Humor in the prose fiction of James Stephens

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Authors Gardiner, Norman Bentley, 1941-

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HUMOR IN: THE PROSE FIGTION OF JAMES STEPHENS

byForman Bentley Gardiner, Jr„

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH.IB Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

MASTER OF ARTSIn the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

Sfi-TEMENT BY AUTHOR

This thesis has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library,

Brief quotations from,this thesis are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made„ Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the head of the major department or the Dean of the Graduate College when in his judgment the proposed use of the material is in the interests of scholarship. In all other instances, however, permission must be obtained from the author.

SIGHEDi B .

APPROVAL BY THESIS DIRECTOR This thesis has been approved on the date shown below:

r/ s /4rL. D. CLARK

Assistant.. Professor, of EnglishDate

Preface

In order to simplify the procedure of footnoting as much as

possible, after the first quotation from'any of Stephens1 books, I refer to the book merely by title in subsequent footnotes; in foot­notes after the first referring to A James Stephens Reader, I cite

the anthology; simply as Reader.

ill

Table of Contents

Chapter ' Page1, Humorous Devices 1

2„ Character, Structure and Genre 24

I* The Heroic Tradition and the Satirist %

Bibliography 57

iw„

Abstract

Labelled as frivolous or whimsical, James Stephens has received little critical attention as a novelist. An. examination of his humorous

prose fiction reveals that he employs humorous devices involving naivete,

exaggeration, exact description, apt metaphor and burlesque with con­

siderable skill. After his first novel, The Charwoman's Daughter, in which he reveals character through ironic but straight-forward nar­ration, he employs an increasingly involved episodic structure in his

books which enables him to expose the nature of his characters through the amusing conjunction of incongruous persons and through the stories told by those persons.

Stephens uses the Irish heroic tradition ambivalently, main­

taining simultaneously an appreciation for the heroic and a mockery of it which at times becomes satire of both the heroic and the commonplace =

In his satire the novelist seriously criticizes his society, but not

without offering a remedy. His remedy is humor, which he calls 11 the health.-of the mind." Given its proper place, humor, he says, will lead people to acceptance of the. conflict between good and evil which is the

source of all life and of love, for Stephens the greatest good.

GJaapter 1

Eymoreus Devices

Because.I wish to make a clear distinction between my treat­ment of the devices James Stephens uses in his fiction to amuse his reader and the genre to which some of his prose belongs, 1 have chosen

"humor," rather than "comedy," as the key word of the titles "Humor in

the Prose Fiction of James Stephens." My study depends upon the assump­tion that humor is an element capable of temporary isolation from the con­

text in which it appears; the assumption will work as long as the reader

remains aware that in Stephens1 prose fiction, humor forms am essential part of the whole, important alike to theme, character and structure.

In the first chapter of this study, I shall examine in detail

the devices Stephens uses to create a humorous effect in each of his

lengthy prose works containing large quantities of humorous matters The Gharwomam*s Daughter(1912), The Chock of Sold(l912), The Demi-Gods

(1914), and In the hand of Youth(1924); and in his single unified book-

of short stories, Irish Fairy Tales(19.20), In the two remaining col­lections of short stories, Here Are Ladies(1915) and Etched in Moonlight

($928); only the final tale in the earlier book, "There Is a Tavern in

the Town," fits into the scope of this thesis. The posthumous collection of short pieces, James, geumas & Jacques, edited by Lloyd Frankenberg,

consists almost entirely of scripts which Stephens delivered over the BiBi.Gi; one fine exception, the short story, "A Bhinoceros, Some Ladies

and a Horse," deserves consideration here,1.

In my second chapter,.I shall treat Stephens * use of humor as

it affects his books in their entirety, with respect to character­ization and structure. In this chapter, too, I shall suggest in what way we may classify Stephens1 prose works in which humor plays a sig­nificant role.

In my final chapter, I shall indicate the nature of the tradi­tionally ambivalent Irish view of heroic material— and Stephens' ad­herence to the tradition in both his heroic and his non-heroic fiction.

The chapter will necessarily involve consideration of Stephens as a

critic of manners and morals and will end with the conclusions to which the study as a whole has led.

One of the principal devices which James Stephens uses to arouse

the amusement of his readers is the exposure of the naivete of his

characters by revelation of their thoughts, Stephens' first novel,The Charwoman8s Daughter(American title, Mary, Mary), abounds in this

sort of revelation. Mdry Makebelieve, the "daughter" in the title, has

been so sheltered by her mother from everything except poverty and makingbelieve that most of her thoughts and comments when she is by herself

reveal her innocence, often in a very amusing way, When Mary goes to

the St. Stephen's Green Park, she feeds the ducks, giving most food tothose with fewest childrens

She knew every bird in the Park, those that had chickens, and those that never had any chickens at all— these latter were usually drakes, and had reason on their side for an abstention which might otherwise have appeared remarkable, but they did not deserve the pity which Mary lavished on their childless­ness, nor thd extrakfiieces of bread with which she sought to recompense them.

^James Stephens, A James Stephens Reader(New York, 1962),, p,5«

3

If Mary is naive about animals, she is no less naive about humans,

“particularly men, Stephens suggests her innocence in this way:She would scarcely have been surprised if one of the men who looked at her casually in the street had suddenly halted and asked her to marry him. It came on her with something like assurance that that was the only business these men were there for, she could not discover any other reason or excuse for their existence, and if some man had been thus adventurous Mary Make- believe would have been sadly perplexed to find an answers she might, indeed, have replied,. “Yes, thank you sir,11 for when a man asks one to do a thing for him one does it gladly,^

In both of the above quotations Stephens demonstrates his ability to

employ irony in a story which without it might become over-sentimental6

Mhry's innocence has its limits, however„ Toward the end of The Charwoman * s Daughter, the lodger who has come to stay in the same

house with Mary and her mother gives Mary a description of his prowess

at which even she is somewhat skepticals "He told Mary of the evil

results which had followed some of his blows, and Mary's incredulity was only heightened by a display of the young man's muscles, She ex­

tolled these because she thought it was her duty to do so, but preserved some doubts of their unique destructiveness,"5

In his description of Maryrs behavior toward the ducks, Stephens indicates that her knowledge of animals is somewhat limited. Often his

characters display a knowledge of natural history most unnatural and amusing indeed. The surviving Philosopher of The Crock of Cold devotes

a sizeable and interrupted lecture to washing, which makes one of the

funniest passages in the books

2Ibid., p.9° 5Ibid., p.90.

4Oats are a philosophic and thoughtful race, but they do not

admit the efficacy of either water or soap, and yet it is usually conceded that they are cleanly folk. There are exceptions to every rule, and I once knew a cat who lusted after water and bathed daily; he was an unnatural brute and died ultimately of the head staggers. Children are nearly as wise as cats. It is true that they will utilize water in a variety of ways, for in­stance, the destruction of a tablecloth or a pinafore, and I have observed them greasing a ladder with soap, showing in the process a great knowledge of the properties of this material....Sparrows again are a highly acute and reasonable folk. They use water to quench thirst, but when they are dirty they take a dust bath and are at once cleansed. Of course, birds are of­ten seen in the water, but they go there to catch fish and not to wash. I have often fancied that fish are a dirty, sly, and unintelligent people— this is due to their staying so much in the water, and it has’been observed that on being removed from this element they at once expire through sheer ecstasy at es­caping from their prolongued washing.

In the same book, when Meehawl MacMurrachu seeks the Philosopher's helpin recovering his daughter(who has gone off with the god Pan), he givesa beautifully simple description of the gods "My wife only put it that maybe she was dead, and that maybe she was taken by the fairies, and that maybe she went away with the travelling man that had the musical instru­ment „ As if he hadn't said enough already, he goes on to question wheth­er the instrument possessed by the travelling man is a concertina or a flute.

The Philosopher is not the only person in The Crock of Gold to

give questionable explanations for things. Speaking of the children,

Setamas Beg and Brigid, Stephens writes, "Every child knows that every grown female person in the world has authority to wash children and to give them food; that is what grown people were made for. It is only

^James Stephens, The Crock of Gold(New York, 1951)» p.19. 3Ibid., p.$0,

6Ibid., p.69.'

5a short step from this reasoning to the sort that Charles Finney displays in the appendix to The Circus of Dr. Lao: that certain salamanders were designed to be cut up by female college students in comparative anatomy

classes, the students being designed in like manner to do the cutting,

and all for no ostensible purpose.The final story in Irish Fairy Tales, "Mongan1s Frenzy," derives

from an ancient Irish tale, but Stephens makes it quite his own, par­

ticularly through dialogue. In the tale as'Stephens tells it, Mongan

tricks the King of Leinster into trading Mongan1s wife, whom he obtained by a bargain, for a woman who, though disguised by enchantment, is really

the Hag of the Mill, a loathly lady of the most unpleasant.variety. To

appreciate the King of Leinster's anguish when waking in the morning he discovers that the lady in bed. beside him, whom he married the night before, is really the Hag of the Mill, first read Stephens' description

of hersHow the Hag of the Mill was a bony, thin pole of a hag

with odd feet. That is, she had one foot that was too big for her, so that when she lifted it up it pulled her over; and shehad one foot that was too small for her, so that when she liftedit up she didn't know what to do with it. She was so long that you would never see the end of her, and she was so thin that you thought ypu\,didn't see her at all» One of her eyes was set where her nose should be and there was an ear in its place,and her nose itself was hanging out of her chin, and she hadwhiskers round it.

All that King Branduv can say, after she has verified her identity,

is simply, "I wish I didn't see you.11 ® Understatement may not quitebelong in the category of statements by the naive, but for the fitnessof this one I have included it.

7James Stephens, Irish Fairy Tales(Hew York, 1962), p.217.

8Ibid., p.222.

In The Demi—Gods the three Irish angels who come to earth have

no knowledge of human practices, so they learn at first by observation.

In the matter of eating they are briefly misled by watching the Mac- Ganns1 ass eat, for they cannot distinguish readily between him and other people— -so without experiencing any great satisfaction, they try

eating grass„ In the same book, Mary MacGann's excuse for kissing the

donkey— that one has to be kissing something— illustrates her particular variety of innocence,

Eochaid, the king of In the hand of Youth who loves the lady

Etain, has little ability to describe his affection. It is with a sort of stupid innocence that when asked how he loves her, he breathes deeply,

strikes his chest, and proclaims, "Thus,11 The effect of incremental

humor is achieved when Etain, at length certain that she loves Eochaid,describes her love in exactly the same fashion.

