ACT III
The two Cats are looking over the settle.
Music behind scene: "O Johnny, I hardly knew
you!"
1st Cat: We did well leaving the bellows for
that foolish Human to see what he can do. There
is great sport before us and behind.
2nd Cat: The best I ever saw since the Jesters
went out from Tara.
1st Cat: They to be giving themselves high
notions and to be looking down on Cats!
2nd Cat: Ha, Ha, Ha, the folly and the craziness
of men! To see him changing them from one
thing to the next, as if they wouldn't be a two-legged
laughing stock whatever way they would
change.
1st Cat: There's apt to be more changes yet
till they will hardly know one another, or every
other one, to be himself! (Sings.)
"Where are your eyes that looked so mild,
Hurroo! Hurroo!
Where are your eyes that looked so mild
When my poor heart you first beguiled,
Why did you run from me and the child?
O Johnny, I hardly knew you!
"With drums and guns and guns and drums,
The enemy nearly slew you!
My darling dear you look so queer,
O Johnny, I hardly knew you!
"Where are the legs with which you run,
When you went to carry a gun.
Indeed your dancing days are done,
O Johnny, I hardly knew you!"
(Timothy and Mother come in from opposite
doors. Cats disappear—music still heard
faintly.)
Mother: (Looking at little bellows in her hand.)
Do you know That what it is, Timothy?
Timothy: Is it now a hand-bellows? It's long
since I seen the like of that.
Mother: It is, but what bellows?
Timothy: Not a bellows? I'd nearly say it to be one.
Mother: There has strange things come to pass.
Timothy: That's what we've all been praying
for this long time!
Mother: Ah, can't you give attention and strive
to listen to me. It is all coming back to my mind.
All the things I am remembering have my mind
tattered and tossed.
Timothy: (Who has been trying to hear the music,
sings a verse.)
"You haven't an arm and you haven't a leg,
Hurroo! Hurroo!
You're a yellow noseless chickenless egg,
You'll have to put up with a bowl to beg.
O Johnny, I hardly knew you!
(Music ceases.)
Mother: Will you give attention, I say! It
will be worth while for you to go chat with me now
I can be telling you all that happened in my years
gone by. What was it Conan was questioning me
about a while ago? What was it now....
"Aristotle in the hour
He left Ireland left a power!"...
Timothy: That now is a very nice sort of a
little prayer.
Mother: (Calling out.) That's it! Aristotle's
Bellows! I know now what has happened. This
that is in my hand has in it the power to make
changes. Changes! Didn't great changes come in
the house to-day! (Shouts.) Did you see any great
change in Celia?
Timothy: Why wouldn't I, and she at this
minute fighting and barging at some poor travelling
man, saying he laid a finger mark of bacon-grease upon
the lintel of the door. Driving him off with a broken-toothed
rake she is, she that was so gentle that she
wouldn't hardly pluck the feathers of a dead duck!
Mother: It was surely a blast of this worked
that change in her, as the blast she blew upon me
worked a change in myself. O! all the thoughts
and memories that are thronging in my mind and
in my head! Rushing up within me the same as
chaff from the flail! Songs and stories and the
newses I heard through the whole course of my
lifetime! And I having no person to tell them out
to! Do you hear me what I'm saying, Timothy?
(Shouts in his ear.) What is come back to me is
what I lost so long ago, my MEMORY.
Timothy: So it is a very good song.
(Sings.)
"By Memory inspired, and love of glory fired,
The deeds of men I love to dwell upon,
And the sympathetic glow of my spirit must bestow
On the memory of Mitchell that is gone, boys, gone—
The memory of Mitchell that is gone!"
Mother: Thoughts crowding on one another,
mixing themselves up with one another for the
want of sifting and settling! They'll have me
distracted and I not able to speak them out to
some person! Conan as surly as a bramble bush,
and Celia wrapped up in her bucket and her broom!
And yourself not able to hear one word I say. (Sobs,
and bellows falls from her hands.)
Timothy: I'll lay it down now out of your way,
ma'am, the way you can cry your fill whatever
ails you.
Mother: (Snatching it back.) Stop! I'll not
part with it! I know now what I can do! Now!
(Points it at him.) I'll make a companion to be
listening to me through the long winter nights and
the long summer days, and the world to be without
any end at all, no more than the round of the
full moon! You that have no hearing, this will
bring back your hearing, the way you'll be a
listener and a benefit to myself for ever. I
wouldn't feel the weeks long that time!
(Blows. Timothy turns away and gropes
toward wall.)
(She sings: Air, "Eileen Aroon.")
"What if the days go wrong,
When you can hear!
What if the evening's long,
You being near,
I'll tell my troubles out,
Put darkness to the rout
And to the roundabout!
Having your ear!"
(Rock at door: sneezes. Mother drops bellows
and goes. Timothy gives a cry,
claps hands to ears and rushes out as if
terrified.)
Rock: (Coming in seizes bellows.) Well now,
didn't this turn to be very lucky and very good!
The very thing I came looking for to be left there
under my hands! (Puts it hurriedly under coat.)
Flannery: (Coming in.) What are you doing
here, James Rock?
Rock: What are you doing yourself?
Flannery: What is that in under your coat?
Rock: What's that to you?
Flannery: I'll know that when I see it.
Rock: What call have you to be questioning me?
Flannery: Open now your coat!
Rock: Stand out of my way!
Flannery: (Suddenly tearing open coat and seizing
bellows.) Did you think it was unknownst to me
you stole the bellows?
Rock: Ah, what steal?
Flannery: Put it back in the place it was!
Rock: I will within three minutes.
Flannery: You'll put it back here and now.
Rock: (Coaxingly.) Look at here now, Michael
Flannery, we'll make a league between us. Did
you ever see such folly as we're after seeing to-day?
Sitting there for an hour and a half till that one
settled the world upside down!
Flannery: If I did see folly, what I see now is
treachery.
Rock: Didn't you take notice of the way that
foolish old man is wasting and losing what was
given him for to benefit mankind? A blast he has
lost turning a pigeon to a crow, as if there wasn't
enough in it before of that tribe picking the spuds
out of the ridges. And another blast he has lost
turning poor Celia, that was harmless, to be a holy
terror of cleanness and a scold.
Flannery: Indeed, he'd as well have left her
as she was. There was something very pleasing
in her little sleepy ways.
(Sings.)
"But sad it is to see you so
And to think of you now as an object of woe;
Your Peggy'll still keep an eye on her beau.
O Johnny, I hardly knew you!"
Rock: Bringing back to the memory of his
mother every old grief and rancour. She that has
a right to be making her peace with the grave!
Flannery: Indeed it seems he doesn't mind
what he'll get so long as it's something that he
wants.
Rock: Three blasts gone! And the world didn't
begin to be cured.
Flannery: Sure enough he gave the bellows no
fair play.
Rock: He has us made a fool of. He using it
the way he did, he has us robbed.
Flannery: There's power in the four blasts
left would bring peace and piety and prosperity
and plenty to every one of the four provinces of
Ireland.
Rock: That's it. There's no doubt but I'll
make a better use of it than him, because I am a
better man than himself.
Flannery: I don't know. You might not get
so much respect in Dublin.
Rock: Dublin, where are you! What would
I'd do going to Dublin? Did you never hear said
the skin to be nearer than the shirt?
Flannery: What do you mean saying that?
Rock: The first one I have to do good to is
myself.
Flannery: Is it that you would grab the benefit
of the bellows?
Rock: In troth I will. I've got a hold of it, and
by cripes I'll knock a good turn out of it.
Flannery: To rob the country and the poor for
your own profit? You are a class of man that is
gathering all for himself.
Rock: It is not worth while we to fall out of
friendship. I will use but the one blast.
Flannery: You have no right or call to meddle
with it.
Rock: The first thing I will meddle with is my
own rick of turf. And I'll give you leave to go do
the same with your own umbrella, or whatever
property you may own.
Flannery: Sooner than be covetous like yourself
I'd live and die in a ditch, and be buried
from the Poorhouse!
Rock: Turf being black and light in the hand,
and gold being shiny and weighty, there will be
no delay in turning every sod into a solid brick of
gold. I give you leave to do the same thing, and
we'll be two rich men inside a half an hour!
Flannery: You are no less than a thief! (Snatches
at bellows.)
Rock: Thief yourself. Leave your hand off it!
Flannery: Give it up here for the man that
owns it!
