MARY
clapping her hand over his mouth.—Knock him down on the road; they didn’t hear him at all.
[Michael pulls him down.
SARAH
Gag his jaws.
MARY
Stuff the sacking in his teeth.
[They gag him with the sack that had the can in it.
SARAH
Tie the bag around his head, and if the peelers come, we’ll put him head-first in the boghole is beyond the ditch.
[They tie him up in some sacking.
MICHAEL
to Mary.—Keep him quiet, and the rags tight on him for fear he’d screech. (He goes back to their camp.) Hurry with the things, Sarah Casey. The peelers aren’t coming this way, and maybe we’ll get off from them now.
[They bundle the things together in wild haste, the priest wriggling and struggling about on the ground, with old Mary trying to keep him quiet.
MARY
patting his head.—Be quiet, your reverence. What is it ails you, with your wrigglings now? Is it choking maybe? (She puts her hand under the sack, and feels his mouth, patting him on the back.) It’s only letting on you are, holy father, for your nose is blowing back and forward as easy as an east wind on an April day. (In a soothing voice.) There now, holy father, let you stay easy, I’m telling you, and learn a little sense and patience, the way you’ll not be so airy again going to rob poor sinners of their scraps of gold. (He gets quieter.) That’s a good boy you are now, your reverence, and let you not be uneasy, for we wouldn’t hurt you at all. It’s sick and sorry we are to tease you; but what did you want meddling with the like of us, when it’s a long time we are going our own ways—father and son, and his son after him, or mother and daughter, and her own daughter again—and it’s little need we ever had of going up into a church and swearing—I’m told there’s swearing with it—a word no man would believe, or with drawing rings on our fingers, would be cutting our skins maybe when we’d be taking the ass from the shafts, and pulling the straps the time they’d be slippy with going around beneath the heavens in rains falling.