



Produced by Joseph R. Hauser, Turgut Dincer and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. Music
transcribed by Brian Foley using LilyPond.









   _By Lady Gregory_


   Irish Folk-History Plays

     First Series: The Tragedies
       Grania. Kincora. Dervorgilla

     Second Series: The Tragic Comedies
       The Canavans. The White Cockade. The Deliverer

   New Comedies
     The Bogie Men. The Full Moon. Coats. Damer's
     Gold. McDonough's Wife

   Our Irish Theatre
     A Chapter of Autobiography

   Seven Short Plays
     Spreading the News. Hyacinth Halvey. The Rising
     of the Moon. The Jackdaw. The Workhouse Ward.
     The Travelling Man. The Gaol Gate

   The Golden Apple
     A Kiltartan Play for Children




   Seven Short Plays

   By

   Lady Gregory


   G. P. Putnam's Sons
   New York and London
   The Knickerbocker Press
   1916


   COPYRIGHT, 1903, by LADY AUGUSTA GREGORY

   COPYRIGHT, 1904, by LADY GREGORY

   COPYRIGHT, 1905, by LADY GREGORY

   COPYRIGHT, 1906, by LADY GREGORY

   COPYRIGHT, 1909, by LADY GREGORY


These plays have been copyrighted and published simultaneously in the
United States and Great Britain.

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign
languages.

All acting rights, both professional and amateur, are reserved in the
United States, Great Britain, and all countries of the Copyright
Union, by the author. Performances forbidden and right of presentation
reserved.

Application for the right of performing these plays or reading them in
public should be made to Samuel French, 28 West 38th St., New York
City, or 26 South Hampton St., Strand, London.


Second Impression

The Knickerbocker Press, New York




DEDICATION


_To you, W. B. YEATS, good praiser, wholesome dispraiser, heavy-handed
judge, open-handed helper of us all, I offer a play of my plays for
every night of the week, because you like them, and because you have
taught me my trade._

   AUGUSTA GREGORY

   _Abbey Theatre,
     May 1, 1909._




CONTENTS

                                                PAGE

   SPREADING THE NEWS                              1

   HYACINTH HALVEY                                29

   THE RISING OF THE MOON                         75

   THE JACKDAW                                    93

   THE WORKHOUSE WARD                            137

   THE TRAVELLING MAN                            155

   THE GAOL GATE                                 173

   MUSIC FOR THE SONGS IN THE PLAYS              189

   NOTES, &C.                                    196




SPREADING THE NEWS

PERSONS

   _Bartley Fallon._
   _Mrs. Fallon._
   _Jack Smith._
   _Shawn Early._
   _Tim Casey._
   _James Ryan._
   _Mrs. Tarpey._
   _Mrs. Tully._
   _A Policeman_ (JO MULDOON).
   _A Removable Magistrate._

SPREADING THE NEWS

   _Scene: The outskirts of a Fair. An Apple Stall, Mrs. Tarpey
   sitting at it. Magistrate and Policeman enter._


_Magistrate_: So that is the Fair Green. Cattle and sheep and mud. No
system. What a repulsive sight!

_Policeman_: That is so, indeed.

_Magistrate_: I suppose there is a good deal of disorder in this
place?

_Policeman_: There is.

_Magistrate_: Common assault?

_Policeman_: It's common enough.

_Magistrate_: Agrarian crime, no doubt?

_Policeman_: That is so.

_Magistrate_: Boycotting? Maiming of cattle? Firing into houses?

_Policeman_: There was one time, and there might be again.

_Magistrate_: That is bad. Does it go any farther than that?

_Policeman_: Far enough, indeed.

_Magistrate:_ Homicide, then! This district has been shamefully
neglected! I will change all that. When I was in the Andaman Islands,
my system never failed. Yes, yes, I will change all that. What has
that woman on her stall?

_Policeman:_ Apples mostly--and sweets.

_Magistrate:_ Just see if there are any unlicensed goods
underneath--spirits or the like. We had evasions of the salt tax in the
Andaman Islands.

_Policeman:_ (_Sniffing cautiously and upsetting a heap of apples._) I
see no spirits here--or salt.

_Magistrate:_ (_To Mrs. Tarpey._) Do you know this town well, my good
woman?

_Mrs. Tarpey:_ (_Holding out some apples._) A penny the half-dozen,
your honour.

_Policeman:_ (_Shouting._) The gentleman is asking do you know the
town! He's the new magistrate!

_Mrs. Tarpey:_ (_Rising and ducking._) Do I know the town? I do, to be
sure.

_Magistrate:_ (_Shouting._) What is its chief business?

_Mrs. Tarpey:_ Business, is it? What business would the people here
have but to be minding one another's business?

_Magistrate:_ I mean what trade have they?

_Mrs. Tarpey:_ Not a trade. No trade at all but to be talking.

_Magistrate:_ I shall learn nothing here.

  (_James Ryan comes in, pipe in mouth. Seeing Magistrate he
  retreats quickly, taking pipe from mouth._)

_Magistrate:_ The smoke from that man's pipe had a greenish look; he
may be growing unlicensed tobacco at home. I wish I had brought my
telescope to this district. Come to the post-office, I will telegraph
for it. I found it very useful in the Andaman Islands.

