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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of O'Flaherty V. C., by George Bernard Shaw
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: O'Flaherty V. C.
+
+Author: George Bernard Shaw
+
+Posting Date: February 15, 2009 [EBook #3484]
+Release Date: October, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK O'FLAHERTY V. C. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eve Sobol
+
+
+
+
+
+O'FLAHERTY V.C.: A RECRUITING PAMPHLET
+
+
+By George Bernard Shaw
+
+
+
+It may surprise some people to learn that in 1915 this little play was
+a recruiting poster in disguise. The British officer seldom likes Irish
+soldiers; but he always tries to have a certain proportion of them in
+his battalion, because, partly from a want of common sense which leads
+them to value their lives less than Englishmen do [lives are really
+less worth living in a poor country], and partly because even the most
+cowardly Irishman feels obliged to outdo an Englishman in bravery if
+possible, and at least to set a perilous pace for him, Irish soldiers
+give impetus to those military operations which require for their
+spirited execution more devilment than prudence.
+
+Unfortunately, Irish recruiting was badly bungled in 1915. The Irish
+were for the most part Roman Catholics and loyal Irishmen, which means
+that from the English point of view they were heretics and rebels. But
+they were willing enough to go soldiering on the side of France and
+see the world outside Ireland, which is a dull place to live in. It was
+quite easy to enlist them by approaching them from their own point of
+view. But the War Office insisted on approaching them from the point of
+view of Dublin Castle. They were discouraged and repulsed by refusals to
+give commissions to Roman Catholic officers, or to allow distinct
+Irish units to be formed. To attract them, the walls were covered with
+placards headed REMEMBER BELGIUM. The folly of asking an Irishman to
+remember anything when you want him to fight for England was apparent to
+everyone outside the Castle: FORGET AND FORGIVE would have been more
+to the point. Remembering Belgium and its broken treaty led Irishmen to
+remember Limerick and its broken treaty; and the recruiting ended in
+a rebellion, in suppressing which the British artillery quite
+unnecessarily reduced the centre of Dublin to ruins, and the British
+commanders killed their leading prisoners of war in cold blood morning
+after morning with an effect of long-drawn-out ferocity. Really it was
+only the usual childish petulance in which John Bull does things in a
+week that disgrace him for a century, though he soon recovers his good
+humor, and cannot understand why the survivors of his wrath do not feel
+as jolly with him as he does with them. On the smouldering ruins of
+Dublin the appeals to remember Louvain were presently supplemented by a
+fresh appeal. IRISHMEN, DO YOU WISH TO HAVE THE HORRORS OF WAR BROUGHT
+TO YOUR OWN HEARTHS AND HOMES? Dublin laughed sourly.
+
+As for me I addressed myself quite simply to the business of obtaining
+recruits. I knew by personal experience and observation what anyone
+might have inferred from the records of Irish emigration, that all an
+Irishman's hopes and ambitions turn on his opportunities of getting out
+of Ireland. Stimulate his loyalty, and he will stay in Ireland and
+die for her; for, incomprehensible as it seems to an Englishman, Irish
+patriotism does not take the form of devotion to England and England's
+king. Appeal to his discontent, his deadly boredom, his thwarted
+curiosity and desire for change and adventure, and, to escape from
+Ireland, he will go abroad to risk his life for France, for the Papal
+States, for secession in America, and even, if no better may be, for
+England. Knowing that the ignorance and insularity of the Irishman is a
+danger to himself and to his neighbors, I had no scruple in making that
+appeal when there was something for him to fight which the whole world
+had to fight unless it meant to come under the jack boot of the German
+version of Dublin Castle.
+
+There was another consideration, unmentionable by the recruiting
+sergeants and war orators, which must nevertheless have helped them
+powerfully in procuring soldiers by voluntary enlistment. The happy home
+of the idealist may become common under millennial conditions. It is not
+common at present. No one will ever know how many men joined the army
+in 1914 and 1915 to escape from tyrants and taskmasters, termagants
+and shrews, none of whom are any the less irksome when they happen
+by ill-luck to be also our fathers, our mothers, our wives and our
+children. Even at their amiablest, a holiday from them may be a tempting
+change for all parties. That is why I did not endow O'Flaherty V.C. with
+an ideal Irish colleen for his sweetheart, and gave him for his mother a
+Volumnia of the potato patch rather than a affectionate parent from whom
+he could not so easily have torn himself away.
+
+I need hardly say that a play thus carefully adapted to its purpose was
+voted utterly inadmissible; and in due course the British Government,
+frightened out of its wits for the moment by the rout of the Fifth Army,
+ordained Irish Conscription, and then did not dare to go through with
+it. I still think my own line was the more businesslike. But during the
+war everyone except the soldiers at the front imagined that nothing
+but an extreme assertion of our most passionate prejudices, without the
+smallest regard to their effect on others, could win the war. Finally
+the British blockade won the war; but the wonder is that the British
+blockhead did not lose it. I suppose the enemy was no wiser. War is not
+a sharpener of wits; and I am afraid I gave great offence by keeping my
+head in this matter of Irish recruiting. What can I do but apologize,
+and publish the play now that it can no longer do any good?
+
+
+
+
+O'FLAHERTY V.C.
+
+At the door of an Irish country house in a park. Fine, summer weather;
+the summer of 1916. The porch, painted white, projects into the drive:
+but the door is at the side and the front has a window. The porch faces
+east: and the door is in the north side of it. On the south side is a
+tree in which a thrush is singing. Under the window is a garden seat
+with an iron chair at each end of it.
+
+The last four bars of God Save the King are heard in the distance,
+followed by three cheers. Then the band strikes up It's a Long Way to
+Tipperary and recedes until it is out of hearing.
+
+Private O'Flaherty V.C. comes wearily southward along the drive, and
+falls exhausted into the garden seat. The thrush utters a note of alarm
+and flies away. The tramp of a horse is heard.
+
+A GENTLEMAN'S VOICE. Tim! Hi! Tim! [He is heard dismounting.]
+
+A LABORER'S VOICE. Yes, your honor.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN'S VOICE. Take this horse to the stables, will you?
+
+A LABORER'S VOICE. Right, your honor. Yup there. Gwan now. Gwan. [The
+horse is led away.]
+
+General Sir Pearce Madigan, an elderly baronet in khaki, beaming with
+enthusiasm, arrives. O'Flaherty rises and stands at attention.
+
+SIR PEARCE. No, no, O'Flaherty: none of that now. You're off duty.
+Remember that though I am a general of forty years service, that little
+Cross of yours gives you a higher rank in the roll of glory than I can
+pretend to.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [relaxing]. I'm thankful to you, Sir Pearce; but I wouldn't
+have anyone think that the baronet of my native place would let a common
+soldier like me sit down in his presence without leave.
+
+SIR PEARCE. Well, you're not a common soldier, O'Flaherty: you're a very
+uncommon one; and I'm proud to have you for my guest here today.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Sure I know, sir. You have to put up with a lot from the
+like of me for the sake of the recruiting. All the quality shakes hands
+with me and says they're proud to know me, just the way the king said
+when he pinned the Cross on me. And it's as true as I'm standing here,
+sir, the queen said to me: "I hear you were born on the estate of
+General Madigan," she says; "and the General himself tells me you
+were always a fine young fellow." "Bedad, Mam," I says to her, "if
+the General knew all the rabbits I snared on him, and all the salmon
+I snatched on him, and all the cows I milked on him, he'd think me the
+finest ornament for the county jail he ever sent there for poaching."
+
+SIR PEARCE [Laughing]. You're welcome to them all, my lad. Come [he
+makes him sit down again on the garden seat]! sit down and enjoy your
+holiday [he sits down on one of the iron chairs; the one at the doorless
+side of the porch.]
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Holiday, is it? I'd give five shillings to be back in the
+trenches for the sake of a little rest and quiet. I never knew what hard
+work was till I took to recruiting. What with the standing on my legs
+all day, and the shaking hands, and the making speeches, and--what's
+worse--the listening to them and the calling for cheers for king and
+country, and the saluting the flag till I'm stiff with it, and the
+listening to them playing God Save the King and Tipperary, and the
+trying to make my eyes look moist like a man in a picture book, I'm that
+bet that I hardly get a wink of sleep. I give you my word, Sir Pearce,
+that I never heard the tune of Tipperary in my life till I came back
+from Flanders; and already it's drove me to that pitch of tiredness
+of it that when a poor little innocent slip of a boy in the street the
+other night drew himself up and saluted and began whistling it at me, I
+clouted his head for him, God forgive me.
+
+SIR PEARCE [soothingly]. Yes, yes: I know. I know. One does get fed up
+with it: I've been dog tired myself on parade many a time. But still,
+you know, there's a gratifying side to it, too. After all, he is our
+king; and it's our own country, isn't it?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Well, sir, to you that have an estate in it, it would feel
+like your country. But the divil a perch of it ever I owned. And as to
+the king: God help him, my mother would have taken the skin off my back
+if I'd ever let on to have any other king than Parnell.
+
+SIR PEARCE [rising, painfully shocked]. Your mother! What are you
+dreaming about, O'Flaherty? A most loyal woman. Always most loyal.
+Whenever there is an illness in the Royal Family, she asks me every
+time we meet about the health of the patient as anxiously as if it were
+yourself, her only son.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Well, she's my mother; and I won't utter a word agen her.
+But I'm not saying a word of lie when I tell you that that old woman is
+the biggest kanatt from here to the cross of Monasterboice. Sure she's
+the wildest Fenian and rebel, and always has been, that ever taught a
+poor innocent lad like myself to pray night and morning to St Patrick
+to clear the English out of Ireland the same as he cleared the snakes.
+You'll be surprised at my telling you that now, maybe, Sir Pearce?
+
+SIR PEARCE [unable to keep still, walking away from O'Flaherty].
+Surprised! I'm more than surprised, O'Flaherty. I'm overwhelmed.
+[Turning and facing him.] Are you--are you joking?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. If you'd been brought up by my mother, sir, you'd know
+better than to joke about her. What I'm telling you is the truth; and I
+wouldn't tell it to you if I could see my way to get out of the fix I'll
+be in when my mother comes here this day to see her boy in his glory,
+and she after thinking all the time it was against the English I was
+fighting.
+
+SIR PEARCE. Do you mean to say you told her such a monstrous falsehood
+as that you were fighting in the German army?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. I never told her one word that wasn't the truth and nothing
+but the truth. I told her I was going to fight for the French and for
+the Russians; and sure who ever heard of the French or the Russians
+doing anything to the English but fighting them? That was how it was,
+sir. And sure the poor woman kissed me and went about the house singing
+in her old cracky voice that the French was on the sea, and they'd be
+here without delay, and the Orange will decay, says the Shan Van Vocht.
+
+SIR PEARCE [sitting down again, exhausted by his feelings]. Well, I
+never could have believed this. Never. What do you suppose will happen
+when she finds out?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. She mustn't find out. It's not that she'd half kill me, as
+big as I am and as brave as I am. It's that I'm fond of her, and can't
+bring myself to break the heart in her. You may think it queer that a
+man should be fond of his mother, sir, and she having bet him from the
+time he could feel to the time she was too slow to ketch him; but I'm
+fond of her; and I'm not ashamed of it. Besides, didn't she win the
+Cross for me?
