instant Irish quickness and generosity, she sells her soul for a great
price to the demons, in order to save her people here and hereafter.
Such a tremendous sacrifice, however, is not permitted. Because of the
purity of her motive, armed angels save her soul in the last
impressive act. Supernatural powers, both pagan and Christian,
participate in the play. Spirits haunt the woods, enter the peasants'
cottages, and cast spells on the inhabitants. The play is Irish in
story, in symbolism, and in the fancifulness of the conception.

_The Land of Heart's Desire_ is another drama that has sprung from the
soil and folklore of Ireland. This play was one of the first Celtic
dramas to be produced, and in its present revised form (1912) it is
one of the most engaging of the Irish plays. Partly in prose and
partly in verse, it is the story of a young bride who tires of her
monotonous life and calls upon the fairies to release her. The old
parents tell her that duty comes before love of the fairies.

The good priest begs her not to forsake her faithful young husband;
but the fairy wins, and, leaving a dead bride in the cottage, bears
away the living bride to a land where--

"The fairies dance in a place apart,
Shaking their milk-white feet in a ring,
Tossing their milk-white arms in the air;
For they have heard the wind laugh and murmur and sing
Of a land where even the old are fair,
And even the wise are merry of tongue."[17]

Patriotic love for Ireland is the very breath of _Cathleen ni
Hoolihan_ (1902), a one-act prose play in which Cathleen symbolizes
Ireland. _The Shadowy Waters_ (1900) and _Deirdre_ (1907) are more
poetic than dramatic. The first of these with the mysterious harper,
the far-sailing into unknown seas, the parting with everything but the
loved one, shows Yeats in his deeply mystical mood. In _Deirdre_ is
dramatized part of a popular legend of the great queen by that name,
who was too beautiful for happiness. She has seven long years of joy
and then accepts her fate in the calm, triumphant way of the old
heroic times.

Yeats's plays reflect the childlike superstitions and lively
imagination of his country. He loves the fairies, the dreams of
eternal youth, the symbolizing of things of the spirit by lovely
things of earth. His plays are poetical, fanciful, and romantic.

John Millington Synge.--One of the most notable of the Irish
writers, J.M. Synge, was born near Dublin in 1871 and di