No More Learning

You are one of the knowledgeable women. You can tell me where it is
best to begin, and what will happen in the end.

BIDDY.

I will foretell nothing at all. I rose out of it this good while, with
the stiffness and the swelling it brought upon my joints.

MARTIN.

If you have foreknowledge you have no right to keep silent. If you
do not help me I may go to work in the wrong way. I know I have to
destroy, but when I ask myself what I am to begin with, I am full of
uncertainty.

PAUDEEN.

Here now are the cups handy and the leavings in them.

BIDDY.

[_Taking cups and pouring one from another. _]

Throw a bit of white money into the four corners of the house.

MARTIN.

There! [_Throwing it. _]

BIDDY.

There can be nothing told without silver. It is not myself will have
the profit of it. Along with that I will be forced to throw out gold.

MARTIN.

There is a guinea for you. Tell me what comes before your eyes.

BIDDY.

What is it you are wanting to have news of?

MARTIN.

Of what I have to go out against at the beginning . . . there is so much
. . . the whole world it may be.

BIDDY.

[_Throwing from one cup to another and looking. _]

You have no care for yourself. You have been across the sea, you are
not long back. You are coming within the best day of your life.

MARTIN.

What is it? What is it I have to do?

BIDDY.

I see a great smoke, I see burning . . . there is a great smoke overhead.

MARTIN.

That means we have to burn away a great deal that men have piled up
upon the earth. We must bring men once more to the wildness of the
clean green earth.

BIDDY.

Herbs for my healing, the big herb and the little herb, it is true
enough they get their great strength out of the earth.

JOHNNY.

Who was it the green sod of Ireland belonged to in the olden times?
Wasn't it to the ancient race it belonged? And who has possession of it
now but the race that came robbing over the sea? The meaning of that
is to destroy the big houses and the towns, and the fields to be given
back to the ancient race.

MARTIN.

That is it. You don't put it as I do, but what matter? Battle is all.

PAUDEEN.

Columcille said, the four corners to be burned, and then the middle of
the field to be burned. I tell you it was Columcille's prophecy said
that.

BIDDY.

Iron handcuffs I see and a rope and a gallows, and it maybe is not for
yourself I see it, but for some I have acquaintance with a good way
back.

MARTIN.

That means the law. We must destroy the law. That was the first sin,
the first mouthful of the apple.

JOHNNY.

So it was, so it was. The law is the worst loss. The ancient law was
for the benefit of all. It is the law of the English is the only sin.

MARTIN.

When there were no laws men warred on one another and man to man, not
with machines made in towns as they do now, and they grew hard and
strong in body. They were altogether alive like him that made them in
his image, like people in that unfallen country. But presently they
thought it better to be safe, as if safety mattered or anything but the
exaltation of the heart, and to have eyes that danger had made grave
and piercing. We must overthrow the laws and banish them.

JOHNNY.

It is what I say, to put out the laws is to put out the whole nation of
the English. Laws for themselves they made for their own profit, and
left us nothing at all, no more than a dog or a sow.

BIDDY.

An old priest I see, and I would not say is he the one was here or
another. Vexed and troubled he is, kneeling fretting and ever-fretting
in some lonesome ruined place.

MARTIN.

I thought it would come to that. Yes, the Church too--that is to be
destroyed. Once men fought with their desires and their fears, with all
that they call their sins, unhelped, and their souls became hard and
strong. When we have brought back the clean earth and destroyed the
law and the Church all life will become like a flame of fire, like a
burning eye . . . Oh, how to find words for it all . . . all that is not
life will pass away.

JOHNNY.

It is Luther's Church he means, and the humpbacked discourse of Seaghan
Calvin's Bible. So we will break it, and make an end of it.

MARTIN.

We will go out against the world and break it and unmake it.
[_Rising. _] We are the army of the Unicorn from the Stars! We will
trample it to pieces. --We will consume the world, we will burn it
away--Father John said the world has yet to be consumed by fire. Bring
me fire.

ANDREW [_to _Beggars_].

Here is Thomas. Hide--let you hide.

[_All except MARTIN hurry into next room. THOMAS comes
in. _

THOMAS.

Come with me, Martin. There is terrible work going on in the town!
There is mischief gone abroad. Very strange things are happening!

MARTIN.

What are you talking of? What has happened?

THOMAS.

Come along, I say, it must be put a stop to. We must call to every
decent man. It is as if the devil himself had gone through the town on
a blast and set every drinking-house open!

MARTIN.

I wonder how that has happened. Can it have anything to do with
Andrew's plan?