+
+SIR PEARCE. Your mother! How?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. By bringing me up to be more afraid of running away than of
+fighting. I was timid by nature; and when the other boys hurted me, I'd
+want to run away and cry. But she whaled me for disgracing the blood of
+the O'Flahertys until I'd have fought the divil himself sooner than face
+her after funking a fight. That was how I got to know that fighting was
+easier than it looked, and that the others was as much afeard of me as
+I was of them, and that if I only held out long enough they'd lose heart
+and give rip. That's the way I came to be so courageous. I tell you, Sir
+Pearce, if the German army had been brought up by my mother, the Kaiser
+would be dining in the banqueting hall at Buckingham Palace this day,
+and King George polishing his jack boots for him in the scullery.
+
+SIR PEARCE. But I don't like this, O'Flaherty. You can't go on deceiving
+your mother, you know. It's not right.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Can't go on deceiving her, can't I? It's little you know
+what a son's love can do, sir. Did you ever notice what a ready liar I
+am?
+
+SIR PEARCE. Well, in recruiting a man gets carried away. I stretch it
+a bit occasionally myself. After all, it's for king and country. But if
+you won't mind my saying it, O'Flaherty, I think that story about
+your fighting the Kaiser and the twelve giants of the Prussian guard
+singlehanded would be the better for a little toning down. I don't ask
+you to drop it, you know; for it's popular, undoubtedly; but still, the
+truth is the truth. Don't you think it would fetch in almost as many
+recruits if you reduced the number of guardsmen to six?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. You're not used to telling lies like I am, sir. I got great
+practice at home with my mother. What with saving my skin when I was
+young and thoughtless, and sparing her feelings when I was old enough to
+understand them, I've hardly told my mother the truth twice a year since
+I was born; and would you have me turn round on her and tell it now,
+when she's looking to have some peace and quiet in her old age?
+
+SIR PEARCE [troubled in his conscience]. Well, it's not my affair, of
+course, O'Flaherty. But hadn't you better talk to Father Quinlan about
+it?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Talk to Father Quinlan, is it! Do you know what Father
+Quinlan says to me this very morning?
+
+SIR PEARCE. Oh, you've seen him already, have you? What did he say?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. He says "You know, don't you," he says, "that it's your
+duty, as a Christian and a good son of the Holy Church, to love your
+enemies?" he says. "I know it's my juty as a soldier to kill them," I
+says. "That's right, Dinny," he says: "quite right. But," says he, "you
+can kill them and do them a good turn afterward to show your love for
+them" he says; "and it's your duty to have a mass said for the souls of
+the hundreds of Germans you say you killed," says he; "for many and many
+of them were Bavarians and good Catholics," he says. "Is it me that must
+pay for masses for the souls of the Boshes?" I says. "Let the King of
+England pay for them," I says; "for it was his quarrel and not mine."
+
+SIR PEARCE [warmly]. It is the quarrel of every honest man and true
+patriot, O'Flaherty. Your mother must see that as clearly as I do.
+After all, she is a reasonable, well disposed woman, quite capable of
+understanding the right and the wrong of the war. Why can't you explain
+to her what the war is about?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Arra, sir, how the divil do I know what the war is about?
+
+SIR PEARCE [rising again and standing over him]. What! O'Flaherty: do
+you know what you are saying? You sit there wearing the Victoria Cross
+for having killed God knows how many Germans; and you tell me you don't
+know why you did it!
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Asking your pardon, Sir Pearce, I tell you no such thing. I
+know quite well why I kilt them, because I was afeard that, if I didn't,
+they'd kill me.
+
+SIR PEARCE [giving it up, and sitting down again]. Yes, yes, of course;
+but have you no knowledge of the causes of the war? of the interests
+at stake? of the importance--I may almost say--in fact I will say--the
+sacred right for which we are fighting? Don't you read the papers?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. I do when I can get them. There's not many newsboys crying
+the evening paper in the trenches. They do say, Sir Pearce, that
+we shall never beat the Boshes until we make Horatio Bottomley Lord
+Leftnant of England. Do you think that's true, sir?
+
+SIR PEARCE. Rubbish, man! there's no Lord Lieutenant in England: the
+king is Lord Lieutenant. It's a simple question of patriotism. Does
+patriotism mean nothing to you?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. It means different to me than what it would to you, sir. It
+means England and England's king to you. To me and the like of me, it
+means talking about the English just the way the English papers talk
+about the Boshes. And what good has it ever done here in Ireland? It's
+kept me ignorant because it filled up my mother's mind, and she thought
+it ought to fill up mine too. It's kept Ireland poor, because instead
+of trying to better ourselves we thought we was the fine fellows of
+patriots when we were speaking evil of Englishmen that was as poor as
+ourselves and maybe as good as ourselves. The Boshes I kilt was more
+knowledgable men than me; and what better am I now that I've kilt them?
+What better is anybody?
+
+SIR PEARCE [huffed, turning a cold shoulder to him]. I am sorry the
+terrible experience of this war--the greatest war ever fought--has
+taught you no better, O'Flaherty.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [preserving his dignity]. I don't know about it's being a
+great war, sir. It's a big war; but that's not the same thing. Father
+Quinlan's new church is a big church: you might take the little old
+chapel out of the middle of it and not miss it. But my mother says there
+was more true religion in the old chapel. And the war has taught me that
+maybe she was right.
+
+SIR PEARCE [grunts sulkily]!!
+
+O'FLAHERTY [respectfully but doggedly]. And there's another thing it's
+taught me too, sir, that concerns you and me, if I may make bold to tell
+it to you.
