THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN

A bare stage of any period. A very old man looking like something out of mythology.

OLD MAN. I have been asked to produce a play called The Death of Cuchulain. It is the last of a series of plays which has for theme his life and death. I have been selected because I am out of fashion and out of date like the antiquated romantic stuff the thing is made of. I am so old that I have forgotten the name of my father and mother, unless indeed I am, as I affirm, the son of Talma, and he was so old that his friends and acquaintances still read Virgil and Homer. When they told me that I could have my own way I wrote certain guiding principles on a bit of newspaper. I wanted an audience of fifty or a hundred, and if there are more I beg them not to shuffle their feet or talk when the actors are speaking. I am sure that as I am producing a play for people I like it is not probable in this vile age that they will be more in number than those who listened to the first performance of Milton’s Comus. On the present occasion they must know the old epics and Mr. Yeats’ plays about them. Such people, however poor, have libraries of their own. If there are more than a hundred I won’t be able to escape people who are educating themselves out of the book societies and the like, sciolists all, pickpockets and opinionated bitches. Why pickpockets? I will explain that, I will make it all quite clear.

[Drum and pipe behind the scene, then silence.

That’s from the musicians; I asked them to do that if I was getting excited. If you were as old you would find it easy to get excited. Before the night ends you will meet the music. There is a singer, a piper and a drummer. I have picked them up here and there about the streets, and I will teach them, if I live, the music of the beggarman, Homer’s music. I promise a dance. I wanted a dance because where there are no words there is less to spoil. Emer must dance, there must be severed heads — I am old, I belong to mythology — severed heads for her to dance before. I had thought to have had those heads carved, but no, if the dancer can dance properly no wood-carving can look as well as a parallelogram of painted wood. But I was at my wit’s end to find a good dancer; I could have got such a dancer once, but she has gone; the tragi-comedian dancer, the tragic dancer, upon the same neck love and loathing, life and death. I spit three times. I spit upon the dancers painted by
Degas. I spit upon their short bodices, their stiff stays, their toes whereon they spin like peg-tops, above all upon that chambermaid face. They might have looked timeless, Rameses the Great, but not the chambermaid, that old maid history. I spit! I spit! I spit!

[The stage is darkened, the curtain falls. Pipe and drum begin and continue until the curtain rises again on a bare stage. Half a minute later Eithne Inguba enters.

EITHNE. Cuchulain! Cuchulain!
Cuchulain enters from back
                     I am Emer’s messenger,
I am your wife’s messenger, she has bid me say
You must not linger here in sloth for Maeve
With all those Connacht ruffians at her back
Burns barns and houses up at Emain Macha:
Your house at Muirthemne already burns.
No matter what’s the odds, no matter though
Your death may come of it, ride out and fight.
The scene is set and you must out and fight.

CUCHULAIN. YOU have told me nothing. I am already armed.
I have sent a messenger to gather men,
And wait for his return. What have you there?

EITHNE. I have nothing.

CUCHULAIN. — There is something in your hand.

EITHNE. NO.

CUCHULAIN. Have you not a letter in your hand?

EITHNE. I do not know how it got into my hand.
I am straight from Emer. We were in some place.
She spoke. She saw.

CUCHULAIN. — This letter is from Emer.
It tells a different story. I am not to move
Until to-morrow morning, for, if now,
I must face odds no man can face and live.
To-morrow morning Conall Cearnach comes
With a great host.

EITHNE. — I do not understand.
Who can have put that letter in my hand?

CUCHULAIN. And there is something more to make it certain
I shall not stir till morning; you are sent
To be my bedfellow, but have no fear;
All that is written but I much prefer
Your own unwritten words. I am for the fight,
I and my handful are set upon the fight;
We have faced great odds before, a straw decided.
The Morrigu enters and stands between them

EITHNE. I know that somebody or something is there,
Yet nobody that I can see.

CUCHULAIN. — There is nobody.

EITHNE. Who among the gods of the air and the upper air
Has a bird’s head?

CUCHULAIN. — Morrigu is headed like a crow.

EITHNE [dazed]. Morrigu, war goddess, stands between.
Her black wing touched me upon the shoulder, and now
All is intelligible.
[The Morrigu goes out.
Maeve put me into a trance.
Though when Cuchulain slept with her as a boy
She seemed as pretty as a bird, she has changed.
She has an eye in the middle of her forehead.

CUCHULAIN. A woman that has an eye in the middle of her forehead,
A woman that is headed like a crow,
But she that put those words into your mouth
Had nothing monstrous; you put them there yourself.
You need a younger man, a friendlier man,
But fearing what my violence might do
Thought out those words to send me to my death,
And were in such excitement you forgot
The letter in your hand.

EITHNE. — NOW that I wake
I say that Maeve did nothing out of error;
What mouth could you believe if not my mouth?

