The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 3 (of 8): The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the StarsYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
General
The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 3 (of 8): The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the Stars
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English literature -- Irish authors
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account