Three Wonder Plays | Page 9

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

ACT II
_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 wild and taking my own way,
mocking and humbugging.
_Nurse_: I never will give in that there is no way to save you from that
Dragon that is foretold to be your destruction. I would give the four
divisions of the world, and Ireland along with them, if I could see you
pelting your ball in at the window the same as an hour ago!
_Princess_: Maybe you will, so long as it will hurt nobody.
_Nurse_: Ah, sure it's no wonder there to be the tracks of tears upon
your face, and that great terror before you.
_Princess_: