Bound East for Easter Rebellion
By Jay Critchley
Honoring two radical Centennials: texts from Eugene O’Neill’s 1916 debut play in Provincetown, Bound East for Cardiff, and the Ireland’s Easter Rebellion, with
rebel Padraig Pearse’s 1916, Proclamation of the Irish Republic
CHARACTERS:
Padraig Pearse: Leader of the 1916 Uprising, poet, intellectual, educator; author of Proclamation; thirty-something male wearing a green military jacket and cap
Eugene O’Neill: Thirty-something wearing an American Airlines sweater
SCENE ONE:
MUSIC intro: Fiddle or penny whistle
PADRAIG:
READING:
[Proclamation of the Irish Republic, published Easter Monday, April 24, 1916]
POBLACHT NA hÉIREANN
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN:
In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.
The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.
Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.
We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.
Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:
THOMAS J. CLARKE, SEAN Mac DIARMADA, THOMAS MacDONAGH, Padraig H. PEARSE, EAMONN CEANNT, JAMES CONNOLLY, JOSEPH PLUNKETT
SONG:
Cape Cod Bay (Galway Bay)
EUGENE:
If you ever go across the sea to Provincetown
Then maybe at the closing of your day
You will sit and watch the moon rise o’r the harbor
And watch the barefoot gossoons at their play.
Just to hear again the sounding of the fog horns
The women in the meadows making hay
And to sit beside a turf fire in the dune shacks
And see the sun go down on Cape Cod Bay.
For the breezes blowing o’r the seas from Provincetown
Are perfumed by the heather as they blow
And the women in the uplands diggin' prates
Speak a language that the strangers do not know.
PADRAIG:
For the strangers came and tried to force us their way
They scorned us just for being what we are
But they might as well go chasing after moonbeams
EUGENE:
Or putting on a dress to be a star.
EUGENE & PADRAIG:
And if there’s going to be a life hereafter
And somehow I am sure there's going to be
I will ask my God to let me make my heaven
In our lands connected by the sea.
SCENE TWO:
On a boat in the Atlantic Ocean, the S.S. Glencairn of Bound East for Cardiff, February 1916, two months before the Irish Republic Easter Rebellion of April 24, 1916.
EUGENE:
Let’s have another one…this fog’s settlin’ in for the night…the sea is still …Padraig! Padraig! (hugs)
PADRAIG:
Erin Go Braugh!! Erin Go Braugh!! You wash ashore!! (they laugh)
EUGENE:
And you! Living eight hundred years with wash-a-shores!
PADRAIG:
Oh, my friend, in the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom…
EUGENE:
Ah, and you say she was cannibalized?
PADRAIG:
“Gawd strike me dead if it ain’t true, every bleedin’ word of it.”
EUGENE:
Aw, stop your croakin’! We’re not dead yet and, praise God, we’ll have many a long day yet before us…
PADRAIG:
I see….no more subjugation, no more…“Irish Need Not Apply!”
EUGENE:
No more Padraig! No more!!…Padraig!!…yes, there’s a change in the air…
SONG:
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral
EUGENE:
Over in Kilkeney,
Many years ago,
Me father sailed across the sea
For freedom from the woe.
Sang a simple little ditty,
In his good ould Irish way,
Now I give the world a song to sing
I sing it every day.
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
(Eugene tries to get Padraig to join in)
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Hush, now don't you cry!
PADRAIG:
(hesitantly)
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
PADRAIG and EUGENE
(reticently)
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
It’s an Irish lullaby.
PAGRAIG:
Oft, in dreams I wander
Thinkin ways to set us free,
I feel the arms of history
The chains of misery.
Ireland’s voice is a hummin'
We hunger from the Blight
We join the dead, rise from our sleep
To sing this song tonight.
PADRAIG and EUGENE: (they waltz together)
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Hush, now don't you cry!
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
It’s an Irish lullaby.
PADRAIG:
Ireland….The divil’s own life ut is to be out in the lonely sea wid nothin’ betune you and a grave in the ocean but a spindle-shanked, gray-whiskered auld fool the loike av him. ‘Twas enough to make a saint shwear to see him wid his gold watch in his hand, tryin’ to look as wise as an owl on a tree, and all the toime he not knowin’ whether ‘twas cholery or the barber’s itch was the matther wid him.
