White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.
VOICES: Police!
DISTANT VOICES: Dublin’s burning! Dublin’s burning! On fire, on fire!
_(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy Gatling guns
boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. Hoarse
commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards bawl. Whores screech.
Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks of dying. Pikes clash on
cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of prey, winging from the sea,
rising from marshlands, swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets,
cormorants, vultures, goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines,
merlins, blackgrouse, sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese.
The midnight sun is darkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin
from Prospect and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black
goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many. A chasm opens with a
noiseless yawn. Tom Rochford, winner, in athlete’s singlet and
breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps
into the void. He is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild
attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory
lasses with fancy clothes toss redhot Yorkshire baraabombs. Society
ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves.
Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on
broomsticks. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragons’ teeth.
Armed heroes spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity the pass of
knights of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe
Tone against Henry Grattan, Smith O’Brien against Daniel O’Connell,
Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin M’Carthy against Parnell,
Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John O’Leary against Lear
O’Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald Fitzedward, The
O’Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of The O’Donoghue. On an
eminence, the centre of the earth, rises the fieldaltar of Saint
Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel and epistle horns. From the
high barbacans of the tower two shafts of light fall on the smokepalled
altarstone. On the altarstone Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason,
lies, naked, fettered, a chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father
Malachi O’Flynn in a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left
feet back to the front, celebrates camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C
Haines Love M. A. in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his head and
collar back to the front, holds over the celebrant’s head an open
umbrella.)_