The Land, Colum

• ACT I
• CORNELIUS (solemnly). You're a good girl, Sally. You're not like some I know. There are girls in this parish who never put hands to a thing till evening, when the boys do be coming in. Then they begin to stir themselves the way they'll be thought busy and good about a house.
• CORNELIUS. Them that are going to meet the landlord's people with an offer for the land. We're not buying ourselves, unfortunately, but this is a great day--the day of the redemption, my father calls it--and I'd like to have some hand in the work if it was only to say a few words to the men.
• MARTIN DOURAS. It's about our Ellen. Father Bartley gave me news for her. "I've heard of a school that'll suit Ellen," says he. "It's in the County Leitrim."
• MARTIN DOURAS (with a sigh). I wouldn't stand in her way, Cornelius; I wouldn't stand in her way. But won't it be a poor thing for an old man like me to have no one to discourse with in the long evenings? For when I'm talking with you, Cornelius, I feel like a boy who lends back all the marbles he's won, and plays again, just for the sake of the game.
• MARTIN DOURAS. You're right to take it that way, Ellen. School doesn't mean scholarship now. Many's the time I'm telling Cornelius that a man farming the land, with a few books on his shelf and a few books in his head, has more of a scholar's life about him than the young fellows who do be teaching in schools and teaching in colleges.
• MATT. Ellen, Ellen, I'd lose house and land for you. Sure you know that, Ellen. My brothers and sisters took their freedom. They went from this house and away to the ends of the world. Maybe I don't differ from them so much. But I've put my work into the land, and I'm beginning to know the land. I won't lose it, Ellen. Neither will I lose you.
• ELLEN. O Matt, what's the land after all? Do you ever think of America? The streets, the shops, the throngs?
• CORNELIUS (to the men going out). I told you Murtagh Cosgar and myself are on the one offer. And Murtagh is right again when he says that you can bide your time. But make sure of the mineral rights, men; make sure of the mineral rights.
• MURTAGH COSGAR (turning round). Them that come after us. Ins't that a great thought, Martin Douras? and isn't it a great thing that we're able to pass this land on to them, and it redeemed for ever? Ay, and their manhood spared the shame that our manhood knew. Standing in the rain with our hats off to let a landloard--ay, or a landlord's dog-boy--pass the way!
• MARTIN DOURAS (stammering). Nothing except in a--in what you might call a general way. There's many a young man left house and land for the sake of some woman, Murtagh Cosgar.
• MURTAGH COSGAR. And you think a son of mine would marry a daughter of your?
• MURTAGH COSGAR (fiercely). The daughter of a man who'd be sitting over his fire reading his paper, and the clouds above his potatoes, and the cows trampling his outs. (MARTIN is beaten down) Do you know me at all, Martin Douras? I came out of a little house by the roadway and built my house on a hill. I have many children. Coming home in the long evenings, or kneeling still when the prayers would be over, I'd have my dreams. A son in Aughnalee, a son in Ballybrian, a son in Dunmore, a son of mine with a shop, a son of mine saying Mass in Killnalee. And i have a living room--a name if flesh and blood.
• MARTIN DOURAS (eagerly). Twenty years, Matt, and they'll get it for twenty. O, it's a great day for you both! Father and son, you come into a single inheritance. What the father wins the son wields.
• MURTAGH COSGAR. What the father wins, the son wastes.
• MURTAGH COSGAR (to MARTIN DOURAS). It's his own way he wants. I never had my own way. (To MATT.) You're my last son. You're too young to know the hardship there was in rearing you.
• MATT (exultantly). Your last son; that won't keep me here. I'm the last of my name, but that won't keep me here. I leave you your lands, your twenty years' purchase. Murtagh Cosgar, Murtagh Cosgar! isn't that a great name, Martin Douras--a name that's well planted, a name for generations? Isn't he a lucky man that has a name for generations? (He goes out.)
• MURTAGH COSGAR. He can't go. How could he go and he the last of the name. Close the door, I say.
• MARIN DOURAS. He'll go to Ellen, surely. We'll lose both of them. Murtagh Cosgar, God comfort you and me.
• ACT II
• ELLEN. He suffered more than any of them. And it's little we'll get out of the day.
• SALLY (breathlessly). Oh, God save you, Cornelius. Tell me, is my father gone? I dread going back and he there! It was all over that baste of a sow that has kept me slaving all through the spring till I don't know whether greens or potatoes is the fittest for her!
• ELLEN (to SALLY, who has been watching CORNELIUS). Tell me, Sally, are they always that busy in your house? Is your father as harsh as they say?
• ELLEN. What would he say if Matt married a girl without a fortune?
• ELLEN. Father wouldn't like me to be far from him, and so I went in for the school instead.
• SALLY. O Corneleus, it won't be lucky for us when father hears about Ellen and Matt.
• CORNELIUS. Give me your hands to hold, Sally. (She gives him her hands.) We are as young as any of them after all.
