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ACT II

The same workshop. MARTIN seen arranging mugs and bread, etc., on a table. FATHER JOHN comes in, knocking at open door as he comes; his mind intensely absorbed.

MARTIN

Come in, come in, I have got the house ready. Here is bread and meat – everybody is welcome.

[Hearing no answer, turns round.

FATHER JOHN

Martin, I have come back. There is something I want to say to you.

MARTIN

You are welcome, there are others coming. They are not of your sort, but all are welcome.

FATHER JOHN

I have remembered suddenly something that I read when I was in the seminary.

MARTIN

You seem very tired.

FATHER JOHN [sitting down]

I had almost got back to my own place when I thought of it. I have run part of the way. It is very important; it is about the trance that you have been in. When one is inspired from above, either in trance or in contemplation, one remembers afterwards all that one has seen and read. I think there must be something about it in St. Thomas. I know that I have read a long passage about it years ago. But, Martin, there is another kind of inspiration, or rather an obsession or possession. A diabolical power comes into one’s body, or overshadows it. Those whose bodies are taken hold of in this way, jugglers, and witches, and the like, can often tell what is happening in distant places, or what is going to happen, but when they come out of that state they remember nothing. I think you said —

MARTIN

That I could not remember.

FATHER JOHN

You remembered something, but not all. Nature is a great sleep; there are dangerous and evil spirits in her dreams, but God is above Nature. She is a darkness, but He makes everything clear; He is light.

MARTIN

All is clear now. I remember all, or all that matters to me. A poor man brought me a word, and I know what I have to do.

FATHER JOHN

Ah, I understand, words were put into his mouth. I have read of such things. God sometimes uses some common man as his messenger.

MARTIN

You may have passed the man who brought it on the road. He left me but now.

FATHER JOHN

Very likely, very likely, that is the way it happened. Some plain, unnoticed man has sometimes been sent with a command.

MARTIN

I saw the unicorns trampling in my dream. They were breaking the world. I am to destroy, destruction was the word the messenger spoke.

FATHER JOHN

To destroy?

MARTIN

To bring again the old disturbed exalted life, the old splendour.

FATHER JOHN

You are not the first that dream has come to. [Gets up, and walks up and down.] It has been wandering here and there, calling now to this man, now to that other. It is a terrible dream.

MARTIN

Father John, you have had the same thought.

FATHER JOHN

Men were holy then, there were saints everywhere. There was reverence; but now it is all work, business, how to live a long time. Ah, if one could change it all in a minute, even by war and violence! There is a cell where Saint Ciaran used to pray; if one could bring that time again!

MARTIN

Do not deceive me. You have had the command.

FATHER JOHN

Why are you questioning me? You are asking me things that I have told to no one but my confessor.

MARTIN

We must gather the crowds together, you and I.

FATHER JOHN

I have dreamed your dream, it was long ago. I had your vision.

MARTIN

And what happened?

FATHER JOHN [harshly]

It was stopped; that was an end. I was sent to the lonely parish where I am, where there was no one I could lead astray. They have left me there. We must have patience; the world was destroyed by water, it has yet to be consumed by fire.

MARTIN

Why should we be patient? To live seventy years, and others to come after us and live seventy years it may be; and so from age to age, and all the while the old splendour dying more and more.

[A noise of shouting. ANDREW, who has been standing at the door, comes in.

ANDREW

Martin says truth, and he says it well. Planing the side of a cart or a shaft, is that life? It is not. Sitting at a desk writing letters to the man that wants a coach, or to the man that won’t pay for the one he has got, is that life, I ask you? Thomas arguing at you and putting you down – ‘Andrew, dear Andrew, did you put the tyre on that wheel yet?’ Is that life? Not, it is not. I ask you all, what do you remember when you are dead? It’s the sweet cup in the corner of the widow’s drinking-house that you remember. Ha, ha, listen to that shouting! That is what the lads in the village will remember to the last day they live.

MARTIN

Why are they shouting? What have you told them?

