PRIEST
loudly.—Let you hold your tongue; let you be quiet, Sarah Casey. I’ve no silver at all for the like of you; and if you want to be married, let you pay your pound. I’d do it for a pound only, and that’s making it a sight cheaper than I’d make it for one of my own pairs is living here in the place.
SARAH
Where would the like of us get a pound, your reverence?
PRIEST
Wouldn’t you easy get it with your selling asses, and making cans, and your stealing east and west in Wicklow and Wexford and the county Meath? (He tries to pass her.) Let you leave the road, and not be plaguing me more.
SARAH
pleadingly, taking money from her pocket.—Wouldn’t you have a little mercy on us, your reverence? (Holding out money.) Wouldn’t you marry us for a half a sovereign, and it a nice shiny one with a view on it of the living king’s mamma?
PRIEST
If it’s ten shillings you have, let you get ten more the same way, and I’ll marry you then.
SARAH
whining.—It’s two years we are getting that bit, your reverence, with our pence and our halfpence and an odd three-penny bit; and if you don’t marry us now, himself and the old woman, who has a great drouth, will be drinking it to-morrow in the fair (she puts her apron to her eyes, half sobbing), and then I won’t be married any time, and I’ll be saying till I’m an old woman: “It’s a cruel and a wicked thing to be bred poor.”
PRIEST
turning up towards the fire.—Let you not be crying, Sarah Casey. It’s a queer woman you are to be crying at the like of that, and you your whole life walking the roads.
SARAH
sobbing.—It’s two years we are getting the gold, your reverence, and now you won’t marry us for that bit, and we hard-working poor people do be making cans in the dark night, and blinding our eyes with the black smoke from the bits of twigs we do be burning.
[An old woman is heard singing tipsily on the left.
PRIEST
looking at the can Michael is making.—When will you have that can done, Michael Byrne?