Part 2

CATHLEEN. How would they be Michael’s, Nora. How would he go the length of that way to the far north?

NORA. The young priest says he’s known the like of it. “If it’s Michael’s they are,” says he, “you can tell herself he’s got a clean burial by the grace of God, and if they’re not his, let no one say a word about them, for she’ll be getting her death,” says he, “with crying and lamenting.”

CATHLEEN. Looking out anxiously.—Did you ask him would he stop Bartley going this day with the horses to the Galway fair?

NORA. “I won’t stop him,” says he, “but let you not be afraid. Herself does be saying prayers half through the night, and the Almighty God won’t leave her destitute,” says he, “with no son living.”

CATHLEEN. Is the sea bad by the white rocks, Nora?

NORA. Middling bad, God help us. There’s a great roaring in the west, and it’s worse it’ll be getting when the tide’s turned to the wind.

Shall I open it now?

CATHLEEN. Maybe she’d wake up on us, and come in before we’d done.

It’s a long time we’ll be, and the two of us crying.

NORA. Goes to the inner door and listens.—She’s moving about on the bed. She’ll be coming in a minute.

CATHLEEN. Give me the ladder, and I’ll put them up in the turf-loft, the way she won’t know of them at all, and maybe when the tide turns she’ll be going down to see would he be floating from the east.

MAURYA. Looking up at Cathleen and speaking querulously.—Isn’t it turf enough you have for this day and evening?

CATHLEEN. There’s a cake baking at the fire for a short space. [Throwing down the turf] and Bartley will want it when the tide turns if he goes to Connemara.

MAURYA. Sitting down on a stool at the fire.—He won’t go this day with the wind rising from the south and west. He won’t go this day, for the young priest will stop him surely.

NORA. He’ll not stop him, mother, and I heard Eamon Simon and Stephen Pheety and Colum Shawn saying he would go.

MAURYA. Where is he itself?

NORA. He went down to see would there be another boat sailing in the week, and I’m thinking it won’t be long till he’s here now, for the tide’s turning at the green head, and the hooker’ tacking from the east.

CATHLEEN. I hear some one passing the big stones.

NORA. Looking out.—He’s coming now, and he’s in a hurry.

BARTLEY. Comes in and looks round the room. Speaking sadly and quietly.—Where is the bit of new rope, Cathleen, was bought in Connemara?

CATHLEEN. Coming down.—Give it to him, Nora; it’s on a nail by the white boards. I hung it up this morning, for the pig with the black feet was eating it.

NORA. Giving him a rope.—Is that it, Bartley?

MAURYA. You’d do right to leave that rope, Bartley, hanging by the boards [Bartley takes the rope]. It will be wanting in this place, I’m telling you, if Michael is washed up to-morrow morning, or the next morning, or any morning in the week, for it’s a deep grave we’ll make him by the grace of God.

BARTLEY. Beginning to work with the rope.—I’ve no halter the way I can ride down on the mare, and I must go now quickly. This is the one boat going for two weeks or beyond it, and the fair will be a good fair for horses I heard them saying below.

MAURYA. It’s a hard thing they’ll be saying below if the body is washed up and there’s no man in it to make the coffin, and I after giving a big price for the finest white boards you’d find in Connemara.

BARTLEY. How would it be washed up, and we after looking each day for nine days, and a strong wind blowing a while back from the west and south?

MAURYA. If it wasn’t found itself, that wind is raising the sea, and there was a star up against the moon, and it rising in the night. If it was a hundred horses, or a thousand horses you had itself, what is the price of a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only?

BARTLEY. Working at the halter, to Cathleen.—Let you go down each day, and see the sheep aren’t jumping in on the rye, and if the jobber comes you can sell the pig with the black feet if there is a good price going.