PEGEEN.
Well, it’d be a poor thing to go marrying your like. I’m seeing there’s a world of peril for an orphan girl, and isn’t it a great blessing I didn’t wed you, before himself came walking from the west or south?
SHAWN.
It’s a queer story you’d go picking a dirty tramp up from the highways of the world.
PEGEEN.
playfully.—And you think you’re a likely beau to go straying along with, the shiny Sundays of the opening year, when it’s sooner on a bullock’s liver you’d put a poor girl thinking than on the lily or the rose?
SHAWN.
And have you no mind of my weight of passion, and the holy dispensation, and the drift of heifers I am giving, and the golden ring?
PEGEEN.
I’m thinking you’re too fine for the like of me, Shawn Keogh of Killakeen, and let you go off till you’d find a radiant lady with droves of bullocks on the plains of Meath, and herself bedizened in the diamond jewelleries of Pharaoh’s ma. That’d be your match, Shaneen. So God save you now! [She retreats behind Christy.]
SHAWN.
Won’t you hear me telling you...?
CHRISTY.
with ferocity.—Take yourself from this, young fellow, or I’ll maybe add a murder to my deeds to-day.
MICHAEL.
springing up with a shriek.—Murder is it? Is it mad yous are? Would you go making murder in this place, and it piled with poteen for our drink to-night? Go on to the foreshore if it’s fighting you want, where the rising tide will wash all traces from the memory of man. [Pushing Shawn towards Christy.]
SHAWN.
shaking himself free, and getting behind Michael.—I’ll not fight him, Michael James. I’d liefer live a bachelor, simmering in passions to the end of time, than face a lepping savage the like of him has descended from the Lord knows where. Strike him yourself, Michael James, or you’ll lose my drift of heifers and my blue bull from Sneem.
MICHAEL.
Is it me fight him, when it’s father-slaying he’s bred to now? (Pushing Shawn.) Go on you fool and fight him now.