Edmund John Millington Synge

“ He's not raving. (To Widow Quin.) Will you ask him what kind was his son?
WIDOW QUIN, to Mahon, with a peculiar look.
Was your son that hit you a lad of one year and a score maybe, a great hand at racing and lepping and licking the world?
MAHON, turning on her with a roar of rage.
Didn't you hear me say he was the fool of men, the way from this out he'll know the orphan's lot, with old and young making game of him, and they swearing, raging, kicking at him like a mangy cur. ”

“ The like of a king, is it? And I after toiling, moiling, digging, dodging from the dawn till dusk; with never a sight of joy or sport saving only when I'd be abroad in the dark night poaching rabbits on hills, for I was a divil to poach, God forgive me, (very naïvely) and I near got six months for going with a dung fork and stabbing a fish.
PEGEEN.
And it's that you'd call sport, is it, to be abroad in the darkness with yourself alone. ”

“ If you didn’t commit murder or a bad, nasty thing, or false coining, or robbery, or butchery, or the like of them, there isn’t anything that would be worth your troubling for to run from now. You did nothing at all.
CHRISTY, his feelings hurt.
That’s an unkindly thing to be saying to a poor orphaned traveller, has a prison behind him, and hanging before, and hell’s gap gaping below.
PEGEEN, with a sign to the men to be quiet.
You’re only saying it. You did nothing at all. A soft lad the like of you wouldn't slit the windpipe of a screeching sow. ”

“ There now is a drink for you, and may it be to your happiness and length of life.
MAHON, taking glass greedily, and sitting down by fire.
God increase you!
WIDOW QUIN, taking men to the right stealthily.
Do you know what? That man's raving from his wound to-day, for I met him a while since telling a rambling tale of a tinker had him destroyed. Then he heard of Christy's deed, and he up and says it was his son had cracked his skull. Oh, isn't madness a fright, for he'll go killing someone yet, and he thinking it's the man has struck him so? ”

“ PEGEEN, at the other side of Michael.
Bless us now, for I swear to God I'll wed him, and I'll not renege.
MICHAEL, standing up in the centre, holding on to both of them.
It's the will of God, I'm thinking, that all should win an easy or a cruel end, and it's the will of God that all should rear up lengthy families for the nurture of the earth. What's a single man, I ask you, eating a bit in one house and drinking a sup in another, and he with no place of his own, like an old braying jackass strayed upon the rocks? ”

“ And to think I'm long years hearing women talking that talk, to all bloody fools, and this the first time I've heard the like of your voice talking sweetly for my own delight.
PEGEEN.
And to think it's me is talking sweetly, Christy Mahon, and I the fright of seven townlands for my biting tongue. Well, the heart's a wonder; and, I'm thinking, there won't be our like in Mayo, for gallant lovers, from this hour to-day. (Drunken singing is heard outside.) There's my father coming from the wake, and when he's had his sleep we'll tell him, for he's peaceful then. ”

“ Let me stretch out on the settle, Pegeen Mike; and himself can lie by the hearth.
PEGEEN, short and fiercely.
Faith, I won't. Quit off or I will send you now.
WIDOW QUIN, gathering her shawl up.
Well, it's a terror to be aged a score. (To Christy.) God bless you now, young fellow, and let you be wary, or there's right torment will await you here if you go romancing with her like, and she waiting only, as they bade me say, on a sheepskin parchment to be wed with Shawn Keogh of Killakeen. ”

“ Christy Mahon! Christy!
CHRISTY.
Is it Pegeen Mike?
WIDOW QUIN.
It's the young girls, I'm thinking, coming to bring you to the sports below, and what is it you'll have me to tell them now?
CHRISTY.
Aid me for to win Pegeen. It's herself only that I'm seeking now. (Widow Quin gets up and goes to window.) Aid me for to win her, and I'll be asking God to stretch a hand to you in the hour of death, and lead you short cuts through the Meadows of Ease, and up the floor of Heaven to the Footstool of the Virgin's Son.
WIDOW QUIN.
There's praying. ”

“ It's little you'll think if my love's a poacher's, or an earl's itself, when you'll feel my two hands stretched around you, and I squeezing kisses on your puckered lips, till I'd feel a kind of pity for the Lord God is all ages sitting lonesome in His golden chair.
PEGEEN.
That'll be right fun, Christy Mahon, and any girl would walk her heart out before she'd meet a young man was your like for eloquence, or talk at all. ”

“ MAHON, slightly emotional from his drink.
I'm poorly only, for it's a hard story the way I'm left to-day, when it was I did tend him from his hour of birth, and he a dunce never reached his second book, the way he'd come from school, many's the day, with his legs lamed under him, and he blackened with his beatings like a tinker's ass. It's a hard story, I'm saying, the way some do have their next and nighest raising up a hand of murder on them, and some is lonesome getting their death with lamentation in the dead of night. ”

“ I've said it nowhere till this night, I'm telling you; for I've seen none the like of you the eleven long days I am walking the world, looking over a low ditch or a high ditch on my north or south, into stony, scattered fields, or scribes of bog, where you'd see young, limber girls, and fine, prancing women making laughter with the men. ”

“ Michael James!
MICHAEL, imitating him.
What ails you?
SHAWN.
The queer dying fellow's beyond looking over the ditch. He's come up, I'm thinking, stealing your hens. (Looks over his shoulder.) God help me, he's following me now (he runs into room) , and if he's heard what I said, he'll be having my life, and I going home lonesome in the darkness of the night.
For a perceptible moment they watch the door with curiosity. Some one coughs outside. Then Christy Mahon, a slight young man, comes in very tired and frightened and dirty. ”

