New Irish Comedies
by
Lady Augusta Gregory
Part 1 out of 3
Produced by Juliet Sutherland and Robert Prince
New Comedies
By Lady Gregory
The Bogie Men--The Full Moon--Coats
Darmer's Gold--McDonough's Wife
COPYRIGHT 1913
BY LADY GREGORY
TO THE RT. HON. W.F. BAILEY
COUNSELLOR, 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.)_ What
brought 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 decent
appearance, rinsing my head and my features in a tin can of water.
_Taig:_ Is it long till the coach will be passing by the
cross-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 from
the 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 the
country clear out their own chimneys with a bush under and a bush
overhead.
_Darby:_ I travel only gentlemen's houses.
_Taig:_ There does be more of company in the streets than you'd
find on the bare road.
_Darby:_ It isn't easy get company for a person has but two empty
hands.
_Taig:_ Wealth to be in the family it is all one nearly with
having 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 be
from this out, and making bets on racehorses and fighting-cocks
through all the hours of the day.
_Darby:_ I would sooner to be sleeping in feathers and to do no
hand's turn at all, day or night.
_Taig:_ If I came paddling along through every place this day and
the road hard under my feet, it is likely I will have my choice way
leaving it.
_Darby:_ How is that now?
_Taig:_ A horse maybe and a car or two horses, or maybe to go in
the 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 every
whole 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 my
mother giving out a report of my one's ways, you would maybe believe
it is no empty skin of a man he is.
_Darby:_ My own mother was not without giving out a report of my
man's ways.
_Taig:_ Did she see him?
_Darby:_ She did, I suppose, or the thing was near him. She never
was tired talking of him.
_Taig:_ It is often my own mother would have Dermot pictured to
myself.
_Darby:_ It is often the likeness of Timothy was laid down to me
by the teaching of my mother's mouth, since I was able to walk the
floor. She thought the whole world of him.
_Taig:_ A bright scholar she laid Dermot down to be. A good doing
fellow 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 Timothy
was on the road.
_Taig:_ To have the handling of silks and jewelleries and to be
free of them, and of suits and the making of suits, that is the way
with the big merchants of the world.
_Darby:_ It is letting out his land to grass farmers a man owning
acres does be making his profit.
_Taig:_ A queer thing you to be the way you are, and he to be an
upstanding gentleman.
_Darby:_ It is the way I went down; my mother used to be faulting
me and I not being the equal of him. Tormenting and picking at me and
shouting me on the road. "You thraneen," she'd say, "you little
trifle 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 be
letting out shrieks and screeches. "What now would your cousin
Dermot 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 body
and puny, not fit to lift scraws from off the field, and Timothy
bringing in profit to his mother's hand, and earning prizes and
rewards."
_Taig:_ The time it would fail me to follow my book or to say off
my A, B, ab, to draw Dermot down on me she would. "Before he was up
to your age," she would lay down, "he was fitted to say off
Catechisms 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 of
the bog."
_Taig:_ "It is you will be fit but to blow the bellows," my mother
would say, "the time Dermot will be forging gold." I let on the book
to have gone astray on me at the last. Why would I go crush and
bruise myself under a weight of learning, and there being one in the
family well able to take my cost and my support whatever way it
might go? Dermot that would feel my keep no more than the lake would
feel 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 anear
Timothy in any sort of a way, and he, by what she was saying, able to
thrash out a rick of oats in the day. So it fell out I was thrown on
the ways of the world, having no skill in any trade, till there came
a demand for me going aloft in chimneys, I being as thin as a needle
and shrunken with weakness and want of food.
_Taig:_ I got my living for a while by miracle and trafficking in
rabbit skins, till a sweep from Limerick bound me to himself one
time I was skinned with the winter. Great cruelty he gave me till I
ran from him with the brush and the bag, and went foraging around
for 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 with
any of the chaps of the village, saying that would not serve me with
Dermot, that had a good top-coat and was brought up to manners and
behaviour.
_Darby:_ My own mother that drew down Timothy on me the time she'd
catch 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 and
funning, against the time the rich man would stretch out his hand.
Going with wild lads and poachers I was, till they left me carrying
their snares in under my coat, that I was lodged for three months in
the gaol.
_Darby:_ The neighbours had it against me after, I not being
friendly when we were small. The most time I am going the road it is
a lonesome shadow I cast before me.
_Taig:_ _(Looking out of the door.)_ It is on this day I will be
making acquaintance with himself. My mother that sent him a request
to come meet me in this town on this day, it being the first of the
summer.
_Darby:_ My own mother that did no less, telling me she got word
from Timothy he would come meet here with myself. It is certain he
will bring me into his house, she having wedded secondly with a
labouring man has got a job at Golden Hill in Lancashire. I would
not recognise him beyond any other one.
_Taig:_ I would recognise the signs of a big man. I wish I was
within 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 it
to 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 keep
courage in your mind.
_Taig:_ It is what I am thinking, I to take it fasting, it might
put confusion and wildness in my head. I would wish, and I meeting
with him, my wits to be of the one clearness with his own. It is not
long to be waiting; it is in claret I will be quenching my thirst
to-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 his
habits.
