by W. B. Yeats
Martin [impatiently]. There is no quiet ... come to the other room. I am trying to remember....
[They go to door of inner room, but Andrew stops him.]
Andrew. They are a bad-looking fleet. I have a mind to drive them away, giving them a charity.
Martin. Drive them away or come away from their voices.
Another Voice. I put under the power of my prayer,
All that will give me help,
Rafael keep him Wednesday;
Sachiel feed him Thursday;
Hamiel provide him Friday;
Cassiel increase him Saturday.
Sure giving to us is giving to the Lord and laying up a store in the treasury of heaven.
Andrew. Whisht! He is coming in by the window! [Johnny B. climbs in.]
Johnny B. That I may never sin, but the place is empty!
Paudeen. Go in and see what can you make a grab at.
Johnny B. [getting in]. That every blessing I gave may be turned to a curse on them that left the place so bare! [He turns things over.] I might chance something in this chest if it was open.... [Andrew begins creeping towards him.]
Nanny [outside]. Hurry on now, you limping crabfish, you! We can’t be stopping here while you’ll boil stirabout!
Johnny B. [seizing bag of money and holding it up in both hands]. Look at this now, look! [Andrew comes behind and seizes his arm.]
Johnny B. [letting bag fall with a crash]. Destruction on us all!
Martin [running forward, seizes him. Heads disappear]. That is it! Oh, I remember! That is what happened! That is the command! Who was it sent you here with that command?
Johnny B. It was misery sent me in and starvation and the hard ways of the world.
Nanny [outside]. It was that, my poor child, and my one son only. Show mercy to him now, and he after leaving gaol this morning.
Martin [to Andrew.]. I was trying to remember it ... when he spoke that word it all came back to me. I saw a bright, many-changing figure ... it was holding up a shining vessel ... [holds up arms] then the vessel fell and was broken with a great crash ... then I saw the unicorns trampling it. They were breaking the world to pieces ... when I saw the cracks coming, I shouted for joy! And I heard the command, “Destroy, destroy; destruction is the life-giver; destroy.”
Andrew. What will we do with him? He was thinking to rob you of your gold.
Martin. How could I forget it or mistake it? It has all come upon me now ... the reasons of it all, like a flood, like a flooded river.
Johnny B. [weeping]. It was the hunger brought me in and the drouth.
Martin. Were you given any other message? Did you see the unicorns?
Johnny B. I saw nothing and heard nothing; near dead I am with the fright I got and with the hardship of the gaol.
Martin. To destroy ... to overthrow all that comes between us and God, between us and that shining country. To break the wall, Andrew, the thing, whatever it is that comes between, but where to begin?...
Andrew. What is it you are talking about?
Martin. It may be that this man is the beginning. He has been sent ... the poor, they have nothing, and so they can see heaven as we cannot. He and his comrades will understand me. But now to give all men high hearts that they may all understand.
Johnny B. It’s the juice of the grey barley will do that.
Andrew. To rise everybody’s heart, is it? Is it that was your meaning?... If you will take the blame of it all, I’ll do what you want. Give me the bag of money, then. [He takes it up.] Oh, I’ve a heart like your own! I’ll lift the world too! The people will be running from all parts. Oh, it will be a great day in this district.
Johnny B. Will I go with you?
Martin. No, you must stay here; we have things to do and to plan.
Johnny B. Destroyed we all are with the hunger and the drouth.
Martin. Go then, get food and drink, whatever is wanted to give you strength and courage; gather your people together here; bring them all in. We have a great thing to do. I have to begin ... I want to tell it to the whole world. Bring them in, bring them in, I will make the house ready.
ACT II
Scene: The same workshop a few minutes later. Martin. seen arranging mugs and bread, etc., on a table. Father John comes in, knocking at open door as he comes.
Martin. Come in, come in, I have got the house ready. Here is bread and meat ... everybody is welcome. [Hearing no answer, turns round.]
Father John. Martin, I have come back.... There is something I want to say to you.
Martin. You are welcome; there are others coming.... They are not of your sort, but all are welcome.
Father John. I have remembered suddenly something that I read when I was in the seminary.
Martin. You seem very tired.
Father John [sitting down]. I had almost got back to my own place when I thought of it. I have run part of the way. It is very important. It is about the trance that you have been in. When one is inspired from above, either in trance or in contemplation, one remembers afterwards all that one has seen and read. I think there must be something about it in St. Thomas. I know that I have read a long passage about it years ago. But, Martin, there is another kind of inspiration, or rather an obsession or possession. A diabolical power comes into one’s body or overshadows it. Those whose bodies are taken hold of in this way, jugglers and witches and the like, can often tell what is happening in distant places, or what is going to happen, but when they come out of that state, they remember nothing. I think you said — —
Martin. That I could not remember.
