Saint Martin couldn’t bear to see
His fellows in distress.
He met a poor man in the snow
And shared his cloak with him, we know.
Both of them therefore froze to death.
His place in Heaven was surely won!
The world however didn’t wait
But soon observed what followed on.
Unselfishness had brought him to that state.
How fortunate the man with none!
That’s how it is with us. We’re respectable folk, stick together, don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t burn places down. And all the time you might say we’re sinking lower and lower, and it’s true what the song says, and soup is few and far between, and if we weren’t like this but thieves and murderers I dare say we’d be eating our fill. For virtues aren’t their own reward, only wickednesses are, that’s how the world goes and it didn’t ought to.
Here you can see respectable folk
Keeping to God’s own laws.
So far he hasn’t taken heed.
You who sit safe and warm indoors
Help to relieve our bitter need!
How virtuously we had begun!
The world however didn’t wait
But soon observed what followed on.
It’s fear of God that brought us to that state.
How fortunate the man with none!
VOICE from above: Hey, you there! Come on up! There’s hot soup if you want.
MOTHER COURAGE: Lamb, me stomach won’t stand nowt. ‘Tain’t that it ain’t sensible, what you say, but is that your last word? We got on all right.
THE COOK: Last word. Think it over.
MOTHER COURAGE: I’ve nowt to think. I’m not leaving her here.
THE COOK: That’s proper senseless, nothing I can do about it though. I’m not a brute, just the inn’s a small one. So now we better get on up, or there’ll be nowt here either and wasted time singing in the cold.
MOTHER COURAGE: I’ll get Kattrin.
THE COOK: Better bring a bit back for her. Scare them if they sees three of us coming. Exeunt both. Kattrin climbs out of the cart with a bundle. She looks around to see if the other two have gone. Then she takes an old pair of trousers of the cook’s and a skirt of her mother’s, and lays them side by side on one of the wheels, so that they are easily seen. She has finished and is picking up her bundle to go, when Mother Courage comes back from the house.
MOTHER COURAGE with a plate of soup: Kattrin! Will you stop there? Kattrin! Where you off to with that bundle? Has devil himself taken you over? She examines the bundle. She’s packed her things. You been listening? I told him nowt doing, Utrecht, his rotten inn, what’d we be up to there? You and me, inn’s no place for us. Still plenty to be got out of war. She sees the trousers and the skirt. You’re plain stupid. S’pose I’d seen that, and you gone away? She holds Kattrin back as she tries to break away. Don’t you start thinking it’s on your account I given him the push. It was cart, that’s it. Catch me leaving my cart I’m used to, it ain’t you, it’s for cart. We’ll go off in t’other direction, and we’ll throw cook’s stuff out so he finds it, silly man. She climbs in and throws out a few other articles in the direction of the trousers. There, he’s out of our business now, and I ain’t having nobody else in, ever. You and me’ll carry on now. This winter will pass, same as all the others. Get hitched up, it looks like snow.
They both harness themselves to the cart, then wheel it round and drag it off. When the cook arrives he looks blankly at his kit.
10
During the whole of 1635 Mother Courage and her daughter Kattrin travel over the high roads of central Germany, in the wake of the increasingly bedraggled armies
High road.
Mother Courage and Kattrin are pulling the cart. They pass a peasant’s house inside which there is a voice singing.
THE VOICE:
The roses in our arbour
Delight us with their show:
They have such lovely flowers
Repaying all our labour
After the summer showers.
Happy are those with gardens now:
They have such lovely flowers.
When winter winds are freezing
As through the woods they blow
Our home is warm and pleasing.
We fixed the thatch above it
With straw and moss we wove it.
Happy are those with shelter now
When winter winds are freezing.
Mother Courage and Kattrin pause to listen, then continue pulling.
11
January 1636. The emperor’s troops are threatening the Protestant town of Halle. The stone begins to speak. Mother Courage loses her daughter and trudges on alone. The war is a long way from being over
The cart is standing, much the worse for wear, alongside a peasant’s house with a huge thatched roof, hacking on a wall of rock. It is night.
