Three Wonder Plays by Lady I. A. Gregory

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_Mother_: Even so there might likely be a mermaid
playing reels on her silver comb, and yourself
craving after the world you left.
(_Sings: Air, "Spailpin Fanach_.")

"You think to go from every woe to peace in the
wide ocean,
But you will find your foolish mind repent its
foolish notion.
When dog-fish dash and mermaids splash their
finny tails to find you,
I'll make a bet that you'll regret the world you
left behind you!"

_Celia:_ (_Clattering in with broom, etc_.) What
are ye doing, coming in this room again after I
having it settled so nice? I'll allow no one in the
place again, only carriage company that will have
no speck of dust upon the sole of their shoe!

_Mother_: Oh, Celia, there has strange things
happened!

_Celia_: What I see strange is that some person
has meddled with that hill of ashes on the hearth
and set it flying athrough the air. Is it hens ye
are wishful to be, that would be searching and
scratching in the dust for grains? And this thrown
down in the midst! (_Holds up bellows_.)

_Conan_: Give me my bellows!

_Mother_: No, but give it to me!

_Rock and Flannery_: Give it to myself!

_Timothy:_ (_Looking up, with hands on ears_.)
My curse upon it and its work. Little I care if it
goes up with the clouds.

_Celia_: What in the world wide makes the whole
of ye so eager to get hold of such a thing?

_Conan_: It has but the one blast left!
(_Sings_.)

"'Tis the last Rose of Summer
Left blooming alone,
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
Or give sigh for sigh!"

_Celia_: What are you fretting about blasts and
about roses?

_Rock:_ It has a charm on it--

_Flannery:_ To change the world--

_Mother:_ That chedang myself--

_Conan:_ For the worse--

_Mother:_ And Timothy--

_Conan:_ For the worse--

_Rock:_ Myself and Flannery--

_Conan:_ For the worse, for the worse--

_Mother:_ Conan that changed yourself with it--

_Conan:_ For the very worst!

_Celia:_ (_To Conan_.) Is it riddles, or is it that
you put a spell and a change upon me?

_Conan:_ If I did, it was for your own good!

_Celia:_ Do you call it for my good to set me
running till I have my toes going through my shoes?
(_Holds them out_.)

_Conan:_ I didn't think to go that length.

_Celia:_ To roughen my hands with soap and
scalding water till they're near as knotted and as
ugly as your own!

_Conan:_ Ah, leave me alone! I tell you it is not
by my own fault. My plan and my purpose that
went astray and that broke down.

_Celia:_ I will not leave you till you'll change me
back to what I was. What way can these hands go
to the dance house to-night? Change me back, I say!

_Rock:_ And me--

_Timothy:_ And myself, that I'll have quiet in my
head again.

_Conan:_ I cannot undo what has been done.
There is no back way.

_Timothy:_ Is there no way at all to come out of
it safe and sane?

_Conan:_ (_Shakes head_.) Let ye make the best of it.

_Flannery: (Sings.) (Air, "I saw from the Beach.")_

"Ne'er tell me of glories serenely adorning
The close of our day, the calm eve of our night.
Give me back, give me back the wild freshness of morning,
Her clouds and her tears are worth evening's best light."

_Mother: (Who has bellows in her hand.)_ Stop!
Stop--my mind is travelling backward ...so far
I can hardly reach to it ...but I'll come to it
...the way I'll be changed to what I was before,
and the town and the country wishing me well, I
having got my enough of unfriendly looks and hard
words!

_Timothy:_ Hurry on, Ma'am, and remember, and
take the spell off the whole of us.

_Mother:_ I am going back, back, to the longest
thing that is in my mind and my memory!...
I myself a child in my mother's arms the very day
I was christened....

_Conan:_ Ah, stop your raving!

_Mother:_ Songs and storytelling, and my old
generations laying down news of this spell that is
now come to pass....

_Rock:_ Did they tell what way to undo the
charm?