_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 better
pleased 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 my
habits, I'd give no heed! I'd stand up to him in the spite of his
teeth!
_Darby:_ If it wasn't for the hearthfires to be slackened with the
springtime, and my work to be lessened with the strengthening of the
sun, 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 to
be a scholar, I'd give him words that are in no books! I'd give him
newses! I'd knock rights out of him or any one I ever seen.
_Darby:_ I could speak only of my trade. The boundaries of the
world to be between us, I'm thinking I'd never ask to go cross them
at all.
_Taig:_ He to go into Court swearing witnesses and to bring me
along 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 partly
reared in the workhouse. And he having a star on his hat and a
golden apple in his hand. He will maybe be bidding me to scour
myself with soapy water all the Sundays and Holy days of the year! I
tell you I am getting low hearted. I pray to the Lord to forgive me
where I did not go under the schoolmaster's rod!
_Taig:_ I that will shape crampy words the same as any scholar at
all! I'll let on to be a master of learning and of Latin!
_Darby:_ Ah, what letting on? It is Timothy will look through me
the same as if my eyes were windows, and my thoughts standing as
plain as cattle under the risen sun! It is easier letting on to have
knowledge than to put on manners and behaviour.
_Taig:_ Ah, what's manners but to refuse no man a share of your
bite and to keep back your hand from throwing stones?
_Darby:_ I tell you I'm in shivers! My heart that is shaking like
an ivy leaf! My bones that are loosened and slackened in the
similitude of a rope of tow! I'd sooner meet with a lion of the
wilderness or the wickedest wind of the hills! I thought it never
would come to pass. I'd sooner go into the pettiest house, the
wildest home and the worst! Look at here now. Let me stop along with
yourself. I never let out so much of my heart to any one at all till
this day. It's a pity we should be parted!
_Taig:_ Is it to come following after me you would, before the
face 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! I
wouldn't for the whole world he should be aware I had ever any
traffic with chimneys or with soot. It would not be for his honour
you to draw anear him!
_Darby: (Indignantly.)_ No but Timothy that would make objection
to yourself! He that would whip the world for manners and behaviour!
_Taig:_ Dermot that is better again. He that would write and
dictate to you at the one time!
_Darby:_ What is that beside owning tillage, and to need no
education, 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 the
grandest," 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 should
have, beautifully made up! You would nearly go astray in it! It
wouldn't be known what you could make of it at all! You wouldn't
have it walked in a month!
_Taig:_ What is that beside having a range of shops as wide maybe
as the street beyond?
_Darby:_ A house would be the capital of the county! One door for
the rich, one door for the common! Velvet carpets rolled up, the way
there would no dust from the chimney fall upon them. A hundred
wouldn't be many standing in a corner of that place! A high bed of
feathers, curled hair mattresses. A cover laid on it would be flowery
with 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 the
sky! Sovereigns and shillings in and out as plenty as to riddle rape
seed. 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 his
billet.
_Taig:_ There is the horn of the coach. Get out now till I'll
prepare myself. He might chance to come seeking for me here.
_Darby:_ There's a lather of sweat on myself. That's my tin can of
water!
_Taig: (Holding can from him.)_ Get out I tell you! I wouldn't
wish him to feel the smell of you on the breeze.
_Darby: (Almost crying.)_ You are a mean savage to go keeping from
me 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, or
come under the lintel of the one door! _(He goes out.)_
_Taig: (Calling after him while he takes a suit of clothes from
his 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 to
three 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 his
life 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, Timothy
O'Harragha.
_Taig: (Sheepishly.)_ I am that. I am sorry indeed it
failed 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 am
badly 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 you
could put on me would be any hardship at all, if it was to walk
steel 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 and
my 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 dinner
before you, if I can be anyway pleasing to you; you that is used to
wealthy 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 you
going as you did so high in the world.
_Darby:_ Any person would go high before he would put his hand out
through 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 the
equal of it nourishing a garden. It would turn every crop blue,
being so good.
_Taig: (Weeping.)_ It is a very unkind thing to go drawing
chimneys 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 and
hungry, and you having coins and tokens from all the goldpits of the
world.
_Darby:_ I wish I ever handled a coin of gold in my lifetime.
_Taig:_ To speak despisingly, not pitiful. And I thinking the
chimney sweeping would be forgot and not reproached to me, if you
have handled the fooleries and watches of the world, that you don't
know the end of your riches!
_Darby:_ I am maybe getting your meaning wrong, your tongue being
a little hard and sharp because you are Englified, but I am without
new learnments and so I speak flat.
_Taig:_ You to have the millions of King Solomon, you have no
right 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 fool
of me. That is a very unseemly thing to do! I that did not ask to go
hide the bag or the brush.
_Taig:_ There you are going on again. Is it to the customers in
your shops you will be giving out that it was my lot to go through
the world as a sweep?
_Darby:_ Customers and shops! Will you stop your funning? Let you
quit mocking and making a sport of me! That is very bad acting
behaviour.
