You think
yourself
very wise, Johnny Bacach.
Yeats
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!
