Spreading the News, Lady Gregory

• MAGISTRATE. So that is the Fair Green. Cattle and sheep and mud. No system. What a repulsive sight!
• MAGISTRATE. Just see if there are any unlicensed goods underneath--spirits or the like. We had evasions of the salt tax in the Andaman Islands.
• MRS. TARPEY. Business, is it? What business would the people here have but to be minding one another's business?
• MRS. TARPEY. Not a trade. No trade at all but to be talking.
• MRS. TARPEY. Bad luck to Jo Muldoon, knocking my apples this way and that way. [Begins arranging them.] Showing off he was to the new magistrate.
• MRS. FALLON. So you might, indeed. [She puts her basket on a barrel and begins putting parcels in it, taking them from under her cloak.]
• BARTLEY [raising his voice]. It was not a good fair, Mrs. Tarpey. It was a scattered sort of fair. If we didn't expect more, we got less. That's the way with me always; whatever I have to sell goes down and whatever I have to buy goes up. If there's ever any mistfortune coming to this world, it's on myself it pitches, like a flock of crows on seed potatoes.
• [Voice of JACK SMITH heard singing.]...
  Over the tide
  I would leap with the leap of a swan
  Till I came to the side
  Of the wife of the Red-haired man!
• JACK SMITH. ... It isn't to the fair I came myself, but up to the Five Acre Meadow I'm going, where I have a contract for hay. We'll get of it into tramps to-day. [He lays down hayfork and lights his pipe.]
• JACK SMITH. If it didn't itself, Bartley, it is my belief you would carry a leaky pail on your head in place of a hat, the way you'd be without some cause of complaining.
• JACK SMITH. Look at that young mare of of Pat Ryan's that is backing into Shaughnessy's bullocks with the dint of the crowd! Don't be daunted, Pat, I'll give you a hand with her. [He goes out, leaving his hayfork.]
• BARTLEY. I'll do that. This is no safe place to be leaving it. [He takes up the fork awkwardly and upsets the basket.] Look at that now! If there is any basket in the fair upset, it must be our own basket. [He goes out to right.]
• TIM CASEY. Following Jack Smith with a hayfork! Did ever anyone here the like of that. [Shouts.] Did you hear the news, Mrs. Tarpey?
• TIM CASEY. Some dispute I suppose it was that rose between Jack Smith and Bartley Fallon, and it seems Jack made off, and Bartley is following him with a hayfork!
• TIM CASEY. Listen, Shawn Early! Listen, Mrs. Tully, to the news! Jack Smith and Bartley Fallon had a falling out, and Jack knocked Mrs. Fallon's basket into the road, and Bartley made an attack on him with a hayfork, and away with Jack, and Bartley after him. Look at the sugar here yet on the road!
• JAMES RYAN. That is great news Mrs. Tarpey was telling me! I suppose that's what brought the police and the magistrate up this way. I was wondering to see them in it a while ago.
• SHAWN EARLY. The police after them? Bartley Fallon must have injured Jack so. They wouldn't meddle in a fight that was just for show!
• JAMES RYAN. Wait till I run north as far as Kelly's bar to spread the news! [He goes out.]
• MRS. TARPEY. Stop a minute, Shawn Early, and tell me did you see red Jack Smith's wife, Kitty Keary, in any place?
• SHAWN EARLY [breaking away]. Laying out a sheet on the hedge. [He goes out.]
• MRS. TARPEY. Laying out a sheet for the dead! The Lord have mercy on us! Jack Smith dead, and his wife laying out a sheet for his burying!
• TIM CASEY. Is it killed he is?
• MRS. TARPEY. Streched on the Five Acre Meadow!
• TIM CASEY. The Lord have mercy on us! Is that a fact?
• MRS. TARPEY. Ochone! cold and dead. And myself maybe the last one he was speaking to!
• TIM CASEY. Dead surely, and the wife getting provision for the wake.
• MRS. TARPEY. Not a one of me knows. The last I saw of them, Jack Smith was standing there, and Bartley Fallon was standing there, quiet and easy, and he listening to "The Red-haired Man's Wife."
