THE ONLY JEALOUSY OF EMER
Persons in the Play:
Three Musicians
(their faces made up to resemble masks)
The Ghost of Cuchulain (wearing a mask)
The Figure of Cuchulain (wearing a mask)
Emer
Ethne Inguba // both masked, or their faces made up to resemble masks //
Woman of The Sidhe
Enter Musicians, who are dressed and made as in “At the Hawk’s Well. They have the same musical instruments, which can either be already upon the stage or be brought in by the First Musician before he stands in the centre with the cloth between his hands, or by a player when the cloth has been unfolded. The stage as before can be against the wall of any room, and the same black cloth can be used as in “At the Hawk’s Well”.
(Song for the folding and unfolding of the cloth.)
First Musician:
A woman’s beauty is like a white
Frail bird, like a white sea-bird alone
At daybreak after stormy night
Between two furrows upon the ploughed land:
A sudden storm, and it was thrown
Between dark furrows upon the ploughed land.
How many centuries spent
The sedentary soul
In toils of measurement
Beyond eagle or mole,
Beyond hearing or seeing,
Or Archimedes’ guess,
To raise into being
That loveliness?
A strange, unserviceable thing,
A fragile, exquisite, pale shell,
That the vast troubled waters bring
To the loud sands before day has broken.
The storm arose and suddenly fell
Amid the dark before day had broken.
What death? What discipline?
What bonds no man could unbind,
Being imagined within
The labyrinth of the mind,
What pursuing or fleeing,
What wounds, what bloody press,
Dragged into being
This loveliness?
(When the cloth is folded again the Musicians take their place against the wall. The folding of the cloth shows on one side of the stage the curtained bed or litter on which lies a man in his grave-clothes. He wears an heroic mask. Another man with exactly similar clothes and mask crouches near the front. Emer is sitting beside the bed.)
First Musician (speaking): I call before the eyes a roof
With cross-beams darkened by smoke;
A fisher’s net hangs from a beam,
A long oar lies against the wall.
I call up a poor fisher’s house;
A man lies dead or swooning,
That amorous man,
That amorous, violent man, renowned
Cuchulain,
Queen Emer at his side.
At her own bidding all the rest have gone;
But now one comes on hesitating feet,
Young Eithne Inguba, Cuchulain’s mistress.
She stands a moment in the open door.
Beyond the open door the bitter sea,
The shining bitter sea, is crying out,
(singing) White shell, white wing!
I will not choose for friend
A frail, unserviceable thing
That drifts and dreams, and but knows
That waters are without end
And that wind blows.
Emer (speaking): Come hither, come sit down beside the bed;
You need not be afraid, for I myself
Sent for you, Eithne Inguba.
Eithne Inguba: No, Madam,
I have too deeply wronged you to sit there.
Emer: Of all the people in the world we two,
And we alone, may watch together here,
Because we have loved him best.
Eithne Inguba: And is he dead?
Emer: Although they have dressed him out in his grave-clothes
And stretched his limbs, Cuchulain is not dead;
The very heavens when that day’s at hand,
So that his death may not lack ceremony,
Will throw out fires, and the earth grow red with blood.
There shall not be a scullion but foreknows it
Like the world’s end.
Eithne Inguba: How did he come to this?
Emer: Towards noon in the assembly of the kings
He met with one who seemed a while most dear.
The kings stood round; some quarrel was blown up;
He drove him out and killed him on the shore
At Baile’s tree, and he who was so killed
Was his own son begot on some wild woman
When he was young, or so I have heard it said;
And thereupon, knowing what man hehad killed,
And being mad with sorrow, he ran out;
And after, to his middle in the foam,
With shield before him and with sword in hand,
He fought the deathless sea. The kings looked on
And not a king dared stretch an arm, or even
Dared call his name, but all stood wandering
In that dumb stupor like cattel in a gale,
Until at last, as though he had fixed his eyes
On a new enemy, he waded out
Until the water had swept over him;
But the waves washed his senseless image up
And laid it at this door.
Eithne Inguba: How pale he looks!
Emer: He is not dead.
Eithne Inguba: You have not kissed his lips
Nor laid his head upon your breast.
