Three Wonder Plays. Lady Gregory

me to do it! Himself and his counsellors and his seven aunts!

      Queen: He will give out that you are crazed and mad.

      Princess: He will be thankful to his life's end to have got free of me!

      King: I don't know. It seemed to me he was better pleased with you in the finish than in the commencement. But I'm in dread his father may not be well pleased.

      Princess: (Patting him.) Which now of the two of you is the most to be pitied? He to have such a timid son or you to have such an unruly daughter?

      Queen: It is likely he will make an attack on you. There was a war made by the King of Britain on the head of a terrier pup that was sent to him and that made away on the road following hares. It's best for you to make ready to put yourself at the head of your troop.

      King: It's long since I went into my battle dress. I'm in dread it would not close upon my chest.

      Queen: Ah, it might, so soon as you would go through a few hardships in the fight.

      King: If the rest of Adam's race was of my opinion there'd be no fighting in the world at all.

      Queen: It is this child's stubbornness is leading you into it. Go out, Nuala, after the Prince. Tell him you are sorry you made a fool of him.

      Princess: He was that before—thinking to put me sitting and sewing in a cushioned chair, listening to stories of kings making a slaughter of one another.

      Queen: Tell him you have changed your mind, that you were but funning; that you will wed with him yet.

      Princess: I would sooner wed with the King of Poison! I to have to go to his kingdom, I'd sooner go earning my wages footing turf, with a skirt of heavy flannel and a dress of the grey frieze! Himself and his bogs and his frogs!

      Queen: I tell you it is time for you to take a husband.

      Princess: You said that before! And I was giving in a while ago, and I felt the blood of my heart to be rising against it! And I will not give in to you again! It is my own business and I will take my own way.

      Queen: (To King.) This is all one with the raving of a hag against heaven!

      King: What the Queen is saying is right. Try now and come around to it.

      Princess: She has set you against me with her talk!

      Queen: (To King.) It is best for you to lay orders on her.

      Princess: The King is not under your orders!

      Queen: You are striving to make him give in to your own!

      King: I will take orders from no one at all!

      Queen: Bid her go bring back the Prince.

      Princess: I say that I will not!

      Queen: She is standing up against you! Will you give in to that?

      King: I am bothered with the whole of you! I will give in to nothing at all!

      Queen: Make her do your bidding so.

      King: Can't you do as you are told?

      Princess: This concerns myself.

      King: It does, and the whole of us.

      Princess: Do you think you can force me to wed?

      King: I do think it, and I will do it.

      Princess: It will fail you!

      King: It will not! I was too easy with you up to this.

      Princess: Will you turn me out of the house?

      King: I will give you my word, it is little but I will!

      Princess: Then I have no home and no father! It is to my mother you must give an account. You know well it is with the first wife you will go at the Judgment!

      Queen: Is it that you would make threats to the King? And put insults upon myself? Now she is daring and defying you! Let you put an end to it!

      King: I will do that! (Stands up.) I swear by the oath my people swear by, the seven things common to us all; by sun and moon; sea and dew; wind and water; the hours of the day and night, I will give you in marriage and in wedlock to the first man that will come into the house!

      Princess: (Shrinking as from a blow.) It is the Queen has done this.

      Queen: I will give you out the reason, and see will you put blame on me or praise!

      Nurse: Oh, let you stop and not draw it down upon her!

      Queen: It is right for me to tell it; it is true telling! You not to be married and wed by this day twelvemonth, there will be a terrible thing happen you …

      Nurse: Be quiet! Don't you see Fintan himself looking in the window!

      King: Fintan! What is it bring you here on this day?

      Fintan: (A very old man in strange clothes at window.) What brings me is to put my curse upon the whole tribe of kitchen boys that are gone and vanished out of this, without bringing me my request, that was a bit of rendered lard that would limber the swivel of my spy-glass, that is clogged with the dripping of the cave.

      Nurse: And you have no bad news?

      Queen: Nothing to say on the head of the Princess, this being, as it is, her birthday?

      Fintan: What birthday? This is not a birthday that signifies. It is the next will be the birthday concerned with the great story that is foretold.

      Queen: It is right for her to know it.

      King: It is not! It is not!

      Princess: Whatever the story is, let me know it, and not be treated as a child that is without courage or sense.

      Fintan: It's long till I'll come out from my cleft again, and getting no peace or quiet on the ridge of the earth. It is laid down by the stars that cannot lie, that on this day twelvemonth, you yourself will be ate and devoured by a scaly Green Dragon from the North!

      END OF ACT I.

ACT II

       Table of Contents

ACT II

       Table of Contents

      Scene: The Same. Princess and Nurse.

      Nurse: Cheer up now, my honey bird, and don't be fretting.

      Princess: It is not easy to quit fretting, and the terrible story you are after telling me of all that is before and all that is behind me.

      Nurse: They had no right at all to go make you aware of it. The Queen has too much talk. An unlucky stepmother she is to you!

      Princess: It is well for me she is here. It is well I am told the truth, where the whole of you were treating me like a child without sense, so giddy I was and contrary, and petted and humoured by the whole of you. What memory would there be left of me and my little life gone by, but of a headstrong, unruly child with no thought but for myself.

      Nurse: No, but the best in the world, you are; there is no one seeing you pass by but would love you.

      Princess: That is not so. I was