Mother: Thoughts crowding on one another,
mixing themselves up with one another for the
want of sifting and settling! They'll have me
distracted and I not able to speak them out to
some person! Conan as surly as a bramble bush,
and Celia wrapped up in her bucket and her broom!
And yourself not able to hear one word I say. (Sobs,
and bellows falls from her hands.)
Timothy: I'll lay it down now out of your way,
ma'am, the way you can cry your fill whatever
ails you.
Mother: (Snatching it back.) Stop! I'll not
part with it! I know now what I can do! Now!
(Points it at him.) I'll make a companion to be
listening to me through the long winter nights and
the long summer days, and the world to be without
any end at all, no more than the round of the
full moon! You that have no hearing, this will
bring back your hearing, the way you'll be a
listener and a benefit to myself for ever. I
wouldn't feel the weeks long that time!
(Blows. Timothy turns away and gropes
toward wall.)
(She sings: Air, "Eileen Aroon.")
(Rock at door: sneezes. Mother drops bellows
and goes. Timothy gives a cry,
claps hands to ears and rushes out as if
terrified.)
Rock: (Coming in seizes bellows.) Well now,
didn't this turn to be very lucky and very good!
The very thing I came looking for to be left there
under my hands! (Puts it hurriedly under coat.)
Flannery: (Coming in.) What are you doing
here, James Rock?
Rock: What are you doing yourself?
Flannery: What is that in under your coat?
Rock: What's that to you?
Flannery: I'll know that when I see it.
Rock: What call have you to be questioning me?
Flannery: Open now your coat!
Rock: Stand out of my way!
Flannery: (Suddenly tearing open coat and seizing
bellows.) Did you think it was unknownst to me
you stole the bellows?
Rock: Ah, what steal?
Flannery: Put it back in the place it was!
Rock: I will within three minutes.
Flannery: You'll put it back here and now.
Rock: (Coaxingly.) Look at here now, Michael
Flannery, we'll make a league between us. Did
you ever see such folly as we're after seeing to-day?
Sitting there for an hour and a half till that one
settled the world upside down!
Flannery: If I did see folly, what I see now is
treachery.
Rock: Didn't you take notice of the way that
foolish old man is wasting and losing what was
given him for to benefit mankind? A blast he has
lost turning a pigeon to a crow, as if there wasn't
enough in it before of that tribe picking the spuds
out of the ridges. And another blast he has lost
turning poor Celia, that was harmless, to be a holy
terror of cleanness and a scold.
Flannery: Indeed, he'd as well have left her
as she was. There was something very pleasing
in her little sleepy ways.
(Sings.)
Rock: Bringing back to the memory of his
mother every old grief and rancour. She that has
a right to be making her peace with the grave!
Flannery: Indeed it seems he doesn't mind
what he'll get so long as it's something that he
wants.
Rock: Three blasts gone! And the world didn't
begin to be cured.
Flannery: Sure enough he gave the bellows no
fair play.
Rock: He has us made a fool of. He using it
the way he did, he has us robbed.
Flannery: There's power in the four blasts
left would bring peace and piety and prosperity
and plenty to every one of the four provinces of
Ireland.
Rock: That's it. There's no doubt but I'll
make a better use of it than him, because I am a
better man than himself.
Flannery: I don't know. You might not get
so much respect in Dublin.
Rock: Dublin, where are you! What would
I'd do going to Dublin? Did you never hear said
the skin to be nearer than the shirt?
Flannery: What do you mean saying that?
Rock: The first one I have to do good to is
myself.
Flannery: Is it that you would grab the benefit
of the bellows?
Rock: In troth I will. I've got a hold of it, and
by cripes I'll knock a good turn out of it.
Flannery: To rob the country and the poor for
your own profit? You are a class of man that is
gathering all for himself.
Rock: It is not worth while we to fall out of
friendship. I will use but the one blast.
Flannery: You have no right or call to meddle
with it.
Rock: The first thing I will meddle with is my
own rick of turf. And I'll give you leave to go do
the same with your own umbrella, or whatever
property you may own.
Flannery: Sooner than be covetous like yourself
I'd live and die in a ditch, and be buried
from the Poorhouse!
Rock: Turf being black and light in the hand,
and gold being shiny and weighty, there will be
no delay in turning every sod into a solid brick of
gold. I give you leave to do the same thing, and
we'll be two rich men inside a half an hour!
