University of California • Berkeley 
 
 From the Estate of 
 Raymond Wallace 
 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
The House of Usna 
 
 A DRAMA BY 
 FIONA MACLEOD 
 
 PORTLAND MAINE 
 
 THOMAS B MOSHER 
 
 MDCCCCIII 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 THOMAS B. MOSHER 
 
 1903 
 
TO 
 MONA 
 
FOREWORD 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 N this short drama I have 
 attempted to give voice to 
 two elemental emotions, 
 the emotion of the inevit- 
 ableness of destiny and the emotion of 
 tragical loveliness. One does not need 
 to know the story of Concobar and 
 Deirdre, of Deirdre and the Sons of 
 Usna, in order to know the mystery 
 and the silent arrivals of destiny, or to 
 know the emotion of sorrow at the 
 passage of beauty : as one does not 
 need to know the story of Iphtgeneta 
 in Aulis in order to know the emotion 
 of indignation at kingly guile or the 
 emotion of pity for the betrayed : as 
 one does not need to know the story 
 of the Crowned Hiffolytos in order to 
 know the emotion of tragical suspense, 
 as when Phaedra's love for the son of 
 her husband is like a leaf on the wind ; 
 or in order to know the emotion of 
 
 ix 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 bewildered futility, as when Theseus 
 curses and banishes his innocent son 
 and persuades to him the doom of 
 Poseidon. For these emotions are 
 not the properties of drama, which is 
 but a fowler snaring them in a net. 
 These deep elementals are the obscure 
 Chorus which plays upon the silent 
 flutes, upon the nerves wherein the 
 soul sits enmeshed. They have their 
 own savage or divine energy, and the 
 man of the woods and the dark girl of 
 the canebrakes know them with the 
 same bowed suspense or uplifted 
 lamentation or joy as do the men and 
 women who have great names and to 
 whom the lords of the imagination 
 have given immortality. 
 
 Many kings have desired, and the 
 gods forbidden. Concobar has but 
 lain down where Caesars have fallen 
 and Pharaohs closed imperial eyes, 
 and many satraps and many tyrants 
 have bent before the wind. All old 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 men who in strength and passion rise 
 up against the bitterness of destiny 
 are the kindred of Lear : those who 
 have kept love as the crown of years, 
 and seen it go from them like a wreath 
 of sand, are of the kin of Concobar. 
 There is not one Lear only, or one 
 Concobar, in the vast stage of life : 
 but a multitude of men who ask, in 
 the dark hour of the Winged Destiny, 
 Am I in truth a king? or who, 
 incredulous, whisper Deirdre is dead, 
 DeirdrS the beautiful is dead, is dead. 
 The tradition of accursed families 
 is not the fantasy of one dramatist or 
 of one country or of one time. The 
 Oresteia of Aischylos is no more than 
 a tragic fugue wherein one hears the 
 cries of uncountable threnodies. The 
 doom of the clan of Usna is not less 
 veiled in terror and perpetuated in 
 fatality than the doom of the Atredai : 
 and even ' The Fall of the House of 
 Usher ' is but a single note of the same 
 
 xi 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 ancient mystery over which Sophocles 
 brooded in the lamentations which 
 eddy like mournful winds around the 
 House of Labdacus. 
 
 Whether the poet turn to the tragedy 
 of the Theban dynasty wherein Laios 
 and lokaste and Gidipus move like 
 children of fire in a wood doomed to 
 flame; or to the tragedy of the 
 Achaian dynasty, wherein Pelops and 
 Atreus, Agamemnon and Menelaos, 
 Helen and Iphigeneia, Klytaimestra 
 prophesying and the prophet Kalchas, 
 are like shadowy figures, crowned 
 with terror and beauty, on the verge 
 of a dark sea where the menace of an 
 obscure wind is continually heard 
 beyond the enchanted shore ; or to 
 the tragedy of Lear weeping, where 
 all kingship seems as a crown left in 
 the desert to become the spoil of the 
 adder or a pillow for wandering dust ; 
 or to the Celtic tragedy of the House 
 of Fionn, where Dermid and Grania, 
 
 xii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 where Oisin and Malveen, are like the 
 winds and the waters, the rains and 
 the lamentations of the hills ; or to 
 that other and less familiar gaelic 
 tragedy of the House of Usna, where 
 an old king knows madness because 
 of garnered love spilt and wasted, and 
 where a lamp of deathless beauty 
 shines like a beacon, and where heroes 
 die as leaves fall, and where a wind 
 of prophesying is like the sound of 
 dark birds flying over dark trees in 
 the darkness of forgotten woods : — 
 whether one turn to these, or to the 
 doom of the House of Malatesta, or to 
 the doom of the House of Macbeth, 
 or to the doom of the House of 
 Ravenswood, one turns in vain if he 
 be blind and deaf to the same elemental 
 forces as they move their eternal ichor 
 through the blood that has to-day*s 
 warmth in it, that are the same powers 
 though they be known of the obscure 
 and the silent, and are committed like 
 
 xiii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 wandering flame to the torch of a 
 ballad as well as to the starry march 
 of the compelling words of genius ; 
 are of the same dominion, though that 
 be in the shaken hearts of islesfolk 
 and mountaineers, and not with kings 
 in Mykenai, or by the thrones of 
 Tamburlaine and Aurungzebe, or with 
 great lords and broken nobles and 
 thanes. 
 
 But the poet, the dramatist, is not 
 able — is not yet able — to express in 
 beauty and convey in symbol the 
 visible energy of these emotions with- 
 out resort to the artifice of men and 
 women set in array, with harmonious 
 and arbitrary speech given to them, 
 and a background of illusion made 
 unreal by being made emphatic. 
 
 If one were to express the passion 
 of remorse under the signal of a Voice 
 lamenting, or the passion of tears 
 under the signal of a Cry, and be 
 content to give no name to these 
 
 xiv 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 protagonists and to deny them the 
 background of history or legend : and 
 were to unite them in the sequence of 
 significant and essential things which 
 is drama in action, but in a sequence 
 of suggestion and symbol rather than 
 of statement and pageant ; he would 
 be told that he had mistaken the 
 method of music passing into drama 
 for the method of verbal illusion pass- 
 ing into drama. 
 
 And, while this is so, it cannot 
 be gainsaid that he must not seek 
 to disengage from the creature of 
 his imagination these old allies, the 
 intimate name and the familiar cir- 
 cumstance. It may be true that a 
 Voice and a Cry may suffice, not 
 as choric echo or emphasis, but as 
 protagonists in a drama where the 
 passions and energies and unveiled 
 emotions are unloosed, and elemental 
 strives with elemental, till Love and 
 Terror may in very weariness lie down 
 
 XV 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 together, and Death and Sorrow and 
 Wrath and Lamentation disclose their 
 own august nakedness, beings stand- 
 ing apart from the mortal wrappings 
 of words and action, of silence and 
 sound and colour and shape, to which 
 our mind compels them. But that is 
 too subtle a dream for realisation to 
 seem possible yet. It is too subtle 
 perhaps even as the insubstantial 
 phantom of a dream, save for those 
 who, hungering after the wild honey 
 of the mind and thirsting for the 
 remoter springs, foresee a time when 
 the imagination shall lay aside words 
 and pigments and clay, as raiment 
 needless during the festivals of the 
 spirit, and express itself in the thoughts 
 which inhabit words — as light inhabits 
 water or as greenness inhabits grass ; 
 and in the colours which inhabit pig- 
 ments, as wild-roses and dew-wet 
 laburnum and white and purple iris 
 gathered from a June morning and 
 
 xvi 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 hidden in earthenware jars ; and in 
 the perpetual and protean energy of 
 Form which, tranced and unique, 
 dreams in clay or sleeps in marble or 
 ivory. 
 
