“We’ll try and forget the women for a while, and talk a little about the other wonders of the world. There’s nothing more extraordinary than the patience of married men. The world is full of wonders, police, clergy, and public houses. But what I do be wondering most about at the close of day is, how did all the stars get into the sky?”
“Well, well, to be sure! There’s ignorance for you! Didn’t you ever hear tell of the night of the big wind?”
“Of course, I did.”
“That was the night the earth was blown about in the heavens the way you’d see a piece of paper in the month of March. She was carried from one place to another, until, lo and behold! she struck the moon a wallop and shattered her highest mountains into smithereens, and all the pieces that fell into the sky were turned into the stars you see floating about on frosty nights.”
“And did she strike the sun at all in her travels?”
“How could the earth strike the sun, you omadhaun?”
“It should be as easy to strike the sun as the moon, but how she could strike either is more than any one will ever be able to understand, I’m thinking.”
“‘Pon my word, but you’re the most ignorant man one could meet in a year of Saturdays. Don’t you know that the sun is a round hole in the floor of Heaven through which all the fairies and politicians fell the night of the rebellion?”
“And was there a rebellion in Heaven?”
“Wisha, what kind of a man are you not to know all these things? Sure, there’s rebellions everywhere.”