  (_Magistrate and Policeman go out left._)

_Mrs. Tarpey:_ Bad luck to Jo Muldoon, knocking my apples this way and
that way. (_Begins arranging them._) Showing off he was to the new
magistrate.

  (_Enter Bartley Fallon and Mrs. Fallon._)

_Bartley:_ Indeed it's a poor country and a scarce country to be
living in. But I'm thinking if I went to America it's long ago the day
I'd be dead!

_Mrs. Fallon:_ So you might, indeed.

  (_She puts her basket on a barrel and begins putting parcels in
  it, taking them from under her cloak._)

_Bartley:_ And it's a great expense for a poor man to be buried in
America.

_Mrs. Fallon:_ Never fear, Bartley Fallon, but I'll give you a good
burying the day you'll die.

_Bartley:_ Maybe it's yourself will be buried in the graveyard of
Cloonmara before me, Mary Fallon, and I myself that will be dying
unbeknownst some night, and no one a-near me. And the cat itself may be
gone straying through the country, and the mice squealing over the
quilt.

_Mrs. Fallon:_ Leave off talking of dying. It might be twenty years
you'll be living yet.

_Bartley:_ (_With a deep sigh._) I'm thinking if I'll be living at the
end of twenty years, it's a very old man I'll be then!

_Mrs. Tarpey:_ (_Turns and sees them._) Good morrow, Bartley Fallon;
good morrow, Mrs. Fallon. Well, Bartley, you'll find no cause for
complaining to-day; they are all saying it was a good fair.

_Bartley:_ (_Raising his voice._) It was not a good fair, Mrs. Tarpey.
It was a scattered sort of a fair. If we didn't expect more, we got
less. That's the way with me always; whatever I have to sell goes down
and whatever I have to buy goes up. If there's ever any misfortune
coming to this world, it's on myself it pitches, like a flock of crows
on seed potatoes.

_Mrs. Fallon:_ Leave off talking of misfortunes, and listen to Jack
Smith that is coming the way, and he singing.

  (_Voice of Jack Smith heard singing:_)

   I thought, my first love,
     There'd be but one house between you and me,
   And I thought I would find
     Yourself coaxing my child on your knee.
   Over the tide
     I would leap with the leap of a swan,
   Till I came to the side
     Of the wife of the Red-haired man!

  (_Jack Smith comes in; he is a red-haired man, and is carrying
  a hayfork._)

_Mrs. Tarpey:_ That should be a good song if I had my hearing.

_Mrs. Fallon:_ (_Shouting._) It's "The Red-haired Man's Wife."

_Mrs. Tarpey:_ I know it well. That's the song that has a skin on it!

  (_She turns her back to them and goes on arranging her
  apples._)

_Mrs. Fallon:_ Where's herself, Jack Smith?

_Jack Smith:_ She was delayed with her washing; bleaching the clothes
on the hedge she is, and she daren't leave them, with all the tinkers
that do be passing to the fair. It isn't to the fair I came myself,
but up to the Five Acre Meadow I'm going, where I have a contract for
the hay. We'll get a share of it into tramps to-day. (_He lays down
hayfork and lights his pipe._)

_Bartley:_ You will not get it into tramps to-day. The rain will be
down on it by evening, and on myself too. It's seldom I ever started
on a journey but the rain would come down on me before I'd find any
place of shelter.

_Jack Smith:_ If it didn't itself, Bartley, it is my belief you would
carry a leaky pail on your head in place of a hat, the way you'd not
be without some cause of complaining.

  (_A voice heard, "Go on, now, go on out o' that. Go on I
  say."_)

_Jack Smith:_ Look at that young mare of Pat Ryan's that is backing
into Shaughnessy's bullocks with the dint of the crowd! Don't be
daunted, Pat, I'll give you a hand with her.

  (_He goes out, leaving his hayfork._)

_Mrs. Fallon:_ It's time for ourselves to be going home. I have all I
bought put in the basket. Look at there, Jack Smith's hayfork he left
after him! He'll be wanting it. (_Calls._) Jack Smith! Jack
Smith!--He's gone through the crowd--hurry after him, Bartley, he'll be
wanting it.

_Bartley:_ I'll do that. This is no safe place to be leaving it. (_He
takes up fork awkwardly and upsets the basket._) Look at that now! If
there is any basket in the fair upset, it must be our own basket! (_He
goes out to right._)

_Mrs. Fallon:_ Get out of that! It is your own fault, it is. Talk of
misfortunes and misfortunes will come. Glory be! Look at my new
egg-cups rolling in every part--and my two pound of sugar with the
paper broke----

_Mrs. Tarpey:_ (_Turning from stall._) God help us, Mrs. Fallon, what
happened to your basket?

_Mrs. Fallon:_ It's himself that knocked it down, bad manners to him.
(_Putting things up._) My grand sugar that's destroyed, and he'll not
drink his tea without it. I had best go back to the shop for more,
much good may it do him!

  (_Enter Tim Casey._)

_Tim Casey:_ Where is Bartley Fallon, Mrs. Fallon? I want a word with
him before he'll leave the fair. I was afraid he might have gone home
by this, for he's a temperate man.

_Mrs. Fallon:_ I wish he did go home! It'd be best for me if he went
home straight from the fair