‘“I have learned,” said the Philosopher, “that the head does not hear anything until the heart has listened, and that what the heart knows to-day the head will understand to-morrow.”’ (Pan edn. 1953, p.111.)

[...]

 About half an hour’s easy travelling brought him to a point from which he could see far down below to the pine trees of Coille Doraca. The shadowy evening had crept over the world ere he reached the wood, and when he entered the little house the darkness had already descended.
 The Thin Woman of Inis Magrath met him as he entered, and was about to speak harshly of his long absence, but the Philosopher kissed her with such unaccustomed tenderness, and spoke so mildly to her, that, first, astonishment enchained her tongue, and then delight set it free in a direction to which it had long been a stranger.
 “Wife,” said the Philosopher, “I cannot say how joyful I am to see your good face again.”
 The Thin Woman was unable at first to reply to this salutation, but, with incredible speed, she put on a pot of stirabout, began to bake a cake, and tried to roast potatoes. After a little while she wept loudly, and proclaimed that the world did not contain the equal of her husband for comeliness and goodness, and that she was herself a sinful person unworthy of the kindness of the gods or of such a mate.
 But while the Philosopher was embracing Seumas and Brigid Beg, the door was suddenly burst open with a great noise, four policemen entered the little room, and after one dumbfoundered minute they retreated again bearing the Philosopher with them to answer a charge of murder. [End]

SOME distance down the road the policemen halted. The night had fallen before they effected their capture, and now, in the gathering darkness, they were not at ease. In the first place, they knew that the occupation upon which they were employed was not a creditable one to a man whatever it might be to a policeman. The seizure of a criminal may be justified by certain arguments as to the health of society and the preservation of property, but no person wishes under any circumstances to hale a wise man to prison. They were further distressed by the knowledge that they were in the very centre of a populous fairy country, and that on every side the elemental hosts might be ranging, ready to fall upon them with the terrors of war or the still more awful scourge of their humour. The path leading to their station was a long one, winding through great alleys of trees, which in some places overhung the road so thickly that even the full moon could not search out that deep blackness. In the daylight these men would have arrested an Archangel and, if necessary, bludgeoned him, but in the night-time a thousand fears afflicted and a multitude of sounds shocked them from every quarter. [CG, London 1908, p.197]

[...]

“Do you know,” said the sergeant, “that whatever you say now will be used in evidence against you later on?”
“I do not,” said the Philosopher. “It may be said that these races are free from crime, that such vices as they have are organized and communal instead of individual and anarchistic, and that, consequently, there is no necessity for policecraft, but I cannot believe that these large aggregations of people could have attained their present high culture without an interval of both national and individual dishonesty”
“Tell me now, as you are talking,” said the sergeant, “did you buy the poison at a chemist’s shop, or did you smother the pair of them with a pillow?”
“I did not,” said the Philosopher. “If crime is a condition precedent to the evolution of policemen, then I will submit that jackdaws are a very thievish clan [...; CG, London 1908, p.205.]

[...]

 “Is it thinking of giving us the slip he is?” said the sergeant. “Take your baton in your hand, Shawn, and if he turns his head to one side of him hit him on that side.”
 “I’ll do that,” said Shawn, and he pulled out his truncheon.
 The Philosopher had been dazed by the suddenness of these occurrences, and the enforced rapidity of his movements prevented him from either thinking or speaking, but during this brief stoppage his scattered wits began to return to their allegiance. First, bewilderment at his enforcement had seized him, and the four men, who were continually running round him and speaking all at once, and each pulling him in a different direction, gave him the impression that he was surrounded by a great rabble of people, but he could not discover what they wanted. After a time he found that there were only four men, and gathered from their remarks that he was being arrested for murder - this precipitated him into another and a deeper gulf of bewilderment. He was unable to conceive why they should arrest him for murder when he had not committed any; and, following this, he became indignant.

[...]