Flannery: You are no less than a thief!
(Snatches
at bellows.)
Rock: Thief yourself. Leave your hand off it!
Flannery: Give it up here for the man that
owns it!
Rock: You may set your coffin making for I'll
beat you to the ground.
Flannery: (As he clutches.) Ah, you have given
it a shove. It has blown a blast on yourself!
Rock: Yourself that blew it on me! Bad cess
to you! But I'll do the same bad turn upon you!
(Blows.)
Flannery: There is some footstep without.
Heave it in under the ashes.
Rock: Whist your tongue! (Flings bellows
behind hearth.)
(Conan comes in.)
Conan: With all the chattering of women I
have the train near lost. The car is coming for
me and I'll make no delay now but to set out.
(Sings.)
Here now is my little pack. You were saying,
Thomas Flannery, you would be lending me the
loan of your umbrella.
Flannery: Ah, what umbrella? There's no fear
of rain.
Conan: (Taking it.) You to have proffered it
I would not refuse it.
Flannery: (Seizing it.) I don't know. I have
to mind my own property. It might not serve
it to be loaning it to this one and that. It might
leave the ribs of it bare.
Conan: That's the way with the whole of ye. I
to give you my heart's blood you'd turn me upside
down for a pint of porter!
Flannery: I see no sense or charity in lending to
another anything that might be of profit to myself.
Conan: Let you keep it so! That your ribs may
be as bare as its own ribs that are bursting out
through the cloth!
Rock: Do not give heed to him, Conan. There
is in this bag (takes it out) what will bring you
every
whole thing you might be wanting in the town.
(Takes out notes and gold and gives them.)
Conan: It is only a small share I'll ask the lend of.
Rock: The lend of! No, but a free gift!
Conan: Well now, aren't you turned to be very
kind? (Takes notes.)
Rock: Put that back in the bag. Here it is, the
whole of it. Five and fifty pounds. Take it and
welcome! It is yourself will make a good use of
it laying it out upon the needy and the poor.
Changing all for their benefit and their good! Oh,
since St. Bridget spread her cloak upon the Curragh
this is the most day and the happiest day ever
came to Ireland.
Conan: (Giving bag to Flannery.) Take it you,
as is your due by what the mother said a while ago
about the robbery he did on you in the time past.
Flannery: Give it here to me. I'll engage I'll
keep a good grip on it from this out. It's long
before any other one will get a one look at it!
Conan: There would seem to be a great change
—and a sudden change come upon the two of ye.
...(With a roar.) Where now is the bellows?
Flannery: (Sulkily.) What way would I know?
Conan: (Shaking him.) I know well what
happened! It is ye have stolen two of my blasts!
Putting changes on yourselves ye would—much
good may it do ye—. Thieving with your covetousness
the last two nearly I had left!
Rock: (Sulkily.) Leave your hand off me! I
never stole no blast!
Conan: There's a bad class going through the
world. The most people you will give to will be
the first to cry you down. This was a wrong out
of measure! Thieves ye are and pickpockets!
Ye that were not worth changing from one to
another, no more than you'd change a pinch of
dust off the road into a puff of ashes. Stealing
away my lovely blasts, bad luck to ye, the same as
Prometheus stole the makings of a fire from the
ancient gods!
Flannery: That is enough of keening and
lamenting after a few blasts of barren wind—I'll
be going where I have my own business to attend.
Conan: Where, so, is the bellows?
Flannery: How would I know?
Conan: The two of ye won't quit this till I'll
find it! There is another two blasts in it that
will bring sense and knowledge into Ireland yet!
Rock: Indeed they might bring comfort yet
to many a sore heart!
Conan: (Searching.) Where now is it? I
couldn't find it if the earth rose up and swallowed
it. Where now did I lay it down?
Rock: There's too much changes in this place
for me to know where anything is gone.
Conan: (At door.) Where are you, Maryanne!
Celia! Timothy! Let ye come hither and search
out my little bellows!
(Timothy comes in, followed by Mother.)
Conan: Hearken now, Timothy!
Timothy: (Stopping his ears.) Speak easy, speak easy!
Conan: Take down now your fingers from your
ears the way you will hear my voice!
Timothy: Have a care now with your screeching
would you split the drum of my ear?
Conan: Is it that you have got your hearing?
Timothy: My hearing is it? As good as that I
can hear a lie, and it forming in the mind.