Before being confronted with Etain, Eochaid evinces a far greater

ability to communicate his vehement thoughts; when it seems he might have

to marry someone chosen, by his mother, he indicates an extreme reluctance "I have seen them all, mother, I would sooner be bedded with a bramble

bush than with any one of them,..,I would rather marry the queen of the

bees and die of it than touch, even with a stick, one friend of your

friends.11 ̂Eochaid's first queen has died, leaving him with the necessity

of replacing her, but all the women who appear in his court are dis­

tasteful to him;

^James Stephens, In the hand of Youth(New York, 1924), p.17$,

7He was astonished and horrified when he saw the consorts

that, these statesmen brought with them. He uttered fiercely and regally his opinion of a world in which such females could occur; and expressed a preference for the torments of doom and death rather than that he should sit at the same banquet, or remain in the same bulging, or be discovered under the same sun with these ladies.

All the vehemence is funny to us because at the same time as we quite

understand its causes, we do not suffer from them. It is as if one of

our good friends has just had a disastrous blind dates we are sorry ithappened to him, but how funny he is, telling about it, and how finethat it should.have happened to him rather than to us. The humor which

proceeds from vehemence closely resembles that which derives from naivete.

As long as the action which arises from vehemence does not offend usmorally, it may seem very funny indeed.

The most amusing sub-tale in In the Land of Youth concerns arivalry between two swineherds, but before the two fall out, they invite

one another to share with their pigs such plenty as the falling of mastin their respective, forests affords. In a time of plenty, when the two

swineherds have massed their charges in the forests of Munster, the noise

of the eating pigs makes the country round about uninhabitable; and

people react strangely;When a man went into a house and saw a piece of pork hanging from a rafter, he would go backwards out of the house with a buzz, and would not stop running until his wind gave out.

Or if a man saw a head of cabbage growing in a field it would.remind him irresistibly of a slice of bacon, and he would leap on the cabbage with both feet until the last trace of any­thing but destruction vanished from the murdered plant.H

10Ibid., p.167. ^Ibid.., p.94.

One of Stephens' most vehement characters is the charwoman,Mrs„ Makebelieve. It is her failing that though she does her work well enough, she is temperamentally unable to hold such positions as she obtainss

Mrs<, Makebelieve1 s clients were always new. She could not remain for any length of time in people's employment without being troubled by the fact that these folk had houses of their own and were actually employing her in a menial capacity. She sometimes looked at their black silk aprons in a way which they never failed to observe with anger, and on their attempting(as they always termed it) to put her in her proper place, she would discuss their appearance and morals with such power that they at once dismissed her frog their employment and incited their husbands to assault her.

Her feeling is so strong that she consistently repays mere vigorously

than necessary the small insults that she receives.It is difficult to determine how autobiographical one ought to

conisder the sketch MA Rhinoceros, Some ladies and a Horse,11 but while

classifying it as fiction, or at least as exaggeration, I cannot finish

speaking of Stephens' use of naivete to arouse amusement without touching on the character he draws of himself in the sketch. He works for a

theatrical agency, and one day after he has had a narrow escape from a

rhinoceros, a sizeable and theatrically inclined lady enters the office. She takes an instant liking to James, sinks to her knees(he is quite small), and cries, 11 Gome to my Boozalum, angel.11 His reaction is a

fine things

I knew what she meant, and I knew that she didn't know how ■ to pronounce that word. I took a rapid glance at the area in­dicated. The lady had a Boozalum you could graze a cow on. I didn't wait one second, but slid, in one swift, silent slide

Reader, p.19°

under the table. Then she came forward and said a whole lot of poems to me under the table, imploring me, among a lot of odd things, to "come forth," and gild the morning with my eyes," but at last she.was reduced to whistling at m| with two fingers, in her mouth, the way you whistle-for a cab, ^

As if to assure us that the story is fiction, Stephens asserts that thepoetry which the lady uses derives, from one "Spokeshave,"

As is apparent already from some of the quotations I have chosento illustrate Stephens' use of the humor which may spring from naivete',

exaggeration provides him with many of his humorous effects. In theIrish heroic tradition exaggeration has an important part, and it is

likely that Stephens profits directly from the tradition when he dealswith heroic materials. In his summary of the tales of the Ulster Qyele,

14The Cycles of the Kings, Myles Dillon describes the two ancient tales

from which Stephens makes "The Wooing of Becfola" and “Mongan1s Frenzy"

in Irish Fairy Tales, Unfortunately, though Dillon mentions the Hag

of the Mill, described above, his summary of the story gives no des­cription of either the Hag or the ferocious dog employed elsewhere in the tale. In A Tale of Wonder, A Source Study of the Wife of Bath1s

Tale, Sigmund Eisner includes a description of a loathly lady, not un­like the Hag of the Mill, which he. has taken from an ancient Irish tale'

entitled The Adventures of the Sons of Eochaid Huigmedon. I quote the

13James Stephens, James, Seumas & Jacques(London, 1964), p.?. Birgit Bramsback, in James Stephens, A Literary and Bibliographical Study, p,15, states that the story is the beginning of a discontinued autobiography,

■^Myles Dillon, The Cycles of the Kings(London, 1946), pp,5Q- 55> 75-78, On p.xvii of his "Preface" to A James Stephens Reader, Padraic Oolum calls Dillon's summaries "literal translations," though in his own preface, pp.vpvi, Dillon admits to using summarization save where literary merit demands exact translation.

10description here as typical of the exaggeration to be found in the Irish heroic traditions

Thus was the hag; every joint and limb of her, from the top of her head to the earth was black as coal* Like the tail of a wild horse was the gray bristly mane that came through the upper part of her head-crown. The green branch of an oak in bearing would be severed by the sickle of green teeth that lay in her head and reached to her ears. Dark smoky eyes she had;a nose crooked and hollow. She had a middle fibrous, spottedwith pustules, diseased, and shins distorted and awry. Her ankles were thick, her shoulderblades were broad, her knees were big, and her^nails were green. Loathsome in sooth was the hagls appearance.

With the description in Eisner, compare Stephens* descriptions bothof the Hag of the Mill and the following from "The Enchanted Gave of GeshOorran" in Irish Fairy Tales, of some ladies rather more war-1ike than

the good Hags

Their hair was black as ink and tough as wires it stuck up and poked out and hung: down about their heads in bushes and spikes and tangles. Their eyes were bleary and red. Their mouths were black and twisted, and in each of these mouths there was a hedge of curved yellow fangs. They had long scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats in others, and in other parts again they looked like chickens. They had moustaches poking under their noses and wooly wads growing out of their ears, so that when you looked at them the first time you never wanted to look at them again, and if you had to look at them a second time you were likely to die of the sight.1°

In "Mongan1 s Frenzy,11 Stephens describes a vicious dog that the magician -Kanahnes uses to drive off the venomous sheep which have treed the waErdors of Fiachna Finn(Dillon fails to describe the animal in

■^Sigmund Eisner, A Tale of Wonder(Wexford, Ireland, 1957)s p.22. 16Irish Fairy Tales, p.149,

11his summary of the ancient tale)s

Now if the sheep were venomous, this dog was more venomous still, for it was fearful to look at. In a body it was not large, but its head was of a. great size, and the mouth that was shaped in that head was able to open like the lid of a pot. It was not teeth which were in that head but hooks and fangs and prongs. Dreadful was that mouth to look at, terrible to look into, woe­ful to think about; and from it, or from the-broad, loose nose that waggled above it, there came a sound which no word of mancould describe, for it was not a snarl, nor was it a howl, al~though it was both of these. It was neither a growl nor a grunt, although it was both of these; it was not a yowl nor agroan, although it was both of theses for it was one sound madeup of these sounds, and there was in it, too, a whine and a yelp,, and a long-drawn snarling noise, and a deep purring noise, and a noise that was like the squeal of a rusty hinge, and there were other noises in it also.^

OSmparing the description of the loathly lady quoted in A Tale of Wonder with the two descriptions of ladies and the one of a dog for which Stephens is responsible, we can but observe that either Stephens draws his descriptions directly from his sources, or at least he is in­

spired by the sources to continue in their tradition. Lest we too readily

decide that his art of exaggerated description is strictly derivative, however, let us examine some of his other hyperbolic treatments.

When Mrs. Makebelieve feels herself insulted by the nephew of

her temporary employer, Stephens notes that "She darted fiercely up and down the room, tearing pieces off the atmosphere and throwing them be­hind her,"’*"® Like Mrs. Makebelieve, the Thin Woman of The Orook of Sold,

grown dissatisfied with the back of the cow against which she rests

from her journey to find the gods, reacts with vehemences "After a

17Ibid., pp,195-194.18Reader, p.70.

12while, she said that the part of the cow1s back against which she wasresting was bonier than anything she had ever leaned upon before, andthat while thinness was a virtue no one had any right to be thin in

lumps, and that on this count the cow was not to be commended«11 ̂

It is in The Demi-Gods that Stephens bursts into exaggerationswhich must be entirely his own. First the MacCanns' ass awakens them

and all the universes

He stood up suddenly, shook himself, swung up on his tail and his chin, bared his teeth, fixed his eye on eternity, and roared "hee-haw11 in a voice of such sudden mightiness, that not alone did the sleepers bound from their slumbers, but the very sun itself leapt across the horizon and stared at him with its wild eye.

Once the ass has finished his morning ceremony, a flock of fifty birds

sweeps across the sky with considerable dih, and then

There came a crow whose happiness was so intense that hewas not able to move; he stood on the hedge for a long time,

■ and all that time he was trying hard to compose himself to a gravity befitting the father of many families, but every few seconds he lost all control and bawled with fervGWr. He ex­amine d himself all over; he peeped under his feathers to see was his complexion good; he parted the plumage of his tail modishly; he polished his feet with his.bill, and then pol­ished his bill on his left thigh, and then he polished his left thigh with the back of his neck. . "11 m a hell of a crow,11 said he, “and everybody admits it." He.f1ew with admirable carelessness over the ass, and cleverly stole two claws and one beak full of hair; but in mid-air he laughed incautiously so that the hair fell out of his beak, and in grabbing at that portion he dropped the bits in his claws, and he got so ex­cited in trying to rescue these before they reached the ground that his voice covered all the other sounds of creation.

Just as no ordinary ass performs his morning waking-exereises with such

success as Stephens1 ass, so no normal crow displays behavior so extreme

19The Crock of Gold, p.209.

^ Header, p. 155.

2lIbid., pp.154-155.

15as that of this crow* If in the grotesque descriptions Stephens gives of the hags and the dog he arouses our sense of humor by portraying creatures ugly beyond belief9 in the ass and the crow he draws creatures similarly unbelievable9 but unbelievable because they show more exuberance than real creatures0 Were it not for the vitality of the crow, he would be quite a "normal person,M vain of his appearance, careful of his dignityo But the humor and the energy which belong to Stephens, trans­form the bird from a sub-human animal to a super-human individual0

The episode of the pigs .in In the Land of Youth contains mar­vellous exaggerated descriptions of the transformations which they under­go through enchantments caused by the rival swineherdst

But in the-matter of the Connacht pig<—The more he ate the leaner he got.He had been jowled like a Leinster bard, and chinned like

a king*s baby;- but his chins tumbled off him two at a time, and his- swagging jowl ran up into his ear.

