than elsewhere.
There is possible, of course, no hard-and-fast classification of his
writings. Class shades into class almost imperceptibly. It is
particularly difficult to draw the line between the several kinds of
stories and sketches he writes that involve supernaturalism of one kind
and another. There is possible, however, a rough-and-ready distinction
between those stories of his which are esoterically mystical and those
which, while concerned with the supernatural, are concerned with it in
the way familiar in old romance. Of this "usual supernatural" are those
in which "second sight" is the motive, second sight which is always to
be looked for as the commonest supernatural motive in the writing of all
Gaels, either Alban or Irish. Sharp introduced "second sight" into "The
Son of Allan" (1881); it is in "Pharais" (1894), the first of his "F.M."
work; it is developed at some length in "Iona" (1900), which is a
microcosm of all his writing. In "Iona," Sharp puts himself on record as
holding stoutly belief in the reality of the power:--
The faculty itself is so apt to the spiritual law that one wonders
why it is so set apart in doubt. It would, I think, be far stranger
if there were no such faculties. That I believe, it were needless
to say, were it not that these words may be read by many to whom
this quickened inward vision is a superstition, or a fantastic
glorification of insight.
The Achannas, in the uncanny stories in which they are heroes and
villains, are all possessed by the power of the second sight, but second
sight is not the most remarkable of their supernatural powers. Hypnotic
suggestion Gloom uses as an everyday agent in his affairs. It is through
hypnotic suggestion that he puts madness upon Alasdair M'Ian, playing to
him the Pibroch of the Mad, Alasdair M'Ian, in telling whose story
"Fiona Macleod" revealed--I suppose, by chance--something of the
struggle of William Sharp to succeed in letters. Much more frequently,
however, he uses a supernatural power that is further removed from those
in which modern science is interested, such as the machination of
fairies that made Allison Achanna the "Anointed Man"--that, in plain
speech, had driven him fey; or such as the lure of the serpent goddess
that drove to his death the piper hero of "By the Yellow Moon Rock," or
the exchanging of human child for fairy child that is the burden of
"Faraghaol."
It is much more likely that William Sharp would have made more of this
changeling motive had it not come so near to the question of dual
personality, which it would be dangerous to him to discuss, as would
that question so closely akin, the question of people who are
"away,"--that is, with the fairies,--a kindly explanation of insanity,
chronic or recurrent. As William Sharp he has touched on the question of
dual personality several times in his verses, and very definitely in "A
Fellowe and his Wife." In this last-named book he says, in a letter that
the Countess Ilse writes to her husband in Rügen: "This duality is so
bewildering. I to be myself, whom you know, and whom I know--and then
that other I, whom you do not know at all and whom I only catch glimpses
of as in a mirror, or hear whispering for a moment in the twilight."
That he could not take up the topic so definitely in his later writings
must have, indeed, been a cross to him, for there was hardly any other
question, unless perhaps that of "ancestral memory," which interested
him more deeply. It might be argued, I suppose, that he did discuss it
in "The Divine Adventure," in considering the relations of Spirit, Will,
and Body. Mrs. Sharp, I take it, so holds when she says in her "Memoir"
that the William Sharp work was that of the Will and the "Fiona Macleod"
work beyond the control of the Will. And it is true that these three,
the Spirit, Will, and Body, though each is given a distinctive
personality, each a memory distinct from the memory of the others, are
all but the component parts of one man. Mrs. Sharp does not, however,
anywhere avow directly a belief in the possession of a real dual
personality by her husband, and she definitely contradicts Mr. Yeats for
his expression of belief that "William Sharp could not remember what as
'Fiona Macleod' he had said to you in conversation."
Very different from these short stories I have been discussing are three
of the four contained in the volume entitled "Madge o' the Pool" (1896),
published as by William Sharp. Of the one that is somewhat in the manner
of certain of the "F.M." stories, the "Gypsy Christ," I have spoken.
Two, "The Coward" and "The Lady in Hosea," are but "the usual thing."
"Madge o' the Pool" is the one really worth while. In this story, with
such river pirates as we have met, sentimentalized, in "Our Mutual
Friend," as material, Sharp writes as realistically as he does in
"Silence Farm," and with a sympathy and pathos that his objective method
cannot exclude.
There are episodes or sketches, some of them what sharp calls "prose
imaginings," throughout his many books, that one may hardly call short
stories, or myths, or studies in folk-lore, or criticism, or any of the
other many kinds of writing that he essayed. Perhaps "memories" would be
the proper general term for writing of this kind. In almost every one of
these episodes or sketches there is a germ of a story, and some, I
suppose, regard them as but unrealized art. But I for one am glad Mr.
Sharp did not "work them up." In them are some of his best writing and
some of that most personal and intimate. I have spoken of "Aileen" and
"Barabal"; "Sheumas, a Memory," is another that is memorable, and
memorable too, are "The Sea Madness" and "The Triad." "The Triad" is
almost his _credo_, certainly a statement of the things he holds "most
excellent"--"primitive genius, primitive love, primitive memory." Here
Sharp recurs, as so often in his writing, to "ancestral memory," that
possession of men by which they are aware of what was in the world
before they were, through oneness with the universal memory into which
they are absorbed in dream or vision or of which they become aware by
what we call intuition. If such a power be restricted so that its
possessor recalls only certain parts of antiquity, he is virtually in
the state of him who believes he remembers what he remembers because of
previous incarnations. I have no personal opinion to express on the
subject, but if such memories exist in us because of our participation
in a universal memory or because of reincarnation, it is easy to explain
why Sharp is best in his writing of myths, his pictures of the wild
beauties of love and war and dream in barbaric Erin and Alba. It is
because he is the reincarnation of the shanachie of the Dark Ages. When
he thought of reincarnation, however, in relation to himself, he
thought, I have no doubt, of himself as the reincarnation of a druid,
one who had been aware of mysteries; but what he really was, in life,
with his magnificent enthusiasm and bravado,--picturesque raiment after
all and no more for the high-hearted and inherently ailing body of
him,--was this reincarnation of the shanachie, such an one as his own
Oran the Monk turned tale-teller. If you doubt that he was shanachie,
not druid, compare the two legends in "Beyond the Blue Septentrions."
The ordered beauty of the legend that tells of the derivation of the
name of Arthur from Arcturus falls familiarly on our ears. It is
evidently made under a lamp by one who has read many old legends. It is
no druidic revelation. The other, that which ends with the three great
hero-leaps of Fionn from the Arctic Floes to the Pole, from the Pole up
to Arcturus, from Arcturus to the Hill of Heaven itself, is fantastic,
bizarre, extravagant to grotesqueness, with the very flamboyance of old
Irish legend and modern Irish folk-tale. In other words, it is in the
very manner of the shanachie of the Dark Ages, whether his work was
recorded then as court poem or has been handed down by word of mouth
among the folk. Nor is there anything inconsistent in this wild
imagining with a very different power displayed in "moralities" like his
"Last Supper." I have heard stories as incongruous, one uproarious,
another of cloistral quiet and piety, from the old Irish gardener with
whom I spent a large part of my happier days, the days from seven to
seventeen. Lawrence lost his life doing a "retreat" morning after
morning on the cold stone floor of a Vincentian church, not in any
sudden repentance at fourscore and three for the sins of his youth for
they had been fewer than those of almost all I know, but in the usual
way of his austere life. Yet Lawrence was just as much himself when he
was telling me stories of Dean Swift that were full of malice and
brutality and orgiac ecstasy.
The range of the shanachie is wide, and wide, too, the range of Sharp in
the rôle of shanachie of barbaric life on both sides of the Moyle. Among
such writings there are few tellings of the order of the folk-tale, more
of the order of the hero saga, many--perhaps the best of them--of an
order all his own that has developed, it is likely, from the old
"Saints' Lives," but to which he has given a ring of authenticity that
makes them seem descended from an antiquity as remote as that of
folk-tale or hero-tale. "The Flight of the Culdees" brings before you
with vividness what must have been the life of the Celtic missionaries
in the days when the men out of Lochlin began to seek the Summer Isles;
and "The Annir Choile" and "The Woman with the Net," what was the fate
they meted out to those among themselves who slipped back into the
pleasant old ways of paganism. These are written out of his own
revisualization of the past. More immediately sprung of the old legends
are "The Three Marvels of Hy," which tells of the inner life of Columba
and his brethren on Iona, and "Muime Chriosd," which utilizes folk-lore
as old or older than the legends collected by Mr. Alexander Carmichael
in his pursuit of the stories of St. Bride among the peasantry of the
Outer Isles. "The Song of the Sword" and "Mircath" have in them the
battle-madness of the Viking, whetted to its keenest intensity as he
meets the hard resistance of the Hebrideans; and "The Laughter of
Scathach" and "The Sad Queen," that more terrible fury of the Amazon who
ruled in Skye. Than this last-named story Sharp has done no starker
writing, but it is so evidently from a man's point of view that it
confirmed many in the belief that "Fiona Macleod" could not be a woman.
