1900-07-08 to William Butler Yeats

Autograph letter signed, National Library of Ireland, 280 words

[Edited for paragraph breaks, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.]

92, VICTORIA STREET. S.W.

Sunday [8 July 1900]

My dear Yeats

After leaving you I worked again on the opening scenes of the II act and have again improved them, leaving you little to do to them, I think. — There will always be a little.

The scene between Grania and the foster mother now seems to me superfical and I am tempted to grapple with it. I think I can make it stronger, more living.

But I count on you for the speech of the foster mother. I wish [you] were here to give it to me; with six lines, which you could improvise in a moment, I could go on with the scene. It is irritating —

You will smile, so simple is my want. Grania before telling the foster mother what she has been doing asks the foster mother what she has been doing and the foster mother tells her in six lines: only casting a few spells, taking a spell off some cows which was cast upon them by etc.

Do you think it would be well to make Grania ask, are you as old as they say you are, and the foster mother to answer that she is old because she remembered previous existences? This people believe whereas no one believes that a woman came out of the woods a couple of centures ago. One is psychological, the other is mere picturesque.

But on this point I do not attach any importance and am quite willing to let it pass.

Always yours

George Moore