end will come.
_Ralph:_ What way now will we bring away the crock?
_Delia:_ Let you go outside and be watching the road while Staffy
will be bringing out the gold.
_Staffy:_ Ah, I'm not so limber as what Ralph is. There does be
giddiness and delay in my feet. It might fail me to heave it to a
hiding place and to bring it away unknownst.
_Delia:_ Let you go out so and be keeping a watch, and Ralph will
put it on the ass-car under sacks.
_Ralph:_ Do it you. I am not of his own kindred and his family.
Any person to get a sketch of me bringing it away they might nearly
take myself to be a thief.
_Delia:_ We are doing but what is fair and is right.
_Ralph:_ Maybe so. But any neighbour to be questioning me, it
might be hard put a skin on the story.
_Delia:_ There is no person to do it but the one. _(Calls from the
door.)_ Come in here from the shed, Simon Niland, if the
sluggishness is banished from your eyesight and from your limbs.
_Simon: (At door_) I was thinking to go travel my road.
_Delia:_ Have you any desire to reach out your hand for to save a
mortal life?
_Simon: (Coming in.)_ Whose life is that?
_Staffy:_ The man of this house that is your uncle and is owner of
wealth closed up in a jar. We now being wittier than himself, that
has lost his wits, have our mind made up to bring it away.
_Simon:_ Outside of his knowledge is it?
_Staffy:_ It will be safe and well minded and lodged in loyal
keeping, it being no profit to him that is at this time shook and
blighted, but only a danger to his days.
_Delia:_ The seven senses to be going astray on him, what would
ail any tramp or neuk that would be passing the road, not to rob him
and to lay him stone dead?
_Staffy:_ Go in now and bring out from the room and to such place
as we will command, that gallon jar of gold.
_Ralph:_ It being certain it will be brought away from him, it is
best it to be kept in the family, and not to go nourishing lawyers
or thieves.
_Simon:_ Is it to steal it I should?
_Staffy:_ What way will it be stealing, and the whole of us to be
looking on at your deed?
_Simon:_ Ah, what call have I to do that much and maybe put myself
in danger of the judge, for the sake of a man is without sense.
_Delia:_ Let you do it for my own sake so. You heard me giving out
news on yesterday of the white goats are on the bounds of being sold.
The neighbours will give me no more credit, where they loaned me the
price of a crested side car was auctioned out at a quality sale.
_Ralph:_ Picking the eyes out of my own head they are, to pay the
little bills they have against her.
_Delia:_ I am no way greedy, I would ask neither food or bite, I
would not begrudge turning Sunday into Friday if I could but get my
heart's desire. Such a thing now as a guinea-hen would be bringing
fashion to the door, throwing it a handful of yellow meal, and it in
its speckled plumage giving out its foreign call!
_Simon:_ I have no mind to be brought within the power of the law.
_Delia:_ You that are near in blood to refuse me so small an asking,
what chance would I have sending requests to Heaven that is beyond
the height of the clouds!
_(Weeps.)_
_Staffy:_ That's the way with them that are reared poor, they are
the hardest after to humour, striving to bring everything to their
own way. But there's a class of people in the world wouldn't do a
hand's turn, no more than the bird upon the tree.
_Ralph:_ I wonder you not to give in to us, when all the world
knows God formed young people for to be giving aid to elder people,
and beyond all to them that are near to them in blood.
_Staffy:_ Look now, Simon, let you be said and led by me. You
having no great share of wisdom we are wishful to make a snug man of
you and to put you on a right road. Go in now and you will not be
kept out of your own profit and your share, and a harbour of plenty
beyond all.
_Simon:_ It might be guarded by a serpent in a tree, or by
unnatural things would be in the similitude of cats.
_Staffy:_ Ah, that class is done away with this good while.
_Ralph:_ There is no person having sense, but would take means, by
hook or by crook, to make his pocket stiff and he to be given his
fair chance. It is to save you from starvation we are wishful to do,
as much as to bring profit to ourselves.
