Queen: There is no other way to set her mind
to sense and learning. It will be for her own
good.

Nurse: Where's the use troubling her with
lessons and with books that maybe she will never
be in need of at all. Speak up for her, King.

King: Let her stop for this year as she is.

Queen: You are all too soft and too easy. She
will turn on you and will blame you for it, and
another year or two years slipped by.

Nurse: That she may!

Dall Glic: Who knows what might take place
within the twelvemonth that is coming?

King: Ah, don't be talking about it. Maybe
it never might come to pass.

Dall Glic: It will come to pass, if there is truth
in the clouds of sky.

King: It will not be for a year, anyway. There'll
be many an ebbing and flowing of the tide within
a year.

Queen: What at all are you talking about?

King: Ah, where's the use of talking too
much.

Queen: Making riddles you are, and striving
to keep the meaning from your comrade, that is
myself.

King: It's best not be thinking about the thing
you would not wish, and maybe it might never
come around at all. To strive to forget a threat
yourself, it might maybe be forgotten by the
universe.

Queen: Is it true something was threatened?

King: How would I know is anything true,
and the world so full of lies as it is?

Nurse: That is so. He might have been wrong
in his foretelling. What is he in the finish but an
old prophecy?

Dall Glic: Is it of Fintan you are saying that?

Queen: And who, will you tell me, is Fintan?

Dall Glic: Anyone that never heard tell of
Fintan never heard anything at all.

Queen: His name was not up on the tablets
of big men at the King of Alban's Court, or of
Britain.

Nurse: Ah, sure in those countries they are
without religion or belief.

Queen: Is it that there was a prophecy?

King: Don't mind it. What are prophecies?
Don't we hear them every day of the week? And
if one comes true there may be seven blind and
come to nothing.

Queen: (To Dall Glic.) I must get to the root
of this, and the handle. Who, now, is Fintan?

Dall Glic: He is an astrologer, and understanding
the nature of the stars.

Nurse: He wore out in his lifetime three eagles
and three palm trees and three earthen dykes.
It is down in a cleft of the rocks beyond he has
his dwelling presently, the way he can be watching
the stars through the daytime.

Dall Glic: He prophesied in a prophecy, and
it is written in clean letters in the King's yew-tree
box.

King: It is best to keep it out of sight. It
being to be, it will be; and, if not, where's the
use troubling our mind?

Queen: Sound it out to me.

Dall Glic: (Looking from window and drawing
curtain.) There is no story in the world is worse
to me or more pitiful; I wouldn't wish any person
to hear.

Nurse: Oh, take care it would come to the
ears of my darling Nu!

Dall Glic: It is said by himself and the heavens
that in a year from this day the King's daughter will
be brought away and devoured by a scaly Green
Dragon that will come from the North of the
World.

Queen: A Dragon! I thought you were talking
of some danger. I wouldn't give in to dragons.
I never saw one. I'm not in dread of beasts unless
it might be a mouse in the night-time!

King: Put it out of mind. It is likely anyway
that the world will soon be ended the way
it is.

Queen: I will send and search out this astrologer
and will question him.

Dall Glic: You have not far to search. He
is outside at the kitchen door at this minute, and
as if questioning after something, and it a half-score
and seven years since I knew him to come
out of his cave.

King: Do not! He might waken up the Dragon
and put him in mind of the girl, for to make his
own foretelling come true.

Nurse: Ah, such a thing cannot be! The
poor innocent child! (Weeps.)

Queen: Where's the use of crying and roaring?
The thing must be stopped and put an end to.
I don't say I give in to your story, but that would
be an unnatural death. I would be scandalised
being stepmother to a girl that would be swallowed
by a sea-serpent!

Nurse: Ochone! Don't be talking of it at
all!

Queen: At the King of Alban's Court, one
of the royal family to die over, it will be naturally
on a pillow, and the dead-bells ringing, and a
burying with white candles, and crape on the
knocker of the door, and a flagstone put over the
grave. What way could we put a stone or so
much as a rose-bush over Nuala and she in the
inside of a water-worm might be ploughing its way
down to the north of the world?

Nurse: Och! that is what is killing me entirely!
O save her, save her.

King: I tell you, it being to be, it will be.

Queen: You may be right, so, when you would
not go to the expense of paying her charges at the
Royal school. But wait, now, there is a plan
coming into my mind.

Nurse: There must surely be some way!

Queen: It is likely a king's daughter the beast—
if there is a beast—will come questioning after, and
not after a king's wife.

Dall Glic: That is according to custom.

Queen: That's what I am saying. What we
have to do is to join Nuala with a man of a husband,
and she will be safe from the danger ahead of her.
In all the inventions made by poets, for to put
terror on children or to knock laughter out of fools,
did any of you ever hear of a Dragon swallowing
the wedding ring?

All: We never did.

Queen: It's easy enough so. There must be
no delay till Nuala will be married and wed with
someone that will bring her away out of this, and
let the Dragon go hungry home!

Nurse: That she may! Isn't it a pity now
she being so hard to please!

Queen: Young people are apt to be selfish and
to have no thought but for themselves. She must
not be hard to please when it will be to save and
to serve her family and to keep up respect for
their name. Here she is coming.

Nurse: Ah, you would not tell her! You
would not put the dear child under the shadow
of such a terror and such a threat!

King: She must not be told. I never could
bear up against it.

(Nuala comes in.)

Queen: Look now at your father the way he is.

Princess: (Touching his hand.) What is fretting
you?

Queen: His heart as weighty as that the chair
near broke under him.

Princess: I never saw you this way before.

Queen: And all on the head of yourself!

Princess: I am sorry, and very sorry, for that.

Queen: He is loth to say it to you, but he is
tired and wore out waiting for you to settle with
some match. See what a troubled look he has on
his face.

Princess: (To King.) Is it that you want me
to leave you? (He gives a sob.) (To Dall Glic.)
Is it the Queen urged him to this?

Dall Glic: If she did, it was surely for your good.

Nurse: Oh, my child and my darling, let you
strive to take a liking to some good man that will
come!

Princess: Are you going against me with the rest?

Nurse: You know well