OUR IRISH LETTER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 5, 30 January 1902, Page 9

OUR IRISH LETTER.

(From uur uai. oorruspoiideut. ) Dublin, November, 1901. THE SPINNING WHEEL,. Lay by a thing for seven years or seven generation and it lis sure to come into use again, as the old saying is. Many things that weie laid by for ever, it was supposed, are coming forth now-a-days in the full glory of their most youthful fashion. Ten years ago, the lady who wanted to have a rare curiosity in a corner of her drawing.room hunted high and low amongst the western peasantry for an old flax wheel, or else, if the real thing could not be found for love or money, she had a spinningwheel and a spinning-wheel chair fashioned by the cabinetmaker, but this was looked upon as a spurious affair, and the happy owner who could display an undoubtedly ancient wheel, chair, or three-legged stool and a rush-light candlestick, complete with rush and iron grisset (a small boat-shaped iron pan on three legs, used for greasing rashes and then receiving again the drops from the rush candle) was the envy of all her female friends at afternoon teas. Now the craze for useful cottage industries has been taken advantage of by some priests m the West of Ireland and promises once more to set the pretty spinning-wheels, both for flax and wool, agoing in the peasants' cottages ; the old grandma is in her glory teaching the girls once more how to wash and card and spin the wool ; once again the peasants will wear the fleece of their own sheep upon their backs in the warm freize coats, flannel vests, petticoats and shawls ; the boys and girls will again learn the useful art of dyeing their yarns at home, and, now the old tongue is the fashion, in fact, a thing to be proud of, the old folk will ransack their memories and long-forgotten .stories will be told around the winter fire to the accompaniment of the stroke of the carders and the hum of the wheel How I should like to heai told in Irish that blissful talc of our childhood, ' Hairy Ruggy !' How telling would be the passage where Hairy Ruggy, having got hold of the giant's sen en leagued boots, leaves the owner nowhere in the efforts to catch him : 'And when the giant was on the hill-top, Hairy Ruggy was m the hollow, and when the giant was in the hollow Hairy Ruggy was on the hill-top. " The devil take you ' " says the giant from the hollow, "the same to you ' " sa\s Hairy Ruggy from the hill-top . . .' IRISH DANCES. With the spread of our national tongue has come a perfect furore, amongst high and low 7 , for the pretty, modest Irish dancing' that has nothing about it of what a young country girl of 30 years ago, when allowed by her mistress to look on at a fashionable dance, called 'the bowld hoult.' Everywhere to-day the ambition of the lads and maids, big and little, is to be able to dance a jig, reel, or hornpipe in true Irish country st\le, and it is the prettiest sight imaginable to watch a roomful of gay children, some dressed in simple lace and muslin, some in quaint Empire style and satin frocks, tripping through all the steps as ardently as ever did young ' buacaills ' and ' cailins ' at a country wedding long ago. Yes, spite of taxes and all other woes, these 'things make us smile with genuine pleasure, and whilst we smile we soothe affliction. A NATIONAL THEATRE. This season a third attempt has been made to interest the public in the scheme for the establishment of a national theatre in the metropolis; a theatre in which only Irish plays

by Irish writers should be produced. But again the effort has been an almost total failure, from the fact that only one of the men who had undertaken to regenerate the stage m Dublin has the very smallest idea of what suits our needs. A radical change from the present imported plays and players is sorely needed in our theatres, which are, with one exception, under the management of men who would be more in their proper place as caterers for some country into which Christian morality has never penetrated. But the idea of a purely national theatre has been seizod upon (whoever may have first started it) by the very men of all others whose antagonism to our national religion makes them, whose writings prove them, to be utterly unfit to judge what it is that suits our people either in morals or in nationality. I said the failure this season was almost total. The exception was a bright, pure, racy little piece in the native tongue, written by Dr. Douglas Hyde and capitally acted by the author and a company of Dublin amateurs ; a little comedy founded on the old song called 'The twisting of the rope,' which charmed all who witnessed it. But the other writers who undertook to regenerate the taste of the present-day Irish playgoers utterly mistake what the word regenerate means. These gentlemen are Mr W. B. Ycates, the poet, and Mr. George Moore, known for the past thirty years as the writer of novels, none of which 1 have ever seen, but which I have alwaj s understood to be best suited to readers who form their ideas of Catholic women from the writings of so-called escaped nuns and ' converted ' priests. A FALSE STEP. For the subject of their drama the co-authors chose an Irish legend that has been dished up by every Irish poet, major and minor, who has written a hue of \erse for the past fifteen years or more, until we, the public, heartily wish the unfortunate subiects of the sad legend had died in their cradles In the tale itself there is nothing that 1 know of to wound anyone's modesty It belongs to the da\s of the Fenian Knights of Erin, when our people were Pagans, and it is simply like a fairy tale that relates how no Fenian Knight could refuse the request for protection made by any woman, no matter what the issue. How a beautiful maiden named Grannie was being forced to marry the renowned Fenian Chief, Fionn MaeCumhail, then an aged man how Gramne, hating the marriage, besought a \ oung Knight, Diarinuid, to sa\e her, and he — bound by oath of loyal service to any female who sought his- protection — fled with Grannie from the marriage feast. Then ensue long wanderings a. weary flights from Fionn's l age, until finally a tragic death overtakes Diarmuid and (here is the most unpoetic touch) Grainne settles down as old Fionn's wife. This legend, a classic, is known as the ' Flight and pursuit of Diarmuid anJ Grainne,' and into the play founded upon it Messrs. Yeatos and Moore introduce such immorality, passages so offensive to Catholic Irish women, that the newspapers would not print the passages, and many men and women who, not not knowing what to eocpect, had gone to the Tnsh play to be regenerated, protested publicly against what they regarded as an insult to Irish womanhood. Our stage does need more wholesome plays than are but too often put upon the boards, so-called realistic plays that of a certainty do not represent real life in any class in Catholic Ireland ; but men who believe that religion is only for the uneducated class, not for men or women of genius, and. so forth, are not the men to teach our people through the medium of the drama.

PROPOSED CBNSOR. The business has its comical side. Mr. George Moore is hot for the regeneration scheme, but he won't accept the vox populi ; he has no faith in the old saying ; he now wants a censorship of the new Irish drama, and, of all men in the world, he calls! upon the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin to bo the censor ! lie requires and believes he will succeed in obtaining the rescinding of that rule of the Church which forbids Catholic clergymen to attend theatres. The vista that this notion spreads out before his Grace of Dublin is really a thing to tickle the fancy. Imagine our grave Archbishop, when he had got over the work of reading up a play, revising it with Mr. George Moore, striking out such passages as were not in accordance with strict theology ; imagine him then — he who has never seen the interior of a public theatre, a ballet — coming with his chaplain to a rehearsal to see that all was as he considered it should be — but the thought is as much too much for even a flight of fancy as the reality would be for the poor Archbishop, yet Mr. Moore has gravely proposed the thing, an' faith he's prented it ! 1 suppose he had in mind the comic opera of the English Vicar of Bray in which the Vicar is so anxious ' to improve the relations between Church and Stage.' I say nothing of the Galway election in which the Unionist candidate Mr. Horace Plunkett, has been defeated, because all that will be ancient history by the time this reaches you.