New Comedies

By Lady Gregory

The Bogie Men--The Full Moon--CoatsDarmer's Gold--McDonough's Wife

COPYRIGHT 1913BY LADY GREGORY

TO THE RT. HON. W. F. BAILEYCOUNSELLOR, PEACEMAKER, FRIEND

ABBEY THEATRE, 1913. 

CONTENTS

 THE BOGIE MEN THE FULL MOON COATS DAMER'S GOLD MCDONOUGH'S WIFE NOTES

THE BOGIE MEN

PERSONS

_Taig O'Harragha_ | BOTH CHIMNEY_Darby Melody_ | SWEEPS

THE BOGIE MEN

 _Scene: A Shed near where a coach stops. Darby comes in. Has a tin can of water in one hand, a sweep's bag and brush in the other. He lays down bag on an empty box and puts can on the floor. Is taking a showy suit of clothes out of bag and admiring them and is about to put them on when he hears some one coming and hurriedly puts them back into the bag_. 

_Taig: (At door. )_ God save all here!

_Darby:_ God save you. A sweep is it? _(Suspiciously. )_ Whatbrought you following me?

_Taig:_ Why wouldn't I be a sweep as good as yourself?

_Darby:_ It is not one of my own trade I came looking to meet with. It is a shelter I was searching out, where I could put on a decentappearance, rinsing my head and my features in a tin can of water. 

_Taig:_ Is it long till the coach will be passing by thecross-road beyond?

_Darby:_ Within about a half an hour they were telling me. 

_Taig:_ There does be much people travelling to this place?

_Darby:_ I suppose there might, and it being the high road fromthe town of Ennis. 

_Taig:_ It should be in this town you follow your trade?

_Darby:_ It is not in the towns I do be. 

_Taig:_ There's nothing but the towns, since the farmers in thecountry clear out their own chimneys with a bush under and a bushoverhead. 

_Darby:_ I travel only gentlemen's houses. 

_Taig:_ There does be more of company in the streets than you'dfind on the bare road. 

_Darby:_ It isn't easy get company for a person has but two emptyhands. 

_Taig:_ Wealth to be in the family it is all one nearly withhaving a grip of it in your own palm. 

_Darby:_ I wish to the Lord it was the one thing. 

_Taig:_ You to know what I know--

_Darby:_ What is it that you know?

_Taig:_ It is dealing out cards through the night time I will befrom this out, and making bets on racehorses and fighting-cocksthrough all the hours of the day. 

_Darby:_ I would sooner to be sleeping in feathers and to do nohand's turn at all, day or night. 

_Taig:_ If I came paddling along through every place this day andthe road hard under my feet, it is likely I will have my choice wayleaving it. 

_Darby:_ How is that now?

_Taig:_ A horse maybe and a car or two horses, or maybe to go inthe coach, and I myself sitting alongside the man came in it. 

_Darby:_ Is it that he is taking you into his service?

_Taig:_ Not at all! And I being of his own family and his blood. 

_Darby:_ Of his blood now?

_Taig:_ A relation I have, that is full up of money and of everywhole thing. 

_Darby:_ A relation?

_Taig:_ A first cousin, by the side of the mother. 

_Darby:_ Well, I am not without having a first cousin of my own. 

_Taig:_ I wouldn't think he'd be much. To be listening to mymother giving out a report of my one's ways, you would maybe believeit is no empty skin of a man he is. 

_Darby:_ My own mother was not without giving out a report of myman's ways. 

_Taig:_ Did she see him?

_Darby:_ She did, I suppose, or the thing was near him. She neverwas tired talking of him. 

_Taig:_ It is often my own mother would have Dermot pictured tomyself. 

_Darby:_ It is often the likeness of Timothy was laid down to meby the teaching of my mother's mouth, since I was able to walk thefloor. She thought the whole world of him. 

_Taig:_ A bright scholar she laid Dermot down to be. A good doingfellow for himself. A man would be well able to go up to his promise. 

_Darby:_ That is the same account used to be given out of Timothy. 

_Taig:_ To some trade of merchandise it is likely Dermot was reared. A good living man that was never any cost on his mother. 

_Darby:_ To own an estate before he would go far in age Timothywas on the road. 

_Taig:_ To have the handling of silks and jewelleries and to befree of them, and of suits and the making of suits, that is the waywith the big merchants of the world. 

_Darby:_ It is letting out his land to grass farmers a man owningacres does be making his profit. 

_Taig:_ A queer thing you to be the way you are, and he to be anupstanding gentleman. 

_Darby:_ It is the way I went down; my mother used to be faultingme and I not being the equal of him. Tormenting and picking at me andshouting me on the road. "You thraneen, " she'd say, "you littletrifle of a son! You stumbling over the threshold as if in slumber, and Timothy being as swift as a bee!"

_Taig:_ So my own mother used to be going on at myself, and beletting out shrieks and screeches. "What now would your cousinDermot be saying?" every time there would come a new rent in my rags. 

_Darby:_ "Little he'd think of you, " she'd say; "you without bodyand puny, not fit to lift scraws from off the field, and Timothybringing in profit to his mother's hand, and earning prizes andrewards. "

_Taig:_ The time it would fail me to follow my book or to say offmy A, B, ab, to draw Dermot down on me she would. "Before he was upto your age, " she would lay down, "he was fitted to say offCatechisms and to read newses. You have no more intellect beside him, "she'd say, "than a chicken has its head yet in the shell. "

_Darby:_ "Let you hold up the same as Timothy, " she'd give out, and I to stoop my shoulders the time the sun would prey upon my head. "He that is as straight and as clean as a green rush on the brink ofthe bog. "

_Taig:_ "It is you will be fit but to blow the bellows, " my motherwould say, "the time Dermot will be forging gold. " I let on the bookto have gone astray on me at the last. Why would I go crush andbruise myself under a weight of learning, and there being one in thefamily well able to take my cost and my support whatever way itmight go? Dermot that would feel my keep no more than the lake wouldfeel the weight of the duck. 

_Darby:_ I seen no use to be going sweating after farmers, striving to plough or to scatter seed, when I never could come anearTimothy in any sort of a way, and he, by what she was saying, able tothrash out a rick of oats in the day. So it fell out I was thrown onthe ways of the world, having no skill in any trade, till there camea demand for me going aloft in chimneys, I being as thin as a needleand shrunken with weakness and want of food. 

_Taig:_ I got my living for a while by miracle and trafficking inrabbit skins, till a sweep from Limerick bound me to himself onetime I was skinned with the winter. Great cruelty he gave me till Iran from him with the brush and the bag, and went foraging aroundfor myself. 

_Darby:_ So am I going around by myself. I never had a comrade lad. 

_Taig:_ My mother that would hit me a crack if I made free withany of the chaps of the village, saying that would not serve me withDermot, that had a good top-coat and was brought up to manners andbehaviour. 

_Darby:_ My own mother that drew down Timothy on me the time she'dcatch me going with the lads that had their pleasure out of the world, slashing tops and pebbles, throwing and going on with games. 

_Taig:_ I took my own way after, fitting myself for sports andfunning, against the time the rich man would stretch out his hand. Going with wild lads and poachers I was, till they left me carryingtheir snares in under my coat, that I was lodged for three months inthe gaol. 

_Darby:_ The neighbours had it against me after, I not beingfriendly when we were small. The most time I am going the road it isa lonesome shadow I cast before me. 

_Taig:_ _(Looking out of the door. )_ It is on this day I will bemaking acquaintance with himself. My mother that sent him a requestto come meet me in this town on this day, it being the first of thesummer. 

_Darby:_ My own mother that did no less, telling me she got wordfrom Timothy he would come meet here with myself. It is certain hewill bring me into his house, she having wedded secondly with alabouring man has got a job at Golden Hill in Lancashire. I wouldnot recognise him beyond any other one. 

_Taig:_ I would recognise the signs of a big man. I wish I waswithin in his kitchen. There is a pinch of hunger within in my heart. 

_Darby:_ So there is within in myself. 

_Taig:_ Is there nothing at all in the bag?

_Darby:_ It is a bit of a salted herring. 

_Taig:_ Why wouldn't you use it?

_Darby:_ I would be delicate coming before him and the smell of itto be on me, and all the grand meats will be at his table. 

_Taig: (Showing a bottle. )_ The full of a pint I have of porter, that fell from a tinker's car. 

_Darby:_ I wonder you would not swallow it down for to keepcourage in your mind. 

_Taig:_ It is what I am thinking, I to take it fasting, it mightput confusion and wildness in my head. I would wish, and I meetingwith him, my wits to be of the one clearness with his own. It is notlong to be waiting; it is in claret I will be quenching my thirstto-night, or in punch!

_Darby: (Looking out. )_ I am nearly in dread meeting Timothy, fearing I will not be pleasing to him, and I not acquainted with hishabits. 

_Taig:_ I would not be afeard, and Dermot to come sparkling in, and seven horses in his coach. 

_Darby:_ What way can I come before him at all? I would be betterpleased you to personate me and to stand up to him in my place. 

_Taig:_ Any person to put orders on me, or to bid me change myhabits, I'd give no heed! I'd stand up to him in the spite of histeeth!

_Darby:_ If it wasn't for the hearthfires to be slackened with thespringtime, and my work to be lessened with the strengthening of thesun, I'd sooner not see him till another moon is passed, or two moons. 

_Taig:_ He to bid me read out the news of the world, taking me tobe a scholar, I'd give him words that are in no books! I'd give himnewses! I'd knock rights out of him or any one I ever seen. 

_Darby:_ I could speak only of my trade. The boundaries of theworld to be between us, I'm thinking I'd never ask to go cross themat all. 

_Taig:_ He to go into Court swearing witnesses and to bring mealong with him to face the judges and the whole troop of the police, I'd go bail I'll be no way daunted or scared. 

_Darby:_ What way can I keep company with him? I that was partlyreared in the workhouse. And he having a star on his hat and agolden apple in his hand. He will maybe be bidding me to scourmyself with soapy water all the Sundays and Holy days of the year! Itell you I am getting low hearted. I pray to the Lord to forgive mewhere I did not go under the schoolmaster's rod!

_Taig:_ I that will shape crampy words the same as any scholar atall! I'll let on to be a master of learning and of Latin!

_Darby:_ Ah, what letting on? It is Timothy will look through methe same as if my eyes were windows, and my thoughts standing asplain as cattle under the risen sun! It is easier letting on to haveknowledge than to put on manners and behaviour. 

_Taig:_ Ah, what's manners but to refuse no man a share of yourbite and to keep back your hand from throwing stones?

_Darby:_ I tell you I'm in shivers! My heart that is shaking likean ivy leaf! My bones that are loosened and slackened in thesimilitude of a rope of tow! I'd sooner meet with a lion of thewilderness or the wickedest wind of the hills! I thought it neverwould come to pass. I'd sooner go into the pettiest house, thewildest home and the worst! Look at here now. Let me stop along withyourself. I never let out so much of my heart to any one at all tillthis day. It's a pity we should be parted!

_Taig:_ Is it to come following after me you would, before theface of Dermot?

_Darby:_ I'd feel no dread and you being at my side. 

_Taig:_ Dermot to see me in company with the like of you! Iwouldn't for the whole world he should be aware I had ever anytraffic with chimneys or with soot. It would not be for his honouryou to draw anear him!

_Darby: (Indignantly. )_ No but Timothy that would make objectionto yourself! He that would whip the world for manners and behaviour!

_Taig:_ Dermot that is better again. He that would write anddictate to you at the one time!

_Darby:_ What is that beside owning tillage, and to need noeducation, but to take rents into your hand?

_Taig:_ I would never believe him to own an estate. 

_Darby:_ Why wouldn't he own it? "The biggest thing and thegrandest, " my mother would say when I would ask her what was he doing. 

_Taig:_ Ah, what could be before selling out silks and satins. There is many an estated lord couldn't reach you out a fourpenny bit. 

_Darby:_ The grandest house around the seas of Ireland he shouldhave, beautifully made up! You would nearly go astray in it! Itwouldn't be known what you could make of it at all! You wouldn'thave it walked in a month!

_Taig:_ What is that beside having a range of shops as wide maybeas the street beyond?

_Darby:_ A house would be the capital of the county! One door forthe rich, one door for the common! Velvet carpets rolled up, the waythere would no dust from the chimney fall upon them. A hundredwouldn't be many standing in a corner of that place! A high bed offeathers, curled hair mattresses. A cover laid on it would be flowerywith blossoms of gold!

_Taig:_ Muslin and gauze, cambric and linen! Canton crossbar!Glass windows full up of ribbons as gaudy as the crooked bow in thesky! Sovereigns and shillings in and out as plenty as to riddle rapeseed. Sure them that do be selling in shops die leaving millions. 

_Darby:_ Your man is not so good as mine in his office or in hisbillet. 

_Taig:_ There is the horn of the coach. Get out now till I'llprepare myself. He might chance to come seeking for me here. 

_Darby:_ There's a lather of sweat on myself. That's my tin can ofwater!

_Taig: (Holding can from him. )_ Get out I tell you! I wouldn'twish him to feel the smell of you on the breeze. 

_Darby: (Almost crying. )_ You are a mean savage to go keeping fromme my tin can and my rag!

_Taig:_ Go wash yourself at the pump can't you?

_Darby:_ That we may never be within the same four walls again, orcome under the lintel of the one door! _(He goes out. )_

_Taig: (Calling after him while he takes a suit of clothes fromhis bag. )_ I'm not like yourself! I have good clothes to put on me, what you haven't got! A body-coat my mother made out--she lost up tothree shillings on it, --and a hat--and a speckled blue cravat. _(He hastily throws off his sweep's smock and cap, and puts on clothes. As he does he sings:)_

 All round my hat I wore a green ribbon, All round my hat for a year and a day; And if any one asks me the reason I wore it I'll say that my true love went over the sea!

 All in my hat I will stick a blue feather The same as the birds do be up in the tree; And if you would ask me the reason I do it I'll tell you my true love is come back to me!

 _(He washes his face and wipes it, looking at himself in the tin can. He catches sight of a straw hat passing window. )_

Who is that? A gentleman? _(He draws back. )_

 _(Darby comes in. He has changed his clothes and wears a straw hat and light coat and trousers. He is looking for a necktie which he had dropped and picks up. His back is turned to Taig who is standing at the other door. )_

_Taig: (Awed. )_ It cannot be that you are Dermot Melody?

_Darby:_ My father's name was Melody sure enough, till he lost hislife in the year of the black potatoes. 

_Taig:_ It is yourself I am come here purposely to meet with. 

_Darby:_ You should be my mother's sister's son so, TimothyO'Harragha. 

_Taig: (Sheepishly. )_ I am that. I am sorry indeed itfailed me to be out before you in the street. 

_Darby:_ Oh, I wouldn't be looking for that much from you. 

 _(They are trying to keep their backs to each other, and to rub their faces cleaner. )_

_Taig:_ I wouldn't wish to be anyway troublesome to you. I ambadly worthy of you. 

_Darby:_ It is in dread I am of being troublesome to yourself. 

_Taig:_ Oh, it would be hard for _you_ to be that. Nothing youcould put on me would be any hardship at all, if it was to walksteel thistles. 

_Darby:_ You have a willing heart surely. 

_Taig:_ Any little job at all I could do for you------

_Darby:_ All I would ask of you is to give me my nourishment andmy bite. 

_Taig:_ I will do that. I will be your serving man. 

_Darby:_ Ah, you are going too far in that. 

_Taig:_ It's my born duty to do that much. I'll bring your dinnerbefore you, if I can be anyway pleasing to you; you that is used towealthy people. 

_Darby:_ Indeed I was often in a house having up to twenty chimneys. 

_Taig:_ You are a rare good man, nothing short of it, and yougoing as you did so high in the world. 

_Darby:_ Any person would go high before he would put his hand outthrough the top of a chimney. 

_Taig:_ Having full and plenty of every good thing. 

_Darby:_ I saw nothing so plentiful as soot. There is not theequal of it nourishing a garden. It would turn every crop blue, being so good. 

_Taig: (Weeping. )_ It is a very unkind thing to go drawingchimneys down on me and soot, and you having all that ever was!

_Darby:_ Little enough I have or ever had. 

_Taig:_ To be casting up my trade against me, I being poor andhungry, and you having coins and tokens from all the goldpits of theworld. 

_Darby:_ I wish I ever handled a coin of gold in my lifetime. 

_Taig:_ To speak despisingly, not pitiful. And I thinking thechimney sweeping would be forgot and not reproached to me, if youhave handled the fooleries and watches of the world, that you don'tknow the end of your riches!

_Darby:_ I am maybe getting your meaning wrong, your tongue beinga little hard and sharp because you are Englified, but I am withoutnew learnments and so I speak flat. 

_Taig:_ You to have the millions of King Solomon, you have noright to be putting reflections on me! I would never behave that way, and housefuls to fall into my hand. 

_Darby:_ You are striving to put ridicule on me and to make a foolof me. That is a very unseemly thing to do! I that did not ask to gohide the bag or the brush. 

_Taig:_ There you are going on again. Is it to the customers inyour shops you will be giving out that it was my lot to go throughthe world as a sweep?

_Darby:_ Customers and shops! Will you stop your funning? Let youquit mocking and making a sport of me! That is very bad actingbehaviour. 

_Taig:_ Striving to blacken my face again at the time I had itwashed pure white. You surely have a heart of marble. 

_Darby:_ What way at all can you be putting such a rascally sayout of your mouth? I'll take no more talk from you, I to betwenty-two degrees lower than the Hottentots!

_Taig:_ If you are my full cousin Dermot Melody I'll make you quittalking of soot!

_Darby:_ I'll take no more talk from yourself!

_Taig:_ Have a care now!

_Darby:_ Have a care yourself!

 _(Each gives the other a push. They stumble and fall, sitting facing one another. Darby's hat falls off. )_

_Taig:_ Is it _you_ it is?

_Darby:_ Who else would it be?

_Taig:_ What call had you letting on to be Dermot Melody?

_Darby:_ What letting on? Dermot is my full name, but Darby is thename I am called. 

_Taig:_ Are you a man owning riches and shops and merchandise?

_Darby:_ I am not, or anything of the sort. 

_Taig:_ Have you teems of money in the bank?

_Darby:_ If I had would I be sitting on this floor?

_Taig:_ You thief you!

_Darby:_ Thief yourself! Turn around now till I will measure yourfeatures and your face. _Yourself_ is it! Is it personating my cousinTimothy you are?

_Taig:_ I am personating no one but myself. 

_Darby:_ You letting on to be an estated magistrate and my owncousin and such a great generation of a man. And you not owning somuch as a rood of ridges!

_Taig:_ Covering yourself with choice clothing for to deceive meand to lead me astray!

_Darby:_ Putting on your head a fine glossy hat and I thinking youto have come with the spring-tide, the way you had luck through yourlife!

_Taig:_ Letting on to be Dermot Melody! You that are but the culland the weakling of a race! It is a queer game you played on me anda crooked game. I never would have brought my legs so far to meetwith the sooty likes of you!

_Darby:_ Letting on to be my poor Timothy O'Harragha!

_Taig:_ I never was called but Taig. Timothy was a sort of a Holyday name. 

_Darby:_ Where now are our two cousins? Or is it that the both ofus are cracked?

_Taig:_ It is, or our mothers before us. 

_Darby:_ My mother was a McGarrity woman from Loughrea. It is Marywas her Christened name. 

_Taig:_ So was my own mother of the McGarritys. It is sisters theywere sure enough. 

_Darby:_ That makes us out to be full cousins in the heel. 

_Taig:_ You no better than myself! And the prayers I used to besaying for you, and you but a sketch and an excuse of a man!

_Darby:_ Ah, I am thinking people put more in their prayers thanwas ever put in them by God. 

_Taig:_ Our mothers picturing us to one another as if we were thebest in the world. 

_Darby:_ Lies I suppose they were drawing down, for to startle usinto good behaviour. 

_Taig:_ Wouldn't you say now mothers to be a terror?

_Darby:_ And we nothing at all after but two chimney sweepers andtwo harmless drifty lads. 

_Taig:_ Where is the great quality dinner yourself was to give me, having seven sorts of dressed meat? Pullets and bacon I was looking for, and to fall on an easy life. 

