N. You are one of the knowledgeable women. You can tell me where
it is best to begin, and what will happen in the end.

BIDDY. I will foretell nothing at all. I rose out of it this good
while, with the stiffness and the swelling it brought upon my joints.

MARTIN. If you have foreknowledge, you have no right to keep silent. If
you do not help me, I may go to work in the wrong way. I know I have to
destroy, but when I ask myself what I am to begin with, I am full of
uncertainty.

PAUDEEN. Here now are the cups handy and the leavings in them.

BIDDY [_taking cups and pouring one from another_]. Throw a bit of
white money into the four corners of the house.

MARTIN. There! [_Throwing it._]

BIDDY. There can be nothing told without silver. It is not myself will
have the profit of it. Along with that I will be forced to throw out
gold.

MARTIN. There is a guinea for you. Tell me what comes before your eyes.

BIDDY. What is it you are wanting to have news of?

MARTIN. Of what I have to go out against at the beginning ... there is
so much ... the whole world, it may be.

BIDDY [_throwing from one cup to another and looking_]. You have no
care for yourself. You have been across the sea; you are not long back.
You are coming within the best day of your life.

MARTIN. What is it? What is it I have to do?

BIDDY. I see a great smoke, I see burning ... there is a great smoke
overhead.

MARTIN. That means we have to burn away a great deal that men have
piled up upon the earth. We must bring men once more to the wildness of
the clean green earth.

BIDDY. Herbs for my healing, the big herb and the little herb; it is
true enough they get their great strength out of the earth.

JOHNNY B. Who was it the green sod of Ireland belonged to in the olden
times? Wasn't it to the ancient race it belonged? And who has
possession of it now but the race that came robbing over the sea? The
meaning of that is to destroy the big houses and the towns, and the
fields to be given back to the ancient race.

MARTIN. That is it. You don't put it as I do, but what matter? Battle
is all.

PAUDEEN. Columcille said the four corners to be burned, and then the
middle of the field to be burned. I tell you it was Columcille's
prophecy said that.

BIDDY. Iron handcuffs I see and a rope and a gallows, and it maybe is
not for yourself I see it, but for some I have acquaintance with a good
way back.

MARTIN. That means the law. We must destroy