_Staffy:_ You not to follow our say you will be brought to burn
green ferns to boil your victuals, or to devour the berries of the
bush.
_Simon:_ I would not wish a head to follow me and leap up on the
table and wrestle me, or to drink against me with its gory mouth.
_Staffy:_ You that have not the substance of a crane's marrow, to
go shrink from so small a bidding, let you go on the shaughraun or
to the workhouse, where you would not take our advice.
_Simon:_ I'll go do your bidding so. I will go bring out the crock.
_Staffy:_ There is my whiteheaded boy! I'll keep a watch, the way
Damer will not steal in on us without warning.
_Ralph:_ He should have the key in some secret place. It is best
for you give the lock a blow of your foot.
_Simon:_ I'll do that.
_(He gives door a kick. It opens easily.)_
_Delia:_ Was I right now saying Damer is turned innocent? Sure the
door was not locked at all.
_Simon: (Dragging out jar.)_ Here it is now.
_Ralph:_ So it is and no mistake.
_Staffy:_ There should be great weight in it.
_Ralph:_ I am in dread it might work a hole down through the
timber of the car.
_Delia:_ Why wouldn't we open it here? It would be handier
bringing it away in small divides.
_Ralph:_ The way we would make sure of getting our own share at
the last.
_Delia:_ Let you draw out the cork from it.
_Ralph:_ I don't know can I lift it. _(Stoops and lifts it easily.)_
The Lord protect and save us! There is no weight in it at all!
_Staffy: (Seizing and shaking it.)_ Not a one penny in it but
clean empty. That beats all.
_Delia:_ It is with banknotes it is stuffed that are deaf and do
be giving out no sound. _(She pokes in a knitting pin.)_ Nothing in
it at all, but as bare as the canopy of heaven!
_Ralph:_ There being nothing within in it, where now is the gold?
_Staffy:_ Some person should have made away with it.
_Delia:_ Some robber or some great rogue. A terrible thing such
ruffians to be around in the world! To turn and rob a poor man of
all he had spared and had earned.
_Staffy:_ They have done him a great wrong surely, taking from him
all he had of comfort in his life.
_Ralph:_ My grief it is there being no more hangings for thieves,
that are worse again than murderers that might do their deed out of
heat. It is thieving is the last crime.
_Staffy:_ We to lay our hand on that vagabond we'll give him
cruelty will force him to Christian habits.
_Ralph:_ Take care might he be nearer than what you think!
(_He points at Simon. All look at him.)_
_Staffy:_ Sure enough it is with himself only we found him on the
hearth this morning.
_Delia:_ He hasn't hardly the intellect to be the thief.
_Simon:_ I tell you I never since the day I was born could be
charged with the weight of a brass pin!
_Staffy:_ It is to Damer, my fine boy, you will have to make out
your case.
_Simon:_ So I will make it out. Where now is Damer?
_Staffy:_ He is gone down the road, where he brought away Jubair
the dog.
_Simon:_ What are you saying? The dog gone is it? _(Goes to door.)_
_Ralph: (Taking hold of him.)_ What makes you go out in such a
hurry?
_Simon:_ What is that to you?
_Delia:_ What cause has he to be making a run?
_Simon:_ Let me mind my own business.
_Staffy:_ It is maybe our own business.
_Simon:_ To make a search I must in that dog's kennel of straw.
_Delia:_ Go out, Ralph, till you will bring it in.
_(Ralph goes out.)_
_Staffy: (Seizing him_) A man to go rush out headlong and money
after being stolen, I have no mind to let him make his escape.
_Delia:_ If you are honest let you stop within and not to put a
bad appearance upon yourself making off.
_Simon:_ Let me out! I tell you I have a thing concealed in the box.
_Staffy:_ A strange place to go hiding things and a queer story
altogether.
_Delia:_ Do not let go your hold. He to go out into the street, he
has the wide world before him.
