hundred pounds reward! A hundred pounds! (_Turns towards audience._) I
wonder, now, am I as great a fool as I think I am?
_Curtain._
THE JACKDAW
PERSONS
JOSEPH NESTOR _An Army Pensioner._
MICHAEL COONEY _A Farmer._
MRS. BRODERICK _A Small Shopkeeper._
TOMMY NALLY _A Pauper._
SIBBY FAHY _An Orange Seller._
TIMOTHY WARD _A Process Server._
THE JACKDAW
_Scene: Interior of a small general shop at Cloon. Mrs.
Broderick sitting down. Tommy Nally sitting eating an orange
Sibby has given him. Sibby, with basket on her arm, is looking
out of door._
_Sibby:_ The people are gathering to the door of the Court. The
Magistrates will be coming there before long. Here is Timothy Ward
coming up the street.
_Timothy Ward:_ (_Coming to door._) Did you get that summons I left
here for you ere yesterday, Mrs. Broderick?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ I believe it's there in under the canister. (_Takes
it out._) It had my mind tossed looking at it there before me. I know
well what is in it if I made no fist of reading it itself. It's no
wonder with all I had to go through if the reading and writing got
scattered on me.
_Ward:_ You know it is on this day you have to appear in the Court?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ It isn't easy to forget that, though indeed it is
hard for me to be keeping anything in my head these times, but maybe
remembering to-morrow the thing I was saying to-day.
_Ward:_ Up to one o'clock the magistrates will be able to attend to
you, ma'am, before they will go out eating their meal.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Haven't I the mean, begrudging creditors now that
would put me into the Court? Sure it's a terrible thing to go in it
and to be bound to speak nothing but the truth. When people would meet
with you after, they would remember your face in the Court. What way
would they be certain was it in or outside of the dock?
_Ward:_ It is not in the dock you will be put this time. And there
will be no bodily harm done to you, but to seize your furniture and
your goods. It's best for me to be going there myself and not to be
wasting my time. (_Goes out._)
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Many a one taking my goods on credit and I seeing
their face no more. But nothing would satisfy the people of this
district. Sure the great God Himself when He came down couldn't please
everybody.
_Sibby:_ I am thinking you were talking of some friend, ma'am, might
be apt to be coming to your aid.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Well able he is to do it if the Lord would but put
it in his mind. Isn't it a strange thing the goods of this world to
shut up the heart of a brother from his own, the same as Esau and
Jacob, and he having a good farm of land in the County Limerick. It is
what I heard that in that place the grass does be as thick as grease.
_Sibby:_ I suppose, ma'am, you wrote giving him an account of your
case?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, Mr. Nestor, the dear man, has his fingers wore
away writing for me, and I telling him all he had or had not to say.
At Christmas I wrote, and at Little Christmas, and at St. Brigit's
Day, and on the Feast of St. Patrick, and after that again such time
as I had news of the summons being about to be served. And you may ask
Mrs. Delane at the Post Office am I telling any lie saying I got no
word or answer at all.... It's long since I saw him, but it is the way
he used to be, his eyes on kippeens and some way suspicious in his
heart; a dark weighty tempered man.
_Sibby:_ A person to be crabbed and he young, it is not likely he will
grow kind at the latter end.
_Tommy Nally:_ That is no less than true now. There are crabbed people
and suspicious people to be met with in every place. It is much that I
got a pass from the Workhouse this day, the Master making sure when I
asked it that I had in my pocket the means of getting drink.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ It would maybe be best to go join you in the
Workhouse, Tommy Nally, when I am out of this, than to go walking the
world from end to end.
_Tommy Nally:_ Ah, don't be saying that, ma'am; sure you couldn't be
happy within those walls if you had the whole world. Clean outside,
but very hard within. No rank but all mixed together, the good, the
middling and the bad, the well reared and the rough.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure I'm not asking to go in it. You could never be
as stiff in any place as in any sort of little cabin of your own.
_Tommy Nally:_ The tea boiled in a boiler, you should close your eyes
drinking it, and ne'er a bit of sugar hardly in it at all. And our
curses on them that boil the eggs too hard! What use is an egg that is
hard to any person on earth? And as to the dinner, what way would a
tasty person eat it not having a knife or a fork?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ That I may live to be in no one's way, but to have
some little corner of my own!
_Tommy Nally:_ And to come to your end in it, ma'am! If you were the
Lady Mayor herself you'd be brought out to the deadhouse if it was ten
o'clock at night, and not a wash unless it was just a Scotch lick, and
nobody to wake you at all!