• SECOND BOY. There's no stir here. There's no fine clothes, nor fine manners, nor fine things to be seen.
• SECOND BOY. She'll be coming in the fall. We'll be glad to see you, Ellen.
• THIRD GIRL (going to ELLEN). There would be little change in that. And isn't it a life altogether different from this life that we have been longing for? To be doing other work, and to be meeting strange people, And instead of bare roads and market-towns, to be seeing streets, and crowds, and theaters.
• ELLEN. I won't be going.
• SALLY. Oh, I don't know how I'll get it all out! Matter and father had an odious falling out, and it was about you. And Matt's going to America; and he's to bring you with him. And Cornelius was saying that if father found out about yourself and Matt--
• ELLEN. And I thought I'd be content with a new house. Now we can go away together. I can see what I longed to see. I have a chance of knowing what is in me. (She takes Sally's hands.) It's great news you've brought me. No one ever brought me such news before. Take this little cross. You won't have a chance of getting fond of me after all. (She wears a cross at her throat; she breaks the string, and give it to Sally.)
• MATT. "I'm your last son," I said; "keep your land and your twenty years' purchase. I'm with the others; and it's poor your land will leave you, and you without a son to bring down your name. A bit of land, a house," said I; "do you think these will keep me here?"
• ELLEN. I knew they could not keep you here, Matt. You have broken from them at last; and now the world is before us. Think of all that is before us--the sea, and the ships, the strange life, and the great cities.
• MATT. Ay, he spoke against you. I couldn't put up with that.
• MATT. He'll be glad to see me back. He'll never cast it up to me that I went.
• ELLEN. It's a bad hand I'd make of a farmer's house. I'm not the sort to be in one. I'm not like Sally.
• ELLEN (with great vehemence). I must be talking like this. If you take me, you will have to go from your father's house. I always knew it. You ought to know it now, Matt Cosgar.
• MATT. I know I am foolish. Fit only to be working in drains and ditches in the winter. That's what you think.
• ELLEN (furiously). Two days or three days he'll wait for me. As if I'd go into Murtagh Cosgar's house. As if I'd go into any farmer's house. As if I'd get married at all, and the world before me. Two days or three days you'll wait. Maybe it's lonesome, weary years you'll be waiting, Matt Cosgar.
• ACT III
• MARTIN DOURAS. It's time for me to be going home. I should be seeing Ellen. (He rises.)
• MURTAGH COSGAR. Ha, here's one of the clutch home. Well, did you see that brother of yours?
• MURTAGH COSGAR. It's that Ellen Douras that's putting him up to all this. Don't you be said by her, Sally.
• SALLY. O, indeed, I had a talk with Ellen, but she won't give much of her mind away. It was Matt that was telling me. "Indeed she's not going," said he, "and a smart young fellow like myself thinking of her. Ellen is too full of notions." Here's Matt himself. Father won't have a word to say to him. He's getting mild as he's getting ould, and maybe it's a fortune he'll be leaving to myself.
• SALLY. Very quiet. God help us all; I think father's losing his spirit.
• MATT. Ay, I saw Ellen (gloomily). She shouldn't talk the way she talks, Martin. What she said keeps coming into my mind, and I'm troubled. God knows I've trouble enough on my head.
• MURTAGH COSGAR. You're my son, and so I feel sorry for you; and you beginning to know your own foolishness. (He turns to Sally.) I'm not taking the pigs. Put a fresh bedding under them to-night.
• MATT. Would you have me go, or would you have me stay?
• MATT. The houses that you remember are different from the houses that are now. Will you have me go, or will you have me stay?
• MURTAGH COSGAR (bitterly). In the houses that are now, the young marry where they have a mind to. It's their own business, they say.
• MURTAGH COSGAR (passionately). Boy, your father built this house. He got these lands together. He has a right to see that you and your generations are in the way of keeping them together.
• MURTAGH COSGAR. Marry Ellen Douras, I bid you. Break what I have built, scatter what I have put together. That is what all the young will be doing,
• ELLEN. I've stayed here long enough. I want my own way; I want to know the world.
• ELLEN. You were never friendly to me; but you have the high spirit, and you deserve a better daughter than I would make. The land and house you offer would be a drag on me. (She goes to the door.)
• MATT. When I meet Ellen Douras again, it's not a farmer's house I'll be offering her, nor life in a country place.
• MARTIN DOURAS. You have, and I have a son.
• CORNELIUS. Aren't they foolish to be going away like that, father, and we at the mouth of the good times? The men will be coming in soon, and you might say a few word. (Martin shakes his head.) Indeed you might, father; they'll expect it of you. (Martin shakes his head. Murtagh and Sally try to restrain him.) "Me of Ballykillduff," you might say, "stay on the land, and you'll be saved body and soul; you'll be saved in the man and in the nation. The nation, men of Ballykillduff, do you ever think of it at all? Do you ever think of the Irish nation that is waiting all this time to be born?"