THOMAS.

Are you giving no heed to what I'm saying? There is not a man, I tell
you, in the parish and beyond the parish but has left the work he was
doing whether in the field or in the mill.

MARTIN.

Then all work has come to an end? Perhaps that was a good thought of
Andrew's.

THOMAS.

There is not a man has come to sensible years that is not drunk or
drinking! My own labourers and my own serving-men are sitting on
counters and on barrels! I give you my word, the smell of the spirits
and the porter and the shouting and the cheering within, made the hair
to rise up on my scalp.

MARTIN.

And yet there is not one of them that does not feel that he could
bridle the four winds.

THOMAS [_sitting down in despair_].

You are drunk too. I never thought you had a fancy for it.

MARTIN.

It is hard for you to understand. You have worked all your life. You
have said to yourself every morning, 'What is to be done to-day? ' and
when you are tired out you have thought of the next day's work. If you
gave yourself an hour's idleness, it was but that you might work the
better. Yet it is only when one has put work away that one begins to
live.

THOMAS.

It is those French wines that did it.

MARTIN.

I have been beyond the earth. In Paradise, in that happy townland,
I have seen the shining people. They were all doing one thing or
another, but not one of them was at work. All that they did was but the
overflowing of their idleness, and their days were a dance bred of the
secret frenzy of their hearts, or a battle where the sword made a sound
that was like laughter.

THOMAS.

You went away sober from out of my hands; they had a right to have
minded you better.

MARTIN.

No man can be alive, and what is paradise but fulness of life, if
whatever he sets his hand to in the daylight cannot carry him from
exaltation to exaltation, and if he does not rise into the frenzy of
contemplation in the night silence. Events that are not begotten in joy
are misbegotten and darken the world, and nothing is begotten in joy if
the joy of a thousand years has not been crushed into a moment.

THOMAS.

And I offered to let you go to Dublin in the coach!

MARTIN [_giving banner to PAUDEEN_].

Give me the lamp. The lamp has not yet been lighted and the world is to
be consumed!

[_Goes into inner room. _

THOMAS [_seeing ANDREW_].

Is it here you are, Andrew? What are these beggars doing? Was this
door thrown open too? Why did you not keep order? I will go for the
constables to help us!

ANDREW.

You will not find them to help you. They were scattering themselves
through the drinking-houses of the town, and why wouldn't they?

THOMAS.

Are you drunk too? You are worse than Martin. You are a disgrace!

ANDREW.

Disgrace yourself! Coming here to be making an attack on me and
badgering me and disparaging me! And what about yourself that turned me
to be a hypocrite?

THOMAS.

What are you saying?

ANDREW.

You did, I tell you! Weren't you always at me to be regular and to be
working and to be going through the day and the night without company
and to be thinking of nothing but the trade? What did I want with a
trade? I got a sight of the fairy gold one time in the mountains.
I would have found it again and brought riches from it but for you
keeping me so close to the work.

THOMAS.

Oh, of all the ungrateful creatures! You know well that I cherished
you, leading you to live a decent, respectable life.

ANDREW.

You never had respect for the ancient ways. It is after the mother you
take it, that was too soft and too lumpish, having too much of the
English in her blood. Martin is a Hearne like myself. It is he has the
generous heart!
It is not Martin would make a hypocrite of me and force
me to do night-walking secretly, watching to be back by the setting of
the seven stars!

[_He begins to play his flute. _

THOMAS.

I will turn you out of this, yourself and this filthy troop! I will
have them lodged in gaol.

JOHNNY.

Filthy troop, is it? Mind yourself! The change is coming. The pikes
will be up and the traders will go down!

_All_ seize THOMAS and sing. _

When the Lion will lose his strength,
And the braket-thistle begin to pine,
The harp shall sound sweet, sweet at length,
Between the eight and the nine!

THOMAS.

Let me out of this, you villains!

NANNY.

We'll make a sieve of holes of you, you old bag of treachery!

BIDDY.

How well you threatened us with gaol, you skim of a weasel's milk!

JOHNNY.

You heap of sicknesses! You blinking hangman! That you may never die
till you'll get a blue hag for a wife!

[_MARTIN comes back with lighted lamp. _

MARTIN.

Let him go. [_They let THOMAS go, and fall back. _] Spread out the
banner. The moment has come to begin the war.

JOHNNY.

Up with the Unicorn and destroy the Lion! Success to Johnny Gibbons and
all good men!

MARTIN.