_Taig:_ Striving to blacken my face again at the time I had it
washed pure white. You surely have a heart of marble.
_Darby:_ What way at all can you be putting such a rascally say
out of your mouth? I'll take no more talk from you, I to be
twenty-two degrees lower than the Hottentots!
_Taig:_ If you are my full cousin Dermot Melody I'll make you quit
talking 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 the
name 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 your
features and your face. _Yourself_ is it! Is it personating my cousin
Timothy you are?
_Taig:_ I am personating no one but myself.
_Darby:_ You letting on to be an estated magistrate and my own
cousin and such a great generation of a man. And you not owning so
much as a rood of ridges!
_Taig:_ Covering yourself with choice clothing for to deceive me
and to lead me astray!
_Darby:_ Putting on your head a fine glossy hat and I thinking you
to have come with the spring-tide, the way you had luck through your
life!
_Taig:_ Letting on to be Dermot Melody! You that are but the cull
and the weakling of a race! It is a queer game you played on me and
a crooked game. I never would have brought my legs so far to meet
with 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 Holy
day name.
_Darby:_ Where now are our two cousins? Or is it that the both of
us are cracked?
_Taig:_ It is, or our mothers before us.
_Darby:_ My mother was a McGarrity woman from Loughrea. It is Mary
was her Christened name.
_Taig:_ So was my own mother of the McGarritys. It is sisters they
were 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 be
saying for you, and you but a sketch and an excuse of a man!
_Darby:_ Ah, I am thinking people put more in their prayers than
was ever put in them by God.
_Taig:_ Our mothers picturing us to one another as if we were the
best in the world.
_Darby:_ Lies I suppose they were drawing down, for to startle us
into good behaviour.
_Taig:_ Wouldn't you say now mothers to be a terror?
_Darby:_ And we nothing at all after but two chimney sweepers and
two 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 of
it the same as we went in.
_Taig:_ We have nothing to do but to starve with the hunger, and
you being as bare as myself.
_Darby:_ We are in a bad shift surely. We must perish with the
want of support. It is one of the tricks of the world does be played
upon the children of Adam.
_Taig:_ All we have to do is to crawl to the poorhouse gate. Or to
go dig a pit in the graveyard, as it is short till we'll be
stretched there with the want of food.
_Darby:_ Food is it? There is nothing at this time against me
eating 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 your
grand man.
_Taig:_ That is so. _(Drinks.)_ I'll strive no more to fit myself
for high quality relations. I am free from patterns of high up
cousins from this out. I'll be a pattern to myself.
_Darby:_ I am well content being free of you, the way you were
pictured to be. I declare to my goodness, the name of you put terror
on me through the whole of my lifetime, and your image to be
clogging and checking me on every side.
_Taig:_ To be thinking of you being in the world was a holy terror
to myself. I give you my word you came through my sleep the same as
a scarecrow or a dragon.
_Darby:_ It is great things I will be doing from this out, we two
having nothing to cast up against one another. To be quit of Timothy
the bogie and to get Taig for a comrade, I'm as proud as the Crown
of France!
_Taig:_ I'm in dread of neither bumble or bagman or bugaboo! I
will regulate things from myself from this out.
_Darby:_ There to be fineness of living in the world, why wouldn't
I make it out for myself?
_Taig:_ It is to the harbours of America we will work our way
across the wideness of the sea. It is well able we should be to go
mounting up aloft in ropes. Come on Darby out of this!
_Darby:_ There is magic and mastery come into me! This day has put
wings 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'll
take a view of the Seven Stars! It is out beyond the hills of Burren
I 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 most
people fail is in not keeping up the heart. Faith, it's well you have
myself 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. Is
that 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, and
that has the door locked till such time as she will come back on the
train. And I thought this shed a place where no bad thing would be
apt to happen me, and not to be going through the streets, and the
darkness falling.
_Shawn Early:_ It is not long till the full moon will be rising.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Everything that is bad, the falling
sickness--God save the mark--or the like, should be at its worst at
the full moon. I suppose because it is the leader of the stars.
_Shawn Early:_ Ah, what could happen any person in the street of
Cloon?
_Bartley Fallon:_ There might. Look at Matt Finn, the coffin-maker,
put his hand on a cage the circus brought, and the lion took and
tore it till they stuck him with a fork you'd rise dung with, and at
that 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 trusting
anything 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. When
the weight is not in them, they won't carry the price. Sure, the
grass I have is no good, but seven times worse than the road.
_Shawn Early:_ They are saying there'll be good demand at the fair
of Carrow to-morrow.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To-morrow the fair day of Carrow? I was not
remembering 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 sorts
in the streets to-night.
_Bartley Fallon:_ The sort that will be in it will be a bad
sort--sievemakers and tramps and neuks.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ The tents on the fair green; there will be
music in it; there was a fiddler having no legs would set men of
threescore years and of fourscore years dancing. I can nearly hear
his tune.
_(He whistles_ "The Heather Broom.")