_Darby:_ Gone like the clouds of the winter's fog. We rose out ofit the same as we went in. 

_Taig:_ We have nothing to do but to starve with the hunger, andyou being as bare as myself. 

_Darby:_ We are in a bad shift surely. We must perish with thewant of support. It is one of the tricks of the world does be playedupon the children of Adam. 

_Taig:_ All we have to do is to crawl to the poorhouse gate. Or togo dig a pit in the graveyard, as it is short till we'll bestretched there with the want of food. 

_Darby:_ Food is it? There is nothing at this time against meeating my bit of a herring. 

 _(Seizes it and takes a bite. )_

_Taig:_ Give me a divide of it. 

_Darby:_ Give me a drop of your own porter so, is in the bottle. There need be no dread on you now, of you being no match for yourgrand man. 

_Taig:_ That is so. _(Drinks. )_ I'll strive no more to fit myselffor high quality relations. I am free from patterns of high upcousins from this out. I'll be a pattern to myself. 

_Darby:_ I am well content being free of you, the way you werepictured to be. I declare to my goodness, the name of you put terroron me through the whole of my lifetime, and your image to beclogging and checking me on every side. 

_Taig:_ To be thinking of you being in the world was a holy terrorto myself. I give you my word you came through my sleep the same asa scarecrow or a dragon. 

_Darby:_ It is great things I will be doing from this out, we twohaving nothing to cast up against one another. To be quit of Timothythe bogie and to get Taig for a comrade, I'm as proud as the Crownof France!

_Taig:_ I'm in dread of neither bumble or bagman or bugaboo! Iwill regulate things from myself from this out. 

_Darby:_ There to be fineness of living in the world, why wouldn'tI make it out for myself?

_Taig:_ It is to the harbours of America we will work our wayacross the wideness of the sea. It is well able we should be to gomounting up aloft in ropes. Come on Darby out of this!

_Darby:_ There is magic and mastery come into me! This day has putwings to my heart!

_Taig:_ Be easy now. We are maybe not clear of the chimneys yet. 

_Darby:_ What signifies chimneys? We'll go up in them till we'lltake a view of the Seven Stars! It is out beyond the hills of BurrenI will cast my eye, till I'll see the three gates of Heaven!

_Taig:_ It's like enough, luck will flow to you. The way mostpeople fail is in not keeping up the heart. Faith, it's well you havemyself to mind you. Gather up now your brush and your bag. 

 _(They go to the door holding each other's hands and singing: "All in my hat I will cock a blue feather, " etc. )_

_Curtain_

_THE FULL MOON_

 TO ALL SANE PEOPLE IN OR OUT OF CLOON WHO KNOW THEIR NEIGHBOURS TO BE NATURALLY CRACKED OR SOMEWAY QUEER OR TO HAVE GONE WRONG IN THE HEAD. 

PERSONS [Sidenote: ALL SANE] _Shawn Early_ _Bartley Fallon_ _Peter Tannian_ _Hyacinth Halvey_ _Mrs. Broderick_ _Miss Joyce_ _Cracked Mary_ _Davideen, _ HER BROTHER, AN INNOCENT

THE FULL MOON

 _Scene: A shed close to Cloon Station; Bartley Fallon is sitting gloomily on a box; Hyacinth Halvey and Shawn Early are coming in at door_. 

_Shawn Early:_ It is likely the train will not be up to its time, and cattle being on it for the fair. It's best wait in the shed. Isthat Bartley Fallon? What way are you, Bartley?

_Bartley Fallon:_ Faith, no way at all. On the drag, on the drag;striving to put the bad times over me. 

_Shawn Early:_ Is it business with the nine o'clock you have?

_Bartley Fallon:_ The wife that is gone visiting to Tubber, andthat has the door locked till such time as she will come back on thetrain. And I thought this shed a place where no bad thing would beapt to happen me, and not to be going through the streets, and thedarkness falling. 

_Shawn Early:_ It is not long till the full moon will be rising. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ Everything that is bad, the fallingsickness--God save the mark--or the like, should be at its worst atthe full moon. I suppose because it is the leader of the stars. 

_Shawn Early:_ Ah, what could happen any person in the street ofCloon?

_Bartley Fallon:_ There might. Look at Matt Finn, the coffin-maker, put his hand on a cage the circus brought, and the lion took andtore it till they stuck him with a fork you'd rise dung with, and atthat he let it drop. And that was a man had never quitted Cloon. 

_Shawn Early:_ I thought you might be sending something to the fair. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ It isn't to the train I would be trustinganything I would have to sell, where it might be thrown off the track. And where would be the use sending the couple of little lambs I have?It is likely there is no one would ask me where was I going. Whenthe weight is not in them, they won't carry the price. Sure, thegrass I have is no good, but seven times worse than the road. 

_Shawn Early:_ They are saying there'll be good demand at the fairof Carrow to-morrow. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To-morrow the fair day of Carrow? I was notremembering that. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ Ah, there won't be many in it, I'm thinking. There isn't a hungrier village in Connacht, they were telling me, and it's poor the look of it as well. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To-morrow the fair day. There will be all sortsin the streets to-night. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ The sort that will be in it will be a badsort--sievemakers and tramps and neuks. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ The tents on the fair green; there will bemusic in it; there was a fiddler having no legs would set men ofthreescore years and of fourscore years dancing. I can nearly hearhis tune. 

 _(He whistles_ "The Heather Broom. ")

_Bartley Fallon:_ You are apt to be going there on the train, Isuppose? It is well to be you, Mr. Halvey, having a good place inthe town, and the price of your fare, and maybe six times the priceof it, in your pocket. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I didn't think of that. I wonder could Igo--for one night only--and see what the lads are doing. 

_Shawn Early:_ Are you forgetting, Mr. Halvey, that you are tomeet his Reverence on the platform that is coming home from drinkingwater at the Spa?

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ So I can meet him, and get in the train afterhim getting out. 

 _(Mrs. Broderick and Peter Tannian come in. )_

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Is that Mr. Halvey is in it? I was looking foryou at the chapel as I passed, and the Angelus bell after ringing. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Business I have here, ma'am. I was in dread Imight not be here before the train. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ So you might not, indeed. That nine o'clocktrain you can never trust it to be late. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To meet Father Gregan I am come, and maybe togo on myself. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, I knew well you would be in haste to bebefore Father Gregan, and we knowing what we know. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I have no business only to be showing respectto him. 

_Shawn Early:_ His good word he will give to Mr. Halvey at theBoard, where it is likely he will be made Clerk of the Union nextweek. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ His good word he will give to another thingbesides that, I am thinking. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I don't know what you are talking about. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Didn't you hear the news, Peter Tannian, thatMr. Halvey is apt to be linked and joined in marriage with Miss Joyce, the priest's housekeeper?

_Peter Tannian:_ I to believe all the lies I'd hear, I'd be aracked man by this. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ What I say now is as true as if you were on theother side of me. I suppose now the priest is come home there'll beno delay getting the license. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is not so settled as that. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Why wouldn't it be settled and it being told atMrs. Delane's and through the whole world?

_Peter Tannian:_ She should be a steady wife for him--a fortiedgirl. 

_Shawn Early:_ A very good fortune in the bank they are saying shehas, and she having crossed the ocean twice to America. 

_Hartley Fallen:_ It's as good for him to have a woman will keepthe door open before him and his victuals ready and a quiet tonguein her head. Not like that little Tartar of my own. 

_Mrs. Broderick_. And an educated woman along with that. A man ofhis sort, going to be Clerk of the Union and to be taken up withbooks and papers, it's likely he'd die in a week, he to marry a dunce. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ So it's likely he would. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ A little shop they are saying she will take, forto open a flour store, and you to be keeping the accounts, the wayyou would not spend any waste time. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I have no mind to be settling myself down yet awhile. I might maybe take a ramble here or there. There's many of mycomrades in the States. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ To go away from Cloon, is it? And why would youthink to do that, and the whole town the same as a father and motherto you? Sure, the sergeant would live and die with you, and thereare no two from this to Galway as great as yourself and the priest. To see you coming up the street, and your Dublin top-coat around you, there are some would give you a salute the same nearly as the Bishop. 

_Peter Tannian:_ They wouldn't do that maybe and they hearingthings as I heard them. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What things?

_Peter Tannian:_ There was a herd passing through from Carrow. Itis what I heard him saying------

_Mrs. Broderick:_ You heard nothing of Mr. Halvey, but what isworthy of him. But that's the way always. The most thing a man does, the less he will get for it after. 

_Peter Tannian:_ A grand place in Carrow I suppose you had?

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I had plenty of places. Giving outproclamations--attending waterworks----. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is well fitted for any place he is, and allthat was written around him and he coming into Cloon. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Writing is easy. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Look at him since he was here, this twelvemonthback, that he never went into a dance-house or stood at a cross-road, and never lost a half-an-hour with drink. Made no blunder, made norumours. Whatever could be said of his worth, it could not be toowell said. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Do you think now, ma'am, would it be any harm Ito go spend a day or maybe two days out of this--I to go on thetrain----. 

_Miss Joyce: (At door, coming in backwards. )_ Go back now, go back!Don't be following after me in through the door! Is Mr. Halvey there?Don't let her come following me, Mr. Halvey!

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Who is it is in it?

 _(Sound of discordant singing outside. )_

_Miss Joyce:_ Cracked Mary it is, that is after coming back thisday from the asylum. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I never saw her, I think. 

_Shawn Early:_ The creature, she was light this long while and notgood in the head, and at the last lunacy came on her and she wastied and bound. Sometimes singing and dancing she does be, andsometimes troublesome. 

_Miss Joyce:_ They had a right to keep her spancelled in the asylum. She would begrudge any respectable person to be walking the street. She'd hoot you, she'd shout you, she'd clap her hands at you. She isa blight in the town. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ There is a lad along with her. 

_Shawn Early:_ It is Davideen, her brother, that is innocent. Hewas left rambling from place to place the time she was put withinwalls. 

 _(Cracked Mary and Davideen come in. Miss Joyce clings to Hyacinth's arm. )_

_Cracked Mary:_ Give me a charity now, the way I'll be keeping alittle rag on me and a little shoe to my foot. Give me the price oftobacco and the price of a grain of tea; for tobacco is blessed andtea is good for the head. 

_Shawn Early:_ Give out now, Davideen, a verse of "The HeatherBroom. " That's a splendid tune. 

_Davideen: (Sings. )_

 Oh, don't you remember, As it's often I told you, As you passed through our kitchen, That a new broom sweeps clean? Come out now and buy one, Come out now and try one--

 _(His voice cracks, and he breaks off, laughing foolishly. )_

_Mrs. Broderick:_ He has a sweet note in his voice, but to know orto understand what he is doing, he couldn't do it. 

_Cracked Mary:_ Leave him a while. His song that does be cloggedthrough the daytime, the same as the sight is clogged with myself. Itisn't but in the night time I can see anything worth while. Davy isa proper boy, a proper boy; let you leave Davy alone. It was himselfcame before me ere yesterday in the morning, and I walking out themadhouse door. 

_Shawn Early:_ It is often there will fiddlers be waiting to playfor them coming out, that are maybe the finest dancers of the day. 

_Cracked Mary:_ Waiting before me he was, and no one to give himknowledge unless it might be the Big Man. I give you my word he nearate the face off me. As glad to see me he was as if I had droppedfrom heaven. Come hither to me, Davy, and give no heed to them. Itis as dull and as lagging as themselves you would be maybe, and theworld to be different and the moon to change its courses with the sun. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ I never would wish to be put within a madhousebefore I'd die. 

_Cracked Mary:_ Sorry they were losing me. There was not a betterprisoner in it than my own four bones. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ Squeals you would hear from it, they weretelling me, like you'd hear at the ringing of the pigs. Savages withwhips beating them the same as hounds. You would not stand andlisten to them for a hundred sovereigns. Of all bad things that cancome upon a man, it is certain the madness is the last. 

_Miss Joyce:_ It is likely she was well content in it, and thefriends she had being of her own class. 

_Cracked Mary:_ What way could you make friends with people wouldbe always talking? Too much of talk and of noise there was in it, cursing, and praying, and tormenting; some dancing, some singing, and one writing a letter to a she devil called Lucifer. I not toclose my ears, I would have lost the sound of Davideen's song. 

_Miss Joyce:_ It was good shelter you got in it through the badweather, and not to be out perishing under cold, the same as thestarlings in the snow. 

_Cracked Mary:_ I was my seven months in it, my seven months and aday. My good clothes that went astray on me and my boots. My finegaudy dress was all moth-eated, that was worked with the wings ofbirds. To fall into dust and ashes it did, and the wings rose upinto the high air. 

_Bartley Fallen_. Take care would the madness catch on toourselves the same as the chin-cough or the pock. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, that's not the way it goes travelling fromone to another, but some that are naturally cracked and inherit it. 

_Shawn Early:_ It is a family failing with her tribe. The most ofthem get giddy in their latter end. 

_Miss Joyce:_ It might be it was sent as a punishment before birth, for to show the power of God. 

_Peter Tannian:_ It is tea-drinking does it, and that is thereason it is on the wife it is apt to fall for the most part. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, there's some does be thinking their wivesisn't right, and there's others think they are too right. There tobe any fear of me going astray, I give you my word I'd lose my witson the moment. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ There are some say it is the moon. 

_Shawn Early:_ So it is too. The time the moon is going back, theblood that is in a person does be weakening, but when the moon isstrong, the blood that moves strong in the same way. And it to be atthe full, it drags the wits along with it, the same as it drags thetide. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Those that are light show off more and have thetalk of twenty the time it is at the full, that is sure enough. Andto hold up a silk handkerchief and to look through it, you would seethe four quarters of the moon; I was often told that. 

_Miss Joyce:_ It is not you, Mr. Halvey, will give in to an unrulything like the moon, that is under no authority, and cannot be putback, the same as a fast day that would chance to fall upon a feast. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is likely it is put in the sky the same as aclock for our use, the way you would pick knowledge of the weather, the time the stars would be wild about it. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ That is very nice now. The thing you'd know, you'd like to go on, and to hear more or less about it. 

_Miss Joyce: (To H. H. )_ It is a lantern for your own use it willbe to-night, and his Reverence coming home through the street, andyourself coming along with him to the house. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ That's right, Miss Joyce. Keep a good grip of him. What do you say to him talking a while ago as if his mind wasrunning on some thought to leave Cloon?

_Miss Joyce:_ What way could he leave it?

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ No way at all, I'm thinking, unless there wouldbe a miracle worked by the moon. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, miracles is gone out of the world this longtime, with education, unless that they might happen in your owninside. 

_Miss Joyce:_ I'll go set the table and kindle the fire, and I'llcome back to meet the train with you myself. 

_(She goes. A noise heard outside. )_

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What is that now?

_Shawn Early: (At door. )_ Some noise as of running. 

_Hartley Fallon: (Going to door. )_ It might chance to be someprisoner they would be bringing to the train. 

_Peter Tannian:_ No, but some lads that are running. 

 _(They go out. H. H. Is going too, but Mrs. Broderick goes before him and turns him round in doorway. )_

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Don't be coming out now in the dust that wasformed by the heat is in the breeze. It would be a pity to spoilyour Dublin coat, or your shirt that is that white you would nearlytake it to be blue. 

 _(She goes out, pushing him in and shutting door after her. )_

_Cracked Mary:_ Ha! ha! ha!

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What is it you are laughing at?

_Cracked Mary:_ Ha! ha! ha! It is a very laughable thing now, thethird most laughable thing I ever met with in my lifetime. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What is that?

_Cracked Mary:_ A fine young man to be shut up and bound in anarrow little shed, and the full moon rising, and I knowing what Iknow!

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It's little you are likely to know about me. 

_Cracked Mary:_ Tambourines and fiddles and pipes--melodeons andthe whistling of drums. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I suppose it is the Carrow fair you are talkingabout. 

_Cracked Mary:_ Sitting within walls, and a top-coat wrappedaround him, and mirth and music and frolic being in the place we know, and some dancing sets on the floor. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I wish I wasn't in this place tonight. I wouldlike well to be going on the train, if it wasn't for the talk theneighbours would be making. I would like well to slip away. It is along time I am going without any sort of funny comrades. 

 _(Goes to door. The others enter quickly, pushing him back. )_

_Bartley Fallon:_ Nothing at all to see. It would be best for usto have stopped where we were. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Running like foals to see it, and nothing to bein it worth while. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What was it was in it?

_Shawn Early:_ Nothing at all but some lads that were running inpursuit of a dog. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ Near knocked us they did, and they coming roundthe corner of the wall. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Is it that it was a mad dog?

_Peter Tannian:_ Ah, what mad? Mad dogs are done away with now bythe head Government and muzzles and the police. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ They are more watchful over them than they used. But all the same, you to see a strange dog afar off, you would beuneasy, thinking it might be yourself he would be searching out ashis prey. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, there did a dog go mad through Galway, andthe whole town rose against him, and flocked him into a corner, andshot him there. He did no harm after, he being made an end of at thefirst. 

_Shawn Early:_ It might be that dog they were pursuing after wasmad, on the head of being under the full moon. 

_Cracked Mary: (Jumping up excitedly. )_ That mad dog, he is aDublin dog; he is betune you and Belfast--he is running ahead--youcouldn't keep up with him. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ There is one, so, mad upon the road. 

_Cracked Mary:_ There is police after him, but they cannot come upwith him; he destroyed a splendid sow; nine bonavs they buried orless. 

_Shawn Early:_ What place is he gone now?

_Cracked Mary:_ He made off towards Craughwell, and he bit a fineyoung man. 

_Bartley Fallen:_ So he would too. Sure, when a mad dog would begoing about, on horseback or wherever you are, you're ruined. 

_Cracked Mary:_ That dog is going on all the time; he wouldn't stop, but go ahead and bring that mouthful with him. He is still on theroad; he is keeping the middle of the road; they say he is as big asa calf. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is the police I have a right to forewarn togo after him. 

_Cracked Mary:_ The motor cars is going to get out to track him, for fear he would destroy the world!

_Mrs. Broderick:_ That is a very nice thought now, to be sendingthe motor cars after him to overturn and to crush him the same as anass-car in their path. 

_Cracked Mary:_ You can't save yourself from a dog; he is afterhis own equals, dogs. He is doing every harm. They are out night andday. 

_Shawn Early:_ Sure, a mad dog would go from this to Kinvara in ahalf a minute, like the train. 

_Cracked Mary:_ He won't stay in this country down--he goes thestraight road--he takes by the wind. He is as big as a yearling calf. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I wouldn't ever forgive myself I to see him. 

_Cracked Mary:_ He is not very heavy yet. There is only the relicsin him. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ They have a right to bring their rifles intheir hand. 

_Cracked Mary:_ The police is afraid of their life. They wrote formotor cars to follow him. Sure, he'd destroy the beasts of the field. A milch cow, he to grab at her, she's settled. Terrible wicked he is;he's as big as five dogs, and he does be very strong. I hope in theLord he'll be caught. It will be a blessing from the Almighty God tokill that dog. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ He is surely the one is raging through thestreet. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Why wouldn't he be him? Is it likely there wouldbe two of them in it at the one time?

_Shawn Early:_ A queer cut of a dog he was; a lurcher, a bastardhound. 

_Peter Tannian:_ I would say him to be about the size of the foalof a horse. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Didn't he behave well not to do ourselves aninjury?

_Bartley Fallon:_ It is likely he will do great destruction. Iwouldn't say but I felt the weight of him and his two paws around myneck. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I will go out following him. 

_Shawn Early: (Holding him)_. Oh, let you not endanger yourself!It is the peelers should go follow him, that are armed with theirbatons and their guns. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I'll go. He might do some injury going throughthe town. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah now, it is not yourself we would let go intodanger! It is Peter Tannian should go, if any person should go. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Is it Hyacinth Halvey you are taking to be so farbefore myself?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Why wouldn't he be before you?

_Peter Tannian:_ Ask him what was he in Carrow? Ask was he a sortof a corner-boy, ringing the bell, pumping water, gathering a fewcoppers in the daytime for to scatter on a game of cards. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Stop your lies and your chat!

