me. I had a share and a good share in my early time, and it's well you
know that, and the both of us reared in Skehanagh.
_Mike McInerney:_ You may say that, indeed, we are both of us reared
in Skehanagh. Little wonder you to have good nourishment the time we
were both rising, and you bringing away my rabbits out of the snare.
_Michael Miskell:_ And you didn't bring away my own eels, I suppose, I
was after spearing in the Turlough? Selling them to the nuns in the
convent you did, and letting on they to be your own. For you were
always a cheater and a schemer, grabbing every earthly thing for your
own profit.
_Mike McInerney:_ And you were no grabber yourself, I suppose, till
your land and all you had grabbed wore away from you!
_Michael Miskell:_ If I lost it itself, it was through the crosses I
met with and I going through the world. I never was a rambler and a
card-player like yourself, Mike McInerney, that ran through all and
lavished it unknown to your mother!
_Mike McInerney:_ Lavished it, is it? And if I did was it you yourself
led me to lavish it or some other one? It is on my own floor I would
be to-day and in the face of my family, but for the misfortune I had
to be put with a bad next door neighbour that was yourself. What way
did my means go from me is it? Spending on fencing, spending on walls,
making up gates, putting up doors, that would keep your hens and your
ducks from coming in through starvation on my floor, and every four
footed beast you had from preying and trespassing on my oats and my
mangolds and my little lock of hay!
_Michael Miskell:_ O to listen to you! And I striving to please you
and to be kind to you and to close my ears to the abuse you would be
calling and letting out of your mouth. To trespass on your crops is
it? It's little temptation there was for my poor beasts to ask to
cross the mering. My God Almighty! What had you but a little corner of
a field!
_Mike McInerney:_ And what do you say to my garden that your two pigs
had destroyed on me the year of the big tree being knocked, and they
making gaps in the wall.
_Michael Miskell:_ Ah, there does be a great deal of gaps knocked in a
twelvemonth. Why wouldn't they be knocked by the thunder, the same as
the tree, or some storm that came up from the west?
_Mike McInerney:_ It was the west wind, I suppose, that devoured my
green cabbage? And that rooted up my Champion potatoes? And that ate
the gooseberries themselves from off the bush?
_Michael Miskell:_ What are you saying? The two quietest pigs ever I
had, no way wicked and well ringed. They were not ten minutes in it.
It would be hard for them eat strawberries in that time, let alone
gooseberries that's full of thorns.
_Mike McInerney:_ They were not quiet, but very ravenous pigs you had
that time, as active as a fox they were, killing my young ducks. Once
they had blood tasted you couldn't stop them.
_Michael Miskell:_ And what happened myself the fair day of
Esserkelly, the time I was passing your door? Two brazened dogs that
rushed out and took a piece of me. I never was the better of it or of
the start I got, but wasting from then till now!
_Mike McInerney:_ Thinking you were a wild beast they did, that had
made his escape out of the travelling show, with the red eyes of you
and the ugly face of you, and the two crooked legs of you that
wouldn't hardly stop a pig in a gap. Sure any dog that had any life
in it at all would be roused and stirred seeing the like of you going
the road!
_Michael Miskell:_ I did well taking out a summons against you that
time. It is a great wonder you not to have been bound over through
your lifetime, but the laws of England is queer.
_Mike McInerney:_ What ailed me that I did not summons yourself after
you stealing away the clutch of eggs I had in the barrel, and I away
in Ardrahan searching out a clocking hen.
_Michael Miskell:_ To steal your eggs is it? Is that what you are
saying now? (_Holds up his hands._) The Lord is in heaven, and Peter
and the saints, and yourself that was in Ardrahan that day put a hand
on them as soon as myself! Isn't it a bad story for me to be wearing
out my days beside you the same as a spancelled goat. Chained I am and
tethered I am to a man that is ramsacking his mind for lies!
_Mike McInerney:_ If it is a bad story for you, Michael Miskell, it is
a worse story again for myself. A Miskell to be next and near me
through the whole of the four quarters of the year. I never heard
there to be any great name on the Miskells as there was on my own race
and name.
_Michael Miskell:_ You didn't, is it? Well, you could hear it if you
had but ears to hear it. Go across to Lisheen Crannagh and down to
the sea and to Newtown Lynch and the mills of Duras and you'll find a
Miskell, and as far as Dublin!
_Mike McInerney:_ What signifies Crannagh and the mills of Duras? Look
at all my own generations that are buried at the Seven Churches. And
how many generations of the Miskells are buried in it? Answer me that!