+
+SIR PEARCE [still sulky]. I hope it's nothing you oughtn't to say to me,
+O'Flaherty.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. It's this, sir: that I'm able to sit here now and talk to
+you without humbugging you; and that's what not one of your tenants or
+your tenants' childer ever did to you before in all your long life. It's
+a true respect I'm showing you at last, sir. Maybe you'd rather have me
+humbug you and tell you lies as I used, just as the boys here, God help
+them, would rather have me tell them how I fought the Kaiser, that all
+the world knows I never saw in my life, than tell them the truth. But
+I can't take advantage of you the way I used, not even if I seem to be
+wanting in respect to you and cocked up by winning the Cross.
+
+SIR PEARCE [touched]. Not at all, O'Flaherty. Not at all.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Sure what's the Cross to me, barring the little pension it
+carries? Do you think I don't know that there's hundreds of men as brave
+as me that never had the luck to get anything for their bravery but a
+curse from the sergeant, and the blame for the faults of them that ought
+to have been their betters? I've learnt more than you'd think, sir;
+for how would a gentleman like you know what a poor ignorant conceited
+creature I was when I went from here into the wide world as a soldier?
+What use is all the lying, and pretending, and humbugging, and letting
+on, when the day comes to you that your comrade is killed in the trench
+beside you, and you don't as much as look round at him until you trip
+over his poor body, and then all you say is to ask why the hell the
+stretcher-bearers don't take it out of the way. Why should I read the
+papers to be humbugged and lied to by them that had the cunning to
+stay at home and send me to fight for them? Don't talk to me or to any
+soldier of the war being right. No war is right; and all the holy water
+that Father Quinlan ever blessed couldn't make one right. There, sir!
+Now you know what O'Flaherty V.C. thinks; and you're wiser so than the
+others that only knows what he done.
+
+SIR PEARCE [making the best of it, and turning goodhumoredly to him
+again]. Well, what you did was brave and manly, anyhow.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. God knows whether it was or not, better than you nor me,
+General. I hope He won't be too hard on me for it, anyhow.
+
+SIR PEARCE [sympathetically]. Oh yes: we all have to think seriously
+sometimes, especially when we're a little run down. I'm afraid we've
+been overworking you a bit over these recruiting meetings. However, we
+can knock off for the rest of the day; and tomorrow's Sunday. I've
+had about as much as I can stand myself. [He looks at his watch.] It's
+teatime. I wonder what's keeping your mother.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. It's nicely cocked up the old woman will be having tea at
+the same table as you, sir, instead of in the kitchen. She'll be after
+dressing in the heighth of grandeur; and stop she will at every house
+on the way to show herself off and tell them where she's going, and fill
+the whole parish with spite and envy. But sure, she shouldn't keep you
+waiting, sir.
+
+SIR PEARCE. Oh, that's all right: she must be indulged on an occasion
+like this. I'm sorry my wife is in London: she'd have been glad to
+welcome your mother.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Sure, I know she would, sir. She was always a kind friend to
+the poor. Little her ladyship knew, God help her, the depth of divilment
+that was in us: we were like a play to her. You see, sir, she was
+English: that was how it was. We was to her what the Pathans and
+Senegalese was to me when I first seen them: I couldn't think, somehow,
+that they were liars, and thieves, and backbiters, and drunkards, just
+like ourselves or any other Christians. Oh, her ladyship never knew all
+that was going on behind her back: how would she? When I was a weeshy
+child, she gave me the first penny I ever had in my hand; and I wanted
+to pray for her conversion that night the same as my mother made me pray
+for yours; and--
+
+SIR PEARCE [scandalized]. Do you mean to say that your mother made you
+pray for MY conversion?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Sure and she wouldn't want to see a gentleman like you going
+to hell after she nursing your own son and bringing up my sister Annie
+on the bottle. That was how it was, sir. She'd rob you; and she'd lie to
+you; and she'd call down all the blessings of God on your head when she
+was selling you your own three geese that you thought had been ate by
+the fox the day after you'd finished fattening them, sir; and all the
+time you were like a bit of her own flesh and blood to her. Often has
+she said she'd live to see you a good Catholic yet, leading victorious
+armies against the English and wearing the collar of gold that Malachi
+won from the proud invader. Oh, she's the romantic woman is my mother,
+and no mistake.
+
+SIR PEARCE [in great perturbation]. I really can't believe this,
+O'Flaherty. I could have sworn your mother was as honest a woman as ever
+breathed.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. And so she is, sir. She's as honest as the day.
+
+SIR PEARCE. Do you call it honest to steal my geese?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. She didn't steal them, sir. It was me that stole them.
+
+SIR PEARCE. Oh! And why the devil did you steal them?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Sure we needed them, sir. Often and often we had to sell our
+own geese to pay you the rent to satisfy your needs; and why shouldn't
+we sell your geese to satisfy ours?
+
+SIR PEARCE. Well, damn me!
+
+O'FLAHERTY [sweetly]. Sure you had to get what you could out of us; and
+we had to get what we could out of you. God forgive us both!
+
+SIR PEARCE. Really, O'Flaherty, the war seems to have upset you a
+little.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. It's set me thinking, sir; and I'm not used to it. It's like
+the patriotism of the English. They never thought of being patriotic
+until the war broke out; and now the patriotism has took them so
+sudden and come so strange to them that they run about like frightened
+chickens, uttering all manner of nonsense. But please God they'll forget
+all about it when the war's over. They're getting tired of it already.
+
+SIR PEARCE. No, no: it has uplifted us all in a wonderful way. The world
+will never be the same again, O'Flaherty. Not after a war like this.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. So they all say, sir. I see no great differ myself. It's all
+the fright and the excitement; and when that quiets down they'll go
+back to their natural divilment and be the same as ever. It's like the
+vermin: it'll wash off after a while.
+
+SIR PEARCE [rising and planting himself firmly behind the garden seat].