 But so long as the imagination 
 dwells in this old convention which 
 imposes upon us the use of events that 
 chime to the bells of the past, and the 
 use of names which are at once con- 
 gruous and traditional .... in this 
 convention of episode and phrase in the 
 concert of action and suspense .... 
 it will be well ever and again to turn to 
 those ancestral themes past which so 
 many generations have slipt like sea- 
 going winds over pastures, and upon 
 which the thoughts of many minds 
 have fallen in secret dews. I do not 
 say, for I do not so think, that there 
 might not be drama as moving whether 
 it deal with the event of to-day and 
 the accent of the hour as with a remote 
 accent recovered and with remote 
 
 xvii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 event. Some of the dramas of Brown- 
 ing, some of the finer French dramas, 
 some of the short plays of Mr. Yeats 
 and others, are to the point. But, to 
 many minds, there must always be a 
 supreme attraction in great themes of 
 drama as familiar to us as the tales 
 of faerie and wonder to the mind of 
 childhood. The mind, however, need 
 not be bondager to formal tradition. I 
 know one who can evoke modern 
 dramatic scenes by the mere iterance 
 of the great musical names of the 
 imagination . . . Menelaos, Helen, 
 Klytemaistra, Andromache, Kassan- 
 dra, Orestes, Blind Oidipus, Elektra, 
 Kreusa, and the like. This is not 
 because these names are in themselves 
 esoteric symbols, or are built of letters 
 of revelation as the fabled tower of Ys 
 was built of evocatory letters made of 
 wind and water, of browness of earth, 
 of greenness of grass, and of dew, 
 all of which the druids held in the 
 
 xviii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 hollows of the five vowels. My friend 
 has not seen any representation of the 
 Agame?nnon or the Choefhoroi^ of 
 Aias or Oidifus at Kolonos, of Elek- 
 tra or lon^ or indeed of any Greek 
 play. But he knows the story of 
 every name mentioned in each of the 
 dramas of the three kings of Greek 
 Tragedy. So, as he says, why should 
 he go out to see a trivial play of trivial 
 people animated by trivial emotions 
 against a background of trivial cir- 
 cumstance, when he can sit before his 
 fire and see Elektra and Orestes 
 standing appalled before the dead 
 body of Klytaimestra, listening if the 
 coming steps are the steps of murdered 
 Aigisthos, and cowering when they 
 see the pale immortal faces of the 
 Dioskoroi : or see Oidipus, that proud 
 king, when he hears the first terrible 
 whisper of destiny from the lips of the 
 prophet Teiresias, or when, blind and 
 abased, he lies in the dust, with 
 
 xix 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 lokaste, wife and queen and revealed 
 mother, already * a silent fruit on 
 the tree of death,' while, beyond, the 
 Choros raves : or when, as in Aias, 
 ( as our Cuchulain fighting the waves 
 with drawn sword and foam on his 
 lips, or Conchobar in the legendary 
 tale that on the day of the Crucifixion 
 he ran into the woods lopping great 
 branches from the trees and calling 
 * A king is fallen to-day, an innocent 
 king is slain, a great king is fallen ! ') 
 the mad prince runs among a herd 
 of cattle and slaughters the lowing 
 bulls, thinking them to be Agamem- 
 non and Menelaos — or, later, when 
 he stands subtly smiling as though 
 acquiescing to the fair words of Tek- 
 messa, and then with sidelong eyes 
 goes furtively to the solitary place 
 where he may fall upon his sword? 
 Or, again, he may see Klytaimestra 
 entering the doorway, with Elektra and 
 Orestes waiting with beating hearts, 
 
 XX 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 not as either Euripides or Aischylos 
 has revealed to us ; or may see Oidipus 
 staring with sudden scornful wrath at 
 Teiresias, not as either Aischylos or 
 Sophocles has revealed to us ; but a 
 Klytaimestra, an Elektra, an Orestes, 
 an Oidipus, a Teiresias, as revealed 
 to his own vision that is of to-day, 
 shaped from the mould that moulds 
 the spirit of to-day and coloured 
 with the colour of to-day's mind. And 
 here, he says, is his delight. *'For I 
 do not live only in the past, but in the 
 present, in these dramas of the mind. 
 The names stand for the elemental 
 passions, and I can come to them 
 through my own gates of to-day as 
 well as through the ancient portals of 
 Aischylos or Sophocles or Euripides : 
 and for background I prefer the flame- 
 light and the sound of the wind to any 
 of the crude illusions of stagecraft." 
 
 It is no doubt in this attitude that 
 Racine, so French in the accent of his 
 
 xxi 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 classical genius, looked at the old 
 drama which was his inspiration : that 
 Mr. Swinburne and Mr. Bridges, so 
 English in the accent of their genius, 
 have looked at it ; that Etchegaray, in 
 Spain, looked at it before he produced 
 his troubled modern Elektra which 
 is so remote in shapen thought and 
 coloured semblance from the colour 
 and idea of its prototype ; that Gabriele 
 D'Annunzio looked at it before he 
 became obsessed with the old terrible 
 idea of the tangled feet of Destiny, so 
 that a tuft of grass might withhold or 
 a breath from stirred dust empoison, 
 and wrote that most perturbing of all 
 modern dramas, La Citta Morta, 
 
 It concurs, then, that there is no 
 inherent reason why a poet of to-day 
 should not overtake the same themes 
 as Aischylos overtook from Phrynicus, 
 and Sophocles from Aischylos, and 
 Euripides from all three, and Philocles 
 and Agathon and Xenocles indiscrim- 
 
 xxii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 inately. The difficulty is not in the 
 remoteness of the theme, still less in 
 the essential substance. It is in the 
 mistaken idea that the ancient formal 
 method is inevitable, and in the mis- 
 taken idea that a theme sustained on 
 essential and elemental things and 
 therefore independent of unique cir- 
 cumstance can be exhausted by the 
 flashing upon it of one great light. 
 Kassandra and Helen and Iphigeneia 
 . . . they live : they are not dead. 
 But, to approach them, to come face 
 to face v^ith them, that is not the 
 reward of the most eager mind, or of 
 the most uplifted desire : it is the 
 reward only of genius akin in quality 
 at least with that of those great ones 
 of old who, like drifting Pharos, 
 flashed across the dark seas of 
 antiquity a dazzling illumination on 
 this lifted wave called Helen, on that 
 lifted wave called Andromache, on 
 these long rolling billows called Aga- 
 
 xxiii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 memnon or Aias or Orestes. It is not 
 the themes that have receded but the 
 imaginations that have quailed. 
 
 Merely to parody the Greek trage- 
 dians, by taking a great theme and 
 putting one's presumption and weak- 
 ness beside it — that is another thing 
 altogether. It is difficult after Shelley 
 and Robert Browning, after Mr. 
 Swinburne and Mr. Robert Bridges, 
 to say that no modern English poet 
 has achieved a play with a Greek 
 heart ... no play written as a nine- 
 teenth century Sophocles or Euripides 
 or Agathon would have written it. 
 Even on Prometheus Unbound and 
 Atalanta in Calydon, even on Erech- 
 theus, the Gothic genius of the North 
 has laid a touch as delicate as frost, 
 as durable as the finger of primeval 
 fire on the brows of immemorial rock. 
 Perhaps the plays of Mr. Bridges are 
 more truly classical than any modern 
 drama since Racine. But their flame 
 
 xxiv 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 is flame seen in a mirror : we see the 
 glow, we are intellectually warmed 
 by it, but we do not feel it ... . our 
 minds only, not our hearts that should 
 burn, our nerves that should thrill, 
 respond. 
 
 The reason, I do not doubt, is 
 mainly a psychical rather than an 
 intellectual difficulty. It is the in- 
 dwelling spirit and not the magnetic 
 mind that is wayward and eager to 
 evade the compelling wand of the 
 imagination. For the spirit is not 
 under the spell of tradition. It wishes 
 to go its own way. Tradition says, 
 if you would write of the slaying 
 of Klytaimestra you must present a 
 recognisable Elektra and a recog- 
 nisable Orestes, and Dioskoroi rec- 
 ognisable as Dioskoroi against a 
 recognisable background : but to the 
 spirit Elektra and Orestes are simply 
 abstract terms of the theatre of the 
 imagination, the Dioskoroi are august 
 
 XXV 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 powers, winnowers of fate, and the 
 old Greek background is but a 
 remembered semblance of a living 
 stage that is not to-day what it was 
 yesterday or shall be to-morrow, and 
 yet is ever in essentials the same. 
 
 There is not one of the Greek 
 dramas which might not in spiritual 
 identity be achieved to-day by genius 
 that, with equality of power, could 
 perceive the intransiency of the essen- 
 tial and immortal factors in the life of 
 the imagination and the mutability 
 of what is accidental in time and 
 circumstance. 
 
