The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 3 of 8. The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the Stars

NANNY

That the pain of your front tooth may be in your back tooth, you to be grabbing my share!

    [They snap at tobacco.

ANDREW

Pup, pup, pup! Don’t be snapping and quarrelling now, and you so well treated in this house. It is strollers like yourselves should be for frolic and for fun. Have you ne’er a good song to sing, a song that will rise all our hearts?

PAUDEEN

Johnny Bacach is a good singer, it is what he used to be doing in the fairs, if the oakum of the gaol did not give him a hoarseness within the throat.

ANDREW

Give it out so, a good song, a song will put courage and spirit into any man at all.

JOHNNY [singing]

Come, all ye airy bachelors,
A warning take by me,
A sergeant caught me fowling,
And fired his gun so free.

His comrades came to his relief,
And I was soon trepanned,
And bound up like a woodcock
Had fallen into their hands.

The judge said transportation,
The ship was on the strand;
They have yoked me to the traces
For to plough Van Dieman’s Land!

ANDREW

That’s no good of a song but a melancholy sort of a song. I’d as lief be listening to a saw going through timber. Wait, now, till you will hear myself giving out a tune on the flute.

    [Goes out for it.

JOHNNY

It is what I am thinking there must be a great dearth and a great scarcity of good comrades in this place, a man like that youngster, having means in his hand, to be bringing ourselves and our rags into the house.

PAUDEEN

You think yourself very wise, Johnny Bacach. Can you tell me, now, who that man is?

JOHNNY

Some decent lad, I suppose, with a good way of living and a mind to send up his name upon the roads.

PAUDEEN

You that have been gaoled this eight months know little of this countryside. It isn’t a limping stroller like yourself the Boys would let come among them. But I know. I went to the drill a few nights and I skinning kids for the mountainy men. In a quarry beyond the drill is – they have their plans made – it’s the square house of the Brownes is to be made an attack on and plundered. Do you know, now, who is the leader they are waiting for?

JOHNNY

How would I know that?

PAUDEEN [singing]

Oh, Johnny Gibbons, my five hundred healths to you.
It is long you are away from us over the sea!

JOHNNY [standing up excitedly]

Sure that man could not be Johnny Gibbons that is outlawed!

PAUDEEN

I asked news of him from the old lad, and I bringing in the drink along with him. ‘Don’t be asking questions,’ says he; ‘take the treat he gives you,’ says he. ‘If a lad that has a high heart has a mind to rouse the neighbours,’ says he, ‘and to stretch out his hand to all that pass the road, it is in France he learned it,’ says he, ‘the place he is but lately come from, and where the wine does be standing open in tubs. Take your treat when you get it,’ says he, ‘and make no delay or all might be discovered and put an end to.’

JOHNNY

He came over the sea from France! It is Johnny Gibbons, surely, but it seems to me they were calling him by some other name.

PAUDEEN

A man on his keeping might go by a hundred names. Would he be telling it out to us that he never saw before, and we with that clutch of chattering women along with us? Here he is coming now. Wait till you see is he the lad I think him to be.

MARTIN [coming in]

I will make my banner, I will paint the unicorn on it. Give me that bit of canvas, there is paint over here. We will get no help from the settled men – we will call to the lawbreakers, the tinkers, the sievemakers, the sheepstealers.

    [He begins to make banner.

BIDDY

That sounds to be a queer name of an army. Ribbons I can understand, Whiteboys, Rightboys, Threshers, and Peep o’ Day, but Unicorns I never heard of before.

JOHNNY

It is not a queer name but a very good name. [Takes up lion and unicorn.] It is often you saw that before you in the dock. There is the unicorn with the one horn, and what it is he is going against? The lion of course. When he has the lion destroyed, the crown must fall and be shivered. Can’t you see it is the League of the Unicorns is the league that will fight and destroy the power of England and King George?

PAUDEEN

It is with that banner we will march and the lads in the quarry with us, it is they will have the welcome before him! It won’t be long till we’ll be attacking the Square House! Arms there are in it, riches that would smother the world, rooms full of guineas we will put wax on our shoes walking them; the horses themselves shod with no less than silver!