Heap all those things together there. Heap those pieces of the coach
one upon another. Put that straw under them. It is with this flame I
will begin the work of destruction. All nature destroys and laughs.

THOMAS.

Destroy your own golden coach!

MARTIN [_kneeling before THOMAS_].

I am sorry to go a way that you do not like and to do a thing that
will vex you. I have been a great trouble to you since I was a child
in the house, and I am a great trouble to you yet. It is not my fault.
I have been chosen for what I have to do. [_Stands up. _] I have to
free myself first and those that are near me. The love of God is a
very terrible thing! [_THOMAS tries to stop him, but is prevented by
_Beggars_. MARTIN takes a wisp of straw and lights it. _] We will
destroy all that can perish! It is only the soul that can suffer no
injury. The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!

[_He throws wisp into heap--it blazes up. _




ACT III


_Before dawn. A wild rocky place, NANNY and BIDDY LALLY
squatting by a fire. Rich stuffs, etc. , strewn about.
PAUDEEN watching by MARTIN, who is lying as if dead, a
sack over him. _

NANNY [_to PAUDEEN_].

Well, you are great heroes and great warriors and great lads
altogether, to have put down the Brownes the way you did, yourselves
and the Whiteboys of the quarry. To have ransacked the house and have
plundered it! Look at the silks and the satins and the grandeurs I
brought away! Look at that now! [_Holds up a velvet cloak. _] It's a
good little jacket for myself will come out of it. It's the singers
will be stopping their songs and the jobbers turning from their cattle
in the fairs to be taking a view of the laces of it and the buttons!
It's my far-off cousins will be drawing from far and near!

BIDDY.

There was not so much gold in it all as what they were saying there
was. Or maybe that fleet of Whiteboys had the place ransacked before
we ourselves came in. Bad cess to them that put it in my mind to go
gather up the full of my bag of horseshoes out of the forge. Silver
they were saying they were, pure white silver; and what are they in
the end but only hardened iron! A bad end to them! [_Flings away
horseshoes. _] The time I will go robbing big houses again it will
not be in the light of the full moon I will go doing it, that does
be causing every common thing to shine out as if for a deceit and a
mockery. It's not shining at all they are at this time, but duck yellow
and dark.

NANNY.

To leave the big house blazing after us, it was that crowned all!
Two houses to be burned to ashes in the one night. It is likely the
servant-girls were rising from the feathers and the cocks crowing
from the rafters for seven miles around, taking the flames to be the
whitening of the dawn.

BIDDY.

It is the lad is stretched beyond you have to be thankful to for that.
There was never seen a leader was his equal for spirit and for daring.
Making a great scatter of the guards the way he did. Running up roofs
and ladders, the fire in his hand, till you'd think he would be apt to
strike his head against the stars.

NANNY.

I partly guessed death was near him, and the queer shining look he
had in his two eyes, and he throwing sparks east and west through the
beams. I wonder now was it some inward wound he got, or did some hardy
lad of the Brownes give him a tip on the skull unknownst in the fight?
It was I myself found him, and the troop of the Whiteboys gone, and he
lying by the side of a wall as weak as if he had knocked a mountain. I
failed to waken him trying him with the sharpness of my nails, and his
head fell back when I moved it, and I knew him to be spent and gone.

BIDDY.

It's a pity you not to have left him where he was lying and said no
word at all to Paudeen or to that son you have, that kept us back from
following on, bringing him here to this shelter on sacks and upon poles.

NANNY.

What way could I help letting a screech out of myself, and the life but
just gone out of him in the darkness, and not a living Christian by his
side but myself and the great God?

BIDDY.

It's on ourselves the vengeance of the red soldiers will fall, they to
find us sitting here the same as hares in a tuft. It would be best for
us follow after the rest of the army of the Whiteboys.

NANNY.

Whisht! I tell you. The lads are cracked about him. To get but the wind
of the word of leaving him, it's little but they'd knock the head off
the two of us. Whisht!

_Enter JOHNNY BACACH with candles. _

JOHNNY [_standing over MARTIN_].

Wouldn't you say now there was some malice or some venom in the air,
that is striking down one after another the whole of the heroes of the
Gael?

PAUDEEN.

It makes a person be thinking of the four last ends, death and
judgment, heaven and hell. Indeed and indeed my heart lies with him. It
is well I knew what man he was under his by-name and his disguise.

[_Sings. _] Oh, Johnny Gibbons, it's you were the prop to us.
You to have left us, we are put astray!

JOHNNY.