 We are, I believe, turning towards 
 a new theatre. The theatre of Ibsen, 
 and all it stands for, is become out- 
 worn as a compelling influence. Its 
 inherent tendency to demonstrate 
 intellectually from a series of incon- 
 trovertible material facts is not ade- 
 quate for those who would see in the 
 drama the means to demonstrate sym- 
 
 xxvi 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 bolically from a sequence of intuitive 
 perception. A subtle French critic, 
 writing of the theatre of Ibsen, appre- 
 ciates it as a theatre more negative 
 than positive, more revolutionary than 
 foundational, more intellectual than 
 religious. **A ce theatre amer et 
 sec," he adds, ^'Tame moderne ne 
 pent etancher toutes ses soifs d'infini 
 et d'absolu. " 
 
 I think that, there, the right thing 
 is said, as well as the significant indi- 
 cation given. ** More intellectual 
 than religious " : that is, more con- 
 gruous with the method of the mirror 
 that gathers and reveals certain facets 
 of the spirit, than with the spirit who 
 as in a glass darkly looks into the 
 mirror. " More intellectual than re- 
 ligious " : that is, more persuaded by 
 the sight that reveals the visible than 
 by the vision that perceives what 
 materially is not visible. 'At this 
 bitter and dry theatre of the intellect, 
 
 xxvii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 the modern soul cannot quench its 
 thirst for the infinite and absolute': 
 and that is the reason, alone adequate, 
 why to-day the minds of men are turn- 
 ing to a new drama, wherein thoughts 
 and ideas and intuitions shall play a 
 more significant part than the acted 
 similitudes of the lesser emotions that 
 are not so much the incalculable life of 
 the soul as the conditioned energies 
 of the body. The Psychic drama 
 shall not be less nervous : but the 
 emotional energy shall be along the 
 nerves of the spirit, which sees be- 
 neath and above and beyond, rather 
 than merely along the nerves of mate- 
 rial life, which sees only that which 
 is in the line of sight. 
 
 And as I have written elsewhere, it 
 may well be that, in a day of outworn 
 conventions, many of us are ready to 
 turn gladly from the scenic illusions 
 of the stage-carpenter and the palpable 
 illusions of the playwright, to the 
 
 xxviii 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 ever-new illusions of the dreaming 
 mind, woven in a new intense dramatic 
 reality against * imagined tapestries * 
 
 .... dream-coloured dramas of tke mind 
 Best seen against imagined tapestries .... 
 
 against revealing shadows and tragic 
 glooms and radiances as real, and as 
 near, as the crude symbols of painted 
 boards and stereotyped phrase in which 
 we still have a receding pleasure. 
 
 I think the profoundest utterance I 
 know, witnessing to the fundamentally 
 psychical nature of the drama, is a 
 phrase of Chateaubriand which I came 
 upon recently in Book V. of his 
 
 Memoir es * * to recover the 
 
 desert I took refuge in the theatre. " 
 The whole effort of a civilisation 
 become anaemic and disillusioned must 
 be to * recover the desert.' That is a 
 central truth, perceived now of many 
 who are still the few. This great 
 writer knew that in the thidtre de Vdme 
 
 xxix 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 lay the subtlest and most searching 
 means for the imagination to compel 
 reality to dreams, to compel actuality 
 to vision, to compel to the symbolic 
 congregation of words the bewildered 
 throng of wandering and illusive 
 thoughts and ideas. By * the desert' 
 he meant that wilderness, that actual 
 or symbolic solitude, to which the 
 creative imagination goes as the curlew 
 to the wastes or as the mew to foam 
 and wind. 
 
 Other writers speak of * nature ' 
 and * solitude ' as though regarding 
 them as sanctuaries where the passions 
 may, like the wild falcons, cover their 
 faces with their wings, and be still. 
 Chateaubriand was of those few who 
 look upon the solitudes of nature as 
 enchanted lands, where terror walks 
 with beauty, and where dreams start 
 affrighted from quiet pools because 
 the shadow of invisible fear falls past 
 their shadowy hair and they see the 
 
 XXX 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 phantom slipping from depth to depth 
 as a wind-eddy from leaf to leaf. He 
 was of those who looked upon solitude 
 as, of old, anchorites looked upon 
 waste places where the vulture had 
 her eyrie and the hyena wailed and in 
 desolate twilights the lioness filled the 
 dark with the hunger of her young. 
 *' Be upon your guard against solitude : 
 the great passions are solitary, and to 
 transport them to the desert is to restore 
 them to their triumph." 
 
 But I have wandered from the 
 narrower path on which I set out. 
 ■Elsewhere, I hope to express more 
 adequately what here I have cursorily 
 outlined, and, also, tentatively to illus- 
 trate the Psychic Drama as thus 
 indicated. It is because my mind is 
 occupied with many problems of a 
 new drama that I have thus burdened 
 a mere act, remembered as it were 
 from some vast unwritten ancient 
 drama, with so lengthy a preface. 
 
 xxxi 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 However, it may stand as the state- 
 ment of a movement of return on the 
 part of individual thought, that I 
 believe to be indicative of a movement 
 of return on the part of modern 
 thought, to the instinct of organic 
 unity and .... in the deep sense of 
 the term . . . to a religious inspiration. 
 
 F. M. 
 
 xxxii 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 A DRAMA 
 
NOTE 
 
 ON CO BAR MAC 
 NESS A was King of 
 Ulster and Ard-Ree or 
 High-King of Ireland at 
 the beginning of the Christian era. 
 By some chroniclers his reign is said 
 to be synchronous with the mortal 
 years of Christ, 
 
 Concobar had founded the knight- 
 ly order of ''The Red Branch'' — 
 the forerunrier^ though on a more 
 epical scale, of the Round Table of 
 the Arthurian Chivalry — and by 
 his force of will and the power of 
 his nation [the Ultonians, the people 
 of Uladh, or Ulster) had become 
 not only High-King of Ireland, but 
 dreamed to make of its 7tations one 
 natiofZy and that he and his sons and 
 his sons sons should be its kings, 
 hi this he disregarded both the 
 
NOTE 
 
 prophecies of the seers and the will of 
 the gods ; for he had long schemed^ 
 and at last accomplished, a deed of 
 evil and treachery upon three of the 
 champions of the Alban or Scottish 
 Gael, Naysha (Naois) and his two 
 brothers, the sons of Usna, though 
 the hero Usna had been allied to him 
 and was bond-brother in war and 
 courtesy. 
 
 The period of this drama is about 
 four years after the elopement of 
 Deirdre, as told in the old tale 
 of Deirdre and the Sons of Usna: 
 a retold version of which, from. 
 Gaelic and other sources, has already 
 appeared in the Old World Series 
 of reprints. More explicitly, the 
 actual period is the year following 
 the triumph of Concobar's inveterate 
 hate in his treacherous murder of 
 Naysha {Naois) and his brothers 
 
NOTE 
 
 Ailne {Ainnle) and Ardan, because 
 of Naysha's love of Deirdre {the 
 High-Kings ward and most beauti- 
 ful woman of her time^ and by 
 Concobar destined to be his queen^ 
 despite the prophecies at her birth) 
 and of Deirdre's for N ay s ha. 
 Because of broken kingly honour, 
 and the slaying of the sons of Usna 
 and the death of Deirdre, Cormac 
 Conlingas, Concobar s son and heir, 
 with other champions, seceded and 
 joined the dread enemy Queen Meave, 
 then advancing against the Ultonian 
 Kingdom from the middle provinces 
 and the west} Conaill Carna 
 and the youthful Setanta \already 
 famous as the Hound (Cu), or 
 
 I As the names have everywhere been anglicised . . 
 . . . e. g. Medb or Medbh into Meave, pronounced 
 Mave; and Naois into Naysha . . . I need add 
 only that Cuchulain is pronounced Coohoolin, and 
 Eilidh, Eily. 
 
NOTE 
 
 Cuchulain, the Hound of Chulain\ 
 were among those who in their 
 loyalty remained with Concobar to 
 fight with vain magnificent heroism 
 against the will of the gods. 
 