Emer: It may be
An image has been put into his place,
A sea-born log bewitched into his likeness,
Or some stark horseman grown too old to ride
Among the troops of Manannan, Son of the Sea,
Now that his joints are stiff.
Eithne Inguba: Cry out his name.
All that are taken from our sight, they say,
Loiter amid the scenery of their lives
For certain hours or days, and should he hear
He might, being angry, drive the changeling out.
Emer: It is hard to make them hear amid their darkness,
And it is long since I could call him home;
I am but his wife, but if you cry aloud
With the sweet voice that is so dear to him
He cannot help but listen.
Eithne Inguba: He loves me best,
Being his newest love, but in the end
Will love the woman best who loved him first
And loved him through the years when love seemed lost.
Emer: I have that hope, the hope that some day somewhere
We’ll sit together at the hearth again.
Eithne Inguba: Women like me, the violent hour passed over,
Are flung into some corner like old nut-shells.
Cuchulain, listen.
Emer: No, not yet, for first
I’ll cover up his face to hide the sea;
And throw new logs upon the hearth and stir
The half-burnt logs until they break in flame.
Old Manannan’s unbridled horses come
Out of the sea, and on their backs his horsemen;
But all the enchantments of the dreaming foam
Dread the hearth-fire.
(She pulls the curtians of the bed so as to hide the sick man’s face, that the actor may change his mask unseen. She goes to one side of the platform and moves her hand as though putting logs on a fire and stirring it into a blaze. While she makes these movements the Musicians play, marking the movements with drum and flute perhaps.
Having finished she stands beside the imaginary fire at a distance from Cuchulain and Eithne
Inguba.)
Call on Cuchulain now.
Eithne Inguba: Can you not hear my voice?
Emer: Bend over him;
Call out dear secrets till you have touched his heart,
If he lies there; and if he is not there,
Till you have made him jealous.
Eithne Inguba: Cuchulain, listen.
Emer: Those words sound timidly; to be afraid
Because his wife is but three paces off,
When there is so great need, were but to prove
The man that chose you made but a poor choice:
We’re but two women struggling with the sea.
Eithne Inguba: O my beloved, pardon me, that I
Have been ashamed. I thrust my shame away.
I have never sent a message or called out,
Scarce had a longing for your company
But you have known and come; and if indeed
You are lying there, stretch out your arms and speak;
Open your mouth and speak, for to this hour
My company has made you talkative.
What ails your tongue, or what has closed your ears?
Our passion had not chilled when we were parted
On the pale shore under the breaking dawn.
He cannot speak: or else his ears are closed
And no sound reaches him.
Emer: Then kiss that image;
The pressure of your mouth upon his mouth
May reach him where he is.
Eithne Inguba (starting back): It is no man.
I felt some evil thing that dried my heart
When my lips touched it.
Emer: No, his body stirs;
The pressure of your mouth has called him home;
He has thrown the changeling out.
Eithne Inguba (going further off): Look at that arm;
That arm is withered to the very socket.
Emer (going up to the bed): What do you come for; and from where?
Figure of Cuchulain: From Manannan’s court upon a brideless horse.
Emer: What one among the Sidhe has dared to lie
Upon Cuchulain’s bed and take his image?
Figure of Cuchulain: I am named Bricriu – not the man – that Bricriu,
Maker of discord among gods and men,
Called Bricriu of the Sidhe.
Emer: Come for what purpose?
Figure of Cuchulain (sitting up, parting curtains and showing its distorted face, as Eithne Inguba goes out):
I show my face, and everything he loves
Must fly away.
Emer: You people of the wind
Are full of lying speech and mockery:
I have not fled your face.
Figure of Cuchulain: You are not loved.
Emer: And therefore have no dread to meet your eyes
And to demand him of you.
Figure of Cuchulain: For that I have come.
You have but to pay the price and he is free.
Emer: Do the Sidhe bargain?
Figure of Cuchulain: For that I have come.
You have but to pay the price and he is free.
Emer: Do the Sidhe bargain?
Figure of Cuchulain: When they would free a captive
They take in ransom a less valued thing.