 After a few minutes of silence the Philosopher began to speak.
 “I do not see any necessity in nature for policemen,” said he, “nor do I understand how the custom first originated. Dogs and cats do not employ these extraordinary mercenaries, and yet their polity is progressive and orderly. Crows are a gregarious race with settled habitations and an organized commonwealth. They usually congregate in a ruined tower or on the top of a church, and their civilization is based on mutual aid and tolerance for each other’s idiosyncrasies. Their exceeding mobility and hardiness renders them dangerous to attack, and thus they are free to devote themselves to the development of their domestic laws and customs. If policemen were necessary to a civilization crows would certainly have evolved them, but I triumphantly insist that they have not got any policemen in their republic - ” [CG, London 1908, p.204]
 “I don’t understand a word you are saying,” said the sergeant.
 “It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “Ants and bees also live in specialized communities and have an extreme complexity both of function and occupation. Their experience in governmental matters is enormous, and yet they have never discovered that a police force is at all essential to their wellbeing - ”
 “Do you know,” said the sergeant, “that whatever you say now will be used in evidence against you later on?”

[...; the enter a house on the road occupied by a widow and her strange son:]

 “Is his father dead, ma’am?” said the sergeant kindly.
 “I’ll tell the truth,” said she. “I don’t know whether he is or not, for a long time ago, when we used to live in the city of Bla’ Cliah, he lost his work one time and he never came back to me again. He was ashamed to come home I’m thinking, the poor man, because he had no money; as if I would have minded whether he had any money or not - sure, he was very fond of me, sir, and we could have pulled along somehow. After that I came back to my father’s place here; the rest of the children died on me, and then my father died, and I’m doing the best I can by myself. It’s only that I’m a little bit troubled with the boy now and again.”
 “It’s a hard case, ma’am,” said the sergeant, “but maybe the boy is only a bit wild not having his father over him, and maybe it’s just that he’s used to yourself, for there isn’t a child at all that doesn’t love his mother. Let you behave yourself now, Tomas; attend to your mother, and leave the beasts and the insects alone, like a decent boy, for there’s no insect in the world will ever like you as well as she does. Could you tell me, ma’am, if we have passed the first turn on this road, or is it in front of us still, for we are lost altogether in the darkness?”
 “It’s in front of you still,” she replied, “about ten minutes down the road; you can’t miss it, for you’ll see the sky where there is a gap in the trees, and that gap is the turn you want.”

[...; the sargeant now calls on a Constable Kelly to blather in order to silence the Philosopher; then the troop is next attacked by a group of lepracauns (sic) whom they successfully beat off:]

 The truncheons of the policemen had been so ferociously exercised that their antagonists departed as swiftly and as mysteriously as they came. It was just two minutes of frantic, aimless conflict, and then the silent night was round them again, without any sound but the slow creaking of branches, the swish of leaves as they swung and poised, and the quiet croon of the wind along the road.
 “Come on, men,” said the sergeant, “we’d better be getting out of this place as quick as we can. Are any of ye hurted?”
 “I’ve got one of the enemy,” said Shawn, panting.
 “You’ve got what?” said the sergeant.
 “I’ve got one of them, and he is wriggling like an eel on a pan.”

[...]

 “If you don’t tell me where the money is at once I’ll kill you, I will so.”
 “I haven’t got any money at all, sir,” said the Leprecaun.
 “None of your lies,” roared Shawn. “Tell the truth now or it’ll be worse for you.”
 “I haven’t got any money,” said the Leprecaun, “for Meehawl MacMurrachu of the Hill stole our crock a while back, and he buried it under a thorn bush. I can bring you to the place if you don’t believe me.”
 “Very good,” said Shawn. “Come on with me now, and I’ll clout you if you as much as wriggle; do you mind me?”
 “What would I wriggle for?” said the Leprecaun: “sure I like being with you.”
 Hereupon the sergeant roared at the top of his voice.
 “Attention,” said he, and the men leaped to position like automata.
 “What is it you are going to do with your prisoner, Shawn?” said he sarcastically. “Don’t you think we’ve had enough tramping of these roads for one night, now? Bring up that Leprecaun to the barracks or it’ll be the worse for you - do you hear me talking to you?”
 “But the gold, sergeant,” said Shawn sulkily.
 “If there’s any gold it’ll be treasure trove, and belong to the Crown. What kind of a constable are you at all, Shawn? Mind what you are about now, my man, and no back answers. Step along there. Bring that murderer up at once, whichever of you has him.”
 There came a gasp from the darkness.
 “Oh, Oh, Oh!” said a voice of horror.
 “What’s wrong with you?” said the sergeant: “are you hurted?”
 “The prisoner!” he gasped, “he, he’s got away!”
 “Got away?” and the sergeant’s voice was a blare of fury.
 “While we were looking at the Leprecaun,” said the voice of woe, “I must have forgotten about the other one - I, I haven’t got him - ”
 “You gawm!” gritted the sergeant.
 “Is it my prisoner that’s gone?” said Shawn in a deep voice. He leaped forward with a curse and smote his negligent comrade so terrible a blow in the face, that the man went flying backwards, and the thud of his head on the road could have been heard anywhere.
 “Get up,” said Shawn, “get up till I give you another one.”