An ensign and three soldiers in heavy armour step out of the wood.
THE ENSIGN: I want no noise now. Anyone shouts, shove your pike into him.
FIRST SOLDIER: Have to knock them up, though, if we’re to find a guide.
THE ENSIGN: Knocking sounds natural. Could be a cow bumping the stable wall.
The soldiers knock on the door of the house. A peasant woman opens it. They stop her mouth. Two soldiers go in.
MAN’S VOICE within: What is it?
The soldiers bring out a peasant and his son.
THE ENSIGN pointing at the cart, where Kattrin’s head has appeared: There’s another one. A soldier drags her out. Anyone else live here beside you lot?
THE PEASANTS: This is our son. And she’s dumb. Her mother’s gone into town to buy stuff. For their business, cause so many people’s getting out and selling things cheap. They’re just passing through. Canteen folk.
THE ENSIGN: I’m warning you, keep quiet, or if there’s the least noise you get a pike across your nut. Now I want someone to come with us and show us the path to the town. Points to the young peasant. Here, you.
THE YOUNG PEASANT: I don’t know no path.
SECOND SOLDIER grinning: He don’t know no path.
THE YOUNG PEASANT: I ain’t helping Catholics.
THE ENSIGN to the second soldier: Stick your pike in his ribs.
THE YOUNG PEASANT forced to his knees, with the pike threatening him: I won’t do it, not to save my life.
FIRST SOLDIER: I know what’ll change his mind. Goes towards the stable. Two cows and an ox. Listen, you: if you’re not reasonable I’ll chop up your cattle.
THE YOUNG PEASANT: No, not that!
THE PEASANT’S WIFE weeps: Please spare our cattle, captain, it’d be starving us to death.
THE ENSIGN: They’re dead if he goes on being obstinate.
FIRST SOLDIER: I’m taking the ox first.
THE YOUNG PEASANT to his father: Have I got to? The wife nods. Right.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: And thank you kindly, captain, for sparing us, for ever and ever, Amen.
The peasant stops his wife from further expressions of gratitude.
FIRST SOLDIER: I knew the ox was what they minded about most, was I right?
Guided by the young peasant, the ensign and his men continue on their way.
THE PEASANT: What are they up to, I’d like to know. Nowt good.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Perhaps they’re just scouting. What you doing?
THE PEASANT putting a ladder against the roof and climbing up it: Seeing if they’re on their own. From the top: Something moving in the wood. Can see something down by the quarry. And there are men in armour in the clearing. And a gun. That’s at least a regiment. God’s mercy on the town and everyone in it!
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Any lights in the town?
THE PEASANT: No. They’ll all be asleep. Climbs down. If those people get in they’ll butcher the lot.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Sentries’re bound to spot them first.
THE
PEASANT: Sentry in the tower up the hill must have been killed, or he’d have blown his bugle.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: If only there were more of us.
THE PEASANT: Just you and me and that cripple.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Nowt we can do, you’d say….
THE PEASANT: Nowt.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Can’t possibly run down there in the blackness.
THE PEASANT: Whole hillside’s crawling with ’em. We can’t even give a signal.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: What, and have them butcher us too?
