George Bernard Shaw provoke, although it was shown at the city's Royal Theatre in November 1907. Shaw later wrote that William Butler Yeats, who had requested the play, "got rather more than he bargained for... It was uncongenial to the whole spirit of the neo-Gaelic movement, which is bent on creating a new Ireland after its own ideal, whereas my play is a very uncompromising presentment of the real old Ireland." Nonetheless, Shaw and Yeats were close friends; Yeats and Lady Gregory tried unsuccessfully to persuade Shaw to take up the vacant co-directorship of the Abbey Theatre after J. M. Synge's death in
Padraic Colum did pay his father's fine afterwards. He collected Irish folk songs, and sometimes rewrote them almost in their entirety, including the famous "She Moved Through the Fair". Colum based his poem on one surviving line, while his collaborator, the musicologist Herbert Hughes noted the tune. He was awarded a five-year scholarship by a wealthy American benefactor, Thomas Hughes Kelly. He used it to read, study and write. He did not attend University College Dublin, or any other University as a student. He was awarded a prize by Cumann na nGaedheal for his anti-enlistment play, "The Saxon Shillin"'. Through his plays