Cathleen Ni Houlihan

W. B. Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century
literature. Yeats was an Irish Nationalist, who sought a kind of traditional lifestyle. In the earlier
part of his life, Yeats was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In 1889 he met Maud
Gonne, an Irish beauty, ardent and brilliant. He fell in love with her, but his love was hopeless.
Maud Gonne liked and admired him, but she was not in love with him. Her passion was lavished
upon Ireland; she was an Irish patriot, a rebel, and a rhetorician, commanding in voice and in
person. When Yeats joined in the Irish nationalist cause, he did so partly from conviction, but
mostly for love of Maud. Due to the escalating tension of the political scene, Yeats distanced
himself from the core political activism in the midst of the Easter Rising, even holding back his
poetry inspired by the events until 1920. However, as his life progressed, he sheltered much of
his revolutionary spirit and distanced himself from the intense political landscape until 1922,
when he was appointed Senator for the Irish Free State. Once Yeats's political involvement enters
the critical fray, the temptation arises to ovesimplify the relationship between politics and art,
and to view political events as material from which the artist may draw. Yeats devoted himself to
literature and drama, believing that poems and plays would engender a national unity capable of
transfiguring the Irish nation.

A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, he helped to found the Abbey Theatre, also
known as the National Theatre of Ireland. In its early years, the theatre was closely associated
with the writers of the Irish Literary Revival, many of whom were involved in its founding and
most of whom had plays staged there. The Abbey served as a nursery for many of leading Irish
playwrights, including William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory. In addition, through its extensive
programme of touring abroad and its high visibility to foreign, particularly American, audiences,
it has become an important part of the Irish cultural brand. On 27 December 1904, the curtains
went up on opening night. The bill consisted of three one-act plays, "On Baile's Strand" and
"Cathleen Ní Houlihan"by Yeats, and "Spreading the News" by Lady Gregory. The Abbey
Theatre is sometimes called Yeats' theatre or a manifestation of his own artistic ambitions and
ideals, "as from the very outset of his dramatic endeavours he was determined to have his own
theatre. He wanted a theater in which the playwright's words were the most important thing,
prevailing over the actor and the audience" (Flannery 181). It was very important to him that the
authors had control.

"Cathleen ni Houlihan" is a one-act play about Ireland’s long fight for independence
written by William Butler Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1902. It was first performed on 2nd of
April that year. The play centres on the 1798 Rebellion. The particular incident referred to in the
play, the landing of a squadron of French soldiers at Killala, was one of many battles in the
struggle to form a free Irish nation. The Killala adventure was inspired by the revolutionary
fervor in France at the time. The invasion failed, but it marked one more milestone in the Irish
march to statehood. The play is startlingly nationalistic, in its last pages encouraging young men
to sacrifice their lives for the heroine Cathleen ni Houlihan, who represents an independent Irish
state. When the young boy agrees and leaves the safety of his home to fight for her, she is seen as
a young woman with "the walk of a queen"(Yeats 15), professing of those who fight for her:
"They shall be remembered forever, They shall be alive forever, They shall be speaking forever,
The people shall hear them forever." (Yeats 14). Subsidiary themes are also sounded throughout
the play. The poverty and hard life of the Irish peasantry are depicted in the small cottage, the
family’s delight at being able to purchase ten acres of land, the absence of any money until the
arrival of the dowry, and the anguish of the mother and father when Michael gives up the dowry
to fight with the French. The fulsome political implications and themes of the play have provided
it with an important place in Irish literature well out of proportion to its length. Despite its short
length, Cathleen ni Houlihan was among the most popular plays in the repertoire of the Abbey
Theatre, and it was revived frequently until World War II.

"Cathleen ni Houlihan" follows a romantic tradition in which the mystic and inexplicable
are set in highly ordinary circumstances; such a device tends to heighten the sense of mystery. In
order to make the mystery more believable, Yeats returns to another century, setting the action
not in an urban environment, but in a rural peasant’s cottage: "interior of a cottage close to
Killala, in 1798" (Yeats 3). Although the plot follows a family of four living an ordinary day, the
visit made by the old woman disturbs this real-life family scene. The eponymous character first
appears as an old woman at the door of the Gillane family who was preparing for their son's
wedding. The old woman is a typical folk figure much like the old witch in the forest. Like other
spectres, she has inexplicable powers to lure the young. The Old Woman's power is suspect and
undeniably alluring. In this case, a young man named Michael Gillane is lured away from his
beautiful loving bride-to-be Delia Cahel and his mother, Bridget, father, Peter, and younger
brother, Patrick. The cheering or the hurling heard in the beginning of the play represents the
noise of the 1789 Rebellion. Michael is the one who sees the strange woman coming up the
path, the one she looks at as she passes the window and the one who opens the door for her,
letting her in, suggesting his respect for her. From the moment the Old Woman enters the
Gillanes' cottage, the incantatory and symbolic power of her words and voice is obvious. The
sense of the mysterious is intensified by the use of folk songs about death, persecution and dying
and by the woman's strange and portentous answers. A normal conversation turn into one of
riddles from a weird and uncanny world. Hence from a slight and inconspicuous episode, the
preparations for a poor farmer’s wedding, Yeats builds a call for the most momentous of actions
— rebellion and revolt in the name of a new nation.

