The sun sets over the rolling green countryside. The trees cut the light into strict lines across the forest floor. Storm clouds unfurl across the sky, turning the pretty colors of sunset into a mottled grey. There is no peace in the forest. Her scream is gutwrenching and puts all birdsong to silence. She grabs at her knees and at the muddy ground underneath her. The mud sticks to her dress, and digs itself under her fingernails. First comes the sob, the body-shaking cry of sadness. The guttural, choking sob.
And then the scream to sky, as if asking the gods to make this feeling stop. As if to ask Why? Why do I have to lose more? Her hair is messy and undone. It settles over her heaving shoulders like a blood-red shawl. The scream is raw, and the sound rips her throat. Her grief echoes off the trees and mountains. She rocks back and forth from her place on the ground. The rain hits her red face. Her eyes are bloodshot and she sees nothing but a blurry sky. The pain is too much, the sadness is enough to drown in. It is hard to breathe. The banshee wails for another loss, and another and another. The endless sea of loss. The firing squads to come, the bullet holes in historic places, as if the world wars weren’t enough.
Yeats was one who wrote a girl like her, the spirit of Ireland. In his play Cathleen ni Houlihan, WD Yeats makes the oppressed Ireland a character. An old grieving woman, who is transformed to her former beauty by the sacrifice of young men. “It is a hard service they take that help me. Many that are red-cheeked now will be pale-cheeked; many that have free to walk the hills and the bogs and the rushes, will be sent to walk hard streets in far countries; many a good plan will be broken; many that have gathered money will not stay to spend it; many a child will be born and there will be no father at it’s christening to give it a name.
They that have red cheeks will have pale cheeks for my sake, and for all that, they will think they are well paid” Cathleen ni Houlihan, WD Yeats. This play was a important piece of art for the cultural revival. Yeats was an important figure in the Cultural Revival movement.
He was a well known poet and writer, and a Gaelic cultural revivalist. “W.B. YEATS often wondered if he had helped to cause the Easter Rising. ‘Did that play of mine send out certain men the English shot?’ he wrote over 20 years after the event. He was thinking of his 1902 drama Cathleen Ni Houlihan, in which Maud Gonne represented Ireland as a poor old woman who would become a beautiful queen if young men were prepared to kill and die for her. While Yeats might have been a bit melodramatic, his question was valid. The Nobel Prize-winning poet had played a key role in the Gaelic Revival movement that swept through Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” (Lynch, 2016) Folklore served as a fountain of inspiration for many writers and revivalists. Yeats’s work often featured a folklore motif. Folklore was also a well of oral history and authentic culture. It became the goal of the revivalists to save folklore stories and record them. By doing so they could keep their traditions and stories from dying out.
An article from Britannica explains how the cultural revival led to the rise of cultural nationalism. By bringing the Irish culture back into public consciousness, the revival led to a renewed sense of nationalist pride and a greater public identity. “ The discovery by philologists of how to read Old Irish (written prior to 900) and the subsequent translations of ancient Gaelic manuscripts (e.g., The Annals of the Four Masters) made possible the reading of Ireland’s ancient literature.
Heroic tales caught the imagination of the educated classes. Anglo-Irish poets experimented with verse that was structured according to Gaelic patterns and rhythms and that echoed the passion and rich imagery of ancient bardic verse. (Gaelic revival)” This shows how the recovery and rediscovery of old Gaelic stories changed the culture at the time. One classic character from old Irish folklore is the banshee. The Banshee is a friendly member of the fair folk, her name coming from the old Gaelic words for fey and woman. She is said only to mourn and wail for Irish families. The Banshee and other characters became very popular in the revival. “The Revival also had a literary wing inspired by Celtic folklore, which led Yeats and other writers to set up the Abbey Theatre in 1904. On Easter Monday 1916, the first Irish rebel to be killed was an Abbey actor called Sean Connolly – shot by a sniper as he stood on the roof of City Hill.” (Lynch, 2016) Many poets and revivalists found great inspiration in folklore. A rich source of oral history and real culture was folklore. The revivalists made it their mission to preserve and preserve folklore stories. They prevented the extinction of their legends and customs by doing this, like the banshee.
Citations
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.-a). Gaelic revival. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/Gaelic-revival
Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.-b). The Fenian cycle. Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/Celtic-literature/The-Fenian-cycle#ref313917
Lynch, A. (2016, January 27). A Gaelic revival that sparked an irish revolution within a decade. Independent.ie. https://www.independent.ie/regionals/dublin/a-gaelic-revival-that-sparked-an-irish-revolution-within-a-decade/34401040.html
