Queen: Throw over her a skillet of water. She
is gone into a faint.
Dall Glic: (Who is bending over her.) She is
in no faint. She is gone out.
Nurse: Oh, my child and my darling! What
call had I to leave you among them at all?
King: Raise her up. It is impossible she can
be gone.
Dall Glic: Gone out and spent, as sudden as
a candle in a blast of wind.
King: Who would think grief would do away
with her so sudden, there to be seven of the like
of him dead?
Nurse: (Rises.) What did you do to her at all,
at all? Or was it through the fright and terror
of the beast?
Queen: She died of the heartbreak, being told
that the strange champion that had put down the
Dragon was killed dead.
Nurse: Killed, is it? Who now put that lie
out of his mouth? (Shouts in her ear.) What
would ail him to be dead? It is myself can tell
you the true story. No man in Ireland ever was
half as good as him! It was himself mastered the
beast and dragged the heart out of him and forced
down a squirrel's heart in its place, and slapped a
bridle on him. And he himself did but stagger
and go to his knees in the heat and drunkenness
of the battle, and rose up after as good as ever he
was! It is out putting ointments on him that I
was up to this, and healing up his cuts and wounds!
Oh, what ails you, honey, that you will not waken?
Queen: She thought it to be a champion and a
high up man that had died for her sake. It is
what broke her down in the latter end, hearing
him to be no big man at all, but a clown!