"The Rageous Ossean": Patron-Hero of Synge and O'Casey

Abstract

IN IRELAND TODAY the heroic figure of Cuchulain (Coo-hoolin) remains a memorial symbol of the Irish theater and the nation's fight for independence. A traveler in Dublin can observe this dual tribute to the warrior-hero of Celtic myth at the Abbey Theatre's temporary home in the Queens Theatre, where the familiar drawing of the young Cuchulain and his hound, the original emblem which Yeats and Lady Gregory chose for the Abbey, still graces the cover of the Theatre program, and in the General Post Office on O'Connell Street, where Oliver Shepherd's bronze statue to the dying Cuchulain commemorates the 1916 Easter Rising. In his last play, The Death of Cuchulain, Yeats linked myth and reality when he saw the heroic spirit of Cuchulain in the martyrs of the Rising.