The Fiddler's House, Colum

• ACT I
• JAMES. ... "Well then," says I, "don't ask me to do unreasonable things. I'm fond of Anne Hourican, and not another girl will I marry. What's money, after all?" says I, "there's gold on the whin-bushes if you only knew it." And he had to leave it at that.
• JAMES. ... "It's a poem to yourself, though your name doesn't come into it. (Gives paper) Let no one see it, Anne, at least not for the present. And now, good-bye.
• CONN. And is a man to have no life to himself? But sure you know nothing at all about it. I'm going out now to give Brian MacConnell a hand.
• CONN. ... (Brian MacConnell comes to the door) I was just going out to you, Brian. I was telling the girl here that it's not right to neglect the boy that's giving you a day's work out of his own goodness.
• CONN. God help them that are depending on the land and the weather for the bit they put into their heads. It's no wonder that the people here are the sort they are, harassed, anxious people.
• ANNE. That God may rest my mother. It's a pity she never lived to come back to the place. But we ought to be praising grandmother night and day, for leaving this place to Maire.
• CONN. Ay, but the road for the fiddler. I'm five years settled here, and I come to be as well know as the begging ass, and there is much thought about me. Fiddling, let me tell you, isn't like a boy's whistling. It can't be kept up on nothing.
• CONN. Listen, Brian, I've a reason for not going to Flynn's. Would you believe it, Brian, Flynn spoke to me about the few shillings I owe him?
• CONN (with dignity). Thank you, Brian. There's few I'd let put me under a compliment; but I take it from you. Maire, as I said, is a careful girl, but some of us must have our freedom. Besides, Brian, the bird that sings lone sings slow. The man of art must have his listeners.
• CONN. I'll give you this advice, and it's proper advice to give a girl thinking of marrying. Never ask of your mankind where they're going.
• CONN. You're a good girl, Anne, and he'll be lucky that gets you. And don't be grieving that you're not bringing James Moynihan a fortune. You're bringing him the decency of birth and rearing. You're like the lone pigeon I often think--the pet that doesn't fly, and keeps near the house.
• CONN (at window). Hush now, here's the other, your sister Maire. She's like the wild pigeon of the woods.
• MAIRE. We'd have no right to take another day from Brian. And when there's no one here to-morrow, you and me could draw some of the turf.
• MAIRE. Indeed I did. I met James Moynihan.
• ANNE. He's going to Flynn's again.
• MAIRE. Disgracing us again.
• MAIRE. You're going to Moynihan's to-night, and I'm going, too. But I'm going to settle this first. Once and for all I'm going to settle this.
• CONN. ... Now, listen to me, Maire; and you listen, too, Anne. Both of you would like to see your father having what's his due after all, honour and respect.
• MAIRE. Both of us would like to see our father earn the same.
• CONN. What has she against me, Anne?
• MAIRE. All the promises you broke.
• MAIRE (rising). Why need you play in Flynn's? You're as good as any that goes there.
• MAIRE (as an apology). I'm out often, I know, but I think as much as ever of the house, and about you and father. You know we couldn't let him go to the Feis at Ardagh. We couldn't let him go off like a rambling fiddler.
• BRIAN. Well, what's a day after all? Many's the day and night I put in thinking on you.
• BRIAN. Hugh will be there with that woman that brought him the big fortune; and I want you to take the shine out of her.
• BRIAN. I'm not going to be bother by the like. Why can't you come?
• CONN. I promise Maire.
• CONN. God help them if that's all they know. We played against each other at the Granard Feis. He got the prize, but everybody knew that it was me played the best.
• BRIAN. It's said that since you settled down you lost your art.
• ANNE. We're going somewhere and Brian might come with us.
• MAIRE. Every one is going to Moynihan's.
• BRIAN. No. I'm going where there's men.
• CONN (at door). I never forget, I never forget. The Granard Feis is as fresh in my mind as the day I played at it. Shawn Heffernan, indeed! I never forget. I never forget.
• ACT II
• ANNE. Indeed it would have been better to go home, but I was sure that Brian MacConnell would come in.
• MAIRE. Conner's the best-looking boy in the country. Was it noticed that we were together often?
• ANNE. I didn't like the way you talked to father.
• ANNE. She never took her eyes off the pair of you. You know she's very fond of Connor.
• MAIRE. Father wasn't in at all, last night.
• CONN. I wonder that a man comes in at all! The complaints against him are like the Queen's Speech, prepared beforehand.
• CONN. I went over to Flynn's, but I had good reason for going there. (He puts the fiddle down on the table)
• ANNE. Will we ever get out of it, Maire?
• JAMES. "Anne Hourican is too young," said my father; "she's a nice girl, and a good girl, but she's too young."
• JAMES (turning to Maire). Ten years from this after would still think Anne too young. And late marriages, as everybody knows, is the real weakness of the country.
• MAIRE. How? By wakening up. You have the right. When we have the right, we ought to be able to do anything we like with the people around us.