_Mrs. Broderick:_ I will not go in it! I would sooner make any shift
and die by the side of the wall. Sure heaven is the best place, heaven
and this world we're in now!
_Sibby:_ Don't be giving up now, ma'am. Here is Mr. Nestor coming,
and if any one will give you an advice he is the one will do it. Why
wouldn't he, he being, as he is, an educated man, and such a great one
to be reading books.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ So he is too, and keeps it in his mind after. It's a
wonder to me a man that does be reading to keep any memory at all.
_Nally:_ It's easy for him to carry things light, and his pension paid
regular at springtime and harvest.
(_Nestor comes in reading "Tit-Bits."_)
_Nestor:_ There was a servant girl in Austria cut off her finger
slicing cabbage....
_All:_ The poor thing!
_Nestor:_ And her master stuck it on again with glue. That now was a
very foolish thing to do. What use would a finger be stuck with glue
that might melt off at any time, and she to be stirring the pot?
_Sibby:_ That is true indeed.
_Nestor:_ Now, if I myself had been there, it is what I would have
advised....
_Sibby:_ That's what I was saying, Mr. Nestor. It is you are the grand
adviser. What now will you say to poor Mrs. Broderick that has a
summons out against her this day for up to ten pounds?
_Nestor:_ It is what I am often saying, it is a very foolish thing to
be getting into debt.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure what way could I help it? It's a very done-up
town to be striving to make a living in.
_Nestor:_ It would be a right thing to be showing a good example.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ They would want that indeed. There are more die with
debts on them in this place than die free from debt.
_Nestor:_ Many a poor soul has had to suffer from the weight of the
debts on him, finding no rest or peace after death.
_Sibby:_ The Magistrates are gone into the Courthouse, Mrs. Broderick.
Why now wouldn't you go up to the bank and ask would the manager
advance you a loan?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is likely he would not do it. But maybe it's as
good for me go as to be sitting here waiting for the end.
(_Puts on hat and shawl._)
_Nestor:_ I now will take charge of the shop for you, Mrs. Broderick.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ It's little call there'll be to it. The time a
person is sunk that's the time the custom will go from her. (_She goes
out._)
_Nally:_ I'll be taking a ramble into the Court to see what are the
lads doing. (_Goes out._)
_Sibby:_ (_Following them._) I might chance some customers there
myself.
(_Goes out calling--oranges, good oranges._)
_Nestor:_ (_Taking a paper from his pocket, sitting down, and
beginning to read._) "Romantic elopement in high life. A young lady at
Aberdeen, Missouri, U.S.A., having been left by her father an immense
fortune...."
(_Stops to wipe his spectacles, puts them on again and looks
for place, which he has lost. Cooney puts his head in at door
and draws it out again._)
_Nestor:_ Come in, come in!
_Cooney:_ (_Coming in cautiously and looking round._) Whose house now
might this be?
_Nestor:_ To the Widow Broderick it belongs. She is out in the town
presently.
_Cooney:_ I saw her name up over the door.
_Nestor:_ On business of her own she is gone. It is I am minding the
place for her.
_Cooney:_ So I see. I suppose now you have good cause to be minding
it?
_Nestor:_ It would be a pity any of her goods to go to loss.
_Cooney:_ I suppose so. Is it to auction them you will or to sell them
in bulk?
_Nestor:_ Not at all. I can sell you any article you will require.
_Cooney:_ It would be no profit to herself now, I suppose, if you did?
_Nestor:_ What do you mean saying that? Do you think I would defraud
her from her due in anything I would sell for her at all?
_Cooney:_ You are not the bailiff so?
_Nestor:_ Not at all. I wonder any person to take me for a bailiff!
_Cooney:_ You are maybe one of the creditors?
_Nestor:_ I am not. I am not a man to have a debt upon me to any
person on earth.
_Cooney:_ I wonder what it is you are at so, if you have no claim on
the goods. Is it any harm now to ask what's this your name is?
_Nestor:_ One Joseph Nestor I am, there are few in the district but
know me. Indeed they all have a great opinion of me. Travelled I did
in the army, and attended school and I young, and slept in the one bed
with two boys that were learning Greek.
_Cooney:_ What way now can I be rightly sure that you are Joseph
Nestor?
_Nestor:_ (_Pulling out envelope._) There is my pension docket. You
will maybe believe that.
_Cooney:_ (_Examining it._) I suppose you may be him so. I saw your
name often before this.
_Nestor:_ Did you now? I suppose it may have travelled a good
distance.
_Cooney:_ It travelled as far as myself anyway at the bottom of
letters that were written asking relief for the owner of this house.
_Nestor:_ I suppose you are her brother so, Michael Cooney?
