Mother: It is like a dream to me I heard that
name. Aristotle of the books.
Conan: (Eagerly.) What did you hear about him?
Mother: I don't know was it about him or was
it some other one. My memory to be as good as
it is bad I might maybe bring it to mind.
Conan: Hurry on now and remember!
Mother: Ah, it's hard remember anything and
the weather so uncertain as what it is.
Conan: Is it of late you heard it?
Mother: It was maybe ere yesterday or some
day of the sort; I don't know. Since the age
tampered with me the thing I'd hear to-day I
wouldn't think of to-morrow.
Conan: Try now and tell me was it that
Aristotle, the time he walked Ireland, had come to
this place.
Mother: It might be that, unless it might be
some other thing.
Conan: And that he left some great treasure
hid—it might be in the rath without.
Mother: And what good would it do you a pot of
gold to be hid in the rath where you would never
come near to it, it being guarded by enchanted
cats and they having fiery eyes?
Conan: Did I say anything about a pot of
gold? This was better again than gold. This
was an enchantment would raise you up if you
were gasping from death. Give attention now ...
Aristotle.
Mother: It's Harry he used to be called.
Conan: Listen now. (Sings.) (Air, "Bells of
Shandon.")
"Once Aristotle hid in a bottle
Or some other vessel of security
A spell had power bring sweet from sour
Or bring blossoms blooming on the blasted tree."
Mother: (Repeating last line.) "Or bring
blossoms
blooming on the blasted tree."
Conan: Is that now what you heard ...that
Aristotle has hid some secret spell?
Mother: I won't say what I don't know. My
memory is too weak for me to be telling lies.
Conan: You could strengthen it if you took it
in hand, putting a knot in the corner of your shawl
to keep such and such a thing in mind.
Mother: If I did I should put another knot in
the other corner to remember what was the first
one for.
Conan: You'd remember it well enough if it
was a pound of tea!
Mother: Ah, maybe it's best be as I am and not
to be running carrying lies here and there, putting
trouble on people's mind.
Conan: Isn't it terrible to be seeing all this
folly around me and not to have a way to
better it!
Mother: Ah, dear, it's best leave the time under
the mercy of the Man that is over us all.
Conan: (Jumping up furious.) Where's the
use of old people being in the world at all if they
cannot keep a memory of things gone by! (Sings.)
(Air, "O the time I've lost in wooing.")
Mother: What is it ails you?
Conan: That secret to be in the world, and I
all to have laid my hand on it, and it to have gone
astray on me!
Mother: So it would go too.
Conan: A secret that could change the world!
I'd make it as good a world to live in as it was in
the time of the Greeks. I don't see much goodness
in the trace of the people in it now. To
change everything to its contrary the way the
book said it would! There would be great satisfaction
doing that. Was there ever in the world
a family was so little use to a man? (Sings in
dejection.) (Air, "My Molly O.")
Celia: I wonder you wouldn't ask Timothy
that is older again than what my mother is.
Conan: Timothy! He has the hearing lost.
Celia: Well there is no harm to try him.
Conan: (Going to door.) Timothy!... There,
he's as deaf as a beetle.
Mother: It might be best for him. The thing
the ear will not hear will not put trouble on the
heart.
Celia: (Who has gone out comes pushing him
in.)
Here he is now for you.
Conan: Did ever you hear of Aristotle?
Timothy: Aye?
Conan: Aristotle!
Timothy: Ere a bottle? I might ...
Conan: Aristotle.... That had some power?
Timothy: I never seen no flower.
Conan: Something he hid near this place.
Timothy: I never went near no race.
Conan: Has the whole world its mind made up
to annoy me!
Celia: Raise your voice into his ear.
Conan: (Chanting.)
Timothy: Would it now?
Conan: You said you had heard of a bottle.
Timothy: A charmed bottle. It is Biddy Early
put a cure in it and bestowed it in her will to her son.
Conan: Aristotle that left one in the same way.
Timothy: It is what I am thinking that my old
generations used to be talking about a bellows.
Conan: A bellows! There's no sense in that!
Timothy: Have it your own way so, and give
me leave to go feeding the little chickens and the
hens, for if I cannot hear what they say and they
cannot understand what I say, they put no reproach
on me after, no more than I would put
it on themselves. (Goes.)
Celia: Let you be satisfied now and not torment
yourself, for if you got the world wide you
couldn't discover it. You might as well think to
throw your hat to hit the stars.