_Mrs. Broderick: (to Tannian_) You are going light in the head totalk that way. 

_Shawn Early:_ He is, and queer in the mind. Take care did he geta bite from the dog, that left some venom working in his blood. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ So he might, and he having a sort of a littlerent in his sleeve. 

_Peter Tannian:_ I to have got a bite from the dog, is it? I didnot come anear him at all. You to strip me as bare as winter youwill not find the track of his teeth. It is Shawn Early was nearerto him than what I was. 

_Shawn Early:_ I was not nearer, or as near as what Mrs. Broderickwas. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I made away when I saw him. My chest is not thebetter of it yet. Since I left off fretting I got gross. I am thatnervous I would run from a blessed sheep, let alone a dog. 

_Shawn Early:_ To see any of the signs of madness upon him, it isMr. Halvey the sergeant would look to for to make his report. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ So I would make a report. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Is it that you lay down you can see signs? Isthat the learning they were giving you in Carrow?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Don't be speaking with him at all. It is easyknow the signs. A person to be laughing and mocking, and that wouldnot have the same habits with yourself, or to have no fear of thingsyou would be in dread of, or to be using a different class of food. 

_Peter Tannian:_ I use no food but clean food. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To be giddy in the head is a sign, and to betalking of things that passed years ago. 

_Peter Tannian:_ I am talking of nothing but the thing I have aright to talk of. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ To be nervous and thinking and pausing, andplaying with knicknacks. 

_Peter Tannian:_ It never was my habit to be playing withknicknacks. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ When the master in the school where I was wentqueer, he beat me with two clean rods, and wrote my name with my ownblood. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ To take the shoe off their foot, and to hit outright and left with it, bawling their life out, tearing their clothes, scattering and casting them in every part; or to run naked throughthe town, and all the people after them. 

_Shawn Early:_ To be jumping the height of trees they do be, andall the people striving to slacken them. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To steal prayer-books and rosaries, and to besaying prayers they never could keep in mind before. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Very strong, that they could leap awall--jumping and pushing and kicking--or to tie people to oneanother with a rope. 

_Shawn Early:_ Any fear of any person here being violent, Mr. Halvey will get him put under restraint. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Is it myself you are thinking to put underrestraint? Would a man would be pushing and kicking and tearing hisclothes, be able to do arithmetic on a board? Look now at that. _(Chalks figures on door. )_ Three and three makes six!--and three--

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I'm no hand at figuring, but I can say out ablessed hymn, what any person with the mind gone contrary in themcould not do. Hearken now till you'll know is there confusion in mymind. _(Sings. )_

 Mary Broderick is my name; Fiddane was my station; Cloon is my dwelling-place; And (I hope) heaven is my destination. 

 Mary Broderick is my name, Cloon was my--

_Cracked Mary:_ _(With a cackle of delight. )_ Give heed to them now, Davideen! That's the way the crazed people used to be going on in theplace where I was, every one thinking the other to be cracked. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ _(To Tannian. )_ Look now at your great figuring!Argus with his hundred eyes wouldn't know is that a nought or is it anine without a tail. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Leave that blame on a little ridge that is in thenature of the chalk. Look now at Mary Broderick, that it has failedto word out her verse. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, what signifies? I'd never get light greatly. It wouldn't be worth while I to go mad. 

 _(Bartley Fallon gives a deep groan. )_

_Shawn Early:_ What is on you, Bartley?

_Bartley Fallon:_ I'm in dread it is I myself has got the venominto my blood. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What makes you think that?

_Bartley Fallon:_ It's a sort of a thing would be apt to happen me, and any malice to fall within the town at all. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Give heed to him, Hyacinth Halvey; you are themost man we have to baffle any wrong thing coming in our midst!

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Is it that you are feeling any pain as of awound or a sore?

_Bartley Fallon:_ Some sort of a little catch I'm thinking thereis in under my knee. I would feel no pain unless I would turn itcontrary. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What class of feeling would you say you arefeeling?

_Bartley Fallon:_ I am feeling as if the five fingers of my handto be lessening from me, the same as five farthing dips the heat ofthe sun would be sweating the tallow from. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That is a strange account. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ And a sort of a megrim in my head, the same as asheep would get a fit of staggers in a field. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That is what I would look for. Is there somesort of a roaring in your ear?

_Bartley Fallon:_ There is, there is, as if I would hear voiceswould be talking. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Would you feel any wish to go tearing anddestroying?

_Bartley Fallon:_ I would indeed, and there to be an enemy upon mypath. Would you say now, Widow Broderick, am I getting anyway flushyin the face?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Don't leave your eye off him for pity's sake. Heis reddening as red as a rose. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ I could as if walk on the wind with lightness. Something that is rising in my veins the same as froth would berising on a pint. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is the doctor I'd best call for--and maybethe sergeant and the priest. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ There are three thoughts going through mymind--to hang myself or to drown myself, or to cut my neck with areaping-hook. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is the doctor will serve him best, where itis the mad blood that should be bled away. To break up eggs, thewhite of them, in a tin can, will put new blood in him, and whiskey, and to taste no food through twenty-one days. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ I'm thinking so long a fast wouldn't serve me. Iwouldn't wish the lads will bear my body to the grave, to lay downthere was nothing within it but a grasshopper or a wisp of dry grass. 

_Shawn Early:_ No, but to cut a piece out of his leg the doctorwill, the way the poison will get no leave to work. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Or to burn it with red-hot irons, the way it willnot scatter itself and grow. There does a doctor do that out inforeign. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ It would be more natural to cut the leg off himin some sort of a Christian way. 

_Shawn Early:_ If it was a pig was bit, or a sow or a bonav, it toshow the signs, it would be shot, if it was a whole fleet of themwas in it. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I knew of a man that was butler in a big housewas bit, and they tied him first and smothered him after, and hismaster shot the dog. A splendid shot he was; the thing he'd not seehe'd hit it the same as the thing he'd see. I heard that from anoutside neighbour of my own, a woman that told no lies. 

_Shawn Early:_ Sure, they did the same thing to a high-up ladyover in England, and she after being bit by her own little spanieland it having a ring around its neck. 

_Peter Tannian:_ That is the only best thing to do. Whether thebite is from a dog, or a cat, or whatever it may be, to put thequilt and the blankets on the person and smother him in the bed. Tosmother them out-and-out you should, before the madness will work. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I'd be loth he to be shot or smothered. I'dsooner to give him a chance in the asylum. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ To keep him there and to try him through threechanges of the moon. It's well for you, Bartley, Mr. Halvey being incharge of you, that is known to be a tender man. 

_Peter Tannian:_ He to have got a bite and to go biting others, hewould put in them the same malice. It is the old people used to tellthat down, and they must have had some reason doing that. 

_Shawn Early:_ To get a bite of a dog you must chance your life. There is no doubt at all about that. It might work till the time ofthe new moon or the full moon, and then they must be shot orsmothered. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is a pity there to be no cure found for itin the world. 

_Shawn Early:_ There never came out from the Almighty any cure fora mad dog. 

 _(Bartley Fallon has been edging towards door. )_

_Shawn Early:_ Oh! stop him and keep a hold of him, Mr. Halvey!

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Stop where you are. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ Isn't it enough to have madness before me, thatyou will not let me go fall in my own choice place?

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ The neighbours would think it bad of me to leta raving man out into their midst. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ Is it to shoot me you are going?

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I will call to the doctor to say is the paddedroom at the workhouse the most place where you will be safe, tillsuch time as it will be known did the poison wear away. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ I will not go in it! It is likely I might beforgot in it, or the nurses to be in dread to bring me nourishment, and they to hear me barking within the door. I'm thinking it wasallotted by nature I never would die an easy death. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I will keep a watch over you myself. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ Where's the use of that the time the breath willbe gone out of me, and you maybe playing cards on my coffin, and Ihaving nothing around or about me but the shroud, and the habit, andthe little board?

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Sure, I cannot leave you the way you are. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ It is what I ever and always heard, a dog tobite you, all you have to do is to take a pinch of its hair and tolay it into the wound. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ So I heard that myself. A dog to bite any personhe is entitled to be plucked of his hair. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I'll go out; I might chance to see him. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ You will not, without getting advice from thepriest that is coming in the train. Let his Reverence come into thisplace, and say is it Bartley or is it Peter Tannian was donedestruction on by the dog. 

_Shawn Early:_ There is a surer way than that. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ What way?

_Shawn Early:_ It takes madness to find out madness. Let you callto the cracked woman that should know. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Come hither, Mary, and tell us is there any oneof your own sort in this shed?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ That is a good thought. It is only themselvesthat recognise one another. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ Do not ask her! I will not leave it to her!

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, she cannot say more than what yourself hassaid against yourself. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ I'm in dread she might know too much, and betelling out what is within in my mind. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That's foolishness. These are not the ancienttimes, when Ireland was full of haunted people. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ Is a man having a wife and three acres of landto be put under the judgment of a witch?

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I would not give in to any pagan thing, but torecognise one of her own sort, that is a thing can be understood. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ So it could be too, the same as witnesses in acourt. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ I will not give in to going to demons or druidsor freemasons! Wasn't there enough of misfortune set before my paththrough every day of my lifetime without it to be linked with meafter my death? Is it that you would force me to lose the comfortsof heaven and to get the poverty of hell? I tell you I will have notrade with witches! I would sooner go face the featherbeds. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Say out, girl, do you see any craziness here oranything of the sort?

_Cracked Mary:_ Every day in the year there comes some malice intothe world, and where it comes from is no good place. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ That is it, a venomous dew, as in the year ofthe famine. There is no astronomer can say it is from the earth orthe sky. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is what we are asking you, did any of thatmalice get its scope in this place?

_Cracked Mary:_ That was settled in Mayo two thousand years ago. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, there's no head or tail to that one's story. You 'd be left at the latter end the same as at the commencement. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That dog you were talking of, that is ragingthrough the district and the town--did it leave any madness after it?

_Cracked Mary:_ It will go in the wind, there is a certain timefor that. It might go off in the wind again. It might go shaping offand do no harm. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ Where is that dog presently, till some personmight go pluck out a few ribs of its hair?

_Cracked Mary:_ Raging ever and always it is, raging wild. Sure, that is a dog was in it before the foundations of the world. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Who is it now that venom fell on, whateverbeast's jaws may have scattered it?

_Cracked Mary:_ It is the full moon knows that. The moon toslacken it is safe, there is no harm in it. Almighty God will dothat much. He'll slacken it like you 'd slacken lime. 

_Shawn Early:_ There is reason in what she is saying. Set open thedoor and let the full moon call its own!

_Bartley Fallon:_ Don't let in the rays of it upon us or I'm agone man. It to shine on them that are going wrong in the head, itwould raise a great stir in the mind. Sure, it's in the asylum atthat time they do have whips to chastise them. 

 _(Goes to corner. )_

_Cracked Mary:_ That's it. The moon is terrible. The full mooncracks them out and out, any one that would have any spleen or anyrelics in them. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Do not let in the light of it. I would scrupleto look at it myself. 

_Cracked Mary:_ Let you throw open the door, Davideen. It is notourselves are in dread that the white man in the sky will be callingnames after us and ridiculing us. Ha! ha! I might be as foolish asyourselves and as fearful, but for the Almighty that left a littlecleft in my skull, that would let in His candle through the nighttime. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Hurry on now, tell us is there any one in thisplace is wild and astray like yourself. 

 _(He opens the door. The light falls on him. )_

_Cracked Mary: (Putting her hand on him. )_ There was greatshouting in the big round house, and you coming into it last night. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What are you saying? I never went frolicking inthe night time since the day I came into Cloon. 

_Cracked Mary:_ We were talking of it a while ago. I knew you bythe smile and by the laugh of you. A queen having a yellow dress, and the hair on her smooth like marble. All the dead of the villagewere in it, and of the living myself and yourself. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I thought it was of Carrow she was talking; itis of the other world she is raving, and of the shadow-shapes of theforth. 

_Cracked Mary:_ You have the door open--the speckled horses areon the road!--make a leap on the horse as it goes by, the horse thatis without a rider. Can't you hear them puffing and roaring? Theirbreath is like a fog upon the air. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What you hear is but the train puffing afar off. 

_Cracked Mary:_ Make a snap at the bridle as it passes by the bushin the western gap. Run out now, run, where you have the bare ridgeof the world before you, and no one to take orders from but yourself, maybe, and God. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Ah, what way can I run to any place!

_Cracked Mary:_ Stop where you are, so. In my opinion it is littledifference the moon can see between the whole of ye. Come on, Davideen, come out now, we have the wideness of the night before us. O golden God! All bad things quieten in the night time, and the uglything itself will put on some sort of a decent face! Come out now tothe night that will give you the song, and will show myself out asbeautiful as Helen of the Greek gods, that hanged herself the daythere first came a wrinkle on her face!

_Davideen: (Coming close, and taking her hand as he sings. )_

 Oh! don't you remember What our comrades called to us And they footing steps At the call of the moon? Come out to the rushes, Come out to the bushes, Where the music is called By the lads of Queen Anne!

 _(They look beautiful. They dance and sing in perfect time as they go out. )_

_Peter Tannian: (Closing the door, and pointing at Hyacinth, who stands gazing after them, and when the door is shut sits down thinking deeply. )_It is on him her judgment fell, and a clear judgment. 

_Shawn Early:_ She gave out that award fair enough. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Did you take notice, and he coming into the shed, he had like some sort of a little twist in his walk?

_Mrs. Broderick:_ I would be loth to think there would be anypoison lurking in his veins. Where now would it come from, andCracked Mary's dog being as good as no dog at all?

_Peter Tannian:_ It might chance, and he a child in the cradle, toget the bite of a dog. It might be only now, its full time being come, its power would begin to work. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ So it would too, and he but to see the shadow ofthe dog bit him in a body glass, or in the waves, and he himselflooking over a boat, and as if called to throw himself in the tide. But I would not have thought it of Mr. Halvey. Well, it's as hard toknow what might be spreading abroad in any person's mind, as to putthe body of a horse out through a cambric needle. 

 _(Hyacinth looks at them. )_

_Shawn Early:_ Be quiet now, he is going to say some word. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ There is a thought in my mind. I think it wascoming this good while. 

_Shawn Early:_ Whisht now and listen. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I made a great mistake coming into this place. 

_Peter Tannian:_ There was some mistake made anyway. 

_Hyacinth:_ It is foolishness kept me in it ever since. It is toobig a name was put upon me. 

_Peter Tannian:_ It is the power of the moon is forcing the truthout of him. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Every person in the town giving me out for morethan I am. I got too much of that in the heel. 

_Shawn Early:_ He is talking queer now anyway. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Calling to me every little minute--expecting meto do this thing and that thing--watching me the same as a watchdog, their eyes as if fixed upon my face. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ To be giving out such strange thoughts, hehasn't much brains left around him. 

_Hyacinth Halvey: I_ looking to be Clerk of the Union, and theplace I had giving me enough to do, and too much to do. Tied on thisside, tied on that side. I to be bothered with business through theholy livelong day!

_Peter Tannian:_ It is good pay he got with it. Eighty pounds ayear doesn't come on the wind. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ In danger to be linked and wed--I neverambitioned it--with a woman would want me to be earning throughevery day of the year. 

_Shawn Early:_ He is a gone man surely. 

_Hyacinth Hakey:_ The wide ridge of the world before me, and tohave no one to look to for orders; that would be better than roastand boiled and all the comforts of the day. I declare to goodness, and I 'd nearly take my oath, I 'd sooner be among a fleet of tinkers, than attending meetings of the Board!

_Mrs. Broderick:_ If there are fairies in it, it is in the fairieshe is. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Give me a hold of that chain. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ What is it you are about to do?

_Peter Tannian:_ To bind him to the chair I will before he willburst out wild mad. Come over here, Bartley Fallon, and lend a handif you can. 

 _(Bartley Fallon appears from corner with a_ _chicken crate over his head. )_

_Mrs. Broderick:_ O Bartley, that is the strangest lightness everI saw, to go bind a chicken crate around your skull!

_Bartley Fallon:_ Will you tighten the knots I have tied, PeterTannian! I am in dread they might slacken or fail. 

_Shawn Early:_ Was there ever seen before this night such power tobe in the moon!

_Bartley Fallon:_ It would seem to be putting very wild unrulythoughts a-through me, stirring up whatever spleen or whateverrelics was left in me by the nature of the dog. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Is it that you think those rods, spaced wide, asthey are, will keep out the moon from entering your brain?

_Bartley Fallon:_ There does great strength come at the time thewits would be driven out of a person. I never was handled by apoliceman--but once--and never hit a blow on any man. I would notwish to destroy my neighbour or to have his blood on my hands. 

_Shawn Early:_ It is best keep out of his reach. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ The way I have this fixed, there is no personwill be the worse for me. I to rush down the street and to meet withmy most enemy in some lonesome craggy place, it would fail me, and Ithrusting for it to scatter any share of poison in his body or tosink my teeth in his skin. I wouldn't wonder I to have hung for someof you, and that plan not to have come into my head. 

 _(Whistle of train heard. )_

_Hyacinth Halvey: (Getting up. )_ I have my mind made up, I amgoing out of this on that train. 

_Peter Tannian:_ You are not going so easy as what you think. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Let you mind your own business. 

_Peter Tannian:_ I am well able to mind it. 

_Hyacinth Halvey: (Throwing off top-coat. )_ You cannot keep me here. 

_Peter Tannian:_ Give me a hand with the chain. _(They throw it round Hyacinth and hold him. )_

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Is it out of your senses you are gone?

_Peter Tannian:_ Not at all, but yourself that is gone raving madfrom the fury and the strength of some dog. 

_Miss Joyce: (At door. )_ Are you there, Hyacinth Halvey? The trainis in. Come forward now, and give a welcome to his Reverence. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Let me go out of this!

_Miss Joyce:_ You are near late as it is. The train is about tostart. 

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Let me go, or I'll tear the heart out of ye!

_Shawn Early:_ Oh, he is stark, staring mad!

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Mad, am I? Bit by a dog, am I? You'll see am Imad! I'll show madness to you! Let go your hold or I'll skin you!I'll destroy you! I'll bite you! I'm a red enemy to the whole of you!Leave go your grip! Yes, I'm mad! Bow wow wow, wow wow!

 _(They let go and fall back in terror, and he rushes out of the door. )_

_Miss Joyce:_ What at all has happened? Where is he gone?

_Shawn Early:_ To the train he is gone, and away in it he is gone. 

_Miss Joyce:_ He gave some sort of a bark or a howl. 

_Shawn Early:_ He is gone clean mad. Great arguing he had, andleaping and roaring. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ _(Taking off crate. )_ He went very near to tearus all asunder. I declare I amn't worth a match. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ He made a reel in my head, till I don't know amI right myself. 

_Shawn Early:_ Bawling his life out, tearing his clothes, tearingand eating them. Look at his top-coat he left after him. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ He poured all over with pure white foam. 

_Peter Tannian:_ There now is an end of your elegant man. 

_Shawn Early:_ Bit he was with the mad dog that went tearing, andlads chasing him a while ago. 

_Miss Joyce:_ Sure that was Tannian's own dog, that had a bit ofmeat snapped from Quirke's ass-car. He is without this door now. _(All look out. )_ He has the appearance of having a full meal taken. 

_Bartley Fallon:_ And they to be saying I went mad. That is theway always, and a thing to be tasked to me that was not in it at all. 

_Mrs. Broderick:_ _(Laying her hand on Miss Joyce's shoulder. )_Take comfort now; and if it was the moon done all, and has yourbachelor swept, let you not begrudge it its full share of praise forthe hand it had in banishing a strange bird, might have gone wildand bawling like eleven, and you after being wed with him, and wouldmaybe have put a match to the roof. And hadn't you the luck of theworld now, that you did not give notice to the priest!

_Curtain_

COATS

_Hazel_ EDITOR OF "CHAMPION"_Mineog_ EDITOR OF "TRIBUNE"_John_ A WAITER

 _Scene: Dining room of Royal Hotel Cloonmore_. 

_Hazel: (Coming in. )_ Did Mr. Mineog come yet, John?

_John:_ He did not, Mr. Hazel. Ah, he won't be long coming. It'sseldom he does be late. 

