The Green Helmet and Other Poems Part 4

LAEGAIRE

Go out or I will make you.

YOUNG MAN

[_Forcing up LAEGAIRE'S arm, pa.s.sing him and putting his s.h.i.+eld on the wall over the chair_]

Not till I have drunk my fill.

But may some dog defend me for a cat of wonder's up.

Laegaire and Conall are here, the flagon full to the top, And the cups--

LAEGAIRE

It is Cuchulain.

CUCHULAIN

The cups are dry as a bone.

[_He sits on chair and drinks_]

CONALL

Go into Scotland again, or where you will, but begone From this unlucky country that was made when the devil spat.

CUCHULAIN

If I lived here a hundred years, could a worse thing come than that Laegaire and Conall should know me and bid me begone to my face?

CONALL

We bid you begone from a house that has fallen on shame and disgrace.

CUCHULAIN

I am losing patience, Conall--I find you stuffed with pride, The flagon full to the brim, the front door standing wide; You'd put me off with words, but the whole thing's plain enough, You are waiting for some message to bring you to war or love In that old secret country beyond the wool-white waves, Or it may be down beneath them in foam-bewildered caves Where nine forsaken sea queens fling shuttles to and fro; But beyond them, or beneath them, whether you will or no, I am going too.

LAEGAIRE

Better tell it all out to the end; He was born to luck in the cradle, his good luck may amend The bad luck we were born to.

CONALL

I'll lay the whole thing bare.

You saw the luck that he had when he pushed in past me there.

Does anything stir on the sea?

LAEGAIRE

Not even a fish or a gull.

CONALL

You were gone but a little while. We were there and the ale-cup full.

We were half drunk and merry, and midnight on the stroke When a wide, high man came in with a red foxy cloak, With half-shut foxy eyes and a great laughing mouth, And he said when we bid him drink, that he had so great a drouth He could drink the sea.

CUCHULAIN

I thought he had come from one of you Out of some Connaught rath, and would lap up milk and mew; But if he so loved water I have the tale awry.

CONALL

You would not be so merry if he were standing by, For when we had sung or danced as he were our next of kin He promised to show us a game, the best that ever had been; And when we had asked what game, he answered, "Why, whip off my head!

Then one of you two stoop down, and I'll whip off his," he said.

"A head for a head," he said, "that is the game that I play."

CUCHULAIN

How could he whip off a head when his own had been whipped away?

CONALL

We told him it over and over, and that ale had fuddled his wit, But he stood and laughed at us there, as though his sides would split, Till I could stand it no longer, and whipped off his head at a blow, Being mad that he did not answer, and more at his laughing so, And there on the ground where it fell it went on laughing at me.

LAEGAIRE

Till he took it up in his hands--

CONALL

And splashed himself into the sea.

CUCHULAIN

I have imagined as good when I've been as deep in the cup.

LAEGAIRE

You never did.

CUCHULAIN

And believed it.

CONALL

Cuchulain, when will you stop Boasting of your great deeds, and weighing yourself with us two, And crying out to the world whatever we say or do, That you've said or done a better?--Nor is it a drunkard's tale, Though we said to ourselves at first that it all came out of the ale, And thinking that if we told it we should be a laughing-stock, Swore we should keep it secret.