+Well, the long and the short of it is, O'Flaherty, I must decline to be
+a party to any attempt to deceive your mother. I thoroughly disapprove
+of this feeling against the English, especially at a moment like the
+present. Even if your mother's political sympathies are really what you
+represent them to be, I should think that her gratitude to Gladstone
+ought to cure her of such disloyal prejudices.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [over his shoulder]. She says Gladstone was an Irishman, Sir.
+What call would he have to meddle with Ireland as he did if he wasn't?
+
+SIR PEARCE. What nonsense! Does she suppose Mr Asquith is an Irishman?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. She won't give him any credit for Home Rule, Sir. She says
+Redmond made him do it. She says you told her so.
+
+SIR PEARCE [convicted out of his own mouth]. Well, I never meant her to
+take it up in that ridiculous way. [He moves to the end of the garden
+seat on O'Flaherty's left.] I'll give her a good talking to when she
+comes. I'm not going to stand any of her nonsense.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. It's not a bit of use, sir. She says all the English
+generals is Irish. She says all the English poets and great men was
+Irish. She says the English never knew how to read their own books until
+we taught them. She says we're the lost tribes of the house of Israel
+and the chosen people of God. She says that the goddess Venus, that was
+born out of the foam of the sea, came up out of the water in Killiney
+Bay off Bray Head. She says that Moses built the seven churches, and
+that Lazarus was buried in Glasnevin.
+
+SIR PEARCE. Bosh! How does she know he was? Did you ever ask her?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. I did, sir, often.
+
+SIR PEARCE. And what did she say?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. She asked me how did I know he wasn't, and fetched me a
+clout on the side of my head.
+
+SIR PEARCE. But have you never mentioned any famous Englishman to her,
+and asked her what she had to say about him?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. The only one I could think of was Shakespeare, sir; and she
+says he was born in Cork.
+
+SIR PEARCE [exhausted]. Well, I give it up [he throws himself into the
+nearest chair]. The woman is--Oh, well! No matter.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [sympathetically]. Yes, sir: she's pigheaded and obstinate:
+there's no doubt about it. She's like the English: they think there's
+no one like themselves. It's the same with the Germans, though they're
+educated and ought to know better. You'll never have a quiet world till
+you knock the patriotism out of the human race.
+
+SIR PEARCE. Still, we--
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Whisht, sir, for God's sake: here she is.
+
+The General jumps up. Mrs. O'Flaherty arrives and comes between the
+two men. She is very clean, and carefully dressed in the old fashioned
+peasant costume; black silk sunbonnet with a tiara of trimmings, and
+black cloak.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [rising shyly]. Good evening, mother.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [severely]. You hold your whisht, and learn behavior
+while I pay my juty to his honor. [To Sir Pearce, heartily.] And how
+is your honor's good self? And how is her ladyship and all the young
+ladies? Oh, it's right glad we are to see your honor back again and
+looking the picture of health.
+
+SIR PEARCE [forcing a note of extreme geniality]. Thank you, Mrs
+O'Flaherty. Well, you see we've brought you back your son safe and
+sound. I hope you're proud of him.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. And indeed and I am, your honor. It's the brave boy he
+is; and why wouldn't he be, brought up on your honor's estate and with
+you before his eyes for a pattern of the finest soldier in Ireland.
+Come and kiss your old mother, Dinny darlint. [O'Flaherty does so
+sheepishly.] That's my own darling boy. And look at your fine new
+uniform stained already with the eggs you've been eating and the porter
+you've been drinking. [She takes out her handkerchief: spits on it: and
+scrubs his lapel with it.] Oh, it's the untidy slovenly one you always
+were. There! It won't be seen on the khaki: it's not like the old red
+coat that would show up everything that dribbled down on it. [To Sir
+Pearce.] And they tell me down at the lodge that her ladyship is
+staying in London, and that Miss Agnes is to be married to a fine young
+nobleman. Oh, it's your honor that is the lucky and happy father! It
+will be bad news for many of the young gentlemen of the quality round
+here, sir. There's lots thought she was going to marry young Master
+Lawless
+
+SIR PEARCE. What! That--that--that bosthoon!
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [hilariously]. Let your honor alone for finding the right
+word! A big bosthoon he is indeed, your honor. Oh, to think of the times
+and times I have said that Miss Agnes would be my lady as her mother was
+before her! Didn't I, Dinny?
+
+SIR PEARCE. And now, Mrs. O'Flaherty, I daresay you have a great deal to
+say to Dennis that doesn't concern me. I'll just go in and order tea.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Oh, why would your honor disturb yourself? Sure I can
+take the boy into the yard.
+
+SIR PEARCE. Not at all. It won't disturb me in the least. And he's too
+big a boy to be taken into the yard now. He has made a front seat for
+himself. Eh? [He goes into the house.]
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Sure he has that, your honor. God bless your honor! [The
+General being now out of hearing, she turns threateningly to her
+son with one of those sudden Irish changes of manner which amaze and
+scandalize less flexible nations, and exclaims.] And what do you mean,
+you lying young scald, by telling me you were going to fight agen the
+English? Did you take me for a fool that couldn't find out, and the
+papers all full of you shaking hands with the English king at Buckingham
+Palace?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. I didn't shake hands with him: he shook hands with me. Could
+I turn on the man in his own house, before his own wife, with his money
+in my pocket and in yours, and throw his civility back in his face?
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. You would take the hand of a tyrant red with the blood
+of Ireland--
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Arra hold your nonsense, mother: he's not half the tyrant
+you are, God help him. His hand was cleaner than mine that had the blood
+of his own relations on it, maybe.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [threateningly]. Is that a way to speak to your mother,
+you young spalpeen?