_Hazel:_ Is the dinner ready?

_John:_ It is, sir. Boiled beef and parsnips, the same as everyMonday for all comers, and an apple pie for yourself and Mr. Mineog. 

_Mineog: (Coming in. )_ Mr. Hazel is the first tonight. I'm glad tosee you looking so good. 

 _(They take off coats and give to waiter. )_

_Mineog:_ Put that on its own peg. 

_Hazel:_ And mine on its own peg to the rear. 

_John:_ I will, sir. 

 _(He drops coats in putting them up. Then notices broken pane in window and picks up the coats hurriedly, putting them on wrong pegs. Hazel and Mineog have sat down. )_

_Hazel:_ Have you any strange news?

_Mineog:_ I have but the same news I always have, that it is quickMonday comes around, and that it is hard make provision for to fillup the four sheets of the _Tribune_, and nothing happening in theseparts worth while. There would seem to be no news on this day beyondall days of the year. 

_Hazel:_ Sure there is the same care and the same burden on myself. I wish I didn't put a supplement to the _Champion_. The deer knowswhat way will I fill it between this and Thursday, or in what placeI can go questing after news!

_Mineog:_ Last week passed without anything doing. It is a verybackward place to give information for two papers. If it was not forthe league is between us, and for us meeting here on every Monday tomake sure we are taking different sides on every question may turn up, and giving every abuse to one another in print, there is no personwould pay his penny for the two of them, or it may be for the one ofthem. 

_Hazel:_ That is so. And the worst is, there is no question everrises that we do not agree on, or that would have power to make usfall out in earnest. It was different in my early time. Thequestions used to rise up then were worth fighting for. 

_Mineog:_ There are some people so cantankerous they will heatthemselves in argument as to which side might be right or wrong in awar, or if wars should be in it at all, or hangings. 

_Hazel:_ Ah, when they are as long on the road as we are, they'lltake things easy. _Mineog:_ Now all the kingdoms of the earth to gostruggling on one wrong side or another, or to bring themselves downto dust and ashes, it would not break our friendship. In all theyears past there never did a cross word rise between us. 

_Hazel:_ There never will. What are the fights of politics andparties beside living neighbourly with one another, and to gopeaceable to the grave, our selves that are the oldest residents inthe Square. 

_Mineog:_ It will be long indeed before you will be followed tothe grave. You didn't live no length yet. You are too fresh to goout and to forsake your wife and your family. 

_Hazel:_ Ah, when the age would be getting up on you, you wouldn'tbe getting younger. But it's yourself that is as full of spirit as afour-year-old. I wish I had a sovereign for every year you willreign after me in the Square. 

_Mineog:_ _(Sneezes. )_ There is a draught of air coming in thewindow. 

_Hazel:_ _(Rising. )_ Take care might it be open--no, but a panethat is out. There is a very chilly breeze sweeping in. 

_Mineog:_ _(Rising. )_ I will put on my coat so. There is no usegiving provocation to a cold. 

_Hazel:_ I'll do the same myself. It is hard to banish a sorethroat. 

 _(They put on coats. John brings in dinner. They sit down. )_

_Mineog:_ See can you baffle that draught of air, John. 

_John:_ I'll go in search of something to stop it, sir. This bitof a board I brought is too unshapely. 

_Mineog:_ Two columns of the _Tribune_ as empty yet as anythingyou could see. I had them kept free for the Bishop's speech and hedidn't come after. 

_Hazel:_ That's the same cause has left myself with so wide a gap. 

_Mineog:_ In the years past there used always to be somethinghappening such as famines, or the invention of printing. The wholeworld has got very slack. 

_Hazel:_ You are a better hand than what I am at filling oddspaces would be left bare. It is often I think the news you put outcomes partly from your own brain, and the prophecies you lay downabout the weather and the crops. 

_Mineog:_ Ah, I might stick in a bit of invention sometimes, whenI'm put to the pin of my collar. 

_Hazel:_ I might maybe make an attack on the _Tribune_ for that. 

_Mineog:_ Ah, what is it but a white sin. Sure it tells everyperson the same thing. It doesn't tell many lies, it goes somewherea near it. 

_Hazel:_ I spent a good while this evening searching through theshelves of the press I have in the office. I write an article an oddtime, when there is nothing doing, that might come handy in a hurry. 

_Mineog:_ So have I a press of the sort, and shelves in it. I amafter going through them to-day. 

_Hazel:_ But it's hard find a thing would be suitable, unless youmight dress it up again someway fresh. 

_Mineog:_ I made a thought and I searching a while ago. I wasthinking it would be a very nice thing to show respect to yourself, and friendliness, putting down a short account of you and of all youhave done for your family and for the town. 

_Hazel:_ That is a strange thing now! I had it in my mind to dothe very same service to yourself. 

_Mineog:_ Is that so?

_Hazel:_ Your worth and your generosity and the way you haveworked the _Tribune_ for your own and for the public good. 

_Mineog:_ And another thing. I not only thought to write it but Iam after writing it. 

_Hazel: (Suspiciously. )_ You had not much time for that. 

_Mineog:_ I never was one to spare myself in anything that couldbenefit a friend. 

_Hazel:_ Neither would I spare myself. I have my article wrote. 

_Mineog:_ I have a mind to read my own one to you, the way youwill know there is nothing in it but what is friendly and is kind. 

_Hazel:_ I will do the same thing. There's nothing I have said init but what you will like to be hearing. 

_Mineog: (Who has rummaged pockets. )_ I thought I put it in theinside pocket--no matter--here it is. 

_Hazel: (Rummaging. )_ Here is my one. I was thinking I had it lost. 

_Mineog: (Reading, after he has turned over a couple of sheets rapidly)_"Born and bred in this Square, he took his chief pride in his nativetown. "

_Hazel: (Turning over two sheets. )_ "It was in this parish anddistrict he spent the most part of his promising youth--Richlystored with world-wide knowledge. "

_Mineog:_ "Well able to give out an opinion on any matter at all. "

_Hazel:_ "To lay down his mind on paper it would be hard to beathim. "

_Mineog:_ "With all that, humble that he would halt and speak toyou the same as a child----" I'm maybe putting it down a bit toosimple, but the printer will give it a little shaping after. 

_Hazel:_ So will my own printer be lengthening out the words forme according to the type and the letters of the alphabet he willhave plentiful and to spare. 

_Mineog:_ "Well looking and well thought of. A true Irishman insupporting all forms of sport. "

_Hazel:_ What's that? I never was one for betting on races orgaining prizes for riddles. 

_Mineog:_ It is strange now I have no recollection of putting thatdown. It is I myself in the days gone by would put an odd shillingon a horse. 

_Hazel:_ These typewriters would bother the world. Wait now--letme throw an eye on those papers you have in your hand. 

_Mineog:_ Not at all. I would sooner be giving it out to you myself. 

_Hazel:_ Of course it is very pleasing to be listening to so nicean account--but lend it a minute. 

 _(Puts out hand. )_

_Mineog:_ Bring me now a bottle of wine, John--you know thesort--till I'll drink to Mr. Hazel's good health. 

_John:_ I will, sir. 

_Hazel:_ No, but bring it at my own expense till I will drink toMr. Mineog. Just give me a hold of that paper for one minute only. 

_Mineog:_ Keep patience now. I will go through it with no delay. 

_Hazel:_ _(Making a snap. )_ Just for one minute. 

_Mineog:_ _(Clapping his hand on it. )_ What a hurry you are in!Stop now till I'll find the place. "Very rarely indeed has been metwith so fair and so neighbourly a man. "

_Hazel:_ Give me a look at it. 

_Mineog:_ What is it ails you? You are uneasy about something. What is it you are hiding from me?

_Hazel:_ What would I have to hide but that the papers got mixedin some way, and you have in your hand what I wrote about yourself, and not what you wrote about myself?

_Mineog:_ What way did they get into the wrong pocket now?

_Hazel: (Putting MS. In his pocket. )_ Give me back my own and Iwill give you back your own. 

_Mineog:_ I don't know. You are putting it in my mind there mightbe something underhand. I would like to make sure what did you sayabout me in the heel. _(Turns over. )_ "He was honest and widelyrespected. " _Was_ honest--are you saying me to be a rogue at thistime?

_Hazel:_ That's not fair dealing to be searching through itagainst my will. 

_Mineog:_ "He was trusted through the whole townland. " _Was_trusted--is it that you are making me out to be a thief?

_Hazel:_ Well, follow your own road and take your own way. 

_Mineog:_ "----Mr. Mineog leaves no family to lament his loss, butalong with the _Tribune_, which he fostered with the care of a father, we offer up prayers for the repose of his soul. " _(Stands up. )_ Itis a notice of my death you are after writing!

_Hazel:_ You should understand that. 

_Mineog:_ An obituary notice! Of myself! Is it that you expect meto quit the living world between this and Thursday?

_Hazel:_ I had no thought of the kind. 

_Mineog:_ I'm not stretched yet! What call have you to go offerprayers for me?

_Hazel:_ I tell you I had it put by this long time till I wouldhave occasion to use it. 

_Mineog:_ Is it this long time, so, you have been waiting for mydeath?

_Hazel:_ Not at all. 

_Mineog:_ You to kill me to-day and to think to bury me to-morrow!

_Hazel:_ Can't you listen? I was wanting something to fill space. 

_Mineog:_ Would nothing serve you to fill space but only my owncorpse? To go set my coffin making and to put nettles growing on myhearth! Wouldn't it be enough to rob my house or to make an attackupon my means? Wouldn't that fill up the gap?

_Hazel:_ Let you not twist it that way!

_Mineog:_ The time I was in the face of my little dinner to gostartle me with a thing of the sort! I'm not worth the ground Istand on! For the _Champion_ of next Thursday! I to be dead ereThursday!

_Hazel:_ I looked for no such thing. 

_Mineog:_ What is it makes you say me to be done and dying? Am Ireduced in the face?

_Hazel:_ You are not. 

_Mineog:_ Am I yellow and pale and shrunken?

_Hazel:_ Why would you be?

_Mineog:_ Would you say me to be crampy in the body? Am I staggeryin the legs?

_Hazel:_ I see no such signs. 

_Mineog:_ Is it in my hand you see them? Is it lame or is itfreezed-brittle like ice?

_Hazel:_ It is as warm and as good as my own. 

_Mineog:_ Let me take a hold of you till you will tell me has itthe feel of a dead man's grip. 

_Hazel:_ I know that it has not. 

_Mineog:_ Is it shaking like a bunch of timber shavings?

_Hazel:_ Not at all, not at all. 

_Mineog:_ It should be my hearing that is failing from me, or thatI am crippled and have lost my walk. 

_Hazel:_ You are roaring and bawling without sense. 

_Mineog:_ Let the _Champion_ go to flitters before I will die toplease it! I will not give in to it driving me out of the worldbefore my hour is spent! It would hardly ask that of a man would beof no use and no account, or even of a beast of any consequence. 

_Hazel:_ Who is asking you to die?

_Mineog:_ Giving no time hardly for the priest to overtake me andto give me the rites of the Church!

_Hazel:_ I tell you there is no danger of you giving up at all!Every person knows there must some sickness come before death. Sometake it from a neighbour and it is put on others by God. 

_Mineog:_ Even so, it's hard say. 

_Hazel:_ You have not a ha'p'orth on you. No complaint in theworld wide. 

_Mineog:_ That's nothing! Sickness comes upon some as sudden as toclap their hands. 

_Hazel:_ What are you talking about? You are thinking us to be inthe days of the cholera yet!

_Mineog:_ There are yet other diseases besides that. 

_Hazel:_ You put the measles over you and we going the road toschool. 

_Mineog:_ There is more than measles has power bring a man down. 

_Hazel:_ You had the chin-cough passed and you rising. We were cutat the one time for the pock. 

_Mineog:_ A disease to be allotted to you it would find you out, and you maybe up twenty mile in the air!

_Hazel:_ Ah, what disease could have you swept in the course ofthe next two days?

_Mineog:_ That is what I'm after saying--unless you might havemurder in your mind?

_Hazel:_ Ah, what murder!

_Mineog:_ What way are you thinking to do away with me? To shootme with the trigger of a gun and to give me shortening of life?

_Hazel:_ The trigger of a gun! God bless it, I never fingered sucha thing in the length of my life!

_Mineog:_ To take aim at me and destroy me; to shoot me in fortyhalves like a crow in the time of the wheat!

_Hazel:_ Oh, now, don't say a thing like that!

_Mineog:_ Or to drown me maybe in the river, enticing me acrossthe rotten plank of the bridge. _(Seizing bottle. )_ Will you tell meon the virtue of your oath, is death lurking in that sherry wine?

_Hazel: (Pulling out paper. )_ Ah, God bless your jig! And howwould I know is it a notice of my own death has come into my hand inthe pocket of this coat I put on me through a mistake?

_Mineog:_ Give it here. That's my property!

_Hazel: (Reading. )_ "We sympathise with Mrs. Hazel and the family. "There is proof now. Is it that you would go grieving with my wife andI to be living yet?

_Mineog:_ I didn't follow you out beyond this world with cravingfor the repose of your soul. It is nothing at all beside what youwrote. 

_Hazel:_ Oh, I bear no grudge at all against you. I am not huffyand crabbed like yourself to go taking offence. Sure Kings and bigpeople of the sort are used to see their dead-notices made readyfrom the hour of their birth out. And it is not anything printed onpapers or any flight of words on the _Tribune_ could give me anyconcern at all. See now will I be put out. _(Reads. )_ What now isthis? "Mr. Hazel was of good race, having in him the old stock ofthe country, the Mahons, the O'Hagans, the Casserlys----. " Where nowdid you get that? I never heard before, a Casserly to be in myfathers. 

_Mineog:_ It might be on the side of the mother. 

_Hazel:_ It was not. My mother was a girl of the Hessians that wasborn in the year of the French. My grandmother was Winefred Kane. 

_Mineog:_ What is being out in one name towards drawing down theforecast of all classes of deaths upon myself?

_Hazel:_ There are twenty thousand things you might lay down and Iwould give them no leave to annoy me. But I have no mind any strangefamily to be mixed through me, but to go my own road and to carry myown character. 

_Mineog:_ I would say you to be very crabbed to be making much ofa small little mistake of the sort. 

_Hazel:_ I will not have blood put in my veins that never rose upin them by birth. You to have put a slur maybe on the whole of myposterity for ever. That now is a thing out of measure. 

_Mineog:_ It might be the Casserlys are as fair as the Hessians, and as well looking and as well reared. 

_Hazel:_ There's no one can know that. What place owns them? Mytribe didn't come inside the province. Every generation was born andbred in this or in some neighbouring townland. 

_Mineog:_ Sure you will be but yourself whatever family may belaying claim to you. 

_Hazel:_ Any person of the Casserlys to have done a wrong deed atany time, the neighbours would be watching and probing my own broodtill they would see might the track of it break out in any way. Itran through our race to be hard tempered, from the Kanes that arevery hot. 

_Mineog:_ Why would the family of the Casserlys go doing wrongdeeds more than another?

_Hazel:_ I would never forgive it, if it was the highest man inConnacht said it. 

_Mineog:_ I tell you there to be any flaw in them, it would haveworked itself out in yourself ere this. 

_Hazel:_ Putting on me the weight of a family I never knew ornever heard the name of at all. It is that is killing me entirely. 

_Mineog:_ Neither did I ever hear their name or if they ever livedin the world, or did any deed good or bad in it at all. 

_Hazel:_ What made you drag them hither for to write them in mygenealogies so?

_Mineog:_ I did not drag them hither----Give me that paper. _(Takes MS. And looks at it. )_ What would it be but a misprint?Hessian, Casserly. There does be great resemblance in the sound of adouble S. 

_Hazel:_ Whether or no, you have a great wrong done me! The personI had most dependence on to be the most person to annoy me! If itwas a man from the County Mayo I wouldn't see him treated that way!

_Mineog:_ Have sense now! What would signify anything might bewrote about you, and the green scraws being over your head?

_Hazel:_ That's the worst! I give you my oath I would not gomiching from death or be in terror of the sharpness of his bones, and he coming as at the Flood to sweep the living world along with me, and leave no man on earth having penmanship to handle my deeds, orto put his own skin on my story!

_Mineog:_ Ah it's likely the both of us will be forgotten and ournames along with us, and we out in the meadow of the dead. 

_Hazel:_ I will not be forgotten! I have posterity will put a goodslab over me. Not like some would be left without a monument, unlessit might be the rags of a cast waistcoat would be put on sticks in abarley garden, to go flapping at the thieves of the air. 

_Mineog:_ Let the birds or the neighbours go screech after me andwelcome, and I not in it to hear or to be annoyed. 

_Hazel:_ Why wouldn't we hear? I'm in dread it's too much I'll hear, and you yourself sending such news to travel abroad, that there isblood in me I concealed through my lifetime!

_Mineog:_ What you are saying now has not the sense of reason. 

_Hazel:_ Tom Mineog to say that of me, that was my trusty comradeand my friend, what at all will strangers be putting out about me?

_Mineog:_ Ah, what call have you to go lamenting as if you hadlost all on this side of the sea!

_Hazel:_ You to have brought that annoyance on me, what wouldenemies be saying of me? That it was in my breed to be cracked or tohave a thorn in the tongue. There's a generation of families wouldbe great with you, and behind you they would be backbiting you. 

_Mineog:_ They will not. You are of a family doesn't know how tosay a wrong word. 

_Hazel:_ A rabbit mushroom they might say me to be, with no memorybehind or around me!

_Mineog:_ Not at all. The world knows you to be civil and broughtup to mannerly ways. 

_Hazel:_ They might say me to have been a foreigner or a Jew man!

_Mineog:_ I can bear witness you have no such yellow look. AndHazel is a natural name. 

_Hazel:_ It's likely they'll say I was a sheep-stealer or a tinkerthat went foraging around after food!

_Mineog:_ You that never put your hand on a rabbit burrow or stoodbefore a magistrate or a judge!

_Hazel:_ They'll put me down as a grabber that was ready to quencha widow's fire!

_Mineog:_ Oh, where are you running to at all my dear man!

_Hazel:_ And I not to be able at that time to rise up and to getsatisfaction! I to be wandering as a shadow and to see some schemerspilling out his lies! That would be the most grief in death! I tohit him a blow of my fist and he maybe not to feel it or to think itto be but a breeze of wind!

_Mineog:_ You are going too far entirely!

_Hazel:_ I to give out a strong curse on him and on his posterityand his land. It would kill my heart if he would take it to be nohuman voice, but some vanity like the hissing of geese!

_Mineog:_ I myself would recognise your voice, and you to beliving or dead. 

_Hazel:_ You say that now. But my ghost to come calling to you inthe night time to rise up and to clear my character, you would runshivering to the priest as from some unnatural thing. You would callto him to come banish me with a Mass!

_Mineog:_ The Lord be between us and harm. 

_Hazel:_ To have no power of revenge after death! My strength togo nourish weeds and grass! A lie to be told and I living I could golay my case before the courts. So I will too! I'll silence you! I'lllearn you to have done with misspellings and with death notices!I'll hinder you bringing in Casserlys! I go take advice from thelawyer! _(Goes towards door. )_

_Mineog:_ I'll go lay down my own case and the way that you havemy life threatened!

_Hazel:_ I'll get justice and a hearing. The Judge will give in tomy say!

_Mineog:_ I that will put you under bail! I'll bind you over toquit prophesying!

_Hazel:_ I'll break the bail of the sun and moon before I'll giveyou leave to go brand me with strange names the same as you wouldtarbrand a sheep! I'll put yourself and your _Tribune_ under the lawof libel!

_Mineog:_ I'll make a world's wonder of you! I'll give plenty andenough to the _Champion_ to fill out its windy pages that time!

_Hazel: (At door. )_ I will lay my information before you willovertake me!

_Mineog: (Seizing him. )_ I will lay my information against you fortheft and you bringing away my coat!

_Hazel:_ I have no intention of bringing it away!

_Mineog:_ Is it that you will deny it? Don't I know that spot ofgrease on the sleeve?

_Hazel:_ Did I never carve a goose? Why wouldn't there be a spotof grease on my own sleeve?

_Mineog:_ Strip it off of you this minute!