_Michael Miskell:_ I tell you but for the wheat that was to be sowed
there would be more side cars and more common cars at my father's
funeral (_God rest his soul!_) than at any funeral ever left your own
door. And as to my mother, she was a Cuffe from Claregalway, and it's
she had the purer blood!
_Mike McInerney:_ And what do you say to the banshee? Isn't she apt to
have knowledge of the ancient race? Was ever she heard to screech or
to cry for the Miskells? Or for the Cuffes from Claregalway? She was
not, but for the six families, the Hyneses, the Foxes, the Faheys, the
Dooleys, the McInerneys. It is of the nature of the McInerneys she is
I am thinking, crying them the same as a king's children.
_Michael Miskell:_ It is a pity the banshee not to be crying for
yourself at this minute, and giving you a warning to quit your lies
and your chat and your arguing and your contrary ways; for there is no
one under the rising sun could stand you. I tell you you are not
behaving as in the presence of the Lord!
_Mike McInerney:_ Is it wishful for my death you are? Let it come and
meet me now and welcome so long as it will part me from yourself! And
I say, and I would kiss the book on it, I to have one request only to
be granted, and I leaving it in my will, it is what I would request,
nine furrows of the field, nine ridges of the hills, nine waves of the
ocean to be put between your grave and my own grave the time we will
be laid in the ground!
_Michael Miskell:_ Amen to that! Nine ridges, is it? No, but let the
whole ridge of the world separate us till the Day of Judgment! I would
not be laid anear you at the Seven Churches, I to get Ireland without
a divide!
_Mike McInerney:_ And after that again! I'd sooner than ten pound in
my hand, I to know that my shadow and my ghost will not be knocking
about with your shadow and your ghost, and the both of us waiting our
time. I'd sooner be delayed in Purgatory! Now, have you anything to
say?
_Michael Miskell:_ I have everything to say, if I had but the time to
say it!
_Mike McInerney:_ (_Sitting up._) Let me up out of this till I'll
choke you!
_Michael Miskell:_ You scolding pauper you!
_Mike McInerney:_ (_Shaking his fist at him._) Wait a while!
_Michael Miskell:_ (_Shaking his fist._) Wait a while yourself!
(_Mrs. Donohoe comes in with a parcel. She is a countrywoman
with a frilled cap and a shawl. She stands still a minute. The
two old men lie down and compose themselves._)
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ They bade me come up here by the stair. I never was in
this place at all. I don't know am I right. Which now of the two of ye
is Mike McInerney?
_Mike McInerney:_ Who is it is calling me by my name?
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Sure amn't I your sister, Honor McInerney that was,
that is now Honor Donohoe.
_Mike McInerney:_ So you are, I believe. I didn't know you till you
pushed anear me. It is time indeed for you to come see me, and I in
this place five year or more. Thinking me to be no credit to you, I
suppose, among that tribe of the Donohoes. I wonder they to give you
leave to come ask am I living yet or dead?
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Ah, sure, I buried the whole string of them. Himself
was the last to go. (_Wipes her eyes._) The Lord be praised he got a
fine natural death. Sure we must go through our crosses. And he got a
lovely funeral; it would delight you to hear the priest reading the
Mass. My poor John Donohoe! A nice clean man, you couldn't but be fond
of him. Very severe on the tobacco he was, but he wouldn't touch the
drink.
_Mike McInerney:_ And is it in Curranroe you are living yet?
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ It is so. He left all to myself. But it is a lonesome
thing the head of a house to have died!
_Mike McInerney:_ I hope that he has left you a nice way of living?
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Fair enough, fair enough. A wide lovely house I have;
a few acres of grass land ... the grass does be very sweet that grows
among the stones. And as to the sea, there is something from it every
day of the year, a handful of periwinkles to make kitchen, or cockles
maybe. There is many a thing in the sea is not decent, but cockles is
fit to put before the Lord!
_Mike McInerney:_ You have all that! And you without ere a man in the
house?
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ It is what I am thinking, yourself might come and keep
me company. It is no credit to me a brother of my own to be in this
place at all.
_Mike McInerney:_ I'll go with you! Let me out of this! It is the name
of the McInerneys will be rising on every side!
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ I don't know. I was ignorant of you being kept to the
bed.
_Mike McInerney:_ I am not kept to it, but maybe an odd time when
there is a colic rises up within me. My stomach always gets better the
time there is a change in the moon. I'd like well to draw anear you.
My heavy blessing on you, Honor Donohoe, for the hand you have held
out to me this day.
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Sure you could be keeping the fire in, and stirring
the pot with the bit of Indian meal for the hens, and milking the goat
and taking the tacklings off the donkey at the door; and maybe putting
out the cabbage plants in their time. For when the old man died the
garden died.
