'If you are mine, be mine by day and by night;
If you are mine, be mine before the world;
If you are mine, be mine with every inch of your heart;
It is my grief you are not with me as a wife this evening.
'It is down in Sligo I got knowledge of my love;
It is up in Galway I drank my fill with her.
By the strength of my hands, if they do not leave me as I am,
I will do a trick will set these women walking.'
Mr. Yeats made Red Hanrahan the hero of this song in a story in 'The
Secret Rose'; and it is Hanrahan Douglas Hyde has kept in the play, with
his passion, his exaggerations, his wheedling tongue, his roving heart,
that all but coax the girl from her mother and her sweetheart; but that
fail after all in their attack on the settled order of things, and leave
their owner homeless and restless, and angry and chiding, like the
stormy west wind outside the door.
'The Marriage' is founded on the story of Raftery at the poor wedding at
Cappaghtagle. It was acted in Galway, at the _Feis_, last summer. There
had been some delay or misunderstanding in the giving of parts; and on
the morning of the _Feis_, it was announced that the play would not be
given. But the disappointment was so great, that we all begged _An
Craoibhin_ to take the chief part himself, as he had done in 'The
Twisting of the Rope'; and when his kindness made him agree to this, we
went in search of the other players. They were all at work in shops or
stores, one wheeling sacks on a barrow; and it was a busy market-day,
and it was hard for them to get away for a rehearsal.
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