_Cooney:_ If I am, there are some questions that I want to put and to
get answers to before my mind will be satisfied. Tell me this now. Is
it a fact Mary Broderick to be living at all?
_Nestor:_ What would make you think her not to be living and she
sending letters to you through the post?
_Cooney:_ I was saying to myself with myself, there was maybe some
other one personating her and asking me to send relief for their own
ends.
_Nestor:_ I am in no want of any relief. That is a queer thing to say
and a very queer thing. There are many worse off than myself, the Lord
be praised!
_Cooney:_ Don't be so quick now starting up to take offence. It is
hard to believe the half the things you hear or that will be told to
you.
_Nestor:_ That may be so indeed; unless it is things that would be
printed on the papers. But I would think you might trust one of your
own blood.
_Cooney:_ I might or I might not. I had it in my mind this long time
to come hither and to look around for myself. There are seven
generations of the Cooneys trusted nobody living or dead.
_Nestor:_ Indeed I was reading in some history of one Ulysses that
came back from a journey and sent no word before him but slipped in
unknown to all but the house dog to see was his wife minding the
place, or was she, as she was, scattering his means.
_Cooney:_ So she would be too. If Mary Broderick is in need of relief
I will relieve her, but if she is not, I will bring away what I
brought with me to its own place again.
_Nestor:_ Sure here is the summons. You can read that, and if you will
look out the door you can see by the stir the Magistrates are sitting
in the Court. It is a great welcome she will have before you, and the
relief coming at the very nick of time.
_Cooney:_ It is too good a welcome she will give me I am thinking. It
is what I am in dread of now, if she thinks I brought her the money so
soft and so easy, she will never be leaving me alone, but dragging all
I have out of me by little and little.
_Nestor:_ Maybe you might let her have but the lend of it.
_Cooney:_ Where's the use of calling it a lend when I may be sure I
never will see it again? It might be as well for me to earn the value
of a charity.
_Nestor:_ You might do that and not repent of it.
_Cooney:_ It is likely I'll be annoyed with her to the end of my
lifetime if she knows I have as much as that to part with. It might be
she would be following me to Limerick.
_Nestor:_ Wait now a minute till I will give you an advice.
_Cooney:_ It is likely my own advice is the best. Look over your own
shoulder and do the thing you think right. How can any other person
know the reasons I have in my mind?
_Nestor:_ I will know what is in your mind if you will tell it to me.
_Cooney:_ It would suit me best, she to get the money and not to know
at the present time where did it come from. The next time she will
write wanting help from me, I will task her with it and ask her to
give me an account.
_Nestor:_ That now would take a great deal of strategy.... Wait now
till I think.... I have it in my mind I was reading in a penny novel
... no but on the "Gael" ... about a boy of Kilbecanty that saved his
old sweetheart from being evicted.
_Cooney:_ I never heard my sister had any old sweetheart.
_Nestor:_ It was playing Twenty-five he did it. Played with the
husband he did, letting him win up to fifty pounds.
_Cooney:_ Mary Broderick was no cardplayer. And if she was itself she
would know me. And it's not fifty pounds I am going to leave with her,
or twenty pounds, or a penny more than is needful to free her from the
summons to-day.
_Nestor:_ (_Excited._) I will make up a plan! I am sure I will think
of a good one. It is given in to me there is no person so good at
making up a plan as myself on this side of the world, not on this side
of the world! I will manage all. Leave here what you have for her
before she will come in. I will give it to her in some secret way.
_Cooney:_ I don't know. I will not give it to you before I will get a
receipt for it ... and I'll not leave the town till I'll see did she
get it straight and fair. Into the Court I'll go to see her paying it.
(_Sits down and writes out receipt._)
_Nestor:_ I was reading on "Home Chat" about a woman put a note for
five pounds into her son's prayer book and he going a voyage. And when
he came back and was in the church with her it fell out, he never
having turned a leaf of the book at all.
_Cooney:_ Let you sign this and you may put it in the prayer book so
long as she will get it safe. (_Nestor signs. Cooney looks
suspiciously at signature and compares it with a letter and then gives
notes._)
_Nestor:_ (_Signing._) Joseph Nestor.
_Cooney:_ Let me see now is it the same handwriting I used to be
getting on the letters. It is. I have the notes here.
_Nestor:_ Wait now till I see is there a prayer book.... (_Looks on
shelf_). Treacle, castor oil, marmalade.... I see no books at all.
_Cooney:_ Hurry on now, she will be coming in and finding me.
_Nestor:_ Here is what will do as well.... "Old Moore's Almanac." I
will put it here between the leaves. I will ask her the prophecy for
the month. You can come back here after she finding it.
