Mrs. Broderick:Amn’t I telling you I was bidden not to tell?
Sibby:You were. And is it likely it was you yourself bid yourself and gave you that advice, Mrs. Broderick? It is what I think the bird wasnever bought at all. It is in some other way she got the money. Maybe in a way she does not like to be talking of. Light weights, light fingers! Let us go away so and leave her, herself and her money and her orders! (Timothy Ward goes out, but Sibby stops at door.) And much good may they do her.
Mrs. Broderick:Listen to that, Mr. Nestor! Will you be listening to that, when one word from yourself would clear my character! I leave it now between you and the hearers. Why would I be questioned this way and that way, the same as if I was on the green table before the judges? You have my heart broke between you. It’s best for me to heat the kettle and wet a drop of tea.
(Goes to inner room.)
Sibby:Tell us the truth now, Mr. Nestor, if you know anything at all about it.
Nestor:I know everything about it. It was to myself the notes were handed in the first place. I am willing to take my oath to you on that. It was a stranger, I said, came in.
Sibby:I wish I could see him and know him if I did see him.
Nestor:It is likely you would know a man of that sort if you did see him, Sibby Fahy. It is likely you never saw a man yet that owns riches would buy up the half of this town.
Sibby:It is not always them that has the most that makes the most show. But it is likely he will have a good dark suit anyway, and shining boots, and a gold chain hanging over his chest.
Nestor:(Sarcastically.) He will, and gold rings and pins the same as the King of France or of Spain.
(Enter Cooney, hatless, streaked with soot and lime, speechless but triumphant. He holds up a nest with nestlings.)
Nestor:What has happened you, Mr. Cooney, at all?
Cooney:Look now, what I have got!
Nestor:A nest, is it?
Cooney:Three young ones in it!
Nestor:(Faintly.) Is it what you are going to say they are jackdaws!
Cooney:I followed your directions....
Nestor:How do you make that out?
Caoney:You said the mill chimneys were full of them....
Nestor:What has that to do with it?
Cooney:I left my rake after me broken in the loft ... my hat went away in the millrace ... I tore my coat on the stones ... there has mortar got into my eye....
Nestor:The Lord bless and save us!
Cooney:But there is no man can say I did not bring back the birds, sound and living andin good health. Look now, the open mouths of them! (All gather round.) Three of them safe and living.... I lost one climbing the wall. ... Where now is the man is going to buy them?
Sibby:(Pointing at Nestor.) It is he that can tell you that.
Cooney:Make no delay bringing me to him. I’m in dread they might die on me first.
Nestor:You should know well that no one is buying them.
Sibby:No one! Sure it was you yourself told us that there was!
Nestor:If I did itself there is no such a man.
Sibby:It’s not above two minutes he was telling of the rings and the pins he wore.
Nestor:He never was in it at all.
Cooney:What plan is he making up now to defraud me and to rob me?
Sibby:Question him yourself, and you will see what will he say.
Cooney:How can I ask questions of a man that is telling lies?
Nestor:I am telling no lies. I am well able to answer you and to tell you the truth.
Cooney:Tell me where is the man that will give me cash for these birds, the same as he gave it to the woman of this house?
Sibby:That’s it, that is it. Let him tell it out now.
Cooney:Will you have me ask it as often as the hairs of my head? If I get vexed I will make you answer me.
Nestor:It seems to me to have set fire to a rick, but I am well able to quench it after. There is no man in South Africa, or that came from South Africa, or that ever owned a mine there at all. Where is the man bought the bird, are you asking? There he is standing among us on this floor. (Points to Cooney.) That is himself, the very man!
Cooney:(Advancing a step.) What is that you are saying?
Nestor:I say that no one came in here but yourself.
Cooney:Did he say or not say there was a rich man came in?
Sibby:He did, surely.
Nestor:To make up a plan....
Cooney:I know well you have made up a plan.
Nestor:To give it unknownst....
Cooney:It is to keep it unknownst you are wanting!
Nestor:The way she would not suspect....
Cooney:It is I myself suspect and have cause to suspect! Give me back my own ten pounds and I’ll be satisfied.
Nestor:What way can I give it back?
Cooney:The same way as you took it, in the palm of your hand.
Nestor:Sure it is paid away and spent....
Cooney:If it is you’ll repay it! I know as well as if I was inside you you are striving to make me your prey! But I’ll sober you! It is into the Court I will drag you, and as far as the gaol!
Nestor:I tell you I gave it to the widow woman....
(Mrs. Broderick comes in.)
Cooney:Let her say now did you.
Mrs. Broderick:What is it at all? What is happening? Joseph Nestor threatened by a tinker or a tramp!
Nestor:I would think better of his behaviour if he was a tinker or a tramp.
Mrs. Broderick:He has drink taken so. Isn’t drink the terrible tempter, a man to see flames and punishment upon the one side and drink upon the other, and to turn his face towards the drink!