[...]

 “That will do,” said the sergeant, “we’ll go home. We’re the laughing-stock of the world. I’ll pay you out for this some time, every damn man of ye. Bring that Leprecaun along with you, and quick march.”
 “Oh!” said Shawn in a strangled tone.
 “What is it now?” said the sergeant testily.
 “Nothing,” replied Shawn.
 “What did you say ‘Oh!’ for then, you block-head?”
 “It’s the Leprecaun, sergeant,” said Shawn in a whisper - “he’s got away - when I was hitting the man there I forgot all about the Leprecaun: he must have run into the hedge. Oh, sergeant, dear, don’t say anything to me now - !”
 “Quick march,” said the sergeant, and the four men moved on through the darkness in a silence, which was only skin deep. [End Chap.]

[...]  Before the Thin Woman could undertake the redemption of her husband by wrath, it was necessary that she should be purified by the performance of that sacrifice which is called the Forgiveness of Enemies, and this she did by embracing the Leprecauns of the Gort and in the presence of the sun and the wind remitting their crime against her husband. Thus she became free to devote her malice against the State of Punishment, while forgiving the individuals who had but acted in obedience to the pressure of their infernal environment, which pressure is Sin.

The Thin Woman’s theory of gender [The Crock of Gold, Book V, Chap. XVII]: ‘She taught that a man must hate all women before he is able to love a woman, but that he is at liberty, or rather he is under express command, to love all men because they are of his kind. Women also should love all other women as themselves, and they should hate all men but one man only, and him they should seek to turn into a woman, because women, by the order of their beings, must be either tyrants or slaves, and it is better they should be tyrants than slaves. She explained that between men and women there exists a state of unremitting warfare, and that the endeavour of each sex is to bring the other to subjection; but that women are possessed by a demon called Pity which severely handicaps their battle and perpetually gives victory to the male, who is thus constantly rescued on the very ridges of defeat. She said to Seumas that his fatal day would dawn when he loved a woman, because he would sacrifice his destiny to her caprice, and she begged him for love of her to beware of all that twisty sex. To Brigid she revealed that a woman’s terrible day is upon her when she knows that a man loves her, for a man in love submits only to a woman, a partial, individual and temporary submission, but a woman who is loved surrenders more fully to the very god of love himself, and so she becomes a slave, and is not alone deprived of her personal liberty, but is even infected in her mental processes by this crafty obsession. The fates work for man, and therefore, she averred, woman must be victorious, for those who dare to war against the gods are already assured of victory: this being the law of life, that only the weak shall conquer. The limit of strength is petrifaction and immobility, but there is no limit to weakness, and cunning or fluidity is its counsellor. For these reasons, and in order that life might not cease, women should seek to turn their husbands into women; then they would be tyrants and their husbands would be slaves, and life would be renewed for a further period. /  As the Thin Woman proceeded with this lesson it became at last so extremely complicated that she was brought to a stand by the knots, so she decided to resume their journey and disentangle her argument when the weather became cooler.’

[Arrival at Brugh of Angus where the God instructs them how to be free:] Come to us, ye who do not know where ye are - ye who live among strangers in the house of dismay and self-righteousness. Poor, awkward ones! How bewildered and bedevilled ye go! Amazed ye look and do not comprehend, for your eyes are set upon a star and your feet move in the blessed kingdoms of the Shee Innocents! in what prisons are ye flung? [...]”

