Three Wonder Plays. Lady Gregory

Ah, that wasn't a breakfast you'd call a breakfast.

      Queen: Very healthy food, oaten meal flummery with whey, and a griddle-cake; dandelion tea and sorrel from the field.

      King: My old fathers ate their enough of wild herbs and the like in the early time of the world. I'm thinking that it is in my nature to require a good share of nourishment as if to make up for the hardships they went through.

      Queen: What now have you within that pastry wall?

      King: It is but a little leveret pie.

      Queen: (Poking with fork.) Leveret! What's this in it? The thickness of a blanket of beef; calves' sweetbreads; cocks' combs; balls mixed with livers and with spice. You to so much as taste of it, you'll be crippled and crappled with the gout, and roaring out in your pain.

      King: I tell you my generations have enough done of fasting and for making little of the juicy meats of the world.

      Queen: And the waste of it! Goose eggs and jellies. … That much would furnish out a dinner for the whole of the King of Alban's Court. King: Ah, I wouldn't wish to be using anything at all, only for to gather strength for to steer the business of the whole of the kingdom!

      Queen: Have you enough ate now, my dear? Are you satisfied?

      King: I am not. I would wish for a little taste of that saffron cake having in it raisins of the sun.

      Queen: Saffron! Are you raving? You to have within you any of the four-and-twenty sicknesses of the race, it would throw it out in red blisters on your skin.

      King: Let me just taste one little slab of that venison ham.

      Queen: (Poking with a fork.) It would take seven chewings! Sudden death it would be! Leave it alone now and rise up. To keep in health every man should quit the table before he is satisfied —there are some would walk to the door and back with every bite.

      King: Is it that I am to eat my meal standing, the same as a crane in a shallow, or moving from tuft to thistle like you'd see a jennet on the high road?

      Queen: Well, at the least, let you drink down a share of this tansy juice. I was telling you it would be answerable to your health.

      King: You are doing entirely too much for me.

      Queen: Sure I am here to be comfortable to you. This house before I came into it was but a ship without a rudder! Here now, take the spoon in your hand.

      Dall Glic: Leave it there, Queen, and I'll engage he'll swallow it down bye-and-bye.

      Queen: Is it that you are meddling, Dall Glic? It is time some person took you in hand. I wonder now could that dark eye of yours be cured?

      Dall Glic: It is given in that it can not, by doctors and by druids.

      Queen: That is a pity now, it gives you a sort of a one-sided look. It might not be so hard a thing to put out the sight of the other.

      Dall Glic: I'd sooner leave them the way they are.

      Queen: I'll put a knot on my handkerchief till such time as I can give my mind to it. … Now, my dear (to King), make no more delay. It is right to drink it down after your meal. The stomach to be bare empty, the medicine might prey upon the body till it would be wore away and consumed.

      King: Time enough. Let it settle now for a minute.

      Queen: Here, now, I'll hold your nose the way you will not get the taste of it.

      (She holds spoon to his mouth. A ball flies in at window; he starts and medicine is spilled.)

      Princess: (Coming in with Nurse.) Is it true what they are telling me?

      Queen: Do you see that you near hit the King with your ball, and, what is worse again, you have his medicine spilled from the spoon.

      Princess: (Patting him.) Poor old King.

      Queen: Have you your lessons learned?

      Princess: (Throwing books in the air.) Neither line nor letter of them! Poem book! Brehon Laws! I have done with books! I am seventeen years old to-day!

      Queen: There is no one would think it and you so flighty as you are.

      Princess: (To King.) Is it true that the cook is gone away?

      King: (Aghast.) What's that you're saying?

      Queen: Don't be annoying the King's mind with such things. He should be hidden from every trouble and care.

      Princess: Was it you sent him away?

      Queen: Not at all. If he went it was through foolishness and pride.

      Princess: It is said in the house that you annoyed him.

      Queen: I never annoyed any person in my life, unless it might be for their own good. But it fails some to recognise their best friend. Just teaching him I was to pickle onion thinnings as it was done at the King of Alban's Court.

      Princess: Didn't he know that before?

      Queen: Whether or no, he gave me very little thanks, but turned around and asked his wages. Hurrying him and harrying him he said I was, and away with him, himself and his four-and-twenty apprentices.

      King: That is bad news, and pitiful news.

      Queen: Do not be troubling yourself at all. It will be easy find another.

      King: It might not be easy to find so good a one. A great pity! A dinner or a supper not to be rightly dressed is apt to give no pleasure in the eating or in the bye-and-bye.

      Queen: I have taken it in hand. I have a good headpiece. I put out a call with running lads and with the army captains through the whole of the five provinces; and along with that, I have it put up on tablets at the post office.

      Princess: I am sorry the old one to be gone. To remember him is nearly the farthest spot in my memory.

      Queen: (Sharply.) If you want the house to be under your hand only, it is best for you to settle into one of your own.

      Princess: Give me the little rush cabin by the stream and I'll be content.

      Queen: If you mind yourself and profit by my instruction it is maybe not a cabin you will be moving to but a palace.

      Princess: I'm tired of palaces. There are too many people in them.

      Queen: That is talking folly. When you settle yourself it must be in the station where you were born.

      Princess: I have no mind to settle myself yet awhile.

      Nurse: Ah, you will not be saying that the time Mr. Right will come down the chimney, and will give you the marks and tokens of a king.

      Queen: There might have some come looking for her before this, if it was not for you petting and pampering her the way you do, and encouraging her flightiness and follies. It is likely she will get no offers till such time as I will have taught her the manners and the right customs of courts.

      Nurse: Sure I am acquainted with courts myself. Wasn't it I fostered comely Manus that is presently King of Sorcha, since his father went out of the world? And as to lovers coming to look for her! They do be coming up to this as plenty as the eye could hold them, and she refusing them, and they laying the blame upon the King!

      King: That is so, they laying the blame upon myself. There was the uncle of the King of Leinster; he never sent me another car-load of asparagus from the time you banished him away.

      Princess: