It is the story of the burying of McDonough's wife will be written in the book of the people!
(Sheep-shearers appear at inner door. McDonough goes out, squeezing the pipes. Triumphant music is heard from outside.)
Curtain
NOTES
THE BOGIE MEN
A message sent to America from Dublin that our Theatre had been "driven out with hisses"; an answering message from New York that the Playboy, the cause of battle, was now "as dead as a doornail," set me musing with renewed delight on our incorrigible genius for myth-making, the faculty that makes our traditional history a perpetual joy, because it is, like the Sidhe, an eternal Shape-changer.
At Philadelphia, the city of trees, where in spite of a day in the police court and before a judge, and the arrest of our players at the suit not of a Puritan but a publican, and the throwing of currant cake with intent to injure, I received very great personal kindness, a story of his childhood told by my host gave me a fable on which to hang my musings; and the Dublin enthusiast and the American enthusiast who interchanged so many compliments and made so brave a show to one another, became Dermot and Timothy, "two harmless drifty lads," the Bogie Men of my little play. They were to have been vagrants, tatterdemalions, but I needed some dress the change of which would change their whole appearance in a moment, and there came to mind the chimney sweepers of my childhood.
They used to come trotting the five miles from Loughrea, little fellows with blue eyes shining out from soot-black faces, wearing little soot-coloured smocks. Our old doctor told us he had gone to see one of them who was sick, and had found him lying in a box, with soot up to his chin as bedding and blanket.
Not many years ago a decent looking man came to my door, with I forget what request. He told me he had heard of ghosts and fairies, but had never met with anything worse than himself, but that he had had one great fright in his lifetime. Its cause had been the squealing and outcry made by two rats caught in one trap, that had come clattering down a flight of steps one time when he was a little lad, and had come sweeping chimneys to Roxborough.
[Music: AIR OF "ALL AROUND MY HAT I WILL WEAR A GREEN RIBBON!">[