_Hazel:_ Give me back my own coat, so!

_Mineog:_ What are you talking about! That's a great wonder now. So it is not my own coat. 

_Hazel:_ Strip it off before you will quit the room!

_Mineog:_ I'll be well pleased casting it off!

_Hazel:_ You will not cast it on the dust and the dirt of the floor!_(Helps him. )_ Go easy now. ----That's it----

 _(Takes it off gently and places it on chair. )_

_Mineog:_ Give me now my own coat!

_Hazel: (Struggling with it. )_ It fails me to get it off. 

_Mineog:_ What way did you get it on?

_Hazel:_ It is that it is made too narrow. 

_Mineog:_ No, but yourself that has too much bulk. 

_Hazel: (Struggling. )_ There now is a tear!

_Mineog: (Taking his arm. )_ Mind now, you'll have it destroyed. 

_Hazel:_ Give me a hand, so. 

_Mineog: (Helping him gently. )_ Have a care--it's a bit tender inthe seams----give me here your hand--it is caught in the rip of thelining. 

_John: (Coming in, puts pie on table. )_ Wait now, sir, till I'llaid you to handle Mr. Hazel's coat. 

 _(Whips off coat, takes up other coat, hangs both on pegs. )_

The apple pie, Sir. 

 _(Hazel sits down, gasping and wiping his face. Mineog turns his back. )_

_John:_ Is there anything after happening, Mr. Hazel?

_Hazel:_ There is not--unless some sort of a battle. 

_John:_ Ah, what signifies? There to be more of battles in theworld there would be less of wars. 

 _(He pushes Mineog's chair to table. )_

_Hazel: (After a pause. )_ Apple pie?

_Mineog: (Sitting down. )_ Indeed, I am not any way inclined foreating. 

 _(Takes plate. John stuffs a cushion into window pane and picks up MSS. )_

_John:_ Are these belonging to you, Mr. Mineog?

_Mineog:_ Let you throw them on the coals of the fire, where wehave no use for them presently. 

_Hazel: (Stopping John and taking them. )_ Thursday is very near athand. Two empty columns is a large space to go fill. 

_Mineog:_ Indeed I am feeling no way fit to go writing columns. 

_Hazel: (Putting his MS. In his pocket. )_ There is nothing ailsthem only to begin a good way after the start, and to stop beforethe finish. 

_Mineog: (Putting his MS. In his pocket. )_ We'll do that. We canput such part of them as we do not need at this time back in theshelf of the press. 

_Hazel: (Filling glasses and lifting his. )_ That it may be longbefore they will be needed!

_Mineog: (Lifting glass. )_ That they may _never_ be needed!

_Curtain_

DAMER'S GOLD

 A COMEDY IN TWO ACTS

PERSONS

_Patrick Kirwan_ CALLED DAMER_Staffy Kirwan_ HIS BROTHER_Delia Hessian_ HIS SISTER_Ralph Hessian_ HER HUSBAND_Simon Niland_ THEIR NEPHEW

DAMER'S GOLD

ACT I

 _Scene: The kitchen in Damer's house. Outer door at back. Door leading to an inner room to right. A dresser, a table, and a couple of chairs. An old coat and hat hanging on the wall. A knocking is heard at door at back. It is unlatched from outside. Delia comes in_. 

_Delia: (Looking round cautiously and going back to door. )_ Youmay come in, Staffy and Ralph. There would seem to be no person here. 

_Staffy:_ Take care would Damer ask us to cross the threshold atall. I would not ask to go pushing on him, but to wait till he wouldcall to us himself. He is not an easy led man. 

_Delia: (Crossing and knocking at inner door. )_ He is not in it. He is likely slipped out unknownst. 

_Ralph:_ Herself that thought to find him at the brink of deathand nearing his last leap, after what happened him with the jennet. We heard tell of it as far as we were. 

_Delia:_ What ailed him to go own a jennet, he that has means tostable a bay horse would set the windows rattling on the public road, and it sparkling over the flintstones after dark?

_Staffy:_ Sure he owns no fourfooted beast only the dog abroad inits box. To make its way into the haggard the jennet did, the timeit staggered him with a kick. To forage out some grazing it thoughtto do, beyond dirt and scutchgrass among the stones. Very crossjennets do be, as it is a cross man it met with. 

_Delia:_ A queer sort of a brother he is. To go searching Irelandyou wouldn't find queerer. But as soon as I got word what happened Ibade Ralph to put the tacklings on the ass. We must have natureabout us some way. There was silence between us long enough. 

_Ralph:_ She was thinking it might be the cause of him getting hisdeath sooner than God has it promised to him, and that it might turnhis mind more friendly like towards us, he knowing us to be at handfor to settle out his burying. 

_Delia:_ Why wouldn't it, and we being all the brothers andsisters ever he had, since Jane Niland, God rest her soul, went outlast Little Christmas from the troubles and torments of the world. 

_Staffy:_ There is nothing left of that marriage now, only oneyoung lad is said to be mostly a fool. 

_Delia:_ It is ourselves can bear witness to that, where he cameinto the house ere yesterday, having no way of living, since deathand misfortune scattered him, but as if he was left down out of theskies. 

_Ralph:_ He has not, unless the pound piece the mother put intohis hand at the last. It is much she had that itself. The time TomNiland died from her, he didn't leave her hardly the cat. 

_Staffy:_ The lad to have any wit around him he would have cometravelling hither along with yourselves, to see would he knock anykindness out of Damer. 

_Ralph:_ It is what herself was saying, it would be no advantageto him to be coming here at all, he being as he is half light, wherethere is nothing only will or wit could pick any profit out of Damer. She did not let on to him what side were we facing, and wetravelling out from Loughtyshassy. 

_Staffy:_ It is likely he will get tidings as good as yourself. Itis said, and said largely, Damer has a full gallon jar of gold. 

_Ralph:_ There is no one could lift it--God bless it--they weretelling me. Filled up it is and brimmed to the very brink. 

_Staffy:_ His heart and his soul gone into it. He is death on thatgallon of gold. 

_Delia:_ He would give leave to the poorhouse to bury him, if hecould but put in his will they should leave it down with his bones. 

_Staffy:_ A man could live an easy life surely and that much beingin the house. 

_Delia:_ There is no more grasping man within the four walls ofthe world. A strange thing he turning to be so ugly and prone tomisery, where he was reared along with myself. I have the firstcovetous person yet to meet I would like! I never would go thrustingafter gold, I to get all Lord Clanricarde's estate. 

_Ralph:_ She never would, only at a time she might have her ownmeans spent and consumed. 

_Staffy:_ The house is very racked beside what it was. Thehungriest cabin in the whole ring of Connemara would not show out soempty and so bare. 

_Delia: (Taking up a jug. )_ No sign in this vessel of anythingthat would leave a sign. I'll go bail he takes his tea in a blackstate, and the milk to be rotting in the churn. 

_Ralph: (Handling a coat and hat hanging on a nail. )_ That's aqueer cut of a hat. That now should have been a good top-coat in itstime. 

_Delia:_ For pity's sake! That is the top-coat and the hat he usedto be wearing and he riding his long-tailed pony to every racecoursefrom this to the Curragh of Kildare. A good class of cloth it shouldbe to last out through seventeen years. 

_Staffy:_ The time he was young and fundless he had not a badreaching hand. He never was thrifty but lavish till he came into theownership of the land. It is as if his luck left him, he growingtimid at the time he had means to lose. 

_Delia:_ Every horse he would back at that time it would surelywin all before it. I saw the people thronging him one time, takinghim in their arms for joy, and the winnings coming into his hand. Itis likely they ran out through the fingers as swift nearly as theyflowed in. 

_Staffy:_ He grew to be very dark and crabbed from the time of thefather's death. His mind was on his halfpenny ever since. 

_Delia: (Looking at dresser. )_ Spiders' webs heaped in ridges thesame as windrows in a bleach of hay. What now is that there above onthe upper shelf?

_Ralph: (Taking it from top shelf. )_ It is but a pack of cards. 

_Staffy:_ They should maybe be the very same that brought himprofit in his wild days. He always had a lucky hand. 

_Delia: (Dusting them. )_ You would give your seven oaths the dustto have been gathering on them since the time of the Hebrews' Flood. I'll tell you now a thing to do. We being here before him in thehouse, why wouldn't we ready it and put some sort of face upon it, the way he would be in humour with us coming in. 

_Ralph:_ And the way he might incline to put into our hand somegood promise or some gift. 

_Delia: (Dusting. )_ I would wish no gift from any person at all, but that my mind is set at this time on a fleet of white goats and aguinea-hen are to be canted out from the Spanish woman at Lisatuwnacross by reason of the hanging gale. 

_Staffy:_ That was the way with you, Delia, from the time youcould look out from the half-door, to be coveting pictures andfooleries, that would shape themselves in your mind. 

_Delia:_ There is no sin coveting things are of no great use orprofit, but would show out good and have some grandeur around them. Those goats now! Browsing on the blossoms of the bushes they would be, or the herbs that give out a sweet smell. Stir yourself, Staffy, andthrow your eye on that turf beyond in the corner. It is that wet youcould wring from it splashes and streams. Let you rise the ashesfrom the sods are on the hearth and redden them with a goosewing, ifthere is a goosewing to be found. There is no greater beauty to bemet with than the leaping of a little yellow flame. 

_Staffy:_ In my opinion there will no pay-day come for this work, but only a thank-you job; a County Clare payment, 'God spare you thehealth!'

_Delia:_ Let you do it, Ralph so. _(Takes potatoes from a sieve. )_A roasted potato would be a nice thing to put before him, in theplace of this old crust of a loaf. Put them in now around the sods, the way they will be crispy before him. 

_Ralph: (Taking them. )_ And the way he will see you are a goodhousekeeper and will mind well anything he might think fit to give. 

_Delia: (At clock. )_ I'll set to the right time of day the twohands of the clock are pointing a full hour before the sun. Take, Staffy, that pair of shoes and lessen from them the clay of the land. That much of doing will not break your heart. He will be as proud asthe fallen angels seeing the way we have all set out before him. 

 _(A harsh laugh is heard at inner door. They turn and see Damer watching them. )_

_Ralph:_ Glory be to God!

_Delia:_ It is Damer was within all the time!

_Staffy:_ What are you talking about, Delia? It is Patrick youwere meaning to say. 

_Damer:_ Let her go on prattling out Damer to my face, as it isoften she called it behind my shoulders. Damer the chandler, themiser got the spoil of the Danes, that was mocked at since the timeof the Danes. I know well herself and the world have me christenedwith that nickname. 

_Ralph:_ Ah, it is not to dispraise you they put it on you, but toshow you out so wealthy and so rich. 

_Damer:_ I am thinking it is not love of my four bones brings youon this day under my thatch?

_Staffy:_ We heard tell you were after being destroyed with ajennet. 

_Damer:_ Picking up newses and tidings of me ye do be. It is shortthe delay was on you coming. 

_Delia:_ And I after travelling through the most of the day on thehead of you being wounded and hurt, thinking you to be grieving tosee one of your own! And I in dread of my life stealing past yourwicked dog. 

_Damer:_ My joy he is, scaring you with his bark! If it wasn't forhim you would have me clogged and tormented, coming in and botheringme every whole minute. 

_Delia:_ There is no person in Ireland only yourself but wouldhave as much welcome for me to-day as on the first day ever they sawme!

_Damer:_ What's that you are doing with my broom?

_Delia:_ To do away with the spider's webs I did, where theshelves were looped with them and smothered. Look at all that cameoff of that pack of cards. 

_Damer:_ What call had you to do away with them, and theybelonging to myself? Is it to bleed to death I should and I to get atip of a billhook or a slasher? You and your vagaries to have leftme bare, that I would be without means to quench the blood, and itto rise up from my veins and to scatter on every side!

_Delia:_ Is it that you are without e'er a rag, and that ancientcoat to be hanging on the wall?

_Damer:_ The place swept to flitters! What is that man of yoursdoing and he handling my turf?

_Ralph:_ It was herself thought to be serviceable to you, settingout the fuel that was full of dampness where it would get an air ofthe fire. 

_Damer:_ To dry it is it? _(Seizes sods and takes them from thehearth. )_ And what length would it be without being burned andconsumed and it not to be wet putting it on? _(Pours water over it. )_And I after stacking it purposely in the corner where there does bea drip from the thatch. 

_Ralph:_ She but thought it would be more answerable to you beingdry. 

_Damer:_ What way could I bear the expense of a fire on the hearthand it to leave smouldering and to break out into a blaze? A month'scutting maybe to go to ashes within three minutes, and into wisps ofsmoke. And the price of turf in this year gone wild out of measure, and it packed so roguish you could read the printed speeches on thepaper through the sods you do be buying in the creel. 

_Staffy:_ I was saying myself not to meddle with it. It is hurryis a worse friend than delay. 

_Damer:_ Where did you get those spuds are roasting there uponthe hearth?

_Ralph:_ Herself that brought them out from the sieve, thinking tomake ready your meal. 

_Damer:_ My seed potatoes! Samples I got from the guardians andasked in the shops and in stores till I'd gather enough to set a fewridges in the gardens would serve me through the length of the year!

_Delia:_ Let you be satisfied so with your mouldy bit of loaf. _(Breaks a bit from it and hands it to him. )_

_Damer:_ Do not be breaking it so wasteful! The mice to have newsthere was as much as that of crumbs in the house, they would berunning the same as chickens around the floor!

_Ralph:_ Thinking to be comfortable to you she was, the way youwould make us welcome from this out. 

_Damer:_ Which of ye is after meddling with my clock?

_Delia:_ It was a full hour before its time. 

_Darner:_ It to be beyond its time, wouldn't that save fire andcandles sending me to my bed early in the night? Leave down thoseboots! _(Takes them from Staffy. )_ Is it that you are wearing outthe uppers with scraping at them and scratching! Is it to rob me yeare come into this place?

_Delia:_ I tell you we only came in getting word that you weredone and dying. 

_Damer:_ Ha! Is it to think I was dying ye did? Well, I am not. Iam not so easy quenched. Strength and courage I have, to keep a fastgrip of what I own. 

_Delia:_ Let you not be talking that way! We are no grabbers andno thieves!

_Damer:_ I have it in my mind that ye are. Very ravenous to runthrough my money ye are. 

_Delia:_ The world knows I am not ravenous! I never gave my heartto silver or to gold but only to the thing it would bring in. But tohold from me the thing my heart is craving after, you might as wellblacken the hearth. 

_Damer:_ Striving to scare me out of my courage and my wits, theway I'll give in to go making my will. 

_Ralph:_ She would not be wishful you to do that the time yourmind would be vexed. 

_Damer:_ I'll make it, sick or sound, if I have a mind to make it. 

_Delia:_ Little thanks you'll get from me if you make it or do notmake it. That is the naked truth. 

_Damer:_ The whole of ye think yourselves to be very managing andvery wise!

_Delia:_ Let you go will it so to an asylum for fools. 

_Damer:_ Why wouldn't I? It is in the asylums all the sense isthese times. There is only the fools left outside. 

_Delia:_ You to bestow it outside of your own kindred for tobenefit and comfort your soul, all the world will say it is that youhad it gathered together by fraud. 

_Staffy:_ Do not be annoying him now. 

_Delia:_ I will not. But the time he will be lying under theflagstone, it is holly rods and brambles will spring up from out ofhis thorny heart. 

_Damer:_ A hasty, cranky woman in the house is worse than you tolay your hand upon red coals! I know well your tongue that is assharp as the sickle of the moon!

_Delia:_ The character you will leave after you will be worse outand out than Herod's!

_Damer:_ The devil upon the winds she is! That one was born intothe world having the use of the bow and arrows!

_Delia:_ You not to give fair play to your own, it is a pitifulghost will appear in your image, questing and craving our prayers!

_Damer:_ I know well what is your aim and your drift!

_Delia:_ I say any man has a right to give thanks to the heavens, and he having decent people to will his means to, in place of peoplehaving no call to it. 

_Damer:_ Whoever I'll will it to will have call to it!

_Delia:_ Or to part with it to low people and to mean people, andyou having it to give. 

_Damer:_ Having it to give is it? Do you see that lock on the door?

_Delia:_ I do see it and have eyes to see it. 

_Damer:_ Can you make any guess what is inside of it?

_Delia:_ It is likely it is what there is so much talk about, yourown full gallon of gold. 

 _(Ralph takes off his hat. )_

_Damer:_ Lay now your eye to that lock hole. 

_Ralph: (Looking through keyhole. )_ It is all dusky within. Itfails me to see any shining thing. 

 _(Staffy and Delia put their eyes to keyhole but draw back disappointed. )_

_Darner:_ If you cannot see it, try can you get the smell of it. Take a good draw of it now; lay your head along the hinges of thedoor. So now ye may quit and scamper out of this, the whole throngof ye, robbers and hangmen and bankbreakers, bargers and badcharacters, and you may believe me telling you that is the nearestye ever will come to my gold!

 _(He bangs back into room locking door after him. )_

_Delia:_ He has no more nature than the brutes of the field, hunting and howling after us. 

_Staffy:_ Yourself that rose him out of his wits and his senses. We will sup sorrow for this day's work where he will put cursesafter us. It is best for us go back to my place. It may be to-morrowthat his anger will be cured up. 

_Ralph:_ I thought it was to lay him out with candles we werebrought here. I declare I came nearer furnishing out a corpse myselfwith the start I got. 

_Delia:_ There is no dread on me. When he gets in humour I willtackle up again to him. It is too far I came to be facing back toLoughtyshassy and I fasting from the price of my goats! Littlecollars I was thinking to buckle around their neck the same as alady's lapdog, and maybe so far as a small clear-sounding bell. 

 _(They go out, Damer comes back. He puts on clock, rakes out fire, picks up potatoes and puts them back in sieve, takes bread into his room. There is a knock at the door. Then it is cautiously opened and Simon Niland comes in, and stands near the hearth. Damer comes back and sees him. )_

_Damer:_ What are you looking for?

_Simon:_ For what I won't get seemingly, that is a welcome. 

_Damer:_ Maybe it's for fists you are looking?

_Simon:_ It is not, before I will get my rest. I couldn't boxto-night if I was the Queen of England. 

_Damer:_ Have you any traffic with that congregation is aftergoing out?

_Simon:_ I seen no person good or bad, but a dog and it on thechain. 

_Damer:_ You to have in you any of the breed of the Kirwans thatis my own, I'd rise the tongs and pitch you out from the door!

_Simon:_ I suppose you would not begrudge me to rest myself for awhile, _(Sits down. )_

_Damer:_ I'll give leave to no strolling vagabond to sit in anyplace at all. 

_Simon:_ All right so. _(Tosses a coin he takes from his pocket, tied in a spotted handkerchief. )_

_Damer:_ What's that you're doing?

_Simon:_ Pitching a coin I was to see would it bid me go west oreast. 

_Damer:_ Go toss outside so. 

_Simon: (Stooping and groping. )_ I will after I will find it. 

_Damer:_ Hurry on now. 

_Simon:_ Wait till I'll kindle a match. _(Lights one and picks up coin. )_

_Damer:_ What is that in your hand?

_Simon:_ You should know. 

_Damer:_ Is it gold it is?

_Simon:_ It is all I have of means in the world. I never handled acoin before it, but my bite to be given me and my bed. 

_Damer:_ You'll mind it well if you have sense. 

_Simon:_ It is towards the east it bade me go. I'll travel as faras the races of Knockbarron to-morrow. 

_Damer:_ You'll be apt to lose it going to races. 

_Simon:_ I'll go bet with it, and see what way will it turn out. 

_Damer:_ You to set all you own upon a horse that might fail atthe leaps! It is a very foolish thing doing that. 

_Simon:_ It might not. Some have luck and are born lucky and morehave run through their luck. If I lose it, it is lost. It would notkeep me long anyway. I to win, I will have more and plenty. 

_Damer:_ You will surely lose it. 

_Simon:_ If I do I have nothing to get or to fall back on. It issome other one must take my charges. 

_Damer:_ A great pity to go lose a gold sovereign to some schemeryou never saw before. 

_Simon:_ Sure you must take some risk. You cannot put your handsaround the world. 

_Damer:_ It to be swept by a trick of the loop man!