_Mike McInerney:_ I could to be sure, and be cutting the potatoes for
seed. What luck could there be in a place and a man not to be in it?
Is that now a suit of clothes you have brought with you?
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ It is so, the way you will be tasty coming in among
the neighbours at Curranroe.
_Mike McInerney:_ My joy you are! It is well you earned me! Let me up
out of this! (He sits up and spreads out the clothes and tries on
coat.) That now is a good frieze coat ... and a hat in the fashion ...
(_He puts on hat._)
_Michael Miskell:_ (_Alarmed._) And is it going out of this you are,
Mike McInerney?
_Mike McInerney:_ Don't you hear I am going? To Curranroe I am going.
Going I am to a place where I will get every good thing!
_Michael Miskell:_ And is it to leave me here after you you will?
_Mike McInerney:_ (_In a rising chant._) Every good thing! The goat
and the kid are there, the sheep and the lamb are there, the cow does
be running and she coming to be milked! Ploughing and seed sowing,
blossom at Christmas time, the cuckoo speaking through the dark days
of the year! Ah, what are you talking about? Wheat high in hedges, no
talk about the rent! Salmon in the rivers as plenty as turf! Spending
and getting and nothing scarce! Sport and pleasure, and music on the
strings! Age will go from me and I will be young again. Geese and
turkeys for the hundreds and drink for the whole world!
_Michael Miskell:_ Ah, Mike, is it truth you are saying, you to go
from me and to leave me with rude people and with townspeople, and
with people of every parish in the union, and they having no respect
for me or no wish for me at all!
_Mike McInerney:_ Whist now and I'll leave you ... my pipe (_hands it
over_); and I'll engage it is Honor Donohoe won't refuse to be sending
you a few ounces of tobacco an odd time, and neighbours coming to the
fair in November or in the month of May.
_Michael Miskell:_ Ah, what signifies tobacco? All that I am craving
is the talk. There to be no one at all to say out to whatever thought
might be rising in my innate mind! To be lying here and no conversible
person in it would be the abomination of misery!
_Mike McInerney:_ Look now, Honor.... It is what I often heard said,
two to be better than one.... Sure if you had an old trouser was full
of holes ... or a skirt ... wouldn't you put another in under it that
might be as tattered as itself, and the two of them together would
make some sort of a decent show?
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Ah, what are you saying? There is no holes in that
suit I brought you now, but as sound it is as the day I spun it for
himself.
_Mike McInerney:_ It is what I am thinking, Honor ... I do be weak an
odd time ... any load I would carry, it preys upon my side ... and
this man does be weak an odd time with the swelling in his knees ...
but the two of us together it's not likely it is at the one time we
would fail. Bring the both of us with you, Honor, and the height of
the castle of luck on you, and the both of us together will make one
good hardy man!
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ I'd like my job! Is it queer in the head you are grown
asking me to bring in a stranger off the road?
_Michael Miskell:_ I am not, ma'am, but an old neighbour I am. If I
had forecasted this asking I would have asked it myself. Michael
Miskell I am, that was in the next house to you in Skehanagh!
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ For pity's sake! Michael Miskell is it? That's worse
again. Yourself and Mike that never left fighting and scolding and
attacking one another! Sparring at one another like two young pups you
were, and threatening one another after like two grown dogs!
_Mike McInerney:_ All the quarrelling was ever in the place it was
myself did it. Sure his anger rises fast and goes away like the wind.
Bring him out with myself now, Honor Donohoe, and God bless you.
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Well, then, I will not bring him out, and I will not
bring yourself out, and you not to learn better sense. Are you making
yourself ready to come?
_Mike McInerney:_ I am thinking, maybe ... it is a mean thing for a
man that is shivering into seventy years to go changing from place to
place.
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Well, take your luck or leave it. All I asked was to
save you from the hurt and the harm of the year.
_Mike McInerney:_ Bring the both of us with you or I will not stir out
of this.
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ Give me back my fine suit so (_begins gathering up the
clothes_), till I'll go look for a man of my own!
_Mike McInerney:_ Let you go so, as you are so unnatural and so
disobliging, and look for some man of your own, God help him! For I
will not go with you at all!
_Mrs. Donohoe:_ It is too much time I lost with you, and dark night
waiting to overtake me on the road. Let the two of you stop together,
and the back of my hand to you. It is I will leave you there the same
as God left the Jews!
(_She goes out. The old men lie down and are silent for a moment._)
_Michael Miskell:_ Maybe the house is not so wide as what she says.
_Mike McInerney:_ Why wouldn't it be wide?
