“We’ll look on the stars and we’ll list to the river
  ’Till you ask of your darling what gift you can give her.”

Conan:  That girl is a disgrace sitting on the floor the way she is!  If I had her for a while I’d put betterment on her.  No one that was under me ever grew slack!

Celia:  You would never be satisfied and you to see me working from dark to dark as hard as a pismire in the tufts.

Mother:  Leave her now, she’s a quiet little girl and comely.

Conan:  Comely!  I’d sooner her to be like the ugliest sod of turf that is pockmarked in the bog, and a handy housekeeper, and her pigeon doing something for the world if it was but scaring its comrades on a stick in a barley garden!

Celia:  Ah, do you hear him! (Stroking pigeon.) (Sings.)

  “But when your friend is forced to flee
  You’ll spread your white wings on the sea
  And fly and follow after me—­
  Go-de tu Mavourneen slan!”

Mother:  I wonder you to be going into the rath the way you do, Conan.  It is a very haunted place.

Conan:  Don’t be bothering me.  I have my reason for that.

Mother:  I often heard there is many a one lost his wits in it.

Conan:  It’s likely they hadn’t much to lose.  Without the education anyone is no good.

Mother:  Ah, indeed you were always a tip-top scholar.  I didn’t ever know how good you were till I had my memory lost.

Conan:  Indeed, it is a strange thing any wits at all to be found in this family.

Mother:  Ah, sure we are as is allotted to us at the time God made the world.

Conan:  Now I to make the world—­

Mother:  You are not saying you would make a better hand of it?

Conan:  I am certain sure I could.

Mother:  Ah, don’t be talking that way!

Conan:  I’d make changes you’d wonder at.

Celia:  It’s likely you’d make the world in one day in place of six.

Mother:  It’s best make changes little by little the same as you’d put clothes upon a growing child, and to knock every day out of what God will give you, and to live as long as we can, and die when we can’t help it.

Conan:  And the first thing I’d do would be to give you back your memory and your sense. (Sings.) (Air, “The Bells of Shandon.")

  “My brain grows rusty, my mind is dusty,
  The time I’m dwelling with the likes of ye,
  While my spirit ranges through all the changes
  Could turn the world to felicity! 
  When Aristotle...”

Mother:  It is like a dream to me I heard that name.  Aristotle of the books.

Conan:  (Eagerly.) What did you hear about him?

Mother:  I don’t know was it about him or was it some other one.  My memory to be as good as it is bad I might maybe bring it to mind.