This is one of the five plays that Yeats wrote about Cuchulainn, hero of the Red Branch Ulster cycle of Irish Celtic myths.
The story is one of the saddest in all of Irish literature. Yeats, who was known for his experimental style in the theatre, has written a mystical, almost surrealistic play. In it he emphasizes the role of magick (in a very ambiguous way -- spoken against, yet powerfully practised). As one of the old women says, Life is lived between a blind man and a fool.
The play opens with a blind man and a fool cooking a stolen chicken. The old blind man says Aoife of Scotland''s son has come to kill Cuchulainn. Conchobar, High King of Ireland, has come to tame Cuchulainn; he''s been spending too much time partying in the woods with his friends, rather than spending his time at Conchobar''s beck and call. The three old women chant him into bondage, and he swears a binding oath to obey Conchobar and to protect his children''s rights as kings. His son (unbeknownst as he is to Cuchulainn) comes and challenges him, but they wind up making peace with each other. Conchobar will have none of it, but forces them to fight. Cuchulainn, son of the Sun god, kills the boy, after they were about swearing an oath of friendship. After the boy''s death, Cuchulainn is told it was the son he had longed for all his life. He went insane, trying, but unable, to strike Conchobar''s crown from his head and his head from his shoulders. He sees the High King in every wave of the sea, and madly tries to destroy the waves.
This is a deeply moving and affecting tragedy, short though it is. It is far more like ancient Greek tragedy than one might suspect possible in relatively modern times. Although I knew the story, and had heard or read it several times before, nothing affected me like this play. There is a power in it that is deep and mysterious, not soon forgotten, nor yet understood.