Cathleen Ní Houlihan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Kathleen Ni Houlihan.

Scene From Yeats' play, Cathleen Ní Houlihan, circa 1912 production

Cathleen Ní Houlihan is a one act play written by Irish playwright William Butler Yeats in collaboration with Lady Gregory in 1902 and first performed on April 2, 1902. The play is startlingly nationalistic, encouraging in its last pages that young men sacrifice their lives for the heroine Cathleen Ní Houlihan, who represents an independent and separate Irish state. The title character first appears as an old woman, at the door of a family celebrating their son's wedding. She describes her four "beautiful green fields," representing the four provinces, that have been unjustly taken from her. With little subtlety, she requests a blood sacrifice, declaring that "many a child will be born and there will be no father at the christening". When the youth agrees and leaves the safety of his home to fight for her, she appears as an image of youth with "the walk of a queen," professing that of those who fight for her: "They shall be remembered forever, They shall be alive forever, They shall be speaking forever, The people shall hear them forever."^[1] This call to immortality through martyrdom is not unique to the Irish struggle for independence.