Act 3 — Scene III.
Reading edition
—A hovel by the sea among the Balmy Stones of Claptrapatrick, near Ballyidiocee. Enter Seamus as usual.
Seamus: Where’s himself?
Sean: Musha avick, how many more times will I be telling you in this play that he’s asleep, God help him, the holy man, and maybe dreaming, if he’s able, of the grand goings on there’ll be when they’re after making him Pope and King of all the world, and he a scraggy, thin, weakly man would put you in mind of an old hen, or maybe a worn-out jackass to be taken from the shafts and turned away among the roots and grasses to die.
Peadar: Sure, I’m thinking that’s not what he’d be dreaming at all, but the great joy of making combats and running here and there in high spirits, with the Men of Gunn around him.
Eamon (mournfully): The heart’s broke in me, Seamus Smitha, for it’s all put aside and finished now, and there’s no more doings I can contrive; and there’s nothing left but to go back, the way we came, among the Bohunks and Dagoes, and die in a little dirty state in the hind end of America.
The Widow Markiewicz (scornfully): And isn’t there land called England over across a dirty bit of water would hardly wet your boots to cross it; where do be fine houses, and gold ornaments, and a stupid uncomplaining people to govern, and a crazy Parliament over it all is calling for ever on the Mother of God to send an alternative Government?
The Men of Gunn: Gee whiz!!
The Widow: How do you say, Eamon! Will you take this country and people and make a new Ireland there; and be leaving the North and the South to slit the throats on each other?
Eamon (in a great voice): I’ll do it, so.... And won’t it be the fine adventure to hold it over the heads of Cosgrave and Mulcahy, when I’m sitting in the seat of Lloyd George with the Kings and Emperors and Presidents of the world around under my feet, and Boûgus beside me, and Naisi and Narsti on my either hand, and the Men of Gunn holding the fair land of England, and me Lord of it all?
Bridgeen: And haven’t you the right, Mister honey, to be sitting in that place and taking your ease, and a sup of whiskey itself maybe; for it’s you surely is destroyed by thinking and fighting in these days in Ireland, and where would there be your match for craft and savagery in all the western islands?
Eamon: I have so. (To Naisi and Narsti): Call up the Men of Gunn, and let Boûgus be there, and Seamus, and Sean, and Peadar Roabensôn, and any other man would make his future, so; and I’ll lead them out to England, or Russia itself if need be, and split the brainpan on Lloyd George and all of them, and be master of the world in their places; and so I will. (They go out.)
The Widow Markiewicz (looking after them as they go): And isn’t he the fine handsome lad to be riding forth on a great adventure; and he, God help him, nothing but a poor crazy scholar, with a great savagery and bitterness in his heart?