 They swept through the goat tracks and the little boreens and the curving roads. Down to the city they went dancing and singing; among the streets and the shops telling their sunny tale; not heeding the malignant eyes and the cold brows as the sons of Balor looked sidewards. And they took the Philosopher from his prison, even the Intellect of Man they took from the hands of the doctors and lawyers, from the sly priests, from the professors whose mouths are gorged with sawdust, and the merchants who sell blades of grass - the awful people of the Fomor ... and then they returned again, dancing and singing, to the country of the gods .... (The Crock of Gold [1912], NY: Collier 1967, p.228; quoted in Donald Morse, ‘Making the Familiar Unfamiliar: The Fantastic in Four Twentieth-century Irish Novels’, in That Other World [... &c.], ed. Bruce Stewart, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1998, p.269.)

Deirdre grew up in a place apart at Emania. She saw no people of any kind, except Lavarcham, the king’s “conversation-woman,” and her women servants; for always about the castle where she lived there was a guard of the oldest and ugliest swordsmen that were in Ulster. Their duty was to let nobody pass in or out of the castle grounds; for it was the king’s intention to outwit fate as he had outwitted all else that had moved in his path.
 Thus she grew in gentleness and peace, hearing no voice less sweet than the voice of the birds that sang in the sunshine, or the friendly calling of the wind she played with; seeing nothing more uncomely than the gracious outline of far hills, the many-coloured sky that fled and was never gone, the creatures that lived unmolested in the trees about the castle, and the wild deer that grew tame in nearby brakes. All that she knew was friendly to her and naught was rough. All that she drew nigh to stood for her approach. Naught fled from her, and she did not flee from anything.
 Watching her, as she stood or sat or went, the wise Lavarcham used to lose her senses, for all that was beautiful was here gathered into one form, as in one true ray of the sun is all that is lovely of the sun. The running wind, and the wild creatures of the wood; the folk from the Shí, the Bochanachs and Bananocks, and the aerial beings that are not seen, might have stayed to look at Deirdre, but had they stayed they could not have gone again, for they would have become eyes only, and they would have perished in beauty, gazing on it.
 Lavarcham was a wise woman. She could not have occupied and continued to hold her position in Conachúr’s household had she not been wise. She was known as the king’s “conversation-woman,” and she could indicate an unpleasant truth as delicately as a poet can express the dimple in a lady’s chin. But her real occupation, masked by the courteous word, was that of household spy. She went to and fro in the vast palaces at Emania, and nothing passed there, whether among the nobles or the servants, that she was not privy to, or which the king was not thereafter acquainted with. She could adapt herself to any situation and to every society; and if her chatter with the kitchen-maids was jovial and in key, her conversation with a young princess or an old bard was not less balanced and elucidatory.
 She had many things to teach a young girl, and she withheld no knowledge that could benefit the little one whom her heart had soon adopted as its own babe. The virtues as well as the arts were part of her experience, so that Deirdre grew in the love of chastity, of industry, and of joyfulness.
 In this way and in these teachings the years went by, unnoticed as years. Day followed night, and night came after day in a timeless succession, each adding its unnoticeable little to her stature, its unseen tender curve to her limbs, its imperceptible deposit of memory to her mind.
 But among the arts of which the tireless Lavarcham spoke there was one she taught and retaught to Deirdre, and that art was Conachúr.
 Although she had never seen the king, yet the young girl knew him as a mother knows her baby. She could have recited his babyhood, his adolescence, and now his maturity. She knew, as only Lavarcham did, why he did such a certain thing, and by what progressions this stated consummation, marvelled at by others, had been arrived at. It was of infinite interest to Deirdre, but its inevitable effect was to stamp the unseen king with a seal of time, so that, although Lavarcham insisted he was only thirty-five years of age, the young girl’s mind regarded him as one who could have been father and grandfather to a hill.
 She reported to Conachúr at proper intervals as to her ward, and he, if he had wished, might have checked the passing years by his memory of the stories Lavarcham told him of Deirdre learning to walk, and walking; of Deirdre learning to talk, and talking: her teeth were counted to him as she cut them, and when she bruised her knee slipping down a bank, or when she wept for the cold fledgling she found on the path, or when she refused to weep in a thunderstorm, he was acquainted with the facts, and nodded at them gravely as they were told.
 She had been a round thing, all surprise and fluff, like a young duck: she became a lank anatomy, all leg and hair and stare, like a young colt: then she became a wild thing, all spring and peep and run, like a young fawn; and now she was what Lavarcham continued to report and dilate on.
But the king could not believe one half of the tale that Lavarcham told, for it seemed to him that such beauty as she reported was not credible, and he knew that women speak foolishly when they talk of beauty. He was, moreover, well satisfied with the queen who was with him then, Maeve, the lovely daughter of the High King. [End chap.]