Cooney:Will you stop your chat, Mary Broderick, till I will drag the truth out of this traitor?
Mrs. Broderick:Who is that calling me by my name? Och! Is it Michael Cooney is in it? Michael Cooney, my brother! O Michael, what will they think of you coming into the town andmuch like a rag on a stick would be scaring in the wheatfield through the day?
Cooney:(Pointing at Nestor.) It was going up in the mill I destroyed myself, following the directions of that ruffian!
Mrs. Broderick:And what call has a man that has drink taken to go climbing up a loft in a mill? A crooked mind you had always, and that’s a sort of person drink doesn’t suit.
Cooney:I tell you I didn’t take a glass over a counter this ten year.
Mrs. Broderick:You would do well to go learn behaviour from Mr. Nestor.
Cooney:The man that has me plundered and robbed! Tell me this now, if you can tell it. Did you find any pound notes in “Old Moore’s Almanac”?
Mrs. Broderick:I did not to be sure, or in any other place.
Nestor:She came in at the door and I striving to put them into the book.
Cooney:Look are they in it now, and I will say he is not tricky, but honest.
Nestor:You needn’t be looking....
Mrs. Broderick:(Turning over the leaves.) Ne’er a thing at all in it but the things that will or will not happen, and the days of the changes of the moon.
Cooney:(Seizing and shaking it.) Look atthat now! (To Nestor.) Will you believe me now telling you that you are a rogue?
Nestor:Will you listen to me, ma’am....
Cooney:No, but listen to myself. I brought the money to you.
Nestor:If he did he wouldn’t trust you with it, ma’am.
Cooney:I intended it for your relief.
Nestor:In dread he was you would go follow him to Limerick.
Mrs. Broderick:It is not likely I would be following the like of him to Limerick, a man that left me to the charity of strangers from Africa!
Cooney:I gave the money to him....
Nestor:And I gave it to yourself paying for the jackdaw. Are you satisfied now, Mary Broderick?
Mrs. Broderick:Satisfied, is it? It would be a queer thing indeed I to be satisfied. My brother to be spending money on birds, and his sister with a summons on her head. Michael Cooney to be passing himself off as a mine-owner, and I myself being the way I am!
Cooney:What would I want doing that? I tell you I ask no birds, black, blue or white!
Mrs. Broderick:I wonder at you now saying that, and you with that clutch on your arm! (Cooney indignantly flings away nest.) Searchingout jackdaws and his sister without the price of a needle in the house! I tell you, Michael Cooney, it is yourself will be wandering after your burying, naked and perishing, through winds and through frosts, in satisfaction for the way you went wasting your money and your means on such vanities, and she that was reared on the one floor with you going knocking at the Workhouse door! What good will jackdaws be to you that time?
Cooney:It is what I would wish to know, what scheme are the whole of you at? It is long till I will trust any one but my own eyes again in the whole of the living world.
(She wipes her eyes indignantly. Tommy Nally rushes in the bird and cage still in his hands.)
Nally:Where is the bird buyer? It is here he is said to be. It is well for me get here the first. It is the whole of the town will be here within half an hour; they have put a great scatter on themselves hunting and searching in every place, but I am the first!
Nestor:What is it you are talking about?
Nally:Not a house in the whole street but is deserted. It is much if the Magistrates themselves didn’t quit the bench for the pursuit, the way Tim Ward quitted the place he had a right to be!
Nestor:It is some curse in the air, or some scourge?
Nally:Birds they are getting by the score! Old and young! Where is the bird-buyer? Who is it now will give me my price?
(He holds up the cage.)
Cooney:There is surely some root for all this. There must be some buyer after all. It’s to keep him to themselves they are wanting. (Goes to door.) But I’ll get my own profit in spite of them.
(He goes outside door, looking up and down the street.)
Mrs. Broderick:Look at what Tommy Nally has. That’s my bird.
Nally:It is not, it’s my own!
Mrs. Broderick:That is my cage!
Nally:It is not, it is mine!
Mrs. Broderick:Wouldn’t I know my own cage and my own bird? Don’t be telling lies that way!
Nally:It is no lie I am telling. The bird and the cage were made a present to me.
Mrs. Broderick:Who would make a present to you of the things that belong to myself?
Nally:It was Mr. Nestor gave them to me.
Mrs. Broderick:Do you hear what he says, Joseph Nestor? What call have you to be giving a present of my bird?
Nestor:And wasn’t I after buying it from you?
Mrs. Broderick:If you were it was not for yourself you bought it, but for the poor man in South Africa you bought it, and you defrauding him now, giving it away to a man has no claim to it at all. Well, now, isn’t it hard for any man to find a person he can trust?
Nestor:Didn’t you hear me saying I bought it for no person at all?
