the little shop where _The Jackdaw_ hops on
the counter, as witnesses to the miracle that happened in Hyacinth's
own inside; and it is likely they may be talking of it yet; for the
talks of Cloon are long talks, and the histories told there do not
lessen or fail.

As to Davideen's song, I give the air of it below. The Queen Anne in
it was no English queen, but, as I think, that Aine of the old gods
at whose hill mad dogs were used to gather, and who turned to grey
the yellow hair of Finn of the Fianna of Ireland. It is with some
thought of her in their mind that the history-tellers say "Anne was
not fair like the Georges but very bad and a tyrant. She tyrannised
over the Irish. She was very wicked; oh! very wicked indeed!"

[Music: AIR OF "THE HEATHER BROOM!"]

COATS

I find some bald little notes I made before writing _Coats_.
"Hazel is astonished Mineog can take such a thing to heart, but it
is quite different when he himself is off ended." "The quarrel is so
violent you think it can never be healed, but the ordinary
circumstances of life force reconciliation. They are the most
powerful force of all." And then a quotation from Nietzsche,
"A good war justifies every cause."

DAMER'S GOLD

In a lecture I gave last year on playwriting I said I had been
forced to write comedy because it was wanted for our theatre, to put
on at the end of the verse plays, but that I think tragedy is easier.
For, I said, tragedy shows humanity in the grip of circumstance, of
fate, of what our people call "the thing will happen," "the Woman in
the Stars that does all." There is a woman in the stars they say,
who is always hurting herself in one way or other, and according to
what she is doing at the hour of your birth, so will it happen to
you in your lifetime, whether she is hanging herself or drowning
herself or burning herself in the fire. "And," said an old man who
was telling me this, "I am thinking she was doing a great deal of
acting at the time I myself made my start in the world." Well, you
put your actor in the grip of this woman, in the claws of the cat.
Once in that grip you know what the end must be. You may let your
hero kick or struggle, but he is in the claws all the time, it is a
mere question as to how nearly you will let him escape, and when you
will allow the pounce. Fate itself is the protagonist, your actor
cannot carry much character, it is out of place. You do not want to
know the character of a wrestler