"The Washer of the Ford" has its roots in folk-lore, but it is so
remoulded in the mind of the writer that it is rather a re-creation of
the old belief than a restoration of it. There are those who would
rather have had Sharp follow the tales as they are told by Campbell of
Islay, Cameron of Brodick, and Carmichael of South Uist, but to me,
unless the tale is one familiar to many readers, such a remoulding, if
done with power, is surely a prerogative of the artist. But when he
takes a well-known legendary character, as well known among the Gaels as
Achilles among English school-boys, and changes his hair from black to
golden and his stature from short to tall, utterly transforming not only
our picture of him, but the significance of his deeds, then I object, as
I would object if he had made the fair-haired and great-statured
Achilles into such "a little dark man" as the Red Branch legends record
Cuchullin to have been. Nor would I quarrel even with his changing of
the spirit of the old tales if he had always, as he has almost always,
substituted a new beauty for the old beauty of the legend in its bardic
or folk form. It is in the few instances in which his dream of the old
tale does not lift to so great a power in its way as the old tale
possessed in its way that I protest. Of such a nature are some of the
changes Sharp made in his retelling of the "Three Sorrows of
Story-Telling" in "The Laughter of Peterkin," which, it must be
remembered, however, was hurried work, almost hackwork.
Sharp was particularly successful, I think, in his handling, in the
three tales--he calls them "legendary moralities"--in which he brings
Christ to the straths of Argyll. These three are "The Last Supper," "The
Fisher of Men," and "The Wayfarer." The last is the least successful of
the three, but significant in its attack on certain forms of
Presbyterianism for their attempts to kill out, as un-Christian, the old
ways of life among the Highlanders. This charge was made fifty years ago
by Campbell of Islay, and it had been repeated only yesterday by Mr.
Carmichael. William Black and Mr. Munro confirm it, too, in their
novels, and, in fact, it is only what one expects of Puritanism, whether
in its dominating of the Scotch Presbyterian minister or of the Irish
Catholic priest. The latter is to-day doing as much to kill the joy of
life in Connacht as did even the minister of the Free Kirk yesterday on
the Lews. It may have been partly to hide his identity that Sharp
assumed what some thought an anti-Presbyterian attitude in his "Fiona
Macleod" writing; it may have been the sympathy of the artist toward a
church that has conserved art that led him to what some thought a
pro-Catholic attitude; but scratch this gypsy artist and you find,
surprising as it may be, moral prejudice for Protestantism. Does he not
admire Torcall Cameron and Archibald Ruthven, stern Calvinists both?
"The Fisher of Men," and "The Last Supper" have in them the austere
beauty of the old morality plays, a beauty that is akin to the beauty of
the Puritan imagination of Bunyan, and a tenderness that we may in vain
look for there. They are written in all reverence and simplicity, and it
is no wonder we find Mr. Yeats suggesting that "Fiona Macleod" turn them
into plays for the Irish Theatre.
I do not care so much for "The Birds of Emar," myths he has rewoven from
the "Mabinogion" into Gaelic texture, or the series that purport to be
collected among the Isles and are found to be very like certain
well-known Greek legends. These, too, seem to me reweavings, and the
"Treud-nan-Ron" and "The Woman at the Crossways"; and "The Man on the
Moor," though its origin is far from their origins, is also a reweaving.
In certain of his writing of this time Sharp passes over virtually into
criticism or comparative mythology, as in "Queens of Beauty" and
"Orpheus and Oisin," and in many of the papers of "Where the Forest
Murmurs." These all have interest; but some smell much of the lamp; and
none of them are to be compared to the best of his "Seanchas," to "The
Harping of Cravetheen," or "Enya of the Dark Eyes," or "Silk o' the
Kine," or "Ula and Urla"; or to his Plays "The House of Usna" and "The
Immortal Hour," in which, for all the savagery, there is nobility, the
nobility that was in the old legends themselves, that nobility that
withstood even the hand of Macpherson, that nobility that has been
reproduced most nobly of all in the "Deirdre" of Synge.
I am not so sure that the tone of these old myths is always
distinctively Celtic, as it is undoubtedly in "The Annir Choile," and in
other "Seanchas" that reveal him at his best. There was viking blood in
Sharp, and it comes out, I think, in such tales as "The Song of the
Sword." How he came to write these barbaric tales I do not know, though
I have sometimes thought that the "Dhoya" (1891) of Mr. Yeats may have
suggested them, as the Hanrahan stories may have suggested certain of
the more modern tales. But whatever their genesis, the heroes and
heroines of the "Seanchas" seem to him like the heroes and heroines of
Homer and the Greek tragedians; and his friend whom he thought inspired
him to much of the "F.M." work stood, we must remember, as symbolical to
him of the women of Greek as well as of Celtic legend.
There are many indications, in his last writing, not only in that
unpublished book on "Greek Backgrounds" and in his articles in the
magazines on Sicily, all by William Sharp, but in the "Fiona Macleod"
work, that he would have come to write of Greek antiquity with an
enthusiasm very like that with which he wrote of Gaelic antiquity.
"W.S." is speaking with the voice of "F.M." when he says in a letter to
Mrs. Sharp, dated Athens, January 29, 1904: "It is a marvelous
homecoming feeling I have here. And I know a strange stirring, a kind of
spiritual rebirth."
One reason, perhaps, that the best work of Sharp has come out of his
consideration of the Celts of antiquity is that the stark stories he has
to tell of them restrain his style, a style too flamboyant when there
is in what he is writing a large opportunity for description of
landscape or exhibition of great emotion in his characters. Another
reason is, perhaps, that his tendency to introduce the supernatural is
more in harmony with the subject material got out of antiquity than of
the subject material got out of to-day. We can accept magic in these old
tales, even to the incantations of Bobaran the White that swayed the
waves of the sea so that Gaer, the son of Deirdre, was saved from the
men of Lochlin. That is as it should be in druidic times. It is
impossible, of course, that Bobaran had power over the waves, but in
such a story such an episode seems more probable than the possible
hypnotic suggestion of Gloom Achanna's pipe-playing that sent Manus
MacOdrum to his death among the fighting seals, because to-day we do not
often come upon such things. It is even less easy to accept the piping
to madness of Alasdair in "Alasdair the Proud." Hypnotic suggestion may
drive to death in the sea a man half fey because of sorrow long endured
and the superstition that he is descended from seals, but pipe-playing
cannot believably in modern tales drive a man insane, whatever it may do
in the famous old "Pied Piper of Hamelin" or other folk-tale.
So, too, in the verse of Sharp, whether lyric or dramatic, it is the
Celt that inspires him to his best work. Nowhere does his verse win so
much of beauty and glamour as when his thought turns to the four cities
of Murias and Finias and Falias and Glorias, or when it breaks into a
chant on the lips of Etain, in "The Immortal Hour."
Though there is less unevenness of technique, both in the style and in
the unfolding of the story, in these "Seanchas" than elsewhere in his
writing, the technique breaks down at times here, too, more usually
through sins of omission than through sins of commission. Sharp realized
the something wanting that so many find in much of his writing, even in
much that is most beautiful, realized it so keenly that he felt called
upon to explain. He explained not directly, it is true, as if in answer
to criticism, but none the less definitely in thus affirming his
attitude toward legends in the "Sunset of Old Tales": "We owe a debt,
indeed, to the few who are truly fit for the task [the collecting of
tales from oral tradition], but there are some minds which care very
little to hear about things when they can have the things themselves."
This statement explains in part why it is that the life of the people,
even that part of their life that fronts the past, has escaped him. He
prefers his dream, thinking that it is their dream, or the dream of
their ancestors. He has, indeed, the thing itself, the Highlander's
dream, and when it is given to him to impart that dream fully we forgive
him the proud words I have just quoted. The pity of it is he has not
always so succeeded through the way he has chosen, and then it is, of
course, that we condemn him for the lack of that humility the great
dramatic artist must have whereby he must forget himself and so
subordinate himself that tradition or life speaks through him.
It is not to be wondered, then, that there is little direct record of
folk-lore of his own collecting in his writing, even when he is writing
of folk-topics. There are borrowings in plenty, especially in "Where the
Forest Murmurs," and even when the collecting seems his own, as it does
in "Earth, Fire, and Water," "Children of Water," and "Cuilidh Mhoire,"
it is diamond dust, not diamonds, to which he gives so beautiful
setting.