Conan: You have me tormented among the
whole of ye. To be without ye would be no harm
at all. (Sits down and weeps.) Of all the families
anyone would wish to live away from I am full
sure my family is the worst.
Mother: Ah, dear, you're worn out and contrary
with the want of sleep. Come now into the
room and stretch yourself on the bed. To go
sleeping out in the grass has no right rest in it at
all! (Takes his arm.)
Conan: Where's the use of lying on my bed
where it is convenient to the yard, that I'd be
afflicted by the turkeys yelping and the pullets
praising themselves after laying an egg! and the
cackling and hissing of the geese.
Mother: Lie down so on the settle, and I'll let
no one disturb you. You're destroyed, avic, with
the want of sleep.
Conan: There'll be no peace in this kitchen no
more than on the common highway with the
people running in and out.
Mother: I'll go sit in the little gap without,
and
the whole place will be as quiet as St. Colman's
wilderness of stones.
Conan: The boards are too hard.
Mother: I'll put a pillow in under you.
Conan: Now it's too narrow. Leave me now
it'll be best.
Mother: Sleep and good dreams to you. (Goes
singing sleepy song.)
Conan: The most troublesome family ever I
knew in all my born days! Why is that people
cannot have behaviour now the same as in ancient
Greece. (Sits up.) I'll not give them the
satisfaction
of going asleep. I'll drink a sup of the
tea that is black with standing and with strength.
(Drinks and lies down.) I'll engage that'll keep
me waking. (Music heard.) Is it to annoy me
they are playing tunes of music? I'll let on to be
asleep! (Shuts eyes.)
(Two large Cats with fiery eyes look over top
of settle.)
(They disappear saying together:)
Conan: (Looking out timidly.) Are they
gone?
Here, Puss, puss! Come hither now poor Puss!
They're not in it.... Here now! here's milk
for ye. And a drop of cream.... (Gets up,
peeps under settle and around.) They are gone!
And that they may never come back! I wouldn't
wish to be brought riding a thorny bush in the night
time into the cold that is behind the sun! What
now did they say? Or is it dreaming I was? Oh,
it was not! They spoke clear and plain. The
hidden spell that I was seeking, they said it to be
in the hiding hole under the hearth. (Pokes,
sneezes.) Bad cess to Celia leaving that much
ashes to be choking me. Well, the luck has come
to me at last!
(Sings as he searches.)
(Pokes at hearthstone.) Sure enough, it's
loose! It's moving! Wait till I'll get
a wedge under it!
(Takes fork from table.) It's coming!
(Door suddenly opens and he drops fork and
springs back.)
Mother: (Coming in with Rock and
Flannery.)
Here now, come in the two of ye. Here now, Conan,
is two of the neighbours, James Rock of Lis Crohan
and Fardy Flannery the rambling herd, that are
come to get a light for the pipe and they walking
the road from the Fair.
Conan: That's the way you make a fool of me
promising me peace and quiet for to sleep!
Mother: Ah, so I believe I did. But it slipped
away from me, and I listening to the blackbird on
the bush.
Conan: (To Rock.) I wonder, James Rock,
that you wouldn't have on you so much as a halfpenny
box of matches!
Rock: (Trying to get to hearth.) So I have
matches. But why would I spend one when I can
get for nothing a light from a sod?
Flannery: Sure, I could give you a match I
have this long time, waiting till I'll get as much
tobacco as will fill a pipe.
Mother: It's the poor man does be generous.
It's gone from my mind, Fardy, what was it
brought you to be a servant of poverty?
Flannery: Since the day I lost on the road my
forty pound that I had to stock my little farm of
land, all has wore away from me and left me bare
owning nothing unless daylight and the run of
water. It was that put me on the Shaughrann.
(Sings "The Bard of Armagh.")
Rock: Bad management! Look what I brought
from the Fair through minding my own property
—£20 for a milch cow, and thirty for a score of
lambs!
Mother: £20 for a cow! Isn't that terrible
money!
Conan: Let you whist now! You are putting
a headache on me with all your little newses and
country chat!
(Mother goes, the others are following.)
Rock: (Turning from door.) It might be
better
for yourself, Conan Creevey, if you had minded
business would bring profit to your hand in place
of your foreign learning, that never put a penny
piece in anyone's pocket that ever I heard. No
earthly profit unless to addle the brain and leave
the pocket empty.
Conan: You think yourself a great sort! Let
me tell you that my learning has power to do more
than that!
Rock: It's an empty mouth that has big talk.
