Play · 1919
The Only Jealousy of Emer
Enter Musicians, who are dressed as in the earlier play. They have the same musical instruments, which can either be already upon the stage or be brought in by the First Musician before he stands in the centre with the cloth between his hands, or by a player when the cloth is unfolded. The stage as before can be against the wall of any room.
First Musician
During the unfolding and folding of the cloth
A woman’s beauty is like a whiteFrail bird, like a white sea-bird aloneAt daybreak after stormy nightBetween two furrows upon the ploughed land:A sudden storm and it was thrownBetween dark furrows upon the ploughed land.How many centuries spentThe sedentary soulIn toils of measurementBeyond eagle or mole,Beyond hearing or seeing,Or Archimedes guess,To raise into beingThat loveliness?
A strange unserviceable thing,A fragile, exquisite, pale shell,That the vast troubled waters bringTo the loud sands before day has broken.The storm arose and suddenly fellAmid the dark before day had broken.What death? what discipline?What bonds no man could unbindBeing imagined withinThe labyrinth of the mind?What pursuing or fleeing?What wounds, what bloody press?Dragged into beingThis loveliness.
When the cloth is folded again the Musicians take their place against wall. The folding of the cloth shows on one side of the stage the curtained bed or litter on which lies a man in his grave-clothes. He wears an heroic mask. Another man with exactly similar clothes and mask crouches near the front. Emer is sitting beside the bed.
First Musician
speaking I call before the eyes a roofWith cross-beams darkened by smoke.A fisher’s net hangs from a beam,A long oar lies against the wall.I call up a poor fisher’s house.A man lies dead or swooning,That amorous man,That amorous, violent man, renowned Cuchulain,Queen Emer at his side.At her own bidding all the rest have gone.But now one comes on hesitating feet,Young Eithne Inguba, Cuchulain’s mistress.She stands a moment in the open door,Beyond the open door the bitter sea,The shining, bitter sea is crying out,singing White shell, white wingI will not choose for my friendA frail unserviceable thingThat drifts and dreams, and but knowsThat waters are without endAnd that wind blows.
Emer
speaking Come hither, come sit down beside the bedYou need not be afraid, for I myselfSent for you, Eithne Inguba.
Eithne Inguba
No, Madam,I have too deeply wronged you to sit there.
Emer
Of all the people in the world we two,And we alone, may watch together here,Because we have loved him best.
Eithne Inguba
And is he dead?
Emer
Although they have dressed him out in his grave-clothesAnd stretched his limbs, Cuchulain is not dead;The very heavens when that day’s at hand,So that his death may not lack ceremony,Will throw out fires, and the earth grow red with blood.There shall not be a scullion but foreknows itLike the world’s end.
Eithne Inguba
How did he come to this?
Emer
Towards noon in the assembly of the kingsHe met with one who seemed a while most dear.The kings stood round; some quarrel was blown up;He drove him out and killed him on the shoreAt Baile’s tree, and he who was so killedWas his own son begot on some wild womanWhen he was young, or so I have heard it said;And thereupon, knowing what man he had killed,And being mad with sorrow, he ran out;And after to his middle in the foamWith shield before him and with sword in hand,He fought the deathless sea. The kings looked onAnd not a king dared stretch an arm, or evenDared call his name, but all stood wonderingIn that dumb stupor like cattle in a gale,Until at last, as though he had fixed his eyesOn a new enemy, he waded outUntil the water had swept over him;But the waves washed his senseless image upAnd laid it at this door.
Eithne Inguba
How pale he looks!
Emer
He is not dead.
Eithne Inguba
You have not kissed his lipsNor laid his head upon your breast.
Emer
It may beAn image has been put into his place,A sea-born log bewitched into his likeness,Or some stark horseman grown too old to rideAmong the troops of Mananan, Son of the Sea,Now that his joints are stiff.
Eithne Inguba
Cry out his name.All that are taken from our sight, they say,Loiter amid the scenery of their livesFor certain hours or days, and should he hearHe might, being angry drive the changeling out.
Emer
It is hard to make them hear amid their darkness,And it is long since I could call him home;I am but his wife, but if you cry aloudWith that sweet voice that is so dear to himHe cannot help but listen.
Eithne Inguba
He loves me best,Being his newest love, but in the endWill love the woman best who loved him firstAnd loved him through the years when love seemed lost.
Emer
I have that hope, the hope that some day and somewhereWe’ll sit together at the hearth again.
Eithne Inguba
Women like me when the violent hour is overAre flung into some corner like old nut shells.Cuchulain, listen.
Emer
No, not yet for firstI’ll cover up his face to hide the sea;And throw new logs upon the hearth and stirThe half burnt logs until they break in flame.Old Mananan’s unbridled horses comeOut of the sea and on their backs his horsemenBut all the enchantments of the dreaming foamDread 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 heartIf he lies there; and if he is not thereTill you have made him jealous.
