No More Learning

_

FIRST MERCHANT.

Cry out at cross-roads and at chapel doors
And market-places that we buy men's souls,
Giving so great a price that men may live
In mirth and ease until the famine ends.

[_TEIG and SHEMUS go out. _

MAIRE [_kneeling_].

Destroyers of souls, may God destroy you quickly!

FIRST MERCHANT.

No curse can overthrow the immortal demons.

MAIRE.

You shall at last dry like dry leaves, and hang
Nailed like dead vermin to the doors of God.

FIRST MERCHANT.

You shall be ours. This famine shall not cease.
You shall eat grass, and dock, and dandelion,
And fail till this stone threshold seem a wall,
And when your hands can scarcely drag your body
We shall be near you.

[_To SECOND MERCHANT. _

Bring the meal out.
[_The SECOND MERCHANT brings the bag of meal from the
pantry. _

Burn it. [_MAIRE faints. _
Now she has swooned, our faces go unscratched;
Bring me the gray hen, too.

_The SECOND MERCHANT goes out through the door and
returns with the hen strangled. He flings it on the
floor. While he is away the FIRST MERCHANT makes up
the fire. The FIRST MERCHANT then fetches the pan of
milk from the pantry, and spills it on the ground. He
returns, and brings out the wolf, and throws it down by
the hen. _

These need much burning.
This stool and this chair here will make good fuel.

[_He begins breaking the chair. _

My master will break up the sun and moon
And quench the stars in the ancestral night
And overturn the thrones of God and the angels.




ACT II.


_A great hall in the castle of the COUNTESS CATHLEEN.
There is a large window at the farther end, through
which the forest is visible.