Pecker and Margaret round the campfire. Others in the background.

MB:    Were you ever around Camden Town in  the fifties?

PD:     I wasn’t, Margaret. More’s the pity. I was stuck in Manchester. In a factory makin’ plastic thing-a-me- jigs. Can you imagine the Pecker in a factory?

MB:    I can’t. How did you breathe at all? Were you there long?

PD:     A few year. I nearly forgot how to play me banjo. It took me months to get back into me stride after I finally escaped. The money was good, but sure that’s no consolation for not bein’ able to go where you want to.

MB:    Freedom, boy, that’s all that matters. You would have loved Camden Town then. The Bedford Arms and the Favourite were our meeting places. The finest musicians and singers in Ireland were to be found there at the time. Willie Clancy, Seamus Ennis, Dominic Behan, Luke Kelly to name a few. And of course that’s where I met Michael.  Michael Gorman. The finest fiddle player of them all…

We hear the fiddle being played; the tune is a jig, THE STRAYAWAY CHILD, which was composed by Margaret. A couple can be seen dancing in the background. The music fades after a while.

PD:     The strayaway child. ( he hums a bit of it)

MB:    You know it then?

PD:     Yerra, indeed I played it many’s the time on the fiddle. One of Michael’s isn’t it?

MB:    Everyone thinks Michael composed it. But he didn’t, it was meself. It was the bane of me life, boy. I spent years trying finish it. I wrote it shortly after I ran away from home, but could never get it right. Michael helped me to put it all together. People were always talking about my relationship with Michael; I mean, they wanted to know was it just musical, or was it personal as well. Well now, I used to say to them, that’s between me and the gatepost,

PD:     Yarrah, who cares anymore, girl! Sure I was a divil after the women meself. And then after many years I found the one that mattered. Madeline. She gave me a wonderful family. (laughs) She was nearly young enough to be me daughter. But that didn’t matter. Shure love bates Bannaher.

MB:    And Bannaher bates the devil! – so they say. The thing is, I was never really in love. Would you believe that? Well, I had a husband, but I was only in love with one thing – and that was singing and music.

PD:     Ah now…I don’t believe that…

 MB:   I’m telling you. You never met anyone like me, boy – that could say I never loved a man. Only the one thing I’m in love with and that’s music.

We hear a woman’s voice off

OFF:   You’re a fraud Maggie Barry.

MB:    Who the divil is that?

A woman appears.

            MB:    Oh Lord save us, it’s me step-mother.

WOMAN:      Queen of the gypsies me backside! You’re not a Tinker – nor a Traveller no more than I am. It’s not even your right name. Your father was Charles Power.

MB:    It’s me stage name. Anyway, my grandmother came from Spain and she was a Romany gypsy. She was a singer too, and played the guitar, and her ancestors was gypsies from Italy.

WOMAN:      Don’t listen to her, mister. Her father played the music for the silent pictures in Cork for most of his life. He never left the city till the day he died. You can’t just decide to become a traveller – you have to be born one.

           MB:     My people were all travellers. Just because me father choose to stay in Cork for most of his life doesn’t change that one bit. What do you know about it anyway?

           PD:      She’s been Margaret Barry all my life. And she has done more for Travelling people and their music than almost anyone else I know. That’s good enough for me.

  WOMAN:    She has you bamboozled, like she bamboozled men all her life. She could always twist men around her finger. Like that Gorman fella, the fiddler, she took up with in London. He left behind a wife and family, broken-hearted and starvin’, back home in Sligo.

           MB:     Why you….! That was nothing to do with me. I didn’t even know Michael then. You’re spreading malicious gossip.  You should be locked up you spiteful auld strap.

WOMAN:      Shaa!  Anyway, you broke your father’s heart when you ran away. And left me to pick up the pieces.

           MB:     That’s your real gripe, isn’t it? He didn’t want me. And you certainly didn’t. You made that clear. It was the happiest day of my life when I got on my bicycle and headed for the North. I was content there for nearly twenty years, living in me caravan, and singing and playing to me heart’s content at the fairs and the matches.

WOMAN:      Until you ran away with the fiddler Gorman

            MB:    I never ran away with him. I was invited to London by Alan Lomax to do some recording. That’s how I met Michael.

WOMAN:      Maybe, maybe not. But you were never a Tinker Margaret Barry. Never a Tinker…(she exits)

MB:    And you were always one. By nature anyway.  You don’t suppose people will think I was a fraud, Pecker?

PD:     That’s the least of your worries, girl. Sure you’re more popular these last  years than you ever were when you were…when you …

MB:    When I was alive, boy.  Don’t be afraid to say it. Well, that’s nice to know anyway. (she looks around) You know, I often think this place is a bit like the Wells Fargo Depot. Stagecoaches come in, people get off and get on; they bring a bit of news, and then they go away again. Off to God knows where. And you’re left waiting for the next coach to come in…

PD:     You’re here a long time yourself, girl. Without movin’ on, I mean.

