New Irish Comedies | Page 9

along with her.
_Shawn Early:_ It is Davideen, her brother, that is innocent. He was
left rambling from place to place the time she was put within walls.
_(Cracked Mary and Davideen come in. Miss Joyce clings to
Hyacinth's arm.)_
_Cracked Mary:_ Give me a charity now, the way I'll be keeping a little
rag on me and a little shoe to my foot. Give me the price of tobacco and
the price of a grain of tea; for tobacco is blessed and tea is good for the
head.
_Shawn Early:_ Give out now, Davideen, a verse of "The Heather
Broom." That's a splendid tune.
_Davideen: (Sings.)_
Oh, don't you remember, As it's often I told you, As you passed
through our kitchen, That a new broom sweeps clean? Come out now
and buy one, Come out now and try one--
_(His voice cracks, and he breaks off, laughing foolishly.)_
_Mrs. Broderick:_ He has a sweet note in his voice, but to know or to
understand what he is doing, he couldn't do it.
_Cracked Mary:_ Leave him a while. His song that does be clogged
through the daytime, the same as the sight is clogged with myself. It
isn't but in the night time I can see anything worth while. Davy is a
proper boy, a proper boy; let you leave Davy alone. It was himself
came before me ere yesterday in the morning, and I walking out the
madhouse door.
_Shawn Early:_ It is often there will fiddlers be waiting to play for
them coming out, that are maybe the finest dancers of the day.
_Cracked Mary:_ Waiting before me he was, and no one to give him
knowledge unless it might be the Big Man. I give you my word he near
ate the face off me. As glad to see me he was as if I had dropped from
heaven. Come hither to me, Davy, and give no heed to them. It is as
dull and as lagging as themselves you would be maybe, and the world
to be different and the moon to change its courses with the sun.
_Bartley Fallon:_ I never would wish to be put within a madhouse
before I'd die.

_Cracked Mary:_ Sorry they were losing me. There was not a better
prisoner in it than my own four bones.
_Bartley Fallon:_ Squeals you would hear from it, they were telling me,
like you'd hear at the ringing of the pigs. Savages with whips beating
them the same as hounds. You would not stand and listen to them for a
hundred sovereigns. Of all bad things that can come upon a man, it is
certain the madness is the last.
_Miss Joyce:_ It is likely she was well content in it, and the friends she
had being of her own class.
_Cracked Mary:_ What way could you make friends with people would
be always talking? Too much of talk and of noise there was in it,
cursing, and praying, and tormenting; some dancing, some singing, and
one writing a letter to a she devil called Lucifer. I not to close my ears,
I would have lost the sound of Davideen's song.
_Miss Joyce:_ It was good shelter you got in it through the bad weather,
and not to be out perishing under cold, the same as the starlings in the
snow.
_Cracked Mary:_ I was my seven months in it, my seven months and a
day. My good clothes that went astray on me and my boots. My fine
gaudy dress was all moth-eated, that was worked with the wings of
birds. To fall into dust and ashes it did, and the wings rose up into the
high air.
Bartley Fallen. Take care would the madness catch on to ourselves the
same as the chin-cough or the pock.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, that's not the way it goes travelling from one to
another, but some that are naturally cracked and inherit it.
_Shawn Early:_ It is a family failing with her tribe. The most of them
get giddy in their latter end.
_Miss Joyce:_ It might be it was sent as a punishment before birth, for
to show the power of God.
_Peter Tannian:_ It is tea-drinking does it, and that is the reason it is on
the wife it is apt to fall for the most part.
_Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, there's some does be thinking their wives isn't

right, and there's others think they are too right. There to be any fear of
me going astray, I give you my word I'd lose my wits on the moment.
_Hyacinth Halvey:_ There are some say it is the moon.
_Shawn Early:_ So it is too. The time the moon is going back, the
blood that is in a person does be weakening, but when