Irish Folk-History Plays
By
First Series. The Tragedies
Second Series. The Tragic Comedies
2 vols. Each, $1.50 net. By mail, $1.65
Lady Gregory has preferred going for her material to the traditional folk-history rather than to the anthorised printed versions, and she has been able, in to doing, to make her plays more living. One of these, Kincora, telling of Brian Boru, who reigned in the year 1000, evoked such keen local interest that an old farmer travelled from the neighborhood of Kincora to aee it acted in Dublin.
The story of Grania, on which lady Gregory has founded one of these plays, was taken entirely from tradition. Grania was a beautiful young woman and was to have been married to Finn, the great leader of the Fenians; but before the marriage, she went away from the bridegroom with his handsome young kinsman, Diarmuid. After many years, when Diarmuid had died (and Finn had a hand in his death), she went back to Finn and became his queen.
Another of Lady Gregory's plays, The Canavans dealt with the stormy times of Queen Elizabeth, whose memory is a horror in Ireland second only to that of Cromwell.
The White Cockade is founded on a tradition of King James having escaped from Ireland after the battle of the Boyne in a wine barrel.
The choice of folk history rather than written history gives a freshness of treatment and elasticity of material which made the late J. M. Synge say that "Lady Gregory's method had brought back the possibility of writing historic plays."
All theae plays, except Grania, which has not yet been staged, have been very successfully performed in Ireland. They are written in the dialect of Kiltartan, which had already become familiar to readers of Lady Gregory's books.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
