New Comedies Part 25

McDONOUGH'S WIFE

PERSONS

_McDonough, a piper._ _First Hag._ _Second Hag._

McDONOUGH'S WIFE

_Scene: A very poor room in Galway with outer and inner door.

Noises of a fair outside. A Hag sitting by the fire. Another standing by outer door_.

_First Hag:_ Is there e'er a sign of McDonough to be coming?

_Second Hag:_ There is not. There were two or three asking for him, wanting him to bring the pipes to some spree-house at the time the fair will be at an end.

_First Hag:_ A great wonder he not to have come, and this the fair day of Galway.

_Second Hag:_ He not to come ere evening, the woman that is dead must go to her burying without one to follow her, or any friend at all to flatten the green scraws above her head.

_First Hag:_ Is there no neighbour at all will do that much, and she being gone out of the world?

_Second Hag:_ There is not. You said to ask Pat Marlborough, and I asked him, and he said there were plenty of decent women and of well-reared women in Galway he would follow and welcome the day they would die, without paying that respect to one not belonging to the district, or that the town got no good account of the time she came.

_First Hag:_ Did you do as I bade you, asking Cross Ford to send in a couple of the boys she has?

_Second Hag:_ What a fool I'd be asking her! I laid down to her the way it was. McDonough's wife to be dead, and he far out in the country, and no one belonging to her to so much as lift the coffin over the threshold of the door.

_First Hag:_ What did she say hearing that?

_Second Hag:_ She put a big laugh out of her, and it is what she said: "May the devil die with her, and it is well pleased the street will be getting quit of her, and it is hard say on what mountain she might be grazing now."

_First Hag:_ There will no help come burying her so.

_Second Hag:_ It is too lofty McDonough was, and too high-minded, bringing in a woman was maybe no lawful wife, or no honest child itself, but it might be a bychild or a tinker's brat, and he giving out no account of her generations or of her name.

_First Hag:_ Whether or no, she was a little giddy. But that is the way with McDonough. He is sometimes an unruly lad, but he would near knock you with his pride.

_Second Hag:_ Indeed he is no way humble, but looking for attendance on her, as if she was the youngest and the greatest in the world.

_First Hag:_ It is not to humour her the Union men will, and they carrying her to where they will sink her into the ground, unless it might be McDonough would come back, and he having money in his hand, to bring in some keeners and some hired men.

_Second Hag:_ He to come back at this time it is certain he will bring a fist-full of money.

_First Hag:_ What makes you say that to be certain?

_Second Hag:_ A troop of sheep-shearers that are on the west side of the fair, looking for hire from the gra.s.s farmers. I heard them laying down they met with McDonough at the big shearing at Cregroostha.

_First Hag:_ What day was that?

_Second Hag:_ This day week for the world.

_First Hag:_ He has time and plenty to be back in Galway ere this.

_Second Hag:_ Great dancing they had and a great supper at the time the shearing was at an end and the fleeces lodged in the big sacks. It is McDonough played his music through the night-time. It is what I heard them saying, "He went out of that place weightier than he went in."

_First Hag:_ He is a great one to squeeze the pipes surely. There is no place ever he went into but he brought the whip out of it.

_Second Hag:_ His father was better again, they do be saying. It was from the other side he got the gift.

_First Hag:_ He did, and from beyond the world, where he befriended some in the forths of the Danes. It was they taught him their trade. I heard tell, he to throw the pipes up on top of the rafters, they would go sounding out tunes of themselves.

_Second Hag:_ He could do no more with them than what McDonough himself can do--may ill luck attend him! It is inhuman tunes he does be making; unnatural they are.

_First Hag:_ He is a great musician surely.

_Second Hag:_ There is no person can be safe from him the time he will put his "come hither" upon them. I give you my word he set myself dancing reels one time in the street, and I making an attack on him for keeping the little lads miching from school. That was a great scandal to put upon a decent woman.

_First Hag:_ He to be in the fair to-day and to take the fancy, you would hear the nailed boots of the frieze-coated man footing steps on the sidewalk.

_Second Hag:_ You would, and it's likely he'd play a notion into the skulls of the pampootied boys from Aran, they to be kings of France or of Germany, till they'd go lift their head to the clouds and go knocking all before them. And the police it is likely laughing with themselves, as if listening to the talk of the blackbird would be perched upon a blessed bush.

_First Hag:_ I wonder he did not come. Could it be he might be made away with for the riches he brought from Cregroostha? It would be a strange thing now, he to be lying and his head broke, at the b.u.t.t of a wall, and the woman he thought the whole world of to be getting her burial from the workhouse.

_(A sound of pipes.)_

_Second Hag:_ Whist, I tell you! It's the sound of the pipes. It is McDonough, it is no other one.

_First Hag:_ _(Getting up.)_ I'm in dread of him coming in the house. He is a hasty man and wicked, and he vexed. What at all will he say and she being dead before him? Whether or no, it will be a sharp grief to him, she to scatter and to go. He might give me a backstroke and drive me out from the door.

_Second Hag:_ Let you make an attack upon himself before he will have time to make his own attack.

_McDonough:_ _(Coming in.)_ Catherine! Where is she? Where is Catherine?

_First Hag:_ Is it readying the dinner before you, or wringing out a s.h.i.+rt for the Sunday like any good slave of a wife, you are used to find your woman, McDonough?

_McDonough:_ What call would she have stopping in the house with the withered like of yourself? It is not to the crabbed talk of a peevish hag a handsome young woman would wish to be listening and sport and funning being in the fair outside.

_First Hag:_ Go look for her in the fair so, if it is gadding up and down is her habit, and you being gone out from her sight.

_McDonough: (Shaking her.)_ Tell me out, where is she?

_First Hag:_ Tell out what harbour were you yourself in from the day you left Cregroostha?

_McDonough:_ Is it that she got word?--or that she was tired waiting for me?

_First Hag:_ She is gone away from you, McDonough.