If it rested only with the boys the girls might go unmarried, for boys have urgent interests and have little of the leisure for dream which girls enjoy.
They feel, moreover, at a loss in that art wherein a girl seems instinctively wise; for as a young bee will undertake untaught the curious angles and subtle perfections of his home, so a girl will adventure herself in love without misgiving and without teaching.
 The secret of the bee and of the girl is that they give their whole minds to their idea; and this powerful concentration, wherein the being comes to a oneness of desire, moves to its ends as unerringly as a bird wings to the sole hedge he aims for among all the hedges of a country-side.
So, although Naoise did think again of their visitor, his thought of her was but one among many, for he had grave businesses in hand, and, except when he slept, his leisure for dreaming was limited.
He had long since left the Boy Troop at Emania. He had performed the feats by which an apprentice rises to be a master, and a full two years had passed since Conachúr, in the presence of a solemn concourse, had received him into the Red Branch, and bestowed on him the armour which he had won, and the shield which he would honourably guard.
 He was a gentleman by birth, but he was now a soldier also, and must lift his hand for those who besought protection or against those who derided it. He would move habitually where death urged about him at no greater distance than the length of a spear, and he would look upon death as being so instant a part of life, that he must woo the one as earnestly as he loved the other.
His thought of Deirdre was also complicated by the knowledge that she was his master’s ward, and his personal loyalty to Conachúr was such that he would not dwell even in imagination on that which belonged to the king.
 Stories of Deirdre had long ago come abroad. The fact of her lonely keeping lent a romantic charm to gossip, and all that was said about her was stressed by the singular condition of her birth and upbringing. The old servants hinted and blinked and nodded, indicating thus a beauty for which there was no parallel; and the ancient guards, partly in brag, partly in truth, lent an aid to the spread of the Deirdre rumour.
 These things, however, were to be talked about, but they were not to be further looked into, for she belonged to the king, and curiosity itself went lightly in the presence of that notable fact. Therefore, so far as a young man could, Naoise put Deirdre out of his mind, or only remembered her as a delicious apparition, and he warned his brothers that they must on no account mention her escapade.
 But if this was the case with the boy it was not so with the girl. For good or ill her imagination had been captured, and through it her senses had awakened. Her fancies had now a home to fly to, and while the unrest proper to her years grew as stealthily as her limbs, it was no longer unnoted. She had a direction and she leaned there as ardently and unconsciously as a flower turns to the sun.
 Now she became a creature of another reverie; no longer staring vaguely into space, but looking there, and seeing what even the wise Lavarcham could not surmise.
 This powerful brooding of desire is a magical act, and the object of it does not remain entirely unaffected; for, even if no coherent message is despatched, the unrest is shared in however diffused a form, and it may be that in sleep Naoise was no longer the master of his dreams.
 But the real scope of an action is with the actor, and Deirdre, brooding on Naoise, was Deirdre brooding on herself, and taking conscious control and direction of her own growth and culture. Lavarcham noticed the difference; for when she spoke to the girl she was replied to by the woman, and she sensed in her ward something intractable, obedient still, and yet as removed from her cognizance, and so from her control, as she was herself from the cognizance of any person about her.

Chapter III. Wednesday: ‘Was the City for or against the Volunteers? Was it for the Volunteers, and yet against the rising? It is considered now (writing a day or two afterwards) that Dublin was entirely against the Volunteers, but on the day of which I write no such certainty could be put forward. There was a singular reticence on the subject. Men met and talked volubly, but they said nothing that indicated a personal desire or belief. They asked for and exchanged the latest news, or, rather, rumour, and while expressions were frequent of astonishment at the suddenness and completeness of the occurrence, [p.36] no expression of opinion for or against was anywhere formulated.

Sometimes a man said, “They will be beaten of course”, and, as he prophesied, the neighbour might surmise if he did so with a sad heart or a merry one, but they knew nothing and asked nothing of his views, and themselves advanced no flag.

This was among the men.