Eithne Inguba
Cuchulain, listen.
Emer
You speak too timidly; to be afraidBecause his wife is but three paces offWhen there is so great a need were but to proveThe 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 IHave been ashamed and you in so great need.I have never sent a message or called out,Scarce had a longing for your companyBut you have known and come; and if indeedYou are lying there stretch out your arms and speak;Open your mouth and speak for to this hourMy company has made you talkative.Why do you mope, and what has closed your ears.Our passion had not chilled when we were partedOn the pale shore under the breaking dawn.He will not hear me: or his ears are closedAnd no sound reaches him.
Emer
Then kiss that imageThe pressure of your mouth upon his mouthMay reach him where he is.
Eithne Inguba
starting back It is no man.I felt some evil thing that dried my heartWhen 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 armThat 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 comeFrom Mananan’s court upon a bridleless horse.
Emer
What one among the Sidhe has dared to lieUpon 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 lovesMust fly away.
Emer
You people of the windAre 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 eyesAnd 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 captiveThey take in ransom a less valued thing.The fisher when some knowledgeable manRestores to him his wife, or son, or daughter,Knows he must lose a boat or net, or it may beThe cow that gives his children milk; and someHave offered their own lives. I do not askYour life, or any valuable thing;You spoke but now of the mere chance that some dayYou’d sit together by the hearth again;Renounce that chance, that miserable hour,And he shall live again.
Emer
I do not questionBut you have brought ill luck on all he lovesAnd now, because I am thrown beyond your powerUnless your words are lies, you come to bargain.
Figure of Cuchulain
You loved your power when but newly marriedAnd I love mine although I am old and withered;You have but to put yourself into that powerAnd 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 hearthOr make old bones, but die of wounds and toilOn some far shore or mountain, a strange womanBeside his mattress.
Emer
You ask for my one hopeThat you may bring your curse on all about him.
Figure of Cuchulain
You’ve watched his loves and you have not been jealousKnowing that he would tire, but do those tireThat love the Sidhe?
Emer
What dancer of the SidheWhat 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 darkThat hid him from your eyes but not that otherThat’s hidden you from his.
Emer
Husband, husband!
Figure of Cuchulain
Be silent, he is but a phantom nowAnd 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 shadesBefore they are accustomed to their freedom,He has taken his familiar form, and yetHe crouches there not knowing where he isOr 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-WaveAnd dreamed herself into that shape that heMay glitter in her basket; for the SidheAre fishers also and they fish for menWith dreams upon the hook.
Emer
And so that womanHas hid herself in this disguise and madeHerself into a lie.
Figure of Cuchulain
A dream is body;The dead move ever towards a dreamless youthAnd when they dream no more return no more;And those more holy shades that never livedBut 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 lipsAnd drop their hair upon them, from that hourOur men, who yet knew nothing of it all,Are lonely, and when at fall of night we pressTheir 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 thereShedding such light from limb and hairAs when the moon complete at lastWith every labouring crescent past,And lonely with extreme delight,Flings out upon the fifteenth night?
Woman of the Sidhe
Because I long I am not complete.What pulled your hands about your feetAnd your head down upon your knees,And hid your face?
Ghost of Cuchulain
Old memories:A dying boy, with handsome faceUpturned upon a beaten place;A sacred yew-tree on a strand;A woman that held in steady handIn all the happiness of her youthBefore her man had broken troth,A burning wisp to light the door;And many a round or crescent more;Dead men and women. MemoriesHave pulled my head upon my knees.
Woman of the Sidhe
Could you that have loved many a womanThat did not reach beyond the human,Lacking a day to be complete,Love one that though her heart can beat,Lacks it but by an hour or so.
Ghost of Cuchulain
I know you now for long agoI met you on the mountain side,Beside a well that seemed long dry,Beside old thorns where the hawk flew.I held out arms and hands but you,That now seem friendly, fled awayHalf woman and half bird of prey.
Woman of the Sidhe
Hold out your arms and hands againYou were not so dumbfounded whenI was that bird of prey and yetI am all woman now.
Ghost of Cuchulain
I am notThe young and passionate man I wasAnd though that brilliant light surpassAll crescent forms, my memoriesWeigh down my hands, abash my eyes.
Woman of the Sidhe
Then kiss my mouth. Though memoryBe beauty’s bitterest enemyI have no dread for at my kissMemory on the moment vanishes:Nothing but beauty can remain.
Ghost of Cuchulain
And shall I never know againIntricacies of blind remorse?
Woman of the Sidhe
Time shall seem to stay his course,For when your mouth and my mouth meetAll my round shall be completeImagining all its circles run;And there shall be oblivionEven to quench Cuchulain’s drouth,Even to still that heart.
Ghost of Cuchulain
Your mouth.