 It is at this juncture that Cormac 
 Conlingas, suddenly deciding to 
 return to Uladh to rejoin Concobar 
 and the Red Branch, is seduced by 
 his great love for the wife of 
 Cravetheen the Harper, arid, while 
 with her, is burned to death by 
 Cravetheen, 
 
 When the drama opens, Concobar 
 (already, as was presaged, brought to 
 the verge of madness by his thwarted 
 and inconsolable passion for Deirdre, 
 and by his urikingly and treacherous 
 revenge and its outcome) does not 
 know that this new evil is come 
 upon him and his house and nation, 
 though in truth the end is at hand 
 
NOTE 
 
 when the star of Ireland shall set in 
 blood from the north to the south 
 and from the east to the west. 
 
DRAMATIS PERSONS 
 
 CoNCOBAR Mac Nessa. King of Ulster and 
 High-King of Ireland. 
 
 DuACH. A Druid. 
 
 CoEL. An Old Blind Harper. 
 
 Cravetheen. a Harper of the Kingship 
 of Conairey M6r. 
 
 Main^. a Boy. 
 and 
 
 Ultonian Warriors. 
 
 Unseen : Mourners passing through the for- 
 est with the charred bodies of Cormac 
 Conlingas and Eilidh the Fair. 
 
 Chorus oj Harpers. 
 
SCENE I 
 
open glade in a forest of pines and 
 oaks, with the silent fires of sunset 
 on the boles. Confused cries are 
 heard, but as though a long way 
 off. A dishevelled savage figure, 
 clad in deerskin and hide-bound 
 leggings, slips forward furtively 
 from tree to tree. His long dark 
 locks fall about his misshapen 
 shoulders: his left arm is in a 
 sling: in his right hand he 
 carries a spear. He stands at 
 last listening inte^itly. 
 
 Starting abruptly he lifts his spear, 
 but slowly lowers it as an old 
 man, blind, clad iji a white robe, 
 with flat gold cirque about his 
 waist and an oak- fillet round his 
 head, comes forward leanhig on 
 a staff. 
 
COEL. 
 
 HO is it who is near 
 me? I hear the quick 
 breath of one who . . . 
 of one who hunts ... or 
 is hunted. 
 
 CRAVETHEEN. 
 
 Druid, I am a stranger. Where 
 am I ? Tell me your name ? 
 
 COEL. 
 
 I am Coel the Druid . . . Coel 
 the old blind harper. 
 
 CRAVETHEEN. 
 
 I too am a harper, though I am 
 no druid. I am Cravetheen the 
 Harper. I am warrior and chief 
 harper to the great king Cbnairey 
 Mbr. I crave sanctuary, Coel the 
 Harper! I crave sanctuary . . . 
 quick! quick! 
 
 13 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 COEL. 
 
 From whom ? 
 
 The confused cries are louder and 
 grow louder, then cease, 
 
 CRAVETHEEN {shaking his 
 spear). 
 
 From them, 
 
 COEL. 
 
 You are safe here. Tell me this, 
 you who are called Cravetheen: 
 where is Cormac Conlingas, the son 
 of the High-King Concobar.? Does 
 he hasten north to the side of his 
 father whom he deserted, because 
 Concobar the king slew the sons of 
 Usna, and because Deirdre died 
 of that great sorrow, Deirdre, the 
 the wife of Naysha, the pride of the 
 house of Usna? 
 
 14 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 CRAVETHEEN {with savage 
 mocking). 
 
 Ay, a great king truly, Concobar, 
 the son of Nessa ! From childhood 
 he kept the beautiful Deirdre to be 
 his queen, but Naysha swooped like 
 a hawk and carried her to the north, 
 because each loved each and laughed 
 at the king. And then did the great 
 Concobar track him through Eire 
 to Alba? Nol Did he force the 
 sword upon him, Deirdre's beloved ? 
 No ! For three years he lay like a 
 wolf on a hillside staring at a far- 
 off fold . . . and then with smooth 
 words he won Naysha and his two 
 hero-brothers, and the beautiful 
 Deirdre, and gave kingly warrant 
 to them . . . and then, ha! then 
 was the noise of swords, then were 
 red streams of blood, where the 
 House of Usna fought the fight of 
 
 15 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 three heroes against a multitude 
 ... and their shameful glorious 
 death . . . and then Deirdre, won- 
 der of the world, did Concobar win 
 her at the last? No! No! She 
 fell dead by the side of him whom 
 she loved, by the body of Naysha, 
 the son of Usna! A true queen, 
 Deirdre the Beautiful! 
 
 CO EL (raising his staff). 
 Who are you ? Who are you ? 
 No sanctuary here for the foe of 
 Concobar the king ! 
 
 CRAVETHEEN {with a loud, 
 wailing, chanting voice). 
 
 I am the voice of the House of 
 Usna. I am the voice in the wind 
 crying for ever and ever " Kings 
 shall lie in the dust: great princes 
 shall be brought to shame: the 
 champions of the mighty shall be 
 
 i6 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 as swordsmen waving reeds, as 
 spearmen spearing the grass, as men 
 pursuing and wooing shadows!" 
 {A momenf s pause) Ay, by the sun 
 and wind, Coel the Blind, I am the 
 broken spear of the great gods . . . 
 the spear to slay them that foully 
 slew the sons of Usna . . . the 
 spear to goad to madness Concobar 
 the king ! 
 
 COEL {angrily). 
 Tell me, mad fool, do you fly 
 from the wrath of Cormac Conlin- 
 gas, the son of Concobar ? 
 
 CRAVETHEEN {laughing 
 mockingly), 
 Cormac, the son of Concobar! 
 Cormac Conlingas, Cormac of the 
 Yellow Locks ! No, no, old man, 
 I do not fly before the wrath of 
 Cormac the Beautiful ! Nor shall 
 
 17 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 any man again fly before him, before 
 Cormac the Beautiful, Cormac the 
 Prince, Cormac the son of Concobar ! 
 
 CO EL {eagerly). 
 
 What! is the king's son dead . . . 
 is he slain ? 
 
 CRAVETHEEN 
 
 {coming close, and speaking low, in a 
 changed voice). 
 
 Old man, there was a woman of 
 my people as beautiful as Deirdre. 
 She loved an Ultonian, that had 
 for name Cormac . . . Cormac Con- 
 lingas. Cbnairey Mbr was fierce 
 with anger at that, and sent him 
 away, but against her will, and gave 
 her to me, who loved her, though 
 she hated me. So I took her to 
 my Dun. But this Cormac came 
 there and found her . . . and I . . . 
 
 i8 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 oh, I too came back suddenly, and 
 learned that he was there ! 
 
 A long wailing chant is heard, 
 COEL. 
 
 Hush ! What is that ? 
 
 CRAVETHEEN {still leaning 
 
 close^ and speaking low). 
 That? . . . That is the wailing 
 of those who carry hither to Con- 
 cobar the dead bodies of Cormac 
 his son and Eilidh the Fair. {Sud- 
 denly springing back, and crying 
 loudly) For I set fire to the great 
 Dun, O Coel the Blind, and I 
 laughed when the red flames swept 
 up to where the sleepers lay — and 
 they died, Cormac and Eilidh, to 
 the glad death-song of me, Crave- 
 theen the Harper! Two charred 
 logs these mourners carry now — 
 Ah-h-h! 
 
 19 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 (As he cries a spear whirls across 
 the stage from left to right, then 
 another^ then a third, which strikes 
 the ground at Cravetheen's feet. 
 Wild cries are heard — a rush — 
 and six or eight Ultonian warriors 
 leap forward, crying as they seize 
 him : ) 
 
 WARRIORS. 
 
 Death to the Harper! — death 
 to Cravetheen the Harper, who has 
 slain the king's son ! 
 
 20 
 
SCENE II 
 
In the background, vague in the 
 moonlight, the walls of a great 
 Diin or ancient fortress, half 
 obscured by trees. To the right, 
 in deep shadow, an oak, Con- 
 COBAR, wrapt in a white robe, 
 with a fillet of gold round his 
 head, leans in silence against 
 the oak. In front, in the moon- 
 light, the boy Maine, clad in a 
 deerskin, lies on the ground, 
 looking towards the king, and 
 playing softly upon a reed with 
 seven holes in it. 
 
CONCOBAR. 
 
 USH. 
 
 Maine ceases playing, 
 
 i CONCOBAR {coming 
 slowly forward). 
 Where is Deirdre? 
 
 MAINfi 
 
 (unstirring,, plays softly). 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 (slowly advancing, till he stands above 
 Maine, and looks down at him^ in 
 silence). 
 