THE PEASANT: You’re right, nowt we can do.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE to Kattrin: Pray, poor creature, pray! Nowt we can do to stop bloodshed. You can’t talk, maybe, but at least you can pray. He’ll hear you if no one else can. I’ll help you. All kneel, Kattrin behind the two peasants. Our Father, which art in Heaven, hear Thou our prayer, let not the town be destroyed with all what’s in it sound asleep and suspecting nowt. Arouse Thou them that they may get up and go to the walls and see how the enemy approacheth with pikes and guns in the blackness across fields below the slope. Turning to Kattrin: Guard Thou our mother and ensure that the watchman sleepeth not but wakes up, or it will be too late. Succour our brother-in-law also, he is inside there with his four children, spare Thou them, they are innocent and know nowt. To Kattrin, who gives a groan: One of them’s not two yet, the eldest’s seven. Kattrin stands up distractedly. Our Father, hear us, for only Thou canst help; we look to be doomed, for why, we are weak and have no pike and nowt and can risk nowt and are in Thy hand along with our cattle and all the farm, and same with the town, it too is in Thy hand and the enemy is before the walls in great strength. Unobserved, Kattrin has slipped away to the cart and taken from it something which she hides beneath her apron; then she climbs up the ladder on to the stable roof.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Forget not the children, what are in danger, the littlest ones especially, the old folk what can’t move, and every living creature.
THE PEASANT: And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. Amen.
Sitting on the roof, Kattrin begins to beat the drum which she has pulled out from under her apron.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Jesus Christ, what’s she doing?
THE PEASANT: She’s out of her mind.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Quick, get her down.
The peasant hurries to the ladder, but Kattrin pulls it up on to the roof.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: She’ll do us in.
THE PEASANT: Stop drumming at once, you cripple!
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Bringing the Catholics down on us!
THE PEASANT looking for stones to throw: I’ll stone you.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Where’s your feelings? Where’s your heart? We’re done for if they come down on us. Slit our throats, they will. Kattrin stares into the distance towards the town and carries on drumming.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE to her husband: I told you we shouldn’t have allowed those vagabonds on to farm. What do they care if our last cows are taken?
THE ENSIGN runs in with his soldiers and the young peasant: I’ll cut you to ribbons, all of you!
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Please, sir, it’s not our fault, we couldn’t help it. It was her sneaked up there. A foreigner.
THE ENSIGN: Where’s the ladder?
THE PEASANT: There.
THE ENSIGN calls up: I order you, throw that drum down. Kattrin goes on drumming.
THE ENSIGN: You’re all in this together. It’ll be the end of you.
THE PEASANT: They been cutting pine trees in that wood. How about if we got one of the trunks and poked her off….
FIRST SOLDIER to the ensign: Permission to make a suggestion, sir! He whispers something in the ensign’s ear. Listen, we got a suggestion could help you. Get down off there and come into town with us right away. Show us which your mother is and we’ll see she ain’t harmed. Kattrin goes on drumming.
THE ENSIGN pushes him roughly aside: She doesn’t trust you; with a mug like yours it’s not surprising. Calls up: Suppose I gave you my word? I can give my word of honour as an officer.
Kattrin drums harder.
THE ENSIGN: Is nothing sacred to her?
THE YOUNG PEASANT: There’s more than her mother involved, sir.
FIRST SOLDIER: This can’t go on much longer. They’re bound to hear in the town.
THE ENSIGN: We’ll have somehow to make a noise that’s louder than her drumming. What can we make a noise with?
FIRST SOLDIER: Thought we weren’t s’posed to make no noise.
THE ENSIGN: A harmless one, you fool. A peaceful one.
THE PEASANT: I could chop wood with my axe.
THE ENSIGN: Good: you chop. The peasant fetches his axe and attacks a tree-trunk. Chop harder! Harder! You’re chopping for your life. Kattrin has been listening, drumming less loudly the while. She now looks wildly round, and goes on drumming.
THE ENSIGN: Not loud enough. To the first soldier: You chop too.
THE PEASANT: Only got the one axe. Stops chopping.
THE ENSIGN: We’ll have to set the farm on fire. Smoke her out, that’s it.
THE PEASANT: It wouldn’t help, captain. If the townspeople see a fire here they’ll know what’s up. Kattrin has again been listening as she drums. At this point she laughs.
THE ENSIGN: Look at her laughing at us. I’m not having that. I’ll shoot her down, and damn the consequences. Fetch the harquebus.
Three soldiers hurry off. Kattrin goes on drumming.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: I got it, captain. That’s their cart. If we smash it up she’ll stop. Cart’s all they got.