Mrs. Broderick:Give it up now, Tommy Nally, or I’ll have you in gaol on the head of it.
Nally:Oh, you wouldn’t do such a thing, ma’am, I am sure!
Mrs. Broderick:Indeed and I will, and have you on the treadmill for a thief.
Nally:Oh, oh, oh, look now, Mr. Nestor, the way you have made me a thief and to be lodged in the gaol!
Nestor:I wish to God you were lodged in it, and we would have less annoyance in this place!
Nally:Oh, that is a terrible thing for you to be saying! Sure the poorhouse itself is better than the gaol! The nuns preparing you for heaven and the Mass every morning of your life....
Nestor:If you go on with your talk and your arguments it’s to gaol you will surely go.
Nally:Milk of a Wednesday and a Friday,the potatoes steamed very good.... It’s the skins of the potatoes they were telling me you do have to be eating in the gaol. It is what I am thinking, Mr. Nestor, that bird will lie heavy on you at the last!
Nestor:(Seizing cage and letting the bird out of the door.) Bad cess and a bad end to it, and that I may never see it or hear of it again!
Mrs. Broderick:Look what he is after doing! Get it back for me! Give it here into my hands I say! Why wouldn’t I sell it secondly to the buyer and he to be coming to the door? It is in my own pocket I will keep the price of it that time!
Nally:It would have been as good you to have left it with me as to be sending itself and the worth of it up into the skies!
Mrs. Broderick:(Taking Nestor’s arm.) Get it back for me I tell you! There it is above in the ash tree, and it flapping its wings on a bough!
Nestor:Give me the cage, if that will content you, and I will strive to entice it to come in.
Cooney:(Coming in.) Everyone running this way and that way. It is for birds they are looking sure enough. Why now would they go through such hardship if there was not a demand in some place?
Nestor:(Pushing him away.) Let me go now before that bird will quit the branch where it is.
Cooney:(Seizing hold of him.) Is it striving to catch a bird for yourself you are now?
Nestor:Let me pass if you please. I have nothing to say to you at all.
Cooney:Laying down to me they were worth nothing! I knew well you had made up some plan! The grand adviser is it! It is to yourself you gave good advice that time!
Nestor:Let me out I tell you before that uproar you are making will drive it from its perch on the tree.
Cooney:Is it to rob me of my own money you did and to be keeping me out of the money I earned along with it!
(Threatens Nestor with “Moore’s Almanac,” which he has picked up.)
Sibby:Take care would there be murder done in this place!
(She seizes Nestor, Mrs. Broderick seizes Cooney. Tommy Nally wrings his hands.)
Nestor:Tommy Nally, will you kindly go and call for the police.
Cooney:Is it into a den of wild beasts I am come that must go calling out for the police?
Nestor:A very unmannerly person indeed!
Cooney:Everyone thinking to take advantage of me and to make their own trap for my ruin.
Nestor:I don’t know what cause has he at all to have taken any umbrage against me.
Cooney:You that had your eye on my notes from the first like a goat in a cabbage garden!
Nestor:Coming with a gift in the one hand and holding a dagger in the other!
Cooney:If you say that again I will break your collar bone!
Nestor:O, but you are the terrible wicked man!
Cooney:I’ll squeeze satisfaction out of you if I had to hang for it! I will be well satisfied if I’ll kill you!
(Flings “Moore’s Almanac” at him.)
Nestor:(Throwing his bundle of newspapers.) Oh, good jewel!
Ward:(Coming in hastily.) Whist the whole of you, I tell you! The Magistrates are coming to the door! (Comes in and shuts it after him.)
Mrs. Broderick:The Lord be between us and harm! What made them go quit the Court?
Ward:The whole of the witnesses and of the prosecution made off bird-catching. The Magistrates sent to invite the great mine-owner to go lunch at Noonan’s with themselves.
Cooney:Horses of their own to stick him with they have. I wouldn’t doubt them at all.
Ward:He could not be found in any place. They are informed he was never seen leavingthis house. They are coming to make an investigation.
Nestor:Don’t be anyway uneasy. I will explain the whole case.
Ward:The police along with them....
Cooney:Is the whole of this district turned into a trap?
Ward:It is what they are thinking, that the stranger was made away with for his gold!
Cooney:And if he was, as sure as you are living, it was done by that blackguard there!
(Points at Nestor.)
Ward:If he is not found they will arrest all they see upon the premises....
Cooney:It is best for me to quit this.
(Goes to door.)
Ward:Here they are at the door. Sergeant Carden along with them. Hide yourself, Mr. Nestor, if you’ve anyway to do it at all.
(Sounds of feet and talking and knock at the door. Cooney hides under counter. Nestor lies down on top of bench, spreads his newspaper over him. Mrs. Broderick goes behind counter.)
