Lady Gregory

“ Mike McInerney: (In a rising chant.) Every good thing! The goat and the kid are there, the sheep and the lamb are there, the cow does be running and she coming to be milked! Ploughing and seed sowing, blossom at Christmas time, the cuckoo speaking through the dark days of the year! Ah, what are you talking about? Wheat high in hedges, no talk about the rent! Salmon in the rivers as plenty as turf! Spending and getting and nothing scarce! Sport and pleasure, and music on the strings! Age will go from me and I will be young again. Geese and turkeys for the hundreds and drink for the whole world! ”

“ What way will I be going back through Gort and through Kilbecanty? The people will not be coming out keening you, they will say no prayer for the rest of your soul!
What way will I be the Sunday and I going up the hill to the Mass? Every woman with her own comrade, and Mary Cushin to be walking her lone!
What way will I be the Monday and the neighbours turning their heads from the house? The turf Denis cut lying on the bog, and no well-wisher to bring it to the hearth! ”

“ If they promised him his life, Mary Cushin, he must live it in some other place. Let him never see Daire-caol again, or Daroda or Druimdarod.
Mary Cushin: O, Mary, what place will we bring him to, and we driven from the place that we know? What person that is sent among strangers can have one day’s comfort on earth?
Mary Cahel: It is only among strangers, I am thinking, he could be hiding his story at all. It is best for him to go to America, where the people are as thick as grass.
Mary Cushin: What way could he go to America and he having no means in his hand? ”

“ Listen, Shawn Early! Listen, Mrs. Tully, to the news! Jack Smith and Bartley Fallon had a falling out, and Jack knocked Mrs. Fallon’s basket into the road, and Bartley made an attack on him with a hayfork, and away with Jack, and Bartley after him. Look at the sugar here yet on the road!
Shawn Early: Do you tell me so? Well, that’s a queer thing, and Bartley Fallon so quiet a man!
Mrs. Tully: I wouldn’t wonder at all. I would never think well of a man that would have that sort of a mouldering look. ”

“ Mrs. Broderick: Do you hear what he says, Joseph Nestor? What call have you to be giving a present of my bird? [Pg 131]
Nestor: And wasn’t I after buying it from you?
Mrs. Broderick: If you were it was not for yourself you bought it, but for the poor man in South Africa you bought it, and you defrauding him now, giving it away to a man has no claim to it at all. Well, now, isn’t it hard for any man to find a person he can trust?
Nestor: Didn’t you hear me saying I bought it for no person at all?
Mrs. Broderick: Give it up now, Tommy Nally, or I’ll have you in gaol on the head of it. ”

“ It is no lie he would have said at all giving witness against Terry Fury.
I will go through Gort and Kilbecanty and Druimdarod and Daroda; I will call to the people and the singers at the fairs to make a great praise for Denis!
The child he left in the house that is shook, it is great will be his boast in his father! All Ireland will have a welcome before him, and all the people in Boston.
I to stoop on a stick through half a hundred years, I will never be tired with praising! Come hither, Mary Cushin, till we’ll shout it through the roads, Denis Cahel died for his neighbour! ”

“ I am thinking we are come to our journey’s end, and that this should be the gate of the gaol.
Mary Cushin: It is certain it could be no other place. There was surely never in the world such a terrible great height of a wall.
Mary Cahel: He that was used to the mountain to be closed up inside of that! What call had he to go moonlighting or to bring himself into danger at all?
Mary Cushin: It is no wonder a man to grow faint-hearted and he shut away from the light. I never would wonder at all at anything he might be driven to say. ”

“ Shawn Early: Is it alive you are, or is it dead you are?
Tim Casey: Is it yourself at all that’s in it?
Mrs. Tully: Is it letting on you were to be dead?
Mrs. Fallon: Dead or alive, let you stop Kitty [Pg 27] Keary, your wife, from bringing my man away with her to America!
Jack Smith: It is what I think, the wits are gone astray on the whole of you. What would my wife want bringing Bartley Fallon to America?
Mrs. Fallon: To leave yourself, and to get quit of you she wants, Jack Smith, and to bring him away from myself. ”

“ Why would any one be sorry for me? Let you be sorry for yourselves, and that there may be shame on you for ever and at the day of judgment, for the words you are saying and the lies you are telling to take away the character of my poor man, and to take the good name off of him, and to drive him to destruction! That is what you are doing!
Shawn Early: Take comfort now, Mrs. Fallon. The police are not so smart as they think. ”

