The Unicorn from the Stars

her when he did see her; and that is what no son of your own could do and he to meet you at the foot of the gallows. Johnny If I did know you, I knew too much of you since the first beginning of my life! What reward did I ever get travelling with you? What store did you give me of cattle or of goods? What provision did I get from you by day or by night but your own bad character to be joined on to my own, and I following at your heels, and your bags tied round about me! Nanny 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 Diemen’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 You think yourself very wise, Johnny Bacach. Can you tell me, now, who that man is? Johnny Some decent lad, I suppose, with a good way of living and a mind to send up his name upon the roads. Paudeen You that have been gaoled this eight months know little of this countryside. It isn’t a limping stroller like yourself the Boys would let come among them. But I know. I went to the drill a few nights and I skinning kids for the mountainy men. In a quarry beyond the drill is⁠—they have their plans made⁠—it’s the square house of the Brownes is to be made an attack on and plundered. Do you know, now, who is the leader they are waiting for? Johnny How would I know that? Paudeen

Singing.

Oh, Johnny Gibbons, my five hundred healths to you.
It is long you are away from us over the sea!

Johnny Standing up excitedly. Sure that man could not be Johnny Gibbons that is outlawed! Paudeen I asked news of him from the old lad, and I bringing in the drink along with him. “Don’t be asking questions,” says he; “take the treat he gives you,” says he. “If a lad that has a high heart has a mind to rouse the neighbours,” says he, “and to stretch out his hand to all that pass the road, it is in France he learned it,” says he, “the place he is but lately come from, and where the wine does be standing open in tubs. Take your treat when you get it,” says he, “and make no delay or all might be discovered and put an end to.” Johnny He came over the sea from France! It is Johnny Gibbons, surely, but it seems to me they were calling him by some other name. Paudeen A man on his keeping might go by a hundred names. Would he be telling it out to us that he never saw before, and we with that clutch of chattering women along with us? Here he is coming now. Wait till you see is he the lad I think him to be.