SARAH GOOD (rising in her rags): Oh, Majesty! Comin’, comin’! Tituba, he’s here, His Majesty’s come!…Oh, is it you, Marshal! I thought sure you be the Devil comin’ for us. Could I have a sip of cider for me goin’- away?
HERRICK (handing her the flask): And where are you off to, Sarah?
TITUBA (as Sarah drinks): We goin’ to Barbados, soon the Devil gits here with the feathers and the wings.
HERRICK: Oh? A happy voyage to you.
SARAH GOOD: A pair of bluebirds wingin’ southerly, the two of us! Oh, it be a grand transformation, Marshal! (She raises her flask to drink again.)
– Arthur Miller
The Crucible, Act 4. When Marshal Herrick arrives to the prison to move some prisoners, a delusional Sarah Good and Tituba mistake him for the Devil. They believe that Satan is coming to fly them to freedom and Tituba’s homeland of Barbados. Sarah uses an animal metaphor to compare the two of them to bluebirds. The good-natured Herrick, somewhat inebriated, gives Sarah a sip of cider from his flask. Miller includes this humorous episode at the beginning of the final act to provide comic relief in what is an intense and deadly serious play. But it shows too how there is no justice for disadvantaged people like the slave Tituba and the beggar Sarah Good, who provide easy targets to frame for witchcraft. Among the first women to be arrested, they have spent the longest time in jail and have now gone crazy and believe they are witches.