Rock: You may set your coffin making for I'll
beat you to the ground.
Flannery: (As he clutches.) Ah, you have given
it a shove. It has blown a blast on yourself!
Rock: Yourself that blew it on me! Bad cess
to you! But I'll do the same bad turn upon you!
(Blows.)
Flannery: There is some footstep without.
Heave it in under the ashes.
Rock: Whist your tongue! (Flings bellows
behind hearth.)
(Conan comes in.)
Conan: With all the chattering of women I
have the train near lost. The car is coming for
me and I'll make no delay now but to set out.
(Sings.)
"Oh the French are on the sea,
Says the Sean Van Vocht,
Oh the French are on the sea,
Says the Sean Van Vocht,
Oh the French are in the bay,
They'll be here without delay,
And the Orange will decay,
Says the Sean Van Vocht!"
Here now is my little pack. You were saying,
Thomas Flannery, you would be lending me the
loan of your umbrella.
Flannery: Ah, what umbrella? There's no fear
of rain.
Conan: (Taking it.) You to have proffered it
I would not refuse it.
Flannery: (Seizing it.) I don't know. I have
to mind my own property. It might not serve
it to be loaning it to this one and that. It might
leave the ribs of it bare.
Conan: That's the way with the whole of ye. I
to give you my heart's blood you'd turn me upside
down for a pint of porter!
Flannery: I see no sense or charity in lending to
another anything that might be of profit to myself.
Conan: Let you keep it so! That your ribs may
be as bare as its own ribs that are bursting out
through the cloth!
Rock: Do not give heed to him, Conan. There
is in this bag (takes it out) what will bring you every
whole thing you might be wanting in the town.
(Takes out notes and gold and gives them.)
Conan: It is only a small share I'll ask the lend of.
Rock: The lend of! No, but a free gift!
Conan: Well now, aren't you turned to be very
kind? (Takes notes.)
Rock: Put that back in the bag. Here it is, the
whole of it. Five and fifty pounds. Take it and
welcome! It is yourself will make a good use of
it laying it out upon the needy and the poor.
Changing all for their benefit and their good! Oh,
since St. Bridget spread her cloak upon the Curragh
this is the most day and the happiest day ever
came to Ireland.
Conan: (Giving bag to Flannery.) Take it you,
as is your due by what the mother said a while ago
about the robbery he did on you in the time past.
Flannery: Give it here to me. I'll engage I'll
keep a good grip on it from this out. It's long
before any other one will get a one look at it!
Conan: There would seem to be a great change
—and a sudden change come upon the two of ye.
...(With a roar.) Where now is the bellows?
Flannery: (Sulkily.) What way would I know?
Conan: (Shaking him.) I know well what
happened! It is ye have stolen two of my blasts!
Putting changes on yourselves ye would—much
good may it do ye—. Thieving with your covetousness
the last two nearly I had left!
Rock: (Sulkily.) Leave your hand off me! I
never stole no blast!
Conan: There's a bad class going through the
world. The most people you will give to will be
the first to cry you down. This was a wrong out
of measure! Thieves ye are and pickpockets!
Ye that were not worth changing from one to
another, no more than you'd change a pinch of
dust off the road into a puff of ashes. Stealing
away my lovely blasts, bad luck to ye, the same as
Prometheus stole the makings of a fire from the
ancient gods!
Flannery: That is enough of keening and
lamenting after a few blasts of barren wind—I'll
be going where I have my own business to attend.
Conan: Where, so, is the bellows?
Flannery: How would I know?
Conan: The two of ye won't quit this till I'll
find it! There is another two blasts in it that
will bring sense and knowledge into Ireland yet!
Rock: Indeed they might bring comfort yet
to many a sore heart!
Conan: (Searching.) Where now is it? I
couldn't find it if the earth rose up and swallowed
it. Where now did I lay it down?
Rock: There's too much changes in this place
for me to know where anything is gone.
Conan: (At door.) Where are you, Maryanne!
Celia! Timothy! Let ye come hither and search
out my little bellows!
(Timothy comes in, followed by Mother.)
Conan: Hearken now, Timothy!
Timothy: (Stopping his ears.) Speak easy, speak easy!
Conan: Take down now your fingers from your
ears the way you will hear my voice!
