The Maiden Stone E-Book

Rona Munro

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Modern Plays
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 124

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A wild and fantastical tale about a group of women struggling to get by in the harsh world of north-east Scotland in the early nineteenth century. Down-on-her-luck, out-of-work actress Harriet and her family are wandering the roads of Scotland looking for food, shelter, and the opportunity to perform. But they are not the only ones travelling the highways and byways – there's tinker and storyteller Bidie along with her family, always looking for a break; and the dangerously beguiling stranger Nick, whose presence on the road just might be more of a curse than a blessing... Rona Munro's play The Maiden Stone won the inaugural Peggy Ramsay Award and was first performed at Hampstead Theatre, London, in April 1995.

Leseprobe

Rona Munro

THE MAIDEN STONE

NICK HERN BOOKSLondonwww.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Original Production

Dedication

Author's Note

Characters

The Maiden Stone

Glossary

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

The Maiden Stone was first performed at the Hampstead Theatre, London on 21 April 1995. The cast was as follows:

HARRIET

Frances Tomelty

BIDIE

Carol Ann Crawford

MARY

Shirley Henderson

MIRIAM

Sarah Howe

ARCHIE

Paul Higgins

NICK

Alexander Morton

HARRY

Anthony Colbert

Bidie's BroodTeam A: Christopher Frost, Lydia Hrela, Perry Keating, Natalie King, Katie Sheehy

Team B: Bradley Cassidy, Mae Cassidy, Gemma Coughlan, Owen Proktor­-Jackson, Samantha Wadsworth

Director

Matthew Lloyd

Designer

Robin Don

Costume Designer

Anne Sinclair

Lighting Designer

Robert Bryan

Choreography

Rosemary Lee

Composer

Jim Sutherland

Sound Designer

Simon Whitehorn

Dialect Coach

Julia Wilson-Dickson

Hair and Make-up Consultant

Louise Fisher

For Joelle, for all the roads and Saff,for all the homecomings

Author’s Note

The Maiden Stone was commissioned by Hampstead Theatre. It’s a play about my own birthplace, North East Scotland. That landscape remains for me one of the most beautiful I know though its effect on me, like its own mountains, is deceptive. It’s only when you reach the summit and look back you realise the distance you’ve come and see you’re standing on top of the world.

The language of the piece is the native dialect as I remember it and is in no sense historical but a living language. For the Hampstead production we reproduced this with minimal compromise and I don’t think the rhythm or the integrity of the play would survive any attempt at translation. The dialect is not rigidly consistent but this reflects the true rhythms of bilingual speech, i.e. not every ‘have’ becomes ‘hae’.

It is important for the story of the play to be told as described but I would anticipate staging which is stylised enough to allow the suggestion of hordes of children, trees, fire and snow with­out these necessarily being literally present. In particular I see the ‘brood’ functioning as a kind of chorus and mechanism to create some of the events of the piece and not as an actual horde of toddlers.

There was at least one nineteenth-century actress who has left us a record of her wanderings. She toured as far north as Arbroath, had seventeen children and outlived two husbands.

The landscape is real as is the Maiden Stone. Corgarff Castle is real and well haunted by the ghosts of lonely red coats. Auch­nibeck is invented but typical of a N.E. ‘toun’ of the period. The songs and stories are ones I remember from childhood. I suppose I feel them to be a record of a people and a culture invisible in history but a bedrock I stand on nonetheless.

I have taken some small liberties with time, distance and language but I think, like Bidie, you can change the tale if it makes for a better story, everything larger than detail is as real as I can make it.

Characters

HARRIET – Early forties but looking good on it despite her situation. She is from the North of England but retains no trace of this in her voice except in moments of stress.BIDIE – Late thirties but appears older than HARRIET. She is a travelling woman.MARY – Sixteen. Her clothes suggest something better than a farm worker, their condition suggests something worse.MIRIAM – Fourteen. Harriet’s daughter.ARCHIE – Thirty-five. Scottish but not a North Easter.NICK – Could be anything from thirty-five to fifty-five. A traveller.CHILDREN – HARRY, babies and BIDIE’s brood.

Once upon a time . . .

In a place like Donside . . .

ACT ONE

Farm and woodland in North East Scotland. The hills are visible in the distance over a sweep of fields. There is a dry stone dyke on stage . One larger stone, an earlier monolith, the Maiden Stone had been embedded in the dyke. It resembles a crude human figure, leaning forward as if running.

There is a road, unmetalled, a farm track between stone dykes.

It is late summer.

Scene One

The road. Dusk.

BIDIE walks to centre stage. She has a baby on her hip, she’s singing to it softly.

BIDIE. And wi’ you, and wi’ you, And wi’ you Johnnie lad, I’ll dance the buckles aff my shoon Wi’ you my Johnnie lad

O, Johnnie’s nae a gentleman, Nor yet is he a laird,But I would follow Johnnie lad,Although he was a caird.

