said by the servant girls in the kitchen. This matter, I think, is of
importance, for in countries where the imagination of the people, and the
language they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer to be rich
and copious in his words, and at the same time to give the reality, which is
the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form. In the modern
literature of towns, however, richness is found only in sonnets, or prose
poems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far away from the profound
and common interests of life. One has, on one side, Mallarme and Huysmans
producing this literature; and on the other, Ibsen and Zola dealing with the
reality of life in joyless and pallid words. On the stage one must have
reality, and one must have joy; and that is why the intellectual modern drama
has failed, and people have grown sick of the false joy of the musical comedy,
that has been given them in place of the rich joy found only in what is superb
and wild in reality. In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured
as a nut or apple, and such speeches cannot be written by anyone who works
among people who have shut their lips on poetry. In Ireland, for a few years
more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery and magnificent, and tender;
so that those of us who wish to write start with a chance that is not given to
writers in places where the springtime of the local life has been forgotten,
and the harvest is a memory only, and the straw has been turned into bricks.
J. M. S.
January 21st, 1907.


PERSONS

CHRISTOPHER MAHON.
OLD MAHON, his father, a squatter.
MICHAEL JAMES FLAHERTY (called MICHAEL JAMES), a publican.
MARGARET FLAHERTY (called] PEGEEN MIKE), his daughter.