Nestor:(Raising paper from his face and looking out.) Tommy Nally, I will give you five shillings if you will draw “Tit-Bits” over my feet.
Curtain
THE WORKHOUSE WARD
Scene: A ward in Cloon Workhouse. The two old men in their beds.
Michael Miskell:Isn’t it a hard case, Mike McInerney, myself and yourself to be left here in the bed, and it the feast day of Saint Colman, and the rest of the ward attending on the Mass.
Mike McInerney:Is it sitting up by the hearth you are wishful to be, Michael Miskell, with cold in the shoulders and with speckled shins? Let you rise up so, and you well able to do it, not like myself that has pains the same as tin-tacks within in my inside.
Michael Miskell:If you have pains within in your inside there is no one can see it or know of it the way they can see my own knees that are swelled up with the rheumatism, and my hands that are twisted in ridges the same as an old cabbage stalk. It is easy to be talking about soreness and about pains, and they maybe not to be in it at all.
Mike McInerney:To open me and to analyse me you would know what sort of a pain and asoreness I have in my heart and in my chest. But I’m not one like yourself to be cursing and praying and tormenting the time the nuns are at hand, thinking to get a bigger share than myself of the nourishment and of the milk.
Michael Miskell:That’s the way you do be picking at me and faulting me. I had a share and a good share in my early time, and it’s well you know that, and the both of us reared in Skehanagh.
Mike McInerney:You may say that, indeed, we are both of us reared in Skehanagh. Little wonder you to have good nourishment the time we were both rising, and you bringing away my rabbits out of the snare.
Michael Miskell:And you didn’t bring away my own eels, I suppose, I was after spearing in the Turlough? Selling them to the nuns in the convent you did, and letting on they to be your own. For you were always a cheater and a schemer, grabbing every earthly thing for your own profit.
Mike McInerney:And you were no grabber yourself, I suppose, till your land and all you had grabbed wore away from you!
Michael Miskell:If I lost it itself, it was through the crosses I met with and I going through the world. I never was a rambler and a card-player like yourself, Mike McInerney, that ranthrough all and lavished it unknown to your mother!
Mike McInerney:Lavished it, is it? And if I did was it you yourself led me to lavish it or some other one? It is on my own floor I would be to-day and in the face of my family, but for the misfortune I had to be put with a bad next door neighbour that was yourself. What way did my means go from me is it? Spending on fencing, spending on walls, making up gates, putting up doors, that would keep your hens and your ducks from coming in through starvation on my floor, and every four footed beast you had from preying and trespassing on my oats and my mangolds and my little lock of hay!
Michael Miskell:O to listen to you! And I striving to please you and to be kind to you and to close my ears to the abuse you would be calling and letting out of your mouth. To trespass on your crops is it? It’s little temptation there was for my poor beasts to ask to cross the mering. My God Almighty! What had you but a little corner of a field!
Mike McInerney:And what do you say to my garden that your two pigs had destroyed on me the year of the big tree being knocked, and they making gaps in the wall.
Michael Miskell:Ah, there does be a great deal of gaps knocked in a twelvemonth. Whywouldn’t they be knocked by the thunder, the same as the tree, or some storm that came up from the west?
Mike McInerney:It was the west wind, I suppose, that devoured my green cabbage? And that rooted up my Champion potatoes? And that ate the gooseberries themselves from off the bush?
Michael Miskell:What are you saying? The two quietest pigs ever I had, no way wicked and well ringed. They were not ten minutes in it. It would be hard for them eat strawberries in that time, let alone gooseberries that’s full of thorns.
Mike McInerney:They were not quiet, but very ravenous pigs you had that time, as active as a fox they were, killing my young ducks. Once they had blood tasted you couldn’t stop them.
Michael Miskell:And what happened myself the fair day of Esserkelly, the time I was passing your door? Two brazened dogs that rushed out and took a piece of me. I never was the better of it or of the start I got, but wasting from then till now!
Mike McInerney:Thinking you were a wild beast they did, that had made his escape out of the travelling show, with the red eyes of you and the ugly face of you, and the two crooked legs of you that wouldn’t hardly stop a pig in a gap.Sure any dog that had any life in it at all would be roused and stirred seeing the like of you going the road!
Michael Miskell:I did well taking out a summons against you that time. It is a great wonder you not to have been bound over through your lifetime, but the laws of England is queer.
Mike McInerney:What ailed me that I did not summons yourself after you stealing away the clutch of eggs I had in the barrel, and I away in Ardrahan searching out a clocking hen.
Michael Miskell:To steal your eggs is it? Is that what you are saying now? (Holds up his hands.) The Lord is in heaven, and Peter and the saints, and yourself that was in Ardrahan that day put a hand on them as soon as myself! Isn’t it a bad story for me to be wearing out my days beside you the same as a spancelled goat. Chained I am and tethered I am to a man that is ramsacking his mind for lies!
