Second Hag: His father was better again, they do be saying. It was from the other side he got the gift.
First Hag: He did, and from beyond the world, where he befriended some in the forths of the Danes. It was they taught him their trade. I heard tell, he to throw the pipes up on top of the rafters, they would go sounding out tunes of themselves.
Second Hag: He could do no more with them than what McDonough himself can do—may ill luck attend him! It is inhuman tunes he does be making; unnatural they are.
First Hag: He is a great musician surely.
Second Hag: There is no person can be safe from him the time he will put his "come hither" upon them. I give you my word he set myself dancing reels one time in the street, and I making an attack on him for keeping the little lads miching from school. That was a great scandal to put upon a decent woman.
First Hag: He to be in the fair to-day and to take the fancy, you would hear the nailed boots of the frieze-coated man footing steps on the sidewalk.
Second Hag: You would, and it's likely he'd play a notion into the skulls of the pampootied boys from Aran, they to be kings of France or of Germany, till they'd go lift their head to the clouds and go knocking all before them. And the police it is likely laughing with themselves, as if listening to the talk of the blackbird would be perched upon a blessed bush.
First Hag: I wonder he did not come. Could it be he might be made away with for the riches he brought from Cregroostha? It would be a strange thing now, he to be lying and his head broke, at the butt of a wall, and the woman he thought the whole world of to be getting her burial from the workhouse.
(A sound of pipes.)
Second Hag: Whist, I tell you! It's the sound of the pipes. It is McDonough, it is no other one.