ANDREW

Never you mind; you left that to me. You bade me to lift their hearts and I did lift them. There is not one among them but will have his head like a blazing tar-barrel before morning. What did your friend the beggar say? The juice of the grey barley, he said.

FATHER JOHN

You accursed villain! You have made them drunk!

ANDREW

Not at all, but lifting them to the stars. That is what Martin bade me to do, and there is no one can say I did not do it.

[A shout at door, and beggars push in a barrel. They cry, ‘Hi! for the noble master!’ and point at ANDREW.

JOHNNY

It’s not him, it’s that one! [Points at MARTIN.

FATHER JOHN

Are you bringing this devil’s work in at the very door? Go out of this, I say! get out! Take these others with you!

MARTIN

No, no; I asked them in, they must not be turned out. They are my guests.

FATHER JOHN

Drive them out of your uncle’s house!

MARTIN

Come, Father, it is better for you to go. Go back to your own place. I have taken the command. It is better perhaps for you that you did not take it.

[FATHER JOHN and MARTIN go out.

BIDDY

It is well for that old lad he didn’t come between ourselves and our luck. Himself to be after his meal, and ourselves staggering with the hunger! It would be right to have flayed him and to have made bags of his skin.

NANNY

What a hurry you are in to get your enough! Look at the grease on your frock yet, with the dint of the dabs you put in your pocket! Doing cures and foretellings is it? You starved pot-picker, you!

BIDDY

That you may be put up to-morrow to take the place of that decent son of yours that had the yard of the gaol wore with walking it till this morning!

NANNY

If he had, he had a mother to come to, and he would know her when he did see her; and that is what no son of your own could do and he to meet you at the foot of the gallows.

JOHNNY

If I did know you, I knew too much of you since the first beginning of my life! What reward did I ever get travelling with you? What store did you give me of cattle or of goods? What provision did I get from you by day or by night but your own bad character to be joined on to my own, and I following at your heels, and your bags tied round about me!

NANNY

Disgrace and torment on you! Whatever you got from me, it was more than any reward or any bit I ever got from the father you had, or any honourable thing at all, but only the hurt and the harm of the world and its shame!

JOHNNY

What would he give you, and you going with him without leave! Crooked and foolish you were always, and you begging by the side of the ditch.

NANNY

Begging or sharing, the curse of my heart upon you! It’s better off I was before ever I met with you to my cost! What was on me at all that I did not cut a scourge in the wood to put manners and decency on you the time you were not hardened as you are!

JOHNNY

Leave talking to me of your rods and your scourges! All you taught me was robbery, and it is on yourself and not on myself the scourges will be laid at the day of the recognition of tricks.

PAUDEEN

’Faith, the pair of you together is better than Hector fighting before Troy!

NANNY

Ah, let you be quiet. It is not fighting we are craving, but the easing of the hunger that is on us and of the passion of sleep. Lend me a graineen of tobacco now till I’ll kindle my pipe – a blast of it will take the weight of the road off my heart.

[ANDREW gives her some, NANNY grabs at it.

BIDDY

No, but it’s to myself you should give it. I that never smoked a pipe this forty year without saying the tobacco prayer. Let that one say did ever she do that much.

NANNY

That the pain of your front tooth may be in your back tooth, you to be grabbing my share!

[They snap at tobacco.

ANDREW

Pup, pup, pup! Don’t be snapping and quarrelling now, and you so well treated in this house. It is strollers like yourselves should be for frolic and for fun. Have you ne’er a good song to sing, a song that will rise all our hearts?

PAUDEEN

Johnny Bacach is a good singer, it is what he used to be doing in the fairs, if the oakum of the gaol did not give him a hoarseness within the throat.

ANDREW

Give it out so, a good song, a song will put courage and spirit into any man at all.

JOHNNY [singing]

Come, all ye airy bachelors,
A warning take by me,
A sergeant caught me fowling,
And fired his gun so free.

His comrades came to his relief,
And I was soon trepanned,
And bound up like a woodcock
Had fallen into their hands.