_Mother:_ You have but to turn the bellows the
same as the smith would turn the anvil, or St.
Patrick turned the stone for fine weather ...
and to blow a blast ...and a twist will come
inside in it and the charm will fall off with that
blast, and undo the work that has been done!

_All:_ Turn it so!
(_Cats look over, playing on fiddles "O Johnny, I
hardly knew you," while mother blows on each_.)

_Timothy:_ Ha! (_Takes hands from ears and puts
one behind his ear_.)

_Rock:_ Ha! Where now is my bag? (_Turns
out his pockets, unhappy to find them empty_.)

_Flannery:_ Ha! (_Smiles and holds out umbrella
to Conan, who takes it_.)

_Mother: (To Celia.)_ Let you blow a blast on me.
(_Celia does so_.) Now it's much if I can remember
to blow a blast backward upon yourself!

_Celia:_ Stop a minute! Leave what is in me of
life and of courage till I will blow the last blast is
in the bellows upon Conan.

_Conan:_ Stop that! Do you think to change
and to crow over me. You will not or I'll lay my
curse upon you, unless you would change me into
an eagle would be turning his back upon the whole
of ye, and facing to his perch upon the right hand
of the master of the gods!

_Celia:_ Is it to waste the last blast you would?
Not at all. As we burned the candle we'll burn the
inch! I'll not make two halves of it, I'll give it to
you entirely!

_Conan:_ You will not, you unlucky witch of illwill!
(_Protects himself with umbrella_.)

_Celia: (Having got him to a corner.)_ Let you
take things quiet and easy from this out, and be as
content as you have been contrary from the very
day and hour of your birth!
_(She blows upon him and he sits down smiling.
Mother blows on Celia, and she sits down
in first attitude_.)

_Celia:_ (_Taking up pigeon_.) Oh, there you are
come back my little dove and my darling!
(_Sings: "Shule Aroon."_)

"Come sit and settle on my knee
And I'll tell you and you'll tell me
A tale of what will never be,
Go-de-tou-Mavourneen slan!"

_Conan:_ (_Lighting pipe_.) So the dove is there,
too. Aristotle said there is nothing at the end but
what there used to be at the beginning. Well now,
what a pleasant day we had together, and what
good neighbours we all are, and what a comfortable
family entirely.

_Rock:_ You would seem to have done with your
complaints about the universe, and your great plan
to change it overthrown.

_Conan:_ Not a complaint! What call have I to
go complaining? The world is a very good world,
the best nearly I ever knew.
(_Sings_.)

"O, a little cock sparrow he sat on a tree,
O, a little cock sparrow he sat on a tree,
O, a little cock sparrow he sat on a tree,
And he was as happy as happy could be,
With a chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup!

"A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup!
A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup!
A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup!
A chirrup, a chirrup, a----!"

CURTAIN

NOTE TO ARISTOTLE'S BELLOWS

I had begun to put down some notes for this play when
in the autumn of 1919 I was suddenly obliged (through
the illness and death of the writer who had undertaken it)
to take in hand the writing of the "Life and Achievement"
of my nephew Hugh Lane, and this filled my mind and
kept me hard at work for a year.

When the proofs were out of my hands I turned with
but a vague recollection to these notes, and was surprised
to find them fuller than they had appeared in my memory,
so that the idea was rekindled and the writing was soon
begun. And I found a certain rest and ease of mind in
having turned from a long struggle (in which, alas, I had
been too often worsted) for exactitude in dates and names
and in the setting down of facts, to the escape into a world
of fantasy where I could create my own. And so before
the winter was over the play was put in rehearsal at the
Abbey Theatre, and its first performance was on St.
Patrick's Day, 1921.

I have been looking at its first scenario, made according
to my habit in rough pen and ink sketches, coloured with
a pencil blue and red, and the changes from that early
idea do not seem to have been very great, except that in
the scene where Conan now hears the secret of the hiding-place
of the Spell from the talk of the cats, the Bellows
had been at that time left beside him by a dwarf from the
rath, in his sleep. The cats work better, and I owe their
success to the genius of our Stage Carpenter, Mr. Sean
Barlow, whose head of the Dragon from my play of that
name had been such a masterpiece that I longed to see
these other enchanted heads from his hand.