+
+O'FLAHERTY [stoutly]. It is so, if you won't talk sense to me. It's a
+nice thing for a poor boy to be made much of by kings and queens, and
+shook hands with by the heighth of his country's nobility in the capital
+cities of the world, and then to come home and be scolded and insulted
+by his own mother. I'll fight for who I like; and I'll shake hands with
+what kings I like; and if your own son is not good enough for you, you
+can go and look for another. Do you mind me now?
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. And was it the Belgians learned you such brazen
+impudence?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. The Belgians is good men; and the French ought to be more
+civil to them, let alone their being half murdered by the Boshes.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Good men is it! Good men! to come over here when they
+were wounded because it was a Catholic country, and then to go to the
+Protestant Church because it didn't cost them anything, and some of them
+to never go near a church at all. That's what you call good men!
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Oh, you're the mighty fine politician, aren't you? Much you
+know about Belgians or foreign parts or the world you're living in, God
+help you!
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Why wouldn't I know better than you? Amment I your
+mother?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. And if you are itself, how can you know what you never seen
+as well as me that was dug into the continent of Europe for six months,
+and was buried in the earth of it three times with the shells bursting
+on the top of me? I tell you I know what I'm about. I have my own
+reasons for taking part in this great conflict. I'd be ashamed to stay
+at home and not fight when everybody else is fighting.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. If you wanted to fight, why couldn't you fight in the
+German army?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Because they only get a penny a day.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Well, and if they do itself, isn't there the French
+army?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. They only get a hapenny a day.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [much dashed]. Oh murder! They must be a mean lot, Dinny.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [sarcastic]. Maybe you'd have me in the Turkish army, and
+worship the heathen Mahomet that put a corn in his ear and pretended it
+was a message from the heavens when the pigeon come to pick it out and
+eat it. I went where I could get the biggest allowance for you; and
+little thanks I get for it!
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Allowance, is it! Do you know what the thieving
+blackguards did on me? They came to me and they says, "Was your son a
+big eater?" they says. "Oh, he was that," says I: "ten shillings a week
+wouldn't keep him." Sure I thought the more I said the more they'd give
+me. "Then," says they, "that's ten shillings a week off your allowance,"
+they says, "because you save that by the king feeding him." "Indeed!"
+says I: "I suppose if I'd six sons, you'd stop three pound a week from
+me, and make out that I ought to pay you money instead of you paying
+me." "There's a fallacy in your argument," they says.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. A what?
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. A fallacy: that's the word he said. I says to him, "It's
+a Pharisee I'm thinking you mean, sir; but you can keep your dirty money
+that your king grudges a poor old widow; and please God the English will
+be got yet for the deadly sin of oppressing the poor;" and with that I
+shut the door in his face.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [furious]. Do you tell me they knocked ten shillings off you
+for my keep?
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [soothing him]. No, darlint: they only knocked off half
+a crown. I put up with it because I've got the old age pension; and they
+know very well I'm only sixty-two; so I've the better of them by half a
+crown a week anyhow.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. It's a queer way of doing business. If they'd tell you
+straight out what they was going to give you, you wouldn't mind; but if
+there was twenty ways of telling the truth and only one way of telling a
+lie, the Government would find it out. It's in the nature of governments
+to tell lies.
+
+Teresa Driscoll, a parlor maid, comes from the house,
+
+TERESA. You're to come up to the drawing-room to have your tea, Mrs.
+O'Flaherty.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Mind you have a sup of good black tea for me in the
+kitchen afterwards, acushla. That washy drawing-room tea will give me
+the wind if I leave it on my stomach. [She goes into the house, leaving
+the two young people alone together.]
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Is that yourself, Tessie? And how are you?
+
+TERESA. Nicely, thank you. And how's yourself?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Finely, thank God. [He produces a gold chain.] Look what
+I've brought you, Tessie.
+
+TERESA [shrinking]. Sure I don't like to touch it, Denny. Did you take
+it off a dead man?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. No: I took it off a live one; and thankful he was to me to
+be alive and kept a prisoner in ease and comfort, and me left fighting
+in peril of my life.
+
+TERESA [taking it]. Do you think it's real gold, Denny?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. It's real German gold, anyhow.
+
+TERESA. But German silver isn't real, Denny.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [his face darkening]. Well, it's the best the Bosh could do
+for me, anyhow.
+
+TERESA. Do you think I might take it to the jeweller next market day and
+ask him?
+
+O'FLAHERTY [sulkily]. You may take it to the divil if you like.
+
+TERESA. You needn't lose your temper about it. I only thought I'd like
+to know. The nice fool I'd look if I went about showing off a chain that
+turned out to be only brass!
+
+O'FLAHERTY. I think you might say Thank you.
+
+TERESA. Do you? I think you might have said something more to me than
+"Is that yourself?" You couldn't say less to the postman.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [his brow clearing]. Oh, is that what's the matter? Here!
+come and take the taste of ther brass out of my mouth. [He seizes her
+and kisses her.]
+
+Teresa, without losing her Irish dignity, takes the kiss as
+appreciatively as a connoisseur might take a glass of wine, and sits
+down with him on the garden seat,
+
+TERESA [as he squeezes her waist]. Thank God the priest can't see us
+here!
+
+O'FLAHERTY. It's little they care for priests in France, alanna.
+
+TERESA. And what had the queen on her, Denny, when she spoke to you in
+the palace?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. She had a bonnet on without any strings to it. And she had
+a plakeen of embroidery down her bosom. And she had her waist where it
+used to be, and not where the other ladies had it. And she had little
+brooches in her ears, though she hadn't half the jewelry of Mrs Sullivan
+that keeps the popshop in Drumpogue. And she dresses her hair down over
+her forehead, in a fringe like. And she has an Irish look about her
+eyebrows. And she didn't know what to say to me, poor woman! and I
+didn't know what to say to her, God help me!