He became gaunt as a winter wolf and spiny as a hedgehog.His skull stuck out lean as a hatchet and pointed as a spear.His legs grew as lanky as a young foal's, and his upper

anatomy was all chest and no stomach like a coursing hound.His tail poked outwards and downwards like a piece of wet

string pasted-on a bone.There was no curl in his tail.Thus he was, and thus they all were.

But things haven't reached their worst yet. The noise the animals make as they forage is incredible t "There were no people left in Munster but the deaf men, and they recovered their hearing; that is, they had hearing thrust violently upon them, and they cursed the gift as they fled,"^5 The leanness of the Connacht pigs accompanies appetites stim-

^In the Land of Youth, pp.98-99» 25ibid., pp,99-100o

14ulated by the swineherd, Fruicj Stephens leaves us in no doubt aboutthe nature of the appetitess

They gave a squeal, a leap, a whistle, and a gobble, and they did that all day long and all night long, as long as the mast lasted.

The mast could not outlast that ravage.They cleaned the forests of mast in a day and a half.They ate the leaves that had fallen.They chewed the bark off the trees; at first as high as

they could reach, but afterwards as.'..high as they could jump; and they could jump like cats. .

They rooted up the grass and ate it.They ate clay.They cleared the forests of all the droppings of all the

pigs..They picked up stones in their mouths and mumbled at them

until they got the toothache,And they overturned Munster hogs that were too fat to right

themselves, and ate the hoovesoff these while they lay help, lesso

Stephens1 prose works perfectly in a passage like this of the

pigs, for part of the humor comes of the exaggeration, but part of it

derives from the endless succession of short, breathless clauses with

which he describes the episode. In his use of hyperbole, Stephens may be partially dependent upon the Irish heroic tradition; but as we have

seen, while using models from that tradition, he is quite capable of

producing exaggerations of his own.Sometimes the author draws a picture so exactly that the reader

cannot quite decide whether the subject itself is slightly out of pro­

portion, or merely the descriptionsOne of my bosses was thin and the other one was fat. My

fat boss was composed entirely of stomachs. He had three baby- stomachs under his chins then he had three more descending in

2^rbid., pp.100-101.

15ever larger englobings nearly to the ground; but, just reaching the ground, the final stomach bifurcated into a pair of boots.He was very light on these and could bounce about in the neatest way.

(There is a humor which springs from particularly felicitous

description; Stephens, like Dickens before him, mastered the art of it. We.have already seen a sample of his ability in the picture of the crow in The Demi-Gods; the crow's grooming behavior matches that which

anyone who watches birds at all closely has often seen. In The Char­woman 1s Daughter, when Mrs. Makebelieve falls ill and Mary must work for their livelihood, she leaves her mother in the care of a neighbor,

Mrs. Oafferty, the mother of numerous children. When Mary returns home,

Mrs. Oafferty was sitting on her mother's bed, two small children and a cat were also on the bed, two slightly bigger children were under the bed, and two others were galloping furiously up and down the room. At one moment these, latter twain were run­away horses, at another they were express trains. When they were horses they snorted and neighed and kicked, when they were trains they backed, and shunted, blew whistles and blew off steam. The children under the bed were tigers in a jungle, and they made the noises proper to such beasts and such a place; they bit each other furiously, and howled and growled precisely as tigers do. The pair of infants on the bed were playing the game of bump; they would stand upright, then spring high into the air and come crashing down on the bed, which then sprung them partly up again. . Each time they jumped they screamed loudly, each time they fell they roared delighted congratulations to each other, and when they fell together they fought with strong good humor.

There can be little wonder that Mrs, Makebelieve was soon up and about again, for had she remained long in such care, she could not have sur­vived. The husband and father of the lively family enjoys one of

25James Stephens, "A Rhinoceros, Some Ladies and a Horse," in James, Seumas & Jacques, p.4. ■

^ Header, p.57-?

16Stephens1 pleasantest descriptions? 11 He was a large, slow man dressed

comfortably in a red beard— his beard was so red and so persistent that it quite overshadowed the rest of his wrappings and did, indeed, seem to clothe him.11 ̂

Some of the most Dickensian of Stephens' descriptions occur in Irish Fairy Tales in connection with quite minor characters. Of one of the four clerics who come in "The -'Wooing of Becfola" to inform on the activities'of that lady, Stephens says, "He buried the fingers of

his right hand in his left fist, so that one could not hope to see them28resurrected again." Saying no more than this, Stephens tells us quite

a lot about both the grimness and the religiosity of the person whose

action he describes.

In "Mongan1s Frenzy," as Mdngan goes for the first time to try to recover his wife from the King of Leinster, he comes upon two priests, before whom he creates a turbulent river to sweep them away, so that he'

and his companion may impersonate them at the court of Leinster. Of

the river Stephens writes, "it was a water of villainous depth and of detestable wetness; of ugly hurrying and of desolate cavernous sound.

A little to their right there was a thin uncomely bridge that waggled

across the t o r r e n t . O f itself a river is apt to be neither villain­ously deep nor detestably wet, nor a bridge uncomely, but to one who must cross both river and bridge they could have these qualities. We

enjoy the description because we need not cross but can watch the dis-

27lbjd., p.10$.^ Irish Fairy Tales, p.112.

29Ibid., p.209.

17coafiture of the two priests„

Some of the ladies who parade before Angus Og in his visions in In the Land of Youth remind us strongly of such Dickensian creations as Mrs. Jellyby or Mrs. Pardiggleg

There were ladies of royal fatness who moved vehemently upon the vision as a great ship, with all sail spread, bears mightily down the sea.

Others of the beauties have little in common with Dickens1 ladies:

There were others, plump as corn-fed pigeons, active as hares, raising the wind as they passed and lifting the soul to journey with them.

And others again,, vehement and bewitching, moving like fierce swans upon the water.^

Stephens does not limit his descriptive talents to treatment

of birds and children and ladies; one of the neatest passages in TheCharwoman1s Daughter concerns Mrs. Makebelieve's_Shandean researches

on the subject of nosesgPointing to her own triumphantly genuine nose and the fact that her husband’s nose had been of quite discernible proportions, she would seek in labyrinths of pedigree for a reason to justify her daughter's lack; she passed all her sisters in this review, with an army of aunts and great-aunts, rifling the tombs of grand-parents and their remoter blood, and making long-dead noses to live again. Mary Makebelieve used to lift her timidly curious eye and smile in deprecation of her nasal short-comings; and then her mother would kiss the dejected button and vow it was the dearest, loveliest bit of a nose that had ever been seen.

When we read either the nasal passage or any of Stephens' fine descrip­tive comments(such as those on the crow), the pleasure we receive from

them derives partly from his language, which is deliberately funny(fnasal short-comings," indeed!), but partly it derives from quite an Aristotelian

^In the Land of Youth, p.77 = Reader, p.l4.

sense of recognition— that we have met this person or this nose or this

crow quite often before and are glad to recognize him here.

Humorous description, in Stephens or elsewhere, profits greatly from the presence of the apt metaphor; Stephens has many of these.

When.hunger follows Mrs. Mhkebelieve*s illness to the Makebelieve establishment, Stephens describes Mary’s gradual surrender of the Make-

believe possessions to the pawnbroker in these terms; "They held famine

at bay with a patchwork quilt and a crazy washstand. A water-jug and

a strip of oilcloth tinkled momentarily against the teeth of the wolf and disappeared. The maw of hunger was not incommoded by the window

curtain.11 ̂ Later in the book, Stephens talks of the lodger's appetite

in similar terms: "The young man had an appetite of which Mrs. Oafferty

spoke with the respect proper to something colossal and awesome, A

half-loaf did not more than break the back of a hunger which could wriggle disastrously over another h a l f - l o a f . O f t e n the author

makes a sententious statement palatable by wording it cleverly; "Shob-

bishness is a puling infant, but it may grow to a deeply whiskered am­

bition."^A beetle which flies by the MacOanns in the dusk in The Demi-

Gods, Stephens says "went slugging by like a tired b u l l e t ; t h i s is

a reversal of his common practice of describing everything in terms of animals. The following quotation from The Orock of Gold more closely

approximates his- normal manner of speaking in metaphorss "A bush crouched tightly on the ground as though, at a word, it would scamper from its

place and chase rabbits across the sward with shouts and laughter,11̂

Though the "shouts and laughter" suggest probably a child, they do not preclude the possibility of the bush's appearing like an animal, es­pecially when we recall the crow of The Demi-Gods, who shares with the

bush Stephens1 exuberance.When Stephens' humor falls short of the vitality of The Grock

of Gold or The Demi.-Gods, which it does in the stories of Here Are Ladies, wryness prevails. Such wryness we may note even in In the Land of Xouth

in this description of Midir's condition when one of his wives has re­

moved the other by sorcery; "A bleak peace was there for him, and he enjoyed it as his neighbor might enjoy a toothache.11 ̂

Occasionally Stephens' wit runs to paradox; for instance, note

the following comment about Mrs. Oafferty's lodger in The Charwoman1sDaughter: "in the young man who had come to lodge with her Mrs. Oaf-ferty discerned a being in whom virtue had concentrated to a degree that

- 38almost amounted to a congestion," By very excess the lodger's virtue

becomes almost a vice. Similarly, in The Crock of Gold, the enmity of the wives of the two Philosophers is "more valuable than the friendship

of angels.The apparent contradiction which creates paradox relates in some

^The Ofock of Gold, p.81.

*^In the Land of Youth, p.1-44.38Header, p.SO.^ The Crock of Gold, p.4.

20fashion to the sort of travesty which treats of high matters in a low

way or of low matters in a high way. In The Demi-Gods, patsy MacOann

speaks of his angelic company in much the same way. that Mervyji Wall has the devil speak to his diabolical host in The Unfortunate Fursey(a novel which may owe something to Stephens, or at least to the tradition in

which Stephens writes), Patsy says, "Mind now, we don't know who them

fellows are at all, and what would the priest say if he heard we were

stravaiging the country with three big, buck angels, and they full of tricks maybe,

One occasion on which Stephens slips into the mock-heroic is when the enormous policeman of The Charwoman's Daughter makes a pass at Mary Makebelieve, Stephens notes that she has difficulty finding . words in which to think about his awfulness; and when words finally

arrive, they seem to describe one of the monsters of the Irish heroic traditions "Each time his hands touched her they remained a trifle longer. They seemed to be great red spiders, they would grip her all round

and squeeze her clammily while his face spiked her to death with its

moustache,Although we have seen how Stephens works through characters

naive or vehement and descriptions exaggerated or quaintly exact or

inappropriate in tone, we have not paid much attention to the constant qualities of his humor. One of these is doubtless his wit, which enlivens all his work; another, generally but not always present, is his use of

^ Reader,, p. l4p * '41Ibid., p.75.

