hey are headstrong and high-handed,
They're getting their own way: they charge, head-down,
At their own image in the window-glass;
And don't come to their senses till their carcase
Is spiked with smarting splinters. But I'm your mother,
Not your tame wife, lad: and I'll go my gait.

MICHAEL:
You shall not go, for all your crazy cackle--
My mother, on the road, a tinker's baggage,
While I've a roof to shelter her!

BELL:
You pull
The handle downwards towards you, and the beer
Spouts out. No hope for you, Ruth: lass, you're safe--
Safe as a linnet in a cage, for life:
No need to read your hand, to tell your fortune:
No gallivanting with the dark-eyed stranger,
Calleevering over all the countryside,
When the owls are hooting to the hunter's moon,
For the wife of Michael Barrasford. Well, boy,
What if I choose to be a tinker's baggage?
It was a tinker's baggage mothered you--
For tying a white apron round the waist
Has never made a housewife of a gipsy--
And a tinker's baggage went out of her way
To set you well on yours: and now she turns.

MICHAEL:
You shall not go, I say. I'm master here:
And I won't let you shame me. I've been decent;
And have always done my duty by the sheep,
Working to keep a decent home together
To bring a wife to: and, for all your jeers,
There are worse things for a woman than a home
And husband and a lawful family.
You shall not go. You say I ken my mind ...

BELL:
Ay: but not mine. What should a tinker's trollop
Do in the house of Michael Barrasford,
But bring a blush to his children's cheeks? God help them,
If they take after me, if they've a dash
Of Haggard blood--for ewe's milk laced with brandy
Is like to curdle: or, happen, I should say,
God help their father!

MICHAEL:
Mother, why should you go?
Why should you want to travel the ditch-bottom,
When you've a hearth to sit by, snug and clean?

BELL:
The fatted calf's to be killed for the prodigal mother?
You've not the hard heart of the young cockrobin
That's got no use for parents, once he's mated:
But I'm, somehow, out of place within four walls,
Tied to one spot--that never wander the world.
I long for the rumble of wheels beneath me; to hear
The clatter and creak of the lurching caravan;
And the daylong patter of raindrops on the roof:
Ay, and the gossip of nights about the campfire--
The give-and-take of tongues: mine's getting stiff
For want of use, and spo