Timothy: Have a care now with your screeching
would you split the drum of my ear?
Conan: Is it that you have got your hearing?
Timothy: My hearing is it? As good as that I
can hear a lie, and it forming in the mind.
Conan: Is that the truth you're saying?
Timothy: Hear, is it! I can hear every whisper
in this parish and the seven parishes are nearest.
And the little midges roaring in the air.—Let ye
whist now with your sneezing in the draught!
Conan: This is surely the work of the bellows.
Another blast gone!
Rock: So it would be too. Mostly the whole
of them gone and spent. It's hard know in the
morning what way will it be with you at night.
(Sings.)
"I saw from the beach when the morning was
shining
A bark o'er the waters move gloriously on—
came when the sun o'er the beach was declining,
The bark was still there, but the waters were gone."
Timothy: It is yourself brought the misfortune
on me, calling your Druid spells into the house.
Conan: It is not upon you I ever turned it.
Timothy: You have a great wrong done to me!
Mother: It is glad you should be and happy.
Timothy: Happy, is it? Give me a hareskin cap
for to put over my ears, having wool in it very thick!
(Sings.) "Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water,
Break not ye breezes your chain of repose,
While murmuring mournfully Lir's lonely daughter
Tells to the night-star her tale of woes.
"When shall the swan, her death-note singing,
Sleep with wings in darkness furl'd?
When will heaven its sweet bells ringing
Call my spirit from this stormy world?"
Mother: Come with me now and I'll be chatting
to you.
Timothy: Why would I be listening to your
blather when I have the voices of the four winds to
be listening to? The night wind, the east wind,
the black wind and the wind from the south!
Conan: Such a thing I never saw before in all
my natural life.
Timothy: To be hearing, without understanding
it, the language of the tribes of the birds! (Puts
hands over ears again.) There's too many sounds
in the world! The sounds of the earth are terrible!
The roots squeezing and jostling one another
through the clefts, and the crashing of the acorn
from the oak. The cry of the little birdeen in
under the silence of the hawk!
Conan: (To Mother.) As it you let it loose
upon him, let you bring him away to some hole or
cave of the earth.
Timothy: It is my desire to go cast myself in
the ocean where there'll be but one sound of its
waves, the fishes in its meadows being dumb!
(Goes to corner and hides his head in a sack.)
Mother: Even so there might likely be a mermaid
playing reels on her silver comb, and yourself
craving after the world you left.
(Sings: Air, "Spailpin Fanach.")
"You think to go from every woe to peace in the
wide ocean,
But you will find your foolish mind repent its
foolish notion.
When dog-fish dash and mermaids splash their
finny tails to find you,
I'll make a bet that you'll regret the world you
left behind you!"
Celia: (Clattering in with broom, etc.) What
are ye doing, coming in this room again after I
having it settled so nice? I'll allow no one in the
place again, only carriage company that will have
no speck of dust upon the sole of their shoe!
Mother: Oh, Celia, there has strange things
happened!
Celia: What I see strange is that some person
has meddled with that hill of ashes on the hearth
and set it flying athrough the air. Is it hens ye
are wishful to be, that would be searching and
scratching in the dust for grains? And this thrown
down in the midst! (Holds up bellows.)
Conan: Give me my bellows!
Mother: No, but give it to me!
Rock and Flannery: Give it to myself!
Timothy: (Looking up, with hands on ears.)
My curse upon it and its work. Little I care if it
goes up with the clouds.
Celia: What in the world wide makes the whole
of ye so eager to get hold of such a thing?
Conan
: It has but the one blast left!
(Sings.)
"'Tis the last Rose of Summer
Left blooming alone,
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
Or give sigh for sigh!"
Celia: What are you fretting about blasts and
about roses?
Rock: It has a charm on it—
Flannery: To change the world—
Mother: That chedang myself—
Conan: For the worse—
Mother: And Timothy—
Conan: For the worse—
Rock: Myself and Flannery—
Conan: For the worse, for the worse—
Mother: Conan that changed yourself with it—
Conan: For the very worst!
Celia: (To Conan.) Is it riddles, or is it that
you put a spell and a change upon me?
Conan: If I did, it was for your own good!
Celia: Do you call it for my good to set me
running till I have my toes going through my shoes?
(Holds them out.)
