district he spent the most part of his promising youth--Richly
stored 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 beat
him."
_Mineog:_ "With all that, humble that he would halt and speak to
you the same as a child----" I'm maybe putting it down a bit too
simple, but the printer will give it a little shaping after.
_Hazel:_ So will my own printer be lengthening out the words for
me according to the type and the letters of the alphabet he will
have plentiful and to spare.
_Mineog:_ "Well looking and well thought of. A true Irishman in
supporting all forms of sport."
_Hazel:_ What's that? I never was one for betting on races or
gaining prizes for riddles.
_Mineog:_ It is strange now I have no recollection of putting that
down. It is I myself in the days gone by would put an odd shilling
on a horse.
_Hazel:_ These typewriters would bother the world. Wait now--let
me 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 nice
an account--but lend it a minute.
_(Puts out hand.)_
_Mineog:_ Bring me now a bottle of wine, John--you know the
sort--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 to
Mr. 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 met
with 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 mixed
in 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 I
will give you back your own.
_Mineog:_ I don't know. You are putting it in my mind there might
be something underhand. I would like to make sure what did you say
about me in the heel. _(Turns over.)_ "He was honest and widely
respected." _Was_ honest--are you saying me to be a rogue at this
time?
_Hazel:_ That's not fair dealing to be searching through it
against 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, but
along with the _Tribune_, which he fostered with the care of a father,
we offer up prayers for the repose of his soul." _(Stands up.)_ It
is 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 me
to 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 offer
prayers for me?
_Hazel:_ I tell you I had it put by this long time till I would
have occasion to use it.
_Mineog:_ Is it this long time, so, you have been waiting for my
death?
_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 own
corpse? To go set my coffin making and to put nettles growing on my
hearth! Wouldn't it be enough to rob my house or to make an attack
upon 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 go
startle me with a thing of the sort! I'm not worth the ground I
stand on! For the _Champion_ of next Thursday! I to be dead ere
Thursday!
_Hazel:_ I looked for no such thing.
_Mineog:_ What is it makes you say me to be done and dying? Am I
reduced 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 staggery
in the legs?
_Hazel:_ I see no such signs.
_Mineog:_ Is it in my hand you see them? Is it lame or is it
freezed-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 it
the 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 that
I 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 to
please it! I will not give in to it driving me out of the world
before my hour is spent! It would hardly ask that of a man would be
of 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 and
to 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. Some
take 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 the
world wide.
_Mineog:_ That's nothing! Sickness comes upon some as sudden as to
clap their hands.
_Hazel:_ What are you talking about? You are thinking us to be in
the 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 to
school.
_Mineog:_ There is more than measles has power bring a man down.
_Hazel:_ You had the chin-cough passed and you rising. We were cut
at 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 of
the next two days?
_Mineog:_ That is what I'm after saying--unless you might have
murder in your mind?
_Hazel:_ Ah, what murder!
_Mineog:_ What way are you thinking to do away with me? To shoot
me 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 such
a thing in the length of my life!
_Mineog:_ To take aim at me and destroy me; to shoot me in forty
halves 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 across
the rotten plank of the bridge. _(Seizing bottle.)_ Will you tell me
on the virtue of your oath, is death lurking in that sherry wine?
_Hazel: (Pulling out paper.)_ Ah, God bless your jig! And how
would I know is it a notice of my own death has come into my hand in
the 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 and
I to be living yet?
_Mineog:_ I didn't follow you out beyond this world with craving
for the repose of your soul. It is nothing at all beside what you
wrote.
_Hazel:_ Oh, I bear no grudge at all against you. I am not huffy
and crabbed like yourself to go taking offence. Sure Kings and big
people of the sort are used to see their dead-notices made ready
from the hour of their birth out. And it is not anything printed on
papers or any flight of words on the _Tribune_ could give me any
concern at all. See now will I be put out. _(Reads.)_ What now is
this? "Mr. Hazel was of good race, having in him the old stock of
the country, the Mahons, the O'Hagans, the Casserlys----." Where now
did you get that? I never heard before, a Casserly to be in my
fathers.
_Mineog:_ It might be on the side of the mother.
_Hazel:_ It was not. My mother was a girl of the Hessians that was
born in the year of the French. My grandmother was Winefred Kane.
_Mineog:_ What is being out in one name towards drawing down the
forecast of all classes of deaths upon myself?
_Hazel:_ There are twenty thousand things you might lay down and I
would give them no leave to annoy me. But I have no mind any strange
family to be mixed through me, but to go my own road and to carry my
own character.
_Mineog:_ I would say you to be very crabbed to be making much of
a small little mistake of the sort.