• CONN. It will be a long time till I break my word to you again.
• MAIRE (startled). And was it to Flynn's that Brian MacConnell went?
• MAIRE. That's talk just. It's time you thought of your own place and your own children. It's time you gave up caring for the praise of foolish people.
• CONN. God help you, if that's your way of thinking! Sure the world knows that a man is born with the gift, and isn't the gift then the sign of the grace of God?
• CONN. God help me that ever came into this country at all. (He sits down on the armchair, his hands resting on his stick) I had friends once, and was well thought of; I can tell you that, my daughter.
• MAIRE. Why can't you stay here? There's lots to be done here. Our fields are a laughing-stock to our neighbours, they're that poor and wasted. Let us put all our minds into working, and have a good place of our own.
• CONN. The people of this place. The people you want to shine before.
• MAIRE. Do I? Maybe I do. Every girl does the like.
• MAIRE. You think I'm like yourself, wanting the praise of the people.
• MAIRE. And fiddlers and women oughtn't be hard on each other.
• MAIRE (with cry). Anne, daughter, I'll be very lonesome for you.
• CONN. Still I'm sorry for him! That poor Heffernan! He'll never hold up his head again.
• MAIRE. I was thinking of the Feis at Ardagh.
• CONN. Sure you're not joking with me, Maire?
• MAIRE. Father, we were always together.
• She hands him the fiddle. Conn, Marie, James, Anne, are at table.
• ACT III
• CONN However it is, I could never play my best in this place. The houses are too scattered, I often think. And it doesn't do for the fiddler to remain too long in one place. The people get too used to him. Virgil made better songs than any man, but if Virgil was sung in the fairs constant, divil much heed would be given to his songs.
• CONN. Another thing, James Moynihan, Ribbonism and the Land League ruined the country.
• CONN. I'm thinking that when my daughters are settled I'll have the years before me. I was reared in a place south of this, and I'd like to go back there for a while.
• JAMES. Are you content to marry me in the town of Ardagh, after the Feis, as Maire wishes?
• MAIRE. I never looked on the place as my own.
• CONN. Ah, what is there ego bring me back to this country, Maire?
• MAIRE. Would you leave the shelter and the settled life? Would you go not he road by yourself?
• MAIRE. Ah, but do you not remember the prayers that mother used to say for us to get some shelter? Do you not remember how proud and glad we were when we come by a place of our own?
• CONN. Sure, I'd be getting ould, and staying in the chimney-corner, with no one to talk to me, for you'd be going to a place of your own, and Anne? after a while, would have too much to mind.
• CONN. Well, one is always meeting new life upon the roads, and I want to spend the years I have before me going from place to place.
• MAIRE (going to him). If you took to the roads, I'd think I ought to go with you, for we were always together.
• MAIRE. Wild and free-handed! Are all men like that? Wild and free-handed! But that's not the sort of man I want to look to now.
• BRIAN. You don't know how I care for you, or you couldn't talk to me like that. Many's the time I left the spade in the ground, and went across the bogs and the rushes, to think of you. You come between me and the work I'd be doing. Ay, and if Heaven opened out before me, you would come between me and Heaven itself.
• MAIRE. Indeed I think of you. Until to-day I'd neither laugh nor cry but on account of you.
• BRIAN. Give me your promise, Maire.
• MAIRE. We'll talk on the road. There's the blackbird. I'll hear him every evening on the road, and I'll think I'm a day nearer home.
• MAIRE. There was never a man but failed me some time. They all leave me to face the world alone.
• MAIRE. I thought you were strong, but I see now that you are only a man who forces himself to harsh behaviour. I have my own way to go; my father wants to go back to the roads, and it's right that I should be with him, to watch over him.
• MAIRE. I'll have the quiet of evening, and my own thoughts, and I'll follow the music; I'll laugh and hold up my head again.
• JAMES. I'm often taken with the thought of the road! Going to the fair on a bright morning, I'd often wish to leave everything aside and follow the road.
• MAIRE. There is no need for you to come back here, father.
• MAIRE. Go back to the fiddler's life, and I'll go back with you. We'll see Anne and James at Ardagh, and we'll be at their marriage. (She turns round as though to take farewell of the house) It's right that this place should go to Anne. The house wasn't for you, and it wasn't for me either, I begin to think.
• ANNE. You bid Brian MacConnell go from you, and where else would you go but on the roads?
• CONN. ... Well, here's Conn Hourican the fiddler going on his travels again. No man knows how his own life will end; but them who have the gift have to follow the gift. I'm leaving this house behind me; and maybe the time will come when I'll be climbing the hills and seeing this little house with the tears in my eyes. I'm leaving the land behind me, too; but what's land after all against the music that comes from the far, strange places, when the night is on the ground, and the bird in the grass is quiet?
• MAIRE. Tell Brian MacConnell that when we meet again maybe we can be kinder to each other.