_Ralph: (Dragging kennel in.)_ Here now is the box.
_Simon: (Breaking away and searching it)_ Where at all is it
vanished?
_Staffy:_ It is lies he was telling. There is nothing at all
within in it only a wisp of barley straw.
_Simon:_ Where at all is it?
_Staffy:_ What is it is gone from you?
_Simon:_ Not a one pound left!
_Delia:_ Why would you look to find coins of money down in
Jubair's bed?
_Simon:_ It is there I hid it.
_Staffy:_ What is it you hid?
_Simon:_ All that was in the crock and that I took from it. Where
now is my bag of gold?
_Staffy:_ Do you hear what he is after saying?
_Ralph:_ A lad of that sort will not be safe but in the gaol. Let
us give him into the grip of the law.
_Delia:_ No, but let the man owned it do that.
_Staffy:_ So he can task him with it, and he drawing to the door.
_Delia: (Going to it.)_ It is time for you, Patrick, come in.
_(Damer comes in dragging a sack.)_
_Ralph:_ You are after being robbed and left bare.
_Delia:_ Not a one penny left of all you have cast into its mouth.
_Ralph:_ Herself made a prophecy you would be robbed with the
weakening of your wits, and sure enough it has come about.
_Delia:_ Not a tint of it left. What now do you say, hearing that?
_Damer: (Sitting down by the hearth and laying down sack.)_ If it
should go it must go. That was allotted to me in the skies.
_Delia:_ Is it that you had knowledge ere this of it being swept
and lost?
_Damer:_ If I had not, why would I have been setting my mind upon
eternity and striving to bring to mind a few prayers? And to have
parted with my wicked dog?
_Delia:_ Let you turn around till you will see before you the man
that is the robber and the thief!
_Simon:_ Thief yourself! You that had a plan made up to bring it
away.
_Damer:_ Delia, Delia, what was I laying down a while ago? It is
the love of riches has twisted your heart and your mind.
_Delia:_ Is it that you are contented to be made this one's prey?
_Damer:_ It was foretold for me, I to go stint the body till I
near put myself to death without the Lord calling on me, and to lose
every whole pound after in one night's card playing.
_Delia:_ Is it at cards you lost it?
_Damer:_ With that same pack of cards you laid out under my hand,
I lost all I had gathered to that one.
_Staffy:_ Well, there is nothing so certain in the world as the
running of a fool to a fool.
_Delia:_ Is it taking that lad you are to be a fool? I thinking
him to be as simple as you'd see in the world, and he putting bread
upon his own butter as we slept!
_Ralph:_ We to have known all then we know now, we need not have
wasted on him our advice.
_Damer:_ Give me, boy, one answer. What in the world wide put
venture into you that made you go face the dog?
_Simon:_ Ah, what venture? And he being as he is without teeth?
_Damer:_ You know that, what no one in the parish or out of it
ever found out till now! You should have put your hand in his jaw to
know that much! A right lad you are and a lucky lad. I would nearly
wish you of my own blood and of my race.
_Delia:_ Of your own blood is it?
_Damer:_ That is what I would wish.
_Delia:_ Is it that you are taking Simon Niland to be a stranger?
_Damer:_ What Simon Niland?
_Delia:_ Your own nephew and only son to your sister Sarah.
_Damer:_ Do you tell me so! What way did it fail me to recognise
that, and he having daring and spirit the same as used to be rising
up in myself in my early time?
_Delia:_ He was born the very year of you coming into possession
of this place.
_Damer:_ The same year my luck turned against me, and every horse
I would back would get the staggers on the course, or would fail to
rise at the leaps. All the strength of fortune went from me at that
time, it is into himself it flowed and ran. The dead spit and image
of myself he is. Stop with me here through the winter season and
through the summer season! You to be in the house it is not an
unlucky house will be in it. The Royalty of England and of Spain
cannot touch upon yourself. I am prouder of you than if you wrote
the wars of Homer or put down Turgesius of the Danes! You are a lad
that can't be beat. It is you are the Lamb of Luck!