21

animals, whether they appear as human actors or as exempla in an un­natural natural history. In a study of Forrest Reid, Russell Burlingham notes that one of the revisions Reid makes in a late manuscript is to

change the pronoun referring to a butterfly from "that" to "who."

Although Stephens does not pay this sort of consistent care to his treatment of animals, they appear always as human characters, whether

in the main action of his books(like the ass in The Demi-Gods)9 or(like

the cat who dies ultimately of the head staggers) in the anecdotes of the Philosopher or of the ancient frequenter of the pub in "There Is a Tavern in the Town." Let us examine a portion of that ancient * s natural ' history in order to determine the sources of humor upon which Stephens

drawss

It could easily be proved that hair and innocence hhve a subtle relationship. Ho very hairy person is really vicious, as witness the caterpillar, of whom I have not heard that he ever bit any ones while, on the other hand, the frog who is born bald, would doubtless be- very savage were it not for the

. fact that nature has benevolently curtailed his teeth. Fishes, also an uncleanly race, and who I fancy are shaved before birth, are all monsters of cold-blooded ferocity, and they will devour their parents and even their own offspring with equal and in­discriminate enjoyment.

The pseudo-philosophy of the passage amuses the reader for sev­

eral reasons. It treats a foolish proposition quite seriously and with!;

pompous diction. Obvious contradictions occur within the paragraphs

the speaker censures the frog for looking ferocious, though like the caterpillar, the frog is quite incapable of damaging humans. Similarly,

he condemns fish for their appearance(in another passage he asserts the ■ iniquity of shaving))and calls them uncleanly, a word which reminds us

^James Stephens, Here Are Ladies(London, 1915)9 P -5^0.

22that the Philosopher of The Qrook of Gold holds fish of little worth because they inhabit water, an element tie distrusts; this would be quite immaterial, save that the ancient and the Philosopher have the very same mentality— a mentality which condemns fishes for living in water, frogs for being bald. True, fish consume their relatives, but this behavior is blameless in them unless they are held to some human moral code,. The whole thought amuses because the speaker attributes a particular kind of behavior to certain animals purely bn the basis of their appearance, just as we attribute certain softs of behavior to,people who look capable of them. Our amusement may easily lead us to condemn the speaker as an ass, but reflection assures us that he merely parodies us.

Although Stephens' animals may perform properly animal actions, whatever they do serves, too, as commentary on human affairs, In ad­dition to the ass, who has visions and even thinks to himself as Stephens' Philosopher thinks, other animals figure as human characters in Stephens'

works a cow and a fly in The Prook of Gold; a fine spider in The Demi- Gods, whom Stephens describes as a ''thick-set, heavy kind of spider, and tie seemed to be middle-aged and resigned to it, who complains

of the slightness and youth of the fly he has eaten for dinner when Art '

chats with him. At an animal anecdote we laugh at the speaker of such a drollery, at the animal who behaves so foolishly, and at the humans whose behavior the animal burlesques„ To refer again to Stephens' lively

crows we laugh at Stephens, who can imagine a bird of such vanity, frus­tration. and exuberance; we are amused at so odd a bird, who is finally

^James Stephens, The Demi-Gods(London, 1914), p,117.

25odd only because he has the vitality to shout with verve the emotion a human would suppress.

Chapter 2 Character9 Structure and Genre

No matter how adeptly a writer handles humor, if the reader

feels he wishes merely to be funny, he is likely to deny him any claim to greatness» Surely when Baugh1s Literary History of England notes

that Stephens1 work is marred by whimsy and that Daniel Oorkery is a more serious writer, judgment is awarded against Stephens because to the critic he seems frivolousd Yet it is part of Stephens' intention to be frivolous, for as one of the angels in The Demi-Gods says, “Humour

is the health of the mindu-~a health Stephens is anxious to spread0 Un­til now we have been examining Stephens' humor to determine his versatile ity and skill in its manipulation; now let us see how he employs it in

the depiction of character and in the structure of his novels»/

In his preface to A James Stephens Header, Padraie Oolum notes that Stephens was an extra-ordinary talker, so it need not surprise us that in each of his humorous, lengthy prose works, Stephens creates a

character capable of conversing or thinking in a perversely witty and verbose fashion» Fortunately Stephens1 talkers lack the dullness of Scott's Bartoline Saddletree, though they possess that character's pro^

lixitye Among the first things Stephens published was a series of

pseudo-philosophical articles which appeared between 1908 and 1910 in both the weekly and the daily editions of Sinn Fein, Eventually Stephens incorporated the articles into The Orock, of.Gold and “There Is a Tavern in the Town *“ Though the subject matter varies from article to article,

24

the speakers remain consistent in their pedantic, speculative approach to the material. There is little difference between the discourses of

the Philosopher of The Crock of. Gold and those of the ancient of 11 There

Is a Tavern in the Town," except that the ancient displays an occasional

weakness for puns on words like "feet" and "scales11 along with a more acid inclination toward satire than the Philosopher embodies.

The conversation of both the Philosopher and the ancient con­

sists of wild and witty speculation about human customs and appearances to which the average person seldom pays a thought. In the passages from

each quoted in Chapter 1, the implications of what the Philosopher says

of washing(that it may be amusing for children, but it is a disgusting and dangerous practice which can ultimately lead to one’s having the head staggers) and what the ancient says of hairyness(that it may be

equated with virtue) are equally silly. If we glibly suppose either

that Stephens wishes us to adopt the speaker’s point of view or that he expects us to consider both passages merely as exercises in whimsy, we

underestimate the seriousness of his art. Both passages serve multiple

purposes: in each we must realize that though the speaker amuses us,

he does so because, with more energy than we have, he exaggerates in his dogmatic way the prejudices from which no one is free. Each passage

reveals great vitality in the speaker; and each constitutes something

of a spoof on dogmatism of all sorts.Despite the prolixity and the dogmatism of each speaker, like

the narrator of "There-Is a Tavern" we return for repeated doses of such

conversation. Taking full advantage of the attractiveness of the talk in The Crock of Gold, Stephens has the Philosopher convert a policeman

26to his sort of disquisition. Somehow such impertinent and irrelevant talk as that of the Philosopher offends the forces of authority, re­

presented by the sergeant, who tries to stifle the old man's exuberance.

Failing in his attempt, he encourages one of his subordinates to out­talk the Philosopher, only to find that listening to the policeman is

quite as demoralizing as listening to the Philosopher.At first glance, we might suspect The Crock of Gold of' lapsing

from the frivolity of "There Is a Tavern11 into complete incoherence.

This short story and the essays from which Stephens built The Crock of

Gold have at least the artistic unity of well-made monologues, while

the novel contains a welter of diverse characters(philosophers, women,

children, an Irish god, a Greek god, leprecauns, animals, policemen and

allegorical figures) along with a variety of attitudes on the part of

the author(lyrical, comic, tragic). The Crock of Gold seems to lack the unity of "There Is a Tavern in the Town," but beneath the surface

diversity of the. novel, we can discern the single comic vision of life

which persists through much of Stephens' prose.Unlike the ancient, the Philosopher must not only talk but act

as well, so that Stephens exacts humor not only from the idle specu­

lations of the old man's wits but from the action of those wits on reality. It is in the nature of things that in spite of his purity of intention, or perhaps because of it, the Philosopher sets to work the

forces of retaliation(leprecauns), who call on the restrictive force

of the law(poliee), who deprive the Philosopher of his freedom of body and, as he ruefully discovers, of mind. At the same time, his actions

on behalf of Caitilin ETi Murrachu have brought her into the love of

27Angus Og, who responds9 therefore9 to the solicitations of the Phil­osopher *s wife on his behalf9 so that through the power of love, thevenom of retaliation is spent in vain*

Because the Philosopher acts, he encounters numerous characters

of all sorts; and at each encounter, the meeting of his mind with thatof another produces a potentially humorous situation. Even when hesays, little, his reactions amuse us. For example, when he encounters

Oaitilin after she has gone with Pan, she both attracts and repels him:As Oaitilin trod lightly in front of him the Philosopher closed his eyes in virtuous anger and opened them again in a not un­natural curiosity, for the girl had no clothes on. He watched her going behind the brush and disappearing in the cleft of the rock, and his anger, both with her and Pan, mastering him he forsook the path of prudence which soared to the mountain top, and followed that leading to the cave. The sound of his feet brought Oaitilin out hastily, but he pushed by her with a harsh word. "Hussy,11 said he, and he went into the cave where Pan was.

Worsted in dispute with Pan, the Philosopher passes Oaitilin on his way from the cave and repeats the single word, "Hussy."

The beauty of Stephens1 characters is that they always react when they meet new people, so that the episodic structure of The Demi- Gods and The Crock of Gold gives the author repeated opportunities to

show the health of his mind in the depiction of encounters between

diverse people. The dance of life which ends The Crock of Gold as it ends many comedies symbolizes the triumph of the healthy mind in love, which to Stephens is the highest good.

In her study of James Stephens, Hilary Pyle notes that The

Charwoman1s Daughter is "the only one of Stephens*s books which might

hhThe Crock of Gold, p.75°

28be called a novel„ jn a sense she is quite right, for it is the only one of his humorous pieces. of fiction in which his treatment is quite realistic throughout. In all of the other "novels," fairy people,, le- precauns, angels and other non-human characters fill important roles,The Charwoman1s Daughter, too, is the only one of Stephens’ books in

which he reveals character more by describing peoplefs thoughts than by

describing their encounters with others or than by letting them tell tales of their own, Mary Makebelieve, of course, overshadows the other characters in the book, for she constantly delights the reader by her

innocent apprehension of every minute detail of her existence. Though

the novel concerns itself with the transformation of her naivete into a more mature charm, her way of looking at things never fails to pro­

vide Stephens with sources for humor.

Mrs, Makebelieve has a much harsher view of life than Mary has;but she does all things with such vigor that her perceptions seem tocrackle with her energy:

The more she thought of Mrs. 01 Connor the more favorably she pondered on emigration. She would say nothing against Mrs,O’Oonnor yet, but the fact' remained that she had a wen on her cheek and buck teeth. Either of these afflictions taken sep­arately were excusable but together she fancied they betoken a bad, sour nature; but maybe the woman was to be pitied: she might be a nice person in herself, but, then, there was the matter of the soap, and she was very fond of giving unnecessary orders, However, time, would show, and, clients being as scarce as>.they were, one could not quarrel with one’s bread and butter.