_Cooney:_ Amn't I after telling you I wouldn't wish her to have sight
of me here at all? What are you at now, I wonder, saying that. I will
take my own way to know does she pay the money. It is not my intention
to be made a fool of.
(_Goes out._)
_Nestor:_ You will be satisfied and well satisfied. Let me see now
where are the predictions for the month. (_Reads._) "The angry
appearance of Scorpio and the position of the pale Venus and Jupiter
presage much danger for England. The heretofore obsequious Orangemen
will refuse to respond to the tocsin of landlordism. The scales are
beginning to fall from their eyes."
(_Mrs. Broderick comes in without his noticing her. She gives a
groan. He drops book and stuffs notes into his pocket._)
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Here I am back again and no addition to me since I
went.
_Nestor:_ You gave me a start coming in so noiseless.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ It is time for me go to the Court, and I give you my
word I'd be better pleased going to my burying at the Seven Churches.
A nice slab I have there waiting for me, though the man that put it
over me I never saw him at all, and he a far off cousin of my own.
_Nestor:_ Who knows now, Mrs. Broderick, but things might turn out
better than you think.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ What way could they turn out better between this and
one o'clock?
_Nestor:_ (_Scratching his head._) I suppose now you wouldn't care to
play a game of Twenty-five?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ I am surprised at you, Mr. Nestor, asking me to go
cardplaying on such a day and at such an hour as this.
_Nestor:_ I wonder might some person come in and give an order for ten
pounds' worth of the stock?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Much good it would do me. Sure I have the most of it
on credit.
_Nestor:_ Well, there is no knowing. Some well-to-do person now
passing the street might have seen you and taken a liking to you and
be willing to make an advance or a loan.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, who would be taking a liking to me as they might
to a young girl in her bloom.
_Nestor:_ Oh, it's a sort of thing might happen. Sure age didn't catch
on to you yet; you are clean and fresh and sound. What's this I was
reading in "Answers." (_Looks at it._) "Romantic elopement...."
_Mrs. Broderick:_ I know of no one would be thinking of me for a wife
... unless it might be yourself, Mr. Nestor....
_Nestor:_ (_Jumping up and speaking fast and running finger up and
down paper._) "Performance of Dick Whittington." ... There now, there
is a story that I read in my reading, it was called Whittington and
the Cat. It was the cat led to his fortune. There might some person
take a fancy to your cat....
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, let you have done now. I have no cat this good
while. I banished it on the head of it threatening the jackdaw.
_Nestor:_ The jackdaw?
_Mrs. Broderick:_ (_Fetches cage from inner room._) Sure I reared it
since the time it fell down the chimney and I going into my bed. It is
often you should have seen it, in or out of its cage. Hero his name
is. Come out now, Hero.
(_Opens cage._)
_Nestor:_ (_Slapping his side._) That is it ... that's the very thing.
Listen to me now, Mrs. Broderick, there are some might give a good
price for that bird. (_Sitting down to the work._) It chances now
there is a friend of mine in South Africa. A mine owner he is ... very
rich ... but it is down in the mine he has to live by reason of the
Kaffirs ... it is hard to keep a watch upon them in the half dark,
they being black.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ I suppose....
_Nestor:_ He does be lonesome now and again, and he is longing for a
bird to put him in mind of old Ireland ... but he is in dread it would
die in the darkness ... and it came to his mind that it is a custom
with jackdaws to be living in chimneys, and that if any birds would
bear the confinement it is they that should do it.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ And is it to buy jackdaws he is going?
_Nestor:_ Isn't that what I am coming to. (_He pulls out notes._) Here
now is ten pounds I have to lay out for him. Take them now and good
luck go with them, and give me the bird.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Notes is it? Is it waking or dreaming I am and I
standing up on the floor?
_Nestor:_ Good notes and ten of them. Look at them! National Bank they
are.... Count them now, according to your fingers, and see did I tell
any lie.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ (_Counting._) They are in it sure enough ... so long
as they are good ones and I not made a hare of before the magistrates.
_Nestor:_ Go out now to the Court and show them to Timothy Ward, and
see does he say are they good. Pay them over then, and its likely you
will be let off the costs.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ (_Taking shawl._) I will go, I will go. Well, you
are a great man and a kind man, Joseph Nestor, and that you may live a
thousand years for this good deed.
_Nestor:_ Look here now, ma'am, I wouldn't wish you to be mentioning
my name in this business or saying I had any hand in it at all.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ I will not so long as it's not pleasing to you.
