McDonough: Oh, Catherine, Catherine!  Is it I myself have brought you to that shame and that disgrace!

Second Hag: You are making too much of it.  Little it will signify, and we to be making clay, who was it dug a hole through the nettles or lifted down the sods over our head.

First Hag: That is so.  What signifies she to be followed or to be going her lone, and her eyes being shut to the world?

McDonough: Is that the thought ye have within ye, ye Galway hags?  It is easy known it is in a trader’s town you were bred, and in a street among dealers.

First Hag: I was but saying it does not signify.

McDonough: But I say it does signify!  I will tell that out to you and the world!  That might be the thought of a townsman or a trader, or a rich merchant itself that had his estate gained by trafficking, for that is a sort does be thinking more of what they can make out of the living than of keeping a good memory of the dead!

First Hag: There are worthier men than yourself, maybe, in storehouses and in shops.

McDonough: But I am of the generations of Orpheus, and have in me the breed of his master!  And of Raftery and Carolan and O’Daly and all that made sounds of music from this back to the foundations of the earth!  And as to the rich of the world, I would not humble my head to them.  Let them have their serving men and their labourers and messengers will do their bidding.  But the servant I myself command is the pipes that draws its breath from the four winds, and from a wind is beyond them again, and at the back of the winds of the air.  She was a wedded woman and a woman having my own gold ring on her hand, and my own name put down with hers in the book.  But she to have been a shameless woman as ye make her out to be, and sold from tinker to tinker on the road it is all one!  I will show Galway and the world that it does signify; that it is not fitting McDonough’s wife to travel without company and good hands under her and good following on the road.  Play now, pipes, if you never played before!  Call to the keeners to follow her with screams and beating of the hands and calling out!  Set them crying now with your sound and with your notes, as it is often you brought them to the dance-house!

   (Goes out and plays a lament outside.)

First Hag:  (Looking out.) It is queer and wild he is, cutting his teeth and the hair standing on him.

Second Hag: Some high notion he has, calling them to show honour to her as if she was the Queen of the Angels.

First Hag: To draw to silence the whole fair did.  Every person is moving towards this house.

   (A murmur as of people.  McDonough comes in, stands at door, looking
   out.)

McDonough: I squeeze the pipes as a challenge to the whole of the fair, gentle noble and simple, the poor and the high up.  Come hither and cry Catherine McDonough, give a hand to carry her to the grave!  Come to her aid, tribes of Galway, Lynches and Blakes and Frenches!  McDonough’s pipes give you that command, that have learned the lamentation of the Danes.