Quite ordinary thoughts, Mrs, Makebelieve's are, but they spill outwith such force that we know that the length of time she will be able

^Hilary Pyle, James Stephens, His ". Work.and an Account of His life (London, 190), p.46.

^ Reader, p.55.

29to restrain herself from not just quarreling with but assaulting herbread and butter will be scarcely measurable in its brevity.

The great policeman., through neither naivete nor vehemence butthrough self-consciousness about both his greatness and his ''policeman-

liness11 is a humorous, creation long before Mary finally sees him as a

monster of Irish legend. With his "severe but tolerant eye," he directs

traffic at the intersection of Hassau, Suffolk and Grafton Streets,According to Stephens,

He. knows all the tram-drivers who go by, and his nicely graduatedwink rewards the rubicund, jolly drivers of the hackneys andthe decayed Jehus with purple faces and dismal hopefulness who drive sepulchral cabs for some reason which has no acquaintance with profit; nor are the ladies and gentlemen who saunter past foreign to his encyclopedic eye. Constantly his great head swings a slow recognition, constantly his serene finger motions onwards a well-known undesirable, and his big, white teeth flash for an instant at young, laughing girls and the more matronly acquaintances who solicit the distinction of his glance,47

Throughout the book, Stephens hints' at the big man's class conscious­

ness and pomposity, so that the reader shares something of Mary's aver­sion for the man by the time he tries to embrace her. On the day on which Mary takes her mother's work at the home of the policeman's aunt,

when he enters, the aunt apologizes for the impossibility of servants;(

he glances:'at the floor, where Mary(who has not told him of her mother's

work, perhaps fearing scorn) scrubs. Then,The policeman, with his eyes fixed steadily on Mary, began

to take off his coat. His eyes, his moustache, all his face and figure seemed to be looking at her. He was an enormous and terrifying interrogation. He tapped his tough moustache and stepped over the-bucket; at the entrance to the parlor he stood again and hung his monstrous look on her, °

^ Read e r , p . 11,

4 8 Ibid., p.55.

50But he says nothing; and later, he aets as if her work cheapens her. Their encounter over the bucket is unpleasant; but by describing the

policeman as an enormous moustached interrogation, Stephens lets us see both the humor of the man's temporary surprise and something of the

class reaction to which his discovery of Mary scrubbing will bring him.

Ber resistance to his embraces finally provokes him into proposing, at which Stephens ironically suggests the man's attitudes "What right has a slip of a girl to withstand the advances of a man and a policeman?11̂

In The Demi**Gods as in The Orock of Gold, Stephens combines

disparate elements to form a book chaotic on the surface but beneath held to a greater unity than the author achieved in the earlier book. Here the character who most closely fits the pattern of the Philosopher

is the ass, who comments little, but whose thoughts Stephens sometimes tells us $

Theyfgarrotsj are a companionable food; they make a pleasant, crunching noise when they are bitten, and so, .when one is eating carrots, one can listen to the sound of one's eating and make a story from it„„.„

Hay can be eaten in great mouthfuls. It has a chip and a crack at the first bite, and then it says no more. It sticksout of one's mouth like whiskers, and you can watch it withyour eye while it moves to and fro according as your mouth moves. It is a friendly food, and very good for the hungry.

Oats are not a food; they are a great blessing; they are adebauch; they make you proud, so the# you want to kick thefront out of a cart, and climb a tree, and bite a cow, and chase chickens.

Even in so short a passage as this, we easily see what it is that makes

the ass both like and unlike Stephens' other talkers. He has all the

^Ibid., p.86.

?0Ibid°, pp.195-194.

51prolixity and charm of the Philosopher or the ancient9 but besides, he echoes the joy of living which makes him cry out so mightily that he might almost expect like Rostand1s Chanticleer to waken the sun and the world with his voice.

The optimism of the ass sets the tenor of The Demi-Gods* Even Stephens1 descriptions, like the following of the ass in rain, convey the character of the worthy animal: uRain was pouring from him as though

he were the father of rivers and supplied the world with running watere It dashed off his flanks; it leaped down his tail; it foamed over his forehead to his nose; and hit the ground from there with a thump»U51 The very rain which spills from the ass partakes of his energy.

Mo character in The Demi-Gods undeservedly suffers great wrong; the persons from whom Patsy MacGann steals either suffer little or deserve what happens to them* Stephens intrudes in the story in the

first person for one chapter, in which he speaks to the ass; and the sights the animal recounts add wonderfully to the humorously lyrical effect which Stephens builds into the book in fervent descriptions which

the ass himself might make. The animal has seen forty cyclops striding fiery-eyed across a hill(one stopped to stroke him); out of a wood he saw three centaurs come, who talked and pelted him with tufts of grass; in a plain he saw and joined a herd of wild asses which kicked and killed

ill-intentioned men who crept about them in the grass. After a night of sporting with his wild relatives, the ass returned to be with Mary MacGann,

Stephens has the ass say that he sees all these things in the

3*Ibid., p.192.

52night. Whether they were there or merely visions does not matter, for persons' and events in both The Oroek of Gold and The Demi'-Gods are quite

as strange as these; what matters is their inclusion in the story. The

author provides us with no explanation for them, though we may note that men are the only creatures included who act wickedly or without

joy. We need not seek an exact explanation, for even unexplained, the

things the ass sees add greatly to the lyric texture of The Demi-Gods.As Mary Makebelieve gradually loses her naivete in The Charwoman1s

Daughter, so in The Demi-Gods Patsy MaeCam loses his isolation from society. He begins the book so independently that he cannot help amusing

the reader as he grudgingly yields in turn to his affection for Eileen Bi Cooley, his daughter and Oaeltia, Each time he gives up part of his

Independence, he so struggles to preserve it that we receive a highly

funny insight into his character, A fine example of such insight occurs when Oaeltia asks Patsy about Eileen8

"Do you not like that woman?11 Oaeltia enquired,"She's a bad woman," replied Patsy,"What sort of a bad woman is she?""She's the sort that commits adultery with every kind of

■ man," said he harshly,Oaeltia turned over that accusation for a moment."Did she ever commit adultery with yourself?" said he."She did not," said Patsy, "and that's why I don't like her."5^

Oaeltia sums up the conversation by saying, "I think that the reason you don't want to see her is because you want to see her too much."

Stephens' book invites comparison with a novel of H. G. Wells, written fifteen years earlier, which concerns itself with the earthly adventures of anyangels The Wonderful Visit. Like Stephens, Wells uses

, 52Ibid., p.177,

his angel*s inexperience as a means of commenting upon 'the nature of the world, which he sees as so unpleasant that it withers the glorious wings of the angel, causes him to be stoned, and finally sends him from

the earth in a fire which consumes him along with one of the two creatures who have the grace to love him.

Stephens 1 angels, like Wells1, come to earth for undesignated

purposes. They experience not Victorian society but the company of a single outcast and his daughter;- the father tries to rob them, but his daughter and his conscience win him to honorable behavior. When they depart, the angels go in sadness, save for the youngest, who stays with

Mary Mac Gann. The grimness of the world as Wells paints it occurs in The Demi-Gods only twices in a parable Finaun tells to move Patsy and

Eileen from hate to love; and in the relations between the couple from

whom Patsy must recover the angels1 equipment. Brien O'Brien's whole career illustrates a rough sort of roguery not much removed from Patsy's,

but Patsy rejects the side of himself which Brien represents. Though

Stephens shows evil plainly enough, the parable and the conversation Pgtsy overhears act on him to move him toward good, with the result that Stephens' book appears quite optimistic in comparison with Wells'.

The talker in Jn the Land of Youth who most closely fits the

pattern set by the Philosopher is the physician of the Shi, Fergne.This conversationalist differs from Stephens' others in that his chief interest is women, of whom he talks quite as enthusiastically as the

Philosopher talks of cats or the ass thinks of foodsiI perceive...that you have begun with the plump women, and

I perceive also that of created beings a well-rounded woman

$4overtops all others, for she dan set the heart at ease and fill the mind with fancy*

There is...much to be said of slender women; they have a grace of movement that is infinitely satisfying; they curve and flow*

How agile the thin maidens are 1»0 oHow deep is the appeal of their willowy youth1^5

The physician performs his medical function efficiently, cor­rectly diagnosing Angus! illness as love* His professional desire to cure the youth conflicts with his unprofessional wish to see the visions of ladies which the Dagda determines to have parade before Angus in order to identify the object of his love; and. it is Fergne1 s medical responsibility which leads him to the uncharacteristic comment that, <rIf your fawn had a hump on her back, or a lame leg* If she were one-eyed or covered with warts*. If she were even a lunatic, or out-and-out mad, we should have something to look for*^ 4 delight in watching the

visions overcomes him, however, so that he cannot understand the queen*s becoming surfeited with them* She expresses revulsion at the hosts of her sex whom she has viewedg

111 have seen too,many women," Eoann replied, "and I must go to some place where I can get the sight of them out of my eyes *"

."Surely— n Fergne began in a tone of astonishment and ex­postulation*

"i wish,11 said Boann, "to go among my men-servants, and to watch them as they move with agility and circumspection about their work* I wish to look at our soldiers as they perform f: '/’Z,. martial evolutions and leap and run* I wish to see short hair on heads and long hair on chins* I wish to see bald people— "

"Here," stammered Fergne, "is a wish indeed I

^ I n the Land of Youth, p*76*

^Ibld., p.69.55lbid_°, p 08O*

In addition to his interplay with the queen of the Shi, Fergne carries on a funny flirtation with Maeve, the queen of Connacht; in her court, each time he exclaims .over her excellences she finds him more attractive.

The humor Stephens draws from characterization comes principally

from the revelation of the characters' thoughts in The Charwoman1s Daughter; and in The Crock of Gold it comes from the combination of that revelation and the meeting of diverse personalities. In The Demi-Gods

again, and in In the hand of Youth, Stephens develops humorous insights into character through having personalities react on one another, but also through having his characters tell stories of their own. Gaeltia's

story of Brien O'Brien's death and reception into heaven, for example, begins in such a fashion that we learn as much of Caeltia as we do of Brien:

When Brien O'Brien died, people said that it did not matter much because he would have died young in any case. He would have been split in two halves with a hatchet, or he would have tumbled down the cliff when he was drunk and been smashed into jelly. Something like that was due to him, and everybody likes to see a man get what he deserves.

But, as ethical writs cease to run when a man is dead, the neighbors did not stay away from his wake. They came and they said many mitigating things across the body with the bandaged jaws and the sly grin, and they reminded each other of this and that queer thing which he had done, for his memory was crusted . over with stories of wild, laughable, things, and other things which were wild but not laughable.^ J

Gaeltia's wit is dry, his experience wider and more human than we might.

expect from his angelic background. After hearing his story, we cannot

be surprised that when he obliges Patsy to throw away his ill-gotten

money, he offers to throw away his own pipe in commiseration.

