What way will I be in the night time, and none but the dog calling after you? Two women to be mixing a cake, and not a man in the house to break it!
What way will I sow the field, and no man to drive the furrow? The sheaf to be scattered before springtime that was brought together at the harvest!
I would not begrudge you, Denis, and you leaving praises after you. The neighbours keening along with me would be better to me than an estate.
But my grief your name to be blackened in the time of the blackening of the rushes! Your name never to rise up again in the growing time of the year! (She ceases keening and turns towards the old woman.) But tell me, Mary, do you think would they give us the body of Denis? I would lay him out with myself only; I would hire some man to dig the grave.
(The Gatekeeper opens the gate and hands out some clothes.)
Gatekeeper: There now is all he brought in with him; the flannels and the shirt and the shoes. It is little they are worth altogether; those mountainy boys do be poor.
Mary Cushin: They had a right to give him time to ready himself the day they brought him to the magistrates. He to be wearing his Sunday coat, they would see he was a decent boy. Tell me where will they bury him, the way I can follow after him through the street? There is no other one to show respect to him but Mary Cahel, his mother, and myself.
Gatekeeper: That is not to be done. He is buried since yesterday in the field that is belonging to the gaol.
Mary Cushin: It is a great hardship that to have been done, and not one of his own there to follow after him at all.
Gatekeeper: Those that break the law must be made an example of. Why would they be laid out like a well behaved man? A long rope and a short burying, that is the order for a man that is hanged.