The Cat and the Moon

The Cat and the Moon

1926

to John Masefield

Persons in the Play

A Blind Beggar

A Lame Beggar

Three Musicians

 

Scene. – The scene is any bare place before a wall against which stands a patterned screen, or hangs a patterned curtain suggesting Saint Colman’s Well. Three Musicains are sitting close to the wall, with zither, drum, and flute. Their faces are made up to resemble masks.

 

    First Musician [singing].

The cat went here and there

And the moon spun round like a top,

And the nearest kin of the moon,

The creeping cat, looked up.

Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,

For, wander and wail as he would,

The pure cold light in the sky

Troubled his animal blood.

    [Two beggars enter – a blind man with a lame man on his back. They wear grotesque masks. The  

    Blind Beggar is counting the paces.

 

Blind Beggar. One thousand and six, one thousand and

  seven, one thousand and nine. Look well now, for

  we should be in sight of the holy well of Saint

  Colman. The beggar at the crosroads said it was

  one thousand paces from where he stood and a few

  paces over. Look well now, can you see the big as

  tree that’s abouve it?

 

Lame Beggar [getting down]. No, not yet.

 

Blind Beggar. Then we must have taken a wrong turn;

  flighty you always were, and maybe before the day

  is over you will have me drowned in Kiltartan River

  or maybe in the sea itself.

 

Lame Beggar. I have brought you the right way, but

  you are a lazy man, Blind Man, and you make very

  short strides.

 

Blind Beggar. It’s great daring you have, and how could

  I make a long stride and you on my back from the

  peep o’day?

 

Lame Beggar. And maybe the beggar of the cross-roads

  was only making it up when he said a thousand

  paces and a few paces more. You and I, being beggars,

  know the way of beggars, and maybe he never paced

  it at all, being a lazy man.

 

Blind Beggar. Get up. It’s too much talk you have.

 

Lame Beggar [getting up]. But as I was saying he being a

  lazy man – O, O, O, stop pinching the calf of my

  leg and I’ll not say another word till I’m spoke to.

    [They go round the stage once, moving to drum-taps, and as they move the following song is sung.]

 

    First Musician [singing]

                Minnaloushe runs in the grass

                Lifting his delicate feet

                Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?

                When two close kindred meet

                What better than call a dance?

                Maybe the moon may learn,

                Tired of that courtly fashion,

                A new dance turn.

 

Blind Beggar. Do you see the big ash-tree?

 

Lame Beggar. I do then, and the wall under it, and the

  flat stone, and the things upon the stone;  and here

  is a good dry place to kneel in.

 

Blind Beggar. You may get down so. [Lame beggar gets

  down.] I begin to have it in my mind that I am a

  great fool, and it was you who egged me on with

  your flighty talk.

 

Lame Beggar. How should you be a great fool to ask the

  saint to give you back your two eyes?

 

Blind Beggar. There is many gives money to a blind

  man and would give nothing but a curse to a whole

  man, and if it was not for one thing – but no matter

  anyway.

 

Lame Beggar. If I speak out all that’s in my mind you

  won’t take a blow at me at all?

 

Blind Beggar. I will not this time.

 

Lame Beggar. Then I’ll tell you why you are not a great

  fool. When you go out to pick up a chicken, or

  maybe a stray goose on the road, or a cabbage from

  a neighbour’s garden, I have to go riding on your

  back; and if I want a goose, or a chicken, or a

  cabbage, I must have your two legs under me.

 

Blind Beggar. That’s true now and if we were whole

  men and went different ways, there’d be as much

  again between us.

 

Lame Beggar. And your own goods keep going from

  you because you are blind.

 

Blind Beggar. Rogues and thieves ye all are, but there

  are some I may have my eyes on yet.

 

Lame Beggar. Because there’s no one to see a man slip-

  -ping in at the door, or throwing a leg over the wall

  of a yard, you are a bitter temptation to many a

  poor man, and I say it’s not right, it’s not right at

  all. There are poor men that because you are blind

  will be delayed in Purgatory.  

 

Blind Beggar. Though you are a rogue, Lame Man,

  maybe you are in the right.

 

Lame Beggar. And maybe we’ll see the blessed saint this

  day, for there’s an odd one sees him, and maybe that

  will be a grander thing than having my two legs,

  though legs are a grand thing.

 

Blind Beggar. You’re getting flighty again, Lame Man;

  what could be better for you than to have your two

  legs?

 

Lame Beggar. Do you think now will the saint put an

  ear on him at all, and we without an Ave or a Pater-

  noster to put before the prayer or after the prayer?

 

Blind Beggar. Wise though you are  and flighty though

  you are, and you throwing eyes to the right of you

  and eyes to the left of you, there’s many a thing you

  don’t know about the heart of man.