^James Stephens, The Dsmi-Gods(London, 1914), pp.167-168.

Stephens'- books vary in complexity from the simplicity of straight narrative in The Charwoman1s Daughter to considerable intri­cacy in In the Land of Youth. The. pattern of events of The Charwoman1s Daughter fits the normal comic one of a character deviating from ac­

cepted behavior, realizing his excess, and.returning to a more normal

behavior after having learned something of the nature of his society

and of himself, Mary Makebelieve, without telling her mother, encourages the suit of a man unsuited to her; realizing that his intentions are impure and his class attitudes ungenerous, she abandons him for Mrs,

Oafforty's lodger, who has the approval of Mrs. Makebelieve. Though her infatuation has been foolish, it gives Mary new knowledge to help her cope with a suitable lover and husband. Throughout the book, Stephens

derives humor from the revelation of her thoughts about and reactions to the small things which make up her life.

Ih each of his novels after The Charwoman1s Daughter.Stephens moves farther from straight omniscient narrative. Though the narrator

does much of the talking in The Crock of Cold, at times Stephens draws

humor from the one-sided conversations of the Philosopher; and through the use of an episodic structure, he has his numerous and incongruous

characters confront one another in funny, revealing encounters. Such

weakness'as the book has comes from Stephens' incomplete assimilation of the varied materials which make it up. Hilary Pyle suggests this weakness when she describes the book as *'an accumulation of previous

work held together by a symbolic plot." "The Children and their games,"

she goes on, "came from, observation at home, and the Philosopher and

his monologues, and two of the short stories, come from Sinn Fein,"57 The Philosopher's monologues are so lively that parts of the book in which other characters hold the narrator's attention suffer by comparison.

Stephens definitely shows an advance in his handling of structure in The Demi-Sods« Though the book contains elements as disparate as

those of The Crock of Gold, it shows far more skill in construction.Again the action is episodics Mary, Patsy and the ass travel, that Patsy can support them by tinkering and thieving. They meet in succession

the angels, who continue with them to the end, Eileen Ni Cooley, who

leaves them but reappears, Billy the Music, and Brien O'Brien and Cuchulain, who accompany Eileen at her reappearance. Each encounter produces an amusing confrontation between characters and part of a story. When the angels and the MacCanns meet Eileen the first time, Finaun tells a par­able which prepares for her conciliation with Patsy on her reappearance.Once they have met Billy, a series of narrations involving the adventures

of Brien and Cuchulain takes places Billy begins, Patsy continues with what he knows, Billy ends his story, Oaeltia describes Brian's heavenly reception, and Art tells of Brien's strife against heaven. Appropriately the company encounters Brien and Cuchulain at the perfect time to have

them act the final portion of their adventures.Within the picaresque structure of the book Stephens provides

us with the second story of Brien O'Brien, which illustrates the grasping

side of human nature, the side which Patsy reduces in himself to minor

importance by replacing the angelic equipment he has stolen and by

^Hilary Pyle, James Stephens, His Work and an Account of His Life(London, 196$), p.49.

casting his gains into a ditch at Oaeltia's request. He further re­pudiates his lesser nature by loving Eileen Hi Oooley even as Art loves Mary, The rhapsodic descriptions by the ass set the tone for the con­clusion and for the whole book— a tone which Stephens establishes early, in his descriptions of the ass and the crow.

Humor in In the Hand of Youth is concentrated within the three stories set inside the story of Hera's adventures in the Land of Youth told by the narrator. Inside the narrator's story, Maeve tells two others the love of Angus for Ethel Anbual's daughter, which led to Maeve1s

sacking of a kingdom in the Land of Youth; and her uncle Eochaid's love for Etain, which caused his similar action. Inside the first of Maeve1s stories, the magician, B©ve, tells of the conflict between the swine­

herds of Connacht and Munster, Bove notes that he is telling his story to cheer up the Dagda, which it does; but set centrally within the first of the two long stories inside Hera's adventures, the tale of the pigs serves to lighten the whole tone of In the Land of Youth, Without

sacrificing the prevailingly romantic tone of the adventure:itself, Stephens changes the total effect of the book by restraining humor to

the included tales and the most uproarious humor to the tale farthest

within Hera!s adventure.All the stories involve similar themes; Hera will return to the

Land of Youth for love of a lady there; he has returned to the court of

Maeve to prevent the massacre of Maeve and her retainers. If the mas­sacre occurs, it will happen because Maeve once warred on a kingdom of the Shi to win a bride for Angus, even as her uncle warred to win his own love, Among Maeve's spoils from her expedition are two bulls who

59were once the two swineherds of Bove’s tale, and who will one day repay Maeve for her action against the Shi,

When Hilary Pyle says that The Charwoman1s Daughter is Stephens’ only novel, she doubtless disqualifies his .other books because of their

fantastic elements. Her distinction may be useful in other ways as well, for in The Charwoman’s Daughter Stephens attempts an almost

psychological revelation of character, while increasingly in the other humorous "novels," he turns his efforts to the sort of story-telling

that is the essence of the romance. If the distinction harms Stephens

in any way, it does so by involving the critic with the pejorative

connotations of the term "romance"— which designates a form of fiction which we are apt to consider less serious than the "novel." Let us

f -adopt the term "romance" as a suitable designation for Stephens' fiction

other than The Charwoman1s Daughterj but let us recognize the seriousness of his efforts in the romances as in the novel.

Stephens lived for a quarter of a century after he published

In the Land of Youth in 1924, but he produced no additional lengthy prose work. The quality of his extant work is so high that we can only regret his mproductivity. His inactivity coincided with a change of residence from Dublin to outside of London and with the end of a pro­

gression in his prose from The Charwoman1s Daughter, which is essentially non-heroic comedy, through The Crock of Gold and The Demi-Gods, which

contain bits of heroic material only as they concern Angus Og and Cu- chulain,, to Deirdre and In the Land of Youth, which are essentially

heroic. Though the author projected three more books on the heroic

Irish material of the Tain Bo Oualigne9 he completed no more* Exactly what stopped his work is questionable; we can but be thankful that we

have as much of his fiction as. he finished»

Chapter 5The Heroic Tradition and the Satirist

If we judged writers to be members of literary families on the basis of resemblances between their work, we should certainly say

that Thomas Love Peacock is a literary ancestor of James Stephens„ Peacock, like Stephens, has been unduly neglected, perhaps for the same reasons as Stephenss superficially he appears not to be a serious writer,

and he seems to handle his materials iman ambivalent fashion. Never­

theless, both are serious writers, though each has the ability to see things in two lights at the same time. Peacock speaks through Friar

Tuck at the end of Maid Marian with words which will elucidate for us

the similarity between his work and Stephens1 s 11 The world is a stage, and life is a farce, and he that laughs most has most profit of the

performance. The worst thing is good enough to be laughed at, though

it be good for nothing else; and the best thing, though it be good for

something else is good for nothing better.Though Stephens would agree that "the worst thing is good enough

to be laughed at,11 in fact neither he nor Peacock treats very many

"worst things; 11 and when Stephens does treat them— poverty in The Charwoman1 s Daughter, prison in The Crock of Col,d, adultery in The Demi­

gods— he tends to treat them soberly. Nevertheless, the two writers

share a vision which is both comic and romantic, a way of looking at

^Thomas Love Peacock,, The Novels, ed. David Garnett(London, 1948), p.529-

42things which must enrich their books for the reader unless it deceiveshim* For a particular instance of Peacock's double vision, let us

. • , - - examine briefly one of his most neglected books, the Welsh romance,

The Misfortunes of Elphin. We can.describe the book, almost an anomalyv,

in English fiction, as a satirical Arthurian romance— terms which seem contradictory. It makes a fine comparison with some of Stephens 11 work

because in it Peacock weaves together several ancient Welsh tales, much.

- as Stephens combines ancient Irish tales in In the Land of Youth.Reading Peacock’s book, we find that though he holds up to ridicule the

behavior of kings, retainers and bards, nevertheless his book has all

the trappings of a romance— warriors, maidens, knightly accoutrements; and somehow it preserves the beautifully idyllic atmosphere a romance ought to have, even as it conveys Peacock’s acerbity toward the follies

of both ancient and modern society.Stephens possesses double vision, or a skill at expressing his

double vision, which approaches that of Peacock. With this vision he deals with the heroic matter of the humorous novels in such a way that

at first glance he seems only to laugh or only to sympathize, when in fact he does both simultaneously. To illustrate his ambivalence, let us look first at In the Land of Youth. The principal tale of the book,

Hera’s adventures in the Land of Youth, involves a hero who acts per­

fectly the role of the hero of a romance5 he has adventures, demonstrates courage, loves a maiden, helps to save his queen's kingdom. Though Stephens hints at a pessimistic view of human courage when he writes of Maeve’s warriors(three accept Aillil’s challenge to tie a withy on

45the foot of the hanged man, but each returns after a few steps into the

darkness cow him), though Maeve throws glances at Fergus mac Boy which

suggest that she will not keep Aili.il as her consort indefinitely, and

though the hanged man behaves in an unseemly fashion, refusing to die unless his thirst is quenched, the disquieting elements scarcely dis­

turb the idyllic atmosphere of the tale,Nera's adventures generally maintain a properly romantic tone,

but in all of the tales included within his, Stephens treats his matter in a far more ambivalent way. Though we see Angus, the god, as a pit­

iable, love-smitten youth, we also see him as something of an ass, a person who is capable only of lying on his bed and groaning while others

try to heal him. The others involved happily include the queen, Boann,

and the physician, Fergne, who disagree comically on the value of the

visions which the Dagda produces to provide the cure for Angus' illness. Among Angus' companions, too, is Bove, who tells the story of the rival

swineherds, surely one of the most unheroic of stories to appear in a

romance. . ,In the third enclosed story, that of Midir, Etain and Eochaid,

Stephens cunningly undermines the very material he uses so well. Eochaid's

method of expressing his love for his wife makes us question his strength of intellect; but his behavior after Midir has defeated him at chess

raises doubts as to his courage and honor. He tries to cheat Midir of

his winnings, not by a clever ruse but by sheer force, not by facing Midir on equal terms, but by opposing him with the entire army of Connacht. Yet Eochaid emerges from the story favorably, for Midir is of the Shjf,

44so Eochaid has every right to fear him? even so, the king of Connacht regains his courage sufficiently to determine to recapture his wife by his own efforts.