Conan: I didn't think to go that length.
Celia: To roughen my hands with soap and
scalding water till they're near as knotted and as
ugly as your own!
Conan: Ah, leave me alone! I tell you it is not
by my own fault. My plan and my purpose that
went astray and that broke down.
Celia: I will not leave you till you'll change me
back to what I was. What way can these hands go
to the dance house to-night? Change me back, I say!
Rock: And me—
Timothy: And myself, that I'll have quiet in my
head again.
Conan: I cannot undo what has been done.
There is no back way.
Timothy: Is there no way at all to come out of
it safe and sane?
Conan: (Shakes head.) Let ye make the best of it.
Flannery: (Sings.) (Air, "I saw from the Beach.")
"Ne'er tell me of glories serenely adorning
The close of our day, the calm eve of our night.
Give me back, give me back the wild freshness of morning,
Her clouds and her tears are worth evening's best light."
Mother: (Who has bellows in her hand.) Stop!
Stop—my mind is travelling backward ...so far
I can hardly reach to it ...but I'll come to it
...the way I'll be changed to what I was before,
and the town and the country wishing me well, I
having got my enough of unfriendly looks and hard
words!
Timothy: Hurry on, Ma'am, and remember, and
take the spell off the whole of us.
Mother: I am going back, back, to the longest
thing that is in my mind and my memory!...
I myself a child in my mother's arms the very day
I was christened....
Conan: Ah, stop your raving!
Mother: Songs and storytelling, and my old
generations laying down news of this spell that is
now come to pass....
Rock: Did they tell what way to undo the
charm?
Mother: You have but to turn the bellows the
same as the smith would turn the anvil, or St.
Patrick turned the stone for fine weather ...
and to blow a blast ...and a twist will come
inside in it and the charm will fall off with that
blast, and undo the work that has been done!
All:
Turn it so!
(Cats look over, playing on fiddles "O Johnny, I
hardly knew you," while mother blows on each.)
Timothy: Ha! (Takes hands from ears and puts
one behind his ear.)
Rock: Ha! Where now is my bag? (Turns
out his pockets, unhappy to find them empty.)
Flannery: Ha! (Smiles and holds out umbrella
to Conan, who takes it.)
Mother: (To Celia.) Let you blow a blast on me.
(Celia does so.) Now it's much if I can remember
to blow a blast backward upon yourself!
Celia: Stop a minute! Leave what is in me of
life and of courage till I will blow the last blast is
in the bellows upon Conan.
Conan: Stop that! Do you think to change
and to crow over me. You will not or I'll lay my
curse upon you, unless you would change me into
an eagle would be turning his back upon the whole
of ye, and facing to his perch upon the right hand
of the master of the gods!
Celia: Is it to waste the last blast you would?
Not at all. As we burned the candle we'll burn the
inch! I'll not make two halves of it, I'll give it to
you entirely!
Conan:
You will not, you unlucky witch of illwill!
(Protects himself with umbrella.)
Celia: (Having got him to a corner.) Let you
take things quiet and easy from this out, and be as
content as you have been contrary from the very
day and hour of your birth!
(She blows upon him and he sits down smiling.
Mother blows on Celia, and she sits down
in first attitude.)
Celia: (Taking up pigeon.) Oh, there you are
come back my little dove and my darling!
(Sings: "Shule Aroon.")
"Come sit and settle on my knee
And I'll tell you and you'll tell me
A tale of what will never be,
Go-dé-tóu-Mavourneen slan!"
Conan: (Lighting pipe.) So the dove is there,
too. Aristotle said there is nothing at the end but
what there used to be at the beginning. Well now,
what a pleasant day we had together, and what
good neighbours we all are, and what a comfortable
family entirely.
Rock: You would seem to have done with your
complaints about the universe, and your great plan
to change it overthrown.
Conan: Not a complaint! What call have I to
go complaining? The world is a very good world,
the best nearly I ever knew.
(Sings.)
"O, a little cock sparrow he sat on a tree,
O, a little cock sparrow he sat on a tree,
O, a little cock sparrow he sat on a tree,
And he was as happy as happy could be,
With a chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup!
"A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup!
A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup!
A chirrup, a chirrup, a chirrup!
A chirrup, a chirrup, a——!"
CURTAIN