Mike McInerney:If it is a bad story for you, Michael Miskell, it is a worse story again for myself. A Miskell to be next and near me through the whole of the four quarters of the year. I never heard there to be any great name on the Miskells as there was on my own race and name.
Michael Miskell:You didn’t, is it? Well, you could hear it if you had but ears to hear it. Go across to Lisheen Crannagh and down to thesea and to Newtown Lynch and the mills of Duras and you’ll find a Miskell, and as far as Dublin!
Mike McInerney:What signifies Crannagh and the mills of Duras? Look at all my own generations that are buried at the Seven Churches. And how many generations of the Miskells are buried in it? Answer me that!
Michael Miskell:I tell you but for the wheat that was to be sowed there would be more side cars and more common cars at my father’s funeral (God rest his soul!) than at any funeral ever left your own door. And as to my mother, she was a Cuffe from Claregalway, and it’s she had the purer blood!
Mike McInerney:And what do you say to the banshee? Isn’t she apt to have knowledge of the ancient race? Was ever she heard to screech or to cry for the Miskells? Or for the Cuffes from Claregalway? She was not, but for the six families, the Hyneses, the Foxes, the Faheys, the Dooleys, the McInerneys. It is of the nature of the McInerneys she is I am thinking, crying them the same as a king’s children.
Michael Miskell:It is a pity the banshee not to be crying for yourself at this minute, and giving you a warning to quit your lies and your chat and your arguing and your contrary ways; for there is no one under the rising sun could standyou. I tell you you are not behaving as in the presence of the Lord!
Mike McInerney:Is it wishful for my death you are? Let it come and meet me now and welcome so long as it will part me from yourself! And I say, and I would kiss the book on it, I to have one request only to be granted, and I leaving it in my will, it is what I would request, nine furrows of the field, nine ridges of the hills, nine waves of the ocean to be put between your grave and my own grave the time we will be laid in the ground!
Michael Miskell:Amen to that! Nine ridges, is it? No, but let the whole ridge of the world separate us till the Day of Judgment! I would not be laid anear you at the Seven Churches, I to get Ireland without a divide!
Mike McInerney:And after that again! I’d sooner than ten pound in my hand, I to know that my shadow and my ghost will not be knocking about with your shadow and your ghost, and the both of us waiting our time. I’d sooner be delayed in Purgatory! Now, have you anything to say?
Michael Miskell:I have everything to say, if I had but the time to say it!
Mike McInerney:(Sitting up.) Let me up out of this till I’ll choke you!
Michael Miskell:You scolding pauper you!
Mike McInerney:(Shaking his fist at him.) Wait a while!
Michael Miskell:(Shaking his fist.) Wait a while yourself!
(Mrs. Donohoe comes in with a parcel. She is a countrywoman with a frilled cap and a shawl. She stands still a minute. The two old men lie down and compose themselves.)
Mrs. Donohoe:They bade me come up here by the stair. I never was in this place at all. I don’t know am I right. Which now of the two of ye is Mike McInerney?
Mike McInerney:Who is it is calling me by my name?
Mrs. Donohoe:Sure amn’t I your sister, Honor McInerney that was, that is now Honor Donohoe.
Mike McInerney:So you are, I believe. I didn’t know you till you pushed anear me. It is time indeed for you to come see me, and I in this place five year or more. Thinking me to be no credit to you, I suppose, among that tribe of the Donohoes. I wonder they to give you leave to come ask am I living yet or dead?
Mrs. Donohoe:Ah, sure, I buried the whole string of them. Himself was the last to go. (Wipes her eyes.) The Lord be praised he got a fine natural death. Sure we must go through our crosses. And he got a lovely funeral; it woulddelight you to hear the priest reading the Mass. My poor John Donohoe! A nice clean man, you couldn’t but be fond of him. Very severe on the tobacco he was, but he wouldn’t touch the drink.
Mike McInerney:And is it in Curranroe you are living yet?
Mrs. Donohoe:It is so. He left all to myself. But it is a lonesome thing the head of a house to have died!
Mike McInerney:I hope that he has left you a nice way of living?
Mrs. Donohoe:Fair enough, fair enough. A wide lovely house I have; a few acres of grass land ... the grass does be very sweet that grows among the stones. And as to the sea, there is something from it every day of the year, a handful of periwinkles to make kitchen, or cockles maybe. There is many a thing in the sea is not decent, but cockles is fit to put before the Lord!
Mike McInerney:You have all that! And you without ere a man in the house?
Mrs. Donohoe:It is what I am thinking, yourself might come and keep me company. It is no credit to me a brother of my own to be in this place at all.
Mike McInerney:I’ll go with you! Let me out of this! It is the name of the McInerneys will be rising on every side!
Mrs. Donohoe:I don’t know. I was ignorant of you being kept to the bed.
