Play: Cathleen Ní Houlihan

Overview
Cathleen Ní Houlihan is a one‑act nationalist drama by William Butler Yeats, written in collaboration with Lady Gregory and first staged in 1902. Set during the 1798 rising, it personifies Ireland as a mysterious old woman who arrives at a peasant home on the eve of a family wedding and transforms the future of the household. Through spare dialogue and a ritualized encounter, the play dramatizes how myth and patriotism can overtake private happiness, calling a young man from domestic promise to public sacrifice.

Setting and Characters
The action unfolds in a cottage near Killala, County Mayo, in 1798. The Gillane family, Peter (father), Bridget (mother), their elder son Michael, and younger son Patrick, prepare for Michael’s marriage to Delia, a match that brings a welcome dowry and prospects of stability. Domestic bustle and talk of land and money establish a world of ordinary hopes. Into this space steps a stranger, an old woman in a worn cloak, whose speech is at once beggar’s plea and bardic chant. She is Cathleen Ní Houlihan, the symbolic embodiment of Ireland, dispossessed and restless.

Plot Summary
As Bridget counts Delia’s dowry and imagines the comforts ahead, rumors drift in of French ships off the western coast. The old woman asks for shelter and begins to tell stories of “strangers in my house” and of men who gave their lives for her cause. Her words, full of loss and promise, subtly shift the room’s attention. Where Bridget sees coins and cattle, the visitor speaks of “four green fields” and the long road of exile and struggle. Michael, at first preoccupied with the wedding, grows entranced by the music of her speech and the grandeur of her need.

The family tries to place the stranger, Is she a poor wanderer, a seer, a neighbor’s widow?, but her identity resists ordinary explanation. She names heroes of past uprisings and offers a single reward to those who answer her call: the immortality of remembrance. When Patrick bursts in with news that French forces have landed at Killala and that a rising is underway, the old woman’s appeal becomes immediate. Michael faces a choice between marriage and the chance to fight for the land the stranger claims as her own.

Despite pleas from Bridget and Delia, and Peter’s efforts to hold the household to its practical path, Michael declares himself and follows the call. He leaves the cottage to join the mustering men. After he goes, the old woman slips away as well. A moment later, someone reports seeing not an old beggar but a radiant young girl with the walk of a queen passing down the road. The transformation signals that sacrifice has renewed her; the country, rejuvenated by a fresh vow, strides into mythic youth.

Themes and Symbolism
The play fuses folklore with politics, turning Ireland into a living presence who demands loyalty beyond family and property. The cottage’s dowry talk and the old woman’s visionary rhetoric collide, foregrounding the tension between private fulfillment and public duty. Memory and fame operate as her currency; she offers no material gain, only the assurance that those who die for her will be remembered forever. The final metamorphosis encodes a paradox: national renewal arrives through personal loss. Yeats’s lyrical minimalism and ritual structure make the persuasion feel ceremonial, suggesting how easily art and legend can sanctify political action.