Not content with the organization of the two literary societies,
Yeats, with courage and relentless tenacity, cast about to realize
his long-cherished dream of a theatre that should embody the ideals
of the Revival. In Lady Gregory, and in Edward Martyn, an Irishman of
large means, who with both pen and purse lent a willing hand, he
found two ardent laborers for his vineyard. George Moore, who in the
event proved a fish out of water in Ireland, Yeats and Martyn
contrived to lure from his London lodgings and his cosmopolitan ways,
and to enlist in the theatrical enterprise. The practical knowledge
of the stage which this gifted _enfant terrible_ of literature
contributed was doubtless of great value in the early days of the
dramatic adventure, though Moore's free thoughts, frank speech, and
mordant irony brought an element of discord into Dublin literary
circles, which may well have left Yeats and his associates with a
feeling that they had paid too dear for a piper to whose tunes they
refused to dance. Be that as it may, in 1899 Yeats's dream was
measurably realized, and the Irish Literary Theatre established, to
be succeeded a little later by the Irish National Theatre Society.
Enough, however, of the dramatic aspect of the Revival, which
receives separate treatment elsewhere in these pages, as does also
the dramatic work of certain of the authors considered here.
From what has already been said, it should be plain that in the last
decade of the last century the ranks of the Irish Literary
Revivalists filled rapidly, and that the movement was really under
way. The renascent spirit took various forms. To one group of poets
the humor, pathos, and tragedy of peasant life deeply appealed, and
found expression in a poetry distinctively and unmistakably national,
from which a kind of pleasure could be drawn unlike anything else in
other literatures. In this group Alfred Perceval Graves and Moira
O'Neill cannot pass unmentioned. Who would ask anything racier in its
kind than the former's "Father O'Flynn"?
Of priests we can offer a charmin' variety,
Far renowned for larnin' and piety,
Still I'd advance you without impropriety,
Father O'Flynn as the flower of them all.
Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn,
Slainte,[1] and slainte, and slainte agin.
Powerfullest preacher,
And tinderest teacher,
And kindliest creature in Old Donegal.
[Footnote 1: "Your health."]
Or was the homing instinct, the homesick longing for the old sod,
ever more truly rendered than in Moira O'Neill's song of the Irish
laborer in England?
Over here in England I'm helpin' wi' the hay,
An' I wish I was in Ireland the livelong day;
Weary on the English, an' sorra take the wheat!
Och! Corrymeela an' the blue sky over it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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