The Irish Literary Revival, 1880-1928

Dr. Michael McAteer

Irish Mythology – Cuchulain and the Red Branch Nights of Ulster

Irish Mythology – Oisín, Niamh and the Fianna

Women and Irish Mythology - Deirdre

Women and Irish Mythology – Queen Maeve

Standish O’Grady

AE (George Russell)

Seamus Heaney

W.B. Yeats

Lady Augusta Gregory

Douglas Hyde

George Moore

J.M. Synge

Sean O’Casey

Cathleen ni Houlihan (1902)

‘Many that are red-cheeked will now be

pale-cheeked’

‘Who Goes with Fergus?’

Who will drive with Fergus now,

And pierce the deep wood’s woven shade,

And dance upon the level shore?

Young man lift up your russet brow,

And lift your tender eyelids, maid,

And brood on hopes and fears no more.

‘The Song of Wandering Aengus’

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

Spreading the News (1904)

Mrs Tarpey. What did you say she was doing?

Shawn Early. Laying out a sheet on the hedge. (He goes)

Mrs Tarpey. Laying out a sheet for the dead! The Lord

have mercy on us! Jack Smith dead, and his wife laying

out a sheet for his burying! . . . Isn’t the deafness the

great hardship? Half the world might be dead without

me knowing of it or getting word of it at all!

The Playboy of the Western World (1907)

Pegeen. Would you have me knock the head of you

with the butt of the broom?

Christy. Don’t strike me. I killed my poor father,

Tuesday was a week, for doing the like of that.

Pegeen. Is it killed your father?

Christy. With the help of God I did surely, and that

the Holy Immaculate Mother may intercede for

his soul.

‘Easter 1916’And what if excess of love

Bewildered them till they died?

I write it out in a verse –

MacDonagh and MacBride

And Connolly and Pearse

Now and in time to be,

Wherever green is worn,

Are changed, changed utterly:

A terrible beauty is born.

The Plough and the Stars (1926)

Lieut. Langon. Th’ time is rotten ripe for

revolution.

Clitheroe. You have a mother, Langon.

Lieut. Langon. Ireland is greater than a mother.

Capt. Brennan. You have a wife, Clitheroe.

Clitheroe. Ireland is greater than a wife.

Nora. An’ there’s no woman gives a son or

a husband to be killed – if they say it,

they’re lyin’, against God, Nature, an’

against themselves!