NE INGUBA

How pale he looks!

EMER

He is not dead.

EITHNE INGUBA

You have not kissed his lips
Nor laid his head upon your breast.

EMER

It may be
An image has been put into his place,
A sea-born log bewitched into his likeness,
Or some stark horseman grown too old to ride
Among the troops of Mananan, Son of the Sea,
Now that his joints are stiff.

EITHNE INGUBA

Cry out his name.
All that are taken from our sight, they say,
Loiter amid the scenery of their lives
For certain hours or days, and should he hear
He might, being angry drive the changeling out.

EMER

It is hard to make them hear amid their darkness,
And it is long since I could call him home;
I am but his wife, but if you cry aloud
With that sweet voice that is so dear to him
He cannot help but listen.

EITHNE INGUBA

He loves me best,
Being his newest love, but in the end
Will love the woman best who loved him first
And loved him through the years when love seemed lost.

EMER

I have that hope, the hope that some day and somewhere
We'll sit together at the hearth again.

EITHNE INGUBA

Women like me when the violent hour is over
Are flung into some corner like old nut shells.
Cuchulain, listen.

EMER

No, not yet for first
I'll cover up his face to hide the sea;
And throw new logs upon the hearth and stir
The half burnt logs until they break in flame.
Old Mananan's unbridled horses come
Out of the sea and on their backs his horsemen
But all the enchantments of the dreaming foam
Dread the hearth fire.

(She pulls the curtains of the bed so as to hide the sick man's
face, that the actor may change his mask unseen. She goes to one
side of platform and moves her hand as though putting logs on a fire
and stirring it into a blaze. While she makes these movements the
Musicians play, marking the movements with drum and flute perhaps.

Having finished she stands beside the imaginary fire at a distance
from Cuchulain & Eithne Inguba.)

Call on Cuchulain now.

EITHNE INGUBA

Can you not hear my voice.

EMER

Bend over him.
Call out dear secrets till you have touched his heart
If he lies there; and if he is not there
Till you have made him jealou