The name of the play in that first scenario was "The
Fault-Finder," but my cranky Conan broke from that
narrowness. If the play has a moral it is given in the words
of the Mother, "It's best make changes little by little,
the same as you'd put clothes upon a growing child." The
restlessness of the time may have found its way into Conan's
mind, or as some critic wrote, "He thinks of the Bellows
as Mr. Wilson thought of the League of Nations," and so
his disappointment comes. As A.E. writes in "The National
Being," "I am sympathetic with idealists in a hurry, but
I do not think the world can be changed suddenly by
some heavenly alchemy, as St. Paul was smitten by a light
from the overworld. Though the heart in us cries out
continually, 'Oh, hurry, hurry to the Golden Age,' though
we think of revolutions, we know that the patient marshalling
of human forces is wisdom.... Not by revolutions
can humanity be perfected. I might quote from an old
oracle, 'The gods are never so turned away from man as
when he ascends to them by disorderly methods.' Our
spirits may live in the Golden Age but our bodily life
moves on slow feet, and needs the lantern on the path
and the staff struck carefully into the darkness before us to
see that the path beyond is not a morass, and the light
not a will o' the wisp." (But this may not refer to our
own Revolution, seeing that has been making a step now
and again towards what many judged to be a will o' the
wisp through over seven hundred years.)

As to the machinery of the play, the spell was first to
have been worked by a harp hung up by some wandering
magician, and that was to work its change according to
the wind, as it blew from north or south, east or west.
But that would have been troublesome in practice, and
the Bellows having once entered my mind, brought there
I think by some scribbling of the pencil that showed Conan
protecting himself with an umbrella, seemed to have every
necessary quality, economy, efficiency, convenience.

As to Aristotle, his name is a part of our folklore. The
old wife of one of our labourers told me one day, as a bee
buzzed through the open door: "Aristotle of the Books
was very wise but the bees got the better of him in the
end. He wanted to know how did they pack the comb,
and he wasted the best part of a fortnight watching them,
and he could not see them doing it. Then he made a
hive with a glass cover on it and put it over them, and
he thought to watch them. But when he went to put his
eye to the glass, they had it all covered with wax so that
it was as black as the pot, and he was as blind as before.
He said he was never rightly killed till then. The bees
had him beat that time surely." And Douglas Hyde
brought home one day a story from Kilmacduagh bog, in
which Aristotle took the place of Solomon, the Wise Man
in our tales as well as in those of the East. And he said
that as the story grew and the teller became more familiar,
the name of Aristotle was shortened to that of Harry.

As to the songs they are all sung to the old Irish airs I
give at the end.

A. GREGORY.

August 18, 1921.

THE JESTER

A PLAY IN THREE ACTS

FOR RICHARD

January, 1919

A.G.

PERSONS

_The Five Princes_.

_The Five Wrenboys_.

_The Guardian of the Princes and Governor of the Island_.

_The Servant_.

_The Two Dowager Messengers_.

_The Ogre_.

_The Jester_.

_Two Soldiers_.

_The Scene is laid in The Island of Hy Brasil, that
appears every seven years_.

_Time: Out of mind_.

ACT I

ACT I

_Scene: A winter garden, with pots of flowering
trees or fruit-trees. There are books about and
some benches with cushions on them and many
cushions on the ground. The young_ PRINCES _are
sitting or lying at their ease. One is playing
"Home, Sweet Home" on a harp. The_
SERVANT--_an old man_--_is standing in the
background_.

_1st Prince_: Here, Gillie, will you please take off
my shoe and see what there is in it that is pressing
on my heel.

_Servant_: (_Taking it off and examining it_.) I
see nothing.

_1st Prince_: Oh, yes, there is something; I have
felt it all the morning. I have been thinking this
long time of taking the shoe off, but I waited for
you.

