[I] Mr. Boyle has since left us as a protest against the performance of Mr. Synge’s Playboy of the Western World.—W.B.Y., March, 1908.
[J] This essay was written immediately after the opening of the Abbey Theatre, though it was not printed, through an accident, until the art of the Abbey has become an art of peasant comedy. It tells of things we have never had the time to begin. We still dream of them.—W.B.Y., March, 1908.
[K] I have heard musicians excuse themselves by claiming that they put the words there for the sake of the singer; but if that be so, why should not the singer sing something she may wish to have by rote? Nobody will hear the words; and the local time-table, or, so much suet and so many raisins, and so much spice and so much sugar, and whether it is to be put in a quick or a slow oven, would run very nicely with a little management.
[L] The Arrow, a briefer chronicle than Samhain, was distributed with the programme for a few months.
APPENDIX I
THE HOUR-GLASS.
This play is founded upon the following story, recorded by Lady Wilde in Ancient Legends of Ireland, 1887, vol. i., pp. 60-67:—
THE PRIEST’S SOUL.
In former days there were great schools in Ireland where every sort of learning was taught to the people, and even the poorest had more knowledge at that time than many a gentleman has now. But as to the priests, their learning was above all, so that the fame of Ireland went over the whole world, and many kings from foreign lands used to send their sons all the way to Ireland to be brought up in the Irish schools.