_Staffy:_ What call has he or any of us to be stopping under
Damer's roof and he owning but the four walls presently and a poor
little valley of land?
_Ralph:_ There is nothing worth while in his keeping, and all he
had gathered after being robbed.
_Damer:_ Is that what you are saying? Well, I am not so easy
robbed as you think! _(Takes bag from the sack and shakes it.)_ Is
that what you call being robbed?
_Simon:_ That is my treasure and my bag!
_Staffy:_ I thought it was after being brought away from the two
of you.
_Damer:_ You are out of it! It is Jubair did that much for me.
Jubair, my darling, it is tonight I'll bring him back to the house!
It is not in the box he will be any more but alongside the warmth of
the hearth. The time I went unloosing his chain, didn't he scrape
with his paw till he showed me all I had lost hid in under the straw,
and it in a spotted bag! _(Opens and pours out money.)_
_Simon:_ It is as well for you have it back where it stopped so
short with myself.
_Damer:_ Is it that I would keep it from you where it was won fair?
It is a rogue of a man would do that. Where would be the use, and I
knowing you could win it back from me at your will, and the five
trumps coming into your hand? It is to share it we will and share
alike, so long as it will not give out!
_Delia:_ A little handsel to myself would do the both of you no
harm at all.
_Damer:_ Delia, my darling, I'll go as far as that on this day of
wonders. I'll handsel you and welcome. I'll bestow on you the empty
jar. _(Gives it to her.)_
_Delia:_ I'll take it. I'll let on it to be weighty and I facing
back into Loughtyshassy.
_Ralph:_ The neighbours seeing it and taking you to be his heir
you might come to your goats yet.
_Delia:_ Ah, what's goats and what is guinea-hens? Did ever you
see yoked horses in a coach, their skin shining out like shells,
rising their steps in tune the same as a patrol of police? There are
peacocks on the lawns of Lough Cutra they were telling me, having
each of them a hundred eyes. _(Goes to door.)_
_Simon: (Putting his hand on the jar.)_ I don't know. _(To Damer_)
It might be a nice thing for the two of us to start gathering the
full of it again.
_Damer:_ Not a fear of me. Where heaping and hoarding that much
has my years withered and blighted up to this, it is not to storing
treasure in any vessel at all I will give the latter end of my days,
or to working the skin off my bones. Give me here that coat.
(_Puts it on.)_ If I was tossed and racked a while ago I'll show
out good from this out. Come on now, out of this, till we'll face to
the races of Loughrea and of Knockbarron. I was miserable and
starved long enough. _(Puts on hat.)_ I'm thinking as long as I'll be
living I'll take my view of the world, for it's long I'll be lying
when my eyes are closed and seeing nothing at all!
_(He seizes a handful of gold and puts it in Simon's pocket and
another in his own. They turn towards the door.)_
_Curtain_
McDONOUGH'S WIFE
PERSONS
_McDonough, a piper._
_First Hag._
_Second Hag._
McDONOUGH'S WIFE
_Scene: A very poor room in Galway with outer and inner door.
Noises of a fair outside. A Hag sitting by the fire. Another
standing by outer door_.
_First Hag:_ Is there e'er a sign of McDonough to be coming?
_Second Hag:_ There is not. There were two or three asking for him,
wanting him to bring the pipes to some spree-house at the time the
fair will be at an end.
_First Hag:_ A great wonder he not to have come, and this the fair
day of Galway.
_Second Hag:_ He not to come ere evening, the woman that is dead
must go to her burying without one to follow her, or any friend at
all to flatten the green scraws above her head.
_First Hag:_ Is there no neighbour at all will do that much, and
she being gone out of the world?
_Second Hag:_ There is not. You said to ask Pat Marlborough, and I
asked him, and he said there were plenty of decent women and of
well-reared women in Galway he would follow and welcome the day they
would die, without paying that respect to one not belonging to the
district, or that the town got no good account of the time she came.