Well, it is yourself took a great load off me this day! (_She goes
out._)
_Nestor:_ (_Calling after her._) I might as well be putting the
jackdaw back into the cage to be ready for the journey. (_Comes into
shop._) I hope now he will be well treated by the sailors and he
travelling over the sea.... Where is he now.... (_Chirrups._) Here
now, come here to me, what's this your name is.... Nero! Nero! (_Makes
pounces behind counter._) Ah, bad manners to you, is it under the
counter you are gone!
(_Lies flat on the floor chirruping and calling, Nero! Nero!
Nally comes in and watches him curiously._)
_Nally:_ Is it catching blackbeetles you are, Mr. Nestor? Where are
they and I will give you a hand....
_Nestor:_ (_Getting up annoyed._) It's that bird I was striving to
catch a hold of for to put him back in the cage.
_Tommy Nally:_ (_Making a pounce._) There he is now. (_Puts bird in
cage._) Wait now till I'll fasten the gate.
_Nestor:_ Just putting everything straight and handy for the widow
woman I am before she will come back from the settlement she is making
in the Court.
_Nally:_ What way will she be able to do that?
_Nestor:_ I gave her advice. A thought I had, something that came from
my reading. (_Taps paper._) Education and reading and going in the
army through the kingdoms of the world; that is what fits a man now to
be giving out advice.
_Tommy:_ Indeed, it's good for them to have you, all the poor ignorant
people of this town.
_Cooney:_ (_Coming in hurriedly and knocking against Nally as he goes
out._) What, now, would you say to be the best nesting place in this
town. Nests of jackdaws I should say.
_Nestor:_ There is the old mill should be a good place. To the west of
the station it is. Chimneys there are in it. Middling high they are.
Wait now till I'll tell you of the great plan I made up....
_Cooney:_ What are you asking for those rakes in the corner? It's no
matter, I'll take one on credit, or maybe it is only the lend of it
I'll take. ... I'll be coming back immediately. (_He goes out with
rake._)
_Sibby:_ (_Coming in excitedly._) If you went bird-catching, Mr.
Nestor, tell me what way would you go doing it?
_Nestor:_ It is not long since I was reading some account of that ...
lads that made a trade of it ... nets they had and they used to be
spreading them in the swamps where the plover do be feeding....
_Sibby:_ Ah, sure where's the use of a plover!
_Nestor:_ And snares they had for putting along the drains where the
snipe do be picking up worms.... But if I myself saw any person going
after things of the sort, it is what I would advise them to stick to
the net.
_Sibby:_ What now is the price of that net in the corner?
_Nestor:_ (_Taking it down._) It is but a little bag that is, suitable
for carrying small articles; it would become your oranges well.
Twopence I believe, Sibby, is what I should charge you for that.
_Sibby:_ (_Taking money out of handkerchief._) Give it to me so! Here
I'll get the start of you, Timothy Ward, anyway.
(_She takes it and goes out, almost overturning Timothy Ward,
who is rushing in._)
_Nestor:_ Well, Timothy, did you see the Widow Broderick in the Court?
_Ward:_ I did see her. It is in it she is, now, looking as content as
in the coffin, and she paying her debt.
_Nestor:_ Did she give you any account of herself?
_Ward:_ She did to be sure, and to the whole Court; but look here now,
I have no time to be talking. I have to be back there when the
magistrates will have their lunch taken. Now you being so clever a
man, Mr. Nestor, what would you say is the surest way to go catching
birds?
_Nestor:_ It is a strange thing now, I was asked the same question not
three minutes ago. I was just searching my mind. It seems to me I have
read in some place it is a very good way to go calling to them with
calls; made for the purpose they are. You have but to sit under a tree
or whatever place they may perch and to whistle ... suppose now it
might be for a curlew.... (_Whistles._)
_Timothy Ward:_ Are there any of those calls in the shop?
_Nestor:_ I would not say there are any made for the purpose, but
there might be something might answer you all the same. Let me see
now.... (_Gets down a box of musical toys and turns them over._)
_Ward:_ Is there anything now has a sound like the croaky screech of a
jackdaw?
_Nestor:_ Here now is what we used to be calling a corncrake....
(_Turns it_.) Corncrake, corncrake ... but it seems to me now that to
give it but the one creak, this way ... it is much like what you would
hear in the chimney at the time of the making of the nests.
_Ward:_ Give it here to me!
(_Puts a penny on counter and runs out._)
_Tommy Nally:_ (_Coming in shaking with excitement._) For the love of
God, Mr. Nestor, will you give me that live-trap on credit!
_Nestor:_ A trap? Sure there is no temptation for rats to be settling
themselves in the Workhouse.