Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/106

Burren in Clare, in the west of Ireland. On the eve of her marriage to Hugh Fitz Walter, a rich young Englishman, whom she will wed only for her father's sake to reestablish him in his position as "The O'Heynes" among the neighboring gentry, she wanders off into the Burren Hills with her old nurse Peg Inerny. Peg has fascinated Maeve O'Heynes with tales of "the other people," convincing Maeve, as she is convinced herself, that she changes from the old vagrant peasant whom the countryside half fears into Queen Maeve, the great Amazon of the Cuchulain legends. Maeve O'Heynes in her own dreams has seen great heroes and heroines of Ireland's legendary past, and she believes that they still live among the fairies as many a peasant to-day beside Peg Inerny believes. So Maeve follows Peg to the mountains, though it is her wedding-eve, to see these great people of old time and to meet a lover she has seen in vision, the ideal man of her dreams. She finds her way home several hours later through the white moonlight of the bitter March night. Then, in a sort of trance, looking out of her window in the half-ruined castle to the ruined abbey, the mysterious round tower, the stony mountains, she beholds the vision of Queen Maeve, with an attendant troupe of harpers and pages, rise from the cairn and approach the castle. As the troupe returns from castle to cairn Maeve's spirit passes with it under the Northern lights into the land of the ever-young of Tir-nan-Ogue. When her sister goes to call her to make ready for her wedding, she finds Maeve sitting still and cold at the open casement. Maeve has found the supernatural lover, once human, of "boyish