_First Hag:_ Did you do as I bade you, asking Cross Ford to send
in a couple of the boys she has?
_Second Hag:_ What a fool I'd be asking her! I laid down to her
the way it was. McDonough's wife to be dead, and he far out in the
country, and no one belonging to her to so much as lift the coffin
over the threshold of the door.
_First Hag:_ What did she say hearing that?
_Second Hag:_ She put a big laugh out of her, and it is what she
said: "May the devil die with her, and it is well pleased the street
will be getting quit of her, and it is hard say on what mountain she
might be grazing now."
_First Hag:_ There will no help come burying her so.
_Second Hag:_ It is too lofty McDonough was, and too high-minded,
bringing in a woman was maybe no lawful wife, or no honest child
itself, but it might be a bychild or a tinker's brat, and he giving
out no account of her generations or of her name.
_First Hag:_ Whether or no, she was a little giddy. But that is
the way with McDonough. He is sometimes an unruly lad, but he would
near knock you with his pride.
_Second Hag:_ Indeed he is no way humble, but looking for
attendance on her, as if she was the youngest and the greatest in
the world.
_First Hag:_ It is not to humour her the Union men will, and they
carrying her to where they will sink her into the ground, unless it
might be McDonough would come back, and he having money in his hand,
to bring in some keeners and some hired men.
_Second Hag:_ He to come back at this time it is certain he will
bring a fist-full of money.
_First Hag:_ What makes you say that to be certain?
_Second Hag:_ A troop of sheep-shearers that are on the west side
of the fair, looking for hire from the grass farmers. I heard them
laying down they met with McDonough at the big shearing at
Cregroostha.
_First Hag:_ What day was that?
_Second Hag:_ This day week for the world.
_First Hag:_ He has time and plenty to be back in Galway ere this.
_Second Hag:_ Great dancing they had and a great supper at the
time the shearing was at an end and the fleeces lodged in the big
sacks. It is McDonough played his music through the night-time. It
is what I heard them saying, "He went out of that place weightier
than he went in."
_First Hag:_ He is a great one to squeeze the pipes surely. There
is no place ever he went into but he brought the whip out of it.
_Second Hag:_ His father was better again, they do be saying. It
was from the other side he got the gift.
_First Hag:_ He did, and from beyond the world, where he
befriended some in the forths of the Danes. It was they taught him
their trade. I heard tell, he to throw the pipes up on top of the
rafters, they would go sounding out tunes of themselves.
_Second Hag:_ He could do no more with them than what McDonough
himself can do--may ill luck attend him! It is inhuman tunes he does
be making; unnatural they are.
_First Hag:_ He is a great musician surely.
_Second Hag:_ There is no person can be safe from him the time he
will put his "come hither" upon them. I give you my word he set
myself dancing reels one time in the street, and I making an attack
on him for keeping the little lads miching from school. That was a
great scandal to put upon a decent woman.
_First Hag:_ He to be in the fair to-day and to take the fancy,
you would hear the nailed boots of the frieze-coated man footing
steps on the sidewalk.
_Second Hag:_ You would, and it's likely he'd play a notion into
the skulls of the pampootied boys from Aran, they to be kings of
France or of Germany, till they'd go lift their head to the clouds
and go knocking all before them. And the police it is likely
laughing with themselves, as if listening to the talk of the
blackbird would be perched upon a blessed bush.
_First Hag:_ I wonder he did not come. Could it be he might be
made away with for the riches he brought from Cregroostha? It would
be a strange thing now, he to be lying and his head broke, at the
butt of a wall, and the woman he thought the whole world of to be
getting her burial from the workhouse.
_(A sound of pipes.)_
_Second Hag:_ Whist, I tell you! It's the sound of the pipes. It
is McDonough, it is no other one.