+
+TERESA. You'll have a pension now with the Cross, won't you, Denny?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Sixpence three farthings a day.
+
+TERESA. That isn't much.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. I take out the rest in glory.
+
+TERESA. And if you're wounded, you'll have a wound pension, won't you?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. I will, please God.
+
+TERESA. You're going out again, aren't you, Denny?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. I can't help myself. I'd be shot for a deserter if I didn't
+go; and maybe I'll be shot by the Boshes if I do go; so between the two
+of them I'm nicely fixed up.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [calling from within the house]. Tessie! Tessie darlint!
+
+TERESA [disengaging herself from his arm and rising]. I'm wanted for
+the tea table. You'll have a pension anyhow, Denny, won't you, whether
+you're wounded or not?
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Come, child, come.
+
+TERESA [impatiently]. Oh, sure I'm coming. [She tries to smile at Denny,
+not very convincingly, and hurries into the house.]
+
+O'FLAHERTY [alone]. And if I do get a pension itself, the divil a penny
+of it you'll ever have the spending of.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [as she comes from the porch]. Oh, it's a shame for you
+to keep the girl from her juties, Dinny. You might get her into trouble.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Much I care whether she gets into trouble or not! I pity the
+man that gets her into trouble. He'll get himself into worse.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. What's that you tell me? Have you been falling out with
+her, and she a girl with a fortune of ten pounds?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Let her keep her fortune. I wouldn't touch her with the
+tongs if she had thousands and millions.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Oh fie for shame, Dinny! why would you say the like of
+that of a decent honest girl, and one of the Driscolls too?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Why wouldn't I say it? She's thinking of nothing but to get
+me out there again to be wounded so that she may spend my pension, bad
+scran to her!
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Why, what's come over you, child, at all at all?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Knowledge and wisdom has come over me with pain and fear
+and trouble. I've been made a fool of and imposed upon all my life. I
+thought that covetious sthreal in there was a walking angel; and now if
+ever I marry at all I'll marry a Frenchwoman.
+
+MRS O'FLARERTY [fiercely]. You'll not, so; and don't you dar repeat such
+a thing to me.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Won't I, faith! I've been as good as married to a couple of
+them already.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. The Lord be praised, what wickedness have you been up
+to, you young blackguard?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. One of them Frenchwomen would cook you a meal twice in the
+day and all days and every day that Sir Pearce himself might go begging
+through Ireland for, and never see the like of. I'll have a French wife,
+I tell you; and when I settle down to be a farmer I'll have a French
+farm, with a field as big as the continent of Europe that ten of your
+dirty little fields here wouldn't so much as fill the ditch of.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [furious]. Then it's a French mother you may go look for;
+for I'm done with you.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. And it's no great loss you'd be if it wasn't for my natural
+feelings for you; for it's only a silly ignorant old countrywoman you
+are with all your fine talk about Ireland: you that never stepped beyond
+the few acres of it you were born on!
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [tottering to the garden seat and showing signs of
+breaking down]. Dinny darlint, why are you like this to me? What's
+happened to you?
+
+O'FLAHERTY [gloomily]. What's happened to everybody? that's what I want
+to know. What's happened to you that I thought all the world of and was
+afeard of? What's happened to Sir Pearce, that I thought was a great
+general, and that I now see to be no more fit to command an army than an
+old hen? What's happened to Tessie, that I was mad to marry a year ago,
+and that I wouldn't take now with all Ireland for her fortune? I tell
+you the world's creation is crumbling in ruins about me; and then you
+come and ask what's happened to me?
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [giving way to wild grief]. Ochone! ochone! my son's
+turned agen me. Oh, what'll I do at all at all? Oh! oh! oh! oh!
+
+SIR PEARCE [running out of the house]. What's this infernal noise? What
+on earth is the matter?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Arra hold your whisht, mother. Don't you see his honor?
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Oh, Sir, I'm ruined and destroyed. Oh, won't you
+speak to Dinny, Sir: I'm heart scalded with him. He wants to marry a
+Frenchwoman on me, and to go away and be a foreigner and desert his
+mother and betray his country. It's mad he is with the roaring of the
+cannons and he killing the Germans and the Germans killing him, bad cess
+to them! My boy is taken from me and turned agen me; and who is to take
+care of me in my old age after all I've done for him, ochone! ochone!
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Hold your noise, I tell you. Who's going to leave you? I'm
+going to take you with me. There now: does that satisfy you?
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Is it take me into a strange land among heathens and
+pagans and savages, and me not knowing a word of their language nor them
+of mine?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. A good job they don't: maybe they'll think you're talking
+sense.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Ask me to die out of Ireland, is it? and the angels not
+to find me when they come for me!
+
+O'FLAHERTY. And would you ask me to live in Ireland where I've been
+imposed on and kept in ignorance, and to die where the divil himself
+wouldn't take me as a gift, let alone the blessed angels? You can come
+or stay. You can take your old way or take my young way. But stick in
+this place I will not among a lot of good-for-nothing divils that'll not
+do a hand's turn but watch the grass growing and build up the stone wall
+where the cow walked through it. And Sir Horace Plunkett breaking his
+heart all the time telling them how they might put the land into decent
+tillage like the French and Belgians.
+
+SIR PEARCE. Yes, he's quite right, you know, Mrs O'Flaherty: quite right
+there.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Well, sir, please God the war will last a long time yet;
+and maybe I'll die before it's over and the separation allowance stops.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. That's all you care about. It's nothing but milch cows we
+men are for the women, with their separation allowances, ever since the
+war began, bad luck to them that made it!
+
+TERESA [coming from the porch between the General and Mrs O'Flaherty.]