And wi’ you, and wi’ you, And wi’ you Johnnie lad,I’ll dance the buckles aff my shoonWi’ you my Johnnie lad.

While she has been singing a crowd of children have crept in. They flow around her, stroking her face, combing her hair. She kisses and pats them as she sings and talks. They kneel and stand around her, one kneels on all fours to make a seat, two on either side make arm rests, they have lambs and dogs and other animals, BIDIE sits on a throne of children and beasts.

Johnnie was sleeping in the green wood. A giant cam. Bending doon the tree tops tae see fit he fancies tae chew on. He spied Johnnie. He caught him up and carried him home oer his back. He says tae Johnnie, ‘Go get me twa eggs frae the siller hawk tae hae til my dinner or I’ll eat you now and pick my teeth wi’ your shin bane.’ Johnnie grat. It wis the ogre’s belly for him. But the giant’s dochter cam tae him. She’d pity for him. She wiped his face wi’ her reid hair and took him intae the forest.

They could see the siller hawk, riding the sough o’ a cauld blue wind, a wee white ash flake at the roof o’ the forest. Her nest wis as high as the clouds, up a pine tree wi’ a trunk as slippery as copper and nae branches tae it at a’.

The giant’s dochter pu’s aff a’ her fingers and sticks them on the tree and that wis his ladder tae the nest. Her ain bleeding fingers.

Next day, he wis set tae clean a giant byre full o’ sharn fae a hundred years o’ giant beasts. The giant’s dochter took aff her goon and dammed the stream wi’ her body tae drive the burn through the byre and wash it clean. Next day he wis tae catch a’ the birds that flew. She made a net o’ her hair and caught them for him. Then they lay together. Then she freed him oot that dungeon and he took her hame.

He left her at the castle gate and went in tae get her a goon. Once through his ain gate he forgot her altogether.

He was awa tae get merriet, riding doon the street wi’ his feeance, a wee blonde girl jist oot the egg. A craw and a hawk and a cooshie doo ca’d his name and he turned and saw her at the gate. Her hair’s aff, her hand bleedin and she’s naked yet. He fell aff his horse and ran tae kiss her. They say . . . They say they got merriet . . .

BIDIE laughs again, raises the baby and kisses it.

I say she held his bairn up tae him. She let him see his eyes in its face. Then she took it awa wi’ her intae the forest, Johnnie’s eyes an a’. Is that nae foo it should finish?

The children swirl round her again they dance off together.

And god help the wee blonde lassie wi’ eggshell still in her hair. (Singing.) An wi’ you, an’ wi’ you , an wi’ you Johnnie lad, I’ll dance the buckles aff my shoon wi’ you my bonny lad . . .

Scene Two

The farm, mid afternoon.

Lights up on HARRIET.

HARRIET is walking to and fro in front of a pile of props and bags. Both HARRIET and her luggage have been abandoned at the entrance to a farmyard. She is reading from a half finished letter.

HARRIET. They do not speak English . . .

HARRIET peers at her letter a moment then looks at her baggage behind her. She puts the letter down carefully, weighting it with a stone. She takes out a portable writing desk and sets it up on the dyke. Drawing out a pen she makes a tiny addition to her letter. She waves it in the air to dry then notices she has trodden in something. She wipes her foot against the grass then breathing heavily in irritation grabs a sheaf of writing paper and scrubs at her shoe. She continues reading.

They are a bleak and ignorant people, tied by ignorance to a bleak and salt scarred landscape. I well know, my dear sister, that there will be many who would delight in seeing where the pursuit of love and talent have led me. I trust you will be my defender against such cramped minds and will assure them that I am indeed crossing new frontiers in a career they cannot diminish with their petty judgements. In truth, however, even the landscape has become flat and lost the grandeur of the mountains to the west although we may be grateful that the perils of weather and bandits are also behind us. The North East of this country has some­thing of the aspect of a blasted heath, a poet’s vision of an icy purgatory. The people do not make poems from it. They make turnips and cattle feed.

As to my daughters, it is with the emotion only a mother could understand that I read your news of them . . .

Turns sees MARY. MARY bobs a curtsey. HARRIET regards her icily for a minute. MARY bobs again. HARRIET lowers her letter.

Yes?

MARY bobs again.

MARY. I’m Mary, mistress. Thank you, mistress.

HARRIET. What do you want?

MARY. I’m tae help.

HARRIET regards her a moment longer, then moves closer looking MARY up and down.

HARRIET (to herself). I doubt you’ll have enough. (Speaking slowly with exaggerated clarity.) It’s twins. Did they tell you it was twins?

MARY (blank). Na.

HARRIET. You’re the wet nurse?

MARY. Fit? (Laughs.) Och mistress you wouldna set your bairns tae suck on me. They’ll get naething frae these dugs but their ain spit.

HARRIET. You’re not the wet nurse.

MARY. I’ve never even hud a bairn.

HARRIET closes her eyes briefly.