PADRAIG and EUGENE:
“Irish Need Not Apply” (sarcastically)
EUGENE:
It’s a starvation ship! Padraig, starvation…
PADRAIG:
Yes sir, plenty o’ work and no food—and the owners ridin’ around in carriages! Bloody swill! Fit only for swine is wot I say.
EUGENE and PADRAIG:
(slowly)
And those rot-ten po-tay-toes! (pause)
PADRAIG:
(To the audience)
Shut your mouths, all av you. ‘Tis a hell av a thing for us to be complainin’ about our guts, and a sick Ireland dyin’ listenin’ to us….
God stiffen you, ye square-head scuts (laugh).
(pause)
EUGENE:
Damn this fog!
PADRAIG:
If this fog keeps up, I’m tellin’ ye, we’ll no be in the Fo’c’sle for a week or more!
EUGENE:
Sounds like P-town hospitality. It gets ya by the balls and then thanks ya fer it!
PADRAIG:
(to the audience, flash forward)
I can forsee it right here before me….
’Twas just such a night as this the auld government wint down….just for a few days − at first. Just about this toime ut was, too, and we all sittin’ round in the Post Office, the Citizen’s Army all around me, whin all av a suddint we heard a great slitherin’ crash, and the ship heeled over till we was all in a heap on wan side. What came afther I disremimber exactly, except ‘twas a hard shift to get the boats over the side before the auld teakittle sank. Me buds was in the same boat wid me, and sivin morthal days we drifted wid scarcely a drop of wather or a bite to chew on. I was held down whin I wanted to jump into the ocean, roarin’ mad wid the thirst.
EUGENE:
Blimey but you’re a cheerful blighter, Padraaaaaaig! Talkin’ abaht shipwrecks in this ‘ere blushin’ fog.
PADRAIG:
And aoi think, we’ll be ‘avin our pint of beer in P-Town this day week.
EUGENE:
And fish and chips, mon!
PADRAIG:
Nice and battered, I hope…before I die.
EUGENE:
But Padraig, I…
PADRAIG:
Yes—soon—when I know it’s all up. (a pause) You mustn’t take it so hard, Eugene. I was just thinkin’ it ain’t as bad as people think—dyin’. I ain’t never took much stock in the truck them sky-pilots preach. I ain’t never had religion; but I know whatever it is what comes after it can’t be no worser’n this. I don’t like to leave you, but—that’s all….
EUGENE:
(to audience)
Well, you’re right, this sailor life ain’t much to cry about leavin’—just one ship after another, had work, small pay, and bum grub; and when we git into port, like this port, just a drunk endin’ up in a fight, and all your money gone, and then ship away again. Never meetin’ no nice people, not here; never gittin’ outa sailor town, hardly, in any port; travelin’ all over the world and never seein’ none of it; without no one to care whether you’re alive or dead. (with a bitter smile) There ain’t much in all that that’d make yuh sorry to lose it, Padraig.
PADRAIG:
(gloomily)
It’s a hell av a life, the sea? It’s a hell ‘av a life on the land…it would
be great to stay on dry land all your life and have a farm with a house of your own with cows and pigs and chickens, ‘way in the middle of the land where yuh’d never smell the sea or see a ship. It must be great to have a wife, and kids to play with at night after supper when your work was done. It must be great to have a home of your own, Eugene…
It must, surely; but what’s the use av thinkin’ av ut? Such things are not for the loikes av us.
.
EUGENE:
Sea-fain’ is all right when you’re young and don’t care, but we ain’t chickens no more, and somehow, I dunno, this last year has seemed rotten, and I’ve had a hunch I’d quit—with you, of course…
PADRAIG:
Laugh at you, is ut? When I’m havin’ the same thoughts myself, toime afther toime. It’s a grand idea and we’ll be doin’ ut sure if you’ll stop your crazy notions…
EUGENE:
(sadly)
Too late. We shouldn’ta made this plan, and then…
(pause)
How’d all the fog git in here?
PADRAIG:
Fog? Oh yes….
