New Comedies

by Lady Gregory

First Hag: "There will a car be sent," he said, "and two boys from the Union for to bear her out from the house."

McDonough: Men from the Union, are you saying? I would not give leave to one of them to put a hand anigh or anear her! It is not their car will bring her to the grave. That would be the most pity in the world!

First Hag: You have no other way to bring her on her road. It is best for you give in to their say.

McDonough: Where are the friends and the neighbours that they would not put a hand tinder her?

First Hag: They are after making their refusal. She was not well liked in Galway. There is no one will come to her help.

McDonough: Is that truth, or is it lies you have made up for my tormenting?

First Hag: It is no lie at all. It is as sure as the winter's frost. You have no one to draw to but yourself.

McDonough: It is mad jealous the women of Galway were and wild with anger, and she coming among them, that was seventeen times better than their best! My bitter grief I ever to have come next or near them, or to have made music for the lugs or for the feet of wide crooked hags! That they may dance to their death to the devil's pipes and be the disgrace of the world! It is a great slur on Ireland and a great scandal they to have made that refusing! That the Corrib River may leave its merings and rise up out of its banks till the waves will rise like mountains over the town and smother it, with all that is left of its tribes!

First Hag: Be whist now, or they will be angered and they hearing you outside in the fair.

McDonough: Let their day not thrive with the buyers and the sellers in the fair! The curse of mildew on the tillage men, that every grain of seed they have sowed may be rotten in the ridges, and the grass corn blasted from the east before the latter end of harvest! The curse of the dead on the herds driving cattle and following after markets and fairs! My own curse on the big farmers slapping and spitting in their deal! That a blood murrain may fall upon their bullocks! That rot may fall upon their flocks and maggots make them their pasture and their prey between this and the great feast of Christmas! It is my grief every hand in the fair not to be set shaking and be crookened, where they were not stretched out in friendship to the fair-haired woman that is left her lone within boards!