HARRIET. I see. Could you then direct me to a nursing mother?

MARY. Och we’ve nane here the now mistress. Bidie Begg is back though, an she wis feeding till jist afore Easter but her wee girl choked wi’ croup and she’s greited a’ her milk dry by now. We’ve kie enough though . . . Cows.

HARRIET. Oh they’ll spit it out and scream . . . (Sighs.) Very well. Thank you.

She starts to put away her writing desk.

MARY. I can still help you. I can help you with your bags. I can mak you a dish of tea. I could hang up your dresses.

HARRIET. A wet nurse is all I require. Thank you.

MARY. Will it be the night?

HARRIET. What?

MARY. The play?

HARRIET. The company will not arrive before dark.

MARY. Aw . . . The morra night then?

HARRIET. There’s an audience?

MARY. Oh God aye! There’s naebody here seen a play. I tell you mistress jist looking at your bonnet there is mair excite­ment than I’ve hud since Christmas. Fit feathers is that?

HARRIET. I don’t know.

MARY. They’ll be peacock’s will they?

HARRIET. No. How many people live here?

MARY. There’s aboot thirty o’ us mistress wi’ the loons in the bothy.

HARRIET. It’s not enough.

MARY. Fit?

HARRIET. There will be no play.

MARY. Aye there will! That’s fit you’re here fir! . . . Is it nae?

HARRIET. Once we have been to the laird. We are artists. We are not a fairground side show. We perform for patrons of gentle blood.

MARY. The laird’s deid.

HARRIET. His heirs . . .

MARY. In Edinburgh. There’s naebody up the big hoose noo but sheep. There’s nae roof on the thing.

HARRIET. My husband told me . . . ! My husband, Mr Lamont believes we have an engagement to entertain the laird of Auchnibeck. This is Auchnibeck?

MARY. Unless there’s anither.

HARRIET. And the laird is dead.

MARY. Been deid five years. Choked on a calf’s foot. They had tae bury it wi’ him. Can I nae pit your dresses awa mistress, I’ll be that careful.

Pause.

HARRIET. I doubt there’s any need to unpack my bags.

MARY. Oh aye, jist while you’re here. Shake a’ the creases oot.

She is busying herself rummaging in HARRIET’s bags.

HARRIET. I can head back and meet them. We could be on the Aberdeen road before midnight . . .

MARY. Aw . . . Aw is it silk? Is it? It’s like water. Ice water . . . aw!

She is stroking and hugging HARRIET’s dress.

HARRIET. What are you . . . ? Leave that!

MARY. Aw it’s flooer petals . . . it’s fur . . . aw.

HARRIET grabs for it.

HARRIET. Put it down!

MARY hits out at her.

MARY. No! No! No! It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s mine!

HARRIET gapes at her stunned. MARY crouches round her crumpled trophy, practically showing her teeth.

MARY. If you’re nae deein a play I want the silk.

She edges away, dragging the dress after her. HARRIET watching her go doesn’t see BIDIE entering behind her. BIDIE is enthroned on a handcart, surrounded by bags and bundles. Her brood are pushing her, pretending to be horses, snorting and stamping and neighing. They push her faster. BIDIE roars with laughter.

BIDIE. Mind! You’ll tip me oot!

They wheel her to a stop facing the startled HARRIET. BIDIE lies at her ease amongst the bundles and smiles at the other woman.

You were wanting a wet nurse mistress?

HARRIET. Who are you?

BIDIE. The wet nurse. Bidie Begg.

HARRIET. I . . . eh . . . do you have milk?

BIDIE. Well I’d nae be much use to you wi’oot it.

HARRIET. No . . . It’s twins.

BIDIE. What age?

HARRIET. Three months.

BIDIE. Well far are they then?

HARRIET. I came ahead. I walked ahead to make the arrangements. My . . . carriage will follow.

HARRIET sways slightly and puts her hand to her brow.

BIDIE. Mistress you better sit doon.

HARRIET. I’ve always had a wet nurse before.

BIDIE. Aye well, I can see you’re a lady.

HARRIET. I have never never had to . . . (Shakes her head.) She has my dress!

BIDIE. Fit’s that?

HARRIET. The wedding gown! She took it!

BIDIE. Fa? . . . Who?

HARRIET. That girl!

BIDIE. Fit girl?

HARRIET. She was mad!

BIDIE. Oh Mary. Aye she’s mad richt enough. You better sit doon mistress.

HARRIET. I can’t . . . I won’t sit on my bags by the side of the road like a . . . a . . . !

BIDIE. Tinker? Maist of my family wis travelling folk mistress we niver hud leather bags like yon. Here . . .

BIDIE pulls bags together to make a seat, spreads the shawl from her back over one.

HARRIET. I’ll have her whipped!

BIDIE gives her a look.

BIDIE. You’d need tae catch her first. Sit doon.

HARRIET hesitates, then obeys. BIDIE turns to her brood.