It is strange how the wheel of things turns and brings back the world to what it had left behind and thought to have outgrown as too primitive. But the child mind cannot be destroyed in man, and it will always return to those truths that are so simple because they are so profound.

Thus after several centuries we have again the Mystery Play—scenes taken from the World’s Great Drama—constructed on mediaeval traditions regardless of modern criticism and acted in the early spirit of Faith.

The latest edition in this revival of the Mediaeval Mystery is the Irish Nativity Play that took place every Saturday and Sunday during the month of December in the Town Hall, Dalkey, County Dublin. Written specially by Katherine Tynan, the play was acted by seventy children from the Killiney and Dalkey National Schools, under the clever management of Lady O’Connell. For three months they had studied, practised and lived in the atmosphere of the play, bringing into this Irish village something of the spirit of Oberammergau. For one month they acted the piece to audiences ever growing larger. Now the curtain has dropped, and the seventy little actors have gone into obscurity until next Christmastide, when they will again call the crowds to listen to the Mystery.

The play begins by a prologue, Lionel Johnson’s Christmas in Ireland, set to an old Irish melody and sung by representatives of the five provinces—Leinster, Munster, Ulster, Connacht, Meath.