Father John You remembered something, but not all. Nature is a great sleep; there are dangerous and evil spirits in her dreams, but God is above Nature. She is a darkness, but He makes everything clear — He is light.
Martin. All is clear now. I remember all, or all that matters to me. A poor man brought me a word, and I know what I have to do.
Father John. Ah, I understand; words were put into his mouth. I have read of such things. God sometimes uses some common man as His messenger.
Martin. You may have passed the man who brought it on the road. He left me but now.
Father John. Very likely, very likely, that is the way it happened. Some plain, unnoticed man has sometimes been sent with a command.
Martin. I saw the unicorns trampling in my dream. They were breaking the world. I am to destroy, that is the word the messenger spoke.
Father John. To destroy?
Martin. To bring again the old disturbed exalted life, the old splendour.
Father John. You are not the first that dream has come to. [Gets up and walks up and down.] It has been wandering here and there, calling now to this man, now to that other. It is a terrible dream.
Martin. Father John, you have had the same thought.
Father John. Men were holy then; there were saints everywhere, there was reverence, but now it is all work, business, how to live a long time. Ah, if one could change it all in a minute, even by war and violence.... There is a cell where St. Ciaran used to pray, if one could bring that time again.
Martin. Do not deceive me. You have had the command.
Father John. Why are you questioning me? You are asking me things that I have told to no one but my confessor.
Martin. We must gather the crowds together, you and I.
Father John. I have dreamed your dream; it was long ago. I had your vision.
Martin. And what happened?
Father John [harshly]. It was stopped. That was an end. I was sent to the lonely parish where I am, where there was no one I could lead astray. They have left me there. We must have patience; the world was destroyed by water, it has yet to be consumed by fire.
Martin. Why should we be patient? To live seventy years, and others to come after us and live seventy years it may be, and so from age to age, and all the while the old splendour dying more and more.
[A noise of shouting. Andrew, who has been standing at the door for a
moment, comes in.]
Andrew. Martin says truth, and he says it well. Planing the side of a cart or a shaft, is that life? It is not. Sitting at a desk writing letters to the man that wants a coach or to the man that won’t pay for the one he has got, is that life, I ask you? Thomas arguing at you and putting you down, “Andrew, dear Andrew, did you put the tyre on that wheel yet?” Is that life? No, it is not. I ask you all what do you remember when you are dead? It’s the sweet cup in the corner of the widow’s drinking house that you remember. Ha, ha, listen to that shouting! That is what the lads in the village will remember to the last day they live!
Martin. Why are they shouting? What have you told them?
Andrew. Never you mind. You left that to me. You bade me to lift their hearts, and I did lift them. There is not one among them but will have his head like a blazing tar barrel before morning. What did your friend, the beggar, say? The juice of the grey barley, he said.
Father John. You accursed villain! You have made them drunk!
Andrew. Not at all, but lifting them to the stars. That is what Martin bade me to do, and there is no one can say I did not do it.
[A shout at door and beggars push in a barrel. They all cry, “Hi! for the noble master!” and point at Andrew.]
Johnny B. It’s not him, it’s that one!
[Points at Martin.]
Father John. Are you bringing this devil’s work in at the very door? Go out of this, I say! Get out! Take these others with you!
Martin. No, no, I asked them in; they must not be turned out. They are my guests.
Father John. Drive them out of your uncle’s house!
Martin. Come, Father, it is better for you to go. Go back to your own place. I have taken the command. It is better, perhaps, for you that you did not take it. [Martin and Father John go out.]
Biddy. It is well for that old lad he didn’t come between ourselves and our luck. It would be right to have flayed him and to have made bags of his skin.
Nanny. What a hurry you are in to get your enough! Look at the grease on your frock yet with the dint of the dabs you put in your pocket! Doing cures and foretellings, is it? You starved pot picker, you!
Biddy. That you may be put up to-morrow to take the place of that decent son of yours that had the yard of the gaol wore with walking it till this morning!
Nanny. If he had, he had a mother to come to, and he would know her when he did see her, and that is what no son of your own could do, and he to meet you at the foot of the gallows!
Johnny B. If I did know you, I knew too much of you since the first beginning of my life! What reward did I ever get travelling with you? What store did you give me of cattle or of goods? What provision did I get from you by day or by night but your own bad character to be joined on to my own, and I following at your heels, and your bags tied round about me?
Nanny. Disgrace and torment on you! Whatever you got from me, it was more than any reward or any bit I ever got from the father you had, or any honourable thing at all, but only the hurt and the harm of the world and its shame!
Johnny B. What would he give you, and you going with him without leave? Crooked and foolish you were always, and you begging by the side of the ditch.