 Where is Deirdre ? 
 MAINfi 
 [taking the reed from his mouth, in 
 a low, prolonged, chanting voice): 
 
 Deirdre is dead! Deirdre the 
 Beautiful is dead, is dead I 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 It is the voice of my dreams. 
 
 23 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 MAINfi. 
 
 Deirdre is dead I Deirdre the 
 Beautiful is dead^ is dead I 
 
 CONCOBAR (muttering), 
 
 Duach the Wise. . . . Where is 
 Duach the Wise ? These were his 
 words : " In the whisper of the leaf 
 by night, in the first moaning air of 
 the new wind, in the voice of the 
 wave, that which has been is told, 
 that which is to be is known." O 
 heart of my heart. . . . Deirdre, my 
 love, my desire ! 
 
 MAINfi 
 
 rises and goes silently over to the oaky 
 
 and leans against it, lost in shadow, 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Heart of my heart, Deirdre! 
 Love of my love, desire of all 
 desire — can no voice rise to those 
 red lips, red as rowans, in that silent 
 
 24 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 place? There is no sadness like 
 unto the sadness of the king. 
 Dream of dreams, I trampled all 
 dreams till the hour of my desire, 
 and in that hour you were stolen 
 from me : and in his heart the king 
 was as a swineherd herding swine, 
 a helot, a slave. Was it I who put 
 death upon Naysha the Fair ? Was 
 it I who put death upon the sons of 
 Usna? It was not I, by the Sun 
 and the Moon ! It was the beauty 
 of Deirdre. O beauty too great 
 and sore ! Deirdre, love of my love, 
 sorrow of my sorrow, grief of my 
 grief ! I am old, because of my sor- 
 row. There is no king so great 
 that he may not perish because of 
 a woman's love. She sleeps: she 
 sleeps : she is not dead ! I will go 
 to the grianan, and will cry Heart 
 Beauty, awake ! It is /, Concobar 
 
 25 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 the King! She will hear, and she 
 will put white hands through her 
 hair, like white doves going into 
 the shadow of a wood : and I will 
 see her eyes like stars, and her face 
 pale and wonderful as dawn, and her 
 lips like twilight water, and she will 
 sigh, and my heart will be as wind 
 fainting in hot grass, and I will 
 laugh because that I am made king 
 of the world and as the old gods, 
 but greater than they, greater than 
 they, greater than they ! 
 
 MAINfi (chanting slowly 
 from the shadow), 
 
 Deirdre is dead! Deirdre the 
 Beautiful is dead, is dead ! 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 (slowly turning, and looking towards 
 the shadow whence the sound came). 
 
 Who spoke ? 
 
 (Silence^ 
 
 26 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Who spoke ? ( Turning again) : — 
 It was the pulse of my heart. They 
 lie who say that Deirdre is dead. 
 The sons of Usna are dead. May 
 the dust of Naysha rot among the 
 worms of the earth. It was he who 
 was king, not I ! It was he whom 
 Deirdre loved — Deirdre, who was 
 so fair, the most beautiful of women ; 
 my dream, my love ! 
 
 A lo7tg wailing cry is heard, 
 CoNCOBAR lifts his head^ and listens, 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 It is Duach. The Druid has 
 deep wisdom. I will ask him to 
 tell me where Deirdre is. There 
 is no woman in the world for me 
 but the daughter of Felim. Her 
 beauty is more terrible than day to 
 the creatures of the night; more 
 
 27 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 mysterious than night to the winged 
 children of the noon. 
 
 The boughs dispart^ and a tall, 
 white-haired man, clad in white, 
 with a gold belt, and with a wreath 
 of oak leaves, enters from the left, 
 
 DUACH. 
 Hail, O king ! 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 I heard the howl of the grey wolf, 
 but now you come alone. Where 
 is the wolf ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 There was no wolf. It was an 
 image only of your own mind. It 
 was but your own sorrow, O king. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Tell me, Duach, who lives in 
 yonder great Dun ? 
 
 28 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH 
 
 (looking at the king curiously, then 
 slowly), Concobar the king ; with 
 the comrades of the king, and his 
 guards : his harpers and poets ; the 
 women of the household. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Can you see the grianan, Duach ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 I see the grianan, Concobar mac 
 Nessa. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 Nessa. . . yes, I am the son of 
 Nessa. . . . Nessa, who was so fair. 
 Tell me, Duach ; in her youth was 
 she so beautiful as the harpers and 
 poets say ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 She was so beautiful that few 
 looked at her untroubled. In her 
 
 29 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 eyes youths dreamed; old men 
 looked back. To all men Nessa 
 was a light and a flame. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Was she fair, as Deirdre is fair ? 
 Was she beautiful, as Deirdre is 
 beautiful ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 Deirdre, whom you have slain, is 
 dead. 
 
 CONCOBAR {calling). 
 Deirdre, dear love, come ! I am 
 here! I wait! 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 From that silence where both are, 
 their names only may come back 
 like falling dew. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 There is none so beautiful as 
 Deirdre. 
 
 30 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 She sleeps by Naysha, son of 
 Usna. 
 
 CONCOBAR {furiously). 
 You lie, old man. Naysha is 
 dead. 
 
 DUACH. 
 She sleeps by Naysha, son of 
 Usna. 
 
 CONCOBAR (troubled). 
 Tell me ! When shall she wake } 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 She shall wake no more. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Speak no lies, Druid. I heard 
 her laugh a brief while ago. She 
 came out into the woods at the 
 rising of the moon. 
 
 31 
 
/ 
 
 THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 She will wake no more. 
 Silence, 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Hearken, Concobar mac Nessa! 
 That was an evil deed, the slaying 
 of the sons of Usna. They were 
 the noblest of all the Gaels of Eri 
 and Alba. 
 
 CONCOBAR {sullenly). 
 They are dead. 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 They are more to bfe feared dead 
 than when their young, sweet, 
 terrible life was upon them. Their 
 voices cry for vengeance, and all 
 men hear. Women whisper. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 What do they whisper? 
 
 32 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 " Most fair and beautiful were 
 the sons of Usna, slain treacherously 
 by Concobar the High-King^ 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 What vengeance is called for by 
 those who cry for an eric ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 It is no eric they cry, but the 
 broken honour of the king. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 And what do the young men say.? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 They say : ^^ He has slain the image 
 of our desired 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 And what is the burthen of the 
 song the singers sing .? 
 
 33 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 " The beauty of the world is now 
 as an old song that is sung^ 
 
 Silence, 
 
 MAINfi 
 {from the shadow of the oak^ strikes 
 a note^ and^ in a low voice^ chaftts 
 slowly — 
 
 Deirdre is dead I Deirdre the 
 Beautiful is dead, is dead I ) 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Can dreams have a voice ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 They alone speak. It is our 
 spoken words that are the idle 
 dreams. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Dreams — dreams. I am sick of 
 dreams ! It is love I long for — my 
 lost love ! my lost love ! 
 
 34 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH. 
 It is a madness, that love. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Better that madness than all 
 wisdom. 
 
 Silence, 
 
 MAINfi 
 {playing a note or two, slowly chants, 
 from the shadow of the oak — 
 
 Deirdre is dead I Deirdre the 
 Beautiful is dead, is dead I ) 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Duach, can dreams speak .? 
 
 DUACH (aside). 
 
 The dead, old wisdom, the wind, 
 dreams — these speak. All else are 
 troubled murmurs, confused cries, 
 echoes of echoes. 
 
 35 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 stands with outstretched arms, star- 
 ing towards the Ditn, 
 
 DUACH. 
 Death and beauty are in his eyes. 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 with a sudden, passionate gesture, 
 flinging up his arms supplicatingly, 
 Deirdre, my queen, my dream, my 
 desire ! Death and beauty were in 
 your eyes as a little child, oh, fawn 
 of women, when I lit my dreams at 
 your face before the House of Usna 
 did me that bitter, bitter wrong ! . . . 
 that bitter, bitter wrong! O Naysha, 
 more terrible your quiet smile in 
 death than all the armies of Meave ! 
 Deirdre, Deirdre, death and beauty 
 are in your eyes, my queen, my 
 dream, my desire I 
 
 36 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 With a sobbing cry he sinks to his 
 knees ^ bows his head, and pulls his 
 robe about him. 
 