It is lost we are now and broken to the end of our days. There is no
satisfaction at all but to be destroying the English, and where now
will we get so good a leader again? Lay him out fair and straight upon
a stone, till I will let loose the secret of my heart keening him!

[_Sets out candles on a rock, propping them up with
stones. _

NANNY.

Is it mould candles you have brought to set around him, Johnny Bacach?
It is great riches you should have in your pocket to be going to those
lengths and not to be content with dips.

JOHNNY.

It is lengths I will not be going to the time the life will be gone out
of your own body. It is not your corpse I will be wishful to hold in
honour the way I hold this corpse in honour.

NANNY.

That's the way always, there will be grief and quietness in the house
if it is a young person has died, but funning and springing and
tricking one another if it is an old person's corpse is in it. There is
no compassion at all for the old.

PAUDEEN.

It is he would have got leave for the Gael to be as high as the Gall.
Believe me, he was in the prophecies. Let you not be comparing yourself
with the like of him.

NANNY.

Why wouldn't I be comparing myself? Look at all that was against me in
the world. Would you be matching me against a man of his sort, that had
the people shouting him and that had nothing to do but to die and to go
to heaven?

JOHNNY.

The day you go to heaven that you may never come back alive out of it!
But it is not yourself will ever hear the saints hammering at their
musics! It is you will be moving through the ages, chains upon you,
and you in the form of a dog or a monster. I tell you that one will go
through Purgatory as quick as lightning through a thorn-bush.

NANNY.

That's the way, that the way.

[_Croons. _] Three that are watching my time to run,
The worm, the devil, and my son,
To see a loop around their neck
It's that would make my heart to lep!

JOHNNY.

Five white candles. I wouldn't begrudge them to him indeed. If he had
held out and held up it is my belief he would have freed Ireland!

PAUDEEN.

Wait till the full light of the day and you'll see the burying he'll
have. It is not in this place we will be waking him. I'll make a call
to the two hundred Ribbons he was to lead on to the attack on the
barracks at Aughanish. They will bring him marching to his grave upon
the hill. He had surely some gift from the other world, I wouldn't say
but he had power from the other side.

ANDREW [_coming in very shaky_].

Well, it was a great night he gave to the village, and it is long
till it will be forgotten. I tell you the whole of the neighbours are
up against him. There is no one at all this morning to set the mills
going. There was no bread baked in the night-time, the horses are not
fed in the stalls, the cows are not milked in the sheds. I met no man
able to make a curse this night but he put it on my head and on the
head of the boy that is lying there before us . . . Is there no sign of
life in him at all?

JOHNNY.

What way would there be a sign of life and the life gone out of him
this three hours or more?

ANDREW.

He was lying in his sleep for a while yesterday, and he wakened again
after another while.

NANNY.

He will not waken, I tell you. I held his hand in my own and it getting
cold as if you were pouring on it the coldest cold water, and no
running in his blood. He is gone sure enough and the life is gone out
of him.

ANDREW.

Maybe so, maybe so. It seems to me yesterday his cheeks were bloomy all
the while, and now he is as pale as wood ashes. Sure we all must come
to it at the last. Well, my white-headed darling, it is you were the
bush among us all, and you to be cut down in your prime. Gentle and
simple, everyone liked you. It is no narrow heart you had, it is you
were for spending and not for getting. It is you made a good wake for
yourself, scattering your estate in one night only in beer and in wine
for the whole province; and that you may be sitting in the middle of
Paradise and in the chair of the Graces!

JOHNNY.

Amen to that. It's pity I didn't think the time I sent for yourself to
send the little lad of a messenger looking for a priest to overtake
him. It might be in the end the Almighty is the best man for us all!

ANDREW.

Sure I sent him on myself to bid the priest to come. Living or dead I
would wish to do all that is rightful for the last and the best of my
own race and generation.

BIDDY [_jumping up_].

Is it the priest you are bringing in among us? Where is the sense
in that? Aren't we robbed enough up to this with the expense of the
candles and the like?

JOHNNY.

If it is that poor starved priest he called to that came talking in
secret signs to the man that is gone, it is likely he will ask nothing
for what he has to do. There is many a priest is a Whiteboy in his
heart.

NANNY.

I tell you, if you brought him tied in a bag he would not say an Our
Father for you, without you having a half-crown at the top of your
fingers.

BIDDY.

There is no priest is any good at all but a spoiled priest. A one that
would take a drop of drink, it is he would have courage to face the
hosts of trouble. Rout them out he would, the same as a shoal of fish
from out the weeds. It's best not to vex a priest, or to run against
them at all.

NANNY.