The Green Helmet and Other Poems

Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love;
“Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair,”
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.

Oh love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away,
And the shadows eaten the moon;
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

THE GREEN HELMET

An Heroic Farce

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

Scene: A house made of logs. There are two windows at the back and a door which cuts off one of the corners of the room. Through the door one can see low rocks which make the ground outside higher than it is within, and beyond the rocks a misty moon-lit sea. Through the windows one can see nothing but the sea. There is a great chair at the opposite side to the door, and in front of it a table with cups and a flagon of ale. Here and there are stools.

At the Abbey Theatre the house is orange red and the chairs and tables and flagons black, with a slight purple tinge which is not clearly distinguishable from the black. The rocks are black with a few green touches. The sea is green and luminous, and all the characters exceptthe Red Man and the Black Men are dressed in various shades of green, one or two with touches of purple which look nearly black. The Black Men all wear dark purple and have eared caps, and at the end their eyes should look green from the reflected light of the sea. The Red Man is altogether in red. He is very tall, and his height increased by horns on the Green Helmet. The effect is intentionally violent and startling.

Laegaire

What is that? I had thought that I saw, though but in the wink of an eye,
A cat-headed man out of Connaught go pacing and spitting by;
But that could not be.

Conall

You have dreamed it – there’s nothing out there.
I killed them all before daybreak – I hoked them out of their lair;
I cut off a hundred heads with a single stroke of my sword,
And then I danced on their graves and carried away their hoard.

Laegaire

Does anything stir on the sea?

Conall

Not even a fish or a gull:
I can see for a mile or two, now that the moon’s at the full.

[A distant shout.]

Laegaire

Ah – there – there is someone who calls us.

Conall

But from the landward side,
And we have nothing to fear that has not come up from the tide;
The rocks and the bushes cover whoever made that noise,
But the land will do us no harm.

Laegaire

It was like Cuchulain’s voice.

Conall

But that’s an impossible thing.

Laegaire

An impossible thing indeed.

Conall

For he will never come home, he has all that he could need
In that high windy Scotland – good luck in all that he does.
Here neighbour wars on neighbour and why there is no man knows,
And if a man is lucky all wish his luck away,
And take his good name from him between a day and a day.

Laegaire

I would he’d come for all that, and make his young wife know
That though she may be his wife, she has no right to go
Before your wife and my wife, as she would have gone last night
Had they not caught at her dress, and pulled her as was right;
And she makes light of us though our wives do all that they can.
She spreads her tail like a peacock and praises none but her man.

Conall

A man in a long green cloak that covers him up to the chin Comes down through the rocks and hazels.

Laegaire

Cry out that he cannot come in.

Conall