Nanny. Begging or sharing, the curse of my heart upon you! It’s better off I was before ever I met with you, to my cost! What was on me at all that I did not cut a scourge in the wood to put manners and decency on you the time you were not hardened as you are!
Johnny B. Leave talking to me of your rods and your scourges! All you taught me was robbery, and it is on yourself and not on myself the scourges will be laid at the day of the recognition of tricks.
Paudeen. Faith, the pair of you together is better than Hector fighting before Troy!
Nanny. Ah, let you be quiet. It is not fighting we are craving, but the easing of the hunger that is on us and of the passion of sleep. Lend me a graineen of tobacco till I’ll kindle my pipe — a blast of it will take the weight of the road off my heart.
[Andrew gives her some. Nanny. grabs at it.]
Biddy. No, but it’s to myself you should give it. I that never smoked a pipe this forty year without saying the tobacco prayer. Let that one say, did ever she do that much?
Nanny. That the pain of your front tooth may be in your back tooth, you to be grabbing my share! [They snap at tobacco.]
Andrew. Pup, pup, pup. Don’t be snapping and quarrelling now, and you so well treated in this house. It is strollers like yourselves should be for frolic and for fun. Have you ne’er a good song to sing, a song that will rise all our hearts?
Paudeen. Johnny Bacach is a good singer; it is what he used to be doing in the fairs, if the oakum of the gaol did not give him a hoarseness in the throat.
Andrew. Give it out so, a good song; a song will put courage and spirit into any man at all.
Johnny B. [singing].
Come, all ye airy bachelors,
A warning take by me:
A sergeant caught me fowling,
And fired his gun so free.
His comrades came to his relief,
And I was soon trepanned;
And, bound up like a woodcock,
Had fallen into their hands.
The judge said transportation;
The ship was on the strand;
They have yoked me to the traces
For to plough Van Dieman’s land!
Andrew. That’s no good of a song, but a melancholy sort of a song. I’d as lief be listening to a saw going through timber. Wait, now, till you will hear myself giving out a tune on the flute. [Goes out for it.]
Johnny B. It is what I am thinking there must be a great dearth and a great scarcity of good comrades in this place, a man like that youngster having means in his hand to be bringing ourselves and our rags into the house.
Paudeen. You think yourself very wise, Johnny Bacach. Can you tell me now who that man is?
Johnny B. Some decent lad, I suppose, with a good way of living and a mind to send up his name upon the roads.
Paudeen. You that have been gaoled this eight months know little of this countryside.... It isn’t a limping stroller like yourself the boys would let come among them. But I know. I went to the drill a few nights, and I skinning kids for the mountainy men. In a quarry beyond the drill is ... they have their plans made.... It’s the square house of the Browns is to be made an attack on and plundered. Do you know now who is the leader they are waiting for?
Johnny B. How would I know that?
Paudeen [singing].
Oh, Johnny Gibbons, my five hundred healths to you.
It is long you are away from us over the sea!
Johnny B. [standing up excitedly]. Sure that man could not be John Gibbons that is outlawed.
Paudeen. I asked news of him from the old lad [points after Andrew], and I bringing in the drink along with him. “Don’t be asking questions,” says he; “take the treat he gives you,” says he. “If a lad that had a high heart has a mind to rouse the neighbours,” says he, “and to stretch out his hand to all that pass the road, it is in France he learned it,” says he, “the place he is but lately come from, and where the wine does be standing open in tubs. Take your treat when you get it,” says he, “and make no delay, or all might be discovered and put an end to.”
Johnny B. He came over the sea from France! It is Johnny Gibbons surely, but it seems to me they were calling him by some other name.
Paudeen. A man on his keeping might go by a hundred names. Would he be telling it out to us that he never saw before, and we with that clutch of chattering women along with us? Here he is coming now. Wait till you see is he the lad I think him to be.
Martin [coming in]. I will make my banner; I will paint the Unicorn on it. Give me that bit of canvas; there is paint over here. We will get no help from the settled men — we will call to the lawbreakers, the tinkers — the sievemakers — the sheep-stealers. [He begins to make banner.]
Biddy. That sounds to be a quee
r name of an army. Ribbons I can understand, Whiteboys, Rightboys, Threshers, and Peep-o’-day, but Unicorns I never heard of before.
Johnny B. It is not a queer name, but a very good name. [Takes up Lion and Unicorn.] It is often you saw that before you in the dock. There is the Unicorn with the one horn, and what is it he is going against? The Lion of course. When he has the Lion destroyed, the Crown must fall and be shivered. Can’t you see? It is the League of the Unicorns is the league that will fight and destroy the power of England and King George.