Just as appealing to Sharp as the old myths themselves are the
localities that tradition or the stories themselves assign as background
to them. He loves Iona not only for its gray and barren beauty, but
because it was here Columba wrought his wonders. "Iona," which fills the
major part of the volume "The Divine Adventure" gives title to, is the
finest in quality as well as the longest of his writings that may be
called, prosaically, topographical. They, in their varying ways, are
much more than merely topographical, whether done in the way of "F.M.,"
as "Iona" is, and as "From the Hebrid Isles" is, and several papers from
"Where the Forest Murmurs"; or in the way of "W.S.," as "Literary
Geography" is. In this last-named book, Scott and Stevenson, among
others, are put against the background that inspired their work, as in
"Iona" certain stories are imagined so as to fit their surroundings and
certain legendary history narrated that is fitting to these surroundings
with an appropriateness almost too exact to be believable. In "Iona,"
because he loved the island that inspired its writing beyond any other
of the places he loved greatly, is to be found some of his very best
work, and examples of all kinds of his writing, as I have said; and even
when this "topographical writing," as in some of his magazine articles,
is evidently of the sort initially intended to "float cuts," it is very
well done, done most often with distinction. At times, of course, it
suffers from over-emphasis, as do the descriptive portions of his long
stories, but generally he attunes his writing to the genius of the
place. This is as true of his letters as of what he wrote for the
public, especially true of that series on Algiers from which Mrs. Sharp
quotes in her "Memoir." Papers of this sort, papers giving the genius of
place, Sharp was happier in, I think, than in those which are more
definitely the out-of-door essay. Sharp knew much of birds and small
mammals, of trees and plants, with a knowledge that evidently began in
childhood, but, as with so much else in his life, this knowledge he
never had time to fill out and deepen through patient observation. You
must not, then, turn to "Where the Forest Murmurs" to find writing of a
kind with that in which Thoreau and Jefferies so finely attained, much
less that loving intimacy with the personal side of birds and animals
that so humanly tempers the scientific spirit in White of Selborne. Nor
is there in them the racy earthiness of Mr. Burroughs. Their greatest
asset is their enthusiasm over the beauty of the world they are written
to praise; the next greatest their power of catching in words the mood
of a landscape; their next greatest their distinction of style, though
there are several in which the style is wholly without distinction. Now
and then, too, they are valuable for their guesses at the whys and
wherefores of things. There are to-day many explanations of what is
commonly called "The Lure of the Wild." Is not this as revelatory as
any?--
Is this because, in the wilderness, we recover something of what we
have lost?... Because we newly find ourselves as though surprised
into an intimate relationship of which we have been unaware or have
indifferently ignored? What a long way the ancestral memory has to
go, seeking, like a pale sleuth-hound, among obscure dusks and
forgotten nocturnal silences, for the lost trails of the soul! It
is not we only, you and I, who look into the still waters of the
wilderness and lonely places, and are often dimly perplext, are
often troubled we know not how or why: some forgotten reminiscence
in us is aroused, some memory, not our own, but yet our heritage is
perturbed, footsteps that have immemorially sunk in ancient dusk
move furtively along obscure corridors in our brain, the ancestral
hunter or fisher awakes, the primitive hillman or woodlander
communicates again with old forgotten intimacies and the secret
oracular things of lost wisdoms. This is no fanciful challenge of
speculation. In the order of psychology it is as logical as in the
order of biology is the tracing of our upright posture or the deft
and illimitable use of our hands, from unrealizably remote periods
wherein the pioneers of man reach slowly forward to inconceivable
arrivals.
The weakness of these essays that are like out-of-door essays, but are
not out-of-door essays, is their dearth of freshly observed fact. This
dearth would not matter so much if there were not so many of them, but a
book full of such essays with little original observation will pall, no
matter how well written, no matter how interesting the personality of
the writer. Thus it is that some of the essays of Jefferies pall, some
of those written in his last days, of Jefferies who had in his earlier
writing been so objective. In Thoreau there is a happy combination of
freshly observed fact with personal comment, and in Mr. Burroughs a
personal element greatly subdued, and presented in most of the essays
only through the selective art that has preserved the incidents he
relates out of many of a vast store of their kind.
In these "nature studies" of Sharp, as in so much of his writing, there
is a great deal of generalization from phenomena superficially observed.
He is not so often inaccurate, but he is very often merely repetitive,
giving us in beautiful and oftentimes distinguished phrase what others
have given us before. Sharp wrote sometimes, I have no doubt, with the
thing he describes before him but oftener, it would seem, from notes,
and oftenest, I take it, from memory. Sometimes it is best to write thus
from memory. The unessential will fade out, the essential remain; but
with Sharp the trouble is that the first observation has often been
hurried. He was content with the beauty that he saw when he first
noticed the incident; he did not wait to observe what in the further
actions of the life observed would make that beautiful incident more
significant. It may, of course, be said that all he was after was the
impression that the passing incident made upon him. Perhaps so, and if
so, more is the pity, because, while, as I have said, one out-of-door
essay with little or even with nothing but the personality of the writer
may interest, or perhaps two such, or even ten, a book full will be
monotonous. At its best, however, his writing of "natural romance" is of
great beauty. "Still Waters," for one, is almost perfect, as perfect as
this sort of thing may be. It is wrought of his own experiences with
just enough of mythological data to give it the texture of old and
lasting things.
"The Rainy Hyades," on the other hand, is largely a rehash of folk-lore
notes, second-hand work with very little added from experience and very
little finely imagined or recaptured by way of ancestral memory. At
times it would seem that, poor, tired man, he had to feed his flagging
invention from a dictionary of quotations. So, it appears, he has done
in his "Winter Stars" as well as in "The Rainy Hyades." As I think over
the unevenness of these essays, the beauty of "Still Waters," and the
obviousness of these others, I am brought back again to wondering what
Sharp would have done had all his time been his to do as he would with.
Such wonderment is, of course, idle, idle as that as to what Keats would
have done had he lived, for a man's art is judged by what it is, with no
tempering of the appraisement by what the man's life has been.
Fortunately there is inspiring work in plenty in Sharp, in this, as in
other phases of his work, to make readers turn to him when interest in
him as a phenomenon of current literature has passed away. It is hard to
think of the time when writing so beautiful as that of "Still Waters"
will not be sought by lovers of beauty in words and by lovers of beauty
in landscape, and when the opening of "The Coming of Dusk" will not be
turned to, as the opening of Emerson's "Nature" is turned to to-day.
Were I to attempt to enumerate the critical writings of Sharp, from the
"Rossetti" of 1882 to "The Winged Destiny" of 1904, I should run up a
catalogue that would exceed any even of Walt Whitman's. For years Sharp
lived by criticism, as editor of "The Canterbury Poets" and as reviewer
for many of the London journals. To me none of this critical work is
significant until he came to write of the movement that carried him to
fame,--to fame, I say, because "Fiona Macleod" was famous for a decade,
and not only as a mystery, but as a revealer of a new beauty in words,
and as a widener of horizons.
I have, I think, by this time made clear what to me is the great
strength of William Sharp--his power to revisualize the Celtic past of
Scotland and to imagine stories of that past that are as native to it as
those handed down in Bardic legend or folk-lore. I have emphasized my
belief that in other kinds of writing his attainment is less original,
though often beautiful in its imitativeness, and this imitativeness I
will explain as being due partly to that quality of the play-actor that
was in him as in so many of Celtic blood, partly to his lack of time to
hew out for himself a way of his own, and partly to his quick
responsiveness to any new beauty pointed out by work that he admired. It
was not altogether, however, lack of time that prevented his attainment
of a larger originality, an originality in other sorts of writing than
the "Seanchas." Sharp had an unfortunate disbelief in early life in the
value of technique. In the preface to the "Romantic Ballads" (1888), for
instance, he expressed the belief that "the supreme merit of a poem is
not perfection of art, but the quality of the imagination which is the
source of such real or approximate perfection." This, as I interpret it
means that a poem, when of perfect art, has back of that perfect art a
high imaginative quality; but by his own practice Sharp knows that he
thought the quality would suffice without the highest art in its
expression. It was this belief that made him leave his work incomplete;
he read his verses, no doubt, with the glow in which he wrote them
recalled to memory, and without the realization that he had not got down
on paper for others half of the creative force that was in him as he
wrote.
I have found a reason for a lesser success than the early work of "Fiona
Macleod" promised to him in his imitativeness, but in some ways he was
handicapped, too, by lack of models to follow. Granted he could have
blazed other ways for himself than that of the "Seanchas," he lessened
the originality of his attainment by imitation, but if he could not have
so blazed other ways he just as surely could have gone further had he
had models, or rather good models, to follow, models, for instance, in
novels of Highland life. The very fact of there being great realistic
stories of Highland life might have made it possible for him to have
written a Highland "Silence Farm."
But enough of what might have been: what is is good enough, good enough
at its best to treasure among those things that are a lasting part of
our lives. However great may be the reaction against his work because of
the nine days' wonder about the identity of its creator, certain parts
of it, certain tales and certain verses and a play, will hold their own
against the years. Through such tales as "The Sad Queen," and such
verses as "The Dirge of the Four Cities," and "The House of Usna" even
eyes of little vision may see "eternal beauty wandering on her way,"
leaving about them a glamour as recurrent to the mind as sunset to the
skies.