The women were less guarded, or, perhaps, knew they had less to fear. Most of the female opinion I heard was not alone unfavourable but actively and viciously hostile to the rising. This was noticeable among the best dressed class of our population; the worst dressed, indeed the female dregs of Dublin life, expressed a like antagonism, and almost in similar language. The view expressed was -

“I hope every man of them will be shot”.
“They ought to be all shot”.

Shooting, indeed, was proceeding everywhere. During daylight, at least, the sound is not sinister nor depressing, and the thought that perhaps a life had exploded with that crack is not depressing either.’ (End chap.; pp.3-37.)

Chapter V - Friday: ‘The feeling that I tapped was definitely Anti-Volunteer, but the number of people who [p.57] would speak was few, and one regarded the noncommital folk who were so smiling and polite, and so prepared to talk, with much curiosity, seeking to read in their eyes, in their bearing, even in the cut of their clothes what might be the secret movements and cogitations of their minds. / I received the impression that numbers of them did not care a rap what way it went; and that others had ceased to be mental creatures and were merely machines for registering the sensations of the time. / None of these people were prepared for Insurrection. The thing had been sprung on them so suddenly that they were unable to take sides, and their feeling of detachment was still so complete that they would have betted on the business as if it had been a horse race or a dog fight.’ (pp.56-57.)

Chapter VI - Saturday: [...] The belief grows that no person who is now in the Insurrection will be alive when the Insurrection is ended. / That is as it will be. But these days the thought of death does not strike on the mind with any severity, and, should the European war continue much longer, the fear of death will entirely depart from man, as it has departed [p.65] many times in history. With that great deterrent gone our rulers will be gravely at a loss in dealing with strikers and other such discontented people. Possibly they will have to resurrect the long-buried idea of torture.

The people in the streets are laughing and chatting. Indeed, there is gaiety in the air as well as sunshine, and no person seems to care that men are being shot every other minute, or bayoneted, or blown into scraps or burned into cinders. These things are happening, nevertheless, but much of their importance has vanished.’ (p.64-65.)

Chapter X - Some of the Leaders: ‘The country was not with it, for be it remembered that a whole army of Irishmen, possibly three hundred thousand of our race, are fighting with England instead of against her. In Dublin alone there is scarcely a poor home in which a father, a brother, or a son is not serving in one of the many fronts which England is defending. Had the country risen, and fought as stubbornly as the Volunteers did, no troops could have beaten them - well that is a wild statement, the heavy guns could always beat them - but from whatever angle Irish people consider this affair it must [p.88] appear to them tragic and lamentable beyond expression, but not mean and not unheroic.

It was hard enough that our men in the English armies should be slain for causes which no amount of explanation will ever render less foreign to us, or even intelligible; but that our men who were left should be killed in Ireland fighting against the same England that their brothers are fighting for ties the question into such knots of contradiction as we may give up trying to unravel. We can only think - this has happened - and let it unhappen itself as best it may.

We say that the time always finds the man, and by it we mean: that when a responsibility is toward there will be found some shoulder to bend for the yoke which all others shrink from.’

It is not always nor often the great ones of the earth who undertake these burdens - it is usually the good folk, that gentle hierarchy who swear allegiance to mournfulness and the under dog, as others dedicate themselves to mutton chops and the easy nymph. It is not my intention to idealise any of the men who were concerned [p.89] in this rebellion. Their country will, some few years hence, do that as adequately as she has done it for those who went before them. Those of the leaders whom I knew were not great men, nor brilliant- that is they were more scholars than thinkers, and more thinkers than men of action; and I believe that in no capacity could they have attained to what is called eminence, nor do I consider they coveted any such public distinction as is noted in that word.

But in my definition they were good men - men, that is, who willed no evil, and whose movements of body or brain were unselfish and healthy. No person living is the worse off for having known Thomas MacDonagh, and I, at least, have never heard MacDonagh speak unkindly or even harshly of anything that lived.’ (pp.87-89; [...]; proceeds to describe O’Rahilly, Plunkett, and Pearse.)

