all, no one
ever saw the body that was buried.'

The rising again of Ireland, of her old speech, of her last leader,
dreams all, as we are told. But here, on the edge of the world, dreams
are real things, and every heart is watching for the opening of one or
another grave.

_AN CRAOIBHIN'S_ PLAYS

I hold that the beginning of modern Irish drama was in the winter of
1898, at a school feast at Coole, when Douglas Hyde and Miss Norma
Borthwick acted in Irish in a Punch and Judy show; and the delighted
children went back to tell their parents what grand curses _An
Craoibhin_ had put on the baby and the policeman.

A little time after that, when a play was wanted for our Literary
Theatre, Dr. Hyde wrote, and then acted in, 'The Twisting of the Rope,'
the first Irish play ever given in a Dublin theatre.

It has been acted many times since then, in Dublin, in London, in
Galway, in Galway Workhouse, in Cornamona, Ballaghaderreen, Ballymoe,
and other places. It has always given great delight, and its success is
very natural; for the Irish-speakers, who are its audience, have an
inborn love of drama, as is shown by their handing down of such long
dramatic dialogues as those between Oisin and St. Patrick, from century
to century. At country gatherings, those old dialogues, and the newer
ones between Death and Raftery, or between the farmers of two
provinces, are followed with a patient joy; and the creation of acting
plays is the natural outcome of this living tradition. And Douglas
Hyde's dramas grow directly from the folk-memory. The tradition and the
beautiful old air, and the song of 'The Twisting of the Rope,' are very
well known:--

'What was the dead cat that put me in this place,
And all the pretty young girls I left after me?
I came into the house where was the bright love of my heart,
And the old hag put me out by the Twisting of the Rope.

'If you are mine, be mine by day and by night;
If you are mine, be mine before the world;
If you are mine, be mine with every inch of your heart;
It is my grief you are not with me as a wife this evening.

'It is down in Sligo I got knowledge of my love;
It is up in Galway I drank my fill with her.
By the strength of my hands, if they do not leave me as I am,
I will do a trick will set these women walking.'

Mr. Yeats made Red Hanrahan the hero of this song in a story in 'The
Secret Rose'; and it is Hanrahan Douglas