McDonough:  (Turning to inner door.) Is it that you are gone from me, Catherine, you that were the blossom of the branch!

   (Old woman moans.)

It is a bad case you to have gone and to have left me as lonesome after you as that no one ever saw the like!

   (The old woman moans after each sentence.)

I to bring you travelling you were the best traveller, and the best stepper, and the best that ever faced the western blast, and the waves of it blowing from you the shawl!  I to be sore in the heart with walking you would make a smile of a laugh.  I would not feel the road having your company; I would walk every whole step of Ireland.

I to bring you to the dance-house you would dance till you had them all tired, the same in the late of the day as in the commencement!  Your steps following quick on one another the same as hard rain on a flagstone!  They could not find your equal in all Ireland or in the whole ring of Connemara!

What way did it fail me to see the withering of the branches on every bush, as it is certain they withered the time laughter died with your laugh?  The cold of winter has settled on the hearth.  My heart is closed up with trouble!

First Hag: It is best for us shut the door and to keep out the noises of the fair.

McDonough: Ah, what sort at all are the people of the fair, to be doing their bargaining and clutching after their luckpenny, and she being stark and quiet!

First Hag: She has to be buried ere evening.  There was a messenger of a clerk came laying that down.

McDonough: May ill luck attend him!  Is it that he thinks she that is gone has no person belonging to her to wake her through the night-time?

First Hag: He sent his men to coffin her.  She will be brought away in the heel of the day.

McDonough: It is a great wake I will give her.  It would not be for honour she to go without that much.  Cakes and candles and drink and tobacco!  The table of this house is too narrow.  It is from the neighbours we should borrow tables.

First Hag: That cannot be.  It is what the man said, “This is a common lodging-house.  It is right to banish the dead from the living.”  He has the law with him, and custom.  There is no use you thinking to go outside of that.

McDonough: My lasting grief it will be I not to get leave to show her that respect!

First Hag: “There will a car be sent,” he said, “and two boys from the Union for to bear her out from the house.”

McDonough: Men from the Union, are you saying?  I would not give leave to one of them to put a hand anigh or anear her!  It is not their car will bring her to the grave.  That would be the most pity in the world!

First Hag: You have no other way to bring her on her road.  It is best for you give in to their say.