_First Hag:_ _(Getting up.)_ I'm in dread of him coming in the
house. He is a hasty man and wicked, and he vexed. What at all will
he say and she being dead before him? Whether or no, it will be a
sharp grief to him, she to scatter and to go. He might give me a
backstroke and drive me out from the door.
_Second Hag:_ Let you make an attack upon himself before he will
have time to make his own attack.
_McDonough:_ _(Coming in.)_ Catherine! Where is she? Where is
Catherine?
_First Hag:_ Is it readying the dinner before you, or wringing out
a shirt for the Sunday like any good slave of a wife, you are used
to find your woman, McDonough?
_McDonough:_ What call would she have stopping in the house with
the withered like of yourself? It is not to the crabbed talk of a
peevish hag a handsome young woman would wish to be listening and
sport and funning being in the fair outside.
_First Hag:_ Go look for her in the fair so, if it is gadding up
and down is her habit, and you being gone out from her sight.
_McDonough: (Shaking her.)_ Tell me out, where is she?
_First Hag:_ Tell out what harbour were you yourself in from the
day you left Cregroostha?
_McDonough:_ Is it that she got word?--or that she was tired
waiting for me?
_First Hag:_ She is gone away from you, McDonough.
_McDonough:_ That is a lie, a black lie.
_First Hag:_ Throwing a lie in a decent woman's face will not
bring you to the truth.
_McDonough:_ Is it what you are laying down that she went away
with some other man? Say that out if you have courage, and I'll
wring your yellow windpipe.
_First Hag:_ Leave your hand off me and open the room door, and
you will see am I telling you any lie.
_McDonough: (Goes to door, then stops.)_ She is not in it. She
would have come out before me, and she hearing the sound of the pipes.
_First Hag:_ It is not the sound of the pipes will rouse her, or
any sound made in this world at all.
_McDonough: (Trembling.)_ What is it?
_First Hag:_ She is gone and she is not living.
_McDonough:_ Is it to die she did? _(Clutches her.)_
_First Hag:_ Yesterday, and the bells ringing, she turned her face
to the south and died away. It was at the hour of noon I knew and
was aware she was gone. A great loss it to be at the time of the fair,
and all the lodgers that would have come into the house.
_McDonough:_ It is not truth. What would ail her to die?
_First Hag:_ The makings of a child that came before its time, God
save the mark! She made a bad battle at the last.
_McDonough:_ What way did it fail you to send me out messengers
seeking me when you knew her to be done and dying?
_First Hag:_ I thought she would drag another while. There was no
time for the priest itself to overtake her, or to put the little
dress of the Virgin in her hand at the last gasp of death.
_McDonough goes into the room. He comes out as if affrighted, leans
his head against the wall, and breaks into a prayer in Irish:_
_"An Athair tha in Naomh, dean trocaire orainn! A Dia Righ an Domhain,
dean trocaire orainn! A Mhuire Mathair Dia, dean trocaire orainn!"_
_Second Hag:_ _(Venturing near.)_ Do not go fret after her,
McDonough. She could not go through the world forever, and
travelling the world. It might be that trouble went with her.
_McDonough:_ Get out of that, you hags, you witches you! You
croaking birds of ill luck! It is much if I will leave you in the
living world, and you not to have held back death from her!
_Second Hag:_ That you may never be cross till you will meet with
your own death! What way could any person do that?
_McDonough:_ Get out the door and it will be best for you!
_Second Hag:_ You are talking fool's talk and giving out words
that are foolishness! There is no one at all can put away from his
road the bones and the thinness of death.
_McDonough:_ I to have been in it he would not have come under the
lintel! Ugly as he is and strong, I would be able for him and would
wrestle with him and drag him asunder and put him down! Before I
would let him lay his sharp touch on her I would break and would
crush his naked ribs, and would burn them to lime and scatter them!
_First Hag:_ Where is the use raving? It is best for you to turn
your hand to the thing has to be done.
_McDonough:_ You to have stood in his path he might have brought
you away in her place! That much would be no great thing to ask, and
your life being dead and in ashes.