CUCHULAIN. When I went mad at my son’s death and drew
My sword against the sea, it was my wife
That brought me back.

EITHNE. — Better women than I
Have served you well, but ‘twas to me you turned.

CUCHULAIN. You thought that if you changed Ed kill you for it,
When everything sublunary must change,
And if I have not changed that goes to prove
That I am monstrous.

EITHNE. — You’re not the man I loved,
That violent man forgave no treachery.
If thinking what you think you can forgive
It is because you are about to die.

CUCHULAIN. Spoken too loudly and too near the door;
Speak low if you would speak about my death,
Or not in that strange voice exulting in it.
Who knows what ears listen behind the door?

EITHNE. Some that would not forgive a traitor, some
That have the passion necessary to life,
Some not about to die. When you are gone
I shall denounce myself to all your cooks,
Scullions, armourers, bed-makers and messengers,
Until they hammer me with a ladle, cut me with a knife,
Impale me upon a spit, put me to death
By what foul way best please their fancy,
So that my shade can stand among the shades
And greet your shade and prove it is no traitor.

CUCHULAIN. Women have spoken so plotting a man’s death.
Enter a Servant

SERVANT. Your great horse is bitted. All wait the word.

CUCHULAIN. I come to give it, but must ask a question.
This woman, wild with grief, declares that she
Out of pure treachery has told me lies
That should have brought my death. What can I do?
How can I save her from her own wild words?

SERVANT. Is her confession true?

CUCHULAIN. — I make the truth.
I say she brings a message from my wife.

SERVANT. What if I make her swallow poppy juice?

CUCHULAIN. What herbs seem suitable, but protect her life
As it were your own and should I not return
Give her to Conal Cearnach because the women
Have called him a good lover.

EITHNE. — I might have peace that know
The Morrigu, the woman like a crow,
Stands to my defence and cannot lie,
But that Cuchulain is about to die.

[Pipe and drum. The stage is dark for a moment. When it lights up again it is empty. Cuchulain enters wounded. He tries to fasten himself to a pillar-stone with his belt. Aoife, an erect white-haired woman, enters.

AOIFE. Am I recognised, Cuchulain?

CUCHULAIN. — YOU fought with a sword,
It seemed that we should kill each other; then
Your body wearied and I took your sword.

AOIFE. But look again, Cuchulain! Look again!

CUCHULAIN. Your hair is white.

AOIFE. — That time was long ago,
And now it is my time. I have come to kill you.

CUCHULAIN. Where am I? Why am I here?

AOIFE. — YOU asked their leave,
When certain that you had six mortal wounds,
To drink out of the pool.

CUCHULAIN. — I have put my belt
About this stone and want to fasten it
And die upon my feet, but am too wèak.
Fasten this belt.
[She helps him to do so.
And now I know your name,
Aoife, the mother of my son. We met
At the Hawk’s Well under the withered trees.
I killed him upon Baile’s Strand, that is why
Maeve parted ranks that she might let you through.
You have a right to kill me.

AOIFE. — Though I have
Her army did not part to let me through.
The grey of Macha, that great horse of yours
Killed in the battle, came out of the pool
As though it were alive, and went three times
In a great circle round you and that stone,
Then leaped into the pool and not a man
Of all that terrified army dare approach,
But I approach.

CUCHULAIN. — Because you have the right.

AOIFE. But I am an old woman now and that
Your strength may not start up when the time comes
I wind my veil about this ancient stone
And fasten down your hands.

CUCHULAIN. — But do not spoil your veil:
Your veils are beautiful, some with threads of gold.

AOIFE. I am too old to care for such things now.
[She has wound the veil about him.

CUCHULAIN. There was no reason so to spoil your veil:
I am weak from loss of blood.

AOIFE. — I was afraid,
But now that I have wound you in the veil
I am not afraid. Our son — how did he fight?

CUCHULAIN. Age makes more skilful but not better men.

AOIFE. I have been told you did not know his name,
And wanted, because he had a look of me,
To be his friend, but Conchubar forbade it.

CUCHULAIN. Forbade it and commanded me to fight;
That very day I had sworn to do his will,
Yet I refused him and spoke about a look;
But somebody spoke of witchcraft and I said
Witchcraft had made the look, and fought and killed him.
Then I went mad, I fought against the sea.

AOIFE. I seemed invulnerable; you took my sword;
You threw me on the ground and left me there.
I searched the mountain for your sleeping-place
And laid my virgin body at your side,
And yet, because you had left me, hated you
And thought that I would kill you in your sleep
And yet begot a son that night between
Two black thorn trees.

CUCHULAIN. — I cannot understand.

AOIFE. Because about to die.
Somebody comes.
Some countryman, and when he finds you there,
And none to protect him, will be terrified.
I will keep out of his sight for I have things
That I must ask questions on before I kill you.