_Servant_: All I can find is a grain of poppy seed.

_1st Prince_: That is it of course--it was enough
to hurt my skin.

_2nd Prince_: Gillie, there is a mayfly tickling
my cheek. Will you please brush it away.

_Servant_: I will and welcome. (_Fans it off_.)

_3rd Prince_: Just give me, please, that book
that is near my elbow. I cannot reach to it without
taking my hand off my cheek.

_Servant_: I wouldn't wish you to do that.
(_Gives him book_.)

_4th Prince_: Gillie, I think, I am nearly sure,
there is a feather in this cushion that has the quill
in it yet. I feel something hard.

_Servant_: Give it to me till I will open it and
make a search.

_4th Prince_: No, wait a while till I am not lying
on it. I will put up with the discomfort till then.

_5th Prince_: Would it give you too much trouble,
Gillie, when you waken me in the morning, to
come and call me three times, so that I can have
the joy of dropping off again?

_Servant_: Why wouldn't I? And there is a
thing I would wish to know. There will be a
supper laid out here this evening for the Dowager
Messengers that are coming to the Island, and I
would wish to provide for yourselves whatever
food would be pleasing to you.

_1st Prince_: It is too warm for eating. All I
will ask is a few grapes from Spain.

_2nd Prince_: A mouthful of jelly in a silver
spoon ...or in the shape of a little castle with
towers. When will the Lady Messengers be here?

_Servant_: Not before the fall of day.

_2nd Prince_: The time passes so quietly and
peaceably it does not feel like a year and a day since
they came here before.

_Servant_: No wonder the time to pass easy and
quiet where you are, with comfort all around you,
and nothing to mark its course, and every season
feeling the same as another, within the glass walls
and the crystal roof of this place. And the old
Queen, your godmother, sending her own Chamberlain
to take charge of you, and to be your Guardian,
and Governor of the Island. Sure, the wind
itself must slacken coming to this sheltered place.

_3rd Prince_: That is a great thing. I would
not wish the rough wind to be blowing upon me.

_4th Prince_: Or the dust to be rising and coming
in among us to spoil our suits.

_5th Prince_: Or to be walking out on the hard
roads, or climbing over stone walls, or tearing
ourselves in hedges.

_1st Prince_: That is the reason we were sent
here by the Queen, our Godmother, in place of
being sent to any school. To be kept safe and
secure.

_2nd Prince_: Not to be running here and there
like our own poor five first cousins, that used to
be slipping out and rambling in their young youth,
till they were swallowed up by the sea.

_3rd Prince_: It was maybe by some big fish of
the sea.

_2nd Prince_: It might be they were brought
away by sea-robbers coming in a ship.

_3rd Prince_: Foolish they were and very foolish
not to stay in peace and comfort in the house where
they were safe.

_Servant_: There is no fear of _ye_ stirring from
where you are, having every whole thing ye can
wish.

_4th Prince_: Here is the Guardian coming!

(_They all rise_.)

_Guardian_: (_A very old man, much encumbered
with wraps, coming slowly in_.) Are you all here,
all the five of you?

_All_: We are here!

_Guardian_: (_Standing, leaning on a stick, to
address them_.) It's a pity that these being holidays,
your teachers and tutors are far away.

Gone off afloat in a cedar boat to a College of
Learning out in Cathay.

_1st Prince_: It's a pity indeed they're not here
to-day.

_Guardian_: For it's likely you looked in your
almanacs, or judged by the shape of the lessening
moon,
That your Godmother's Dowager Messengers are
due to arrive this afternoon.

_2nd Prince_: We did and we think they'll be
here very soon.

_Guardian_: But I know they'll be glad that each
royal lad, put under my rule in place of a school,
Can fashion his life without trouble or strife, and
be shielded from care in a nice easy chair.

_3rd Prince_: As we always are and we always
were.