Mike McInerney:I am not kept to it, but maybe an odd time when there is a colic rises up within me. My stomach always gets better the time there is a change in the moon. I’d like well to draw anear you. My heavy blessing on you, Honor Donohoe, for the hand you have held out to me this day.
Mrs. Donohoe:Sure you could be keeping the fire in, and stirring the pot with the bit of Indian meal for the hens, and milking the goat and taking the tacklings off the donkey at the door; and maybe putting out the cabbage plants in their time. For when the old man died the garden died.
Mike McInerney:I could to be sure, and be cutting the potatoes for seed. What luck could there be in a place and a man not to be in it? Is that now a suit of clothes you have brought with you?
Mrs. Donohoe:It is so, the way you will be tasty coming in among the neighbours at Curranroe.
Mike McInerney:My joy you are! It is well you earned me! Let me up out of this! (He sits up and spreads out the clothes and tries on coat.) That now is a good frieze coat ... and a hat in the fashion ... (He puts on hat.)
Michael Miskell:(Alarmed.) And is it going out of this you are, Mike McInerney?
Mike McInerney:Don’t you hear I am going? To Curranroe I am going. Going I am to a place where I will get every good thing!
Michael Miskell:And is it to leave me here after you you will?
Mike McInerney:(In a rising chant.) Every good thing! The goat and the kid are there, the sheep and the lamb are there, the cow does be running and she coming to be milked! Ploughing and seed sowing, blossom at Christmas time, the cuckoo speaking through the dark days of the year! Ah, what are you talking about? Wheat high in hedges, no talk about the rent! Salmon in the rivers as plenty as turf! Spending and getting and nothing scarce! Sport and pleasure, and music on the strings! Age will go from me and I will be young again. Geese and turkeys for the hundreds and drink for the whole world!
Michael Miskell:Ah, Mike, is it truth you are saying, you to go from me and to leave me with rude people and with townspeople, and with people of every parish in the union, and they having no respect for me or no wish for me at all!
Mike McInerney:Whist now and I’ll leave you ... my pipe (hands it over); and I’ll engage it is Honor Donohoe won’t refuse to be sending you a few ounces of tobacco an odd time,and neighbours coming to the fair in November or in the month of May.
Michael Miskell:Ah, what signifies tobacco? All that I am craving is the talk. There to be no one at all to say out to whatever thought might be rising in my innate mind! To be lying here and no conversible person in it would be the abomination of misery!
Mike McInerney:Look now, Honor.... It is what I often heard said, two to be better than one.... Sure if you had an old trouser was full of holes ... or a skirt ... wouldn’t you put another in under it that might be as tattered as itself, and the two of them together would make some sort of a decent show?
Mrs. Donohoe:Ah, what are you saying? There is no holes in that suit I brought you now, but as sound it is as the day I spun it for himself.
Mike McInerney:It is what I am thinking, Honor ... I do be weak an odd time ... any load I would carry, it preys upon my side ... and this man does be weak an odd time with the swelling in his knees ... but the two of us together it’s not likely it is at the one time we would fail. Bring the both of us with you, Honor, and the height of the castle of luck on you, and the both of us together will make one good hardy man!
Mrs. Donohoe:I’d like my job! Is it queer in the head you are grown asking me to bring in a stranger off the road?
Michael Miskell:I am not, ma’am, but an old neighbour I am. If I had forecasted this asking I would have asked it myself. Michael Miskell I am, that was in the next house to you in Skehanagh!
Mrs. Donohoe:For pity’s sake! Michael Miskell is it? That’s worse again. Yourself and Mike that never left fighting and scolding and attacking one another! Sparring at one another like two young pups you were, and threatening one another after like two grown dogs!
Mike McInerney:All the quarrelling was ever in the place it was myself did it. Sure his anger rises fast and goes away like the wind. Bring him out with myself now, Honor Donohoe, and God bless you.
Mrs. Donohoe:Well, then, I will not bring him out, and I will not bring yourself out, and you not to learn better sense. Are you making yourself ready to come?
Mike McInerney:I am thinking, maybe ... it is a mean thing for a man that is shivering into seventy years to go changing from place to place.
Mrs. Donohoe:Well, take your luck or leave it. All I asked was to save you from the hurt and the harm of the year.
Mike McInerney:Bring the both of us with you or I will not stir out of this.
Mrs. Donohoe:Give me back my fine suit so (begins gathering up the clothes), till I’ll go look for a man of my own!
Mike McInerney:Let you go so, as you are so unnatural and so disobliging, and look for some man of your own, God help him! For I will not go with you at all!
Mrs. Donohoe:It is too much time I lost with you, and dark night waiting to overtake me on the road. Let the two of you stop together, and the back of my hand to you. It is I will leave you there the same as God left the Jews!
(She goes out. The old men lie down and are silent for a moment.)