_Simon:_ It is not with that class I will make free. 

_Damer:_ To go lose the whole of it in one second of time!

_Simon:_ I will make four divides of it. 

_Damer:_ To go change it into silver and into copper! That wouldbe the most pity in the world. 

_Simon:_ I'll chance it all upon the one jock so. 

_Damer:_ Gold! Believe me it is a good thing to hold and a veryheartbreak the time it is lost. _(Takes it in his hand. )_ Pure gold!There is not a thing to be got with it as worthy as what it is itself!There is no comfort in any place and it not in it. The Queen's imageon it and her crown. Solid between the fingers; weighty in the palmof the hand; as beautiful as ever I saw. 

_Simon:_ It is likely it is the same nearly as any other one. 

_Damer:_ Gold! My darling it is! From the hollows of the world tothe heights of the world there is no grander thing to be found. Mybone and my marrow! Let me have the full of my arms of it and I'llnot ask the flowers of field or fallow or the dancing of the Eastersun!

_Simon:_ I am thinking you should be Damer. I heard said Damer hasa full crock of gold. 

_Damer:_ He has not! He has not!

_Simon:_ That is what the world says anyway. I heard it as far asthe seaside. 

_Damer:_ I wish to my God it was true!

_Simon:_ Full and brimming to the brink. That is the way it wastold. 

_Damer:_ It is not full! It is not! Whisper now. It is many a timeI thought it to be full, full at last, full at last!

_Simon:_ And it wasn't after?

_Damer:_ To take it and to shake it I do. It is often I gavemyself a promise the time there will be no sound from it, I willgive in to nourish myself, I will rise out of misery. But every timeI will try it, I will hear a little clatter that tells me there issome space left; some small little hole or gap. 

_Simon:_ What signifies that when you have so much in it?

_Damer:_ Weightier it gets and weightier, but there will always bethat little sound. I thought to stop it one time, putting in afistful of hayseed; but I felt in my heart that was not dealing fairand honest with myself, and I rose up and shook it out again, risingup from my bed in the night time. I near got my death with the coldand the draught fell on me doing that. 

_Simon:_ It is best for me be going on where I might find my bed, _Damer:_ Hearken now. I am old and the long road behind me. Youare young and in your strength. It is you is rich, it is I myselfthat is poor. You know well, you to get the offer, you would notchange your lot with my own. 

_Simon:_ I suppose I might not. I'd as lief keep my countenanceand my run. 

_Darner:_ Isn't it a great pity there to be that hollow within inmy gallon, and the little coin that would likely just fill it up, tobe going out of the house?

_Simon:_ Is it that you are asking it of me?

_Damer:_ You might never find so good a way to open Heaven toyourself with a charity. To be bringing peace to an old man that hasnot long to live in the world! You wouldn't think now how quiet Iwould sleep, and the good dreams would be going through me, and thatgallon jar to be full and to make no sound the time I would roll iton the floor. That would be a great deed for one little pound pieceto do!

_Simon:_ I'll toss you for it. 

_Damer:_ I would not dare put anything at all upon a chance. 

_Simon:_ Leave it alone so. _(Turns away. )_

_Damer: (Seizing him. )_ It would make such a good appearance inthe little gap!

_Simon:_ Head or harp?

_Damer:_ No, I'm in dread I might lose. 

_Simon:_ Take your chance or leave it. 

_Damer:_ I to lose, you may kill me on the moment! My heart isdriven down in the sole of my shoe!

_Simon:_ That is poor courage. 

_Damer:_ There is some shiver forewarning me I will lose! I made astrong oath I never would give in again to try any sort of chance. 

_Simon:_ You didn't make it but with yourself. 

_Damer:_ It was through my luck leaving me I swore against bettingand gaming. 

_Simon:_ It might turn back fresh and hearty where you gave it solong a rest. 

_Damer:_ Well--maybe----

_Simon:_ Here now. 

_Damer:_ I dare not. 

_Simon: (Going to door. )_ I'll make my bet so according to a dreamI had. It is on a red horse I will put it to-morrow. 

_Damer:_ No--stop--wait a minute. 

_Simon:_ I'll win surely following my dream. 

_Damer:_ I might not lose. 

_Simon:_ I'm in dread of that. All turns to the man is rich. 

_Damer:_ I'll chance it!

_Simon:_ You said no and I'll take no. 

_Damer:_ You cannot go back of your word. 

_Simon:_ Let me go out from you tempting me. 

_Damer: (Seizing him. )_ Heads! I say heads!

_Simon:_ Harps it is. I win. 

_Damer:_ My bitter grief! Ochone!

_Simon:_ I'll toss you for another. 

_Damer:_ You will not. What's tosses? Look at here what is put inmy way! _(Holds up pack of cards. )_

_Simon:_ Where's the stakes?

_Damer:_ Wait a second. _(Goes into room. )_

_Simon:_ Hurry on or I won't stop. 

_Damer:_ Let you not stir out of that! _(Comes back and throws money on table. )_

_Simon:_ Come on so. _(Shuffles cards. )_

_Darner:_ Give me the pack. _(Cuts. )_ I didn't feel a card betweenmy fingers this seven and a half-score years!

_Simon:_ Spades are trumps. 

_Darner: (Lighting candle. )_ I'll win it back! I won't begrudgespending a penny candle, no, or two penny candles! I'll play you tothe brink of day!

_Curtain_

ACT II

 _The next morning. The same kitchen. Simon Niland is lying asleep on the hearth. Ralph and Staffy are looking at him_. 

_Staffy:_ Who is it at all is in it?

_Ralph:_ Who would it be but Simon Niland, that is come followingafter us. 

_Staffy:_ Stretched and sleeping all the same as if there was apin of slumber in his hair, as in the early times of the world. Theday passing without anything doing. That one will never win to afortune. 

_Ralph:_ It would be as well for ourselves maybe he not to be toogreat with Damer. 

_Staffy:_ Will Delia make any headway I wonder. She had goodcourage to go face him, and he abroad on the land, sitting stoopedon the bent body of a bush. 

_Ralph:_ I wonder what way did that lad make his way into thisplace. Wait now till I'll waken and question him. 

 _(Shakes Simon. )_

_Simon: (Drowsily. )_ Who is that stirring me?

_Ralph:_ Rouse yourself up now. 

_Simon:_ Do not be rousing me, where I am striving to catch a holdof the tail of my last dream. 

_Staffy:_ Is it seeking for a share of Damer's wealth you are come?

_Simon:_ I never asked and never looked for it. 

_Staffy:_ You are going the wrong road to reach to it. 

_Simon:_ A bald cat there was in the dream, was keeping watch overjewelleries in a cave. 

_Staffy:_ No person at all would stretch out his hand to a ladwould be rambling and walking the world, and it in its darkness andsleep, and be drowsing and miching from labour through the hours thesun has command of. 

_Delia: (At the door)_. Is it that ye are within, Staffy and Ralph?

_Ralph:_ We are, and another along with us. 

_Delia:_ Put him out the door!

_Ralph:_ Ah, there's no danger of him coming around Damer. He issimple and has queer talk too. 

_Delia:_ Put him out I say! _(Pushes Simon to door. )_ Let himdrowse out the day in the car shed! I tell you Damer is at hand!

_Ralph:_ Has he the frown on him yet?

_Staffy:_ Did his anger anyway cool down?

_Delia:_ He is coming I say. I am partly in dread of him. I amafeard and affrighted!

_Ralph:_ He should be in terrible rages so. There was no dread onyou yesterday, and he cursing and roaring the way he was. 

_Delia:_ He is mad this time out and out. Wait now till you'll see!

 _(She goes behind dresser. Damer comes to the door. Staffy goes behind a chair. Ralph seizes a broom. )_

_Damer: (At door. )_ Are you acquainted with any person, RalphHessian, is in need of a savage dog?

_Staffy:_ Is it that you are about to part Jubair your dog?

_Damer:_ I have no use for him presently. 

_Staffy:_ Is it that you are without dread of robbers coming forto knock in your skull with a stone? Or maybe out in the night it isto burn you out of the house they would. 

_Damer:_ What signifies, what signifies? All must die, all must die. The longest person that will live in the world, he is bound to go inthe heel. Life is a long road to travel and a hard rough track underthe feet. 

_Staffy:_ Mike Merrick the huckster has an apple garden boughtagainst the harvest. He should likely be seeking for a dog. There dobe little lads passing to the school. 

_Damer:_ He might want him, he might want him. _(He leans upon half-door. )_

_Staffy:_ Is it that you are tired and wore out carrying the loadof your wealth?

_Damer:_ It is a bad load surely. It was the love of moneydestroyed Buonaparte where he went robbing a church, without the menof learning are telling lies. 

_Staffy:_ I would never go so far as robbery, but to bid itwelcome I would, and it coming fair and easy into my hand. 

_Damer:_ There was a king out in Foreign went astray through thesame sin. His people that made a mockery of him after his death, filling up his jaws with rendered gold. Believe me, any person goescoveting after riches puts himself under a bad master. 

_Staffy:_ That is a master I'd be willing to engage with, he togive me my victuals and my ease. 

_Damer:_ In my opinion it was to keep temptation from our path thegold of the world was covered under rocks and in the depths of thestreams. Believe me it is best leave it where it is, and not tomeddle with the Almighty. 

_Staffy:_ You'd be best without it. It is the weight of it isbowing you to your grave. When things are vexing your mind and youare trouble minded they'll be going through your head in the nighttime. There is a big shift and a great change in you since yesterday. There is not the half of you in it. You have the cut of themisfortune. 

_Damer:_ I am under misfortune indeed. 

_Staffy:_ Give over now your load to myself before the coming ofthe dusk. The way you are there'll be nothing left of you withinthree days. There is no way with you but death. 

_Delia:_ _(To Ralph. )_ Let you raise your voice now, and comearound him on my own behalf. 

_Ralph:_ It is what herself is saying, you to be quitting theworld as it seems, it is as good for you make over to her your crockof gold. 

_Damer:_ I would not wish, for all the glories of Ireland, toleave temptation in the path of my own sister or my kin, or to twista gad for their neck. 

_Delia:_ _(To Ralph. )_ Tell him I'll chance it. 

_Damer:_ At the time of the judgment of the mountain, when the sunand moon will be all one with two blackberries, it is not beingpampered with plenty will serve you, beside being great with theangels!

_Delia:_ _(Shrinking back. )_ I would as soon nearly not get it atall, where it might bring me to the wretched state of Damer! (_Dog heard barking. )_

_Damer:_ I'll go bring my poor Jubair out of this. A great sin anda great pity to be losing provision with a dog, and the image of thesaints maybe to be going hungry and bare. How do I know what troopmight be bearing witness against me before the gate of heaven? To becherishing a ravenous beast might be setting his teeth in their limbs!To give charity to the poor is the best religion in Ireland. Didn'tour Lord Himself go beg through three and thirty years? _(He goes. )_

_Delia: (Coming forward. )_ Will you believe me now telling you heis gone unsteady in the head?

_Staffy:_ I see no other sign. He is a gone man surely. Hisunderstanding warped and turned backward. To see him blighted theway he is would stir the heart of a stone. 

_Ralph:_ He surely got some vision or some warning, or there liton him a fit or a stroke. 

_Staffy:_ Twice a child and only once a man. He is turned to beinnocent with age. 

_Ralph:_ It would be a bad thing he to meet with his death unknownto us. 

_Delia:_ It would be worse again he that is gone out of hislatitude to be brought away to the asylum. 

_Ralph:_ I don't know. 

_Delia:_ But I know. He to die, and to make no will, it isourselves, by rule and by right, that would lay claim to his wealth. 

_Staffy:_ So we could do that, and he to come to his end in thebad place, God save the mark!

_Delia:_ Would you say there would be no fear the Government mightstretch out and take charge of it, saying him to be outside of hisreason?

_Ralph:_ That would be the worst of all. We to be forced to hirean attorney against them, till we would break one another at law. 

_Delia:_ He to be stopping here, and being light in the brain, itis likely some thief travelling the road might break his way in andsweep all. 

_Ralph:_ It would be right for us keep some sort of a watch on it. 

_Staffy:_ What way would we be sitting here watching it, the sameas a hen on a pebble of flint, through a quarter or it might bethree quarters of a year? He might drag for a good while yet, andlive and linger into old days. 

_Delia:_ To take some cross turn he might, and to come at usviolent and maybe tear the flesh from our bones. 

_Staffy:_ It is best for us do nothing so, but to leave it to theforeknowledge of God. 

_Delia:_ There is but the one thing to do. To bring it away out ofthis and to lodge it within in my own house. We can settle out aplace under the hearth. 

_Staffy:_ We can make a right division of it at such time as theend will come. 

_Ralph:_ What way now will we bring away the crock?

_Delia:_ Let you go outside and be watching the road while Staffywill be bringing out the gold. 

_Staffy:_ Ah, I'm not so limber as what Ralph is. There does begiddiness and delay in my feet. It might fail me to heave it to ahiding place and to bring it away unknownst. 

_Delia:_ Let you go out so and be keeping a watch, and Ralph willput it on the ass-car under sacks. 

_Ralph:_ Do it you. I am not of his own kindred and his family. Any person to get a sketch of me bringing it away they might nearlytake myself to be a thief. 

_Delia:_ We are doing but what is fair and is right. 

_Ralph:_ Maybe so. But any neighbour to be questioning me, itmight be hard put a skin on the story. 

_Delia:_ There is no person to do it but the one. _(Calls from thedoor. )_ Come in here from the shed, Simon Niland, if thesluggishness is banished from your eyesight and from your limbs. 

_Simon: (At door_) I was thinking to go travel my road. 

_Delia:_ Have you any desire to reach out your hand for to save amortal life?

_Simon: (Coming in. )_ Whose life is that?

_Staffy:_ The man of this house that is your uncle and is owner ofwealth closed up in a jar. We now being wittier than himself, thathas lost his wits, have our mind made up to bring it away. 

_Simon:_ Outside of his knowledge is it?

_Staffy:_ It will be safe and well minded and lodged in loyalkeeping, it being no profit to him that is at this time shook andblighted, but only a danger to his days. 

_Delia:_ The seven senses to be going astray on him, what wouldail any tramp or neuk that would be passing the road, not to rob himand to lay him stone dead?

_Staffy:_ Go in now and bring out from the room and to such placeas we will command, that gallon jar of gold. 

_Ralph:_ It being certain it will be brought away from him, it isbest it to be kept in the family, and not to go nourishing lawyersor thieves. 

_Simon:_ Is it to steal it I should?

_Staffy:_ What way will it be stealing, and the whole of us to belooking on at your deed?

_Simon:_ Ah, what call have I to do that much and maybe put myselfin danger of the judge, for the sake of a man is without sense. 

_Delia:_ Let you do it for my own sake so. You heard me giving outnews on yesterday of the white goats are on the bounds of being sold. The neighbours will give me no more credit, where they loaned me theprice of a crested side car was auctioned out at a quality sale. 

_Ralph:_ Picking the eyes out of my own head they are, to pay thelittle bills they have against her. 

_Delia:_ I am no way greedy, I would ask neither food or bite, Iwould not begrudge turning Sunday into Friday if I could but get myheart's desire. Such a thing now as a guinea-hen would be bringingfashion to the door, throwing it a handful of yellow meal, and it inits speckled plumage giving out its foreign call!

_Simon:_ I have no mind to be brought within the power of the law. 

_Delia:_ You that are near in blood to refuse me so small an asking, what chance would I have sending requests to Heaven that is beyondthe height of the clouds!

 _(Weeps. )_

_Staffy:_ That's the way with them that are reared poor, they arethe hardest after to humour, striving to bring everything to theirown way. But there's a class of people in the world wouldn't do ahand's turn, no more than the bird upon the tree. 

_Ralph:_ I wonder you not to give in to us, when all the worldknows God formed young people for to be giving aid to elder people, and beyond all to them that are near to them in blood. 

_Staffy:_ Look now, Simon, let you be said and led by me. Youhaving no great share of wisdom we are wishful to make a snug man ofyou and to put you on a right road. Go in now and you will not bekept out of your own profit and your share, and a harbour of plentybeyond all. 

_Simon:_ It might be guarded by a serpent in a tree, or byunnatural things would be in the similitude of cats. 

_Staffy:_ Ah, that class is done away with this good while. 

_Ralph:_ There is no person having sense, but would take means, byhook or by crook, to make his pocket stiff and he to be given hisfair chance. It is to save you from starvation we are wishful to do, as much as to bring profit to ourselves. 

_Staffy:_ You not to follow our say you will be brought to burngreen ferns to boil your victuals, or to devour the berries of thebush. 

_Simon:_ I would not wish a head to follow me and leap up on thetable and wrestle me, or to drink against me with its gory mouth. 

_Staffy:_ You that have not the substance of a crane's marrow, togo shrink from so small a bidding, let you go on the shaughraun orto the workhouse, where you would not take our advice. 

_Simon:_ I'll go do your bidding so. I will go bring out the crock. 

_Staffy:_ There is my whiteheaded boy! I'll keep a watch, the wayDamer will not steal in on us without warning. 

_Ralph:_ He should have the key in some secret place. It is bestfor you give the lock a blow of your foot. 

_Simon:_ I'll do that. _(He gives door a kick. It opens easily. )_

_Delia:_ Was I right now saying Damer is turned innocent? Sure thedoor was not locked at all. 

_Simon: (Dragging out jar. )_ Here it is now. 

_Ralph:_ So it is and no mistake. 

_Staffy:_ There should be great weight in it. 

_Ralph:_ I am in dread it might work a hole down through thetimber of the car. 

_Delia:_ Why wouldn't we open it here? It would be handierbringing it away in small divides. 

_Ralph:_ The way we would make sure of getting our own share atthe last. 

_Delia:_ Let you draw out the cork from it. 

_Ralph:_ I don't know can I lift it. _(Stoops and lifts it easily. )_The Lord protect and save us! There is no weight in it at all!

_Staffy: (Seizing and shaking it. )_ Not a one penny in it butclean empty. That beats all. 

_Delia:_ It is with banknotes it is stuffed that are deaf and dobe giving out no sound. _(She pokes in a knitting pin. )_ Nothing init at all, but as bare as the canopy of heaven!

_Ralph:_ There being nothing within in it, where now is the gold?

_Staffy:_ Some person should have made away with it. 

_Delia:_ Some robber or some great rogue. A terrible thing suchruffians to be around in the world! To turn and rob a poor man ofall he had spared and had earned. 

_Staffy:_ They have done him a great wrong surely, taking from himall he had of comfort in his life. 

_Ralph:_ My grief it is there being no more hangings for thieves, that are worse again than murderers that might do their deed out ofheat. It is thieving is the last crime. 

_Staffy:_ We to lay our hand on that vagabond we'll give himcruelty will force him to Christian habits. 

_Ralph:_ Take care might he be nearer than what you think! (_He points at Simon. All look at him. )_

_Staffy:_ Sure enough it is with himself only we found him on thehearth this morning. 

_Delia:_ He hasn't hardly the intellect to be the thief. 

_Simon:_ I tell you I never since the day I was born could becharged with the weight of a brass pin!

_Staffy:_ It is to Damer, my fine boy, you will have to make outyour case. 

_Simon:_ So I will make it out. Where now is Damer?

_Staffy:_ He is gone down the road, where he brought away Jubairthe dog. 

_Simon:_ What are you saying? The dog gone is it? _(Goes to door. )_

_Ralph: (Taking hold of him. )_ What makes you go out in such ahurry?

_Simon:_ What is that to you?

_Delia:_ What cause has he to be making a run?

_Simon:_ Let me mind my own business. 

_Staffy:_ It is maybe our own business. 

_Simon:_ To make a search I must in that dog's kennel of straw. 

_Delia:_ Go out, Ralph, till you will bring it in. 

 _(Ralph goes out. )_

_Staffy: (Seizing him_) A man to go rush out headlong and moneyafter being stolen, I have no mind to let him make his escape. 

_Delia:_ If you are honest let you stop within and not to put abad appearance upon yourself making off. 

_Simon:_ Let me out! I tell you I have a thing concealed in the box. 

_Staffy:_ A strange place to go hiding things and a queer storyaltogether. 