THE END
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
PLAYS PRODUCED, IN DUBLIN, BY THE ABBEY THEATRE COMPANY AND ITS
PREDECESSORS, WITH DATES OF FIRST PERFORMANCES
IRISH LITERARY THEATRE AT ANTIENT CONCERT
ROOMS
May 8, 1899. "The Countess Cathleen." W.B. Yeats.
May 9, 1899. "The Heather Field." Edward Martyn.
IRISH LITERARY THEATRE AT THE GAIETY THEATRE
Feb. 19, 1900. "The Bending of the Bough." George Moore.
Feb. 19, 1900. "The Last Feast of the Fianna." Alice Milligan.
Feb. 20, 1900. "Maeve." Edward Martyn.
Oct. 21, 1901. "Diarmuid and Grania." W.B. Yeats and
George Moore.
Oct. 21, 1901. "The Twisting of the Rope." Douglas Hyde.
(The first Gaelic play produced in any theatre.)
MR. W.G. FAY'S IRISH NATIONAL DRAMATIC COMPANY AT ST. TERESA'S HALL,
CLARENDON STREET
Apr. 2, 1902. "Deirdre." "A.E."
Apr. 2, 1902. "Kathleen ni Houlihan." W.B. Yeats.
IRISH NATIONAL DRAMATIC COMPANY AT ANTIENT CONCERT ROOMS
Oct. 29, 1902. "The Sleep of the King." Seumas O'Cuisin.
Oct. 29, 1902. "The Laying of the Foundations." Fred Ryan.
Oct. 30, 1902. "A Pot of Broth." W.B. Yeats.
Oct. 31, 1902. "The Racing Lug." Seumas O'Cuisin.
IRISH NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY, MOLESWORTH HALL
Mar. 14, 1903. "The Hour-Glass." W.B. Yeats.
Mar. 14, 1903. "Twenty-Five." Lady Gregory.
Oct. 8, 1903. "The King's Threshold." W.B. Yeats.
Oct. 8, 1903. "In the Shadow of the Glen." J.M. Synge.
Dec. 3, 1903. "Broken Soil." Padraic Colum.
Jan. 14, 1904. "The Shadowy Waters." W.B. Yeats.
Jan. 14, 1904. "The Townland of Tamney." Seumas McManus.
Feb. 25, 1904. "Riders to the Sea." J.M. Synge.
IRISH NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY AT THE ABBEY THEATRE
Dec. 27, 1904. "On Baile's Strand." W.B. Yeats.
Dec. 27, 1904. "Spreading the News." Lady Gregory.
Feb. 4, 1905. "The Well of the Saints." J.M. Synge.
Mar. 25, 1905. "Kincora." Lady Gregory.
Apr. 25, 1905. "The Building Fund." William Boyle.
June 9, 1905. "The Land." Padraic Colum.
NATIONAL THEATRE SOCIETY, LTD. (ABBEY COMPANY)
Dec. 9, 1905. "The White Cockade." Lady Gregory.
Jan. 20, 1906. "The Eloquent Dempsey." William Boyle.
Feb. 19, 1906. "Hyacinth Halvey." Lady Gregory.
Oct. 20, 1906. "The Gaol Gate." Lady Gregory.
Oct. 20, 1906. "The Mineral Workers." William Boyle.
Nov. 24, 1906. "Deirdre." W.B. Yeats.
Dec. 8, 1906. "The Canavans." Lady Gregory.
Dec. 8, 1906. New Version of "The Shadowy W.B. Yeats.
Waters."
Jan. 26, 1907. "The Playboy of the Western J.M. Synge.
World."
Feb. 23, 1907. "The Jackdaw." Lady Gregory.
Mar. 9, 1907. "The Rising of the Moon." Lady Gregory.
Apr. 1, 1907. "The Eyes of the Blind." Miss W.M. Letts.
Apr. 3, 1907. "The Poorhouse." Douglas Hyde and
Lady Gregory.
Apr. 27, 1907. "Fand." Wilfred Scawen
Blunt.
Oct. 3, 1907. "The Country Dressmaker." George Fitzmaurice.
Oct. 31, 1907. "Devorgilla." Lady Gregory.
Nov. 21, 1907. "The Unicorn from the Stars." W.B. Yeats and
Lady Gregory.
Feb. 13, 1908. "The Man who missed the Tide." W.F. Casey.
Feb. 13, 1908. "The Piper." "Norreys Connell."
Mar. 10, 1908. "The Piedish." George Fitzmaurice.
Mar. 19, 1908. "The Golden Helmet." W.B. Yeats.
Apr. 20, 1908. "The Workhouse Ward." Lady Gregory.
Oct. 1, 1908. "The Suburban Groove." W.F. Casey.
Oct. 8, 1908. "The Clancy Name." Lennox Robinson.
Oct. 15, 1908. "When the Dawn is come." Thomas MacDonogh.
Oct. 21, 1908. New Version of "The Man who W.F. Casey.
missed the Tide."
Feb. 11, 1909. Revised Version of "Kincora." Lady Gregory.
Mar. 11, 1909. "Stephen Grey." D.L. Kelleher.
Apr. 1, 1909. "The Crossroads." Lennox Robinson.
Apr. 1, 1909. "Time." "Norreys Connell."
Apr. 29, 1909. "The Glittering Gate." Lord Dunsany.
May 27, 1909. "An Imaginary Conversation." "Norreys Connell."
Aug. 25, 1909. "The Showing-up of Blanco Posnet." Bernard Shaw.
Sept. 16, 1909. "The White Feather." R.J. Ray.
Oct. 14, 1909. "The Challenge." Miss W.M. Letts.
Nov. 11, 1909. "The Image." Lady Gregory.
Jan. 13, 1910. "Deirdre of the Sorrows." J.M. Synge.
Feb. 10, 1910. "The Green Helmet." W.B. Yeats.
Mar. 2, 1910. "The Travelling Man." Lady Gregory.
May 12, 1910. "Thomas Muskerry." Padraic Colum.
May 26, 1910. "Harvest." Lennox Robinson.
Sept. 28, 1910. "The Casting-out of Martin R.J. Ray.
Whelan."
Oct. 27, 1910. "Birthright." T.C. Murray.
Nov. 10, 1910. "The Full Moon." Lady Gregory.
Nov. 24, 1910. "The Shuiler's Child."[3] Seumas O'Kelly.
Dec. 1, 1910. "Coats." Lady Gregory
Jan. 12, 1911. "The Deliverer." Lady Gregory.
Jan. 26, 1911. "King Argimenes and the Lord Dunsany.
Unknown Warrior."
Feb. 16, 1911. "The Land of Heart's Desire."[4] W.B. Yeats.
Mar. 30, 1911. "Mixed Marriage." St. John G. Ervine.
Nov. 23, 1911. "The Interlude of Youth." Anon., first
printed 1554.
Nov. 23, 1911. "The Second Shepherds' Play." Anon., _circa_
1400.
Nov. 30, 1911. "The Marriage." Douglas Hyde.
Dec. 7, 1911. "Red Turf." Rutherford Mayne.
Dec. 16, 1911. Revival of "The Countess W.B. Yeats.
Cathleen."
Jan. 4, 1912. "The Annunciation." _circa_ 1400.
Jan. 4, 1912. "The Flight into Egypt." _circa_ 1400.
Jan. 11, 1912. "MacDarragh's Wife." Lady Gregory.
Feb. 1, 1912. Revival of "The Country George Fitzmaurice.
Dressmaker."
Feb. 16, 1912. "The Tinker and the Fairy." Douglas Hyde.
(Played in Gaelic.)
Feb. 29, 1912. "The Worlde and the Chylde." 15th century.
Mar. 28, 1912. "Family Failings." William Boyle.
Apr. 11, 1912. "Patriots." Lennox Robinson.
June 20, 1912. "Maurice Harte." T.C. Murray.
July 4, 1912. "The Bogie Men." Lady Gregory.
Oct. 17, 1912. "The Magnanimous Lover." St. John G. Ervine.
Nov. 21, 1912. "Damer's Gold." Lady Gregory.
TRANSLATIONS OF THE FOLLOWING HAVE BEEN PRODUCED
Apr. 16, 1906. "The Doctor in spite of Himself." (Molière.) Translated
by Lady Gregory.
Mar. 16, 1907. "Interior." (Maeterlinck.)
Mar. 19, 1908. "Teja." (Sudermann.)
Translated by Lady
Gregory.
Apr. 4, 1909. "The Rogueries of Scapin." (Molière.)
Translated by Lady
Gregory.
Jan. 21, 1909. "The Miser." (Molière.)
