Three Wonder Plays.

by Lady I. A. Gregory.

THE DRAGON

ACT I

PERSONS

_The King_

_The Queen_.

_The Princess Nuala_.

_The Dall Glic_ (THE BLIND WISE MAN).

_The Nurse_.

_The Prince of the Marshes_.

_Ma.n.u.s, King of Sorcha_.

_Fintan, The Astrologer_.

_Taig_.

_Sibby_ (TAIG'S MOTHER).

_Gatekeeper_.

_Two Aunts of the Prince of the Marshes_.

_Foreign Men Bringing in Food_.

_The Dragon_.

ACT I

_Scene: A room in the King's house at Burren.

Large window at back with deep window seat.

Doors right and left. A small table and some chairs_.

_Dall Glic: (Coming in with tray, which he puts on table. Goes back to door.)_ You can come in, King. There is no one here.

_King: (Coming in.)_ That's very good. I was in dread the Queen might be in it.

_Dall Glic_: It is a good thought I had bringing it in here, and she gone to give learning to the Princess. She is not likely to come this side. It would be a great pity to annoy her.

_King: (Hastily swallowing a mouthful.)_ Look out now the door and keep a good watch. The time she will draw upon me is when I am eating my little bite.

_Dall Glic_: I'll do that. What I wouldn't see with my one eye, there's no other would see with three.

_King_: A month to-day since I wed with her, and well pleased I am to be back in my own place. I give you word my teeth are rusting with the want of meat. On the journey I got no fair play. She wouldn't be willing to see me nourish myself, unless maybe with the marrow bone of a wren.

_Dall Glic_: Sure she lays down she is but thinking of the good of your health.

_King_: Maybe so. She is apt to be paying too much attention to what will be for mine and for the world's good. I kept my health fair enough, and the first wife not begrudging me my enough.

I don't know what in the world led me not to stop as I was.

_Dall Glic_: It is what you were saying, it was for the good of the Princess Nuala, and of yourself.

_King_: That is what herself laid down. It would be a great ease to my mind, she was saying, to have in the house with the young girl, a far-off cousin of the King of Alban, and that had been conversation woman in his Court.

_Dall Glic_: So it might be too. She is a great manager of people.

_King_: She is that ...I think I hear her coming.... Throw a cloth over the plates.

_Queen: (Coming in.)_ I was in search of you.

_King_: I thought you were in Nuala's sunny parlour, learning her to play music and to go through books.

_Queen_: That is what I thought to do. But I hadn't hardly started to teach her the principles of conversation and the branches of relationships and kindred of the big people of the earth, when she plucked off the coverings I had put over the cages, and set open their doors, till the fiery birds of Sabes and the canaries of the eastern world were screeching around my head, giving out every cla.s.s of cry and call.

_King_: So they would too.

_Queen_: The royal eagles stirred up till I must quit the place with their squawking, and the enchanted swans raising up their heads and pecking at the beadwork on my gown.

_King_: Ah, she has a wish for the birds of the air, that are by nature light and airy the same as herself.

_Queen:_ It is time for her to turn her mind to good sense. What's that? (_Whipping cloth from tray_.) Is it that you are eating again, and it is but one half-hour since your breakfast?

_King_: Ah, that wasn't a breakfast you'd call a breakfast.

_Queen_: Very healthy food, oaten meal flummery with whey, and a griddle-cake; dandelion tea and sorrel from the field.

_King_: My old fathers ate their enough of wild herbs and the like in the early time of the world.

I'm thinking that it is in my nature to require a good share of nourishment as if to make up for the hardships they went through.

_Queen_: What now have you within that pastry wall?

_King_: It is but a little leveret pie.