• MRS. TULLY. Do you hear that, Tim Casey? Do you hear that, Shawn Early and James Ryan? Bartley Fallon was there this morning listening to red Jack Smith's wife, Kitty Keary that was! Listening to her and whispering to her! It was she started the fight so!
• TIM CASEY. I never knew, before, Bartley Fallon was great with Jack Smith's wife.
• TIM CASEY. How can he take charge of her? Sure he has a wife of his own. Sure you don't think he'd turn souper and marry her in a Protestant church?
• SHAWN EARLY. With or without Kitty Keary, believe me it is for America he's making at this minute. I saw the new magistrate and Jo Muldoon of the police going into the post-office as I came up--there was hurry on them--you may be sure it was to telegraph they went, the way he'll be stopped at the docks at Queenstown!
• MRS. TULLY. It's like Kitty Keary has gone with him, and not minding a sheet or a wake at all. The poor man, to be deserted by his own wife, and the breath hardly gone out yet from his body that is lying bloody in the field!
• MRS. FALLON. What is it the whole town is talking about? And what is it you yourselves are talking about? Is it about my man Bartley Fallon you are talking? Is it lies about him you are telling, saying he went killing Jack Smith? My grief that he ever came into this place at all!
• MRS. FALLON. Sorry for me, is it? Why would any one be sorry for me? Let you be sorry for yourselves, and that there may be shame on you for ever and at the day of judgment, for the words you are saying and the lies you are telling to take away the character of my poor man, and to take the good name off of him, and to drive him to destruction! That is what you are doing!
• BARTLEY. It is what I often said to myself, if there is ever any misfortune coming to this world it is on myself it is sure to come!
  [All turn round and face him.]
  To be going about with this fork and to find no one to take it, and no place to leave it down, and I wanting to be gone out of this--Is that you, Shawn Early? [Holds out fork.]
• BARTLEY. If no one at all will take it, maybe it's best to give it up to the police.
• BARTLEY. Red Jack Smith dead! Who was telling you?
• JAMES RYAN. You don't know that yourself, I suppose, Bartley Fallon? You don't know he was followed and that he was laid dead with a stab of a hayfork?
• TIM CASEY. Look, boys, at the new magistrate, and Jo Muldoon along with him! It's best for us to quit this.
• JAMES RYAN. Bad as he is, I wouldn't like to be an informer against any man.
• MAGISTRATE. I knew the district was in a bad state, but I did not expect to be confronted with a murder at the first fair I came to.
• POLICEMAN [in a whisper]. That's the very man they say did the act; Bartley Fallon himself!
• BARTLEY. His ghost to come before me! It is likely on account of the fork! I to have it and he to have no way to defend himself the time he met with his death!
• BARTLEY. ... Don't be putting the blame on the parish, for such a thing was never done in the parish before--it was done for the sake of Kitty Keary, Jack Smith's wife.
• MAGISTRATE [to policeman]. Put on the handcuffs, we have been saved some trouble. I knew he would confess if taken in the right way.
• MAGISTRATE. It is natural you should take his part, but you have no cause of complaint against your neighbors. He has been arrested for the murder of John Smith, on his own confession.
• MAGISTRATE. It is best you should know all. He did it on account of a love affair with the murdered man's wife.
• MRS. FALLON. Don't say a word! I won't listen to any word you'll say. [Stops her ears.] O, isn't he the treacherous villain? Ohone go den!
• BARTLEY. It's Jack Smith's voice--I never knew a ghost to sing before.
• MRS. FALLON. Dead or alive, let you stop Kitty Keary, your wife, from bringing my man away with her to America!
• JACK SMITH. I'll break the head of any man that says that!
• ALL TOGETHER [backing and shaking their heads]. It wasn't I said it!
• ALL TOGETHER [pointing at Bartley]. It was him that said it!
• JACK SMITH. Let me at him till I break his head!
• MAGISTRATE [pointing to JACK SMITH]. Policeman, put the handcuffs on this man. I see it all now. A case of false impersonation, a conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice.
• MAGISTRATE. We must take both these men to the scene of the murder. We must confront them with the body of the real Jack Smith.
• BARTLEY. It is what I am thinking, if myself and Jack Smith are put together in the one cell for the night, the handcuffs will be taken off him, and his hands will be free, and murder will be done that time surely!