Three Wonder Plays | Page 8

my head, I must leap up to meet them till I can hardly
tell what is my right element, is it the high air or is it the loosened
spring-tide!
_Queen_: Stop your nonsense talk. She is gone wild and raving with
the great luck that is come to her!
_(Prince has stood up, and is watching her eagerly.)_
_Princess_: I feel a wind at this very time that is blowing from the
wilderness of the sea, and I am changing with it.... There. _(Pulls down
her hair.)_ Let my mane go free! I will race you, Prince, I will race you!
The wind of March will not overtake me, Prince, and I running on the
top of the white waves!
_(Runs out; Prince entranced, rushes to door.)_
_Aunts: (Catching hold of him.)_ Are you going mad wild like herself?
_Prince_: Oh, I will go after her!
_First Aunt: (Clutching him)_ Do not! She will drag you to destruction.
_Prince: (Struggling to door.)_ What matter! Let me go or she will
escape me! _(Shaking himself free.)_ I will never stop till I come to
her.
_(He rushes out, Second Aunt still holding on to him.)_
_First Aunt_: What at all has come upon him? I never knew him this
way before!
_(She trots after him.)_
_Princess: (Comes leaping in by window.)_ They are gone running the
road to Muckanish! But they won't find me!
_Queen_: You have a right to be ashamed of yourself and your
play-game. It's easy for you to go joking, having neither cark nor care:
that is no way to treat the second best match in Ireland!
_King_: You were saying you had your mind made up to take him.
_Princess_: It failed 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