_Bartley Fallon:_ You are apt to be going there on the train, I
suppose? It is well to be you, Mr. Halvey, having a good place in
the town, and the price of your fare, and maybe six times the price
of it, in your pocket.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I didn't think of that. I wonder could I
go--for one night only--and see what the lads are doing.
_Shawn Early:_ Are you forgetting, Mr. Halvey, that you are to
meet his Reverence on the platform that is coming home from drinking
water at the Spa?
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ So I can meet him, and get in the train after
him getting out.
_(Mrs. Broderick and Peter Tannian come in.)_
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Is that Mr. Halvey is in it? I was looking for
you at the chapel as I passed, and the Angelus bell after ringing.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Business I have here, ma'am. I was in dread I
might not be here before the train.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ So you might not, indeed. That nine o'clock
train you can never trust it to be late.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To meet Father Gregan I am come, and maybe to
go on myself.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, I knew well you would be in haste to be
before Father Gregan, and we knowing what we know.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I have no business only to be showing respect
to him.
_Shawn Early:_ His good word he will give to Mr. Halvey at the
Board, where it is likely he will be made Clerk of the Union next
week.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ His good word he will give to another thing
besides 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, that
Mr. 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 a
racked man by this.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ What I say now is as true as if you were on the
other side of me. I suppose now the priest is come home there'll be
no 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 at
Mrs. Delane's and through the whole world?
_Peter Tannian:_ She should be a steady wife for him--a fortied
girl.
_Shawn Early:_ A very good fortune in the bank they are saying she
has, and she having crossed the ocean twice to America.
_Hartley Fallen:_ It's as good for him to have a woman will keep
the door open before him and his victuals ready and a quiet tongue
in her head. Not like that little Tartar of my own.
_Mrs. Broderick_. And an educated woman along with that. A man of
his sort, going to be Clerk of the Union and to be taken up with
books 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, for
to open a flour store, and you to be keeping the accounts, the way
you would not spend any waste time.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I have no mind to be settling myself down yet a
while. I might maybe take a ramble here or there. There's many of my
comrades in the States.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ To go away from Cloon, is it? And why would you
think to do that, and the whole town the same as a father and mother
to you? Sure, the sergeant would live and die with you, and there
are 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 hearing
things as I heard them.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What things?
_Peter Tannian:_ There was a herd passing through from Carrow. It
is what I heard him saying------
_Mrs. Broderick:_ You heard nothing of Mr. Halvey, but what is
worthy 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 out
proclamations--attending waterworks----.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is well fitted for any place he is, and all
that was written around him and he coming into Cloon.
_Peter Tannian:_ Writing is easy.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Look at him since he was here, this twelvemonth
back, 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 no
rumours. Whatever could be said of his worth, it could not be too
well said.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Do you think now, ma'am, would it be any harm I
to go spend a day or maybe two days out of this--I to go on the
train----.
_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 this
day from the asylum.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I never saw her, I think.
_Shawn Early:_ The creature, she was light this long while and not
good in the head, and at the last lunacy came on her and she was
tied and bound. Sometimes singing and dancing she does be, and
sometimes 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 is
a blight in the town.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ There is a lad along with her.
_Shawn Early:_ It is Davideen, her brother, that is innocent. He
was left rambling from place to place the time she was put within
walls.
_(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 a
little rag on me and a little shoe to my foot. Give me the price of
tobacco and the price of a grain of tea; for tobacco is blessed and
tea is good for the head.
_Shawn Early:_ Give out now, Davideen, a verse of "The Heather
Broom." 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 or
to understand what he is doing, he couldn't do it.
_Cracked Mary:_ Leave him a while. His song that does be clogged
through the daytime, the same as the sight is clogged with myself. It
isn't but in the night time I can see anything worth while. Davy is
a proper boy, a proper boy; let you leave Davy alone. It was himself
came before me ere yesterday in the morning, and I walking out the
madhouse door.
_Shawn Early:_ It is often there will fiddlers be waiting to play
for them coming out, that are maybe the finest dancers of the day.
_Cracked Mary:_ Waiting before me he was, and no one to give him
knowledge unless it might be the Big Man. I give you my word he near
ate the face off me. As glad to see me he was as if I had dropped
from heaven. Come hither to me, Davy, and give no heed to them. It
is as dull and as lagging as themselves you would be maybe, and the
world to be different and the moon to change its courses with the sun.
_Bartley Fallon:_ I never would wish to be put within a madhouse
before I'd die.
_Cracked Mary:_ Sorry they were losing me. There was not a better
prisoner in it than my own four bones.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Squeals you would hear from it, they were
telling me, like you'd hear at the ringing of the pigs. Savages with
whips beating them the same as hounds. You would not stand and
listen to them for a hundred sovereigns. Of all bad things that can
come upon a man, it is certain the madness is the last.
_Miss Joyce:_ It is likely she was well content in it, and the
friends she had being of her own class.
_Cracked Mary:_ What way could you make friends with people would
be 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 to
close my ears, I would have lost the sound of Davideen's song.
_Miss Joyce:_ It was good shelter you got in it through the bad
weather, and not to be out perishing under cold, the same as the
starlings in the snow.
_Cracked Mary:_ I was my seven months in it, my seven months and a
day. My good clothes that went astray on me and my boots. My fine
gaudy dress was all moth-eated, that was worked with the wings of
birds. To fall into dust and ashes it did, and the wings rose up
into the high air.
_Bartley Fallen_. Take care would the madness catch on to
ourselves the same as the chin-cough or the pock.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, that's not the way it goes travelling from
one to another, but some that are naturally cracked and inherit it.
_Shawn Early:_ It is a family failing with her tribe. The most of
them 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 the
reason it is on the wife it is apt to fall for the most part.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, there's some does be thinking their wives
isn't right, and there's others think they are too right. There to
be any fear of me going astray, I give you my word I'd lose my wits
on 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, the
blood that is in a person does be weakening, but when the moon is
strong, the blood that moves strong in the same way. And it to be at
the full, it drags the wits along with it, the same as it drags the
tide.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Those that are light show off more and have the
talk of twenty the time it is at the full, that is sure enough. And
to hold up a silk handkerchief and to look through it, you would see
the four quarters of the moon; I was often told that.
_Miss Joyce:_ It is not you, Mr. Halvey, will give in to an unruly
thing like the moon, that is under no authority, and cannot be put
back, 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 a
clock 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 will
be to-night, and his Reverence coming home through the street, and
yourself 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 was
running 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 would
be a miracle worked by the moon.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, miracles is gone out of the world this long
time, with education, unless that they might happen in your own
inside.
_Miss Joyce:_ I'll go set the table and kindle the fire, and I'll
come 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 some
prisoner 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 was
formed by the heat is in the breeze. It would be a pity to spoil
your Dublin coat, or your shirt that is that white you would nearly
take 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, the
third 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 a
narrow little shed, and the full moon rising, and I knowing what I
know!
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It's little you are likely to know about me.
_Cracked Mary:_ Tambourines and fiddles and pipes--melodeons and
the whistling of drums.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I suppose it is the Carrow fair you are talking
about.
_Cracked Mary:_ Sitting within walls, and a top-coat wrapped
around 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 would
like well to be going on the train, if it wasn't for the talk the
neighbours would be making. I would like well to slip away. It is a
long 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 us
to have stopped where we were.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Running like foals to see it, and nothing to be
in it worth while.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What was it was in it?
_Shawn Early:_ Nothing at all but some lads that were running in
pursuit of a dog.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Near knocked us they did, and they coming round
the 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 by
the 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 be
uneasy, thinking it might be yourself he would be searching out as
his prey.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, there did a dog go mad through Galway, and
the whole town rose against him, and flocked him into a corner, and
shot him there. He did no harm after, he being made an end of at the
first.
_Shawn Early:_ It might be that dog they were pursuing after was
mad, on the head of being under the full moon.
_Cracked Mary: (Jumping up excitedly.)_ That mad dog, he is a
Dublin dog; he is betune you and Belfast--he is running ahead--you
couldn'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 up
with him; he destroyed a splendid sow; nine bonavs they buried or
less.
_Shawn Early:_ What place is he gone now?
_Cracked Mary:_ He made off towards Craughwell, and he bit a fine
young man.
_Bartley Fallen:_ So he would too. Sure, when a mad dog would be
going 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 the
road; he is keeping the middle of the road; they say he is as big as
a calf.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is the police I have a right to forewarn to
go 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 sending
the motor cars after him to overturn and to crush him the same as an
ass-car in their path.
_Cracked Mary:_ You can't save yourself from a dog; he is after
his own equals, dogs. He is doing every harm. They are out night and
day.
_Shawn Early:_ Sure, a mad dog would go from this to Kinvara in a
half a minute, like the train.
_Cracked Mary:_ He won't stay in this country down--he goes the
straight 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 relics
in him.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ They have a right to bring their rifles in
their hand.
_Cracked Mary:_ The police is afraid of their life. They wrote for
motor 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 the
Lord he'll be caught. It will be a blessing from the Almighty God to
kill that dog.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ He is surely the one is raging through the
street.
_Peter Tannian:_ Why wouldn't he be him? Is it likely there would
be two of them in it at the one time?
_Shawn Early:_ A queer cut of a dog he was; a lurcher, a bastard
hound.
_Peter Tannian:_ I would say him to be about the size of the foal
of a horse.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Didn't he behave well not to do ourselves an
injury?
_Bartley Fallon:_ It is likely he will do great destruction. I
wouldn't say but I felt the weight of him and his two paws around my
neck.
_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 their
batons and their guns.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I'll go. He might do some injury going through
the town.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah now, it is not yourself we would let go into
danger! It is Peter Tannian should go, if any person should go.
_Peter Tannian:_ Is it Hyacinth Halvey you are taking to be so far
before myself?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Why wouldn't he be before you?
_Peter Tannian:_ Ask him what was he in Carrow? Ask was he a sort
of a corner-boy, ringing the bell, pumping water, gathering a few
coppers 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 to
talk that way.
_Shawn Early:_ He is, and queer in the mind. Take care did he get
a bite from the dog, that left some venom working in his blood.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ So he might, and he having a sort of a little
rent in his sleeve.
_Peter Tannian:_ I to have got a bite from the dog, is it? I did
not come anear him at all. You to strip me as bare as winter you
will not find the track of his teeth. It is Shawn Early was nearer
to him than what I was.
_Shawn Early:_ I was not nearer, or as near as what Mrs. Broderick
was.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ I made away when I saw him. My chest is not the
better of it yet. Since I left off fretting I got gross. I am that
nervous I would run from a blessed sheep, let alone a dog.
_Shawn Early:_ To see any of the signs of madness upon him, it is
Mr. 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? Is
that the learning they were giving you in Carrow?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Don't be speaking with him at all. It is easy
know the signs. A person to be laughing and mocking, and that would
not have the same habits with yourself, or to have no fear of things
you 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 be
talking of things that passed years ago.
_Peter Tannian:_ I am talking of nothing but the thing I have a
right to talk of.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ To be nervous and thinking and pausing, and
playing with knicknacks.
_Peter Tannian:_ It never was my habit to be playing with
knicknacks.
_Bartley Fallon:_ When the master in the school where I was went
queer, he beat me with two clean rods, and wrote my name with my own
blood.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ To take the shoe off their foot, and to hit out
right and left with it, bawling their life out, tearing their clothes,
scattering and casting them in every part; or to run naked through
the town, and all the people after them.
_Shawn Early:_ To be jumping the height of trees they do be, and
all the people striving to slacken them.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To steal prayer-books and rosaries, and to be
saying prayers they never could keep in mind before.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Very strong, that they could leap a
wall--jumping and pushing and kicking--or to tie people to one
another 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 under
restraint? Would a man would be pushing and kicking and tearing his
clothes, 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 a
blessed hymn, what any person with the mind gone contrary in them
could not do. Hearken now till you'll know is there confusion in my
mind. _(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 the
place 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 a
nine without a tail.
_Peter Tannian:_ Leave that blame on a little ridge that is in the
nature of the chalk. Look now at Mary Broderick, that it has failed
to 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 venom
into 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 the
most man we have to baffle any wrong thing coming in our midst!
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Is it that you are feeling any pain as of a
wound or a sore?
_Bartley Fallon:_ Some sort of a little catch I'm thinking there
is in under my knee. I would feel no pain unless I would turn it
contrary.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What class of feeling would you say you are
feeling?
_Bartley Fallon:_ I am feeling as if the five fingers of my hand
to be lessening from me, the same as five farthing dips the heat of
the 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 a
sheep would get a fit of staggers in a field.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That is what I would look for. Is there some
sort of a roaring in your ear?
_Bartley Fallon:_ There is, there is, as if I would hear voices
would be talking.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Would you feel any wish to go tearing and
destroying?
_Bartley Fallon:_ I would indeed, and there to be an enemy upon my
path. Would you say now, Widow Broderick, am I getting anyway flushy
in the face?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Don't leave your eye off him for pity's sake. He
is 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 be
rising on a pint.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is the doctor I'd best call for--and maybe
the sergeant and the priest.
_Bartley Fallon:_ There are three thoughts going through my
mind--to hang myself or to drown myself, or to cut my neck with a
reaping-hook.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is the doctor will serve him best, where it
is the mad blood that should be bled away. To break up eggs, the
white 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. I
wouldn't wish the lads will bear my body to the grave, to lay down
there 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 doctor
will, the way the poison will get no leave to work.
_Peter Tannian:_ Or to burn it with red-hot irons, the way it will
not scatter itself and grow. There does a doctor do that out in
foreign.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ It would be more natural to cut the leg off him
in some sort of a Christian way.
_Shawn Early:_ If it was a pig was bit, or a sow or a bonav, it to
show the signs, it would be shot, if it was a whole fleet of them
was in it.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ I knew of a man that was butler in a big house
was bit, and they tied him first and smothered him after, and his
master shot the dog. A splendid shot he was; the thing he'd not see
he'd hit it the same as the thing he'd see. I heard that from an
outside neighbour of my own, a woman that told no lies.
_Shawn Early:_ Sure, they did the same thing to a high-up lady
over in England, and she after being bit by her own little spaniel
and it having a ring around its neck.
_Peter Tannian:_ That is the only best thing to do. Whether the
bite is from a dog, or a cat, or whatever it may be, to put the
quilt and the blankets on the person and smother him in the bed. To
smother them out-and-out you should, before the madness will work.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I'd be loth he to be shot or smothered. I'd
sooner to give him a chance in the asylum.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ To keep him there and to try him through three
changes of the moon. It's well for you, Bartley, Mr. Halvey being in
charge of you, that is known to be a tender man.
_Peter Tannian:_ He to have got a bite and to go biting others, he
would put in them the same malice. It is the old people used to tell
that 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 of
the new moon or the full moon, and then they must be shot or
smothered.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is a pity there to be no cure found for it
in the world.
_Shawn Early:_ There never came out from the Almighty any cure for
a 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, that
you will not let me go fall in my own choice place?
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ The neighbours would think it bad of me to let
a 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 padded
room at the workhouse the most place where you will be safe, till
such time as it will be known did the poison wear away.
_Bartley Fallon:_ I will not go in it! It is likely I might be
forgot 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 was
allotted 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 will
be gone out of me, and you maybe playing cards on my coffin, and I
having nothing around or about me but the shroud, and the habit, and
the 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 to
bite you, all you have to do is to take a pinch of its hair and to
lay it into the wound.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ So I heard that myself. A dog to bite any person
he 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 the
priest that is coming in the train. Let his Reverence come into this
place, and say is it Bartley or is it Peter Tannian was done
destruction 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 call
to the cracked woman that should know.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Come hither, Mary, and tell us is there any one
of your own sort in this shed?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ That is a good thought. It is only themselves
that 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 has
said against yourself.
_Bartley Fallon:_ I'm in dread she might know too much, and be
telling out what is within in my mind.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ That's foolishness. These are not the ancient
times, when Ireland was full of haunted people.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Is a man having a wife and three acres of land
to be put under the judgment of a witch?
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I would not give in to any pagan thing, but to
recognise one of her own sort, that is a thing can be understood.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ So it could be too, the same as witnesses in a
court.
_Bartley Fallon:_ I will not give in to going to demons or druids
or freemasons! Wasn't there enough of misfortune set before my path
through every day of my lifetime without it to be linked with me
after my death? Is it that you would force me to lose the comforts
of heaven and to get the poverty of hell? I tell you I will have no
trade with witches! I would sooner go face the featherbeds.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Say out, girl, do you see any craziness here or
anything of the sort?
_Cracked Mary:_ Every day in the year there comes some malice into
the world, and where it comes from is no good place.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ That is it, a venomous dew, as in the year of
the famine. There is no astronomer can say it is from the earth or
the sky.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ It is what we are asking you, did any of that
malice 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 raging
through the district and the town--did it leave any madness after it?
_Cracked Mary:_ It will go in the wind, there is a certain time
for that. It might go off in the wind again. It might go shaping off
and do no harm.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Where is that dog presently, till some person
might 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, whatever
beast's jaws may have scattered it?
_Cracked Mary:_ It is the full moon knows that. The moon to
slacken it is safe, there is no harm in it. Almighty God will do
that much. He'll slacken it like you 'd slacken lime.
_Shawn Early:_ There is reason in what she is saying. Set open the
door and let the full moon call its own!
_Bartley Fallon:_ Don't let in the rays of it upon us or I'm a
gone man. It to shine on them that are going wrong in the head, it
would raise a great stir in the mind. Sure, it's in the asylum at
that time they do have whips to chastise them.
_(Goes to corner.)_
_Cracked Mary:_ That's it. The moon is terrible. The full moon
cracks them out and out, any one that would have any spleen or any
relics in them.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Do not let in the light of it. I would scruple
to look at it myself.
_Cracked Mary:_ Let you throw open the door, Davideen. It is not
ourselves are in dread that the white man in the sky will be calling
names after us and ridiculing us. Ha! ha! I might be as foolish as
yourselves and as fearful, but for the Almighty that left a little
cleft in my skull, that would let in His candle through the night
time.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Hurry on now, tell us is there any one in this
place is wild and astray like yourself.
_(He opens the door. The light falls on him.)_
_Cracked Mary: (Putting her hand on him.)_ There was great
shouting in the big round house, and you coming into it last night.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ What are you saying? I never went frolicking in
the night time since the day I came into Cloon.
_Cracked Mary:_ We were talking of it a while ago. I knew you by
the 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 village
were in it, and of the living myself and yourself.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I thought it was of Carrow she was talking; it
is of the other world she is raving, and of the shadow-shapes of the
forth.
_Cracked Mary:_ You have the door open--the speckled horses are
on the road!--make a leap on the horse as it goes by, the horse that
is without a rider. Can't you hear them puffing and roaring? Their
breath 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 bush
in the western gap. Run out now, run, where you have the bare ridge
of 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 little
difference 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 ugly
thing itself will put on some sort of a decent face! Come out now to
the night that will give you the song, and will show myself out as
beautiful as Helen of the Greek gods, that hanged herself the day
there 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 any
poison lurking in his veins. Where now would it come from, and
Cracked Mary's dog being as good as no dog at all?
_Peter Tannian:_ It might chance, and he a child in the cradle, to
get 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 of
the dog bit him in a body glass, or in the waves, and he himself
looking 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 to
know what might be spreading abroad in any person's mind, as to put
the 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 was
coming 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 too
big a name was put upon me.
_Peter Tannian:_ It is the power of the moon is forcing the truth
out of him.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Every person in the town giving me out for more
than 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 me
to 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, he
hasn't much brains left around him.
_Hyacinth Halvey: I_ looking to be Clerk of the Union, and the
place I had giving me enough to do, and too much to do. Tied on this
side, tied on that side. I to be bothered with business through the
holy livelong day!