_Guardian_: It is part of my knowledge that lads
in a college, and made play one and all with a bat
and a ball,
Come often to harm with a knock on the arm,
and their hands get as hard as the hands of a clown.

_4th Prince_: But ours are as soft as thistledown.

_Guardian_: And I've seen young princes not
far from your age, go chasing beasts on a winter day,
And carted home with a broken bone, and a
yard of a doctor's bill to pay;
Or going to sail in the teeth of a gale, when the
waves were rising mountains high,
Or fall from a height that was near out of sight,
robbing rooks from their nest in a poplar tree.

_5th Prince: (To another_.) But that never
happened to you or me.

_Guardian_: Or travelling far to a distant war,
with battles and banners rilling their mind,
And creeping back like a crumpled sack, content
if they'd left no limbs behind.

_1st Prince_: But we'll have nothing to do with
that, but stop at home with an easy mind.

_Guardian: (Sitting down.)_ That's right. And
now I would wish you to say over some of your
tasks, to make ready for the Dowager Messengers,
that they may bring back a good report to the
Queen, your Godmother.

_1st Prince_: We'll do that. We would wish to be
a credit to you, sir, and to our teachers.

_Guardian_: Say out now some little piece of
Latin; that one that is my favourite.

_1st Prince_:

Aere sub gelido nullus rosa fundit odores,
Ut placeat tellus, sole calesce Dei.

_Guardian_: Say out the translation.

_2nd Prince_: Beneath a chilly blast the rose,
loses its sweet, and scentless blows;

If you would have earth keep its charm, stop
in the sunshine and keep warm.

_Guardian_: Very good. Now your history book;
you were learning of late some genealogies of kings,
might suit your Godmother.

_3rd Prince_:

William the First as the Conqueror known
At the Battle of Hastings ascended the throne,
His Acts were all made in the Norman tongue
And at eight every evening the curfew was rung
When each English subject by royal desire

Extinguished his candle and put out his fire.
He bridled the kingdom with forts round the Border
And the Tower of London was built by his order.

_2nd Prince_:

William called Rufus from having red hair,
Of virtues possessed but a moderate share,
But though he was one whom we covetous call,
He built the famed structure called Westminster Hall.
Walter Tyrrell his favourite, when hunting one day,
Attempted a deer with an arrow to slay,
But missing his aim, shot the King to the heart
And the body was carried away in a cart.

_Guardian_: That will do. You have that very
well in your memory. Now let me hear the
grammar lesson.

_3rd Prince_:

A noun's the name of anything
As school or garden, hoop or swing.

_Guardian_: Very good, go on.

_4th Prince_:

Adjectives tell the kind of noun
As strong or pretty, white or brown.

_5th Prince_:

Conjunctions join the nouns together
As men and children, wind or weather.

_Guardian_: It will be very useful to you to have
that so well grafted in your mind.... What
noise is that outside?

_Servant_: It is some strolling people.

_1st Prince_: Oh, Guardian, let them come in.
We will do our work all the better if we have some
amusement now.

_Guardian_: Maybe so. I am well pleased when
amusements come to our door, that you can see
without going outside the walls.

_(A Jester enters in very ragged green clothes
and broken shoes.)_

But this is a very ragged looking man. Do you
know anything about him, Gillie?

_Servant_: I seen him one time before.... At
the time of the earthquake out in Foreign. A mad
jester he was. A tramp class of a man. _(To Jester.)_
Where is it you stop?

_Jester_: Where do I stop? Where would I be
but everywhere, like the bad weather. I stop in
no place, but going through the whole roads of
the world.

_Guardian_: What brought you in here?

_Jester_: Hearing questions going on, and answers.
I am well able to give help in that. It's
not long since I was giving instruction to the sons
of the King of Babylon. Here now is a question.
How many ladders would it take to reach to the
moon?

_1st Prince_: It should be a great many.

_2nd Prince_: I give it up.

_Jester_: One ...if it is long enough! Which
is it easier to spell, ducks or geese?

_3rd Prince_: Ducks I suppose because it's shorter.

