But while he was saying this the two old women had gone outside the door, and Oona’s mother was crying, and she said:  ’He has put an enchantment on Oona.  Can we not get the men to put him out of the house?’

‘That is a thing you cannot do, said the other woman,’ for he is a poet of the Gael, and you know well if you would put a poet of the Gael out of the house, he would put a curse on you that would wither the corn in the fields and dry up the milk of the cows, if it had to hang in the air seven years.’

‘God help us,’ said the mother, ’and why did I ever let him into the house at all, and the wild name he has!’

’It would have been no harm at all to have kept him outside, but there would great harm come upon you if you put him out by force.  But listen to the plan I have to get him out of the house by his own doing, without anyone putting him from it at all.’

It was not long after that the two women came in again, each of them having a bundle of hay in her apron.  Hanrahan was not singing now, but he was talking to Oona very fast and soft, and he was saying:  ’The house is narrow but the world is wide, and there is no true lover that need be afraid of night or morning or sun or stars or shadows of evening, or any earthly thing.’  ‘Hanrahan,’ said the mother then, striking him on the shoulder, ’will you give me a hand here for a minute?’ ‘Do that, Hanrahan,’ said the woman of the neighbours, ’and help us to make this hay into a rope, for you are ready with your hands, and a blast of wind has loosened the thatch on the haystack.’

‘I will do that for you,’ said he, and he took the little stick in his hands, and the mother began giving out the hay, and he twisting it, but he was hurrying to have done with it, and to be free again.  The women went on talking and giving out the hay, and encouraging him, and saying what a good twister of a rope he was, better than their own neighbours or than anyone they had ever seen.  And Hanrahan saw that Oona was watching him, and he began to twist very quick and with his head high, and to boast of the readiness of his hands, and the learning he had in his head, and the strength in his arms.  And as he was boasting, he went backward, twisting the rope always till he came to the door that was open behind him, and without thinking he passed the threshold and was out on the road.  And no sooner was he there than the mother made a sudden rush, and threw out the rope after him, and she shut the door and the half-door and put a bolt upon them.

She was well pleased when she had done that, and laughed out loud, and the neighbours laughed and praised her.  But they heard him beating at the door, and saying words of cursing outside it, and the mother had but time to stop Oona that had her hand upon the bolt to open it.  She made a sign to the fiddler then, and he began a reel, and one of the young men asked no leave but caught hold of Oona and brought her into the thick of the dance.  And when it was over and the fiddle had stopped, there was no sound at all of anything outside, but the road was as quiet as before.