_Peter Tannian:_ It is good pay he got with it. Eighty pounds a
year doesn't come on the wind.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ In danger to be linked and wed--I never
ambitioned it--with a woman would want me to be earning through
every day of the year.
_Shawn Early:_ He is a gone man surely.
_Hyacinth Hakey:_ The wide ridge of the world before me, and to
have no one to look to for orders; that would be better than roast
and 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 fairies
he 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 will
burst out wild mad. Come over here, Bartley Fallon, and lend a hand
if you can.
_(Bartley Fallon appears from corner with a_ _chicken crate over
his head.)_
_Mrs. Broderick:_ O Bartley, that is the strangest lightness ever
I saw, to go bind a chicken crate around your skull!
_Bartley Fallon:_ Will you tighten the knots I have tied, Peter
Tannian! I am in dread they might slacken or fail.
_Shawn Early:_ Was there ever seen before this night such power to
be in the moon!
_Bartley Fallon:_ It would seem to be putting very wild unruly
thoughts a-through me, stirring up whatever spleen or whatever
relics was left in me by the nature of the dog.
_Peter Tannian:_ Is it that you think those rods, spaced wide, as
they are, will keep out the moon from entering your brain?
_Bartley Fallon:_ There does great strength come at the time the
wits would be driven out of a person. I never was handled by a
policeman--but once--and never hit a blow on any man. I would not
wish 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 person
will be the worse for me. I to rush down the street and to meet with
my most enemy in some lonesome craggy place, it would fail me, and I
thrusting for it to scatter any share of poison in his body or to
sink my teeth in his skin. I wouldn't wonder I to have hung for some
of 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 am
going 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 mad
from the fury and the strength of some dog.
_Miss Joyce: (At door.)_ Are you there, Hyacinth Halvey? The train
is 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 to
start.
_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 I
mad! 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, and
leaping and roaring.
_Bartley Fallon:_ _(Taking off crate.)_ He went very near to tear
us all asunder. I declare I amn't worth a match.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ He made a reel in my head, till I don't know am
I right myself.
_Shawn Early:_ Bawling his life out, tearing his clothes, tearing
and 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, and
lads chasing him a while ago.
_Miss Joyce:_ Sure that was Tannian's own dog, that had a bit of
meat 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 the
way 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 your
bachelor swept, let you not begrudge it its full share of praise for
the hand it had in banishing a strange bird, might have gone wild
and bawling like eleven, and you after being wed with him, and would
maybe have put a match to the roof. And hadn't you the luck of the
world 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's
seldom he does be late.
_Hazel:_ Is the dinner ready?
_John:_ It is, sir. Boiled beef and parsnips, the same as every
Monday for all comers, and an apple pie for yourself and Mr. Mineog.
_Mineog: (Coming in.)_ Mr. Hazel is the first tonight. I'm glad to
see 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 quick
Monday comes around, and that it is hard make provision for to fill
up the four sheets of the _Tribune_, and nothing happening in these
parts worth while. There would seem to be no news on this day beyond
all 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 knows
what way will I fill it between this and Thursday, or in what place
I can go questing after news!
_Mineog:_ Last week passed without anything doing. It is a very
backward place to give information for two papers. If it was not for
the league is between us, and for us meeting here on every Monday to
make sure we are taking different sides on every question may turn up,
and giving every abuse to one another in print, there is no person
would pay his penny for the two of them, or it may be for the one of
them.
_Hazel:_ That is so. And the worst is, there is no question ever
rises that we do not agree on, or that would have power to make us
fall out in earnest. It was different in my early time. The
questions used to rise up then were worth fighting for.
_Mineog:_ There are some people so cantankerous they will heat
themselves in argument as to which side might be right or wrong in a
war, 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'll
take things easy. _Mineog:_ Now all the kingdoms of the earth to go
struggling on one wrong side or another, or to bring themselves down
to dust and ashes, it would not break our friendship. In all the
years past there never did a cross word rise between us.
_Hazel:_ There never will. What are the fights of politics and
parties beside living neighbourly with one another, and to go
peaceable to the grave, our selves that are the oldest residents in
the Square.
_Mineog:_ It will be long indeed before you will be followed to
the grave. You didn't live no length yet. You are too fresh to go
out and to forsake your wife and your family.
_Hazel:_ Ah, when the age would be getting up on you, you wouldn't
be getting younger. But it's yourself that is as full of spirit as a
four-year-old. I wish I had a sovereign for every year you will
reign after me in the Square.
_Mineog:_ _(Sneezes.)_ There is a draught of air coming in the
window.
_Hazel:_ _(Rising.)_ Take care might it be open--no, but a pane
that is out. There is a very chilly breeze sweeping in.
_Mineog:_ _(Rising.)_ I will put on my coat so. There is no use
giving provocation to a cold.
_Hazel:_ I'll do the same myself. It is hard to banish a sore
throat.
_(They put on coats. John brings in dinner. They sit down.)_
_Mineog:_ See can you baffle that draught of air, John.
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