_Hazel:_ I will not have blood put in my veins that never rose up
in them by birth. You to have put a slur maybe on the whole of my
posterity 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? My
tribe didn't come inside the province. Every generation was born and
bred in this or in some neighbouring townland.
_Mineog:_ Sure you will be but yourself whatever family may be
laying claim to you.
_Hazel:_ Any person of the Casserlys to have done a wrong deed at
any time, the neighbours would be watching and probing my own brood
till they would see might the track of it break out in any way. It
ran through our race to be hard tempered, from the Kanes that are
very hot.
_Mineog:_ Why would the family of the Casserlys go doing wrong
deeds more than another?
_Hazel:_ I would never forgive it, if it was the highest man in
Connacht said it.
_Mineog:_ I tell you there to be any flaw in them, it would have
worked itself out in yourself ere this.
_Hazel:_ Putting on me the weight of a family I never knew or
never 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 lived
in 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 my
genealogies 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 a
double S.
_Hazel:_ Whether or no, you have a great wrong done me! The person
I had most dependence on to be the most person to annoy me! If it
was a man from the County Mayo I wouldn't see him treated that way!
_Mineog:_ Have sense now! What would signify anything might be
wrote about you, and the green scraws being over your head?
_Hazel:_ That's the worst! I give you my oath I would not go
miching 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, or
to put his own skin on my story!
_Mineog:_ Ah it's likely the both of us will be forgotten and our
names along with us, and we out in the meadow of the dead.
_Hazel:_ I will not be forgotten! I have posterity will put a good
slab over me. Not like some would be left without a monument, unless
it might be the rags of a cast waistcoat would be put on sticks in a
barley garden, to go flapping at the thieves of the air.
_Mineog:_ Let the birds or the neighbours go screech after me and
welcome, 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 is
blood 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 comrade
and my friend, what at all will strangers be putting out about me?
_Mineog:_ Ah, what call have you to go lamenting as if you had
lost all on this side of the sea!
_Hazel:_ You to have brought that annoyance on me, what would
enemies be saying of me? That it was in my breed to be cracked or to
have a thorn in the tongue. There's a generation of families would
be great with you, and behind you they would be backbiting you.
_Mineog:_ They will not. You are of a family doesn't know how to
say a wrong word.
_Hazel:_ A rabbit mushroom they might say me to be, with no memory
behind or around me!
_Mineog:_ Not at all. The world knows you to be civil and brought
up 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. And
Hazel is a natural name.
_Hazel:_ It's likely they'll say I was a sheep-stealer or a tinker
that went foraging around after food!
_Mineog:_ You that never put your hand on a rabbit burrow or stood
before a magistrate or a judge!
_Hazel:_ They'll put me down as a grabber that was ready to quench
a 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 get
satisfaction! I to be wandering as a shadow and to see some schemer
spilling out his lies! That would be the most grief in death! I to
hit him a blow of my fist and he maybe not to feel it or to think it
to 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 posterity
and his land. It would kill my heart if he would take it to be no
human voice, but some vanity like the hissing of geese!
_Mineog:_ I myself would recognise your voice, and you to be
living or dead.
_Hazel:_ You say that now. But my ghost to come calling to you in
the night time to rise up and to clear my character, you would run
shivering to the priest as from some unnatural thing. You would call
to 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 to
go nourish weeds and grass! A lie to be told and I living I could go
lay my case before the courts. So I will too! I'll silence you! I'll
learn you to have done with misspellings and with death notices!
I'll hinder you bringing in Casserlys! I go take advice from the
lawyer! _(Goes towards door.)_
_Mineog:_ I'll go lay down my own case and the way that you have
my life threatened!
_Hazel:_ I'll get justice and a hearing. The Judge will give in to
my say!
_Mineog:_ I that will put you under bail! I'll bind you over to
quit prophesying!
_Hazel:_ I'll break the bail of the sun and moon before I'll give
you leave to go brand me with strange names the same as you would
tarbrand a sheep! I'll put yourself and your _Tribune_ under the law
of libel!
_Mineog:_ I'll make a world's wonder of you! I'll give plenty and
enough to the _Champion_ to fill out its windy pages that time!
_Hazel: (At door.)_ I will lay my information before you will
overtake me!
_Mineog: (Seizing him.)_ I will lay my information against you for
theft 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 of
grease on the sleeve?
_Hazel:_ Did I never carve a goose? Why wouldn't there be a spot
of 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 in
the seams----give me here your hand--it is caught in the rip of the
lining.
_John: (Coming in, puts pie on table.)_ Wait now, sir, till I'll
aid 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 the
world 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 for
eating.
_(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 we
have no use for them presently.
_Hazel: (Stopping John and taking them.)_ Thursday is very near at
hand. 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 ails
them only to begin a good way after the start, and to stop before
the finish.