When he discusses the games held at Tara in Eochaid's time, Stephens talks of the bards in a tone reminiscent of Peacock's tone in The Misfortunes of Blphins

The bards were in Convention at the Well of the Elf Mound discussing if all that could be achieved by the Great Eight-Line Curved Verse could not be as competently managed by the Little Eight-Line Curved Verse, and.whether the Great-Curving Eight- Line Return Verse was a necessity or an outrages these holding that brevity, and those that diversity, was the chief ornament.of poetry.^9

The vendors present at the games share the irony with which Stephens treats the bardss

There were,those, at the Well of the Dark Eyes, who would teach you ten new proverbs for a farthing;? and their .rivals who would sell you three powerful incantations for a penny,. Three lines of verse against the rheumatism?1 six couplets that will kill a witch? or a sovereign ten-1 irie'd’'.verse, to mend a tooth-ache.

On the Slope of the Chariots there were men of lesser, med­icine who would dispossess one's soul of a devil4 h r ..one's toe of a corn, at a price that had never before been heard of.

What Stephens achieves by combining humor with his genuine sym­

pathy for the heroic tradition that he continues is a rare sort of

simultaneously ironic and idyllic vision— a vision which works par­ticularly well in In the Land of Youth and The Demi-Gods, only a degree

less well in The Crock of Gold. Though Peacock writes in the same vein,

we must note that Stephens shares a peculiarly Irish attitude toward

^9In the Lend of Youth, p.2$6,

6QIbid., p.259v

45.heroic material„ In his study of the Irish comic tradition, Vivian

Mercier notes that the Gaelic writer is apt to utilize Gaelic archaic material in two wayss he may adopt the primitive "play-spirit11 of the earlier society, or he may take an ambivalent view of heroic or sacred matter.

Though Stephens achieves “play-spirit" enough in many of his tales, we cannot readily determine how original or derivative this spirit

is. Neither can we be certain how much his ambivalence derives from

the Irish tradition; but Mercier's description of the traditional attitude could describe Stephens alonet “Like Homer or Aristophanes, he seems to believe in myth and magic with one half of his being, while with the

other half he delights in their absurdity.... The same basic bruidhean

material may become a fierce and noble hero-tale or an uproarious bur­lesque. . . Though Mercier sees the alternative possibilities of an ambivalent attitude like Stephens1 or Peacock's, he fails to note the

possibility of a synthesis between the two sorts of vision.The word “bruidhean,“ as Mercier notes elsewhere, refers

specifically to an otherworld dwelling to which Fionn is enticed, and

less exactly refers to otherworld dwellings of approximately the same nature as the Greek Hades; 11 brui dhean material" therefore refers to

tales involving, human adventures in fairy dwellings. "The Enchanted Gave of Gesh Gorran" fits the technical description of bruidhean material,

for Fionn and his men are tricked into the cave of Oonaran of the Shi, where Qonaran's daughters, the ferocious hags whose description appears .

^Vivian Mercier, The Irish Comic Tradition (Oxford, 1962), p. 8.

62Ibid., p.19.

46

above in Chapter 1, plan to avenge their father on the hero and his

warriorso Though the men behave well enough, they fall into the hags' trap through a natural and hilarious curiosity about the whiskered

ladiess

"One would not call them handsome,11 said Conan,"One could,11 Pionn replied, "but it would not be true.11

"IIwant to make sure that it is whiskers they are wearing.11 "bet them wear whiskers- or not wear them," Conan counselled.

"But let us have nothing to do with them.""One must not be frightened of anything," Pionn stated."llam not frightened," Conan explained. "I only want to

keep my good opinion of women, and if the three yonder are women, then I feel sure I shall begin to dislike women from this min­ute out." 5

Heroic tales happen to include hags, every now and then, but such hags

seldom evoke the responses of Stephens* warriors, nor do they pride

themselves on their appearance or dance about while singing, "Pionn-;thinks he is safe. But who knows when the sky will fall." Yet Stephenssurpasses the absurdity of the words the hags sing by the comment he

makes about those wordss "Lois of the people in the Shi learned this64song by heart, and they applied it to every kind of circumstance."

Though Stephens stresses the burlesque side of his double vision in this

story, the heroes emerge with their glory but slightly tarnished.

The whole of Hera's adventures in the Land of Youth and the stories in Irish Fairy Tales in which persons pass from one of the fairy kingdoms to the human kingdom or vice versa,, though they seldom

deserve technical classification as bruidhean material, by their concern

^Irish Fairy Tales, pp. 151-152.^Ibid., p.150, ■

with commerce between natural and supernatural certainly deserve sim*-

ilar classification. "The Birth of Bran" contains no episode in an

otherworldly house, but it does contain commerce between fairy people and humans. When.',.the fairy lady Uet Dealv learns that her mortal lover

lollan, has married an earthly lady;, Tuiren, the lady of the Shi trans­

forms the queen into a dog, which she gives(as a gift from Pionn) to a

dog-hating man named Fergus Fionnliath. Fergus cannot refuse a gift from his king, nor can he mistreat it as Uct Dealv hopes he will, so against his will he comes to love its

"Its legs will drop off," said Fergus. "Fionn will blame me," he cried in despair....

He tucked and tightened the animal into his breast, and marched moodily up and down the room. The dog's nose lay along . his breast under his chin, and as he gave it dutiful hugs, one hug to every five paces, the dog put out its tongue and licked him timidly under the chin.

"Stop," roared Fergus, "stop that for ever," and he grew very ped in the face, and stared truculently down along his nose. 2

Before long Fionn learns what has happened to the lady and has her returned to her natural state, but only after she has produced two

whelps, Bran and Sceolan, which he keeps for his own. Infected by the

dog-owning habit, Fergus falls ill until a new puppy restores him to

health.The stories of Irish Fairy Tales vary from the extreme of

romance("The Boyhood of Fionn") to the extreme of burlesque("The En­

chanted Gave of Qesh Gorran"), and they include fine means between the two like'; ';l!ltbngan1 s Frenzy. “ If we view the collection as a whole, it has very much the double vision which prevails in the humorous romances

48The Demi-Gods invites comparison with the work of a novelist who

wrote just when Stephens virtually abandoned prose and whom Stephens may

have influenced, Eimar O’Duffy, Just as Stephens employs Guohulain in The Deml-GodsO'Duffy brings the hero into modern life in a trilogy,King Goshawk and the Birds(1926), The Spacious Adventures of the Man in

the Street(1929), and Asses in Plover(1935)» Of the three novels, the first is best to compare with The Demi-Gods, for The Spacious Adventures involves the utopian wanderings of the spirit of the man whose body

Guchulain uses in King Goshawk, while Asses in Glover treats of the ad­

ventures of Guchulain's son, Ouanduine,Stephens and O'Duffy use Guchulain for humorous effects which

depend on the reader's acquaintance with the hero's role in Irish

legend, Stephens plays off his traditional role against both the role which he plays as a seraph and the role to which extremities reduce himas he accompanies Brien-O'Bhien across the Irish countryside. Ho char­

acter in The Demi-Gods suggests the impropriety of Guchulain's being an

angel, but whenever, the reader comes upon "seraph Guchulain," he ought to hurst with laughter at Stephens' audacity in casting the great Ulster­

man as an angel, In heaven, the seraph behaves with a meekness and

propriety far from Guchulain's mettlesome deportment. When.Bhadamanthus challenges him for taking Brien O'Brien's three-penny piece, however, the ex-hero reverts to his ancient characters

11 Findings are keepings,11 said he loudly, and he closed his mouth and stared very impertinently at the judge.

"It is to be given up,11 said the judge."Bet them come and take it from me," said the seraph Gu­

chulain. And suddenly(for these things are at the will of

4pspirits) around his head the lightnings span, and his hands were on the necks of thunders.

Violently transported to earth for his misbehavior, Cuchulain

accompanies the bum, Brien O'Brien, about the countryside, stealing to get clothes, bullying his way through the world. Though the seraph plays only a small role in The Demi-Gods, in using him as he does,

Stephens makes an amusing but penetrating comment'upon both a world and a heaven which seem to have no place for the heroic, though the heroic itself seems considerably less than noble.

While Stephens' Quchulain comes to earth because he is cast out of heaven, O'Duffy's comes at the request of the poor Dublin phil­osopher who seeks heavenly aid against the monopoly of the world's

songbirds which has been perpetrated by an American magnate, King Gos­

hawk, A satirist, 0'Duffy paints a grasping world run by monopolists, flooded with patent products of appalling quality, devoid of heroism.

When the philosopher persuades the hero to help alleviate earthly con­

ditions, he rents for Ouehulain the body of a grocery clerk, an inferior body, but the best he can obtain at short notice and on.slender means, Ouehulain goes about wreaking havoc because of his ignorance of and dis­

dain for moderii customs. Used to the freer customs of his pagan world,

he cannot understand a society in which he must pay for food and drink, where people about him cannot see without spectacles or eat without dentures,, and where women cannot give love without marriage. The hero's

wooing of a girl he meets on a walk beautifully illustrates the contrast 01Duffy draws between the heroic and the modern world; the girl is

^The Demi-Gods , pp. 177-178,

shabby and unattractive, but Ouchulain can see her only with the eyes of the clerk whose body he uses;

"Pair maiden, you are beautiful as a morn of spring when the cherries are in bloom."

"Galong out o' that," answered the girl, smirking.The girl, playing with a faded ribbon on her blouse thrust

it between her teeth and giggled. Ouchulain, watching her, said;"My thirst is for the honey that is gathered from a bed of

scarlet flowers.""I don't care for the kind you get in them combs," said

the girl, "l prefer the bottled stuff. But I like jam best."Then said Ouchulain; "it is your fair bosom that is the

fruit of my desiring, and your red lips ripe for kissing, and your warm white body to be pressed to mine in the clasp of 1ove."

"0 you dirty_fellowl" cried the girl, and turning, she fled into her house.

What distinguishes Stephens' use of Ouchulain from O'Daffy's

is the very difference which makes the two writers quite dissimilar though they use the same material; Stephens mocks heroic tradition with his characterization of Ouchulain, but when he has finished, Ouchulain

is still a hero who can anticipate with a tinkling laugh Bhadamanthus' discomfiture at Brien O'Brien's :r©appearance. O'Duffy's hero abandons the miserable world in disgust, though he promises it the aid of his

son. O'Duffy consistently admires the heroic, past, despises the material­

istic present, while Stephens recognizes with a laugh the imperfections

Of both, even as(like the angel, Art) he accepts the world.Heroic elements in The Orock of Gold and The Charwoman's Daughter

certainly have less importance than they have in The Demi-Gods or In the

hand of Youth; but even in the earlier books Stephens presents a vision

^Eimar O'Duffy, King Goshawk and the Birds(Hew York, 1926), PPo75-77o -

compounded of idyll and irony. The Philosopher exists in a world whichis pleasant for him because he sees in it both the humor of his spec­

ulations on animals and the beauty of his ideas on life; evil is present

too, in the revenge of the leprecairns and the restraints of the law,but humor and love can overcome revenge and restraint. Mary Makebelieve

is a beautiful character because we see her with Stephens1 irony and her own simplicity.

