New Comedies Part 27

_McDonough:_ Let their day not thrive with the buyers and the sellers in the fair! The curse of mildew on the tillage men, that every grain of seed they have sowed may be rotten in the ridges, and the gra.s.s corn blasted from the east before the latter end of harvest!

The curse of the dead on the herds driving cattle and following after markets and fairs! My own curse on the big farmers slapping and spitting in their deal! That a blood murrain may fall upon their bullocks! That rot may fall upon their flocks and maggots make them their pasture and their prey between this and the great feast of Christmas! It is my grief every hand in the fair not to be set shaking and be crookened, where they were not stretched out in friendship to the fair-haired woman that is left her lone within boards!

_Second Hag: (At door.)_ Is it a n.i.g.g.ard you are grown to be, McDonough, and you with riches in your hand? Is it against a new wedding you are keeping your pocket stiff, or to buy a house and an estate, that it fails you to call in hired women to make a right keening, and a few decent boys to lift her through the streets?

_McDonough:_ I to have money or means in my hand, I would ask no help or be beholden to any one at all.

_Second Hag:_ If you had means, is it? I heard by true telling that you have money and means. "At the sheep-shearers' dance a high lady held the plate for the piper; a sovereign she put in it out of her hand, and there was no one of the big gentry but followed her.

There never was seen so much riches in any hall or home." Where now is the fifty gold sovereigns you brought away from Cregroostha?

_McDonough:_ Where is it?

_Second Hag:_ Is it that you would begrudge it to the woman is inside?

_McDonough:_ You know well I would not begrudge it.

_First Hag:_ A queer thing you to speak so stiff and to be running down all around you, and your own pocket being bulky the while.

_McDonough:_ _(Turning out pocket.)_ It is as slack and as empty as when I went out from this.

_Second Hag:_ You could not have run through that much.

_McDonough:_ Not a red halfpenny left, or so much as the image of a farthing.

_First Hag:_ Is it robbed and plundered you were, and you walking the road?

_McDonough:_ _(Sitting down and rocking himself.)_ I wish to my G.o.d it was some robber stripped and left me bare! Robbed and plundered! I was that, and by the worst man and the unkindest that ever was joined to a woman or lost a woman, and that is myself.

_First Hag:_ Is it to lose it unknownst you did?

_McDonough:_ What way did I lose it, is it? I lost it knowingly and of my own will. Thrown on counters, thrown on the drink-house floor, given for spirits, given for porter, thrown for drink for friends and acquaintances, for strangers and strollers and vagabonds.

Scattered in the parish of Ardrahan and at Labane cross. Tramps and schemers lying drunk and dead drunk at the b.u.t.t of every wall.

_(Buries head in his hands.)_

_First Hag:_ That is what happened the gold yourself and the pipes had won? You made no delay doing that much. You have a great wrong done to the woman inside, where you left her burying bare.

_Second Hag:_ She to be without a farthing dip for her corpse, and you after lavishing gold.

_First Hag:_ You have a right to bruise your knees making repentance, you that lay on the one pillow with her. You to be putting curses upon others and making attacks on them! I would make no complaint, you to be naked at your own burying and at the very hour of death, and the rain falling down on your head.

_McDonough:_ Little I mind what happens me. There is no word you can put out of your mouth can do me any injury at all. Oh, Catherine, it is best for me go hang myself out of a tree, and my carca.s.s to be torn by savage dogs that went famished through a great length of time, and my bones left without a token or a flag or a headstone, and my name that was up at one time to be forgotten out of mind!

_(He bursts out sobbing.)_

_First Hag:_ The shadows should be lengthening in the street. Look out would you see the car to be coming.

_Second Hag:_ It was a while ago at the far corner of the fair.

They were but waiting for the throng to lessen.

_First Hag:_ They are making too much delay.

_Second Hag:_ I see a hint of the livery of the poorhouse coming through the crowd.

_First Hag:_ The men of the Union are coming to bring her away, McDonough. There is nothing more to be done. She will get her burial from the rates.

_McDonough:_ Oh, Catherine, Catherine! Is it I myself have brought you to that shame and that disgrace!

_Second Hag:_ You are making too much of it. Little it will signify, and we to be making clay, who was it dug a hole through the nettles or lifted down the sods over our head.

_First Hag:_ That is so. What signifies she to be followed or to be going her lone, and her eyes being shut to the world?

_McDonough:_ Is that the thought ye have within ye, ye Galway hags?

It is easy known it is in a trader's town you were bred, and in a street among dealers.

_First Hag:_ I was but saying it does not signify.

_McDonough:_ But I say it does signify! I will tell that out to you and the world! That might be the thought of a townsman or a trader, or a rich merchant itself that had his estate gained by trafficking, for that is a sort does be thinking more of what they can make out of the living than of keeping a good memory of the dead!

_First Hag:_ There are worthier men than yourself, maybe, in storehouses and in shops.

_McDonough:_ But I am of the generations of Orpheus, and have in me the breed of his master! And of Raftery and Carolan and O'Daly and all that made sounds of music from this back to the foundations of the earth! And as to the rich of the world, I would not humble my head to them. Let them have their serving men and their labourers and messengers will do their bidding. But the servant I myself command is the pipes that draws its breath from the four winds, and from a wind is beyond them again, and at the back of the winds of the air. She was a wedded woman and a woman having my own gold ring on her hand, and my own name put down with hers in the book. But she to have been a shameless woman as ye make her out to be, and sold from tinker to tinker on the road it is all one! I will show Galway and the world that it does signify; that it is not fitting McDonough's wife to travel without company and good hands under her and good following on the road. Play now, pipes, if you never played before! Call to the keeners to follow her with screams and beating of the hands and calling out! Set them crying now with your sound and with your notes, as it is often you brought them to the dance-house!

_(Goes out and plays a lament outside.)_

_First Hag: (Looking out.)_ It is queer and wild he is, cutting his teeth and the hair standing on him.

_Second Hag:_ Some high notion he has, calling them to show honour to her as if she was the Queen of the Angels.

_First Hag:_ To draw to silence the whole fair did. Every person is moving towards this house.

_(A murmur as of people. McDonough comes in, stands at door, looking out.)_

_McDonough:_ I squeeze the pipes as a challenge to the whole of the fair, gentle n.o.ble and simple, the poor and the high up. Come hither and cry Catherine McDonough, give a hand to carry her to the grave! Come to her aid, tribes of Galway, Lynches and Blakes and Frenches! McDonough's pipes give you that command, that have learned the lamentation of the Danes.

Come follow her on the road, trades of Galway, the fishermen, and the carpenters, and the weavers! It is by no short road we will carry her that never will walk any road from this out! By Williams-gate, beside Lynch's gallows, beside the gaol of the hangings, the salmon will make their leap as we pa.s.s!

_Men at Door:_ We will. We will follow her, McDonough.

_Others:_ Give us the first place.

_Others:_ We ourselves will carry her!

_McDonough:_ Faith, Catherine, you have your share and your choice this day of fine men, asking to carry you and to lend you their strength.

I will give no leave to traffickers to put their shoulder under you, or to any that made a refusal, or any seaside man at all.

I will give leave to no one but the sheep-shearers from Eserkelly, from Moneen and Cahirlinny and the whole stretch of Cregroostha. It is they have friendship for music, it is they have a wish for my four bones.

_(Sheep-shearers come in. They are dressed in white flannel. Each has a pair of shears at his side. The first carries a crook.)_