Translated by Lady
Gregory.
Feb. 24, 1910. "Mirandolina." (Goldini.) Translated
by Lady Gregory.
Jan. 5, 1911. "Nativity Play." (Douglas Hyde.)
Translated by Lady
Gregory.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] First produced by an amateur company at the Molesworth Hall in 1909.
[4] First produced at the Avenue Theatre, London, in 1894.
INDEX
Abbey Theatre, organization of company, 13-36.
_All Ireland Review_, 86.
_All on the Irish Shore_, 6.
Allgood, Sara, 19, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 211.
Allingham, William, 39.
_Ancient Legends of Ireland_, 51.
Antient Concert Rooms, the, 18, 78, 86, 106, 200.
_Apostle, The_, 111.
_Aran Islands, The_, 168, 187, 188, 191.
Aran Islands, the, 147, 162, 166, 170, 171, 177, 178, 179, 181, 187,
188, 190, 191, 192.
Argyll, 4, 267, 268.
Arnold, Matthew, 3, 59, 255.
Arran, 267.
Arthurian stories, 3, 48.
Austen, Jane, 155, 156.
_Ave_, 73, 76, 94, 99, 108, 109.
Avenue Theatre, London, 25, 50.
_Bards and Saints_, 8.
Barker, Granville, 230.
Barlow, Jane, 1, 7, 148.
Beerbohm, Max, 81.
Belfast, 47.
_Beltaine_, 75, 85.
_Bending of the Bough, The_, 76, 88, 95, 98, 105.
Benson, Sir Frank, 18.
Benson Company, the, 106.
Beowulf, 142.
Berkeley, George, 135.
Bernhardt, Sara, 16.
Bhagavad-Gîta, 117.
Birmingham, George A. (The Rev. Dr. James O. Hannay), 8.
_Birthright_, 216, 217, 218, 219, 222.
Björnson, Björnstjerne, 36.
Black, William, 271, 284.
Blake, William, 38.
Bodley Head, the, 2.
_Book of Saints and Wonders_, 138, 142.
Borrow, George, 161, 165, 173, 179.
Boucicault, Dion, 168.
Boyle, William, 15, 33, 208-215, 238, 239, 240.
_Building Fund, The_, 209-213;
_Eloquent Dempsey, The_, 208, 209, 213;
_Family Failings_, 208;
_Mineral Workers, The_, 208, 213-214, 238.
Brigit, St., 142, 147, 282.
Brittany, 3, 266.
_Broken Soil_, 32, 202.
Brown, T.E., 4, 5.
Browning, Robert, 50.
Buchanan, Robert, 272.
Buckley, William, 7, 8.
_Building Fund, The_, 208, 209-213, 214.
Bullock, Shan, 7, 214, 234, 236, 270.
Bunyan, John, 285.
Burns, Robert, "Jolly Beggars," 177, 234.
Burroughs, John, 290, 292.
_Bursting of the Bubble, The_, 9.
_By Thrasna River_, 7.
_Calendar of the Saints_, 247.
Cameron, Dr., of Brodick, 283.
Campbell, John F., of Islay, 283, 284.
Campbell, Joseph (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil), 246-250.
_Judgment_, 247-250;
_Mearing Stones_, 247;
_The Mountainy Singer_, 247.
Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 23, 28, 45.
_Canavans, The_, 149, 152.
"Carberry, Ethna" (Anna Johnston MacManus), 10, 216, 255.
Carmichael, Alexander, 263, 282, 283, 284.
_Carmina Gadelica_, 263.
Carnegie Lyceum, The, New York, 85.
_Cathleen ni Houlihan_, 10, 17, 19, 31, 50-51, 53, 54, 55, 77.
_Catriona_, 272.
"Celtic Gloom, The," 274.
_Celtic Literature, On the Study of_, 3.
Celtic Renaissance, The, 1-12, 13, 18, 33, 36, 41, 93, 105, 114, 158,
251, 256, 259, 260.
_Celtic Twilight, The_, 37, 41, 42, 54.
Chesson, Nora Hopper, 10.
_Child of Nature, A_, 272.
_Children of Lir_, 200.
_Children of Tempest, The_, 4, 271.
_Children of To-morrow_, 264.
Church, Richard William, 138.
_Clancy Name, The_, 223, 224, 228.
Clare, 84, 141.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 210, 211.
Colum, Padraic, 11, 15, 21, 198-208, 240.
_Broken Soil_, 32, 202;
_Children of Lir_, 200;
_Eoghan's Wife_, 201;
_The Fiddler's House_, 200, 202, 204-205, 206;
_The Foleys_, 201;
_The Kingdom of the Young_, 201;
_The Land_, 200, 202, 204, 206;
_The Miracle of the Corn_, 200, 202;
_The Saxon Shillin'_, 201;
_Studies_, 200;
_Thomas Muskerry_, 199, 200, 206;
_Wild Earth_, 200, 208.
Columba, 147, 282, 289.
Congreve, William, 13.
_Conn the Shaughraun_, 168.
Connacht, 39, 154, 179, 188, 215, 239.
"Connell, Norreys" (Conal O'Riordan), 31, 241-243.
_An Imaginary Conversation_, 242;
_Piper_, 31, 33, 242, 243;
_Shakespeare's End_, 242;
_Time_, 242.
Connemara, 7, 147, 188.
_Connla_, 20, 21.
Conway, Hart, 218.
Cork, 15, 47, 220, 222.
Cork Dramatic Society, The, 35, 216, 223.
_Cork Realists_, 216.
Cornwall, 2, 3, 4.
_Countess Cathleen, The_, 18, 32, 43, 47, 48-49, 50, 51, 59, 64,
69, 78.
Court Theatre, London, The, 241.
Cousins, James H., 20, 32.
Craig, Gordon, 29.
Craigie, Pearl Teresa ("John Oliver Hobbes"), 104, 105.
Crashaw, Richard, 135.
Croker, Crofton, 168.
_Croppies Lie Down_, 7.
_Crossroads, The_, 224-228, 230, 231.
_Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, 58, 138, 143.
Cumann nan Gaedheal, 90, 115.
_Dan the Dollar_, 7, 214.
_Dandy Dick_, 233.
Darragh, Miss, 28.
Dartmoor, 6.
_Daughters of Erin, The_, 18, 200.
Davis, Thomas, 39.
_Death of Dermid, The_, 109.
_Death of Tintagiles, The_, 252.
_Deirdre_ (G.W. Russell), 20, 21, 31, 77, 115.
_Deirdre_ (W.B. Yeats), 23, 27, 28, 44, 50, 61-63.
_Deirdre of the Sorrows_, 160, 163, 166, 168, 181, 183, 192, 196,
197, 285.
_Deliverer, The_, 149.
DeMax, 16.
De Quincey, Thomas, 265.
Derry, 14.
_Destruction of the Hostel, The_, 205.
_Devorgilla_, 152.
_Dhoya_, 41, 286.
_Diarmid and Grania_, 32, 106-110, 143.
Dickens, Charles, 6.
Digges, T. Dudley, 21, 22.
_Discoveries_, 42.
_Divine Adventure, The_, 263, 270, 273, 275, 279, 289.
_Divine Vision, The_, 116, 122.
Dolmetsch, Arnold, 64, 98.
_Dome, The_, 81.
_Dominion of Dreams, The_, 273, 274.
Donegal, 7, 246, 247, 249, 250.
_Donegal Fairy Stories_, 7.
Donne, John, 164.
Down, 15, 210, 216, 226, 235, 237, 238, 243.
_Drama in Muslin, A_, 96, 101, 102, 110, 171.
_Drone, The_, 210, 235, 236.
_Drosdan and Yssul_, 254.
Dual personality, 278.
Dublin Castle, 32.
_Dublin University Review_, 38.
Duffy, Sir Charles Gavan, 2.
Dun Theatre, the, Cork, 224.
_Earth Breath, The_, 116.
Edgeworth, Maria, 6.
"Eglinton, John." (_See_ Magee, W.K.)
Elizabethan Stage Society, the, 30.
_Eloquent Dempsey, The_, 208, 209, 213.
Emerson, R.W., 115, 120, 122, 125, 126, 127, 135, 293.
_Enchanted Sea, The_, 75, 77, 83, 85-87, 89, 90.
_Enchanted Valleys, The_, 254.
_Eoghan's Wife_, 201.
Ervine, St. John G., 15, 33, 243-246.
_The Eviction_, 246;
_The Magnanimous Lover_, 243, 245, 246;
_Mixed Marriage_, 243, 246, 247.
_Esther Waters_, 6, 96, 112.
_Evelyn Innes_, 95, 96, 97, 98, 122.
_Everyman_, 30, 51.
_Eviction, The_, 246.
Fairies, 39, 41.
_Family Failings_, 208.
Farr, Florence, 25, 26, 27, 28.