The fisher, when some knowledgeable man
Restores to him his wife, or son, or daughter,
Knows he must lose a boat or net, or it may be
The cow that gives his children milk; and some
Have offered their own lives. I do not ask
Your life, or any valuable thing;
You spoke but now of the mere chance that some day
You’d be the apple of his eye again
When old and ailing, but renounce that chance
And he shall live again.
Emer: I do not question
But you have brought ill-luck on all he loves;
And now, because I am thrown beyond your power
Unless your words are lies, you come to bargain.
Figure of Cuchulain: You loved your mastery, when but newly married,
And I love mine for all my withered arm;
You have but to put yourself into that power
And he shall live again.
Emer: No, never, never.
Figure of Cuchulain: You dare not be accursed, yet he has dared.
Emer: I have but two joyous thoughts, two things I prize,
A hope, a memory, and how you claim that hope.
Figure of Cuchulain: He’ll never sit beside you at the hearth
Or make old bones, but die of wounds and toil
On some far shore or mountain, a strange woman
Beside his mattress.
Emer: You ask for my one hope.
That may bring you curse on all about him.
Figure of Cuchulain: You’ve watched his loves and you have not been jealous,
Knowing that he would tire, but do those tire
That love the Sidhe? Come closer to the bed
That I may touch your eyes and give them sight.
(He touches her eyes with his left hand, the right being withered.)
Emer (seeing the crouching Ghost of Cuchulain): My husband is there.
Figure of Cuchulain: I have dissolved the dark
That hid him from your eyes, but not that other
That’s hidden you from his.
Emer: O husband, husband!
Figure of Cuchulain: He cannot hear – being shut off,
a phantom
that can neither touch, nor hear, nor see;
The longing and the cries have drawn him hither.
He heard no sound, heard no articulate sound;
They could but banish rest, and make him dream,
And in that dream, as do all dreaming shades
Before they are accustomed to their freedom,
He has taken his familiar form; and yet
He crouches there not knowing where he is
Or at whose side he is crouched.
(A Woman of Sidhe has entered and stands a little inside the door.)
Emer: Who is this woman?
Figure of Cuchulain: She ahs hurried from the Country-under-Wave
And dreamed herself into that shape that he
May glitter in her basket; for the Sidhe
Are dexterous fishers and they fish for men
With dreams upon the hook.
Emer: And so that woman
Has hid herself in this disguise and made
Herself into a lie.
Figure of Cuchulain: A dream is body;
The dead move ever towards a dreamless youth
And when they dream no more return no more;
And those more holy shades that never lived
But visit you in dreams.
Emer: I know her sort.
They find our men asleep, weary with war,
Lap them in cloudy hair or kiss their lips;
Our men awake in ignorance of it all,
But when we take them in our arms at night
We cannot break their solitude.
(She draws a knife from her girdle.)
Figure of Cuchulain: No knife
Can wound that body of air. Be silent, listen;
I have not given you eyes and ears for nothing.
(The Woman of the Sidhe moves round the crouching Ghost of Cuchulain at front of stage in a dance that grows gradually quicker, as he slowly awakes. At moments she may drop her hair upon his head, but she does not kiss him. She is accompanied by string and flute and drum. Her mask and clothes must suggest gold or bronze or brass or silver, so that she seems more an idol than a human being. This suggestion may be repeated in her movements. Her hair, too, must keep the metallic suggestion.)
Ghost of Cuchulain: Who is it stands before me there
Shedding such light from limb and hair
As when the moon, complete at last
With every labouring crescent past,
And lonely with extreme delight,
Flings out upon the fifteenth night?
Woman of the Sidhe: Because I long I am not complete.
What pulled your hands about your feet,
Pulled down your head upon your knees,
And hid your face?
Ghost of Cuchulain: Old memories:
A woman in her happy youth
Before her man had broken troth,
Dead men and women. Memories
Have pulled my head upon my knees.
Woman of the Sidhe: Could you that have loved many a woman
That did not reach beyond the human,
Lacking a day to be complete,
Love one that, though her heart can beat,
Lacks it but by an hour or so?
Ghost of Cuchulain: I know you now, for long ago
I met you on a cloudy hill
Beside old thorn-trees and a well.
