HANRAHAN.

    I was myself one time a poor barnacle goose;
    The night was not plain to me more than the day
    Till I got sight of her; she is the love of my heart
    That banished from me my grief and my misery.

OONA.

    I was myself on the morning of yesterday
    Walking beside the wood at the break of day;
    There was a bird there was singing sweetly,
    How I love love, and is it not beautiful?

(A shout and a noise, and SHEAMUS O’HERAN rushes in.)

SHEAMUS.  Ububu!  Ohone-y-o, go deo!  The big coach is overthrown at the foot of the hill!  The bag in which the letters of the country are is bursted; and there is neither tie, nor cord, nor rope, nor anything to bind it up.  They are calling out now for a hay sugaun—­whatever kind of thing that is; the letters and the coach will be lost for want of a hay sugaun to bind them.

HANRAHAN.  Do not be bothering us; we have our poem done, and we are going to dance.  The coach does not come this way at all.

SHEAMUS.  The coach does come this way now; but sure you’re a stranger, and you don’t know.  Doesn’t the coach come over the hill now, neighbours?

ALL.  It does, it does, surely.

HANRAHAN.  I don’t care whether it does come or whether it doesn’t.  I would sooner twenty coaches to be overthrown on the road than the pearl of the white breast to be stopped from dancing to us.  Tell the coachman to twist a rope for himself.

SHEAMUS.  Oh! murder! he can’t.  There’s that much vigour, and fire, and activity, and courage in the horses, that my poor coachman must take them by the heads; it’s on the pinch of his life he’s able to control them; he’s afraid of his soul they’ll go from him of a rout.  They are neighing like anything; you never saw the like of them for wild horses.

HANRAHAN.  Are there no other people in the coach that will make a rope, if the coachman has to be at the horses’ heads?  Leave that, and let us dance.

SHEAMUS.  There are three others in it; but as to one of them, he is one-handed, and another man of them, he’s shaking and trembling with the fright he got; it’s not in him now to stand up on his two feet with the fear that’s on him; and as for the third man, there isn’t a person in this country would speak to him about a rope at all, for his own father was hanged with a rope last year for stealing sheep.

HANRAHAN.  Then let one of yourselves twist a rope so, and leave the floor to us. (To OONA.) Now, O star of women, show me how Juno goes among the gods, or Helen for whom Troy was destroyed.  By my word, since Deirdre died, for whom Naoise son of Usnech, was put to death, her heir is not in Ireland to-day but yourself.  Let us begin.

SHEAMUS.  Do not begin until we have a rope; we are not able to twist a rope; there’s nobody here can twist a rope.

HANRAHAN.  There’s nobody here is able to twist a rope?