MB:    Am I, boy? I wonder why that is?  Ah shure ours is not to reason why. Ours is just to….well you know what I mean.

Pecker and Margaret both sing a few verses of IT’S NEARLY OVER NOW, AND NOW I’M EASY ( (c) Eric Bogle)

BOTH:           For nearly sixty years, I’ve been a Cockie
Of droughts and fires and floods I’ve lived through plenty
This country’s dust and mud have seen my tears and blood
But it’s nearly over now, and now I’m easy

I married a fine girl when I was twenty
But she died in giving birth when she was thirty
No flying doctor then, just a gentle old black ‘gin
But it’s nearly over now, and now I’m easy

She left me with two sons and a daughter
On a bone-dry farm whose soil cried out for water
So my care was rough and ready, but they grew up fine and steady
But it’s nearly over now, and now I’m easy

My daughter married young, and went her own way
My sons lie buried by the Burma Railway
So on this land I’ve made me home, I’ve carried on alone
But it’s nearly over now, and now I’m easy

City folks these days despise the Cockie
Say with subsidies and dole, we’ve had it easy
But there’s no drought or starving stock on a sewered suburban block
But it’s nearly over now, and now I’m easy

For nearly sixty years, I’ve been a Cockie
Of droughts and fires and floods, I’ve lived through plenty
This country’s dust and mud, have seen my tears and blood
But it’s nearly over now, and now I’m easy
And now I’m easy

End of scene

PD:                 My proper name is Paddy Dunne. It was me uncle who said call yourself Pecker. Pecker, that’s a great name, boy, he said. And he was right. I think  music is something that has got to be born in you. In the blood. Like the blood horse, the drop of blood has to be there. If I hadn’t got the music I think I would be very hungry. Nobody else gives a damn for my family only me. All my people were show people, carnival people, still are today. The cinema, fairs, the circus, hurling and football matches, that’s where you’ll find us, anywhere there’s a big crowd

You’d always know spring was here when you saw the crows building their nests, and when you saw the primroses growing at the side of the road, and when you saw me father’s caravan coming over the brow of the hill. That’s the time when me mother would tell us we ‘were goin’ off to the country again’.

A man appears in the background. He is dressed in 1940’s clothes, the clothes of an artisan, and carrying a set of uileann pipes. He begins to play. The tune is called COLONEL FRASER/RAKISH PADDY.  We hear it for a few minutes, and see a couple dancing in the background.

PD:     Well, God…do you know what? I’d swear that’s Johnny Doran. The great Johnny Doran.

MB:    Tis, boy. I‘d recognise him anywhere. We were often in competition. At a match, or a fair. If you saw Johnny on the horizon, ‘twas time to pack up and move on, because the pennies would be very scarce in your bag that day.

PD:     I heard tell of one fair where he collected nearly fourteen pounds for the day’s playing –  and the wages of a farm labourer at the time was twelve pounds for a whole year.  I often collected four or five, but fourteen pounds! (he shakes his head then shouts)  Hey, Johnny, is that you? Is that Johnny Doran?

The man looks at him and smiles, then waves. He plays the pipes for a few more minutes , and the couple dance again.

PD:     Did you know that in Cromwellian times there was a bounty on pipers? Five pounds, the same as on priests, cos the authorities believed they had the power to incite rebellion.

MB:    And why wouldn’t they – have the power, I mean –  if they could play like Johnny

PD:     The finest piper in Ireland. He was one of the Cashs’ you know. One of their descendants, anyway. I remember the Cash’s when I was growin’ up in Wexford. Goin’ to school there, and the Cashs’ and the Dunnes’ being put together on one side of the classroom. That’s the way it was for some reason. I suppose it was because we were Travellers.

MB:    That was the prejudice, boy. We hadn’t a name for it then , we just thought that was the way all people treated travellers. But that’s what it was. Pure prejudice.

PD:     Because we dared to be different. And it wasn’t ignorant people doing it.

MB:    Like guards. Or farmers.

PD:     It was educated people. Teachers. And priests. The parish priests ran the schools in them days, so suppose it was on their orders that we were…what’s the word?

MB:    Segregated.

PD:     That’s the fella.

MB:    Like the Jews in Hitler’s Germany.

PD:     We were in good company then. Segregated be people who weren’t fit to lick  Johnny Doran’s  boots.

MD:    Johnny would put the heart crossways in you when you listened to him. Did you know he taught Willy Clancy how to play the pipes? Willy himself told me that. (pause) He died young. Too young. He was crushed beneath a wall that fell on his caravan in Dublin. Wasn’t I livin’ there around the time? Ah, he lived for two year after in a wheelchair, boy, but what sort of a life was that for him?  He never played the pipes again.

The music should get louder now, as the couple finish the dance, then disappear.