Michael Miskell:Maybe the house is not so wide as what she says.
Mike McInerney:Why wouldn’t it be wide?
Michael Miskell:Ah, there does be a good deal of middling poor houses down by the sea.
Mike McInerney:What would you know about wide houses? Whatever sort of a house you had yourself it was too wide for the provision you had into it.
Michael Miskell:Whatever provision I had in my house it was wholesome provision and natural provision. Herself and her periwinkles! Periwinkles is a hungry sort of food.
Mike McInerney:Stop your impudence and your chat or it will be the worse for you. I’d bear with my own father and mother as long as any man would, but if they’d vex me I would give them the length of a rope as soon as another!
Michael Miskell:I would never ask at all to go eating periwinkles.
Mike McInerney:(Sitting up.) Have you anyone to fight me?
Michael Miskell:(Whimpering.) I have not, only the Lord!
Mike McInerney:Let you leave putting insults on me so, and death picking at you!
Michael Miskell:Sure I am saying nothing at all to displease you. It is why I wouldn’t go eating periwinkles, I’m in dread I might swallow the pin.
Mike McInerney:Who in the world wide is asking you to eat them? You’re as tricky as a fish in the full tide!
Michael Miskell:Tricky is it! Oh, my curse and the curse of the four and twenty men upon you!
Mike McInerney:That the worm may chew you from skin to marrow bone! (Seizes his pillow.)
Michael Miskell:(Seizing his own pillow.) I’ll leave my death on you, you scheming vagabone!
Mike McInerney:By cripes! I’ll pull out your pin feathers! (Throwing pillow.)
Michael Miskell:(Throwing pillow.) You tyrant! You big bully you!
Mike McInerney:(Throwing pillow and seizing mug.) Take this so, you stobbing ruffian you!
(They throw all within their reach at one another, mugs, prayer books, pipes, etc.)
Curtain
PersonsA Mother.A Child.A Travelling Man.
THE TRAVELLING MAN
A MIRACLE PLAY
Scene: A cottage kitchen. A woman setting out a bowl and jug and board on the table for bread-making.
Child:What is it you are going to make, mother?
Mother:I am going to make a grand cake with white flour. Seeds I will put in it. Maybe I’ll make a little cake for yourself too. You can be baking it in the little pot while the big one will be baking in the big pot.
Child:It is a pity daddy to be away at the fair on a Samhain night.
Mother:I must make my feast all the same, for Samhain night is more to me than to any other one. It was on this night seven years I first came into this house.
Child:You will be taking down those plates from the dresser so, those plates with flowers on them, and be putting them on the table.
Mother:I will. I will set out the house to-day,and bring down the best delf, and put whatever thing is best on the table, because of the great thing that happened me seven years ago.
Child:What great thing was that?
Mother:I was after being driven out of the house where I was a serving girl....
Child:Where was that house? Tell me about it.
Mother:(Sitting down and pointing southward.) It is over there I was living, in a farmer’s house up on Slieve Echtge, near to Slieve na n-Or, the Golden Mountain.
Child:The Golden Mountain! That must be a grand place.
Mother:Not very grand indeed, but bare and cold enough at that time of the year. Anyway, I was driven out a Samhain day like this, because of some things that were said against me.
Child:What did you do then?
Mother:What had I to do but to go walking the bare bog road through the rough hills where there was no shelter to find, and the sharp wind going through me, and the red mud heavy on my shoes. I came to Kilbecanty....
Child:I know Kilbecanty. That is where the woman in the shop gave me sweets out of a bottle.
Mother:So she might now, but that night her door was shut and all the doors were shut; and Isaw through the windows the boys and the girls sitting round the hearth and playing their games, and I had no courage to ask for shelter. In dread I was they might think some shameful thing of me, and I going the road alone in the night-time.
Child:Did you come here after that?
Mother:I went on down the hill in the darkness, and with the dint of my trouble and the length of the road my strength failed me, and I had like to fall. So I did fall at the last, meeting with a heap of broken stones by the roadside.
Child:I hurt my knee one time I fell on the stones.
Mother:It was then the great thing happened. I saw a stranger coming towards me, a very tall man, the best I ever saw, bright and shining that you could see him through the darkness; and I knew him to be no common man.
Child:Who was he?
Mother:It is what I thought, that he was the King of the World.
Child:Had he a crown like a King?
Mother:If he had, it was made of the twigs of a bare blackthorn; but in his hand he had a green branch, that never grew on a tree of this world. He took me by the hand, and he led me over the stepping-stones outside to this door, and he bade me to go in and I would find good shelter. I was kneeling down to thank him, but he raisedme up and he said, “I will come to see you some other time. And do not shut up your heart in the things I give you,” he said, “but have a welcome before me.”
Child:Did he go away then?
