ture that has lost her wits. They offer her bread and milk, and Peter, under his wife's reproaches, offers her a shilling. But she refuses.
"If any man would give me help he must give me himself, he must give mo all."
And Michael starts to go with her, to welcome the friends that are coming to help her. But his mother interposes sharply, with a note of terror, and she reminds him whom it is he has to welcome. Then turning to the stranger—
Maybe you don't know, ma'am, that my son is going to be married to-morrow.
Old Woman. It is not a man going to his marriage that I look to for help.
Peter (to Bridget). Who is she, do you think, at all?
Bridget. You did not tell us your name yet, ma'am.
Old Woman. Some call me the Poor Old'Woman, and there are some that call me Cathleen ni Hoolihan.
It sounds flat and cold when you write it down; it did not sound cold when it was spoken. And the audience felt, too, in a flash, all that lay in Peter's comment, "I think I knew some one of that name once. It must have been some one I knew when I was a boy."
The stranger goes out then, chanting an uncanny chant, after she has told them what the service means that she asks of men. "They that had red cheeks will have pale cheeks for my sake; and for all that they will think they are well paid." And she leaves the boy in a kind of trance, from which his mother tries to waken him with talk of his wedding clothes. But as Bridget speaks the door is thrown open, Patrick bursts in with the neighbors: "There are ships in the bay; the French are landing at Killala!"
Delia Cahel may come with him, may cling about Michael; but the chant is heard outside and the bridegroom flings away the bride and rushes out, leaving them all silent. Then old Peter crosses to Patrick and asks, "Did you see an old woman going down the path?" And the lad answers, "I did not; but I saw a young girl and she had the walk of a queen."
The actors played the piece as it was written; that is, they lessened instead of heightening the dialect and the brogue; they left the points unemphasized. But they had