_Jester_: Not at all but geese. Do you know
why? Because it is spelled with _ees_. Tell me
now, can you spell pup backwards?

_4th Prince_: P-u-p....

_Jester_: Not at all.

_4th Prince_: But it is.

_Jester_: No, that is pup straight forwards....
Can you run back and forwards at the same time?

_4th Prince_: Answer it yourself so.

_Jester_: You would be as wise as myself then.
But I'll show you some tricks. Look at these
three straws on my hand. Will I be able to blow
two of them away, and the other to stay in its place?

_5th Prince_: They would all blow away.

_Jester_: Look now. Puff! (_He has put his
finger on the middle one_.) Now is it possible?

_5th Prince_: It is easy when you know the way.

_Jester_: That is so with all knowledge. Can you
wag one ear and keep the other quiet?

_1st Prince_: Nobody can do that.

_Jester: (Wagging one ear with his finger.)_ There,
now you see I have done it! There's more learning
than is taught in books. Wait now and I'll give
you out a song I'll engage you never heard. (_Sings
or repeats_.)

It's I can rhyme you out the joy
That's ready for a lively boy.
Cuchulain flung a golden ball
And followed it where it would fall,
And when they counted him a child
He took the flying swans alive.
And Finn was given hares to mind
Till he outran them and the wind;
And he could swim and overtake
The wild duck swimming on the lake.
Osgar's young music was to thwack
The enemy and drive him back....

_Guardian_: That's enough now. I have no
fancy for that class of song. What other amusements
are there?

_Servant_: There are the Wrenboys are come here
at the end of their twelve days' funning.

_Jester_: That's it! The Wrenboys; a rambling
troop; rambling the world like myself. I will make
place for them. The old must give way to the
young.

(_He goes and sits down in a corner, munching
a crust and dozing_.)

_Servant_: Come in here let ye, and show what
ye can do!

(_Wrenboys come in playing a fife. They are
wearing little masks and are dressed in
ragged tunics; they carry drum and, fife,
and stand in a line_.)

_All Five Wrenboys: (Together.)_

The wren, the wren, the King of all birds,
On Stephen's Day was caught in the furze.
Although he's small his family's great,
Rise up kind gentry and give us a treat!
(_Rub-a-tub-tub-tub, on the drum_.)

Down with the kettle and up with the pan
And give us money to bury the wren!
_(Rub-a-tub.)_

We followed him twenty miles since morn,
The Wrenboys are all tattered and torn.
From Kyle-na-Gno we started late
And here we are at this grand gate!
_(Rub-a-tub.)_

He dipped his wing in a barrel of beer--
We wish you all a Happy New Year!
Give us now money to buy him a bier
And if you don't, we'll bury him here!
(_Rub-a-tub, and fife_.)

(_Princes laugh and clap hands_.)

_1st Prince_: That is very good.

_2nd Prince_: We must give them some money to
bury the wren!

_Guardian_: Come on then and I will give you
some. They will be glad of it. Play now the
harp as you go.

(_Princes go off playing, "Home, Sweet Home_."
_The Wrenboys sit down_.)

_1st Wrenboy_: It is likely we'll get good treatment.

_Jester: (Coming forward.)_ Ye should be tired.

_2nd Wrenboy_: We should be, but that we have
our feet well soled,--with the dust of the road!

_3rd Wrenboy_: If walking could tire us we might
be tired. But we're as well pleased to be moving,
where we have no house or home that you'll call a
house or a home.

_Jester_: That's not so with those young princes.
Wouldn't you be well pleased if ye could change
places with them? (_He goes back to his corner_.)

_4th Wrenboy_: They are lovely kind young
princes. I was near in dread they might set the
dogs at us.

_5th Wrenboy_: They would do that if they
knew the Ogre had sent us to spy out the place
for him.

_1st Wrenboy_: It failed us to see what he wanted
us to see. It is likely he will beat us, when we go
back, with his cat-o'-nine-tails.

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