Mother:I saw him no more after that, but I did as he bade me. (She stands up and goes to the door.) I came in like this, and your father was sitting there by the hearth, a lonely man that was after losing his wife. He was alone and I was alone, and we married one another; and I never wanted since for shelter or safety. And a good wife I made him, and a good housekeeper.
Child:Will the King come again to the house?
Mother:I have his word for it he will come, but he did not come yet; it is often your father and myself looked out the door of a Samhain night, thinking to see him.
Child:I hope he won’t come in the night time, and I asleep.
Mother:It is of him I do be thinking every year, and I setting out the house, and making a cake for the supper.
Child:What will he do when he comes in?
Mother:He will sit over there in the chair, and maybe he will taste a bit of the cake. I will call in all the neighbours; I will tell them he is here. They will not be keeping it in their mind against me then that I brought nothing, coming tothe house. They will know I am before any of them, the time they know who it is has come to visit me. They will all kneel down and ask for his blessing. But the best blessing will be on the house he came to of himself.
Child:And are you going to make the cake now?
Mother:I must make it now indeed, or I will be late with it. I am late as it is; I was expecting one of the neighbours to bring me white flour from the town. I’ll wait no longer, I’ll go borrow it in some place. There will be a wedding in the stonecutter’s house Thursday, it’s likely there will be flour in the house.
Child:Let me go along with you.
Mother:It is best for you to stop here. Be a good child now, and don’t be meddling with the things on the table. Sit down there by the hearth and break up those little sticks I am after bringing in. Make a little heap of them now before me, and we will make a good fire to bake the cake. See now how many will you break. Don’t go out the door while I’m away, I would be in dread of you going near the river and it in flood. Behave yourself well now. Be counting the sticks as you break them.
(She goes out.)
Child:(Sitting down and breaking sticks across his knee.) One—and two—O I can break thisone into a great many, one, two, three, four.—This one is wet—I don’t like a wet one—five, six—that is a great heap.—Let me try that great big one.—That is too hard.—I don’t think mother could break that one.—Daddy could break it.
(Half-door is opened and a travelling man comes in. He wears a ragged white flannel shirt, and mud-stained trousers. He is bareheaded and barefooted, and carries a little branch in his hand.)
Travelling Man:(Stooping over the child and taking the stick.) Give it here to me and hold this.
(He puts the branch in the child’s hand while he takes the stick and breaks it.)
Child:That is a good branch, apples on it and flowers. The tree at the mill has apples yet, but all the flowers are gone. Where did you get this branch?
Travelling Man:I got it in a garden a long way off.
Child:Where is the garden? Where do you come from?
Travelling Man:(Pointing southward.) I have come from beyond those hills.
Child:Is it from the Golden Mountain you are come? From Slieve na n-Or?
Travelling Man:That is where I come from surely, from the Golden Mountain. I would like to sit down and rest for a while.
Child:Sit down here beside me. We must not go near the table or touch anything, or mother will be angry. Mother is going to make a beautiful cake, a cake that will be fit for a King that might be coming in to our supper.
Travelling Man:I will sit here with you on the floor.
(Sits down.)
Child:Tell me now about the Golden Mountain.
Travelling Man:There is a garden in it, and there is a tree in the garden that has fruit and flowers at the one time.
Child:Like this branch?
Travelling Man:Just like that little branch.
Child:What other things are in the garden?
Travelling Man:There are birds of all colours that sing at every hour, the way the people will come to their prayers. And there is a high wall about the garden.
Child:What way can the people get through the wall?
Travelling Man:There are four gates in the wall: a gate of gold, and a gate of silver, and a gate of crystal, and a gate of white brass.
Child:(Taking up the sticks.) I will make a garden. I will make a wall with these sticks.
Travelling Man:This big stick will make the first wall.
(They build a square wall with sticks.)
Child:(Taking up branch.) I will put this in the middle. This is the tree. I will get something to make it stand up. (Gets up and looks at dresser.) I can’t reach it, get up and give me that shining jug.
(Travelling Man gets up and gives him the jug.)
Travelling Man:Here it is for you.
Child:(Puts it within the walls and sets the branch in it.) Tell me something else that is in the garden?
Travelling Man:There are four wells of water in it, that are as clear as glass.
Child:Get me down those cups, those flowery cups, we will put them for wells. (He hands them down.) Now I will make the gates, give me those plates for gates, not those ugly ones, those nice ones at the top.
(He takes them down and they put them on the four sides for gates. The Child gets up and looks at it.)
Travelling Man:There now, it is finished.
Child:Is it as good as the other garden? How can we go to the Golden Mountain to see the other garden?
Travelling Man:We can ride to it.
Child:But we have no horse.
Travelling Man:This form will be our horse. (He draws a form out of the corner, and sits downastride on it, putting the child before him.) Now, off we go! (Sings, the child repeating the refrain)—