My dear Lady Gregory, I dedicate to you two volumes of playsthat are in part your own.
When I was a boy I used to wander about at Rosses Point and Ballisodarelistening to old songs and stories. I wrote down what I heard and madepoems out of the stories or put them into the little chapters of thefirst edition of "The Celtic Twilight," and that is how I began to writein the Irish way.
Then I went to London to make my living, and though I spent a part ofevery year in Ireland and tried to keep the old life in my memory byreading every country tale I could find in books or old newspapers, Ibegan to forget the true countenance of country life. The old tales werestill alive for me indeed, but with a new, strange, half unreal life, asif in a wizard's glass, until at last, when I had finished "The SecretRose," and was half-way through "The Wind Among the Reeds," a wise womanin her trance told me that my inspiration was from the moon, and that Ishould always live close to water, for my work was getting too full ofthose little jewelled thoughts that come from the sun and have nonation. I had no need to turn to my books of astrology to know that thecommon people are under the moon, or to Porphyry to remember theimage-making power of the waters. Nor did I doubt the entire truth ofwhat she said to me, for my head was full of fables that I had no longerthe knowledge and emotion to write. Then you brought me with you to seeyour friends in the cottages, and to talk to old wise men on SlieveEchtge, and we gathered together, or you gathered for me, a great numberof stories and traditional beliefs. You taught me to understand again,and much more perfectly than before, the true countenance of countrylife.
One night I had a dream almost as distinct as a vision, of a cottagewhere there was well-being and firelight and talk of a marriage, andinto the midst of that cottage there came an old woman in a long cloak.She was Ireland herself, that Cathleen ni Hoolihan for whom so manysongs have been sung and about whom so many stories have been told andfor whose sake so many have gone to their death. I thought if I couldwrite this out as a little play I could make others see my dream as Ihad seen it, but I could not get down out of that high window ofdramatic verse, and in spite of all you had done for me I had not thecountry speech. One has to live among the people, like you, of whom anold man said in my hearing, "She has been a serving-maid among us,"before one can think the thoughts of the people and speak wi