MAURYA.  Bad luck to the vagabond!  It is well I know what sort he is; because there was a kind of friendship between himself and the first husband I had; and it is often I heard from poor Diarmuid—­the Lord have mercy on him!—­what sort of person he was.  He was a schoolmaster down in Connacht; but he used to have every trick worse than another; ever making songs he used to be, and drinking whiskey and setting quarrels afoot among the neighbours with his share of talk.  They say there isn’t a woman in the five provinces that he wouldn’t deceive.  He is worse than Donal na Greina long ago.  But the end of the story is that the priest routed him out of the parish altogether; he got another place then, and followed on at the same tricks until he was routed out again, and another again with it.  Now he has neither place nor house nor anything, but he to be going the country, making songs and getting a night’s lodging from the people; nobody will refuse him, because they are afraid of him.  He’s a great poet, and maybe he’d make a rann on you that would stick to you for ever, if you were to anger him.

SHEELA.  God preserve us; but what brought him in to-night?

MAURYA.  He was travelling the country and he heard there was to be a dance here, and he came in because he knew us; he was rather great with my first husband.  It is wonderful how he is making out his way of life at all, and he with nothing but his share of songs.  They say there is no place that he’ll go to, that the women don’t love him, and that the men don’t hate him.

SHEELA (catching MAURYA by the shoulder).  Turn your head, Maurya; look at him now, himself and your daughter, and their heads together; he’s whispering in her ear; he’s after making a poem for her and he’s whispering it in her ear.  Oh, the villain, he’ll be putting his spells on her now.

MAURYA.  Ohone, go deo! isn’t it a misfortune that he came?  He’s talking every moment with Oona since he came in three hours ago.  I did my best to separate them from one another, but it failed me.  Poor Oona is given up to every sort of old songs and old made-up stories; and she thinks it sweet to be listening to him.  The marriage is settled between herself and Sheamus O’Herin there, a quarter from to-day.  Look at poor Sheamus at the door, and he watching them.  There is grief and hanging of the head on him; it’s easy to see that he’d like to choke the vagabond this minute.  I am greatly afraid that the head will be turned on Oona with his share of blathering.  As sure as I am alive there will come evil out of this night.

SHEELA.  And couldn’t you put him out?

MAURYA.  I could.  There’s no person here to help him unless there would be a woman or two; but he is a great poet, and he has a curse that would split the trees, and that would burst the stones.  They say the seed will rot in the ground and the milk go from the cows when a poet like him makes a curse, if a person routed him out of the house; but if he was once out, I’ll go bail I wouldn’t let him in again.