"Sheila Morgan!" Henry said.
"Yes. Sheila Morgan ... she said something about dancing classes, didn't she? We'll start a dancing class ... we'll teach them the Gaelic dances!..."
It suddenly seemed funny to Henry that Marsh should propose to solve the Land Problem ... the real Land Problem ... by means of dancing classes.
"They'll want more than that," he said. "They can't always be dancing!"
"No," Marsh answered, "but we can begin with that!"
Marsh's depression swiftly left him. He began to speculate on the future of the countryside when the Gaelic revival was complete. There would be Gaelic games, Gaelic songs, Gaelic dances and a Gaelic literature. "I don't see why we shouldn't have a theatre in every village, with village actors and village plays.... There must be a great deal of talent hidden away in these houses that never comes out because there is no one to bring it out.... I wish you were older, Henry, and were quit of Trinity. You and I ... and Galway ... of course, we must have Galway ... might start the Movement on a swifter course than it has now!..." He broke off and made a gesture of impatience. "Oh, my God, why can't a man do more!" he said.
5
Henry put the question to his father, and Mr. Quinn considered it for a while.
"I don't know," he answered, "what to say. You'd think people would find more to interest them in the land than in anything else ... but they don't. There's so much to do, an' it's so varied, an' you have it all under your own eye ... you begin it an' carry it on and you end it ... an' yet somehow!... An' then the whole family understands it and can take an interest in it. You'd think that that would hold them. There isn't any other trade in the world that'll take up a whole family an' give them all somethin' to talk about an' think over an' join in. But I've never known a bright boy or girl on a farm that wasn't itchin' to get away from it to a town!"
"But something'll have to be done, father!" Henry urged. "We must have farmers!..."