“ The sheaf to be scattered before springtime that was brought together at the harvest!
I would not begrudge you, Denis, and you leaving praises after you. The neighbours keening along with me would be better to me than an estate.
But my grief your name to be blackened in the time of the blackening of the rushes! Your name never to rise up again in the growing time of the year! (She ceases keening and turns towards the old woman.) But tell me, Mary, do you think would they give us the body of Denis? I would lay him out with myself only; I would hire some man to dig the grave. ”

“ Mike McInerney: You may say that, indeed, we are both of us reared in Skehanagh. Little wonder you to have good nourishment the time we were both rising, and you bringing away my rabbits out of the snare.
Michael Miskell: And you didn’t bring away my own eels, I suppose, I was after spearing in the Turlough? Selling them to the nuns in the convent you did, and letting on they to be your own. For you were always a cheater and a schemer, grabbing every earthly thing for your own profit. ”

“ There is lasting kindness in Heaven when no kindness is found upon earth. [Pg 181] There will surely be mercy found for him, and not the hard judgment of men! But my boy that was best in the world, that never rose a hair of my head, to have died with his name under blemish, and left a great shame on his child! Better for him have killed the whole world than to give any witness at all! Have you no word to say, Mary Cushin? ”

“ Sergeant: It’s a whole troop of police they ought to put here to stop a man like that.
Man: But if you’d like me to stop with you, I could be looking down this side. I could be sitting up here on this barrel.
Sergeant: And you know him well, too?
Man: I’d know him a mile off, sergeant.
Sergeant: But you wouldn’t want to share the reward?
Man: Is it a poor man like me, that has to be going the roads and singing in fairs, to have the name on him that he took a reward? But you don’t want me. I’ll be safer in the town.
Sergeant: Well, you can stop.
Man: (Getting up on barrel.) All right, sergeant. ”

“ Why wouldn’t I be getting my own ten pounds?
Nestor: Heaven help your poor head this day!
Nally: Why wouldn’t I get it the same as Mrs. Broderick got it? [Pg 116]
Nestor: Well, listen to me now. You will not get it.
Nally: Sure that man is buying them will have no objection they to come from one more than another.
Nestor: Don’t be arguing now. It is a queer thing for you, Tommy Nally, to be arguing with a man like myself. ”

“ I am not, ma’am, but an old neighbour I am. If I had forecasted this asking I would have asked it myself. Michael Miskell I am, that was in the next house to you in Skehanagh!
Mrs. Donohoe: For pity’s sake! Michael Miskell is it? That’s worse again. Yourself and Mike that never left fighting and scolding and attacking one another! Sparring at one another like two young pups you were, and threatening one another after like two grown dogs!
Mike McInerney: All the quarrelling was ever in the place it was myself did it. Sure his anger rises fast and goes away like the wind. ”

“ Mrs. Broderick: What is it at all? What is happening? Joseph Nestor threatened by a tinker or a tramp!
Nestor: I would think better of his behaviour if he was a tinker or a tramp.
Mrs. Broderick: He has drink taken so. Isn’t drink the terrible tempter, a man to see flames and punishment upon the one side and drink upon the other, and to turn his face towards the drink!
Cooney: Will you stop your chat, Mary Broderick, till I will drag the truth out of this traitor?
Mrs. Broderick: Who is that calling me by my name? Och! Is it Michael Cooney is in it? Michael Cooney, my brother! ”

“ But none of these can compete with Lady Gregory for the quality of universality. The best beauty in Lady Gregory’s art is its spontaneity. It is never forced.... She has read and dreamed and studied, and slept and wakened and worked, and the great ideas that have come to her have been nourished and trained till they have grown to be of great stature.”—Chicago Tribune. ”

“ Kitty Keary, his wife!
(Sits down bewildered.)
Mrs. Tully: And what have you to say now, Bartley Fallon?
Bartley: (Crossing himself.) I to bring that fork here, and to find that news before me! It is much if I can ever stir from this place at all, or reach as far as the road!
Tim Casey: Look, boys, at the new magistrate, and Jo Muldoon along with him! It’s best for us to quit this.
Shawn Early: That is so. It is best not to be mixed in this business at all.
James Ryan: Bad as he is, I wouldn’t like to be an informer against any man. ”

“ It’s to keep him to themselves they are wanting. (Goes to door.) But I’ll get my own profit in spite of them.
(He goes outside door, looking up and down the street.)
Mrs. Broderick: Look at what Tommy Nally has. That’s my bird.
Nally: It is not, it’s my own!
Mrs. Broderick: That is my cage!
Nally: It is not, it is mine!
Mrs. Broderick: Wouldn’t I know my own cage and my own bird? Don’t be telling lies that way!
Nally: It is no lie I am telling. The bird and the cage were made a present to me.
Mrs. Broderick: Who would make a present to you of the things that belong to myself? ”

