MAIRE.
If you be not demons,
Go and give alms among the starving poor,
You seem more rich than any under the moon.
FIRST MERCHANT.
If we knew where to find deserving poor,
We would give alms.
MAIRE.
Then ask of Father John.
FIRST MERCHANT.
We know the evils of mere charity,
And have been planning out a wiser way.
Let each man bring one piece of merchandise.
MAIRE.
And have the starving any merchandise?
FIRST MERCHANT.
We do but ask what each man has.
MAIRE.
Merchants,
Their swine and cattle, fields and implements,
Are sold and gone.
FIRST MERCHANT.
They have not sold all yet.
MAIRE.
What have they?
FIRST MERCHANT.
They have still their souls.
[MAIRE shrieks. He beckons to TEIG and SHEMUS.
Come hither.
See you these little golden heaps? Each one
Is payment for a soul. From charity
We give so great a price for those poor flames.
Say to all men we buy men’s souls—away.
[They do not stir.
This pile is for you and this one here for you.
MAIRE.
Shemus and Teig, Teig—
TEIG.
Out of the way.
[SHEMUS and TEIG take the money.
FIRST MERCHANT.
Cry out at cross-roads and at chapel doors
And market-places that we buy men’s souls,
Giving so great a price that men may live
In mirth and ease until the famine ends.
[TEIG and SHEMUS go out.
MAIRE [kneeling].
Destroyers of souls, may God destroy you quickly!
FIRST MERCHANT.
No curse can overthrow the immortal demons.
MAIRE.
You shall at last dry like dry leaves, and hang
Nailed like dead vermin to the doors of God.
FIRST MERCHANT.
You shall be ours. This famine shall not cease.
You shall eat grass, and dock, and dandelion,
And fail till this stone threshold seem a wall,
And when your hands can scarcely drag your body
We shall be near you.
[To SECOND MERCHANT.
Bring the meal out.
[The SECOND MERCHANT brings the bag of meal from the pantry.
Burn it. [MAIRE faints.
Now she has swooned, our faces go unscratched;
Bring me the gray hen, too.
The SECOND MERCHANT goes out through the door and returns with the hen strangled. He flings it on the floor. While he is away the FIRST MERCHANT makes up the fire. The FIRST MERCHANT then fetches the pan of milk from the pantry, and spills it on the ground. He returns, and brings out the wolf, and throws it down by the hen.
These need much burning.
This stool and this chair here will make good fuel.
[He begins breaking the chair.
My master will break up the sun and moon
And quench the stars in the ancestral night
And overturn the thrones of God and the angels.
ACT II.
A great hall in the castle of the COUNTESS CATHLEEN. There is a large window at the farther end, through which the forest is visible. The wall to the right juts out slightly, cutting off an angle of the room. A flight of stone steps leads up to a small arched door in the jutting wall. Through the door can be seen a little oratory. The hall is hung with ancient tapestry, representing the loves and wars and huntings of the Fenian and Red Branch heroes. There are doors to the right and left. On the left side OONA sits, as if asleep, beside a spinning-wheel. The COUNTESS CATHLEEN stands farther back and more to the right, close to a group of the musicians, still in their fantastic dresses, who are playing a merry tune.
CATHLEEN.
Be silent, I am tired of tympan and harp,
And tired of music that but cries ‘Sleep, sleep,’
Till joy and sorrow and hope and terror are gone.
[The COUNTESS CATHLEEN goes over to OONA.
You were asleep?
OONA.
No, child, I was but thinking
Why you have grown so sad.
CATHLEEN.
The famine frets me.
OONA.
I have lived now near ninety winters, child,
And I have known three things no doctor cures—
Love, loneliness, and famine; nor found refuge
Other than growing old and full of sleep.
See you where Oisin and young Niamh ride
Wrapped in each other’s arms, and where the Fenians
Follow their hounds along the fields of tapestry;
How merry they lived once, yet men died then.
Sit down by me, and I will chaunt the song
About the Danaan nations in their raths
That Aleel sang for you by the great door
Before we lost him in the shadow of leaves.
CATHLEEN.
No, sing the song he sang in the dim light,
When we first found him in the shadow of leaves,
About King Fergus in his brazen car
Driving with troops of dancers through the woods.
[She crouches down on the floor, and lays her head on OONA’S knees.
OONA.
Dear heart, make a soft cradle of old tales,
And songs, and music: wherefore should you sadden
For wrongs you cannot hinder? The great God
Smiling condemns the lost: be mirthful: