New Comedies Part 4

_Taig:_ It is to the harbours of America we will work our way across the wideness of the sea. It is well able we should be to go mounting up aloft in ropes. Come on Darby out of this!

_Darby:_ There is magic and mastery come into me! This day has put wings to my heart!

_Taig:_ Be easy now. We are maybe not clear of the chimneys yet.

_Darby:_ What signifies chimneys? We'll go up in them till we'll take a view of the Seven Stars! It is out beyond the hills of Burren I will cast my eye, till I'll see the three gates of Heaven!

_Taig:_ It's like enough, luck will flow to you. The way most people fail is in not keeping up the heart. Faith, it's well you have myself to mind you. Gather up now your brush and your bag.

_(They go to the door holding each other's hands and singing: "All in my hat I will c.o.c.k a blue feather," etc.)_

_Curtain_

_THE FULL MOON_

TO ALL SANE PEOPLE IN OR OUT OF CLOON WHO KNOW THEIR NEIGHBOURS TO BE NATURALLY CRACKED OR SOMEWAY QUEER OR TO HAVE GONE WRONG IN THE HEAD.

PERSONS [Sidenote: ALL SANE]

_Shawn Early_ _Bartley Fallon_ _Peter Tannian_ _Hyacinth Halvey_ _Mrs. Broderick_ _Miss Joyce_ _Cracked Mary_ _Davideen,_ HER BROTHER, AN INNOCENT

THE FULL MOON

_Scene: A shed close to Cloon Station; Bartley Fallon is sitting gloomily on a box; Hyacinth Halvey and Shawn Early are coming in at door_.

_Shawn Early:_ It is likely the train will not be up to its time, and cattle being on it for the fair. It's best wait in the shed. Is that Bartley Fallon? What way are you, Bartley?

_Bartley Fallon:_ Faith, no way at all. On the drag, on the drag; striving to put the bad times over me.

_Shawn Early:_ Is it business with the nine o'clock you have?

_Bartley Fallon:_ The wife that is gone visiting to Tubber, and that has the door locked till such time as she will come back on the train. And I thought this shed a place where no bad thing would be apt to happen me, and not to be going through the streets, and the darkness falling.

_Shawn Early:_ It is not long till the full moon will be rising.

_Bartley Fallon:_ Everything that is bad, the falling sickness--G.o.d save the mark--or the like, should be at its worst at the full moon. I suppose because it is the leader of the stars.

_Shawn Early:_ Ah, what could happen any person in the street of Cloon?

_Bartley Fallon:_ There might. Look at Matt Finn, the coffin-maker, put his hand on a cage the circus brought, and the lion took and tore it till they stuck him with a fork you'd rise dung with, and at that he let it drop. And that was a man had never quitted Cloon.

_Shawn Early:_ I thought you might be sending something to the fair.

_Bartley Fallon:_ It isn't to the train I would be trusting anything I would have to sell, where it might be thrown off the track.

And where would be the use sending the couple of little lambs I have?

It is likely there is no one would ask me where was I going. When the weight is not in them, they won't carry the price. Sure, the gra.s.s I have is no good, but seven times worse than the road.

_Shawn Early:_ They are saying there'll be good demand at the fair of Carrow to-morrow.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To-morrow the fair day of Carrow? I was not remembering that.

_Bartley Fallon:_ Ah, there won't be many in it, I'm thinking.

There isn't a hungrier village in Connacht, they were telling me, and it's poor the look of it as well.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To-morrow the fair day. There will be all sorts in the streets to-night.

_Bartley Fallon:_ The sort that will be in it will be a bad sort--sievemakers and tramps and neuks.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ The tents on the fair green; there will be music in it; there was a fiddler having no legs would set men of threescore years and of fourscore years dancing. I can nearly hear his tune.

_(He whistles_ "The Heather Broom.")

_Bartley Fallon:_ You are apt to be going there on the train, I suppose? It is well to be you, Mr. Halvey, having a good place in the town, and the price of your fare, and maybe six times the price of it, in your pocket.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I didn't think of that. I wonder could I go--for one night only--and see what the lads are doing.

_Shawn Early:_ Are you forgetting, Mr. Halvey, that you are to meet his Reverence on the platform that is coming home from drinking water at the Spa?

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ So I can meet him, and get in the train after him getting out.

_(Mrs. Broderick and Peter Tannian come in.)_

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Is that Mr. Halvey is in it? I was looking for you at the chapel as I pa.s.sed, and the Angelus bell after ringing.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ Business I have here, ma'am. I was in dread I might not be here before the train.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ So you might not, indeed. That nine o'clock train you can never trust it to be late.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ To meet Father Gregan I am come, and maybe to go on myself.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Sure, I knew well you would be in haste to be before Father Gregan, and we knowing what we know.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I have no business only to be showing respect to him.

_Shawn Early:_ His good word he will give to Mr. Halvey at the Board, where it is likely he will be made Clerk of the Union next week.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ His good word he will give to another thing besides that, I am thinking.

_Hyacinth Halvey:_ I don't know what you are talking about.

_Mrs. Broderick:_ Didn't you hear the news, Peter Tannian, that Mr. Halvey is apt to be linked and joined in marriage with Miss Joyce, the priest's housekeeper?

_Peter Tannian:_ I to believe all the lies I'd hear, I'd be a racked man by this.