Everything looks misty. We got to fight our way out…I guess…
SCENE THREE:
Leicester Square, Dublin, Ireland, days before the Easter Rebellion, April 1916.
SONG:
Sure it's the same old shillelagh
Me father brought from Ireland.
EUGENE:
(holding a shillelagh – a walking stick [and weapon])
Sure it's the same old shillelagh
Me father brought from Ireland.
And divil a man prouder than he,
As he walked with it in his hand.
He'd lead the band on Paddy's Day
And twirle it round his mitt
And divil a bit we'd laught at it
Or Dad would have a fit.
PARAIG:
(enters, holding a rifle)
Sure with the same old shillelagh
We’ll use to lick a dozen men
As fast as they'd get up be gorry,
We’ll shoot 'em down again
It’s not the last time we’ll use it on thee
To make you understand
The same old shillelagh
We’ll use to lick a dozen men.
(They do a dance together - military style - and separately, exchanging the rifle and the shillelagh)
PADRAIG:
D’yuh think God’ll hold it up agin me Gene?
EUGENE:
If there’s justice in hiven, no!
PADRAIG:
God. They say He sees everything. He must know it was done in fair fight, under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoked upon our arms, and we prayed that no one who serves our cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine, don’t yuh think?
EUGENE:
Av course. And be damned to them, for the skulkin’ swine the Brits was, afther them tryin’ to stick you in the back. We fought them off back home ya know. Let your conscience be aisy. I wisht I had nothin’ blacker than that on my sowl. I’d not be afraid av the angel Gabriel himself.
It’s hard to ship on this voyage I’m goin’ on…
PADRAIG:
Solong, Gene…
They hug, Padraig gives Gene his cap; Gene leaves; Padraig hold’s up his shillelagh)
Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.
SCENE FOUR:
Provincetown, April 24, 1916.
EUGENE:
(wearing Padraig’s cap) Eugene stands and looks across the harbor. He takes his cap off and hold it to his chest)
Padraig… the fog has lifted!
MUSIC: Penny whistle or fiddle.
(The Curtain Falls)
By Jay Critchley
Honoring two radical Centennials: texts from Eugene O’Neill’s 1916 debut play in Provincetown, Bound East for Cardiff, and the Ireland’s Easter Rebellion, with
rebel Padraig Pearse’s 1916, Proclamation of the Irish Republic
CHARACTERS:
Padraig Pearse: Leader of the 1916 Uprising, poet, intellectual, educator; author of Proclamation; thirty-something male wearing a green military jacket and cap
Eugene O’Neill: Thirty-something wearing an American Airlines sweater
SCENE ONE:
MUSIC intro: Fiddle or penny whistle
PADRAIG:
READING:
[Proclamation of the Irish Republic, published Easter Monday, April 24, 1916]
POBLACHT NA hÉIREANN
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT OF THE IRISH REPUBLIC TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND
IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN:
In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.
Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.
We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.
The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.
Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.
We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.
Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:
THOMAS J. CLARKE, SEAN Mac DIARMADA, THOMAS MacDONAGH, Padraig H. PEARSE, EAMONN CEANNT, JAMES CONNOLLY, JOSEPH PLUNKETT
SONG:
Cape Cod Bay (Galway Bay)
EUGENE:
If you ever go across the sea to Provincetown
Then maybe at the closing of your day
You will sit and watch the moon rise o’r the harbor
And watch the barefoot gossoons at their play.
Just to hear again the sounding of the fog horns
The women in the meadows making hay
And to sit beside a turf fire in the dune shacks
And see the sun go down on Cape Cod Bay.
For the breezes blowing o’r the seas from Provincetown
Are perfumed by the heather as they blow
And the women in the uplands diggin' prates
Speak a language that the strangers do not know.
PADRAIG:
For the strangers came and tried to force us their way
They scorned us just for being what we are
But they might as well go chasing after moonbeams
EUGENE:
Or putting on a dress to be a star.
EUGENE & PADRAIG:
And if there’s going to be a life hereafter
And somehow I am sure there's going to be
I will ask my God to let me make my heaven
In our lands connected by the sea.