When Peter asks about her travels, she responds: "I have travelled far, very far; there are
few who have travelled so far as myself" (Yeats 8). The rhytmic repetition ensures that her
listeners will understand the salient points of her narrative, placing her within an oral tradition as
"for the Gillanes, the Old Woman is, in a sense, a bard-someone to be encouraged with eager
questions, a repository of news, stories and folk songs. She is not simply and allegorical
representation of Ireland, she speaks for Ireland" (Pocock 100). Her speech denotes wisdom,
talking about the difficulties she has faced in her long life, these symbolising the difficulties
Ireland had to face in order to achieve independence. Her wander started when she felt that there
were too many strangers in the house, that is the British, who took her four beautiful green fields.
The four fields are seen as the Provinces of Ireland with Ulster being the "field" that remained
part of the United Kingdom after the Irish Free State separated. Although she is a symbol herself,
her speech contains its own symbols, which, though obvious to the audience, remain enigmatic
to Peter and Bridget. They understand her speech only on a literal level, wondering if she is the
dispossessed "widow Casey" (Yeats 16). Michael, silent throughout the exchange, watches the
Old Woman "curiously from the door" (Yeats 7), but as she begins to sing a folk song mourning
the hanging of "yellow-haired Donough" (Yeats 9), Michael moves from the door. The song
laments a young Irishman hanged by the English. A few days prior to the first production of the
play, Yeats wrote to the United Irishman emphasizing the importance of the song to the play: "I
have put into the mouth of Kathleen ni Houlihan verses about those who have died or are about
to die for her, and these verses are the key of the rest"(Pocock 106). The song is pivotal, as it
contains an implicit warning about the dangerous allure of the Old Woman's cause. Her most
persuasive promise to Michael, that those who follow her will be speaking forever, rings false in
light of the song's lyrics.

As representatives of Irish cultural memory, the Gillanes fail miserably. They miss the
Old Woman's heavy-handed hints about her identity and ignore the tragic import of her songs.
Even when the Old Woman reveals that she is "Cathleen, the daughter of Houlihan" (Yeats 12),
Peter's memory fails him. The Gillanes cannot remember their past and, therefore, cannot protect
Michael from the Old Woman's obvious threat. Michael is as curious about the song itself as he
is about the story it tells, asking "Is it long since that song was made? Is it long since he got his
death?" (Yeats 13). She talks about those who died for her in the past and who will die for her in
the future: "some died hundreds of years ago, and there are some that will tomorrow" (Yeats 13).
Her frequent use of folk songs "underscores the liminal quality of her speech" ( Pocock 102): she
is a presence belonging to both the past and the future. Folk songs are inherently liminal,
occupying the space between past and future: they encapsulate the heroism of earlier eras. The
Old Woman stands in the doorway after entering and return to that position. Michael mirrors her
movements, watching and gradually following her towards the threshold at the end. Thus,
Michael becomes the Old Woman's apprentice. He rejects domestic bliss, however, to fight for
Ireland. In joining the French forces against the British, he risks his life, knowing that death will
bring eternal fame, as the Old Woman says in her song: "They shall be remembered forever,/
They shall be alive forever,/ They shall be speaking forever,/ The people shall hear them forever"
(Yeats 14). It is Patrick, the youngest son, who proclaims the transformation of Cathleen ni
Houlihan into a "young girl with the walk of a queen" (Yeats 15).
 In the original version of Cathleen, the playwrights left Michael in this ambigous
position, frozen forever in what Yeats called "the perpetual struggle of the cause of Ireland and
every other ideal cause against private hopes and dreams" (qtd. in Pocock 105). For Yeats, "the
perpetual struggle between ideal causes and personal ties cannon resolve itself by a step in a
direction or another, but only by a life-long balancing act between self-sacrifice and self-
expression" (qtd. in Pocock 105). The original end would have left Michael in a powerfully
ambivalent postion, free to choose between turning back inside to marriage and family, following
the Old Woman's song to a self-sacrificial death. Maud Gonne is the one who changed the
ending. Michael forgets that he has to get married the following day, asking his parents: "What
wedding are you talking of?" (Yeats 14) and looking at Delia like a stranger. His family realises
that they have no power of him, as he "does not hear a word; breaks away from Delia, stands for
a second at the door, then rushes out following the Old Woman's voice" (Yeats 14). By taking the
final step across the threshold, Michael Gillane gives himself to a patriotic cause whose
representative is problematic, if not downright sinister. The fact that Yeats agreed to her revision
testifies to the extent of Gonne's influence over him but also to his implicit faith that an Irish
audience would be capable of registering the play's note of tragic irony, recognizing the Old
Woman both as an allegory for the Irish cause and as a deceptively alluring fairy.

In conclusion, it is above all the Irish predilection for the mysterious that forms the base
of the play. Ireland is seen in allegory as a female spirit, ancient and unfathomable but also
capable of transforming herself into a beautiful and queenly young woman. Whether portrayed as
an old woman or young queen, the assaulted and mistreated land still has the spiritual force to
pull young men to its defense and glory. A leader in the movement for Irish independence, and
ultimately a member of parliament in the new Irish nation, Yeats realized early the value of
theater as a political force: through this play, "Yeats calls out to all young people to forgo their
personal desires, as they did in 1798 and in other attempts to attain freedom, and give all in the
fight for Irish independence" (Pocock 108). His interest in the mixture of the natural and the
supernatural, of the mundane and the spiritual, is demonstrated in Cathleen ni Houlihan. Ireland
itself became an example of Yeats’s sense of the continuity between the supernatural and the
natural, at once a place and an ideal, a blend of the personal and the legendary.