Fay, Frank J., 19, 21, 22, 23, 24.
Fay, William G., 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 28, 201.
_Fellowe and his Wife, A_, 261, 264, 278.
Ferguson, Sir Samuel, 39, 61, 109, 184.
Fermanagh, 7.
_Fiddler's House, The_, 200, 202, 204-205, 206.
FitzGerald, Edward, 141.
Flamel, 43.
_Flora MacDonald_, 266.
_Foleys, The_, 201.
Folk-plays, 17, 29, 35, 49.
Folk-songs, 2, 40.
Folk-tales, 283.
_From the Hills of Dream_, 259.
_Full Moon, The_, 152.
Gaelic League, the, 1, 18, 41, 107.
Gaiety Theatre, the, Dublin, 30, 106, 110.
Galway, 73, 101, 108, 141, 189, 208, 210, 216, 238, 240.
_Gaol Gate, The_, 153, 154.
_Ghosts_, 80.
Gilbert, Lady (Rosa Mulholland), 6.
_Gillian the Dreamer_, 4.
_Gods and Fighting Men_, 109, 138, 141, 145.
_Golden Helmet, The_, 27, 63.
Goldsmith, Oliver, 13.
Gonne, Maud, 27, 59, 136.
Gore-Booth, Eva, 11.
_Grangecolman_, 91-92.
_Grania_ (Lady Gregory), 110, 154, 156-157.
_Grania_ (The Hon. Emily Lawless), 7.
_Greek Backgrounds_, 286.
_Green Fire_, 263, 266.
_Green Helmet, The_, 63.
Gregory, Lady, 8, 9, 15, 22, 30, 31, 32, 47, 53, 54, 56, 58, 73, 74,
75, 76, 88, 92, 93, 108, 109, 110, 114, 138-159, 179, 206, 215.
_Book of Saints and Wonders_, 138, 142;
_The Canavans_, 149, 152;
_Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, 58, 138, 143;
_The Deliverer_, 149;
_Devorgilla_, 152;
_The Full Moon_, 152;
_The Gaol Gate_, 153, 154;
_Gods and Fighting Men_, 109, 138, 141, 145;
_Grania_, 110, 154, 156-157;
_Hyacinth Halvey_, 150, 151;
_The Image_, 150, 151;
_The Jack Daw_, 151;
_Kincora_, 152;
_MacDaragh's Wife_, 154, 155;
_Poets and Dreamers_, 147;
_The Poorhouse_, 9;
_The Rising of the Moon_, 22, 31, 32, 152;
_Spreading the News_, 150, 151;
_A Travelling Man_, 153;
_Twenty-five_, 32, 152;
_The Unicorn from the Stars_, 27, 53-56;
_The White Cockade_, 152;
_The Workhouse Ward_, 152, 154.
Gregory, Robert, 30.
Grundy, Sydney, 104.
Gwynn, Stephen, 122.
Gyles, Althea, 247.
_Gypsy Christ, The_, 265, 279.
_Hail and Farewell_, 73, 92, 98, 113.
Hankin, St. John, 245.
Hardy, Thomas, 6, 7, 101, 164, 175, 176, 192, 193, 239, 258, 271.
Harrigan plays, the, 22.
Harte, Bret, 241.
_Harvest_, 221, 224, 228, 229, 230, 231.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 82, 175.
_Heather Field, The_, 18, 78-83, 85, 89, 91, 92, 93, 95.
Hebrides, the, 271, 274, 283.
_Hedda Gabler_, 104, 175.
Hermetic Society, the, 39, 117, 120.
Hewlett, Maurice, 165.
Highlands of Scotland, the, 3, 4, 260, 263, 264, 267, 268, 270, 271,
272, 274, 276, 284, 295.
Hinkson, Katherine Tynan, 1, 6, 10.
Homer, 64, 120, 144, 286.
_Homestead, The_, 117.
_Homeward_, 116.
Horniman, Miss, 21, 31, 33, 35.
_House of Usna, The_, 251, 252, 253, 254, 259, 285.
_Hyacinth Halvey_, 150, 151.
Hyde, Douglas, 1, 2, 8, 18, 40, 41, 46, 107, 147, 153, 158, 166,
171, 179.
Hypnotic suggestion, 278.
Ibsen, Henrik, 13, 34, 36, 38, 80, 93, 163, 168, 178, 213.
_Ideas of Good and Evil_, 42.
_Image, The_, 150, 151.
_Imaginary Conversation, An_, 242.
_Immortal Hour, The_, 251, 252, 285, 287.
_Impressions and Opinions_, 103.
_In a Balcony_, 50.
_In Chimney Corners_, 7.
Independent Theatre, The, London, 103, 104, 105.
_Iona_, 277, 289.
Iona, 282.
"I.O.," 116.
_Irish Idylls_, 7, 148.
Irish Agricultural Organization Society, the, 13, 117, 118, 137, 225.
Irish Literary Theatre, The, 5, 18, 19, 42, 52, 73, 74, 76, 85, 105,
109, 110, 115, 251.
_Irish Pastorals_, 7.
Irving Terry Company, the, 105.
_Island of Statues, The_, 47.
_Jack Daw, The_, 151.
Janvier, Mrs. Thomas A., 256.
Jefferies, Richard, 290, 291.
_John Bull's Other Island_, 241.
_John Sherman and Dhoya_, 41.
_John Splendid_, 4.
Johnson, Lionel, 5, 10, 64.
Johnston, Charles, 125, 134, 146.
_Journeys End in Lovers Meeting_, 105.
Joyce, Dr. P.W., 3, 110, 139.
_Judgment_, 246, 249, 250.
Kailyard School, the, 270.
Keats, John, 48, 293.
Kelley, P.J., 21, 22.
Kelpius, 122.
Kembles, the, 18.
Kerrigan, J.M., 23, 27, 217.
Kerry, 166, 188, 190, 216.
_Kidnapped_, 272.
Kiltartan English, 141, 142.
_Kincora_, 152.
_King of Ys, The_, 254.
_Kingdom of the Young, The_, 201.
_King's Threshold, The_, 60, 69.
Kingston, Thomas, 81.
Kipling, Rudyard, 47.
_Lady from the Sea, The_, 85.
_Lake, The_, 96, 99, 101, 102, 111, 112, 113.
_Land, The_, 200, 202, 204, 206.
Land League, the, 102.
_Land of Heart's Desire, The_, 25, 43, 49-50, 51, 59.
Larminie, William, 8.
_Last of the De Mullins, The_, 245.
_Last Supper, The_, 251.
_Laughter of Peterkin, The_, 267, 284.
Lawless, The Hon. Emily, 6.
_Laying of the Foundations, The_, 32.
_Lays of the Western Gael, The_, 110.
_Leabhar Sgeuluigheachta_, 41.
_Lear_, 45.
_Legend of Montrose, The_, 272.
Leinster, 215.
Le Moyne, Mrs., 50.
_Lesson of Life, The_, 224.
Lever, Charles James, 102.
_Literary Geography_, 289.
_Lost Pibroch, The_, 4.
_Lost Saint, The_, 9.
_Love in the Valley_, 49.
_Love Songs of Connacht, The_, 1, 9, 166, 179.
Lover, Samuel, 101.
Lowlands of Scotland, the, 258, 260, 264.
_Luke Delmege_, 7.
Lynchehaun case, the, 171.
_Lyra Celtica_, 4.
_Mabinogion_, 285.
_MacDaragh's Wife_, 154, 155.
McGee, Eithne, 23, 26, 211.
"Macleod, Fiona." (_See_ Sharp, William.)
MacManus, Anna Johnstone. (_See_ "Ethna Carberry.")
MacManus, Seumas, 7.
Macpherson, James, 3, 285.
_Madge o' the Pool_, 279.
Maeterlinck, Maurice, 13, 38, 45, 48, 113, 135, 178, 192, 202, 252,
253, 260.
Magee, W.K. ("John Eglinton"), 8, 10.
Magic, 67.
_Magnanimous Lover, The_, 243, 245, 246.
Man, Isle of, 3, 4, 5.
Martin, Martin, 271.
Martyn, Edward, 13, 18, 46, 72, 73, 74-95, 97, 98, 102, 105, 112, 115,
178, 207.
_The Enchanted Sea_, 75, 77, 83, 85-87, 89, 90;
_Grangecolman_, 91-92;
_The Heather Field_, 18, 78-83, 85, 89, 91, 92, 93, 95;
_Maeve_, 75, 76, 77, 83-85, 90;
_Morgante the Lesser_, 97;
_The Place Hunters_, 75, 78, 90, 93;
_A Tale of a Town_, 75, 76, 78, 81, 87-90, 105, 112, 213.
Masefield, John, 238, 239.
_Maurice Harte_, 216, 219-221, 222.
Mayne, Rutherford, 15, 210, 233-240, 244.