Conan: What would you say hearing I had
power put in my hand that could change the entire
world? And that's what you never will have power
to do.
Rock: What power is that?
Rock: Foolishness! I never would believe in
poetry or in dreams or images, but in ready money
down. (Jingles bag.)
Conan: I tell you you'll see me getting the
victory over all Ireland!
Rock: You have but a cracked headpiece thinking
that will come to you.
Conan: I tell you it will! No end at all in the
world to what I am about to bring in!
Rock: It's easy praise yourself!
Conan: And so I am praising myself, and so will
you all be praising me when you will see all that
I will do!
Rock: It is what I think you got demented in
the head and in the mind.
Conan: It is soon the wheel will be turned and
the whole of the nation will be changed for the
best. (Sings.)
Flannery: That's a great thought, if it is but a
vanity or a dream.
Rock: (Sneeringly.) Well now and what
would
you do?
Flannery: I would wish a great lake of milk,
the same as blessed St. Bridget, to be sharing with
the family of Heaven. I would wish vessels full
of alms that would save every sorrowful man. Do
that now, Conan, and you'll have the world of
prayers down on you!
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.")
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 grass. 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.)
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!
(Cats reappear and look over back of settle.)
(Music from behind.) ("O'Donnall Abu.")
CURTAIN
ACT II
ACT II
Conan alone holding up bellows, singing:
Celia: (Comes in having listened amused at
door; claps hands.) Very good! It is you yourself
should be going to the dance house to-night in
place of myself. It is long since I heard you rise
so happy a tune!
Conan: (Putting bellows behind him.) What
brings you here? Is there no work for you out in
the garden—the cabbages to be cutting for the
cow....
Celia: I wouldn't wish to roughen my hands
before evening. Music there will be for the dancing!
(She lilts Miss McLeod's Reel.)
Conan: Let you go ready yourself for it so.
Celia: Is it at this time of the day? You
should be forgetting the hours of the clock the
same as the poor mother.
Conan: It is a strange thing since I came to
this house I never can get one minute's ease and
quiet to myself.
Celia: It was hearing you singing brought me in.
Conan: I'd sooner have you without! Be
going now.
Celia: I will and welcome. It is to bring out
my little pigeon I will, where there is a few grains
of barley fell from a car going the road.
Conan: Hurry on so!
Celia: (Taking up cage.) He is not in his crib.
(Looking here and there.) Where now can he
have gone?
Conan: He should have gone out the door.
Celia: He did not. He could not have come
out unknown to me. Coo, coo,—coo—coo.
Conan: Never mind him now. You are putting
my mind astray with your Coo, coo—
Celia: He might be in under the settle.
(Stoops.) Where are you, my little bird. (Sings.)
(Air, "Shule Aroon.")
Conan: (Putting her away.) What way would
he be in it? Let you put a stop to that humming.
(Seizes her.) Come here to the light ...is it
you sewed this button on my coat?
Celia: It was not. It is likely it was some
tailor down in the North.
Conan: It is getting loose on the sleeve.
Celia: Ah, it will last a good while yet. Coo, coo!
Conan: (Getting before her.) It would be no
great load on you to get a needle and put a stitch
would tighten it.
Celia: I'll do it in the by and bye. There, I
twisted the thread around it. That'll hold good
enough for a while.
Conan: "Anything worth doing at all is worth
doing well."
Celia: Aren't you getting very dainty in your
dress?
Conan: Any man would like to have a decent
appearance on his suit.
Celia: Isn't it the same to-day as it was
yesterday?
Conan: Have you ne'er a needle?
Celia: I don't know where is it gone.
Conan: You haven't a stim of sense. Can't
you keep in mind "Everything in its right place."
Celia: Sure, there's no hurry—the day is long.
Conan: Anything has to be done, the quickest
to do it is the best.
Celia: I'm not working by the hour or the day.
Conan: Look now at Penelope of the Greeks,
and all her riches, and her man not at hand to urge
her, how well she sat at the loom from morn till
night till she'd have the makings of a suit of frieze.
Celia: Ah, that was in the ancient days, when
you wouldn't buy it made and ready in the shops.
Conan: Will you so much as go to find a towel
would take the dust off of the panes of glass?
Celia: I wonder at you craving to disturb the
spider and it after making its web.
Conan: Well, go sit idle outside. I wouldn't
wish to be looking at you! Aristotle that said a
lazy body is all one with a lazy mind. You'll be
begging your bread through the world's streets
before your poll will be grey.
(Sings.)