Acknowledging at once that Stephens lacks O'Duffy's bitter sat­ire, we must nevertheless realize that he often includes pungent com­

ments on manners and morals in his funniest work. The ancient of "There Is a Tavern in the Town11 occasionally goes beyond merely teasing his listeners about customs they accept to indict those customs. In what

seems a harmless digression on wheels(though he has nothing from which

to digress), he says, "By the use of legs humanity has stalked into manhood. By the use of wheels we are rapidly rolling into a race of

commercial travellers, touts, gad-abouts, and Members of Parliament,

folk with mental, moral and optical indigestion.11 ̂ Mote that Stephens

uses the standard satirical device of including an incongruous item, Members of Parliament, in an otherwise homogeniously scurrilous list.

Sometimes the energy with which he has the ancient defend the status quo makes a yet stronger indictment of society than does a direct attacks

This happy, whiskey—governed land of ours should never for­sake its liquor or it may be forced by opportunity and work to become great. . The foundations of our civilization are steeped in beer— let no sacrilegious hand seek to interfere with it,■ for, even if the foundations were.rotten, the interests of the Trade must not be disturbed, the grave and learned members of

^®Here Are Ladies, p.$29.

52our Corporation might be horribly reduced to working for their -living, and our unfortunate City might have the extraordinary

We little associate The Crock of Gold with satire or socialcriticism, but it contains ample. In a catalogue like the ancient's, ,Stephens wryly remarks of the.philosophers' wives that "the women were

true to their own doctrines and refused to part with information to

any persons saving only those of high rank, such as policemen, gombeenmen, and district and county councillors. Even in the triumphant

conclusion of the book, .Stephens suggests that his opinion of societymay finally be not greatly different from 0'Duffy's. True, followingAngus Og, the forces of good(reformed leprecauns, fairy people andpeople like the Thin Woman and Caitilin) dance toward the city to free

the Philosopher; but the language with'which Stephens discusses thepeople of the city smacks of the prophetic books of the Bible, thoughthe names "Balor" and 11 Fomor" come from Celtic mythology;

Down to the city they went dancing and singing; among the streets , and the shops telling their sunny tale; not heeding the malig­nant eyes and the cold brows as the sons of Balor looked side­ways. And they took the Philosopher from his prison, even the intellect of Man they took.from the hands of the doctors and

• lawyers, from the sly priests, from the professors whose mouths '-‘•-Are gorged with sawdust, and the merchants who sell blades of grass— the awful people of the Fomor.'

Mary Makebelieve grows up in the city of the Fomor, and though her life has-, much of the golden tint that comes through her soiled win­

dow in the morning, Stephens includes in her book much comment on the

^Ibid., p p . 7oThe Qrock of Gold, p.10.

71Ibid., p.227.

misfortune to scramble out of debt in the absence of its states­men* ^

55conditions of the poor. Her mother tries to think of the poor with op­timism, but she has only imperfect success s

They could dodge under the fences of the law and climb the barbed wire of morality with equal impunity, and the utmost rigor of punishment had little terror for those whose hard­ships could scarcely be artificially worsened. The stagger of despair, the stricken, helpless aspect of such people, their gaunt faces and blurred eyes might conceivably be their stock in trade, the keys wherewith they unlocked hearts and purses and area-doors. It must be so when the sun was shining and birds were singing across fields not immeasurably distant, and children in walled gardens romped among fruits and flowers. She would believe this, for it was early morning when one must believe, but when the night-time came again she would laugh to scorn such easy beliefs, she would see the lean ribs of humanity when she undressed herself.'

The Demi-Gods may be Stephens * most optimistic book; certainly

the little social criticism which appears in his treatment of Guchulain, Billy the Music(how that worthy squeezed his laborers to fill his cof­fers), Patsy, and even Brien O'Brien must be classified as individual

rather than sweeping social criticism. Similarly In the Land of fouth

contains a little witty satire(like that I quoted involving the Games at"Tara), but like The Demi-Gods, the book is a skillful romance which

lacks great significance as social criticism.Irish Fairy Tales contains some satire, but again, it is mainly

of the sort which criticizes the behavior of individuals rather than that of society as a .whole. The incident in "Mbngan's Frenzy" when the

venomous sheep have treed the men of Fiachna Finn contains an interesting

comment on courage which parallels the comment Stephens makes in In

. the Land of Youth when Maeve's men refuse to dare the dark at the feast

of Samhain s

^Reader, p.21.

54Fiaohna Finn,v/as also sitting in a tree, very high up, and

he was disconsolate,"We are disgraced! 11 said he,"it is very lucky," said the man in the branch below, "that

a sheep cannot climb a tree,""We are disgraced for ever!" said the King of Ulster,"if those sheep leafh how to climb, we are undone surely,"

said the man below.

"Some one must fight them," said Fiachna Finn, "but no more of my men shall die until I fight myself; for if I am fated to die, I will die and I cannot escape it, and if it is the sheep's fate to die, then die they will; for there is no man can avoid destiny, and there is no sheep can dodge it. either."

"Praise be to god!" said the warrior that was higher up."Amen!" said the man who was higher than he, and the rest

of the warriors wished good luck to the king.̂

Happily for Fiachna Finn, Manannan the son of Lir comes along and offers

the use of his venomous dog; but there are some persons insensible to

great kindness, so that when the dog has disposed of the sheep andManannan invites everyone to come down,

"That dog can't climb a tree," said the man in the braneh above the king warningly.

"Praise be to the gods!" said the man who was above him."Amen!" said the warrior who was higher up than that.And the man in the next tree said:"Don't move a hand or foot until the dog chokes himself

to death on the dead meat."74Though the behavior of Fiachna Finn's men may merely indicate

their personal cowardice, nevertheless Stephens depicts their weakness

with such humor that even-as we condemn them, we sympathize with their plight., Stephens must intend that we react with both condemnation and

sympathy, for in a preface to The Charwoman's Daughter, he writes:A work of art will rarely fail by reason of its author's

intellectual poverty— it can fail when the identity between

75lrish Fairy Tales, pp.195-194,

74Ibld», pp.194-195•

55subject and object has brokens It, falls when the artist can­not will to be his matter, and, so, c.annot will his matter to be. It will fail, too, when comprehension ceases to be sym­pathetic, In writing, at least, you,must love your enemy, or love's' labour is lost. To- identify the object; to fuse self and not-self is the^privllege, and it is the first and last duty of an artist.

•Stephens has a.clear idea of his function as an artist; and we have seen to what degree he fulfills that function. Throughout his humorous

prose, he uses devices involving naivete', vehemence, exaggeration, exact description, apt metaphor, paradox, travesty and the mock heroic both

to amtise us and to help in the exposition of his comic vision of life. '

Whether he writes of people, fairy people, leprecauns, angels, animals or bushes, he writes with such'sympathy that we recognize the creatures as people we know. .

We have talked around Stephens1 comic vision of life at' great

length, but what finally is that vision? The author writes openly about it at the conclusion of The Oharwoman1 a Daughter; he says that evil is

almost as valuable as good, for the interaction of the two makes pos­

sible all things,"Hunger," he writes, "is life, ambition, good-will and understanding, while fullness is all those negatives which culminate in greediness, stupidity and decay,11 How must we react to the way things

are? "it is urgent, therefore, that we be joyous if we wish to live.

Our heads may be as solid as possible, but our hearts and our heels shall be light or we are ruined."^7

The advice is good, and it explains the sort of "novel" to

^ Reader, p.407»76Ibid., p.111.

7?Ibid., p.110.

56which Stephens gave his best work. In all of his humorous prose, the

sympathy which he hopes to have for his characters penetrates the books to such an extent that but for his saving irony, he would, often verge on sentimentalism. Humor serves both to amuse the reader and to reveal the nature of the characters and of the world which Stephens sees. When

he tends to be most lyrical, he tempers his lyricism with humor. The humor does not dispel the lyrical illusion, but it puts it in a reason­

able perspective, for we can both laugh at Stephens’ dream and keep it,

11 Humor is the health of the mind, "7® says Pinaun in The Demi-Sods,

and surely he speaks for Stephens. In so far as Stephens tries to inculcate the idea in his readers, he is didactic, as Richard Loftus

suggests in his book, Rationalism in Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry;

It would, be a mistake to conclude that Stephens did not take his saga stories seriously. He believed that the Old Irish literature could have great importance for contemporary Ire­land provided that it were reshaped so as to embody more ef­fectively those human values which would be meaningful for modern man. The humor which infects Stephens' Celtic stories is entertaining; but it is more than just entertaining, for in Stephens' peculiar philosophy §f life laughter is akin to . joy. and joy.is akin to love and love is the ideal toward which all men must strive.'“

If once in a while Stephens forces his reader to feel like the crow inThe Demi-Gods, "whose voice covered all the other sounds of creation,11

he succeeds in his intention as a writer.

' 78The Semi-Sods, p.187."^Richard J. Loftus, Rationalism in Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry

(Madison and Milwaukee, 1964), p.206.

Bibliography

Bramsback, Birgit. James Stephens, A Literary and Bibliographical Study. Up sala, 1959.

Burlingham, Russell. Forrest Reid: A Portrait and a Study. London, 1955*

Dillon, Myles. The Cycles of the Kings. London,. 1946.

Finney, Charles Grandison. The Circus of Dr. Lao. New York, 1946.Loftus, Richard J. Nationalism in Modern Anglo-Irish Poetry,.Madison

and Milwaukee, 1964. 'Mercier, Vivian. The Irish Comic Tradition. Oxford, 1962.O’Duffy,, Eimar. King Goshawk and the Birds. New York, 1926..

Peacock, Thomas Love. The NOvels, ed. David Garnett. London, 1948.Pyle, Hilary. James Stephens, His Work and an Account of His Life.

London, 1965” ' -

Stephens, James. The Crock of Gold. New YOrk, 1951» , _____. Deirdre. New York, 1962.

________ ,______. The Demi-Gods. London, 1914.

, . Etched in Moonlight. New York, 1928.

________,______ . Here Are Ladies, London, 1915* ,______» In the Land of Youth. New York, 1924.

, _____» The Insurrection in Dublin. Dublin and London, 1916.

, _____, Irish Fairy Tales. New York, 1962. _, _____. James, Seumas & Jacques, ed. Lloyd Frankenberg.

London, 1964. . , ____,-A Jhmes Stephens Reader, ed. Lloyd Frankenberg.

. New York,“1962.Wall, Mervyn. The Unfortunate Fursey. New York, 1947.Wells, Herbert George. Works. 24 vols. New York, 1926.