The Unicorn from the Stars

By Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats.

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Persons in the Play

Father John
Thomas Hearne, a coachbuilder
Andrew Hearne, his brother
Martin Hearne, his nephew
Johnny Bacach, Paudeen, Biddy Lally, and Nanny, beggars

The Unicorn from the Stars

Act I

Interior of a coachbuilder’s workshop. Parts of a gilded coach, among them an ornament representing a lion and unicorn. Thomas working at a wheel. Father John coming from door of inner room.

Father John	I have prayed over Martin. I have prayed a long time, but there is no move in him yet.
Thomas	You are giving yourself too much trouble, Father. It’s as good for you to leave him alone till the doctor’s bottle will come. If there is any cure at all for what is on him, it is likely the doctor will have it.
Father John	I think it is not doctor’s medicine will help him in this case.
Thomas	It will, it will. The doctor has his business learned well. If Andrew had gone to him the time I bade him and had not turned again to bring yourself to the house, it is likely Martin would be walking at this time. I am loth to trouble you, Father, when the business is not of your own sort. Any doctor at all should be able and well able to cure the falling sickness.
Father John	It is not any common sickness that is on him now.
Thomas	I thought at the first it was gone to sleep he was. But when shaking him and roaring at him failed to rouse him, I knew well it was the falling sickness. Believe me, the doctor will reach it with his drugs.
Father John	Nothing but prayer can reach a soul that is so far beyond the world as his soul is at this moment.
Thomas	You are not saying that the life is gone out of him!
Father John	No, no, his life is in no danger. But where he himself, the spirit, the soul, is gone, I cannot say. It has gone beyond our imaginings. He is fallen into a trance.
Thomas	He used to be queer as a child, going asleep in the fields, and coming back with talk of white horses he saw, and bright people like angels or whatever they were. But I mended that. I taught him to recognise stones beyond angels with a few strokes of a rod. I would never give in to visions or to trances.
Father John	We who hold the faith have no right to speak against trance or vision. Saint Elizabeth had them, Saint Benedict, Saint Anthony, Saint Columcille. Saint Catherine of Siena often lay a long time as if dead.
Thomas	That might be so in the olden time, but those things are gone out of the world now. Those that do their work fair and honest have no occasion to let the mind go rambling. What would send my nephew, Martin Hearne, into a trance, supposing trances to be in it, and he rubbing the gold on the lion and unicorn that he had taken in hand to make a good job of for the top of the coach?
Father John	Taking up ornament. It is likely it was that sent him off. The flashing of light upon it would be enough to throw one that had a disposition to it into a trance. There was a very saintly man, though he was not of our church, he wrote a great book called Mysterium Magnum, was seven days in a trance. Truth, or whatever truth he found, fell upon him like a bursting shower, and he a poor tradesman at his work. It was a ray of sunlight on a pewter vessel that was the beginning of all. Goes to the door and looks in. There is no stir in him yet. It is either the best thing or the worst thing can happen to anyone, that is happening to him now.
Thomas	And what in the living world can happen to a man that is asleep on his bed?
Father John	There are some would answer you that it is to those who are awake that nothing happens, and it is they that know nothing. He is gone where all have gone for supreme truth.
Thomas	Sitting down again and taking up tools. Well, maybe so. But work must go on and coachbuilding must go on, and they will not go on the time there is too much attention