 MAINfi 
 
 slowly advances from the shadow, 
 softly playing on his reed flute, 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Sing! 
 
 MAINfi 
 
 [sings) \ 
 
 Dim face of Beauty haunting all the world, 
 Fair face of Beauty all too fair to see, 
 Where the lost stars adown the heavens are 
 hurled, 
 
 There, there alone for thee 
 May white peace be. 
 
 For here, where all the dreams of men are 
 
 whirled 
 Like sere, torn leaves of autumn to and fro. 
 There is no place for thee in all the world. 
 Who drifted as a star, 
 Beyond, afar. 
 
 37 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 Beauty^ sad face of Beauty^ Mystery^ Won- 
 der^ 
 What are these dreams to foolish babbling 
 
 men — 
 Who cry with little noises ^?ieath the thunder 
 Of ages ground to sand, 
 To a little sand? 
 
 (Con COB AR slowly rises. He turns 
 and looks at Maine.) 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Who made that song ? 
 
 MAINfi. 
 
 Cormac the Red, the father of 
 my father, and son of Felim the 
 Harper. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Felim! . . . Felim the Harper — 
 it was he who was the father of 
 Deirdre. He harps no more. ( Turn- 
 ing to DuACH.) Do you remember 
 when we went to the house of Felim 
 
 38 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 the Harper in the days of my youth ? 
 Do you remember the birthnight 
 of Deirdre ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Ay. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 And the prophecy of Cathba the 
 Arch-Druid ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Ay: that before his eyes he saw 
 a sea of blood, and saw it rise and 
 rise and rise till it overflowed great 
 straths, and laved the flanks of high 
 hills, and from the summits of the 
 mountains poured down upon the 
 lands of the Gael in a thundering 
 flood, blood-red, to the blood-red 
 sea. 
 
 CONCOBAR {troubled, and mov- 
 ing slowly to and fro). 
 
 Did Cathba see the end ? 
 
 39 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH. 
 He saw the end. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 It was but the idle wisdom of a 
 dreamer. 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 That idle wisdom is the utterance 
 of the gods. The dreamers and 
 poets and seers are their voices. 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 What were the last words of 
 Cathba the Wise ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 That Eire, the most beautiful of 
 all lands under the sun, should be 
 the saddest of all lands under the 
 sun. Blood shall run in that land 
 till Famine shall make her home 
 there, he said: and tears shall be 
 shed for it in every age: and all 
 wisdom and beauty and hope shall 
 
 40 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 grow there: and she shall be a 
 lamp, and then know the darkness 
 of darkness. But before the end 
 she shall be a queenly land again, 
 and the nations shall bow before 
 her as the soul of peoples born 
 anew. For into all the nations of 
 the world, he said, Eire shall die, 
 but shall live again. She shall be 
 the soul of the nations. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Too many dreams . . . too many 
 dreams } 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Cathba saw all that is to be. 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 If Felim the Harper were to come 
 again. . . . 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 He would ask: Where is Emain 
 Macha, the royal city, the beautiful 
 
 41 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 city ? Where are the sons of Usna? 
 Where is Deirdre, the most beauti- 
 ful of women ? Where is the glory 
 of the Red Branch ? 
 
 CONCOBAR (confusedly). 
 
 The Red Branch ! . . . The Red 
 Branch! At least, at least, the 
 Red Branch stands ! 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 What of Fergus? . . . what of 
 Cormac Conlingas? They and a 
 third of the Red Branch are gone 
 from you: Fergus, the first cham- 
 pion of Ulla; Cormac Conlingas, 
 the greatest of your sons, the king 
 that is to be ! 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Conaill Carna is with me . . . 
 and Setanta the wonderful youth, 
 that is called Cuchulain. 
 
 42 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 DUACH. 
 
 Yet neither they nor the gods 
 themselves shall in the end prevail. 
 
 CONCOBAR {with sudden 
 passion), 
 
 Duach, win back to me my son 
 Cormac, and I will give you what- 
 soever you will — yea, my kingship. 
 Him only do I love of all men, him 
 only, my son who is so fair and 
 proud and beautiful. He shall be 
 high-king; he and he only is the 
 son of my kinghood. 
 
 DUACH. 
 That which is to be, will be. 
 
 CONCOBAR {looking fixedly 
 at him). 
 
 Shall not Cormac Conlingas be 
 king after me ? 
 
 43 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH. 
 Have you forgotten, O king! 
 Cormac mac Concobar is in arms 
 against you. He and Fergus and 
 a third of the Red Branch are with 
 Queen Meave, whose armies gather 
 to overwhelm you, to do to Ulla as 
 the Great Queen has already done 
 to Emain Macha, your proud city. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Cormac, my son, my son ! 
 DUACH. 
 
 These were the words he sent: 
 " For that which you did upon 
 Naysha and the sons of Usna, and 
 for that shame which you brought 
 upon Fergus mac Roy, and because 
 of the beauty of Deirdre which is 
 no more in the world because of 
 you . . . the Sword and Sorrow, 
 Sorrow and the Sword ! " 
 
 44 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 CONCOBAR (angrily and 
 impatiently), 
 
 I care not ! I care not ! He 
 shall be king. Listen! Duach; I 
 will send word to Cormac that I am 
 weary of the kingship. He shall be 
 Tanist, with all power. He shall 
 be the Ard-Righ himself. He 
 shall save Eire. The prophecies of 
 Cathba shall be set at nought. He 
 shall be a great king. All Eire shall 
 call him king. All the Gaels 
 shall call him Ard-Righ. His son's 
 sons shall reign after him. Ireland 
 shall be made one nation, because 
 of this great king — Cormac, the 
 son of Concobar,thesonof Flachtna, 
 kings and sons of kings ! 
 DUACH. 
 
 Beware, O Concobar, of the foam 
 of dreams. Tt is only the great 
 wave that will lift Eire. 
 
 45 
 
 y 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 The great wave ? Shall not that 
 be the king ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Through no king can Eire 
 become one nation and great, but 
 only through the kinglihood of her 
 sons and daughters. In the end, 
 when all are royal of soul, Eire shall 
 be the first of the nations of the 
 world. 
 
 CONCOBAR (confusedly). 
 
 In the end? ... In the end.? 
 Of what do you speak.? Cormac 
 shall be king, he and his sons after 
 him. The blood of the gods is in 
 Essa, his wife. 
 
 DUACH 
 
 (leaning forward, and staring into 
 the kings face), 
 
 46 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 Essa ? . . . Have you not heard ? 
 Essa is dead ! 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Essa is not dead. I saw her and 
 Deirdre and Dectera, my sister, 
 and my mother Nessa, walking in 
 the wood at the rising of the moon. 
 
 DUACH (muttering). 
 Ay, that might well be. It is the 
 hour of the dead. 
 
 CONCOBAR {sadly\ 
 Is she dead, Essa, daughter of 
 Etain the Wonderful ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 She is not dead, being of the 
 Divine race. But her body lies at 
 Rath Nessa, where in the dream of 
 death she can look for ever upon 
 the Hill of Tara. 
 
 47 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Hopes fall about me as old leaves. 
 {A pause) Nevertheless, I will send 
 word to Cormac at the camp of 
 Queen Meave. There shall be no 
 more war. Cormac Conlingas shall 
 be king. 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Cormac is not there. He is one 
 of the nine hostages at the Dun of 
 Cbnairey M6r, the king of the 
 Middle Province. Meave marches 
 against him. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Fergus was king no more because 
 of Nessa: I am king no more 
 because of Deirdre. She is not 
 here, the beautiful Deirdre. She 
 is here no more. I will go into the 
 woods. I will go into the woods, 
 and upon the hills. I am led by 
 
 48 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 dreams and visions. Deirdre, my 
 dream and my desire ! 
 
 DUACH (aside). 
 The prophecy of the sting that 
 was to sting to madness the King 
 of the Ultonians ! The gods see 
 far! 
 
 CONCOBAR {starting). 
 Who . . . what is that ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 I see nothing. 
 
 CONCOBAR {pointing). 
 Look! . . . yonder ... a white 
 hound — a white hound, that moves 
 through the wood ! How swift and 
 silent . . . see, his head is low . . . 
 he is on the trail ... is it Rumac '^, 
 
 AN ECHO IN THE WOODS. 
 
