When you were an acorn on the tree-top,
Then was I an eagle cock;
Now that you are a withered old block,
Still am I an eagle cock.
Then was I an eagle cock;
Now that you are a withered old block,
Still am I an eagle cock.
Yeats
He likes nothing so well as a feather.
FOOL.
He left me nothing but the bones and feathers. Nothing but the
feathers, though I had stolen it.
CUCHULAIN.
Give me that horn! Quarrels here, too! [_Drinks. _] What is there
between you two that is worth a quarrel? Out with it!
BLIND MAN.
Where would he be but for me? I must be always thinking--thinking to get
food for the two of us, and when we've got it, if the moon is at the
full or the tide on the turn, he'll leave the rabbit in the snare till
it is full of maggots, or let the trout slip back through his hands
into the stream.
[_The FOOL has begun singing while the BLIND MAN is
speaking. _
FOOL [_singing_].
When you were an acorn on the tree-top,
Then was I an eagle cock;
Now that you are a withered old block,
Still am I an eagle cock.
BLIND MAN.
Listen to him, now. That's the sort of talk I have to put up with day
out, day in.
[_The FOOL is putting the feathers into his hair.
CUCHULAIN takes a handful of feathers out of a heap the
FOOL has on the bench beside him, and out of the FOOL'S
hair, and begins to wipe the blood from his sword with
them. _
FOOL.
He has taken my feathers to wipe his sword. It is blood that he is
wiping from his sword.
CUCHULAIN.
[_Goes up to door at back and throws away feathers. _]
They are standing about his body. They will not awaken him, for all his
witchcraft.
BLIND MAN.
It is that young champion that he has killed. He that came out of
Aoife's country.