The judge said transportation,
The ship was on the strand;
They have yoked me to the traces
For to plough Van Dieman’s Land!

ANDREW

That’s no good of a song but a melancholy sort of a song. I’d as lief be listening to a saw going through timber. Wait, now, till you will hear myself giving out a tune on the flute.

[Goes out for it.

JOHNNY

It is what I am thinking there must be a great dearth and a great scarcity of good comrades in this place, a man like that youngster, having means in his hand, to be bringing ourselves and our rags into the house.

PAUDEEN

You think yourself very wise, Johnny Bacach. Can you tell me, now, who that man is?

JOHNNY

Some decent lad, I suppose, with a good way of living and a mind to send up his name upon the roads.

PAUDEEN

You that have been gaoled this eight months know little of this countryside. It isn’t a limping stroller like yourself the Boys would let come among them. But I know. I went to the drill a few nights and I skinning kids for the mountainy men. In a quarry beyond the drill is – they have their plans made – it’s the square house of the Brownes is to be made an attack on and plundered. Do you know, now, who is the leader they are waiting for?

JOHNNY

How would I know that?

PAUDEEN [singing]

Oh, Johnny Gibbons, my five hundred healths to you.
It is long you are away from us over the sea!

JOHNNY [standing up excitedly]

Sure that man could not be Johnny Gibbons that is outlawed!

PAUDEEN

I asked news of him from the old lad, and I bringing in the drink along with him. ‘Don’t be asking questions,’ says he; ‘take the treat he gives you,’ says he. ‘If a lad that has a high heart has a mind to rouse the neighbours,’ says he, ‘and to stretch out his hand to all that pass the road, it is in France he learned it,’ says he, ‘the place he is but lately come from, and where the wine does be standing open in tubs. Take your treat when you get it,’ says he, ‘and make no delay or all might be discovered and put an end to.’

JOHNNY

He came over the sea from France! It is Johnny Gibbons, surely, but it seems to me they were calling him by some other name.

PAUDEEN

A man on his keeping might go by a hundred names. Would he be telling it out to us that he never saw before, and we with that clutch of chattering women along with us? Here he is coming now. Wait till you see is he the lad I think him to be.

MARTIN [coming in]

I will make my banner, I will paint the unicorn on it. Give me that bit of canvas, there is paint over here. We will get no help from the settled men – we will call to the lawbreakers, the tinkers, the sievemakers, the sheepstealers.

[He begins to make banner.

BIDDY

That sounds to be a queer name of an army. Ribbons I can understand, Whiteboys, Rightboys, Threshers, and Peep o’ Day, but Unicorns I never heard of before.

JOHNNY

It is not a queer name but a very good name. [Takes up lion and unicorn.] It is often you saw that before you in the dock. There is the unicorn with the one horn, and what it is he is going against? The lion of course. When he has the lion destroyed, the crown must fall and be shivered. Can’t you see it is the League of the Unicorns is the league that will fight and destroy the power of England and King George?

PAUDEEN

It is with that banner we will march and the lads in the quarry with us, it is they will have the welcome before him! It won’t be long till we’ll be attacking the Square House! Arms there are in it, riches that would smother the world, rooms full of guineas we will put wax on our shoes walking them; the horses themselves shod with no less than silver!

MARTIN [holding up banner]

There it is ready! We are very few now, but the army of the Unicorns will be a great army! [To JOHNNY.] Why have you brought me the message? Can you remember any more? Has anything more come to you? You have been drinking, the clouds upon your mind have been destroyed… Can you see anything or hear anything that is beyond the world?

JOHNNY

I can not. I don’t know what do you want me to tell you at all?

MARTIN

I want to begin the destruction, but I don’t know where to begin.. you do not hear any other voice?

JOHNNY

I do not. I have nothing at all to do with Freemasons or witchcraft.

PAUDEEN

It is Biddy Lally has to do with witchcraft. It is often she threw the cups and gave out prophecies the same as Columcille.

MARTIN

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!