Padraic Colum Colum started to write and met a number of the leading Irish writers of the time, including W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory and Æ. He also joined the Gaelic League and was a member of the first board of the Abbey Theatre. He became a regular user of the National Library of Ireland, where he met James Joyce and the two became lifelong friends. During the riots caused by the Abbey Theatre's production of "The Playboy of the Western World", Padraic Colum's father, Patrick Columb, was one of the protestors. Padraic himself was not engaged in the protests, although he
Diarmuid and Grania Diarmuid and Grania Diarmuid and Grania is a play in poetic prose co-written by George Moore and W. B. Yeats in 1901, with incidental music by the English composer Edward Elgar. George Moore wrote a novel based on a translation by Lady Gregory of the Fenian tale "The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne". W. B. Yeats then collaborated with Moore in writing the play. The play, in three acts, was dedicated to Henry Wood, and its first performance was by Frank Benson's English Shakespearean Company at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin on 21 October 1901; it appeared in a double bill,