“ Mike McInerney: I hope that he has left you a nice way of living?
Mrs. Donohoe: Fair enough, fair enough. A wide lovely house I have; a few acres of grass land ... the grass does be very sweet that grows among the stones. And as to the sea, there is something from it every day of the year, a handful of periwinkles to make kitchen, or cockles maybe. There is many a thing in the sea is not decent, but cockles is fit to put before the Lord! ”

“ Tommy Nally: That is no less than true now. There are crabbed people and suspicious people to be met with in every place. It is much that I got a pass from the Workhouse this day, the Master making sure when I asked it that I had in my pocket the means of getting drink.
Mrs. Broderick: It would maybe be best to go join you in the Workhouse, Tommy Nally, when I am out of this, than to go walking the world from end to end. [Pg 98]
Tommy Nally: Ah, don’t be saying that, ma’am; sure you couldn’t be happy within those walls if you had the whole world. Clean outside, but very hard within. ”

“ Telling lies the whole of the people of this town are; telling lies, telling lies as fast as a dog will trot! Speaking against my poor respectable [Pg 24] man! Saying he made an end of Jack Smith! My decent comrade! There is no better man and no kinder man in the whole of the five parishes! It’s little annoyance he ever gave to any one! (Turns and sees him.) What in the earthly world do I see before me? Bartley Fallon in charge of the police! Handcuffs on him! O Bartley, what did you do at all at all?
Bartley: O Mary, there has a great misfortune come upon me! ”

“ Mary Cushin: Sure you heard what the neighbours were calling the time their own boys were brought away. “It is Denis Cahel,” they were saying, “that informed against them in the gaol.”
Mary Cahel: There is nothing that is bad or is wicked but a woman will put it out of her mouth, and she seeing them that belong to her brought away from her sight and her home.
Mary Cushin: Terry Fury’s mother was saying it, and Pat Ruane’s mother and his wife. They came out calling it after me, “It was Denis swore against them in the gaol!” ”

“ Mrs. Donohoe: Sure you could be keeping the fire in, and stirring the pot with the bit of Indian meal for the hens, and milking the goat and taking the tacklings off the donkey at the door; and maybe putting out the cabbage plants in their time. For when the old man died the garden died.
Mike McInerney: I could to be sure, and be cutting the potatoes for seed. What luck could there be in a place and a man not to be in it? Is that now a suit of clothes you have brought with you?
Mrs. Donohoe: It is so, the way you will be tasty coming in among the neighbours at Curranroe. ”

“ And now you are stiffer than a woman would have a hundred pounds! It is too much talk the whole of you have. A rope is it? I tell you the whole of this town is full of liars and schemers that would hang you up for half a glass of whiskey. (Turning to go.) People they are you wouldn’t believe as much as daylight from without you’d get up to have a look at it yourself. Killing Jack Smith indeed! ”

“ Showing off he was to the new magistrate.
(Enter Bartley Fallon and Mrs. Fallon.)
Bartley: Indeed it’s a poor country and a scarce country to be living in. But I’m thinking if I went to America it’s long ago the day I’d be dead!
Mrs. Fallon: So you might, indeed.
(She puts her basket on a barrel and begins putting parcels in it, taking them from under her cloak.)
Bartley: And it’s a great expense for a poor man to be buried in America.
Mrs. Fallon: Never fear, Bartley Fallon, but I’ll give you a good burying the day you’ll die. ”

“ Jack Smith: Look at that young mare of Pat Ryan’s that is backing into Shaughnessy’s bullocks with the dint of the crowd! Don’t be daunted, Pat, I’ll give you a hand with her.
(He goes out, leaving his hayfork.)
Mrs. Fallon: It’s time for ourselves to be going home. I have all I bought put in the basket. Look at there, Jack Smith’s hayfork he left after him! He’ll be wanting it. (Calls.) Jack Smith! Jack Smith!—He’s gone through the crowd—hurry after him, Bartley, he’ll be wanting it. ”

“ I was going to Galway, and at the Gort station I met two cloaked and shawled countrywomen from the slopes of Slieve Echtge, who were obliged to go and see some law official in Galway because of some money left them by a kinsman in Australia. They had never been in a train or to any place farther than a few miles from their own village, and they felt astray and terrified “like blind beasts in a bog” they said, and I took care of them through the day. ”