 

Lame Beggar. But is stands to reason that he’d be put

  out and he maybe with a great liking for the Latin.

 

Blind Beggar. I have it in mind that the saint will be

  better pleased at us not knowing a prayer at all, and

  that we had best say what we want in plain language.

  What pleasure can he have in all that holy company

  kneeling at his well on holidays and Sundays, and

  they as innocent maybe as himself?

 

Lame Beggar. That’s a strange thing to say, and do you

  say it as I or another might say it, or as a blind man?

 

Blind Beggar. I say it as a blind man, I say it because

  since I went blind in the tenth year of my age, I have

  been hearing and remembering the knowledges of

  the world.

 

Lame Beggar. And you who are a blind man say that

  a saint, and he living in a pure well of water, would

  soonest be talking with a sinful man.

 

Blind Beggar. Do you mind what the beggar told you

  about the holy man in the big house at Laban?

 

Lame Beggar. Nothing stays in my head, Blind Man.

 

Blind Beggar. What does he do but go knocking about

  the roads with an old lecher from the county of

  Mayo, and he a woman-hater from the day of his

  birth! And what do they talk of by candle-light and

  by daylight? The old lecher does be telling over all

  the sins he committed, or maybe he never committed

  at all, and the man of Laban does be trying to head

  him off and quiet him down that he may quit

  telling them.

 

Lame Beggar. We have great wisdom between us, that’s

  certain.

 

Blind Beggar. Now the Church says that it is a good

  thought, and a sweet thought, and a comfortable

  thought, that every man may have a saint to look

  after him, and I, being blind, give it out to all the

  world that the bigger the sinner the better pleased

  is the saint. I am sure and certain that Saint Colman

  would not have us two different from what we are. 

 

Lame Beggar. I’ll not give in to that, for as I was saying,

  he has a great liking maybe for the Latin.

 

Blind Beggar. Is it contradicting me you are? Are you

  in reach of my arm? [swinging stick].

 

Lame Beggar. I’m not, Blind Man, you couldn’t touch

  me at all; but as I was saying –

 

First Musician [speaking]. Will you be cured or will you

  be blessed?

 

Lame Beggar. Lord save us, that is the saint’s voice and

  we not on our knees.                                                           [They kneel.

 

Blind Beggar. Is he standing before us, Lame Man?

 

Lame Beggar. I cannot see him at all. It is in the ash-tree

  he is, or up in the air.

 

First Musician. Will you be cured or will you be

  blessed?

 

Lame Beggar. There he is again.

 

Blind Beggar. I’ll be cured of my blindness.

 

First Musician. I am a saint and lonely. Will you be-

  come blessed and stay blind and we will be together

  always?

 

Blind Beggar. No, no, your Reverence, if I have to

  choose, I’ll have the sight of my two eyes, for those

  that have their sight are always stealing my things

  and telling me lies, and some maybe that are near

  me. So don’t take it bad of me, Holy Man, that I

  ask the sight of my two eyes.

 

Lame Beggar. No one robs him and no one tells him

  lies; it’s all in his head, it is. He’s had his tongue on

  me all day because he thinks I stole a sheep of his.

 

Blind Beggar. It was the feel of his sheepskin coat put

  it into my had, but my sheep was black, they say,

  and he tells me, Holy Man, that his sheepskin is of

  the most lovely white wool so that it is a joy to be

  looking at it.

 

First Musician. Lame Man, will you be cured or will

  you be blessed?

 

Lame Beggar. What would it be like to be blessed?

 

First Musician. You would be of the kin of the blessed

  saints and of the martyrs.

 

Lame Beggar. Is it true now that they have a book and

  that they write the names of the blessed in that

  book?

 

First Musician. Many a time I have seen the book, and

  your name would be in it.

 

Lame Beggar. It would be a grand thing to have two legs

  under me, but I have it in my mind that it would be

  a grander thing to have my name in that book.

 

First Musician. It would be a grander thing.

 

Lame Beggar. I will stay lame, Holy Man, and I will be

  blessed.

 

First Musician. In the name of the Father, the Son and

  the Holy Spirit I give this Blind Man sight and I

  make this Lame Man blessed.

 

Blind Beggar. I see it all now, the blue sky and the big

  ash-tree and the well and the flat stone,  – all as I

  have heard the people say – and the things the pray-

  ing people put on the stone, the beads and the

  candles and the leaves torn out of prayer-books, and

  the hairpins and the buttons. It is a great sight and

  a blessed sight, but I don’t see yourself, Holy Man

  – is it up in the big tree you are?

 

Lame Beggar. Why, there he is in front of you and he

  laughing out of his wrinkled face.

 

Blind Beggar. Where, where?

