Three Wonder Plays Part 50

_2nd Dowager Messenger_: It is no wonder they took to one another. It was easy to know by the way they behaved they had in them royal blood.

_(The Boys turn to each other, the Ogre is slipping out.)_

_Jester: (Throwing off his cloak and showing his green ragged clothes.)_ Stop where you are!

_Ogre_: Do your best! You cannot hinder me!

I have spells could change the whole of ye to a cairn of grey stones! _(Makes signs with his hands.)_

_Jester: (In a terrible voice.)_ Are you thinking to try your spells against _mine_?

_Ogre: (Trembling and falling on his knees.)_ Oh, spare me! Hold your hand! Do not use against me your spells of life and death! I know you now! I know you well through your ragged dress!

What are my spells beside yours? You the great Master of all magic and all enchantments, Manannan, Son of the Sea!

_Jester_: Yes, I am Manannan, that men are apt to call a Jester and a Fool, and a Disturber, and a Mischief-maker, upsetting the order of the world and making confusion in its order and its ways.

_(Recites or sings.)_

For when I see a master Hold back his hireling's fee I shake my pepper castor Into his sweetened tea!

And when I see a plan make The Birds that watch us frown, I come and toss the pancake And turn it upside down!

In this I follow after Lycurgus who was wise; To the little G.o.d of laughter I make my sacrifice!

And now here is my word of command! Everyone into his right place!

_Ogre_: Spare me! Let me go this time!

_Jester_: Go out now! I will not bring a blemish on this sword by striking off your ugly head. But as you have been through seven years an enemy to these young boys, keeping them in ignorance and dirt, they that are sons of a king, I cross and command you to go groping through holes and dirt and darkness through three times seven years in the shape of a rat, with every boy, high or low, gentle or simple, your pursuer and your enemy.

And along with that I would recommend you to keep out of the way of your own enchanted cats!

_(Ogre gives a squeal and creeps away on all fours.)_

_Guardian_: I think I will give up business and go back to my old trade of Chamberlain and of shutting out draughts from the Court. The weight of years is coming on me, and it is time for me to set my mind to some quiet path.

_1st Dowager Messenger_: Come home with us so, and help us to attend to our cats, that they will be able to destroy the rats of the world.

_2nd Dowager Messenger: (To Princes.)_ It is best for you come to your G.o.dmother's Court, as your Guardian is showing the way.

_1st Prince_: We may come and give news of our doings at the end of a year and a day.

But now we will go with our comrades to learn their work and their play.

_2nd Prince_: For lying on silken cus.h.i.+ons, or stretched on a feathery bed.

We would long again for the path by the lake, and the wild swans overhead.

_3d Prince_: Till we'll harden our bodies with wrestling and get courage to stand in a fight.

_4th Prince_: And not to be blind in the woods or in dread of the darkness of night.

_1st Wrenboy_: And we who are ignorant blockheads, and never were reared to know The art of the languaged poets, it's along with you we will go.

_5th Prince_: Come show us the wisdom of woods, and the way to outrun the wild deer, Till we'll harden our minds with courage, and be masters of hards.h.i.+p and fear.

_2nd Wrenboy_: But you are candles of knowledge, and we'll give you no ease or peace, Till you'll learn us manners and music, and news of the Wars of Greece.

_1st Prince_: Come on, we will help one another, and going together we'll find, Joy with those great companions, Earth, Water, Fire, and Wind. _(They join hands.)_

_Jester_: It's likely you'll do great actions, for there is an ancient word, That comrades.h.i.+p is better than the parting of the sword, And that if ever two natures should join and grow into one, They will do more together than the world has ever done.

So now I've ended my business, and I'll go, for my road is long, But be sure the Jester will find you out, if ever things go wrong!

_(He goes off singing.)_

And so I follow after Lycurgus who was wise; To the little G.o.d of laughter I pay my sacrifice!

CURTAIN

NOTES FOR THE JESTER

I was asked one Christmas by a little schoolboy to write a play that could be acted at school; and in looking for a subject my memory went back to a story I had read in childhood called "The Discontented Children," where, though I forget its incidents, the gamekeeper's children changed places for a while with the children of the Squire, and I thought I might write something on these lines.

But my mind soon went miching as our people (and Shakespeare) would say, and broke through the English hedges into the unbounded wonder-world. Yet it did not quite run out of reach of human types, for having found some almost illegible notes, I see that at the first appearance of Manannan I had put in brackets the initials "G.B.S."

And looking now at the story of that Great Jester, in the history of the ancient G.o.ds, I see that for all his quips and mischief and "tricks and wonders," he came when he was needed to the help of Finn and the Fianna, and gave good teaching to the boy-hero, Cuchulain; and I read also that "all the food he would use would be a vessel of sour milk or a few crab-apples. And there never was any music sweeter than the music he used to be playing."

I have without leave borrowed a phrase from "The Candle of Vision," written by my liberal fellow-countryman, A.E., where he says, "I felt at times as one raised from the dead, made virginal and pure, who renews exquisite intimacies with the divine companions, with Earth, Water, Air, and Fire." And I think he will forgive me for quoting another pa.s.sage now from the same book, for I think it must have been in my mind when I wrote of my Wrenboys: "The lands of Immortal Youth which flush with magic the dreams of childhood, for most sink soon below far horizons and do not again arise. For around childhood gather the wizards of the darkness and they baptize it and change its imagination of itself, as in the Arabian tales of enchantment men were changed by sorcerers who cried, 'Be thou beast or bird.' So ...is the imagination of life about itself changed and one will think he is a worm in the sight of Heaven, he who is but a G.o.d in exile....

What palaces they were born in, what dominions they are rightly heir to, are concealed from them as in the fairy tale the stolen prince lives obscurely among the swineherd.

Yet at times men do not remember, in dreams or in the deeps of sleep, they still wear sceptre and diadem and partake of the banquet of the G.o.ds."

The Wrenboys still come to our door at Coole on St. Stephen's Day, as they used in my childhood to come to Roxborough, but it is in our bargain that the wren itself must be symbolic, unmolested, no longer killed in vengeance for that one in the olden times that awakened the sentinels of the enemy Danes by pecking at crumbs on a drum. And, indeed, these last two or three years the rhymes concerning that old history have been lessened, and their place taken by "The Soldiers Song."

I think the staging of the play is easy. The Ogre's hut may be but a shallow front scene, a curtain that can be drawn away. The masks are such as might be used by Wrenboys, little paper ones, such as one finds in a Christmas cracker, held on with a bit of elastic, and would help to get the change into the eyes of the audience, which Manannan's Mullein-dust may not have reached.

Air: "Shule Aroon"

[Music]

Air: "Mo Bhuachailin Buidhe"

_Brightly_ [Music]

Air: "The Bells of Shandon"

My brain grows rus-ty, my mind is dus-ty The time I'm dwelling with the like of ye; While my spirit rang-es through all the changes could turn the world to fel-is-it-y When Ar-is-tot-le

[Music]