They are about to kiss, he turns away
O Emer, Emer.
Woman of the Sidhe
So then it is sheMade you impure with memory.
Ghost of Cuchulain
Still in that dream I see you stand,A burning wisp in your right hand,To wait my coming to the house,As when our parents married us.
Woman of the Sidhe
Being among the dead you love herThat valued every slut above herWhile you still lived.
Ghost of Cuchulain
O my lost Emer.
Woman of the Sidhe
And there is not a loose-tongued schemerBut could draw you if not dead,From her table and her bed.How could you be fit to wiveWith flesh and blood, being born to liveWhere no one speaks of broken trothFor all have washed out of their eyesWind blown dirt of their memoriesTo improve their sight?
Ghost of Cuchulain
Your mouth, your mouth.
Their lips approach but Cuchulain turns away as Emer speaks.
Emer
If he may live I am content,Content that he shall turn on me,If but the dead will set him freeThat I may speak with him at whiles,Eyes that the cold moon or the harsh seaOr what I know not’s made indifferent.
Ghost of Cuchulain
What a wise silence has fallen in this dark!I know you now in all your ignoranceOf all whereby a lover’s quiet is rent.What dread so great as that he should forgetThe least chance sight or sound, or scratch or markOn an old door, or frail bird heard and seenIn the incredible clear light love castAll round about her some forlorn lost day?That face, though fine enough, is a fool’s faceAnd there’s a folly in the deathless SidheBeyond man’s reach.
Woman of the Sidhe
I told you to forgetAfter my fashion; you would have none of it;So now you may forget in a man’s fashion.There’s an unbridled horse at the sea’s edge.Mount; it will carry you in an eye’s winkTo where the King of Country-Under-Wave,Old Mananan, nods above the board and movesHis chessmen in a dream. Demand your lifeAnd come again on the unbridled horse.
Ghost of Cuchulain
Forgive me those rough words. How could you knowThat man is held to those whom he has lovedBy pain they gave, or pain that he has given,Intricacies of pain.
Woman of the Sidhe
I am ashamedThat being of the deathless shades I choseA man so knotted to impurity.
The Ghost of Cuchulain goes out
Woman of the Sidhe
to Figure of Cuchulain
To you that have no living light, but droppedFrom a last leprous crescent of the moon,I owe it all.
Figure of Cuchulain
Because you have failedI must forego your thanks, I that took pityUpon your love and carried out your planTo tangle all his life and make it nothingThat he might turn to you.
Woman of the Sidhe
Was it from pityYou taught the woman to prevail against me?
Figure of Cuchulain
You know my nature—by what name I am called.
Woman of the Sidhe
Was it from pity that you hid the truthThat men are bound to women by the wrongsThey do or suffer?
Figure of Cuchulain
You know what being I am.
Woman of the Sidhe
I have been mocked and disobeyed—your powerWas more to you than my good-will, and nowI’ll have you learn what my ill-will can do;I lay you under bonds upon the instantTo stand before our King and face the chargeAnd take the punishment.
Figure of Cuchulain
I’ll stand there first.And tell my story first, and ManananKnows that his own harsh sea made my heart cold.
Woman of the Sidhe
My horse is there and shall outrun your horse.
The Figure of Cuchulain falls back, the Woman of the Sidhe goes out. Drum taps, music resembling horse hoofs.
Eithne Inguba
entering quickly
I heard the beat of hoofs, but saw no horse,And then came other hoofs and after thatI heard low angry cries and thereuponI ceased to be afraid.
Emer
Cuchulain wakes.
The figure turns round. It once more wears the heroic mask.
Cuchulain
Eithne Inguba take me in your arms,I have been in some strange place and am afraid.
The First Musician comes to the front of stage, the others from each side and unfold the cloth singing
The Musicians
What makes her heart beat thus,Plain to be understoodI have met in a man’s houseA statue of solitude,Moving there and walking;Its strange heart beating fastFor all our talking.O still that heart at last.
O bitter reward!Of many a tragic tomb!And we though astonished are dumbAnd give but a sigh and a wordA passing word.
Although the door be shutAnd all seem well enough,Although wide world hold notA man but will give you his love.The moment he has looked at you,He that has loved the bestMay turn from a statueHis too human breast.
O bitter reward!Of many a tragic tomb!And we though astonished are dumbOr give but a sigh and a wordA passing word.
What makes your heart so beat?Some one should stay at her side.When beauty is completeHer own thought will have diedAnd danger not be diminished;Dimmed at three quarter lightWhen moon’s round is finishedThe stars are out of sight.
O bitter reward!Of many a tragic tomb!And we though astonished are dumbOr give but a sigh and a wordA passing word.
When the cloth is folded again the stage is bare.
Text: Two Plays for Dancers (Cuala Press, Dundrum, 1919). Public domain.