[She goes. The Blind Man of “On Baile’s Strand” comes in. He moves his stick about until he finds the standing stone; he lays his stick down, stoops and touches Cuchulain’s feet. He feels the legs.

BLIND MAN. Ah! Ah!

CUCHULAIN. — I think you are a blind old man.

BLIND MAN. A blind old beggar-man. What is your name?

CUCHULAIN. Cuchulain.

BLIND MAN. — They say that you are weak with wounds.
I stood between a fool and the sea at Baile’s Strand
When you went mad. What’s bound about your hands
So that they cannot move? Some womanish stuff.
I have been fumbling with my stick since the dawn
And then heard many voices. I began to beg.
Somebody said that I was in Maeve’s tent,
And somebody else, a big man by his voice,
That if I brought Cuchulain’s head in a bag
I would be given twelve pennies; I had the bag
To carry what I get at kitchen doors,
Somebody told me how to find the place;
I thought it would have taken till the night
But this has been my lucky day.

CUCHULAIN. — Twelve pennies!

BLIND MAN. I would not promise anything until the woman,
The great Queen Maeve herself, repeated the words.

CUCHULAIN. Twelve pennies. What better reason for killing a man?
You have a knife, but have you sharpened it?

BLIND MAN. I keep it sharp because it cuts my food.

[He lays bag on ground and begins feeling Cuchulain’s body, his hands mounting upward.

CUCHULAIN. I think that you know everything, Blind Man,
My mother or my nurse said that the blind
Know everything.

BLIND MAN. — NO, but they have good sense.
How could I have got twelve pennies for your head
If I had not good sense?

CUCHULAIN. — There floats out there
The shape that I shall take when I am dead,
My soul’s first shape, a soft feathery shape,
And is not that a strange shape for the soul
Of a great fighting-man?

BLIND MAN. — Your shoulder is there,
This is your neck. Ah! Ah! Are you ready, Cuchulain?

CUCHULAIN. I say it is about to sing.
[The stage darkens.

BLIND MAN. — Ah! Ah!

[Music of pipe and drum, the curtain falls, the music ceases as the curtain rises upon a bare stage. There is nobody upon the stage except a woman with a crow’s head. She is the Morrigu. She stands towards the back. She holds a black parallelogram the size of a man’s head. There are six other parallelograms near the backcloth.

MORRIGU. The dead can hear me and to the dead I speak.
This head is great Cuchulain’s, those other six
Gave him six mortal wounds. This man came first,
Youth lingered though the years ran on, that season
A woman loves the best, Maeve’s latest lover;
This man had given him the second wound,
He had possessed her once; these were her sons,
Two valiant men that gave the third and fourth;
These other men were men of no account,
They saw that he was weakening and crept in,
One gave him the sixth wound and one the fifth.
Conall avenged him. I arranged the dance.
[Emer enters. The Morrigu places the head of Cuchulain upon the ground and goes out. Emer runs in and begins to dance. She so moves that she seems to rage against the heads of those that had wounded Cuchulain, perhaps makes movements as though to strike them, going three times round the circle of the heads. She then moves towards the head of Cuchulain, — It may, if need be, be raised above the others on a pedestal — she moves as if in adoration or in triumph. She is about to prostrate herself before it, perhaps does so, then rises, looking up as though listening. She seems to hesitate between the head and what she hears. Then she stands motionless. There is silence and in the silence a few faint bird notes. The stage darkens slowly. Then comes loud music, but now it is quite different. It is the music of some Irish fair of our day. The stage brightens. Emer and the head are gone. There is none there but the three Musicians. They are in ragged streetsingers’ clothes; two of them play pipe and drum. They cease. The Street-Singer begins to sing.

SINGER. The harlot sang to the beggar-man.
I meet them face to face,
Conall, Cuchulain, Usna’s boys,
All that most ancient race;
Maeve had three in an hour they say;
I adore those clever eyes,
Those muscular bodies, but can get
No grip upon their thighs.
I meet those long pale faces,
Hear their great horses, then
Recall what centuries have passed
Since they were living men,
That there are still some living
That do my limbs unclothe,
But that the flesh my flesh has gripped
I both adore and loathe.
[Pipe and drum music.

SINGER. Are those things that men adore and loathe
Their sole reality?
What stood in the Post Office
With Pearse and Connolly?
What comes out of the mountain
Where men first shed their blood?
Who thought Cuchulain till it seemed
He stood where they had stood?

No body like his body
Has modern woman borne,
But an old man looking back on life
Imagines it in scorn.
A statue’s there to mark the place
By Oliver Sheppard done.
So ends the tale that the harlot
Sang to the beggar-man.
[Music from pipe and drum.

Curtain