Conan: Is that the truth you're saying?
Timothy: Hear, is it! I can hear every whisper
in this parish and the seven parishes are nearest.
And the little midges roaring in the air.—Let ye
whist now with your sneezing in the draught!
Conan: This is surely the work of the bellows.
Another blast gone!
Rock: So it would be too. Mostly the whole
of them gone and spent. It's hard know in the
morning what way will it be with you at night.
(Sings.)
"I saw from the beach when the morning was
shining
A bark o'er the waters move gloriously on—
came when the sun o'er the beach was declining,
The bark was still there, but the waters were gone."
Timothy: It is yourself brought the misfortune
on me, calling your Druid spells into the house.
Conan: It is not upon you I ever turned it.
Timothy: You have a great wrong done to me!
Mother: It is glad you should be and happy.
Timothy: Happy, is it? Give me a hareskin cap
for to put over my ears, having wool in it very thick!
(Sings.)
"Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water,
Break not ye breezes your chain of repose,
While murmuring mournfully Lir's lonely daughter
Tells to the night-star her tale of woes.
"When shall the swan, her death-note singing,
Sleep with wings in darkness furl'd?
When will heaven its sweet bells ringing
Call my spirit from this stormy world?"
Mother: Come with me now and I'll be chatting
to you.
Timothy: Why would I be listening to your
blather when I have the voices of the four winds to
be listening to? The night wind, the east wind,
the black wind and the wind from the south!
Conan: Such a thing I never saw before in all
my natural life.
Timothy: To be hearing, without understanding
it, the language of the tribes of the birds! (Puts
hands over ears again.) There's too many sounds
in the world! The sounds of the earth are terrible!
The roots squeezing and jostling one another
through the clefts, and the crashing of the acorn
from the oak. The cry of the little birdeen in
under the silence of the hawk!
Conan: (To Mother.) As it you let it loose
upon him, let you bring him away to some hole or
cave of the earth.
Timothy: It is my desire to go cast myself in
the ocean where there'll be but one sound of its
waves, the fishes in its meadows being dumb!
(Goes to corner and hides his head in a sack.)
Mother: Even so there might likely be a mermaid
playing reels on her silver comb, and yourself
craving after the world you left.
(Sings: Air, "Spailpin
Fanach.")
"You think to go from every woe to peace in the
wide ocean,
But you will find your foolish mind repent its
foolish notion.
When dog-fish dash and mermaids splash their
finny tails to find you,
I'll make a bet that you'll regret the world you
left behind you!"
Celia: (Clattering in with broom, etc.)
What
are ye doing, coming in this room again after I
having it settled so nice? I'll allow no one in the
place again, only carriage company that will have
no speck of dust upon the sole of their shoe!
Mother: Oh, Celia, there has strange things
happened!
Celia: What I see strange is that some person
has meddled with that hill of ashes on the hearth
and set it flying athrough the air. Is it hens ye
are wishful to be, that would be searching and
scratching in the dust for grains? And this thrown
down in the midst! (Holds up bellows.)
Conan: Give me my bellows!
Mother: No, but give it to me!
Rock and Flannery: Give it to myself!
Timothy: (Looking up, with hands on ears.)
My curse upon it and its work. Little I care if it
goes up with the clouds.
Celia: What in the world wide makes the whole
of ye so eager to get hold of such a thing?
Celia: What are you fretting about blasts and
about roses?
Rock: It has a charm on it—
Flannery: To change the world—
Mother: That chedang myself—
Conan: For the worse—
Mother: And Timothy—
Conan: For the worse—
Rock: Myself and Flannery—
Conan: For the worse, for the worse—
Mother: Conan that changed yourself with it—
Conan: For the very worst!
Celia: (To Conan.) Is it riddles, or is it
that
you put a spell and a change upon me?
Conan: If I did, it was for your own good!
Celia: Do you call it for my good to set me
running till I have my toes going through my shoes?
(Holds them out.)
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.")
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 wishing 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 pass....
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!
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 gods!
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!
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
attitude.)
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-dé-tóu-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 cock sparrow he sat on a tree,
O, a little cock sparrow he sat on a tree,
O, a little cock 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 exactitude 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.