 Rumac ! Cormac ! Cormac ! 
 
 49 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 CoNCOBAR moves backward a step. 
 What ! Cormac ! . . . Cormac ? . . . 
 my son Cormac ! 
 
 DUACH 
 
 {staring into the dusk of the woods), 
 I see no hound. . . . Where is 
 the white hound ? 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Yonder . . . under the oaks . . . 
 he goes swiftly to the place where 
 he was born. 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Who.? 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Cormac. Cormac Conlingas, my 
 son. Is this evil fallen upon me 
 because of the death of Deirdre.? 
 Is this evil come upon me out of 
 the House of Usna? 
 
 50 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 The House of Usna is in the 
 dust. 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 {distraught, loudly ckmtts). 
 The grey wind weeps, the grey wind weeps, 
 
 the grey wind weeps ; 
 Dust on her breasts, dust in her eyes, the 
 grey wind weeps I 
 
 DUACH. 
 The hound is gone. 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 {putting his finger on his lips). 
 Hush! do you hear the little 
 children of the wind . . . rustling 
 and laughing . . . the little children 
 of the wind ? Or are they the little 
 white feet of those who come at 
 dusk? Or are they the waves of 
 the Moyle . . . tears, tears, sighs, 
 oh tears, tears, tears, of Deirdre 
 upon the dark waters of the Moyle ! 
 
 51 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Deirdre is in that far place where 
 your hound of old is . . . where 
 Rumac bays against a moon that 
 does not set or wane. 
 
 CONCOBAR {calling), 
 
 Rumac ! Rumac ! 
 
 ECHO. 
 
 Coomac ! Coomac ! 
 
 Cormac, my beautiful son ! Cor- 
 
 mac ! come ! come ! 
 
 A sound of a harp is heard. Both 
 
 start, 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Who comes ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 Someone comes through the 
 
 wood. 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 (drawing his sword). It is Naysha, 
 son of Usna. Night after night I 
 
 52 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 hear him come harping through the 
 woods. Sometimes I see him, 
 standing under an oak. He calls 
 upon Deirdre. 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 It is Coel mac Coel, the old blind 
 harper — he who loved Macha the 
 great queen, and was blinded by 
 her because that he loved overmuch. 
 He alone wandered free out of 
 Emain Macha when the beautiful 
 city was laid waste. He is not 
 alone; there are the young bards 
 and minstrels with him. For the 
 last three nights they have come 
 in the darkness, and sung before 
 the Royal Dun the song which 
 Coel made of Macha and her beau- 
 tiful city. Hark ! They sing now. 
 
 The noise of harps and tympans. 
 From the wood comes the loud 
 chanting voice of Coel : 
 
 53 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 6?, Uis a good house, and a palace fairy 
 the DUn of Macha^ 
 And happy with a great household is 
 Macha there : 
 Druids she has, and bards, minstrels, 
 harpers, knights ; 
 Hosts of servants she has, and wonders 
 
 beautiful and rare, 
 But nought so wonderful and sweet 
 as her face, queenly fair, 
 
 O Macha of the Ruddy Hair / 
 
 {Choric voices in a loud, swelltJtg 
 chant): 
 
 O Macha of the Ruddy Hair! 
 
 COEL ckafits : 
 
 7he colour of her great Diln is the shining 
 
 whiteness of lime, 
 And within it are floors strewn with 
 
 green rushes and couches white 
 Soft wondrous silks and blue gold-claspt 
 
 mantles and furs 
 Are there, and jewelled golden cups for 
 
 revelry by night : 
 
 54 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 Thy grianan of gold and glass is filled 
 with sunshine-light^ 
 
 O Macha, queen by day^ queen 
 by night! 
 
 ( Choric Voices ) ; 
 O Macha, queen by day, queen 
 by night ! 
 
 Beyond the green portals^ and the brown 
 
 and red thatch of wings 
 Striped orderly^ the wings of innumerous 
 
 stricken birds, 
 A zvide shining floor reaches from wall 
 
 to wall, wondrously carven 
 Out of a sheet of silver, whereon are 
 
 graven swords 
 Intricately ablaze: mistress oj many 
 
 hoards 
 
 Art thou, Macha of few words I 
 
 {Choric Voices ) ; 
 
 O Macha of few words ! 
 
 Fair indeed is thy couch, but fairer still 
 is thy throne, 
 
 55 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 A chair it is, all of a blaze of wonderful 
 
 yellow gold: 
 There thou sittesi, and watchest the 
 
 women going to and fro, 
 Each in garments fair and with long 
 
 locks twisted fold in fold: 
 With the joy that is in thy house men 
 
 would not grow old, 
 
 O Macha, proud, austere, cold. 
 
 [Choric Voices ) : 
 
 O Macha, proud, austere, cold. 
 
 Of a surety there is much joy to be had oj 
 
 thee and thine, 
 There in the song-siveet sunlit botvers in 
 
 that place; 
 Wounded men might sink in sleep and 
 
 be well content 
 So to sleep, and to dream perchance, and 
 
 know no other grace 
 J7ian to wake and look betimes on thy 
 
 proud queenly face, 
 
 O Macha of the Proud Face I 
 
 56 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 {Choric Voices): 
 
 O Macha of the Proud Face ! 
 
 And if there be any here who wish to 
 
 know more of this wonder^ 
 Go^ you will find all as I have shown, as 
 
 I have said : 
 From beneath its portico, thatched with 
 
 wings of birds blue and yellow, 
 Reaches a green lawn, where a fount is 
 
 fed 
 From crystal and gems : of crystal and 
 
 gold each bed 
 
 In the house of Macha of the 
 Ruddy Head ! 
 
 {Choric Voices): 
 
 In the house of Macha of the 
 Ruddy Head! 
 
 In that great house where Macha the 
 
 queen has her pleas aunce 
 There is everything in the whole world 
 
 that a man might desire. 
 God is my witness that if I say little it is 
 
 far this, 
 
 57 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 That I am grown faint with wonder^ and 
 
 can no more admire^ 
 But say this only, that I live and die in 
 the fire 
 
 Of thine eyes, O Macha^ my 
 
 desire^ 
 With thine eyes of fire ! 
 
 {Choric Voices in a loud swelling 
 chant): 
 
 But say this only, that we live 
 
 and die in the fire 
 Of thine eyes, O Macha, Dream, 
 
 Desire, 
 With thine eyes of fire ! 
 
 (Choric Voices repeat their refrains^ 
 but fainter^ and becoming more 
 faint. Last vanishing sound 
 of the harps and tympans) 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 Is Emain Macha as a dream that 
 is no more ? 
 
 58 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Emain Macha, the beautiful city, 
 is as a dream that is no more. 
 A moan of wind, 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Wind, wind, nothing but wind ! 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Clouds cover the moon. Let us 
 go, O king. To-night, dreams : the 
 morrow waits, when dreams will be 
 realities. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Dreams, dreams, nothing but 
 dreams ! 
 
 (Slowly CoNCOBAR and Duach pass 
 through the darkening gloom. 
 The Dun becomes more and 
 more obscure. From the dark- 
 ness to the right a single Jlute 
 note^ where Maine lies) 
 
 59 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 MAINfi 
 
 (chanting slowly, unseen), Deirdrfe 
 is dead ! Deirdre the Beautiful is 
 dead, is dead ! 
 
 60 
 
SCENE III 
 
Scene^ the same, Ultonian War- 
 riors have brought Cravetheen 
 THE Harper — a misshapen 
 savage figure^ held by two 
 warriors — before the king, so 
 that CoNCOBAR may decree what 
 ma7iner of death the man is to 
 die, because of having murdered 
 CoRMAC by setting fire to the 
 Dun, where he and Eilidh lay, 
 and burning him and his love, 
 and all that were within the 
 Diin, 
 
"iW 2tf Hf M" Ttf Itf ttf 2tf US' ttf Uf US^ 2tf ttf 2tf ttf~ US' Uf 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 HAVE heard all. Let 
 
 him go. What is death ? 
 
 (Cravetheen 2> 
 
 released,) 
 
 CRAVETHEEN. 
 Have you no mercy, O king ? 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Harper, you have your life. Go ! 
 
 CRAVETHEEN. 
 Have you no mercy, O king? 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 What is your desire ? 
 
 CRAVETHEEN. 
 I have but one desire, Concobar, 
 King of Ulla. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Speak. 
 
