at Dundrum with the help of the village girls. I have been busy with a
single art, that of the theatre, of a small, unpopular theatre; and this
art may well seem to practical men, busy with some programme of
industrial or political regeneration, of no more account than the
shaping of an agate; and yet in the shaping of an agate, whether in the
cutting or the making of the design, one discovers, if one have a
speculative mind, thoughts that seem important and principles that may
be applied to life itself, and certainly if one does not believe so, one
is but a poor cutter of so hard a stone.

W. B. YEATS.

August, 1912.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THOUGHTS ON LADY GREGORY'S TRANSLATIONS
I. Cuchulain and his Cycle 1
II. Fion and his Cycle 12

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE WELL OF THE SAINTS 36

DISCOVERIES
Prophet, Priest and King 49
Personality and the Intellectual Essences 56
The Musician and the Orator 61
A Guitar Player 63
The Looking-glass 65
The Tree of Life 67
The Praise of Old Wives' Tales 71
The Play of Modern Manners 73
Has the Drama of Contemporary Life a Root of its Own? 76
Why the Blind Man in Ancient Times was made a Poet 79
Concerning Saints and Artists 85
The Subject Matter of Drama 89
The Two Kinds of Asceticism 94
In the Serpent's Mouth 97
The Black and the White Arrows 99
His Mistress's Eyebrows 100
The Tresses of the Hair 103
A Tower on the Apennines 104
The Thinking of the Body 106
Religious Belief Necessary to Religious Art 109
The Holy Places 113

POETRY AND TRADITION 116

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF JOHN M. SYNGE'S POEMS