SCENE TWO:
On a boat in the Atlantic Ocean, the S.S. Glencairn of Bound East for Cardiff, February 1916, two months before the Irish Republic Easter Rebellion of April 24, 1916.
EUGENE:
Let’s have another one…this fog’s settlin’ in for the night…the sea is still …Padraig! Padraig! (hugs)
PADRAIG:
Erin Go Braugh!! Erin Go Braugh!! You wash ashore!! (they laugh)
EUGENE:
And you! Living eight hundred years with wash-a-shores!
PADRAIG:
Oh, my friend, in the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom…
EUGENE:
Ah, and you say she was cannibalized?
PADRAIG:
“Gawd strike me dead if it ain’t true, every bleedin’ word of it.”
EUGENE:
Aw, stop your croakin’! We’re not dead yet and, praise God, we’ll have many a long day yet before us…
PADRAIG:
I see….no more subjugation, no more…“Irish Need Not Apply!”
EUGENE:
No more Padraig! No more!!…Padraig!!…yes, there’s a change in the air…
SONG:
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral
EUGENE:
Over in Kilkeney,
Many years ago,
Me father sailed across the sea
For freedom from the woe.
Sang a simple little ditty,
In his good ould Irish way,
Now I give the world a song to sing
I sing it every day.
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
(Eugene tries to get Padraig to join in)
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Hush, now don't you cry!
PADRAIG:
(hesitantly)
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
PADRAIG and EUGENE
(reticently)
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
It’s an Irish lullaby.
PAGRAIG:
Oft, in dreams I wander
Thinkin ways to set us free,
I feel the arms of history
The chains of misery.
Ireland’s voice is a hummin'
We hunger from the Blight
We join the dead, rise from our sleep
To sing this song tonight.
PADRAIG and EUGENE: (they waltz together)
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Hush, now don't you cry!
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
Too-ra-loo-ra-li,
Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral,
It’s an Irish lullaby.
PADRAIG:
Ireland….The divil’s own life ut is to be out in the lonely sea wid nothin’ betune you and a grave in the ocean but a spindle-shanked, gray-whiskered auld fool the loike av him. ‘Twas enough to make a saint shwear to see him wid his gold watch in his hand, tryin’ to look as wise as an owl on a tree, and all the toime he not knowin’ whether ‘twas cholery or the barber’s itch was the matther wid him.
PADRAIG and EUGENE:
“Irish Need Not Apply” (sarcastically)
EUGENE:
It’s a starvation ship! Padraig, starvation…
PADRAIG:
Yes sir, plenty o’ work and no food—and the owners ridin’ around in carriages! Bloody swill! Fit only for swine is wot I say.
EUGENE and PADRAIG:
(slowly)
And those rot-ten po-tay-toes! (pause)
PADRAIG:
(To the audience)
Shut your mouths, all av you. ‘Tis a hell av a thing for us to be complainin’ about our guts, and a sick Ireland dyin’ listenin’ to us….
God stiffen you, ye square-head scuts (laugh).
(pause)
EUGENE:
Damn this fog!
PADRAIG:
If this fog keeps up, I’m tellin’ ye, we’ll no be in the Fo’c’sle for a week or more!
EUGENE:
Sounds like P-town hospitality. It gets ya by the balls and then thanks ya fer it!
PADRAIG:
(to the audience, flash forward)
I can forsee it right here before me….
’Twas just such a night as this the auld government wint down….just for a few days − at first. Just about this toime ut was, too, and we all sittin’ round in the Post Office, the Citizen’s Army all around me, whin all av a suddint we heard a great slitherin’ crash, and the ship heeled over till we was all in a heap on wan side. What came afther I disremimber exactly, except ‘twas a hard shift to get the boats over the side before the auld teakittle sank. Me buds was in the same boat wid me, and sivin morthal days we drifted wid scarcely a drop of wather or a bite to chew on. I was held down whin I wanted to jump into the ocean, roarin’ mad wid the thirst.
EUGENE:
Blimey but you’re a cheerful blighter, Padraaaaaaig! Talkin’ abaht shipwrecks in this ‘ere blushin’ fog.
PADRAIG:
And aoi think, we’ll be ‘avin our pint of beer in P-Town this day week.
EUGENE:
And fish and chips, mon!
