hand here and there.

King: What way does he handle flesh, I'd wish
to know? And all that comes up from the tide?
Bream, now; that is a fish is very pleasant to me—
stewed or fried with butter till the bones of it melt
in your mouth. There is nothing in sea or strand
but is the better of a quality cook—only oysters,
that are best left alone, being as they are all gravy
and fat.

Queen: I didn't question him yet about cookery.

King: It's seldom I met a woman with right
respect for food, but for show and silly dishes and
trash that would leave you in the finish as dwindled
as a badger on St. Bridget's day.

Queen: If this youth of a young man was able to
give satisfaction at the King of Sorcha's Court,
I am sure that he will make a dinner to please
yourself.

Manus: I will do more than that. I will dress
a dinner that will please myself.

Princess: (Clapping hands.) Very well said!

King: Sound out now some good dishes such
as you used to be giving in Sorcha, and the Queen
will put them down in a line of writing, that I can
be thinking about them till such time as you will
have them readied.

Queen: There are sheeps' trotters below; you
might know some tasty way to dress them.

Manus: I do surely. I'll put the trotters within
a fowl, and the fowl within a goose, and the goose in
a suckling pig, and the suckling pig in a fat lamb,
and the lamb in a calf, and the calf in a Maderalla ...

King: What now is a Maderalla?

Manus: He is a beast that saves the cook trouble,
swallowing all those meats one after another—in
Sorcha.

King: That should be a very pretty dish. Let
you go make a start with it the way we will not be
famished before nightfall. Bring him, Dall Glic,
to the larder.

Dall Glic: I'm in dread it's as good for him to
stop where he is.

King: What are you saying?

Dall Glic: Those lads of apprentices that left
nothing in it only bare hooks.

Nurse: It is the Queen would give no leave
for more provision to come in, saying there was
no one to prepare it.

Manus: If that is so, I will be forced to lay
my orders on the Hawk of the Grey Rock and the
Brown Otter of the Stream to bring in meat at
my bidding.

King: Hurry on so.

Queen: I myself will go and give you instructions
what way to use the kitchen.

Manus: Not at all! What I do I'd as lief do
in your own royal parlour! (Blows whistle; two dark-skinned
men come in with vessels.) Give me here
those pots and pans!

Queen: What now is about to take place?

Dall Glic: I not to be blind, I would say those
to be very foreign-looking men.

King: It would seem as if the world was grown
to be very queer.

Queen: So it is, and the mastery being given
to a cook.

Manus: So it should be too! It is the King
of Shades and Shadows would have rule over the
world if it wasn't for the cooks!

King: There's some sense in that now.

(Strange men are moving and arranging baskets
and vessels.)

Manus: There was respect for cooks in the
early days of the world. What way did the Sons
of Tuireann get their death but going questing
after a cooking spit at the bidding of Lugh of the
Long Hand! And if a spit was worthy of the death
of heroes, what should the man be worth that is
skilled in turning it? What is the difference
between man and beast? Beast and bird devour
what they find and have no power to change it.
But we are Druids of those mysteries, having
magic and virtue to turn hard grain to tender cakes,
and the very skin of a grunting pig to crackling
causing quarrels among champions, and it singing
upon the coals. A cook! If I am I am not without
good generations before me! Who was the first
old father of us, roasting and reddening the fruits
of the earth from hard to soft, from bitter to kind,
till they are fit for a lady's platter? What is it
leaves us in the hard cold of Christmas but the
robbery from earth of warmth for the kitchen
fire of (takes off cap) the first and foremost of all
master cooks—the Sun!