_Delia:_ Do not let go your hold. He to go out into the street, hehas the wide world before him. 

_Ralph: (Dragging kennel in. )_ Here now is the box. 

_Simon: (Breaking away and searching it)_ Where at all is itvanished?

_Staffy:_ It is lies he was telling. There is nothing at allwithin in it only a wisp of barley straw. 

_Simon:_ Where at all is it?

_Staffy:_ What is it is gone from you?

_Simon:_ Not a one pound left!

_Delia:_ Why would you look to find coins of money down inJubair's bed?

_Simon:_ It is there I hid it. 

_Staffy:_ What is it you hid?

_Simon:_ All that was in the crock and that I took from it. Wherenow is my bag of gold?

_Staffy:_ Do you hear what he is after saying?

_Ralph:_ A lad of that sort will not be safe but in the gaol. Letus give him into the grip of the law. 

_Delia:_ No, but let the man owned it do that. 

_Staffy:_ So he can task him with it, and he drawing to the door. 

_Delia: (Going to it. )_ It is time for you, Patrick, come in. 

 _(Damer comes in dragging a sack. )_

_Ralph:_ You are after being robbed and left bare. 

_Delia:_ Not a one penny left of all you have cast into its mouth. 

_Ralph:_ Herself made a prophecy you would be robbed with theweakening of your wits, and sure enough it has come about. 

_Delia:_ Not a tint of it left. What now do you say, hearing that?

_Damer: (Sitting down by the hearth and laying down sack. )_ If itshould go it must go. That was allotted to me in the skies. 

_Delia:_ Is it that you had knowledge ere this of it being sweptand lost?

_Damer:_ If I had not, why would I have been setting my mind uponeternity and striving to bring to mind a few prayers? And to haveparted with my wicked dog?

_Delia:_ Let you turn around till you will see before you the manthat is the robber and the thief!

_Simon:_ Thief yourself! You that had a plan made up to bring itaway. 

_Damer:_ Delia, Delia, what was I laying down a while ago? It isthe love of riches has twisted your heart and your mind. 

_Delia:_ Is it that you are contented to be made this one's prey?

_Damer:_ It was foretold for me, I to go stint the body till Inear put myself to death without the Lord calling on me, and to loseevery whole pound after in one night's card playing. 

_Delia:_ Is it at cards you lost it?

_Damer:_ With that same pack of cards you laid out under my hand, I lost all I had gathered to that one. 

_Staffy:_ Well, there is nothing so certain in the world as therunning of a fool to a fool. 

_Delia:_ Is it taking that lad you are to be a fool? I thinkinghim to be as simple as you'd see in the world, and he putting breadupon his own butter as we slept!

_Ralph:_ We to have known all then we know now, we need not havewasted on him our advice. 

_Damer:_ Give me, boy, one answer. What in the world wide putventure into you that made you go face the dog?

_Simon:_ Ah, what venture? And he being as he is without teeth?

_Damer:_ You know that, what no one in the parish or out of itever found out till now! You should have put your hand in his jaw toknow that much! A right lad you are and a lucky lad. I would nearlywish you of my own blood and of my race. 

_Delia:_ Of your own blood is it?

_Damer:_ That is what I would wish. 

_Delia:_ Is it that you are taking Simon Niland to be a stranger?

_Damer:_ What Simon Niland?

_Delia:_ Your own nephew and only son to your sister Sarah. 

_Damer:_ Do you tell me so! What way did it fail me to recognisethat, and he having daring and spirit the same as used to be risingup in myself in my early time?

_Delia:_ He was born the very year of you coming into possessionof this place. 

_Damer:_ The same year my luck turned against me, and every horseI would back would get the staggers on the course, or would fail torise at the leaps. All the strength of fortune went from me at thattime, it is into himself it flowed and ran. The dead spit and imageof myself he is. Stop with me here through the winter season andthrough the summer season! You to be in the house it is not anunlucky house will be in it. The Royalty of England and of Spaincannot touch upon yourself. I am prouder of you than if you wrotethe wars of Homer or put down Turgesius of the Danes! You are a ladthat can't be beat. It is you are the Lamb of Luck!

_Staffy:_ What call has he or any of us to be stopping underDamer's roof and he owning but the four walls presently and a poorlittle valley of land?

_Ralph:_ There is nothing worth while in his keeping, and all hehad gathered after being robbed. 

_Damer:_ Is that what you are saying? Well, I am not so easyrobbed as you think! _(Takes bag from the sack and shakes it. )_ Isthat what you call being robbed?

_Simon:_ That is my treasure and my bag!

_Staffy:_ I thought it was after being brought away from the twoof you. 

_Damer:_ You are out of it! It is Jubair did that much for me. Jubair, my darling, it is tonight I'll bring him back to the house!It is not in the box he will be any more but alongside the warmth ofthe hearth. The time I went unloosing his chain, didn't he scrapewith his paw till he showed me all I had lost hid in under the straw, and it in a spotted bag! _(Opens and pours out money. )_

_Simon:_ It is as well for you have it back where it stopped soshort with myself. 

_Damer:_ Is it that I would keep it from you where it was won fair?It is a rogue of a man would do that. Where would be the use, and Iknowing you could win it back from me at your will, and the fivetrumps coming into your hand? It is to share it we will and sharealike, so long as it will not give out!

_Delia:_ A little handsel to myself would do the both of you noharm at all. 

_Damer:_ Delia, my darling, I'll go as far as that on this day ofwonders. I'll handsel you and welcome. I'll bestow on you the emptyjar. _(Gives it to her. )_

_Delia:_ I'll take it. I'll let on it to be weighty and I facingback into Loughtyshassy. 

_Ralph:_ The neighbours seeing it and taking you to be his heiryou might come to your goats yet. 

_Delia:_ Ah, what's goats and what is guinea-hens? Did ever yousee yoked horses in a coach, their skin shining out like shells, rising their steps in tune the same as a patrol of police? There arepeacocks on the lawns of Lough Cutra they were telling me, havingeach of them a hundred eyes. _(Goes to door. )_

_Simon: (Putting his hand on the jar. )_ I don't know. _(To Damer_)It might be a nice thing for the two of us to start gathering thefull of it again. 

_Damer:_ Not a fear of me. Where heaping and hoarding that muchhas my years withered and blighted up to this, it is not to storingtreasure in any vessel at all I will give the latter end of my days, or to working the skin off my bones. Give me here that coat. (_Puts it on. )_ If I was tossed and racked a while ago I'll showout good from this out. Come on now, out of this, till we'll face tothe races of Loughrea and of Knockbarron. I was miserable andstarved long enough. _(Puts on hat. )_ I'm thinking as long as I'll beliving I'll take my view of the world, for it's long I'll be lyingwhen my eyes are closed and seeing nothing at all!

 _(He seizes a handful of gold and puts it in Simon's pocket and another in his own. They turn towards the door. )_

_Curtain_

McDONOUGH'S WIFE

PERSONS

_McDonough, a piper. __First Hag. __Second Hag. _

McDONOUGH'S WIFE

 _Scene: A very poor room in Galway with outer and inner door. Noises of a fair outside. A Hag sitting by the fire. Another standing by outer door_. 

_First Hag:_ Is there e'er a sign of McDonough to be coming?

_Second Hag:_ There is not. There were two or three asking for him, wanting him to bring the pipes to some spree-house at the time thefair will be at an end. 

_First Hag:_ A great wonder he not to have come, and this the fairday of Galway. 

_Second Hag:_ He not to come ere evening, the woman that is deadmust go to her burying without one to follow her, or any friend atall to flatten the green scraws above her head. 

_First Hag:_ Is there no neighbour at all will do that much, andshe being gone out of the world?

_Second Hag:_ There is not. You said to ask Pat Marlborough, and Iasked him, and he said there were plenty of decent women and ofwell-reared women in Galway he would follow and welcome the day theywould die, without paying that respect to one not belonging to thedistrict, or that the town got no good account of the time she came. 

_First Hag:_ Did you do as I bade you, asking Cross Ford to sendin a couple of the boys she has?

_Second Hag:_ What a fool I'd be asking her! I laid down to herthe way it was. McDonough's wife to be dead, and he far out in thecountry, and no one belonging to her to so much as lift the coffinover the threshold of the door. 

_First Hag:_ What did she say hearing that?

_Second Hag:_ She put a big laugh out of her, and it is what shesaid: "May the devil die with her, and it is well pleased the streetwill be getting quit of her, and it is hard say on what mountain shemight be grazing now. "

_First Hag:_ There will no help come burying her so. 

_Second Hag:_ It is too lofty McDonough was, and too high-minded, bringing in a woman was maybe no lawful wife, or no honest childitself, but it might be a bychild or a tinker's brat, and he givingout no account of her generations or of her name. 

_First Hag:_ Whether or no, she was a little giddy. But that isthe way with McDonough. He is sometimes an unruly lad, but he wouldnear knock you with his pride. 

_Second Hag:_ Indeed he is no way humble, but looking forattendance on her, as if she was the youngest and the greatest inthe world. 

_First Hag:_ It is not to humour her the Union men will, and theycarrying her to where they will sink her into the ground, unless itmight be McDonough would come back, and he having money in his hand, to bring in some keeners and some hired men. 

_Second Hag:_ He to come back at this time it is certain he willbring a fist-full of money. 

_First Hag:_ What makes you say that to be certain?

_Second Hag:_ A troop of sheep-shearers that are on the west sideof the fair, looking for hire from the grass farmers. I heard themlaying down they met with McDonough at the big shearing atCregroostha. 

_First Hag:_ What day was that?

_Second Hag:_ This day week for the world. 

_First Hag:_ He has time and plenty to be back in Galway ere this. 

_Second Hag:_ Great dancing they had and a great supper at thetime the shearing was at an end and the fleeces lodged in the bigsacks. It is McDonough played his music through the night-time. Itis what I heard them saying, "He went out of that place weightierthan he went in. "

_First Hag:_ He is a great one to squeeze the pipes surely. Thereis no place ever he went into but he brought the whip out of it. 

_Second Hag:_ His father was better again, they do be saying. Itwas from the other side he got the gift. 

_First Hag:_ He did, and from beyond the world, where hebefriended some in the forths of the Danes. It was they taught himtheir trade. I heard tell, he to throw the pipes up on top of therafters, they would go sounding out tunes of themselves. 

_Second Hag:_ He could do no more with them than what McDonoughhimself can do--may ill luck attend him! It is inhuman tunes he doesbe making; unnatural they are. 

_First Hag:_ He is a great musician surely. 

_Second Hag:_ There is no person can be safe from him the time hewill put his "come hither" upon them. I give you my word he setmyself dancing reels one time in the street, and I making an attackon him for keeping the little lads miching from school. That was agreat scandal to put upon a decent woman. 

_First Hag:_ He to be in the fair to-day and to take the fancy, you would hear the nailed boots of the frieze-coated man footingsteps on the sidewalk. 

_Second Hag:_ You would, and it's likely he'd play a notion intothe skulls of the pampootied boys from Aran, they to be kings ofFrance or of Germany, till they'd go lift their head to the cloudsand go knocking all before them. And the police it is likelylaughing with themselves, as if listening to the talk of theblackbird would be perched upon a blessed bush. 

_First Hag:_ I wonder he did not come. Could it be he might bemade away with for the riches he brought from Cregroostha? It wouldbe a strange thing now, he to be lying and his head broke, at thebutt of a wall, and the woman he thought the whole world of to begetting her burial from the workhouse. 

 _(A sound of pipes. )_

_Second Hag:_ Whist, I tell you! It's the sound of the pipes. Itis McDonough, it is no other one. 

_First Hag:_ _(Getting up. )_ I'm in dread of him coming in thehouse. He is a hasty man and wicked, and he vexed. What at all willhe say and she being dead before him? Whether or no, it will be asharp grief to him, she to scatter and to go. He might give me abackstroke and drive me out from the door. 

_Second Hag:_ Let you make an attack upon himself before he willhave time to make his own attack. 

_McDonough:_ _(Coming in. )_ Catherine! Where is she? Where isCatherine?

_First Hag:_ Is it readying the dinner before you, or wringing outa shirt for the Sunday like any good slave of a wife, you are usedto find your woman, McDonough?

_McDonough:_ What call would she have stopping in the house withthe withered like of yourself? It is not to the crabbed talk of apeevish hag a handsome young woman would wish to be listening andsport and funning being in the fair outside. 

_First Hag:_ Go look for her in the fair so, if it is gadding upand down is her habit, and you being gone out from her sight. 

_McDonough: (Shaking her. )_ Tell me out, where is she?

_First Hag:_ Tell out what harbour were you yourself in from theday you left Cregroostha?

_McDonough:_ Is it that she got word?--or that she was tiredwaiting for me?

_First Hag:_ She is gone away from you, McDonough. 

_McDonough:_ That is a lie, a black lie. 

_First Hag:_ Throwing a lie in a decent woman's face will notbring you to the truth. 

_McDonough:_ Is it what you are laying down that she went awaywith some other man? Say that out if you have courage, and I'llwring your yellow windpipe. 

_First Hag:_ Leave your hand off me and open the room door, andyou will see am I telling you any lie. 

_McDonough: (Goes to door, then stops. )_ She is not in it. Shewould have come out before me, and she hearing the sound of the pipes. 

_First Hag:_ It is not the sound of the pipes will rouse her, orany sound made in this world at all. 

_McDonough: (Trembling. )_ What is it?

_First Hag:_ She is gone and she is not living. 

_McDonough:_ Is it to die she did? _(Clutches her. )_

_First Hag:_ Yesterday, and the bells ringing, she turned her faceto the south and died away. It was at the hour of noon I knew andwas aware she was gone. A great loss it to be at the time of the fair, and all the lodgers that would have come into the house. 

_McDonough:_ It is not truth. What would ail her to die?

_First Hag:_ The makings of a child that came before its time, Godsave the mark! She made a bad battle at the last. 

_McDonough:_ What way did it fail you to send me out messengersseeking me when you knew her to be done and dying?

_First Hag:_ I thought she would drag another while. There was notime for the priest itself to overtake her, or to put the littledress of the Virgin in her hand at the last gasp of death. 

 _McDonough goes into the room. He comes out as if affrighted, leans his head against the wall, and breaks into a prayer in Irish:_

_"An Athair tha in Naomh, dean trocaire orainn! A Dia Righ an Domhain, dean trocaire orainn! A Mhuire Mathair Dia, dean trocaire orainn!"_

_Second Hag:_ _(Venturing near. )_ Do not go fret after her, McDonough. She could not go through the world forever, andtravelling the world. It might be that trouble went with her. 

_McDonough:_ Get out of that, you hags, you witches you! Youcroaking birds of ill luck! It is much if I will leave you in theliving world, and you not to have held back death from her!

_Second Hag:_ That you may never be cross till you will meet withyour own death! What way could any person do that?

_McDonough:_ Get out the door and it will be best for you!

_Second Hag:_ You are talking fool's talk and giving out wordsthat are foolishness! There is no one at all can put away from hisroad the bones and the thinness of death. 

_McDonough:_ I to have been in it he would not have come under thelintel! Ugly as he is and strong, I would be able for him and wouldwrestle with him and drag him asunder and put him down! Before Iwould let him lay his sharp touch on her I would break and wouldcrush his naked ribs, and would burn them to lime and scatter them!

_First Hag:_ Where is the use raving? It is best for you to turnyour hand to the thing has to be done. 

_McDonough:_ You to have stood in his path he might have broughtyou away in her place! That much would be no great thing to ask, andyour life being dead and in ashes. 

_First Hag:_ Quieten yourself now where it was the will of God. She herself made no outcry and no ravings. I did my best for her, laying her out and putting a middling white sheet around her. I wentso far as to smoothen her hair on the two sides of her face. 

_McDonough: (Turning to inner door. )_ Is it that you are gone fromme, Catherine, you that were the blossom of the branch!

 _(Old woman moans. )_

It is a bad case you to have gone and to have left me as lonesomeafter you as that no one ever saw the like!

 _(The old woman moans after each sentence. )_

I to bring you travelling you were the best traveller, and the beststepper, and the best that ever faced the western blast, and thewaves of it blowing from you the shawl! I to be sore in the heartwith walking you would make a smile of a laugh. I would not feel theroad having your company; I would walk every whole step of Ireland. 

I to bring you to the dance-house you would dance till you had themall tired, the same in the late of the day as in the commencement!Your steps following quick on one another the same as hard rain on aflagstone! They could not find your equal in all Ireland or in thewhole ring of Connemara!

What way did it fail me to see the withering of the branches onevery bush, as it is certain they withered the time laughter diedwith your laugh? The cold of winter has settled on the hearth. Myheart is closed up with trouble!

_First Hag:_ It is best for us shut the door and to keep out thenoises of the fair. 

_McDonough:_ Ah, what sort at all are the people of the fair, tobe doing their bargaining and clutching after their luckpenny, andshe being stark and quiet!

_First Hag:_ She has to be buried ere evening. There was amessenger of a clerk came laying that down. 

_McDonough:_ May ill luck attend him! Is it that he thinks shethat is gone has no person belonging to her to wake her through thenight-time?

_First Hag:_ He sent his men to coffin her. She will be broughtaway in the heel of the day. 

_McDonough:_ It is a great wake I will give her. It would not befor honour she to go without that much. Cakes and candles and drinkand tobacco! The table of this house is too narrow. It is from theneighbours we should borrow tables. 

_First Hag:_ That cannot be. It is what the man said, "This is acommon lodging-house. It is right to banish the dead from the living. "He has the law with him, and custom. There is no use you thinking togo outside of that. 

_McDonough:_ My lasting grief it will be I not to get leave toshow her that respect!

_First Hag:_ "There will a car be sent, " he said, "and two boysfrom the Union for to bear her out from the house. "

_McDonough:_ Men from the Union, are you saying? I would not giveleave to one of them to put a hand anigh or anear her! It is nottheir car will bring her to the grave. That would be the most pityin the world!

_First Hag:_ You have no other way to bring her on her road. It isbest for you give in to their say. 

_McDonough:_ Where are the friends and the neighbours that theywould not put a hand tinder her?

_First Hag:_ They are after making their refusal. She was not wellliked in Galway. There is no one will come to her help. 

_McDonough:_ Is that truth, or is it lies you have made up for mytormenting?

_First Hag:_ It is no lie at all. It is as sure as the winter'sfrost. You have no one to draw to but yourself. 

_McDonough:_ It is mad jealous the women of Galway were and wildwith anger, and she coming among them, that was seventeen timesbetter than their best! My bitter grief I ever to have come next ornear them, or to have made music for the lugs or for the feet ofwide crooked hags! That they may dance to their death to the devil'spipes and be the disgrace of the world! It is a great slur onIreland and a great scandal they to have made that refusing! Thatthe Corrib River may leave its merings and rise up out of its bankstill the waves will rise like mountains over the town and smother it, with all that is left of its tribes!

_First Hag:_ Be whist now, or they will be angered and theyhearing you outside in the fair. 

_McDonough:_ Let their day not thrive with the buyers and thesellers in the fair! The curse of mildew on the tillage men, thatevery grain of seed they have sowed may be rotten in the ridges, andthe grass corn blasted from the east before the latter end of harvest!The curse of the dead on the herds driving cattle and following aftermarkets and fairs! My own curse on the big farmers slapping andspitting in their deal! That a blood murrain may fall upon theirbullocks! That rot may fall upon their flocks and maggots make themtheir pasture and their prey between this and the great feast ofChristmas! It is my grief every hand in the fair not to be setshaking and be crookened, where they were not stretched out infriendship to the fair-haired woman that is left her lone withinboards!

_Second Hag: (At door. )_ Is it a niggard you are grown to be, McDonough, and you with riches in your hand? Is it against a newwedding you are keeping your pocket stiff, or to buy a house and anestate, that it fails you to call in hired women to make a rightkeening, and a few decent boys to lift her through the streets?

_McDonough:_ I to have money or means in my hand, I would ask nohelp or be beholden to any one at all. 

_Second Hag:_ If you had means, is it? I heard by true tellingthat you have money and means. "At the sheep-shearers' dance a highlady held the plate for the piper; a sovereign she put in it out ofher hand, and there was no one of the big gentry but followed her. There never was seen so much riches in any hall or home. " Where nowis the fifty gold sovereigns you brought away from Cregroostha?