_The Drone_, 210, 235, 236;
_Red Turf_, 238, 239, 240;
_The Troth_, 235, 237;
_The Turn of the Road_, 216, 235, 238, 239.
Mayo, 95.
_Mearing Stones_, 247.
_Measure for Measure_, 24.
Meath, 226.
_Memoirs of My Dead Self_, 98.
Meredith, George, 4, 11, 101, 165, 166, 261.
Meynell, Alice, 10.
Milligan, Alice, 116.
Milton, John, 48, 120, 135.
_Mineral Workers, The_, 208, 213, 214, 238.
_Miracle of the Corn, The_, 200, 202.
_Mixed Marriage_, 243, 246, 247.
_Modern Lover, A_, 74, 96.
_Modern Painting_, 95.
Molesworth Hall, 163.
_Monna Vanna_, 45.
Moore, George, 6, 8, 18, 52, 72, 73, 74, 75, 80, 81, 88, 92, 94,
95-113, 122, 158.
_The Apostle_, 111;
_The Bending of the Bough_, 76, 88, 95, 98, 105;
_Diarmid and Grania_, 32, 106-110, 143;
_A Drama in Muslin_, 96, 101, 102, 110, 111;
_Esther Waters_, 6, 96, 112;
_Evelyn Innes_, 95, 96, 97, 98, 122;
_Hail and Farewell_, 73, 92, 98, 113;
_Ave_ (vol. I), 73, 76, 94, 99, 108, 109;
_Salve_ (vol. II), 99;
_Impressions and Opinions_, 103;
_The Lake_, 96, 99, 101, 102, 111, 112, 113;
_Memoirs of My Dead Self_, 98;
_A Modern Lover_, 74, 96;
_Modern Painting_, 95;
_A Mummer's Wife_, 101;
_Parnell and his Island_, 96, 97, 101;
_Sister Teresa_, 98;
_The Strike at Arlingford_, 103, 104;
_The Untilled Field_, 101, 102, 111, 112;
_The Wild Goose_, 101.
More, Henry, 135.
Morgan, Sydney J., 217.
_Morgante the Lesser_, 97.
Morris, William, 38.
_Mosada_, 47.
_Mountain Lovers, The_, 262, 264, 265, 266, 270, 274.
_Mountainy Singer, The_, 247.
Mulholland, Rosa. (_See_ Lady Gilbert.)
_Mummer's Wife, A_, 101.
Munro, Neil, 4, 6, 59, 271, 284.
Munster, 178, 215.
Murray, T.C., 15, 215-222.
_Birthright_, 216, 217, 218, 219, 222;
_Maurice Harte_, 216, 219-221, 222;
_The Wheel o' Fortune_, 216.
_My New Curate_, 7.
Mysticism, 11, 123, 134, 135, 273, 274, 275.
_Nan_, 238, 239.
Nash, Thomas, 66.
National Dramatic Company, the 16, 19, 20, 21, 29, 32, 56, 77, 110,
115, 118.
National Players, the, 35.
National Theatre Society, the Ltd., 30, 35, 60, 202, 223, 241.
Nethersole, Olga, 233.
_New Songs_, 116.
Norway, 36.
O'Curry, Eugene, 140.
O'Doherty, Eileen, 217.
O'Donoghue, Taidgh, 108.
O'Donovan, Fred, 23, 26, 27, 211, 217.
"Oghma," 116.
O'Grady, Standish Hayes, 110, 140, 141.
O'Grady, Standish James, 3, 86, 117, 139.
Oisin, 13, 40, 69.
Olcott, Chauncey, 22.
_Old Celtic Romances_, 139.
_Old Knowledge, The_, 122.
_Omar Khayyám_, 141.
_On Baile's Strand_, 27, 28, 58, 59.
O'Neill, Maire, 23, 26.
"Moira O'Neill" (Mrs. Nesta Higginson Skrine), 10, 255.
_Origines Islandicæ_, 238.
O'Riordan, Conal. (_See_ "Norreys Connell.")
O'Rourke, J.A., 211, 217.
_Ossian_, 3, 138.
O'Sullivan, Seumas, 11.
_Our Dramatists and their Literature_, 103.
_Our Mutual Friend_, 279.
_Outer Isles, The_, 274.
_Pagan Review, The_, 261.
Palestrina, 77.
Parnell, Charles Stewart, 2, 147, 149.
_Parnell and his Island_, 96, 97, 101.
Pater, Walter, 121, 133.
Patrick, St., 13, 40, 142.
_Patriots_, 231-232.
"Paul Gregan," 116.
_Pebbles from a Brook_, 8.
_Peer Gynt_, 163.
_Pharais_, 262, 263, 264, 266, 270, 277.
_Phèdre_, 16.
Phillpotts, Eden, 6.
Pinero, Sir Arthur Wing, 104, 214, 233.
_Piper, The_, 31, 33, 242, 243.
_Place Hunters, The_, 75, 78, 90, 93.
_Playboy of the Western World, The_, 23, 26, 31, 32, 33, 75, 149,
163, 164, 166, 170, 171, 176, 178, 180, 182, 184, 196, 218, 228.
Players Club, The, 86.
Plotinus, 125.
Poe, Edgar Allan, 40, 48, 265.
Poel, William, 24.
_Poems and Ballads_, 49.
_Poetry of the Celtic Races, The_, 3.
_Poets and Dreamers_, 147.
Pomfret, John, 203.
_Poorhouse, The_, 9.
Pope, Alexander, 203.
Porphyry, 54.
_Pot of Broth, A_, 22, 32, 51, 52, 54.
Pre-Raphaelites, The, 10, 158.
_Princess of Thule, The_, 271.
Proclus, 126.
Psaltery, 64.
Puritanism, 135, 234, 235, 244, 285.
Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, 3.
Quinn, Maire T., 21, 22.
_Racing Lug, The_, 20, 21.
Raftery, 147.
_Red Turf_, 238, 239, 240.
Rehan, Ada, 233.
_Religious Songs of Connacht, The_, 9, 171, 179.
Renan, Ernest, 3, 255.
_Revival of Irish Literature, The_, 2.
Rhys, Ernest, 4.
_Riders to the Sea_, 149, 162, 178, 179, 181, 183, 195, 197.
Rinder, Edith Wingate, 268, 269.
_Rising of the Moon, The_, 22, 31, 32, 152.
Robin Hood, 138.
Robinson, S. Lennox, 15, 33, 112, 215, 221, 222-232.
_The Clancy Name_, 223-224, 228;
_The Crossroads_, 224-228, 230, 231;
_Harvest_, 221, 224, 228-230;
_Lesson of Life_, 224;
_Patriots_, 231-232.
_Rob Roy_, 272.
_Romantic Ballads_, 253, 259, 294.
_Rosmersholm_, 91.
Ross, Martin. (_See_ Somerville, E. Oe.)
_Rossetti, Dante Gabriel_, 293.
Ruskin, John, 89, 158, 159.
Russell, G.W. ("A.E."), 1, 5, 8, 11, 19, 20, 21, 39, 41, 46, 95, 98,
111, 112, 114-137, 146, 251, 253, 255.
_Deirdre_, 20, 21, 31, 77, 115;
_The Divine Vision_, 116, 122;
_The Earth Breath_, 116;
_Homeward_, 116;
"Symbolism," 126;
"Weariness," 128;
"Memory of Earth," 130.
Ryan, Frederick, 32.
_Salve_, 99.
_Samhain_, 16, 29, 76, 81, 109.
_Saturday Review, The_, London, 81.
_Saxon Shillin', The_, 201.
Scotch Irish, the, 215, 234.
Scott, Sir Walter, 6, 100, 234, 272, 289.
Scotus Erigena, 135.
_Second Mrs. Tanqueray, The_, 104.
_Secret Rose, The_, 41, 54.
_Seething Pot, The_, 8.
_Seven Woods, In the_, 43.
_Shadow of the Glen, In the_, 32, 60, 77, 162, 168, 169, 175, 178,
181, 184, 190, 195, 218.
_Shadowy Waters, The_, 28, 56-58, 60.
Shakespeare, 120.
_Shakespeare's End_, 242.
Sharp, William ("Fiona Macleod"), 4, 86, 251-296.
