Crazy Jane on the Mountain
About the text
Yeats first published this poem in 1939. It is out of copyright in Ireland and the EU, but in the United States it stays in copyright until the start of 2035, and this site is served partly from American servers. So for now we give the notes without the full text; it will appear here in 2035.
It begins: I am tired of cursing the Bishop
In brief
SummaryCrazy Jane scorns a cowardly king and weeps before Cuchulain and Emer.
Crazy Jane returns for a last time. She is tired of cursing the Bishop, whom nine books or nine hats could never make a man. She has found something worse to brood on: a King who had beautiful cousins, battered to death in a cellar, while he clung to his throne. Then she tells of a vision. Last night, lying on the mountain, she saw a two-horsed chariot racing on two wheels, and in it sat Emer and her violent husband Cuchulain, the heroes of old Ireland. At the sight she kissed a stone, lay stretched in the dirt and wept.
Lines to remember
And he stuck to his throne.
Line by line
Lines 1 to 6Tired of the Bishop
Jane's old enemy, the Bishop, no longer seems worth cursing. Neither learning nor the hats of office could make him a man. She has found a worse thing to think about, and the bracketed "(Said Crazy Jane)" gives the lines the feel of a ballad.
Lines 7 to 10The cowardly King
A King had beautiful cousins, and they were battered to death in a cellar, while he held on to his throne. Jane's contempt is for the man who saved his crown rather than his kin. The rhyme falls heavily on "throne".
Lines 11 to 18Vision on the mountain
Last night on the mountain she saw a chariot drawn by two horses, running on two wheels, and in it the ancient heroine Emer beside her violent man Cuchulain. The coarse epithet given to Emer makes her an earthy, powerful woman rather than a pale legend.
Lines 19 to 22Tears in the dirt
At once Jane kneels, kisses a stone, lies stretched out in the dirt and cries. Her worship of the old heroes is physical and total. Set against the modern King who let his family die, Cuchulain and Emer stand for a lost courage and passion.
Themes
Heroic past
The poem sets a modern king who "stuck to his throne" against Cuchulain, the great hero of Irish legend, and his fierce wife Emer. The present has kings who save themselves; the past had heroes who lived violently. Jane's tears are for everything the modern world has lost.
Contempt for power
Bishop and King both fail Jane's test of manhood. The Bishop's books and hats are empty show; the King's crown was bought with his cousins' deaths. Her scorn for official authority, religious and royal, runs through all the Crazy Jane poems.
Context
The poem first appeared in On the Boiler (Cuala Press, 1939) and was collected in Last Poems and Two Plays (Cuala Press, Dublin, 1939). It brings back Crazy Jane, the outspoken old woman of the Crazy Jane poems in Words for Music Perhaps (1932), and her quarrel with the Bishop.
The King and his cousins are usually taken to be George V and the Russian royal family, shot in a cellar at Yekaterinburg in 1918 after Britain withdrew an offer of refuge. Cuchulain and Emer had been central figures in Yeats's plays and poems for forty years.
Form
Twenty-two very short lines of two or three beats in one unbroken stanza. Almost every even line ends on the same sound (man, on, gone, throne, ran, stone, down), a single chiming rhyme that makes the poem sound like a keen or a chant. The bracketed refrain splits it into Jane's two speeches.