“ You're heroes surely, and let you drink a supeen with your arms linked like the outlandish lovers in the sailor's song. (She links their arms and gives them the glasses.) There now. Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgments of the English law. ”

“ You're one of the tinkers, young fellow, is beyond camped in the glen?
CHRISTY.
I am not; but I’m destroyed walking.
MICHAEL, patronizingly.
Let you come up then to the fire. You're looking famished with the cold.
CHRISTY.
God reward you! (He takes up his glass and goes a little way across to the left, then stops and looks about him.) Is it often the polis do be coming into this place, master of the house? ”

“ On the stage one must have reality, and one must have joy; and that is why the intellectual modern drama has failed, and people have grown sick of the false joy of the musical comedy, that has been given them in place of the rich joy found only in what is superb and wild in reality. In a good play every speech should be as fully flavoured as a nut or apple, and such speeches cannot be written by anyone who works among people who have shut their lips on poetry. In Ireland, for a few years more, we have a popular imagination that is fiery, and magnificent, and tender ”

“ Didn't I know rightly I was handsome, though it was the divil's own mirror we had beyond, would twist a squint across an angel's brow; and I'll be growing fine from this day, the way I'll have a soft lovely skin on me and won't be the like of the clumsy young fellows do be ploughing all times in the earth and dung. ”

“ How would a lovely, handsome woman the like of you be lonesome when all men should be thronging around to hear the sweetness of your voice, and the little infant children should be pestering your steps, I'm thinking, and you walking the roads.
PEGEEN.
I'm hard set to know what way a coaxing fellow the like of yourself should be lonesome either. ”

“ And I brought you a little laying pullet—boiled and all she is—was crushed at the fall of night by the curate's car. Feel the fat of that breast, mister.
CHRISTY.
It's bursting, surely.
He feels it with the back of his hand, in which he holds the presents.
SARA.
Will you pinch it? Is your right hand too sacred for to use at all? (She slips round behind him.) It's a glass he has, Well, I never seen to this day a man with a looking-glass to his back. Them that kills their fathers is a vain lot surely. (Girls giggle.) ”

“ MAHON, with hesitation.
What's that? They're raising him up. They're coming this way. (With a roar of rage and astonishment) It's Christy! by the stars of God! I'd know his way of spitting and he astride the moon. ”

“ Murder is it? Is it mad yous are? Would you go making murder in this place, and it piled with poteen for our drink to-night? Go on to the foreshore if it's fighting you want, where the rising tide will wash all traces from the memory of man.
Pushing Shawn towards Christy.
SHAWN, shaking himself free, and getting behind Michael.
I'll not fight him, Michael James. I'd liefer live a bachelor, simmering in passions to the end of time, than face a lepping savage the like of him has descended from the Lord knows where. ”

“ All art is a collaboration; and there is little doubt that in the happy ages of literature, striking and beautiful phrases were as ready to the storyteller's or the playwright's hand, as the rich cloaks and dresses of his time. It is probable that when the Elizabethan dramatist took his ink-horn and sat down to his work he used many phrases that he had just heard, as he sat at dinner, from his mother or his children. In Ireland, those of us who know the people have the same privilege. ”

“ This matter, I think, is of importance, for in countries where the imagination of the people, and the language they use, is rich and living, it is possible for a writer to be rich and copious in his words, and at the same time to give the reality, which is the root of all poetry, in a comprehensive and natural form. In the modern literature of towns, however, richness is found only in sonnets, or prose poems, or in one or two elaborate books that are far away from the profound and common interests of life. ”

“ You were saying at the fall of night I was shut of jeopardy and I here with yourselves.
PEGEEN, severely.
You'll be shut of jeopardy no place if you go talking with a pack of wild girls the like of them do be walking abroad with the peelers, talking whispers at the fall of night. ”

“ If they're not fearing you, itself, the peelers in this place is decent, drouthy, poor fellows, wouldn't touch a cur dog and not give warning in the dead of night.
PEGEEN, very kindly and persuasively.
Let you stop a short while anyhow. Aren't you destroyed walking with your feet in bleeding blisters, and your whole skin needing washing like a Wicklow sheep. ”

“ PEGEEN, coming in again and crossing right.
There was not, but a story filled half a page of the hanging of a man. Ah, that should be a fearful end, young fellow, and it worst of all for a man destroyed his da; for the like of him would get small mercies, and when it's dead he is they'd put him in a narrow grave, with cheap sacking wrapping him round, and pour down quicklime on his head, the way you'd see a woman pouring any frishfrash from a cup. ”

“ You'll be doing like myself, I'm thinking, when I did destroy my man, for I'm above many's the day, odd times in great spirits, abroad in the sunshine, darning a stocking or stitching a shift; and odd times again looking out on the schooners, hookers, trawlers is sailing the sea, and I thinking on the gallant hairy fellows are drifting beyond, and myself long years living alone. ”

“ If you weren't destroyed travelling, you'd have as much talk and streeleen, I'm thinking, as Owen Roe O'Sullivan or the poets of the Dingle Bay; and I've heard all times it's the poets are your like—fine, fiery fellows with great rages when their temper's roused. ”

“ And what is it you'll say to me, and I after doing it this time in the face of all?
PEGEEN.
I'll say, a strange man is a marvel, with his mighty talk; but what's a squabble in your back-yard, and the blow of a loy, have taught me that there's a great gap between a gallous story and a dirty deed. (To men.) Take him from this, or the lot of us will be likely put on trial for his deed to-day. ”