 

Lame Beggar. Why, there, between you and the ash-tree.

 

Blind Beggar. There’s nobody there – you’re at your lies

  again.

 

Lame Beggar. I am blessed, and that is why I can see the

  holy saint.

 

Blind Beggar. But if I don’t see the saint, there’s some-

  thing else I can see.

 

Lame Beggar. The blue sky and green leaves are a great

  sight, and a strange sight to one that has been long

  blind.

 

Blind Beggar. There is a stranger sight than that, and

  that is the skin of my own black sheep on your back.

 

Lame Beggar. Haven’t I been telling you from the peep

  o’day that my sheepskin is that white it would

  dazzle you?

 

Blind Beggar. Are you so swept with words that

  you’ve never thought that when I had my own two

  eyes, I’d see what coulour was on it?

 

Lame Beggar [very dejected]. I never thought of that.

 

Blind Beggar. Are you that flighty?

 

Lame Beggar. I am that flighty. [Cheering up.] But am I

  not blessed, and it’s a sin to speak against the

  blessed?

 

Blind Beggar. Well, I’ll speak against the blessed, and

  I’ll tell you something more that I’ll do. All the

  while you were telling me how, if I had my two

  eyes, I could pick up a chicken here and a goose

  there, while my neighbours  were in bed, do you

  know what I was thinking?

 

Lame Beggar. Some wicked blind man’s thought.

 

Blind Beggar. It was, and it’s not gone from me yet. I

  was saying to myself, I have a long arm and a strong

  arm and a very weighty arm, and when I get my own

  two eyes I shall know where to hit.

 

Lame Beggar. Don’t lay a hand on me. Forty years we’ve

  been knocking about the roads together, and I

  wouldn’t have you bring your soul into mortal peril.

 

Blind Beggar. I have been saying to myself, I shall know

  where to hit and how to hit and who to hit.

 

Lame Beggar. Do you know that I am blessed?

  Would you be as bad as Caesar and as Herod and

  Nero and the other wicked emperors of antiquity?

 

Blind Beggar. Where’ll I hit him, for the love of God,

  where’ll I hit him?

                [Blind Beggar beats Lame Beggar. The beating takes the form of a dance and is accompanied

on drum and flute. The Blind Beggar goes out.

 

Lame Beggar. That is a soul lost, Holy Man.

 

First Musician: Maybe so.

 

Lame Beggar. I’d better be going, Holy Man, for he’ll

  rouse the whole country against me.

 

First Musician. He’ll do that.

 

Lame Beggar. And I have it in my mind not even

  myself again with the martyrs, and the holy con-

  fessors, till I am more used to being blessed.

 

First Musician. Bend your back.

 

Lame Beggar. What for, Holy Man?

 

First Musician. That I may get up on it.

 

Lame Beggar. But my lame legs would never bear the

  weight of you.

 

First Musician. I’m up now.

 

Lame Beggar. I don’t feel  you at all.

 

First Musician: I don’t weigh more than a grasshopper.

 

Lame Beggar. You do not.

 

First Musician. Are you happy?

 

Lame Beggar. I would be if I was right sure I was

  blessed

 

First Musician. Haven’t you got me for a friend?

 

Lame Beggar: I have so.

 

First Musician. Then you’re blessed.

 

Lame Beggar. Will you see that they put my name in

  the book?

 

First Musician. I will then.

 

Lame Beggar. Let us be going, Holy Man.

 

First Musician. But you must bless the road.

 

Lame Beggar. I haven’t the right words.

 

First Musician. What do you want words for? Bow to

  what is before you, bow to what is behind you, bow

  to what is to the left of you, bow to what is to the

  right of you.                                                                   [The Lame Beggar begins to bow.

 

First Musician. That’s no good.

 

Lame Beggar. No good, Holy Man?

 

First Musician. No good at all. You must dance.

 

Lame Beggar. But how can I dance? Ain’t I a lame man?

 

First Musician. Aren’t you blessed?

 

Lame Beggar. Maybe so.

 

First Musician. Aren’t you a miracle?

 

Lame Beggar. I am, Holy Man.

 

First Musician. Then dance, and that’ll be a miracle.

 

[The Lame Beggar begins to dance, at first clumsily, moving about with his stick, then he throws away the stick and dances more and more quickly. Whenever he strikes the ground strongly with his lame foot the cymbals clash. He goes out dancing, after which follows the First Musician’s song.

 

    First Musician [singing]

                Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

                From moonlit place to place.

                The sacred moon overhead

                Has taken a new phase.

                Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils

                Will pass from change to change,

                And that from round to crescent,

From crescent to round they range?

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

Alone, important and wise,

And lifts to the changing moon

His changing eyes.

 

                                                                              The End