 63 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 CRAVETHEEN. 
 
 It is that I may know death. 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 (rising, and smiling strangely). 
 Brother, I too — I too have that 
 one desire. 
 
 CRAVETHEEN (confusedly). 
 You . . . the king. . . . 
 
 MAINfi 
 
 lying under an oak, makes a clear 
 note on his reed-flute, and chants 
 slowly, with wailing rise and fall: 
 Deirdre is dead I Deirdre the 
 Beautiful is dead, is dead ! 
 
 CRAVETHEEN (muttering). 
 
 Ah, now I know ! Now I know ! 
 (moving slowly towards the king). 
 That cry is the cry of the House of 
 Usna ! The gods do not sleep, O 
 
 64 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 king. That cry is the cry of the 
 House of Usna! 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 with sudden fury^ reaching out his 
 arms as though cursing or abhorring 
 the speaker. Take him away ! To 
 death ! ... to death ! Away with 
 him ! 
 
 CRAVETHEEN 
 (eagerly and triumphantly), I am 
 the voice of the House of Usna, O 
 king! 
 
 CONCOBAR (furiously). 
 Tie him to the saplings ! Let 
 him die the death of the oaks ! 
 
 WARRIORS (shouting). 
 
 To the Death-tree! To the 
 Death-tree ! 
 
 ( They seize Cravetheen, and drag 
 him away into the wood,) 
 
 65 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 (staring about him confusedly). 
 Who spoke ? [Lower, in a hoarse 
 whisper) Who spoke ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 O king, there is no evil done 
 upon the world that the wind does 
 not bring back to the feet of him 
 who wrought it. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 The wind ! . . . The wind ! 
 DUACH. 
 
 O king, the gods abhor most the 
 evil that is wrought unworthily by 
 the great. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 Who are the great ? . . . I have 
 lost love, and my kinglihood, and 
 my son, and all, all my hopes. 
 Who are the great } 
 
 66 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 DUACH. 
 
 O king, you have slain youth, 
 and love, and beauty. 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 {wailingly). Life. . . . Life. . . . 
 Life for ever slays youth, and love, 
 and beauty. 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Take not the brute law to be the 
 divine law. O king, are prophecies 
 idle ways of an idle wind } Long, 
 long ago it was foretold that evil 
 would come upon you and your 
 house because of your uncontrolled 
 desire, but what avail } Your ears 
 were deaf. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Why do the gods pursue me ? 
 I am old, I am old. 
 
 67 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 ^ DUACH. 
 
 At the kindling of the light they 
 look into the silent earth, and 
 they behold the slain bodies of 
 Naysha and Ailne and Ardan, and 
 a shade stands at their grave calling 
 night and day — / am the House of 
 Usna ! 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Druid, is there no evil done upon 
 the world, is there no slaying of 
 young men, is there no falling 
 of heroic names into the dust, save 
 what I have done ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Because of your desire you slew 
 your kinglihood. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 My kinglihood ? 
 68 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 DUACH. 
 
 More terrible than the fate of 
 Usna is the fall of royal honour. 
 More terrible than the death of 
 Naysha is the shame put upon 
 those who blindly did your will. 
 More terrible than the death of 
 Deirdre is the undoing of the great 
 wonder and mystery of beauty. 
 The gods call. ..." Concobar, 
 Concobar, thy thirst shall be for 
 shadows^ and the rose of thy desire 
 shall be dust within thy mouth ! " 
 
 CONCOBAR {hopelessly). 
 
 It was because of love. ... It 
 was because of love. 
 
 DUACH. , 
 
 Yes, O king . . . love of thine 
 own love. 
 Silence, 
 
 69 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 CONCOBAR. 
 Evil can be undone. 
 
 DUACH. ' 
 Where are the sons of Usna ? 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 I tell you, Druid, evil can be 
 undone. I repent me of my evil. . . . 
 I repent me of my evil. 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Where are the sons of Usna.? 
 Where is the word of the king.? 
 Where is Deirdre, the too great 
 beauty of this evil time.? Where 
 is Emain Macha, the beautiful city .? 
 Where is the glory of the Red 
 Branch.? Where is Cormac, Cor- 
 mac Conlingas, who was to be king? 
 Where stands Eire that was to be 
 one nation .? 
 
 70 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 CONCOBAR (in a hoarse 
 ^ whisper). 
 
 Have all these evils come upon 
 me because I was a king and 
 because I loved ? 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 Because you were a king and 
 chose the unkingly way. 
 
 CONCOBAR {wailingly). 
 Good blooms like a flower that has 
 its day : evil like a weed that endures, 
 and grows and grows and grows. 
 
 DUACH. 
 
 But the evil that is done of kings 
 shall cover the whole land. 
 
 CONCOBAR {starling, and 
 furiously). 
 
 Enough! Enough, Druid! I 
 have heard enough. I am the 
 king (raising his sword, and look- 
 
 71 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 ing towards the Warriors, shouts), 
 Ultonians, awake ! I am the king. 
 I am the Red Branch. On the 
 morrow we march. I shall lead 
 you, with Conaill Carna and with 
 Cuchulain. The armies of Queen 
 Meave shall be scattered like dry 
 leaves. Fear not the gods ! The 
 gods follow the victorious sword I 
 Before the new moon all the gods 
 of the Gael will be on our side ! 
 The Red Branch ! The Red Branch I 
 
 WARRIORS 
 
 (clashing swords a^id spears). The 
 Red Branch ! The Red Branch ! 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Up with the Sunburst ! Up with 
 the banner of the Sunburst ! 
 
 WARRIORS. 
 
 The Su7iburst ! The Sunburst ! 
 
 72 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 CONCOBAR (triumphantly). 
 
 The gods are with us ! {Lower, 
 and turning to Duach, exultantly). 
 The gods are with us. Druid, it is 
 the will of man that compels the 
 gods, not the gods who compel 
 man. 
 
 DUACH 
 
 after a momentary pause, and laying 
 his hand on the king's arm. The 
 gods are the will of man. For 
 good and for evil the gods are the 
 will of man. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 
 Stand back, Druid. I am weary of 
 your subtleties. (Shouts) Warriors, 
 go! On the morrow I shall lead 
 you — I, and Conaill the Victorious, 
 and Cuchulain the greatest cham- 
 pion of Eire ! 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 WARRIORS 
 
 gOy shouting, and after they have 
 gone their voices are heard repeating 
 the acclaim : 
 
 Concobar I Concobar ! Conaill 
 Carna ! Cuchulain ! Cuchulain I 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 {looking sombrely at T>VKCii), Druid, 
 go ! I would be alone. 
 
 DUACH. 
 I go. But truly, yea truly, O 
 king, you shall be alone from this 
 hour. 
 
 CONCOBAR {scornfully). 
 Enough. I am the king. I have 
 great dreams. The gods are with 
 me. They have forgotten, for they 
 do not long remember the dead ! 
 
 DUACH 
 
 {meaningly, as he moves slowly away), 
 
 74 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 The gods neither sleep nor do 
 they forget. {A pause) 
 
 A long pause. Silence. 
 CONCOCAR {alo7ie^ exu Itan tly). 
 
 I am the king. I have great 
 dreams. 
 
 A wailing voice from the wood. 
 The king starts^ raising his sword. 
 
 CONCOBAR. 
 Who is that ? . . . what is that .? 
 CRAVETHEEN 
 {unseen, on the Death-tree). It is I, 
 Cravetheen, in my hour of death. 
 
 Silence. The king stands listen- 
 ing. Again a long wailing cry. 
 
 CRAVETHEEN. 
 
 The gods do not sleep, O king I 
 . . . Farewell. 
 Slowly CoNCOBAR lowers his 
 sword. It falls with a crash to 
 
 75 
 
THE HOUSE OF USNA 
 
 the ground. He stands as though 
 spell-bound, 
 
 CONCOBAR 
 
 (jin an awed whispering voice). It 
 is the cry of the House of Usna I 
 
 Silence, Slowly the king lifts his 
 hand to his face, and bows his head. 
 
 From the wood the boy Maine 
 breathes three poignant notes on his 
 reedflute^ and chants slowly with 
 long rise and fall : 
 
 Deirdre is dead I Deirdre the 
 Beautiful is dead, is dead I 
 
FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY 
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