The Unicorn from the Stars

themselves they made for their own profit, and left us nothing at all, no more than a dog or a sow. Biddy An old priest I see, and I would not say is he the one was here or another. Vexed and troubled he is, kneeling fretting and ever-fretting in some lonesome ruined place. Martin I thought it would come to that. Yes, the Church too⁠—that is to be destroyed. Once men fought with their desires and their fears, with all that they call their sins, unhelped, and their souls became hard and strong. When we have brought back the clean earth and destroyed the law and the Church all life will become like a flame of fire, like a burning eye⁠ ⁠… Oh, how to find words for it all⁠ ⁠… all that is not life will pass away. Johnny It is Luther’s Church he means, and the humpbacked discourse of Seaghan Calvin’s Bible. So we will break it, and make an end of it. Martin We will go out against the world and break it and unmake it. Rising. We are the army of the Unicorn from the Stars! We will trample it to pieces.⁠—We will consume the world, we will burn it away⁠—Father John said the world has yet to be consumed by fire. Bring me fire. Andrew To Beggars. Here is Thomas. Hide⁠—let you hide. All except Martin hurry into next room. Thomas comes in. Thomas Come with me, Martin. There is terrible work going on in the town! There is mischief gone abroad. Very strange things are happening! Martin What are you talking of? What has happened? Thomas Come along, I say, it must be put a stop to. We must call to every decent man. It is as if the devil himself had gone through the town on a blast and set every drinking-house open! Martin I wonder how that has happened. Can it have anything to do with Andrew’s plan? Thomas Are you giving no heed to what I’m saying? There is not a man, I tell you, in the parish and beyond the parish but has left the work he was doing whether in the field or in the mill. Martin Then all work has come to an end? Perhaps that was a good thought of Andrew’s. Thomas There is not a man has come to sensible years that is not drunk or drinking! My own labourers and my own serving-men are sitting on counters and on barrels! I give you my word, the smell of the spirits and the porter and the shouting and the cheering within, made the hair to rise up on my scalp. Martin And yet there is not one of them that does not feel that he could bridle the four winds. Thomas Sitting down in despair. You are drunk too. I never thought you had a fancy for it. Martin It is hard for you to understand. You have worked all your life. You have said to yourself every morning, “What is to be done today?” and when you are tired out you have thought of the next day’s work. If you gave yourself an hour’s idleness, it was but that you might work the better. Yet it is only when one has put work away that one begins to live. Thomas It is those French wines that did it. Martin I have been beyond the earth. In Paradise, in that happy townland, I have seen the shining people. They were all doing one thing or another, but not one of them was at work. All that they did was but the overflowing of their idleness, and their days were a dance bred of the secret frenzy of their hearts, or a battle where the sword made a sound that was like laughter. Thomas You went away sober from out of my hands; they had a right to have minded you better. Martin No man can be alive, and what is paradise but fullness of life, if whatever he sets his hand to in the daylight cannot carry him from exaltation to exaltation, and if he does not rise into the frenzy of contemplation in the night silence. Events that are not begotten in joy are misbegotten and darken the world, and nothing is begotten in joy if the joy of a thousand years has not been crushed into a moment. Thomas And I offered to let you go to Dublin in the coach! Martin Giving banner to Paudeen. Give me the lamp. The lamp has not yet been lighted and the world is to be consumed! Goes into inner room. Thomas Seeing Andrew. Is it here you are, Andrew? What are these beggars doing? Was this door thrown open too? Why did you not keep order? I will go for the constables to help us! Andrew You will not find them to help you. They were scattering themselves through the drinking-houses of the town, and why wouldn’t they? Thomas Are you drunk too? You are worse than Martin. You are a disgrace! Andrew Disgrace yourself! Coming here to be making an attack on me and badgering me and disparaging me! And what about yourself that turned me to be a hypocrite? Thomas What are you saying? Andrew You did, I tell you! Weren’t you always at me to be regular and to be working and to be going through the day and the night without company and to be thinking of nothing but the trade? What did I want with a trade? I got a sight of the fairy gold one time in the mountains. I would have found it again and brought riches from it but for you keeping me so close to the work. Thomas Oh, of all the ungrateful creatures! You know well that I cherished you, leading you to live a decent, respectable life. Andrew You never had respect for the ancient ways. It is after the mother you take it, that was too soft and too lumpish, having too much of the English in her blood. Martin is a