Three Wonder Plays Part 35

_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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.s....

_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 G.o.ds!

_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 att.i.tude_.)

_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 c.o.c.k sparrow he sat on a tree, O, a little c.o.c.k sparrow he sat on a tree, O, a little c.o.c.k 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 exact.i.tude 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.