_A Child of Nature_, 272;
_Children of To-morrow_, 264;
"The Dan-nan-Ron," 263, 287;
"The Dirge of the Four Cities," 255, 259, 287, 296;
"Dim face of beauty haunting all the world," 259;
_The Divine Adventure_, 263, 270, 273, 275, 279, 289;
_The Dominion of Dreams_, 273, 274;
_Drosdan and Yssul_, 254;
_The Enchanted Valleys_, 254;
_A Fellowe and his Wife_, 261, 264, 278;
_Flora MacDonald_, 266;
_From the Hills of Dream_, 259;
_Greek Backgrounds_, 286;
_Green Fire_, 263, 266;
_The Gypsy Christ_, 265, 279;
_The House of Usna_, 251, 252, 253, 254, 259, 285;
_The Immortal Hour_, 251, 252, 285, 287;
_Iona_, 277, 289;
_The King of Ys_, 254;
_The Last Supper_, 251;
_The Laughter of Peterkin_, 267, 284;
_Literary Geography_, 289;
_Lyra Celtica_, 4;
_Madge o' the Pool_, 279;
_The Mountain Lovers_, 262, 264, 265, 266, 270, 274;
_The Pagan Review_, 261;
_Pharais_, 262, 263, 264, 266, 270, 277;
_Romantic Ballads_, 253, 259, 294;
_Silence Farm_, 257, 258, 264, 265, 270, 271, 279, 295;
_The Sin-Eater_, 263;
_Sospiri di Roma_, 257, 258;
_Vistas_, 251, 252, 253, 259, 260, 273;
_The Washer of the Ford_, 263, 283;
_Where the Forest Murmurs_, 263, 285, 289, 290;
_The Winged Destiny_, 263, 274, 293;
_Wives in Exile_, 261, 264.
Sharp, Mrs. William, 251, 256, 262, 268, 279, 286, 290.
Shaw, George Bernard, 53, 177, 230, 241.
Sheehan, Canon, 7.
Shelley, P.B., 38.
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 13.
Shorter, Dora Sigerson, 11.
_Showing-up of Blanco Posnet, The_, 241.
Sigerson, Dr. George, 2.
_Silence Farm_, 257, 258, 264, 265, 270, 271, 279, 295.
Sims, George Robert, 103, 104.
Sinclair, Arthur, 19, 23, 24, 27, 211.
_Sin-Eater, The_, 263.
_Sister Teresa_, 98.
Skrine, Nesta Higginson. (_See_ "Moira O'Neill.")
Skye, 267, 283.
Sligo, 40, 41.
_Sohrab and Rustum_, 59.
_Some Experiences of an Irish R.M._, 6.
Somerville, E. Oe., and Martin Ross, 6.
_Sospiri di Roma_, 257, 258.
_Sowing the Wind_, 104.
Spenser, Edmund, 38, 39, 123.
Spoer, Ada Goodrich-Freer, 274.
_Spreading the News_, 150, 151.
_Squireen, The_, 7, 236, 271.
Stage Society, the, London, 53, 112, 252.
Stephens, James, 8.
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 49, 260, 272, 289.
Stokes, Whitley, 140.
Strand Theatre, the, London, 81.
_Strike at Arlingford, The_, 103, 104.
_Studies_, 200.
Sutherland, 272.
Swift, Jonathan, 13, 173, 196, 282.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 43, 49.
Symbolism, 65-67, 126, 176.
Synge, John Millington, 15, 22, 26, 31, 32, 47, 61, 114, 148, 149, 155,
160-197, 205, 206, 238, 239, 240, 242, 285.
_Aran Islands_, 168, 187, 188, 191;
_Deirdre of the Sorrows_, 163, 166-168, 181, 183, 192, 196, 197,
285;
"In Kerry," 164;
verse, 192-194;
"Preludes," 193;
_Playboy of the Western World_, 23, 26, 31, 32, 33, 75, 149,
163, 164, 166, 170, 171, 176, 178, 180, 182, 184, 196, 218, 228;
_Riders to the Sea_, 149, 162, 178, 179, 181, 183, 195, 197;
_In the Shadow of the Glen_, 32, 60, 77, 162, 168, 169, 175,
178, 181, 184, 190, 195, 218;
_The Tinker's Wedding_, 111, 163, 171, 174, 180, 182, 190, 196;
_Well of the Saints_, 23, 29, 164, 170, 175, 177, 178, 182, 190,
196, 218.
_Tables of the Law, The_, 41.
_Tale of a Town, A_, 75, 76, 78, 81, 87-90, 105, 112, 213.
Taliaferro, Mabel, 50.
Taylor, Thomas, 117.
_Tempest, The_, 45.
_Tess of the D'Urbervilles_, 7, 258.
Thackeray, W.M., 6, 101.
Théâtre Français, 17.
Theatre of Ireland, the, 35, 202.
Theatre Royal, Dublin, 30.
_Thomas Muskerry_, 199, 200, 206.
Thompson, Francis, 135.
Thoreau, Henry David, 290, 291.
_Through the Turf Smoke_, 7.
_Time_, 242.
_Tinker's Wedding, The_, 111, 163, 171, 174, 180, 182, 190, 196.
Tipperary, 171.
_Travelling Man, A_, 153.
_Treasure of the Humble, The_, 115.
Trench, Herbert, 11.
Trinity College, 32, 33.
Trollope, Anthony, 271.
_Troth, The_, 235, 237.
_Turn of the Road, The_, 216, 235, 238, 239.
_Twenty-five_, 32, 152.
_Twilight People, The_, 11.
_Twisting of the Rope, The_, 107.
_Two Essays on the Remnant_, 8.
Ulster, 215, 240, 245, 246.
Ulster Literary Theatre, the, 35, 239, 243.
_Unicorn from the Stars, The_, 27, 53-56.
_Untilled Field, The_, 101, 102, 111, 112.
Upanishads, 117.
Villon, François, 182.
_Vistas_, 251, 252, 253, 259, 260, 273.
Von Teuffel, Mrs., 261.
Wales, 2, 3, 4.
Walker, Mary, 20, 21, 22.
_Wanderings of Oisin, The_, 1, 39, 40, 41, 63, 64, 139.
_Washer of the Ford, The_, 263, 283.
Watts, George Frederic, 122.
_Waverley_, 272.
Weekes, Charles, 116.
_Weir of Hermiston_, 272.
_Well of the Saints, The_, 23, 29, 164, 170, 175, 177, 178, 182,
190, 196, 218.
Wessex, 7, 258.
West Britons, 32.
_West Irish Folk-Tales_, 9.
Wexford, 141, 152.
_Wheel o' Fortune, The_, 216.
_Where the Forest Murmurs_, 263, 285, 289, 290.
_Where there is Nothing_, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56.
White, Gilbert, 290.
_White Cockade, The_, 152.
Whitman, Walt, 39, 173, 193, 294.
Wicklow, 162, 166, 170, 177, 184, 190, 216.
_Wild Duck, The_, 80, 91.
_Wild Earth_, 200, 208.
_Wild Goose, The_, 101.
Wilde, Oscar, 13, 53, 245.
Wilde, Lady, 51.
_William Sharp: A Memoir_, 262, 279, 290.
_Wind among the Reeds, The_, 43, 54.
_Winged Destiny, The_, 263, 274, 293.
_Wives in Exile_, 261, 264.
Wolfe, Charles, 94.
_Woman of no Importance, A_, 245.
Wordsworth, 48, 94, 265.
Workhouse Ward, The, 152, 154.
Wycherly, Margaret, 51.
Yeats, J.B., Sr., 38, 119.
Yeats, J.B., Jr., 118, 119.
Yeats, W.B., 1, 5, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26,
27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 36, 37-71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 81, 85, 88,
92, 94, 95, 97, 98, 102, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 114, 115,
116, 117, 123, 139, 145, 146, 148, 155, 158, 162, 179, 199, 251, 252,
253, 255, 259, 269, 279, 285, 286.
_Cathleen ni Houlihan_, 10, 17, 19, 31, 50-51, 53, 54, 55, 77;
_Celtic Twilight_, 37, 41, 42, 54;
_Countess Cathleen_, 18, 32, 43, 47, 48-49, 50, 51, 59, 64, 69,
78;
_Deirdre_, 23, 27, 28, 44, 56, 61-63;
_Dhoya_, 41, 286;
_Diarmid and Grania_, 32, 106-110, 143;
_Discoveries_, 42;
_The Golden Helmet_, 27, 63;
_The Green Helmet_, 63;
_The Hour-Glass_, 10, 27, 28, 51-52, 54;
_Ideas of Good and Evil_ 42;
_The Island of Statues_, 47;
_John Sherman and Dhoya_, 41;
_The King's Threshold_, 60, 69;
_The Land of Heart's Desire_, 25, 43, 49-50, 51, 59;
_Mosada_, 47;
_On Baile's Strand_, 27, 28, 58, 59;
_A Pot of Broth_, 22, 32, 51, 52, 54;
_The Secret Rose_, 41, 54;
_In the Seven Woods_, 43;
_The Shadowy Waters_, 28, 56-58, 60;
_The Tables of the Law_, 41;
"The Valley of the Black Pig," 50, 65, 66, 67;
_Wanderings of Oisin_, 1, 39, 40, 41, 63, 64, 139;
_Where there is Nothing_, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56;
_The Wind among the Reeds_, 43.
End of Project Gutenberg's Irish Plays and Playwrights, by Cornelius Weygandt