+Hannah sent me out for to tell you, sir, that the tea will be black and
+the cake not fit to eat with the cold if yous all don't come at wanst.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [breaking out again]. Oh, Tessie darlint, what have you
+been saying to Dinny at all at all? Oh! Oh--
+
+SIR PEARCE [out of patience]. You can't discuss that here. We shall have
+Tessie beginning now.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. That's right, sir: drive them in.
+
+TERESA. I haven't said a word to him. He--
+
+SIR PEARCE. Hold your tongue; and go in and attend to your business at
+the tea table.
+
+TERESA. But amment I telling your honor that I never said a word to him?
+He gave me a beautiful gold chain. Here it is to show your honor that
+it's no lie I'm telling you.
+
+SIR PEARCE. What's this, O'Flaherty? You've been looting some
+unfortunate officer.
+
+O'FLAHERTY. No, sir: I stole it from him of his own accord.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY. Wouldn't your honor tell him that his mother has the
+first call on it? What would a slip of a girl like that be doing with a
+gold chain round her neck?
+
+TERESA [venomously]. Anyhow, I have a neck to put it round and not a
+hank of wrinkles.
+
+At this unfortunate remark, Mrs O'Flaherty bounds from her seat: and
+an appalling tempest of wordy wrath breaks out. The remonstrances and
+commands of the General, and the protests and menaces of O'Flaherty,
+only increase the hubbub. They are soon all speaking at once at the top
+of their voices.
+
+MRS O'FLAHERTY [solo]. You impudent young heifer, how dar you say such a
+thing to me? [Teresa retorts furiously: the men interfere: and the solo
+becomes a quartet, fortissimo.] I've a good mind to clout your ears for
+you to teach you manners. Be ashamed of yourself, do; and learn to know
+who you're speaking to. That I maytn't sin! but I don't know what the
+good God was thinking about when he made the like of you. Let me not see
+you casting sheep's eyes at my son again. There never was an O'Flaherty
+yet that would demean himself by keeping company with a dirty Driscoll;
+and if I see you next or nigh my house I'll put you in the ditch with a
+flea in your ear: mind that now.
+
+TERESA. Is it me you offer such a name to, you fou-mouthed,
+dirty-minded, lying, sloothering old sow, you? I wouldn't soil my tongue
+by calling you in your right name and telling Sir Pearce what's the
+common talk of the town about you. You and your O'Flahertys! setting
+yourself up agen the Driscolls that would never lower themselves to be
+seen in conversation with you at the fair. You can keep your ugly stingy
+lump of a son; for what is he but a common soldier? and God help
+the girl that gets him, say I! So the back of my hand to you, Mrs
+O'Flaherty; and that the cat may tear your ugly old face!
+
+SIR PEARCE. Silence. Tessie, did you hear me ordering you to go into the
+house? Mrs O'Flaherty! [Louder.] Mrs O'Flaherty!! Will you just listen
+to me one moment? Please. [Furiously.] Do you hear me speaking to you,
+woman? Are you human beings or are you wild beasts? Stop that noise
+immediately: do you hear? [Yelling.] Are you going to do what I order
+you, or are you not? Scandalous! Disgraceful! This comes of being too
+familiar with you. O'Flaherty, shove them into the house. Out with the
+whole damned pack of you.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [to the women]. Here now: none of that, none of that. Go
+easy, I tell you. Hold your whisht, mother, will you, or you'll be sorry
+for it after. [To Teresa.] Is that the way for a decent young girl to
+speak? [Despairingly.] Oh, for the Lord's sake, shut up, will yous? Have
+you no respect for yourselves or your betters? [Peremptorily.] Let me
+have no more of it, I tell you. Och! the divil's in the whole crew of
+you. In with you into the house this very minute and tear one another's
+eyes out in the kitchen if you like. In with you.
+
+The two men seize the two women, and push them, still violently abusing
+one another, into the house. Sir Pearce slams the door upon them
+savagely. Immediately a heavenly silence falls on the summer afternoon.
+The two sit down out of breath: and for a long time nothing is said. Sir
+Pearce sits on an iron chair. O'Flaherty sits on the garden seat. The
+thrush begins to sing melodiously. O'Flaherty cocks his ears, and looks
+up at it. A smile spreads over his troubled features. Sir Pearce, with a
+long sigh, takes out his pipe and begins to fill it.
+
+O'FLAHERTY [idyllically]. What a discontented sort of an animal a man
+is, sir! Only a month ago, I was in the quiet of the country out at the
+front, with not a sound except the birds and the bellow of a cow in the
+distance as it might be, and the shrapnel making little clouds in the
+heavens, and the shells whistling, and maybe a yell or two when one of
+us was hit; and would you believe it, sir, I complained of the noise and
+wanted to have a peaceful hour at home. Well: them two has taught me a
+lesson. This morning, sir, when I was telling the boys here how I was
+longing to be back taking my part for king and country with the others,
+I was lying, as you well knew, sir. Now I can go and say it with a clear
+conscience. Some likes war's alarums; and some likes home life. I've
+tried both, sir; and I'm for war's alarums now. I always was a quiet lad
+by natural disposition.
+
+SIR PEARCE. Strictly between ourselves, O'Flaherty, and as one soldier
+to another [O'Flaherty salutes, but without stiffening], do you think we
+should have got an army without conscription if domestic life had been
+as happy as people say it is?
+
+O'FLAHERTY. Well, between you and me and the wall, Sir Pearce, I think
+the less we say about that until the war's over, the better.
+
+He winks at the General. The General strikes a match. The thrush sings.
+A jay laughs. The conversation drops.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of O'Flaherty V. C., by George Bernard Shaw
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK O'FLAHERTY V. C. ***
+
+***** This file should be named 3484.txt or 3484.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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+
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