Three Wonder Plays Part 25

_Rock_: It's what I'd do, to turn the whole of Galway Bay to dry land, and I to have it for myself, the red land, the green land, the fallow and the lea! The want of land is a great stoppage to a man having means to lay out in stock.

(_Sings_.) (_Air, "I wish I had the shepherd's lamb."_)

"I wish I had both mill and kiln, I wish I had of land my fill; I wish I had both mill and kiln, And all would follow after!"

_Flannery_: Ah, the land, the land, the rotten land, and what will you have in the end but the breadth of your back of it? Let you now soften the heart in that one (_points to Rock_) till he would restore to me the thing he is aware of.

_Conan_: It was not for that the spell was promised, to be changing a few neighbours or a thing of the kind, or to be doing wonders in this broken little place. A town of dead factions! To change any of the dwellers in this place would be to make it better, for it would be impossible to make it worse. The time you wouldn't be meddling with them you wouldn't know them to be bad, but the time you'd have to do business with them that's the time you'd know it!

_Rock_: I suppose it is what you are asking to do, to make yourself rich?

_Conan_: I do not! I would be loth take any profit, and Aristotle after laying down that _to_ pleasure or _to_ profit every wealthy man is a slave!

_Flannery_: What would you do, so?

_Conan_: I will change all into the similitude of ancient Greece! There is no man at all can understand argument but it is from Greece he is. I know well what I'm doing. I'm not like a potato having eyes this way and that. People were harmless long ago and why wouldn't they be made harmless again? Aristotle said, "Fair play is more beautiful than the morning and the evening star!"

"Be friendly with one another," he said, "and let the lawyers starve!" I'll turn the captains of soldiers to be as peaceable as children picking strawberries in the gra.s.s. I've a mind to change the tongue of the people to the language of the Greeks, that no farmer will be grumbling over a halfpenny Independent, but be following the plough in full content, giving out Homer and the praises of the ancient world!

_Flannery_: If you make the farmers content you will make the world content.

_Rock_: You will, when you'll bring the sun from Greece to ripen our little lock of oats!

_Conan_: So I will drag Ireland from its moorings till I'll bring it to the middling sea that has no ebb or flood!

_Rock_: You will do well to put a change on the college that harboured you, and that left you so much of folly.

_Conan_: I'll do that! I'll be in College Green before the dawn is white--no but before the night is grey! It is to Dublin I will bring my spell, for I ever and always heard it said what Dublin will do to-day Ireland will do to-morrow! (_Sings_.)

"Let Erin remember the days of old Ere her faithless sons betrayed her-- When Malachy wore the collar of gold Which he won from her proud invader-- When her kings with standards of green unfurl'd, Led the Red-Branch knights to danger; Ere the emerald gem of the western world Was set in the crown of a stranger."

_Rock_: And maybe you'll tell us now by what means you will do all this?

_Conan_: Go out of the house and I will tell you in the by and bye.

_Rock_: That is what I was thinking. You are talking nothing but lies.

_Conan_: I tell you that power is not far from where you stand! But I will let no one see it only myself.

_Flannery_: There might be some truth in it.

There are some say enchantments never went out of Ireland.

_Conan_: It is a spell, I say, that will change anything to its contrary. To turn it upon a snail, there is hardly a greyhound but it would overtake; but a hare it would turn to be the slowest thing in the universe; too slow to go to a funeral.

_Rock_: I'll believe it when I'll see it.

_Conan_: You could see it if I let you look in this hiding-hole.

_Rock_: Good-morrow to you!

_Conan_: Then you will see it, for I'll raise up the stone. (_Kneels_.)

_Rock_: It to be anything it is likely a pot of sovereigns.

_Flannery_: It might be the harp of Angus.

_Rock_: I see no trace of it.

_Conan_: There is something hard! It should likely be a silver trumpet or a hunting-horn of gold!

_Rock_: Give me a hold of it.

_Conan_: Leave go! (_Lifts out bellows_.)

_Rock_: Ha! Ha! Ha! after all your chat, nothing but a little old bellows!...

_Conan_: There is seven rings on it.... They should signify the seven blasts....

_Rock_: If there was seventy times seven what use would it be but to redden the coals?

_Conan_: Every one of these blasts has power to make some change.

_Rock_: Make one so, and I'll plough the world for you.

_Conan_: Is it that I would spend one of my seven blasts convincing the like of ye?

_Rock_: It is likely the case there is no power in it at all.

_Conan_: I'm very sure there is surely. The world will be a new world before to-morrow's Angelus bell.

_Flannery_: I never could believe in a bellows.

_Rock_: Here now is a fair offer. I'll loan you this bag of notes to pay your charges to Dublin if you will change that little pigeon in the crib into a crow.

_Conan_: I will do no such folly.

_Rock_: You wouldn't because you'd be afeared to try.

_Conan_: Hold it up to me. I'll show you am I afeared!

_Rock_: There it is now. (_Holds up cage_.)

_Conan_: Have a care! (_Blows_.)

_Rock_: (_Dropping it with a shriek_.) It has me bit with its hard beak, it is turned to be an old black crow.

_Flannery_: As black as the bottom of the pot.

_Crow_: Caw! Caw! Caw!