I have been looking at its first scenario, made according to my habit in rough pen and ink sketches, coloured with a pencil blue and red, and the changes from that early idea do not seem to have been very great, except that in the scene where Conan now hears the secret of the hiding-place of the Spell from the talk of the cats, the Bellows had been at that time left beside him by a dwarf from the rath, in his sleep. The cats work better, and I owe their success to the genius of our Stage Carpenter, Mr. Sean Barlow, whose head of the Dragon from my play of that name had been such a masterpiece that I longed to see these other enchanted heads from his hand.
The name of the play in that first scenario was "The Fault-Finder," but my cranky Conan broke from that narrowness. If the play has a moral it is given in the words of the Mother, "It's best make changes little by little, the same as you'd put clothes upon a growing child." The restlessness of the time may have found its way into Conan's mind, or as some critic wrote, "He thinks of the Bellows as Mr. Wilson thought of the League of Nations," and so his disappointment comes. As A.E. writes in "The National Being," "I am sympathetic with idealists in a hurry, but I do not think the world can be changed suddenly by some heavenly alchemy, as St. Paul was smitten by a light from the overworld. Though the heart in us cries out continually, 'Oh, hurry, hurry to the Golden Age,' though we think of revolutions, we know that the patient marshalling of human forces is wisdom.... Not by revolutions can humanity be perfected. I might quote from an old oracle, 'The gods are never so turned away from man as when he ascends to them by disorderly methods.' Our spirits may live in the Golden Age but our bodily life moves on slow feet, and needs the lantern on the path and the staff struck carefully into the darkness before us to see that the path beyond is not a morass, and the light not a will o' the wisp." (But this may not refer to our own Revolution, seeing that has been making a step now and again towards what many judged to be a will o' the wisp through over seven hundred years.)
As to the machinery of the play, the spell was first to have been worked by a harp hung up by some wandering magician, and that was to work its change according to the wind, as it blew from north or south, east or west. But that would have been troublesome in practice, and the Bellows having once entered my mind, brought there I think by some scribbling of the pencil that showed Conan protecting himself with an umbrella, seemed to have every necessary quality, economy, efficiency, convenience.
As to Aristotle, his name is a part of our folklore. The old wife of one of our labourers told me one day, as a bee buzzed through the open door: "Aristotle of the Books was very wise but the bees got the better of him in the end. He wanted to know how did they pack the comb, and he wasted the best part of a fortnight watching them, and he could not see them doing it. Then he made a hive with a glass cover on it and put it over them, and he thought to watch them. But when he went to put his eye to the glass, they had it all covered with wax so that it was as black as the pot, and he was as blind as before. He said he was never rightly killed till then. The bees had him beat that time surely." And Douglas Hyde brought home one day a story from Kilmacduagh bog, in which Aristotle took the place of Solomon, the Wise Man in our tales as well as in those of the East. And he said that as the story grew and the teller became more familiar, the name of Aristotle was shortened to that of Harry.
As to the songs they are all sung to the old Irish airs I give at the end.
A. GREGORY.
August 18, 1921.
THE JESTER
A PLAY IN THREE ACTS
FOR RICHARD
January, 1919
A.G.
PERSONS
The Five Princes.
The Five Wrenboys.
The Guardian of the Princes and Governor of the Island.
The Servant.
The Two Dowager Messengers.
The Ogre.
The Jester.
Two Soldiers.
The Scene is laid in The Island of Hy Brasil, that appears every seven years.
Time: Out of mind.
ACT I
ACT I
Scene: A winter garden, with pots of flowering
trees or fruit-trees. There are books about and
some benches with cushions on them and many
cushions on the ground. The young PRINCES are
sitting or lying at their ease. One is playing
"Home, Sweet Home" on a harp. The
SERVANT—an old man—is standing in the
background.
1st Prince: Here, Gillie, will you please take
off
my shoe and see what there is in it that is pressing
on my heel.
Servant: (Taking it off and examining it.)
I
see nothing.
1st Prince: Oh, yes, there is something; I have
felt it all the morning. I have been thinking this
long time of taking the shoe off, but I waited for
you.
Servant: All I can find is a grain of poppy seed.
1st Prince: That is it of course—it was
enough
to hurt my skin.
2nd Prince: Gillie, there is a mayfly tickling
my cheek. Will you please brush it away.
Servant: I will and welcome. (Fans it off.)
3rd Prince: Just give me, please, that book
that is near my elbow. I cannot reach to it without
taking my hand off my cheek.
Servant: I wouldn't wish you to do that.
(Gives him book.)
