In the Shadow of the Glen

by J. M. Synge

(She fills the kettle and puts it on the fire.)

NORA.
Maybe, if you’re not easy afeard, you’ld stay here a short while alone with himself.

TRAMP.
I would surely. A man that’s dead can do no hurt.

NORA.
(Speaking with a sort of constraint.) I’m going a little back to the west, stranger, for himself would go there one night and another and whistle at that place, and then the young man you’re after seeing—a kind of a farmer has come up from the sea to live in a cottage beyond—would walk round to see if there was a thing we’ld have to be done, and I’m wanting him this night, the way he can go down into the glen when the sun goes up and tell the people that himself is dead.

TRAMP.
(Looking at the body in the sheet.) It’s myself will go for him, lady of the house, and let you not be destroying yourself with the great rain.

NORA.
You wouldn’t find your way, stranger, for there’s a small path only, and it running up between two sluigs where an ass and cart would be drowned. (She puts a shawl over her head.) Let you be making yourself easy, and saying a prayer for his soul, and it’s not long I’ll be coming again.

TRAMP.
(Moving uneasily.) Maybe if you’d a piece of a grey thread and a sharp needle—there’s great safety in a needle, lady of the house—I’ld be putting a little stitch here and there in my old coat, the time I’ll be praying for his soul, and it going up naked to the saints of God.

NORA.
(Takes a needle and thread from the front of her dress and gives it to him.) There’s the needle, stranger, and I’m thinking you won’t be lonesome, and you used to the back hills, for isn’t a dead man itself more company than to be sitting alone, and hearing the winds crying, and you not knowing on what thing your mind would stay?

TRAMP.
(Slowly.) It’s true, surely, and the Lord have mercy on us all!

(Nora goes out. The Tramp begins stitching one of the tags in his coat, saying the “De Profundis” under his breath. In an instant the sheet is drawn slowly down, and Dan Burke looks out. The Tramp moves uneasily, then looks up, and springs to his feet with a movement of terror.)