place where he may be free from the nagging of his daughter and
her children; and in Myles Gorman, in this same play, is sounded that
other call that is recurrent in his work, the call of the road. We see
more of wanderer than of artist, too, in Conn Hourican, though Mr. Colum
calls the play he made for him "The Fiddler's House"; and here, too, the
love of land is a motive--love of land and the wander-love battle in
"The Land" (1905), with love of woman the deciding factor in the
latter's victory.

Mr. Colum would not be an Irishman if nationality and religion were not
also motives in his plays and poems, but it is only in his 'prentice
work that either appears as a leading motive. From a good deal of
writing, most of which appeared originally in "The United Irishmen," he
has republished only the three plays before mentioned, "The Land"
(1905), "The Fiddler's House" (1907), "Thomas Muskerry" (1910), his
miracle play, "The Miracle of the Corn," and two stories in "Studies"
(1907), and what he wishes to preserve of his verse in "Wild
Earth" (1909).

It was through "The Daughters of Erin" that Mr. Colum came in touch with
the dramatic movement. Their plays and tableaux in the Antient Concert
Rooms in 1900 attracted his attention, and he wrote to the secretary,
inclosing with the note copies of two plays that he had written--the
dramatic achievements of his late 'teens. These plays were about the
"Children of Lir," that one of "The Three Sorrows of Story-Telling"
that is less poignant than the story of Deirdre only because it is less
human, and about Brian Boru, the high king that beat back the Danes at
Clontarf. Faery and mediaeval history were not destined, however, to be
Mr. Colum's field, and Mr. Fay, then stage manager of the Association
productions, probably helped him on the way to his true field, the life
of the peasant of the Midlands, by declaring them rubbish. Two years
later Mr. Colum had learned enough about life and about the stage to
write a play against enlistment in the English army that held the
attention of audiences and was regarded as good propagandist "stuff."
"The Saxon Shillin'," produced May 15, 1903, Mr. Colum has not
republished, nor "The Kingdom of the Young" (1902), which like its
predecessor was published in "The United Irishmen." With this last play,
as its title indicates, Mr. Colum found his way to that subject of
youth, which, whatever other one of his dominant motives his plays may
invo