A woman danced and a hawk flew,
I held out arms and hands; but you,
That now seem friendly, fled away,
Half woman and half bird of prey.
Woman of the Sidhe: Hold out your arms and hands again;
You were not so dumbfounded when
I was that bird of prey, and yet
I am all woman now.
Ghost of Cuchulain: I am not
The young and passionate man I was,
And though that brilliant light surpass
All crescent forms, my memories
Weigh down my hands, abash my eyes.
Woman of the Sidhe: Then kiss my mouth. Though memory
Be beauty’s bitterest enemy
I have no dread, for at my kiss
Memory on the moment vanishes:
Nothing but beauty can remain.
Ghost of Cuchulain: And shall I never know again
Intricacies of blind remorse?
Woman of the Sidhe: Time shall seem to stay his course;
When your mouth and my mouth meet
All my round shall be complete
Imagining all its circles run;
And there shall be oblivion
Even to quench Cuchulain’s drouth,
Even to still that heart.
Ghost of Cuchulain: Your mouth!
(They are about to kiss, he turns away.)
O Emer, Emer!
Woman of the Sidhe: So then it is she
Made you impure with memory.
Ghost of Cuchulain: O Emer, Emer, there we stand
Side by side and hand in hand
Tread the threshold of the house
As when our parents married us.
Woman of the Sidhe: Being among the dead you love her
That valued every slut above her
While you still lived.
Ghost of Cuchulain: O my lost Emer!
Woman of the Sidhe: And there is not a loose-tongued schemer
But could draw you, if not dead,
From her table and her bed.
But what could make you fit to wive
With flesh and blood, being born to live
Where no one speaks of broken troth,
For all have washed out of their eyes
Wind-blown dirt of their memories
To improve their sight?
Ghost of Cuchulain: Your mouth, your mouth!
(She goes out followed by Ghost of Cuchulain.)
Figure of Cuchulain: Cry out that you renounce his love; make haste
And cry that you renounce his love for ever.
Emer: No, never will I give that cry.
Figure of Cuchulain: Fool, fool!
I am Fand’s enemy come to thwart her will,
And you stand gaping there. There is still time.
Hear how the horses trample! She has mounted up.
Cuchulain’s not beside her in the chariot.
There is still a moment left; cry out, cry out!
Renounce him, and her power is at end.
Cuchulain’s foot is on the chariot-step.
Cry –
Emer: I renounce Cuchulain’s love for ever.
(The Figure of Cuchulain sinks back upon the bed, half-drawing the curtain. Eithne Inguba comes in and kneels by bed.)
Eithne Inguba: Come to me, my beloved, it is I.
I, Eithne Inguba. Look! He is there.
He has come back and moved upon the bed.
And it is I that won him from the sea,
That brought him back to life.
Emer: Cuchulain wakes.
(The figure turns round. It once more wears the heroic mask.)
Cuchulain: Your arms, your arms! O Eithne Inguba,
I have been in some strange place and am afraid.
(The First Musician comes to the front of stage, the others from each side, and unfold the cloth singing.)
(Song for the unfolding and folding of the cloth.)
The Musicians: Why does your heart beat thus?
Plain to be understood,
I have met in a man’s house
A statue of solitude,
Moving there and walking;
Its strange heart beating fast
For all our talking.
O still that heart at last.
O bitter reward
Of many a tragic tomb!
And we though astonished are dumb
Or give but a sigh and a word,
A passing word.
Although the door be shut
And all seem well enough,
Although wide world hold not
A man but will give you his love
The moment he has looked at you,
He that has loved the best
May turn from a statue
His too human breast.
O bitter reward
Of many a tragic tomb!
And we though astonished are dumb
Or give but a sigh and a word,
A passing word.
What makes your heart so beat?
What man is at your side?
What beauty is complete
Your own thought will have died
And danger not be diminished;
Dimmed at three-quarter light,
When moon’s round is finished
The stars are out of sight.
O bitter reward
Of many a tragic tomb!
And we though astonished are dumb
Or give but a sigh and a word,
A passing word.
(When the cloth is folded again the stage is bare.)
W
1916-18