Chapter XI - Labour and the Insurrection: ‘The truth is that labour in Ireland has not yet succeeded in organising anything - not even discontent. It is not self-conscious to any extent, and, outside of Dublin, it scarcely appears to exist. The national imagination is not free to deal with any other subject than that of freedom, and part of the policy of our “masters” is to see that we be kept busy with politics instead of social ideas. From their standpoint the policy is admirable, and up to the present it has thoroughly succeeded. [p.96]

One does not hear from the lips of the Irish workingman, even in Dublin, any of the affirmations and rejections which have long since become the commonplaces of his comrades in other lands. But on the subject of Irish freedom his views are instantly forthcoming, and his desires are explicit, and, to a degree, informed. This latter subject they understand and have fabricated an entire language to express it, but the other they do not understand nor cherish, and they are not prepared to die for it.’ (pp.95-96.)

[...] Thank you for the pleasant things you said about my work. I wonder whether the Irish Revival is, as you suggest, a matter of climate - that is a good beginning and a bad end. if climate has anything to do with it why is not America producing better work? Why is England producing nothing, or very little, but vulgar stupidity. France and Germany are also very dexterously efficient but are not doing anything of importance. Barring Yeats I dont think there is a first class poet in the world - I dont think that climate has much to do with it. Ireland has lain fallow for so many hundreds of years now that, perhaps, even a little sowing will have to produce a notable crop. I often imagine the artistic and literary soil of Europe wants a long rest. [...] The wonder to me is that Ireland has some kind of renascence but that America has not. [End; spelling sic passim.] (Letters, p.52.)

As to the short stories - I am having them typed, and will send you the mss within a week. [...] I may say that I am very pleased with these short stories, which, in many ways, represent the best work I have yet done. (p.52.)

[Incls. remarks on AE’s new poetry collection:] You mention (inter alia, for your letter was well packed) AE’s book. He has sent it to me. I have read it four things and will reread it 24 times - I am amazed at the greatness of this man. It is the most superb book of verse published in these times. I ti my intimate conviction that Ae is a greater poet than Yeats. Ther are thing in this book, many things, of the most [80] wonderful beauty and ecstasy. It is I think a book unique in the English language. Ireland has reason to be proud of AE. I bow down and wallow before him. Get you that book even if you have to hit your da with a loy for the money. (pp.80-81.)

[...] Irish literature in English is still in its infancy - a lusty infancy, but still —! Only sixty years ago the vast bulk of our population (about nine millions) spoke habitually in the Gaelic, and altho’ the Gaelic has been broken aas a medium of exchange a great number of our people who speak only English still think in the Gaelic mode. A great number of our Anglo-Irish writ3rs, Lever & Lover & all that ilk, wrote English with great cleverness, but no great prose or poetry (or scarcely any) was produced in English by Irishmen. Our race had not thoroughly learned the language, or had not thoroughly learned to adapt the Irish mode to the English tongue - We have now learned it; &, outside of their real literary merit, it is for this that Yeats and Russell, Synge and Lady Gregory are remarkable - They have succeeded in freshing both the English tongue and Irish thought. With Yeats and Russell (AE) & Standish O’Grady Anglo-Irish literature re-commences. Are the types drawn by Synge & myself true Irish types? you ask. Yes, they are true as types: but the are not the type. Every country is too complex to be summed up in any man’s formula. In literature as in every other affair a man answers at last only to himself. Synge’s types are art last a synthesis of Synge, & Synge is an Irishman. My types are true to me, and I am an Irishman. I represent something that is true of me. If you look at the illustrations of Irish life by Jack Yeats (Willy [197] Yeats’ brother) you will see that he reproduces in line and coulour the very men whom Synge reproduced in word & thought. We cn all have an ideaa of a typical Englishman, or Frenchman, for the literatures of these races have been engaged so long & so profoundly on their psychologiy that at last the type has emerged, not as a man, but s an understanding, a notion. In Ireland the type is there all right, but the destruction of the Irish language, Irish culture & tradition, the Irish "mode" in fact, has hidden or veiled the type; so that we Irish writers must go searching for it again, &and will find it all right. These preliminary essays of the writers you mentioned, and among whom you are pleased to include myself, are as yet no more than examinations made by the way—They are the beginning of our stock-taking. This is I believe true, what we are a good race; but our national evolution has been hindered, our traditional culture subjected to every kind of interference, so that it is a marvel it exists at all, and we have almost entirely lost the Gaelic language which is the national storehouse, & into which the Irish psychology had been precipitated. English was so strong in men, & money, & culture, & yet Ireland has withstood the terrific pressure of this threefold power. That is an amazing feat, & the country which, having been impoverished in men and money & culture, could yet withstand the energetic trinity hsa something in it worth discovering. Has American literature been working long enough to evolve a national type, or national types. I dont [sic] believe it has. Something that is true of New York has arrived, but do you know anything that is true of America. / Yours faithfully / JAMES STEPHENS. (pp.197-98.)