_McDonough:_ Where is it?

_Second Hag:_ Is it that you would begrudge it to the woman isinside?

_McDonough:_ You know well I would not begrudge it. 

_First Hag:_ A queer thing you to speak so stiff and to be runningdown all around you, and your own pocket being bulky the while. 

_McDonough:_ _(Turning out pocket. )_ It is as slack and as emptyas when I went out from this. 

_Second Hag:_ You could not have run through that much. 

_McDonough:_ Not a red halfpenny left, or so much as the image ofa farthing. 

_First Hag:_ Is it robbed and plundered you were, and you walkingthe road?

_McDonough:_ _(Sitting down and rocking himself. )_ I wish to myGod it was some robber stripped and left me bare! Robbed andplundered! I was that, and by the worst man and the unkindest thatever was joined to a woman or lost a woman, and that is myself. 

_First Hag:_ Is it to lose it unknownst you did?

_McDonough:_ What way did I lose it, is it? I lost it knowinglyand of my own will. Thrown on counters, thrown on the drink-housefloor, given for spirits, given for porter, thrown for drink forfriends and acquaintances, for strangers and strollers and vagabonds. Scattered in the parish of Ardrahan and at Labane cross. Tramps andschemers lying drunk and dead drunk at the butt of every wall. _(Buries head in his hands. )_

_First Hag:_ That is what happened the gold yourself and the pipeshad won? You made no delay doing that much. You have a great wrongdone to the woman inside, where you left her burying bare. 

_Second Hag:_ She to be without a farthing dip for her corpse, andyou after lavishing gold. 

_First Hag:_ You have a right to bruise your knees makingrepentance, you that lay on the one pillow with her. You to beputting curses upon others and making attacks on them! I would makeno complaint, you to be naked at your own burying and at the veryhour of death, and the rain falling down on your head. 

_McDonough:_ Little I mind what happens me. There is no word youcan put out of your mouth can do me any injury at all. Oh, Catherine, it is best for me go hang myself out of a tree, and my carcass to betorn by savage dogs that went famished through a great length of time, and my bones left without a token or a flag or a headstone, and myname that was up at one time to be forgotten out of mind! _(He bursts out sobbing. )_

_First Hag:_ The shadows should be lengthening in the street. Lookout would you see the car to be coming. 

_Second Hag:_ It was a while ago at the far corner of the fair. They were but waiting for the throng to lessen. 

_First Hag:_ They are making too much delay. 

_Second Hag:_ I see a hint of the livery of the poorhouse comingthrough the crowd. 

_First Hag:_ The men of the Union are coming to bring her away, McDonough. There is nothing more to be done. She will get her burialfrom the rates. 

_McDonough:_ Oh, Catherine, Catherine! Is it I myself have broughtyou to that shame and that disgrace!

_Second Hag:_ You are making too much of it. Little it will signify, and we to be making clay, who was it dug a hole through the nettlesor lifted down the sods over our head. 

_First Hag:_ That is so. What signifies she to be followed or tobe going her lone, and her eyes being shut to the world?

_McDonough:_ Is that the thought ye have within ye, ye Galway hags?It is easy known it is in a trader's town you were bred, and in astreet among dealers. 

_First Hag:_ I was but saying it does not signify. 

_McDonough:_ But I say it does signify! I will tell that out toyou and the world! That might be the thought of a townsman or atrader, or a rich merchant itself that had his estate gained bytrafficking, for that is a sort does be thinking more of what theycan make out of the living than of keeping a good memory of the dead!

_First Hag:_ There are worthier men than yourself, maybe, instorehouses and in shops. 

_McDonough:_ But I am of the generations of Orpheus, and have inme the breed of his master! And of Raftery and Carolan and O'Dalyand all that made sounds of music from this back to the foundationsof the earth! And as to the rich of the world, I would not humble myhead to them. Let them have their serving men and their labourersand messengers will do their bidding. But the servant I myselfcommand is the pipes that draws its breath from the four winds, andfrom a wind is beyond them again, and at the back of the winds ofthe air. She was a wedded woman and a woman having my own gold ringon her hand, and my own name put down with hers in the book. But sheto have been a shameless woman as ye make her out to be, and soldfrom tinker to tinker on the road it is all one! I will show Galwayand the world that it does signify; that it is not fittingMcDonough's wife to travel without company and good hands under herand good following on the road. Play now, pipes, if you never playedbefore! Call to the keeners to follow her with screams and beatingof the hands and calling out! Set them crying now with your soundand with your notes, as it is often you brought them to thedance-house!

 _(Goes out and plays a lament outside. )_

_First Hag: (Looking out. )_ It is queer and wild he is, cuttinghis teeth and the hair standing on him. 

_Second Hag:_ Some high notion he has, calling them to show honourto her as if she was the Queen of the Angels. 

_First Hag:_ To draw to silence the whole fair did. Every personis moving towards this house. 

 _(A murmur as of people. McDonough comes in, stands at door, looking out. )_

_McDonough:_ I squeeze the pipes as a challenge to the whole ofthe fair, gentle noble and simple, the poor and the high up. Comehither and cry Catherine McDonough, give a hand to carry her to thegrave! Come to her aid, tribes of Galway, Lynches and Blakes andFrenches! McDonough's pipes give you that command, that have learnedthe lamentation of the Danes. 

Come follow her on the road, trades of Galway, the fishermen, andthe carpenters, and the weavers! It is by no short road we willcarry her that never will walk any road from this out! ByWilliams-gate, beside Lynch's gallows, beside the gaol of thehangings, the salmon will make their leap as we pass!

_Men at Door:_ We will. We will follow her, McDonough. 

_Others:_ Give us the first place. 

_Others:_ We ourselves will carry her!

_McDonough:_ Faith, Catherine, you have your share and your choicethis day of fine men, asking to carry you and to lend you theirstrength. 

I will give no leave to traffickers to put their shoulder under you, or to any that made a refusal, or any seaside man at all. 

I will give leave to no one but the sheep-shearers from Eserkelly, from Moneen and Cahirlinny and the whole stretch of Cregroostha. Itis they have friendship for music, it is they have a wish for myfour bones. 

 _(Sheep-shearers come in. They are dressed in white flannel. Each has a pair of shears at his side. The first carries a crook. )_

_First Sheep-shearer:_ Is it within there she is, McDonough?

_First Hag:_ Go in through the door. The boards are around her anda clean quilt over them. Have a care not to leave down your hands onit, and they maybe being soiled with the fair. 

 _(They take off their hats and go in. )_

_McDonough: (Turning to her door. )_ If you got no great honourfrom your birth up, and went barefoot through the first of your youth, you will get great respect now and will be remembered in the timesto come. 

There is many a lady dragging silk skirts through the lawns and theflower knots of Connacht, will get no such grand gathering of peopleat the last as you are getting on this day. 

It is the story of the burying of McDonough's wife will be writtenin the book of the people!

 _(Sheep-shearers appear at inner door. McDonough goes out, squeezing the pipes. Triumphant music is heard from outside. )_

_Curtain_

NOTES

THE BOGIE MEN

A message sent to America from Dublin that our Theatre had been"driven out with hisses"; an answering message from New York thatthe _Playboy_, the cause of battle, was now "as dead as a doornail, "set me musing with renewed delight on our incorrigible genius formyth-making, the faculty that makes our traditional history aperpetual joy, because it is, like the Sidhe, an eternalShape-changer. 

At Philadelphia, the city of trees, where in spite of a day in thepolice court and before a judge, and the arrest of our players atthe suit not of a Puritan but a publican, and the throwing ofcurrant cake with intent to injure, I received very great personalkindness, a story of his childhood told by my host gave me a fableon which to hang my musings; and the Dublin enthusiast and theAmerican enthusiast who interchanged so many compliments and made sobrave a show to one another, became Dermot and Timothy, "twoharmless drifty lads, " the _Bogie Men_ of my little play. They wereto have been vagrants, tatterdemalions, but I needed some dress thechange of which would change their whole appearance in a moment, andthere came to mind the chimney sweepers of my childhood. 

They used to come trotting the five miles from Loughrea, littlefellows with blue eyes shining out from soot-black faces, wearinglittle soot-coloured smocks. Our old doctor told us he had gone tosee one of them who was sick, and had found him lying in a box, withsoot up to his chin as bedding and blanket. 

Not many years ago a decent looking man came to my door, with Iforget what request. He told me he had heard of ghosts and fairies, but had never met with anything worse than himself, but that he hadhad one great fright in his lifetime. Its cause had been thesquealing and outcry made by two rats caught in one trap, that hadcome clattering down a flight of steps one time when he was a littlelad, and had come sweeping chimneys to Roxborough. 

[Music: AIR OF "ALL AROUND MY HAT I WILL WEAR A GREEN RIBBON!"]

THE FULL MOON

It had sometimes preyed on my mind that _Hyacinth Halvey_ had beenleft by me in Cloon for his lifetime, bearing the weight of acharacter that had been put on him by force. But it failed me torelease him by reason, that "binds men to the wheel"; it took thecall of some of those unruly ones who give in to no limitations, anddance to the sound of music that is outside this world, to bring himout from "roast and boiled and all the comforts of the day. " Where heis now I do not know, but anyway he is free. 

Tannian's dog has now become a protagonist; and Bartley Fallon andShawn Early strayed in from the fair green of _Spreading the News_, and Mrs. Broderick from the little shop where _The Jackdaw_ hops onthe counter, as witnesses to the miracle that happened in Hyacinth'sown inside; and it is likely they may be talking of it yet; for thetalks of Cloon are long talks, and the histories told there do notlessen or fail. 

As to Davideen's song, I give the air of it below. The Queen Anne init was no English queen, but, as I think, that Aine of the old godsat whose hill mad dogs were used to gather, and who turned to greythe yellow hair of Finn of the Fianna of Ireland. It is with somethought of her in their mind that the history-tellers say "Anne wasnot fair like the Georges but very bad and a tyrant. She tyrannisedover the Irish. She was very wicked; oh! very wicked indeed!"

[Music: AIR OF "THE HEATHER BROOM!"]

COATS

I find some bald little notes I made before writing _Coats_. "Hazel is astonished Mineog can take such a thing to heart, but itis quite different when he himself is off ended. " "The quarrel is soviolent you think it can never be healed, but the ordinarycircumstances of life force reconciliation. They are the mostpowerful force of all. " And then a quotation from Nietzsche, "A good war justifies every cause. "

DAMER'S GOLD

In a lecture I gave last year on playwriting I said I had beenforced to write comedy because it was wanted for our theatre, to puton at the end of the verse plays, but that I think tragedy is easier. For, I said, tragedy shows humanity in the grip of circumstance, offate, of what our people call "the thing will happen, " "the Woman inthe Stars that does all. " There is a woman in the stars they say, who is always hurting herself in one way or other, and according towhat she is doing at the hour of your birth, so will it happen toyou in your lifetime, whether she is hanging herself or drowningherself or burning herself in the fire. "And, " said an old man whowas telling me this, "I am thinking she was doing a great deal ofacting at the time I myself made my start in the world. " Well, youput your actor in the grip of this woman, in the claws of the cat. Once in that grip you know what the end must be. You may let yourhero kick or struggle, but he is in the claws all the time, it is amere question as to how nearly you will let him escape, and when youwill allow the pounce. Fate itself is the protagonist, your actorcannot carry much character, it is out of place. You do not want toknow the character of a wrestler you see trying his strength at ashow. 

In writing a little tragedy, _The Gaol Gate_, I made the scenario inthree lines, "He is an informer; he is dead; he is hanged. " I wrotethat play very quickly. My two poor women were in the clutch of theWoman in the Stars. .. . I knew what I was going to do and I was ableto keep within those three lines. But in comedy it is different. Character comes in, and why it is so I cannot explain, but as soonas one creates a character, he begins to put out little feet of hisown and take his own way. 

I had been meditating for a long time past on the mass of advicethat is given one by friends and well-wishers and relations, advicethat would be excellent if the giver were not ignorant so often ofthe one essential in the case, the one thing that matters. But thereis usually something out of sight, of which the adviser is unaware, it may be something half mischievously hidden from him, it may bethat "secret of the heart with God" that is called religion. In thewhole course of our work at the theatre we have been I may saydrenched with advice by friendly people who for years gave us thereasons why we did not succeed. .. . All their advice, or at leastsome of it, might have been good if we had wanted to make money, tomake a common place of amusement. Our advisers did not see that whatwe wanted was to create for Ireland a theatre with a base of realism, with an apex of beauty. Well, last summer I made a fable for thismeditation, this emotion, at the back of my mind to drive. 

I pictured to myself, for I usually first see a play as a picture, ayoung man, a mere lad, very sleepy in the daytime. He was surroundedby people kind and wise, who lamented over his rags and idleness andassured him that if he didn't get up early and do his work in thedaytime he would never know the feel of money in his hand. Helistens to all their advice, but he does not take it, because heknows what they do not know, that it is in the night time preciselyhe is filling his pocket, in the night when, as I think, we receivegifts from the unseen. I placed him in the house of a miser, an oldman who had saved a store of gold. I called the old man Damer, froma folk-story of a chandler who had bought for a song the kegs ofgold the Danes had covered with tallow as a disguise when they weredriven out of Ireland, and who had been rich and a miser ever after. I did not mean this old man, Damer, to appear at all. He was to beas invisible as that Heaven of which we are told the violent take itby force. My intention at first was that he should be robbed, butthen I saw robbery would take too much sympathy from my young lad, and I decided the money should be won by the lesser sin ofcardplaying, but still behind the scenes. Then I thought it wouldhave a good stage effect if old Damer could just walk once acrossthe stage in the background. His relations might have come into thehouse to try and make themselves agreeable to him, and he wouldappear and they would vanish. . .. Damer comes in, and contrary tomy intention, he begins to find a tongue of his own. He has made hisstart in the world, and has more than a word to say. How that playwill work out I cannot be sure, or if it will ever be finished at all. But if ever it is I am quite sure it will go as Damer wants, not as Iwant. 

That is what I said last winter, and now in harvest time the play isall but out of my hands. But as I foretold, Damer has takenpossession of it, turning it to be as simple as a folk-tale, wherethe innocent of the world confound the wisdom of the wise. The ideawith which I set out has not indeed quite vanished, but is as if"extinct and pale; not darkness, but light that has become dead. "

As to Damer's changes of mood, it happened a little time ago, whenthe play was roughly written, but on its present lines, that I tookup a volume of Montaigne, and found in it his justification by highexamples:

"Verilie it is not want but rather plentie that causeth avarice. Iwill speake of mine owne experience concerning this subject. I havelived in three kinds of condition since I came out of my infancie. The first time, which continued well nigh twentie yeares, I havepast it over as one who had no other means but casual without anycertaine maintenance or regular prescription. My expenses were somuch the more carelessly laid out and lavishly employed, by how muchmore they wholly depended on fortunes rashnesse and exhibition. Inever lived so well at ease. .. . My second manner of life hath been tohave monie: which when I had once fingred, according to my conditionI sought to hoorde up some against a rainy day. .. . My minde was everon my halfe-penny; my thoughts ever that way. Of commoditie I hadlittle or nothing. .. . And after you are once accustomed, and havefixed your thoughts upon a heape of monie, it is no longer at yourservice; you dare not diminish it; it is a building which if youtouch or take any part from it, you will think it will all fall. AndI should sooner pawne my clothes or sell a horse, with lesse careand compulsion than make a breach into that beloved purse which Ikept in store. .. . I was some yeares of the same humour: I wot notwhat good Demon did most profitably remove me from it, like to theSiracusan, and made me to neglect my sparing. .. . I live from hand tomouth, from day to day, and have I but to supplie my present andordinarie needs I am satisfied. .. . And I singularly gratifie myselfthis correction came upon me in an age naturally inclined tocovetousnesse, and that I am free from that folly so common andpeculiar to old men, and the most ridiculous of all humane follies. Feraulez who had passed through both fortunes and found thatencrease of goods was no encrease of appetite to eat, to sleepe orto embrace his wife; and who on the other side felt heavily on hisshoulders the importunitie of ordering and directing hisOeconomicall affairs as it doth on mine, determined with himselfe tocontent a poore young man, his faithfull friend, greedily gapingafter riches, and frankly made him a present donation of all hisgreat and excessive riches, always provided hee should undertake toentertaine and find him, honestly and in good sort, as his guest andfriend. In which estate they lived afterwards most happily andmutually content with the change of their condition. "

And so I hope it may come to pass with the remaining years of Simonand of Damer. 

McDONOUGH'S WIFE

In my childhood there was every year at my old home, Roxborough, or, as it is called in Irish, Cregroostha, a great sheep-shearing thatlasted many days. On the last evening there was always a dance forthe shearers and their helpers, and two pipers used to sit on chairsplaced on a corn-bin to make music for the dance. One of them wasalways McDonough. He was the best of all the wandering pipers whowent about from house to house. When, at my marriage, I moved fromthe barony of Dunkellin to the neighbouring barony of Kiltartan, hecame and played at the dance given to the tenants in my honour, andhe came and played also at my son's coming of age. Not long afterthat he died. The last time I saw him he came to ask for a loan ofmoney to take the train to Ennis, where there was some fair orgathering of people going on, and I would not lend to so old a friend, but gave him a half-sovereign, and we parted with kindly words. Hewas so great a piper that in the few years since his death mythshave already begun to gather around him. I have been told that hisfather was taken into a hill of the Danes, the Tuatha de Danaan, theancient invisible race, and they had taught him all their tunes andso bewitched his pipes that they would play of themselves if hethrew them up on the rafters. McDonough's pipes, they say, had notthat gift, but he himself could play those inspired tunes. Lately Iwas told the story I have used in this play about his taking awayfifty sovereigns from the shearing at Cregroostha and spending themat a village near. "I said to him, " said the old man who told me this, "that it would be better for him to have bought a good kitchen ofbacon; but he said, 'Ah, when I want more, I have but to squeeze thepipes. '" The story of his wife's death and burial as I give it hasbeen told to me here and there. That is my fable, and the emotiondisclosed by the story is, I think, the lasting pride of the artistof all ages:

 "We are the music makers And we are the dreamers of dreams. .. . We in the ages lying In the buried past of the earth Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth. "

I wrote the little play while crossing the Atlantic in the _Cymric_last September. Since it was written I have been told at Kinvarathat "McDonough was a proud man; he never would go to a weddingunasked, and he never would play through a town, " So he had laiddown pride for pride's sake, at that time of the burying of his wife. 

In Galway this summer one who was with him at the end told me he hada happy death, "But he died poor; for what he would make in the longnights he would spend through the summer days. " And then she said, "Himself and Reilly and three other fine pipers died within that year. There was surely a feast of music going on in some other place. "

_Dates of production of plays_. 

THE BOGIE MEN was first produced at the Court Theatre, London, July 8, 1912, with the following cast:

_Taig O'Harragha_ J. M. KERRIGAN_Darby Melody_ J. A. O'ROURKE

THE FULL MOON was first produced at the AbbeyTheatre, Dublin, on November 10, 1910, with thefollowing cast:

_Shawn Early_ J. O'ROURKE_Bartley Fallon_ ARTHUR SINCLAIR_Peter Tannian_ SIDNEY MORGAN_Hyacinth Halvey_ FRED. O'DONOVAN_Mrs. Broderick_ SARA ALLGOOD_Miss Joyce_ EILEEN O'DOHERTY_Cracked Mary_ MAIRE O'NEILL_Davideen_ J. M. KERRIGAN

COATS was first produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, December, 1910, with the following cast:

_Mineog_ ARTHUR SINCLAIR_Hazel_ J. M. KERRIGAN_John_ J. A. O'ROURKE

DAMER'S GOLD was first produced at the AbbeyTheatre November 21, 1912, with the following cast:

_Delia Hessian_ SARA ALLGOOD_Staffy Kirwan_ SIDNEY MORGAN_Ralph Hessian_ J. M. KERRIGAN_Damer_ ARTHUR SINCLAIR_Simon Niland_ A. WRIGHT

McDONOUGH'S WIFE has not yet been produced by the Abbey Company.