PD:     Well, he’s not in the wheelchair now. You know, that’s the second miracle I’ve seen in me life. The first was when a nun talked me into givin’ up the lush – the drink. I thought I would never do it. And I told her so. But she wouldn’t leave it lie. ‘You’re an alcoholic’, she said to me. I didn’t like those words – but she was right. And she persuaded me to join Alcoholics Anonymous.

Pecker stands before his peers, as if at an AA meeting.

PD:     Me name is Pecker Dunne and I’m an alcoholic. I had me first drink when I was twelve years old at me Confirmation in Wexford town.  I went out to celebrate with my father’s brothers who were confirmed on the same day. That was my first drinking session and I went on to drink for the next forty years. I became an alcoholic because I like the taste of the lush. I liked the way it made me feel. I knew at an early age I had a problem but I wasn’t able to stop. I tried a few times. I remember coming to Clonmel to play some music and decided there and then to take the Pledge. I managed to stay off the drink for six months; I bought a wagon and horses and felt a lot healthier in meself. But then I hit the bottle again and within a few weeks the wagon, the horses, the nice harness were all gone. I spent everything on the dark stuff in the bottom of the bottle  (pause)

            I drank everything; beer, spirits, poitin, anything that would make me high. But like many alcoholics I was in denial for years. This despite the fact that I was as bad an alcoholic as you would find anywhere in Ireland. I almost hit a priest once when he told me I was an alcoholic. I was in denial, you see. Drink can strip you of your dignity and leave you with nothing. That is how powerful it is. There are years in my life I can remember very little about. They are like a blur. It is like I wasn’t really living. I went through a period of sleeping in graveyards, don’t ask me why. I suppose I was in good company because I was half-dead myself. I remember waking up very early in a graveyard in Kerry one morning and thinking, ‘God, it must be resurrection day and I am the first up’.

            And then I met this nun from Skibereen who saved me. I was in hospital because of the drinking and she came over to me and tried to help me. The abuse I gave that poor woman. ‘Leave me alone, I’m dying sick’, I would say, But she wouldn’t give up. ‘We’ll have a talk’, she’d say. And I would say to her ‘If we do have a talk will you leave me alone after that?’  And she would say ‘No I won’t’.  Then one day she came over and said ‘Now, just relax and listen to me for a moment. Do you know you have a disease called alcoholism?  The alcohol is in the bottle and the ‘ism’ is in you. That’s what it is, plain and simple. If you leave the bottle alone you will have no problems. I will take you to a place where you can start to fight your addiction’. And she took me to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.

            When I came out of the meeting she was waiting for me. ‘How do you feel now?’ she asked me. ‘Sister’, I said, ‘the gates of heaven haven’t opened to let me in yet, but the gates of hell are starting to open to let me out’. She put her arms around me and said, ‘You know I love you, Pecker’. That fixed it for me. Her telling me she loved me meant everything to me. The drink had brought me so low I didn’t care anymore whether I lived or died, but when she said that I knew there was at least one person in the world that cared. I said to myself, ‘someone wants me to live’. And shortly after that I met my wife. I’ve been sober ever since.

Pecker sings the song SULLIVAN’S JOHN  (c Pecker Dunne)

PD:                 Oh Sullivan’s John, to the road you’ve gone
Far away from your native home
You’ve gone with the tinker’s daughter
For along the road to roam
Ah, Sullivan’s John you won’t stick it long
Till your belly will soon get slack
As you roam the road with a mighty load
And a tooten box on your back

I met Katy Caffrey and a neat baby
All behind on her back strapped on
She had an old ash plant all in her hands
For to drive her donkey on
Enquiring every farmer’s house
As along the road she passed,
Oh, where would she get an old pot to mend
And where would she get an ass

There’s a hairy ass fair in the County Clare
In a place they call Spancel Hill
Where my brother James got a rap of a hames
And poor Paddy they tried to kill
They loaded him up in an ass and cart
For along the road to go
Oh, bad luck to the day that I went away
To join with the tinker’s band

Oh Sullivan’s John, to the road you’ve gone
Far away from your native home
You’ve gone with the tinker’s daughter
For along the road to roam
Ah, Sullivan’s John you won’t stick it long
Till your belly will soon get slack
As you roam the road with a mighty load
And a tooten box on your back

MB:     That’s a great song, Pecker.

PD:     I wrote that song when I was eleven. And I think it’s the best one I ever wrote. It was a romantic incident that I saw among the travelling people that inspired me. We pulled in off the drag – the road – one evening outside Kilrush, joining a camp that was already set up. We were there for a few days and every evening I noticed this farmer’s son coming down to the molly – the camp – and he had his eye on this beautiful traveller girl. You could see that that he was crazy about her and she about him. In the heel of the hunt, they were so mad about each other that they ran away to England together. Johnny Sullivan was the boy’s name and I named the song after him.  He joined the travelling life in England and started his own tarmac and trucking business there. In the song I pretended that he was a tinker tramping the road, but in reality he became a very wealthy man. Ah, that’s what they call poetic licence I suppose. 

End of scene