PADRAIG:
Nice and battered, I hope…before I die.
EUGENE:
But Padraig, I…
PADRAIG:
Yes—soon—when I know it’s all up. (a pause) You mustn’t take it so hard, Eugene. I was just thinkin’ it ain’t as bad as people think—dyin’. I ain’t never took much stock in the truck them sky-pilots preach. I ain’t never had religion; but I know whatever it is what comes after it can’t be no worser’n this. I don’t like to leave you, but—that’s all….
EUGENE:
(to audience)
Well, you’re right, this sailor life ain’t much to cry about leavin’—just one ship after another, had work, small pay, and bum grub; and when we git into port, like this port, just a drunk endin’ up in a fight, and all your money gone, and then ship away again. Never meetin’ no nice people, not here; never gittin’ outa sailor town, hardly, in any port; travelin’ all over the world and never seein’ none of it; without no one to care whether you’re alive or dead. (with a bitter smile) There ain’t much in all that that’d make yuh sorry to lose it, Padraig.
PADRAIG:
(gloomily)
It’s a hell av a life, the sea? It’s a hell ‘av a life on the land…it would
be great to stay on dry land all your life and have a farm with a house of your own with cows and pigs and chickens, ‘way in the middle of the land where yuh’d never smell the sea or see a ship. It must be great to have a wife, and kids to play with at night after supper when your work was done. It must be great to have a home of your own, Eugene…
It must, surely; but what’s the use av thinkin’ av ut? Such things are not for the loikes av us.
.
EUGENE:
Sea-fain’ is all right when you’re young and don’t care, but we ain’t chickens no more, and somehow, I dunno, this last year has seemed rotten, and I’ve had a hunch I’d quit—with you, of course…
PADRAIG:
Laugh at you, is ut? When I’m havin’ the same thoughts myself, toime afther toime. It’s a grand idea and we’ll be doin’ ut sure if you’ll stop your crazy notions…
EUGENE:
(sadly)
Too late. We shouldn’ta made this plan, and then…
(pause)
How’d all the fog git in here?
PADRAIG:
Fog? Oh yes….
Everything looks misty. We got to fight our way out…I guess…
SCENE THREE:
Leicester Square, Dublin, Ireland, days before the Easter Rebellion, April 1916.
SONG:
Sure it's the same old shillelagh
Me father brought from Ireland.
EUGENE:
(holding a shillelagh – a walking stick [and weapon])
Sure it's the same old shillelagh
Me father brought from Ireland.
And divil a man prouder than he,
As he walked with it in his hand.
He'd lead the band on Paddy's Day
And twirle it round his mitt
And divil a bit we'd laught at it
Or Dad would have a fit.
PARAIG:
(enters, holding a rifle)
Sure with the same old shillelagh
We’ll use to lick a dozen men
As fast as they'd get up be gorry,
We’ll shoot 'em down again
It’s not the last time we’ll use it on thee
To make you understand
The same old shillelagh
We’ll use to lick a dozen men.
(They do a dance together - military style - and separately, exchanging the rifle and the shillelagh)
PADRAIG:
D’yuh think God’ll hold it up agin me Gene?
EUGENE:
If there’s justice in hiven, no!
PADRAIG:
God. They say He sees everything. He must know it was done in fair fight, under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoked upon our arms, and we prayed that no one who serves our cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine, don’t yuh think?
EUGENE:
Av course. And be damned to them, for the skulkin’ swine the Brits was, afther them tryin’ to stick you in the back. We fought them off back home ya know. Let your conscience be aisy. I wisht I had nothin’ blacker than that on my sowl. I’d not be afraid av the angel Gabriel himself.
It’s hard to ship on this voyage I’m goin’ on…
PADRAIG:
Solong, Gene…
They hug, Padraig gives Gene his cap; Gene leaves; Padraig hold’s up his shillelagh)
Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.
SCENE FOUR:
Provincetown, April 24, 1916.
EUGENE:
(wearing Padraig’s cap) Eugene stands and looks across the harbor. He takes his cap off and hold it to his chest)
Padraig… the fog has lifted!
MUSIC: Penny whistle or fiddle.
(The Curtain Falls)