_Michael Miskell:_ Ah, there does be a good deal of middling poor
houses down by the sea.
_Mike McInerney:_ What would you know about wide houses? Whatever sort
of a house you had yourself it was too wide for the provision you had
into it.
_Michael Miskell:_ Whatever provision I had in my house it was
wholesome provision and natural provision. Herself and her
periwinkles! Periwinkles is a hungry sort of food.
_Mike McInerney:_ Stop your impudence and your chat or it will be the
worse for you. I'd bear with my own father and mother as long as any
man would, but if they'd vex me I would give them the length of a rope
as soon as another!
_Michael Miskell:_ I would never ask at all to go eating periwinkles.
_Mike McInerney:_ (_Sitting up._) Have you anyone to fight me?
_Michael Miskell:_ (_Whimpering._) I have not, only the Lord!
_Mike McInerney:_ Let you leave putting insults on me so, and death
picking at you!
_Michael Miskell:_ Sure I am saying nothing at all to displease you.
It is why I wouldn't go eating periwinkles, I'm in dread I might
swallow the pin.
_Mike McInerney:_ Who in the world wide is asking you to eat them?
You're as tricky as a fish in the full tide!
_Michael Miskell:_ Tricky is it! Oh, my curse and the curse of the
four and twenty men upon you!
_Mike McInerney:_ That the worm may chew you from skin to marrow bone!
(_Seizes his pillow._)
_Michael Miskell:_ (_Seizing his own pillow._) I'll leave my death on
you, you scheming vagabone!
_Mike McInerney:_ By cripes! I'll pull out your pin feathers!
(_Throwing pillow._)
_Michael Miskell:_ (_Throwing pillow._) You tyrant! You big bully you!
_Mike McInerney:_ (_Throwing pillow and seizing mug._) Take this so,
you stobbing ruffian you!
(_They throw all within their reach at one another, mugs,
prayer books, pipes, etc._)
_Curtain_
THE TRAVELLING MAN
PERSONS
_A Mother._
_A Child._
_A Travelling Man._
THE TRAVELLING MAN
A MIRACLE PLAY
_Scene: A cottage kitchen. A woman setting out a bowl and jug
and board on the table for bread-making._
_Child:_ What is it you are going to make, mother?
_Mother:_ I am going to make a grand cake with white flour. Seeds I
will put in it. Maybe I'll make a little cake for yourself too. You
can be baking it in the little pot while the big one will be baking in
the big pot.
_Child:_ It is a pity daddy to be away at the fair on a Samhain night.
_Mother:_ I must make my feast all the same, for Samhain night is more
to me than to any other one. It was on this night seven years I first
came into this house.
_Child:_ You will be taking down those plates from the dresser so,
those plates with flowers on them, and be putting them on the table.
_Mother:_ I will. I will set out the house to-day, and bring down the
best delf, and put whatever thing is best on the table, because of the
great thing that happened me seven years ago.
_Child:_ What great thing was that?
_Mother:_ I was after being driven out of the house where I was a
serving girl....
_Child:_ Where was that house? Tell me about it.
_Mother:_ (_Sitting down and pointing southward._) It is over there I
was living, in a farmer's house up on Slieve Echtge, near to Slieve na
n-Or, the Golden Mountain.
_Child:_ The Golden Mountain! That must be a grand place.
_Mother:_ Not very grand indeed, but bare and cold enough at that time
of the year. Anyway, I was driven out a Samhain day like this, because
of some things that were said against me.
_Child:_ What did you do then?
_Mother:_ What had I to do but to go walking the bare bog road through
the rough hills where there was no shelter to find, and the sharp wind
going through me, and the red mud heavy on my shoes. I came to
Kilbecanty....
_Child:_ I know Kilbecanty. That is where the woman in the shop gave
me sweets out of a bottle.
_Mother:_ So she might now, but that night her door was shut and all
the doors were shut; and I saw through the windows the boys and the
girls sitting round the hearth and playing their games, and I had no
courage to ask for shelter. In dread I was they might think some
shameful thing of me, and I going the road alone in the night-time.
_Child:_ Did you come here after that?
_Mother:_ I went on down the hill in the darkness, and with the dint
of my trouble and the length of the road my strength failed me, and I
had like to fall. So I did fall at the last, meeting with a heap of
broken stones by the roadside.
_Child:_ I hurt my knee one time I fell on the stones.
_Mother:_ It was then the great thing happened. I saw a stranger
coming towards me, a very tall man, the best I ever saw, bright and
shining that you could see him through the darkness; and I knew him to
be no common man.
_Child:_ Who was he?