THE ENSIGN to the young peasant: Smash it up. Calls up: We’re going to smash up your cart if you don’t stop drumming. The young peasant gives the cart a few feeble blows.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Stop it, you animal!
Desperately looking towards the cart, Kattrin emits pitiful noises. But she goes on drumming.
THE ENSIGN: Where are those clodhoppers with the harquebus?
FIRST SOLDIER: Can’t have heard nowt in town yet, else we’d be hearing their guns.
THE ENSIGN calls up: They can’t hear you at all. And now we’re going to shoot you down. For the last time: throw down that drum!
THE YOUNG PEASANT suddenly flings away his plank: Go on drumming! Or they’ll all be killed! Go on, go on….
The soldier knocks him down and beats him with his pike.
Kattrin starts to cry, but she goes on drumming.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Don’t strike his back! For God’s sake, you’re beating him to death!
The soldiers hurry in with the harquebus.
SECOND SOLDIER: Colonel’s frothing at the mouth, sir. We’re all for court-martial.
THE ENSIGN: Set it up! Set it up! Calls up while the gun is being erected: For the very last time: stop drumming! Kattrin, in tears, drums as loud as she can. Fire! The soldiers fire. Kattrin is hit, gives a few more drumbeats and then slowly crumples.
THE ENSIGN: That’s the end of that.
But Kattrin’s last drumbeats are taken up by the town’s cannon. In the distance can be heard a confused noise of tocsins and gunfire.
FIRST SOLDIER: She’s made it.
12
Before first light. Sound of the fifes and drums of troops marching off into the distance
In front of the cart Mother Courage is squatting by her daughter. The peasant family are standing near her.
THE PEASANT with hostility: You must go, missis. There’s only one more regiment behind that one. You can’t go on your own.
MOTHER COURAGE: I think she’s going to sleep. She sings:
Lullaby baby
What’s that in the hay?
Neighbours’ kids grizzle
But my kids are gay.
Neighbours’ are in tatters
And you’re dressed in lawn
Cut down from the raiment an
Angel has worn.
Neighbours’ kids go hungry
And you shall eat cake
Suppose it’s too crumbly
You’ve only to speak.
Lullaby baby
What’s that in the hay?
The one lies in Poland
The other – who can say?
Better if you’d not told her nowt about your brother-in-law’s kids.
THE PEASANT: If you’d not gone into town to get your cut it might never of happened.
MOTHER COURAGE: Now she’s asleep.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: She ain’t asleep. Can’t you see she’s passed over?
THE PEASANT: And it’s high time you got away yourself. There are wolves around and, what’s worse, marauders.
MOTHER COURAGE: Aye.
She goes and gets a tarpaulin to cover the dead girl with.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE: Ain’t you got nobody else? What you could go to?
MOTHER COURAGE: Aye, one left. Eilif.
THE PEASANT as Mother Courage covers the dead girl. Best look for him, then. We’ll mind her, see she gets proper burial. Don’t you worry about that.
MOTHER COURAGE: Here’s money for expenses.
She counts out coins into the peasant’s hands.
The peasant and his son shake hands with her and carry Kattrin away.
THE PEASANT’S WIFE as she leaves: I’d hurry.
MOTHER COURAGE harnessing herself to the cart: Hope I can pull cart all right by meself. Be all right, nowt much inside it. Got to get back in business again.
Another regiment with its fifes and drums marches past in the background.
MOTHER COURAGE tugging the cart: Take me along!
Singing is heard from offstage:
With all its luck and all its danger
The war is dragging on a bit
Another hundred years or longer
The common man won’t benefit.
Filthy his food, no soap to shave him
The regiment steals half his pay.
But still a miracle may save him:
Tomorrow is another day!
The new year’s come. The watchmen shout.
The thaw sets in. The dead remain.
Wherever life has not died out
It staggers to its feet again.
Notes and Variants
Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics) Page 23
