Damer: Not a fear of me.  Where heaping and hoarding that much has my years withered and blighted up to this, it is not to storing treasure in any vessel at all I will give the latter end of my days, or to working the skin off my bones.  Give me here that coat. (Puts it on.) If I was tossed and racked a while ago I’ll show out good from this out.  Come on now, out of this, till we’ll face to the races of Loughrea and of Knockbarron.  I was miserable and starved long enough. (Puts on hat.) I’m thinking as long as I’ll be living I’ll take my view of the world, for it’s long I’ll be lying when my eyes are closed and seeing nothing at all!

   (He seizes a handful of gold and puts it in Simon’s pocket and
   another in his own.  They turn towards the door.)

Curtain

McDONOUGH’S WIFE

PERSONS

McDonough, a piper. First Hag. Second Hag.

McDONOUGH’S WIFE

   Scene:  A very poor room in Galway with outer and inner door. 
   Noises of a fair outside.  A Hag sitting by the fire.  Another
   standing by outer door.

First Hag: Is there e’er a sign of McDonough to be coming?

Second Hag: There is not.  There were two or three asking for him, wanting him to bring the pipes to some spree-house at the time the fair will be at an end.

First Hag: A great wonder he not to have come, and this the fair day of Galway.

Second Hag: He not to come ere evening, the woman that is dead must go to her burying without one to follow her, or any friend at all to flatten the green scraws above her head.

First Hag: Is there no neighbour at all will do that much, and she being gone out of the world?

Second Hag: There is not.  You said to ask Pat Marlborough, and I asked him, and he said there were plenty of decent women and of well-reared women in Galway he would follow and welcome the day they would die, without paying that respect to one not belonging to the district, or that the town got no good account of the time she came.

First Hag: Did you do as I bade you, asking Cross Ford to send in a couple of the boys she has?

Second Hag: What a fool I’d be asking her!  I laid down to her the way it was.  McDonough’s wife to be dead, and he far out in the country, and no one belonging to her to so much as lift the coffin over the threshold of the door.

First Hag: What did she say hearing that?

Second Hag: She put a big laugh out of her, and it is what she said:  “May the devil die with her, and it is well pleased the street will be getting quit of her, and it is hard say on what mountain she might be grazing now.”

First Hag: There will no help come burying her so.