4th Prince: Gillie, I think, I am nearly sure,
there is a feather in this cushion that has the quill
in it yet. I feel something hard.
Servant: Give it to me till I will open it and
make a search.
4th Prince: No, wait a while till I am not lying
on it. I will put up with the discomfort till then.
5th Prince: Would it give you too much trouble,
Gillie, when you waken me in the morning, to
come and call me three times, so that I can have
the joy of dropping off again?
Servant: Why wouldn't I? And there is a
thing I would wish to know. There will be a
supper laid out here this evening for the Dowager
Messengers that are coming to the Island, and I
would wish to provide for yourselves whatever
food would be pleasing to you.
1st Prince: It is too warm for eating. All I
will ask is a few grapes from Spain.
2nd Prince: A mouthful of jelly in a silver
spoon ...or in the shape of a little castle with
towers. When will the Lady Messengers be here?
Servant: Not before the fall of day.
2nd Prince: The time passes so quietly and
peaceably it does not feel like a year and a day since
they came here before.
Servant: No wonder the time to pass easy and
quiet where you are, with comfort all around you,
and nothing to mark its course, and every season
feeling the same as another, within the glass walls
and the crystal roof of this place. And the old
Queen, your godmother, sending her own Chamberlain
to take charge of you, and to be your Guardian,
and Governor of the Island. Sure, the wind
itself must slacken coming to this sheltered place.
3rd Prince: That is a great thing. I would
not wish the rough wind to be blowing upon me.
4th Prince: Or the dust to be rising and coming
in among us to spoil our suits.
5th Prince: Or to be walking out on the hard
roads, or climbing over stone walls, or tearing
ourselves in hedges.
1st Prince: That is the reason we were sent
here by the Queen, our Godmother, in place of
being sent to any school. To be kept safe and
secure.
2nd Prince: Not to be running here and there
like our own poor five first cousins, that used to
be slipping out and rambling in their young youth,
till they were swallowed up by the sea.
3rd Prince: It was maybe by some big fish of
the sea.
2nd Prince: It might be they were brought
away by sea-robbers coming in a ship.
3rd Prince: Foolish they were and very foolish
not to stay in peace and comfort in the house where
they were safe.
Servant: There is no fear of ye stirring
from
where you are, having every whole thing ye can
wish.
4th Prince: Here is the Guardian coming!
(They all rise.)
Guardian: (A very old man, much encumbered
with wraps, coming slowly in.) Are you all here,
all the five of you?
All: We are here!
Guardian: (Standing, leaning on a stick, to
address them.) It's a pity that these being holidays,
your teachers and tutors are far away.
Gone off afloat in a cedar boat to a College of
Learning out in Cathay.
1st Prince: It's a pity indeed they're not here
to-day.
Guardian: For it's likely you looked in your
almanacs, or judged by the shape of the lessening
moon, That your Godmother's Dowager Messengers are
due to arrive this afternoon.
2nd Prince: We did and we think they'll be
here very soon.
Guardian: But I know they'll be glad that each
royal lad, put under my rule in place of a school,
Can fashion his life without trouble or strife, and
be shielded from care in a nice easy chair.
3rd Prince: As we always are and we always
were.
Guardian: It is part of my knowledge that lads
in a college, and made play one and all with a bat
and a ball,
Come often to harm with a knock on the arm,
and their hands get as hard as the hands of a clown.
4th Prince: But ours are as soft as thistledown.
Guardian: And I've seen young princes not
far from your age, go chasing beasts on a winter day,
And carted home with a broken bone, and a
yard of a doctor's bill to pay;
Or going to sail in the teeth of a gale, when the
waves were rising mountains high,
Or fall from a height that was near out of sight,
robbing rooks from their nest in a poplar tree.
5th Prince: (To another.) But that never
happened to you or me.
Guardian: Or travelling far to a distant war,
with battles and banners rilling their mind,
And creeping back like a crumpled sack, content
if they'd left no limbs behind.
1st Prince: But we'll have nothing to do with
that, but stop at home with an easy mind.
Guardian: (Sitting down.) That's right. And
now I would wish you to say over some of your
tasks, to make ready for the Dowager Messengers,
that they may bring back a good report to the
Queen, your Godmother.
1st Prince: We'll do that. We would wish to be
a credit to you, sir, and to our teachers.
Guardian: Say out now some little piece of
Latin; that one that is my favourite.