We can say, almost with certainty, that a given picture must have been painted in Siena, and another such at Florence or Perugia [...] and could not have been painted in any other localities. But in the craft of writing our literary senses have not been so minutely trained in critical examination. [...] But locality does not only influence one’s accent: it subtly shades all our perspectives and preoccupations: it should be found in every book, so that, after a few lines by any author, one should exclaim - a Dublin book, A Connemara book, as one says, at a taste or smell, a Cheshire cheese, a Limerick ham, a Dublin Bay herrring. When a criticism of origins becomes as remunerative , or as fashionable, in literature as in painting the timely critic will not only be ready for his obol, he will be clamant. (p.298.)

[...] I mention that the impulse to write came to me after reading Browning, and I am sure that in Insurrections a certain amount of the Browning method will be discovered, but a great deal of my own –[...] I suppose every writer has some kind of general aim, perhaps it is no more than an idea, of what he is really at himself; for every man is so sunk in his environment that it is with difficulty that he can dissociate himself from it, or see his own acts [202] apart from the general stream of life around him. One seldom knows what one is truly at, for somewhere else your work is hingeing on to a larger issue and becoming instantly modified and amplified and digested and (apparently) lost. But so far as I am concerned I believe there are certain qualities in my work which are my own and, if there is any value in me, it is in these qualities. Most writers (it is nothing against them) seem to make all their contacts through persons, or life. I think I portray living, or the sense of being alive, or the sense of receptiveness better than most other do. [...] It is in response to a feeling of “life” my best writing comes, and even with thinking I use somewhat the same method, seeking to take it into me like sunlight or eyesight or smell, and then to hand it out to the reader hot or visible or savoury. (p.203.)

[...]

I have written practically nothing of journalism and very little of my work (saving for the National paper aforesaid [Sinn Féin])has appeared in newspapers or magazines. As to my life – It is to a greater extent than appears distilled into my books, enthusiasms and vain imaginings. I am Mary in the Charwoman’s Daughter, and I am her mother and the Policeman [—] I am the Philosopher in The Crock of Gold, and I am the children, the leprechauns and the goat: so, in the Demi-Gods, I am the gods, and Patsy MacCann and Eileen Ni Cooley, and whoever else goes through those pages. (p.204.)

[...]

I have never written a story that I heard, and I hope I never will. Always the tale has been my own adventure or my own imagining, which is the same thing. Just as you cannot digest another man’s meat, so you cannot digest another [204] man’s story without indigestion in the second chapter. (pp.204-05.)

[...]

Of education I got the ordinary stuffing provided by most schools twenty years ago. I learned geography and grammar and the bible [—] things like that, and forgot them a great deal easier than I learned them. The quickness in forgetting is a kind of activity also I suppose. I was active that way in my early days. The dislike I got of teachers has lasted to this day, coupled with a dislike for clergymen and policemen and politicians. As to my contemporaries, I think that Russell and Yeats are the bet things in English poetry.  I think Hodgson is, or may be, the best Englishman in English poetry. I thing the art of writing prose has been lost to the English people, but not to Irish ones. At their best, Russell and Yeats, Lord Dunsany, Standish O’Grady are wonderful prose artiss. What more? I have been in Paris for three years before the war and one year afer the war. I think their literature is (in its latest phase & time) rubbish. Paul Claudel has done good things, but for the rest of them there is nothing to be said. (p.205.)

[...]

Now I have typed enough. I am not able to write or think decently on a typing machine, so I’ll stop. I hope you may get some where among the words something of use to you. Needless to say I do not wish you to publish this stuff – it is merely that you asked me to chatter to you and I have done so. […. Signed.] (p.206.)

[See also letter to Lord Dunsany suggesting that ‘[i]f anyone can take Synge’s place in drama it will be yourself’ dated c.27 Jan. 1911, Finneran, ed., Letters, p.20.]