The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Countess Cathleen, by William Butler Yeats

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Title: The Countess Cathleen

Author: William Butler Yeats

Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5167]
Posting Date: March 26, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN ***

Produced by Marjorie Fulton

THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN

By W. B. Yeats

1912

First Edition............................ 1892
Second Edition (in "Poems" by W. B. Yeats) 1895
Third Edition ,, ,, 1899
Fourth Edition ,, ,, 1901
Fifth Edition ,, ,, 1904
Sixth Edition ,, ,, 1908
Seventh Edition (revised)................ 1912

(All rights reserved.)

To MAUD GONNE

"The sorrowful are dumb for thee"
Lament of Morion Shehone for Miss Mary Bourke

SHEMUS RUA, A Peasant
MARY, His Wife
TEIG, His Son
ALEEL, A Poet
THE COUNTESS CATHLEEN
OONA, Her Foster Mother
Two Demons disguised as Merchants
Peasants, Servants, Angelical Beings, Spirits

The Scene is laid in Ireland and in old times.

SCENE 1

SCENE--A room with lighted fire, and a door into the open air,
through which one sees, perhaps, the trees of a wood, and these
trees should be painted in flat colour upon a gold or diapered
sky. The walls are of one colour. The scene should have the
effect of missal Painting. MARY, a woman of forty years or so,
is grinding a quern.

MARY. What can have made the grey hen flutter so?

(TEIG, a boy of fourteen, is coming in with turf, which he lays
beside the hearth.)

TEIG. They say that now the land is famine struck
The graves are walking.

MARY. There is something that the hen hears.

TEIG. And that is not the worst; at Tubber-vanach
A woman met a man with ears spread out,
And they moved up and down like a bat's wing.

MARY. What can have ke