_Mineog: (Putting his MS. in his pocket.)_ We'll do that. We can
put such part of them as we do not need at this time back in the
shelf of the press.
_Hazel: (Filling glasses and lifting his.)_ That it may be long
before 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.)_ You
may come in, Staffy and Ralph. There would seem to be no person here.
_Staffy:_ Take care would Damer ask us to cross the threshold at
all. I would not ask to go pushing on him, but to wait till he would
call 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 death
and 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 to
stable 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 in
its box. To make its way into the haggard the jennet did, the time
it staggered him with a kick. To forage out some grazing it thought
to do, beyond dirt and scutchgrass among the stones. Very cross
jennets do be, as it is a cross man it met with.
_Delia:_ A queer sort of a brother he is. To go searching Ireland
you wouldn't find queerer. But as soon as I got word what happened I
bade Ralph to put the tacklings on the ass. We must have nature
about us some way. There was silence between us long enough.
_Ralph:_ She was thinking it might be the cause of him getting his
death sooner than God has it promised to him, and that it might turn
his mind more friendly like towards us, he knowing us to be at hand
for to settle out his burying.
_Delia:_ Why wouldn't it, and we being all the brothers and
sisters ever he had, since Jane Niland, God rest her soul, went out
last Little Christmas from the troubles and torments of the world.
_Staffy:_ There is nothing left of that marriage now, only one
young lad is said to be mostly a fool.
_Delia:_ It is ourselves can bear witness to that, where he came
into the house ere yesterday, having no way of living, since death
and misfortune scattered him, but as if he was left down out of the
skies.
_Ralph:_ He has not, unless the pound piece the mother put into
his hand at the last. It is much she had that itself. The time Tom
Niland died from her, he didn't leave her hardly the cat.
_Staffy:_ The lad to have any wit around him he would have come
travelling hither along with yourselves, to see would he knock any
kindness out of Damer.
_Ralph:_ It is what herself was saying, it would be no advantage
to him to be coming here at all, he being as he is half light, where
there 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 we
travelling out from Loughtyshassy.
_Staffy:_ It is likely he will get tidings as good as yourself. It
is said, and said largely, Damer has a full gallon jar of gold.
_Ralph:_ There is no one could lift it--God bless it--they were
telling me. Filled up it is and brimmed to the very brink.
_Staffy:_ His heart and his soul gone into it. He is death on that
gallon of gold.
_Delia:_ He would give leave to the poorhouse to bury him, if he
could 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 being
in the house.
_Delia:_ There is no more grasping man within the four walls of
the world. A strange thing he turning to be so ugly and prone to
misery, where he was reared along with myself. I have the first
covetous person yet to meet I would like! I never would go thrusting
after gold, I to get all Lord Clanricarde's estate.
_Ralph:_ She never would, only at a time she might have her own
means spent and consumed.
_Staffy:_ The house is very racked beside what it was. The
hungriest cabin in the whole ring of Connemara would not show out so
empty and so bare.
_Delia: (Taking up a jug.)_ No sign in this vessel of anything
that would leave a sign. I'll go bail he takes his tea in a black
state, and the milk to be rotting in the churn.
_Ralph: (Handling a coat and hat hanging on a nail.)_ That's a
queer cut of a hat. That now should have been a good top-coat in its
time.
_Delia:_ For pity's sake! That is the top-coat and the hat he used
to be wearing and he riding his long-tailed pony to every racecourse
from this to the Curragh of Kildare. A good class of cloth it should
be to last out through seventeen years.
_Staffy:_ The time he was young and fundless he had not a bad
reaching hand. He never was thrifty but lavish till he came into the
ownership of the land. It is as if his luck left him, he growing
timid at the time he had means to lose.
_Delia:_ Every horse he would back at that time it would surely
win all before it. I saw the people thronging him one time, taking
him in their arms for joy, and the winnings coming into his hand. It
is likely they ran out through the fingers as swift nearly as they
flowed in.
_Staffy:_ He grew to be very dark and crabbed from the time of the
father's death. His mind was on his halfpenny ever since.
_Delia: (Looking at dresser.)_ Spiders' webs heaped in ridges the
same as windrows in a bleach of hay. What now is that there above on
the 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 him
profit in his wild days. He always had a lucky hand.
_Delia: (Dusting them.)_ You would give your seven oaths the dust
to 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 the
house, 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 some
good 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 a
guinea-hen are to be canted out from the Spanish woman at Lisatuwna
cross by reason of the hanging gale.
_Staffy:_ That was the way with you, Delia, from the time you
could look out from the half-door, to be coveting pictures and
fooleries, that would shape themselves in your mind.