_Mother:_ It is what I thought, that he was the King of the World.
_Child:_ Had he a crown like a King?
_Mother:_ If he had, it was made of the twigs of a bare blackthorn;
but in his hand he had a green branch, that never grew on a tree of
this world. He took me by the hand, and he led me over the
stepping-stones outside to this door, and he bade me to go in and I
would find good shelter. I was kneeling down to thank him, but he
raised me up and he said, "I will come to see you some other time.
And do not shut up your heart in the things I give you," he said, "but
have a welcome before me."
_Child:_ Did he go away then?
_Mother:_ I saw him no more after that, but I did as he bade me. (_She
stands up and goes to the door._) I came in like this, and your father
was sitting there by the hearth, a lonely man that was after losing
his wife. He was alone and I was alone, and we married one another;
and I never wanted since for shelter or safety. And a good wife I made
him, and a good housekeeper.
_Child:_ Will the King come again to the house?
_Mother:_ I have his word for it he will come, but he did not come
yet; it is often your father and myself looked out the door of a
Samhain night, thinking to see him.
_Child:_ I hope he won't come in the night time, and I asleep.
_Mother:_ It is of him I do be thinking every year, and I setting out
the house, and making a cake for the supper.
_Child:_ What will he do when he comes in?
_Mother:_ He will sit over there in the chair, and maybe he will taste
a bit of the cake. I will call in all the neighbours; I will tell them
he is here. They will not be keeping it in their mind against me then
that I brought nothing, coming to the house. They will know I am
before any of them, the time they know who it is has come to visit me.
They will all kneel down and ask for his blessing. But the best
blessing will be on the house he came to of himself.
_Child:_ And are you going to make the cake now?
_Mother:_ I must make it now indeed, or I will be late with it. I am
late as it is; I was expecting one of the neighbours to bring me white
flour from the town. I'll wait no longer, I'll go borrow it in some
place. There will be a wedding in the stonecutter's house Thursday,
it's likely there will be flour in the house.
_Child:_ Let me go along with you.
_Mother:_ It is best for you to stop here. Be a good child now, and
don't be meddling with the things on the table. Sit down there by the
hearth and break up those little sticks I am after bringing in. Make a
little heap of them now before me, and we will make a good fire to
bake the cake. See now how many will you break. Don't go out the door
while I'm away, I would be in dread of you going near the river and it
in flood. Behave yourself well now. Be counting the sticks as you
break them.
(_She goes out._)
_Child:_ (_Sitting down and breaking sticks across his knee._) One--and
two--O I can break this one into a great many, one, two, three,
four.--This one is wet--I don't like a wet one--five, six--that is a great
heap.--Let me try that great big one.--That is too hard.--I don't think
mother could break that one.--Daddy could break it.
(_Half-door is opened and a travelling man comes in. He wears a
ragged white flannel shirt, and mud-stained trousers. He is
bareheaded and barefooted, and carries a little branch in his
hand._)
_Travelling Man:_ (_Stooping over the child and taking the stick._)
Give it here to me and hold this.
(_He puts the branch in the child's hand while he takes the
stick and breaks it._)
_Child:_ That is a good branch, apples on it and flowers. The tree at
the mill has apples yet, but all the flowers are gone. Where did you
get this branch?
_Travelling Man:_ I got it in a garden a long way off.
_Child:_ Where is the garden? Where do you come from?
_Travelling Man:_ (_Pointing southward._) I have come from beyond
those hills.
_Child:_ Is it from the Golden Mountain you are come? From Slieve na
n-Or?
_Travelling Man:_ That is where I come from surely, from the Golden
Mountain. I would like to sit down and rest for a while.
_Child:_ Sit down here beside me. We must not go near the table or
touch anything, or mother will be angry. Mother is going to make a
beautiful cake, a cake that will be fit for a King that might be
coming in to our supper.
_Travelling Man:_ I will sit here with you on the floor.
(_Sits down._)
_Child:_ Tell me now about the Golden Mountain.
_Travelling Man:_ There is a garden in it, and there is a tree in the
garden that has fruit and flowers at the one time.
_Child:_ Like this branch?
_Travelling Man:_ Just like that little branch.
_Child:_ What other things are in the garden?
_Travelling Man:_ There are birds of all colours that sing at every
hour, the way the people will come to their prayers. And there is a
high wall about the garden.
_Child:_ What way can the people get through the wall?
_Travelling Man:_ There are four gates in the wall: a gate of gold,
and a gate of silver, and a gate of crystal, and a gate of white
brass.
_Child:_ (_Taking up the sticks._) I will make a garden. I will make a
wall with these sticks.