.
25 10 / NATION AND LANGUAGE
[SARAH points.]
Where?
[SARAH mimes rocking a baby.]
I don't understand?where?
[SARAH repeats the mime and wipes away tears, OWEN is still puzzled.]
It doesn't matter. He'll probably turn up.
[BRIDGET and DOALTY enter, sacks over their heads against the rain. They are self-consciously noisier, more ebullient, more garrulous than ever? brimming over with excitement and gossip and brio. ]
DOALTY You're missing the crack,2 boys! Cripes, you're missing the crack!
Fifty more soldiers arrived an hour ago! BRIDGET And they're spread out in a big line from Sean Neal's over to Lag and they're moving straight across the fields towards Cnoc na nGabhar! DOALTY Prodding every inch of the ground in front of them with their bayo
nets and scattering animals and hens in all directions! BRIDGET And tumbling everything before them?fences, ditches, hay-stacks, turf-stacks! DOALTY They came to Barney Petey's field of corn?straight through it be
God as if it was heather!1 BRIDGET Not a blade of it left standing! DOALTY And Barney Petey just out of his bed and running after them in his
drawers: 'You hoors4 you! Get out of my corn, you hoors you!' BRIDGET First time he ever ran in his life. DOALTY TOO lazy, the wee get,5 to cut it when the weather was good.
[SARAH begins putting out the seats.] BRIDGET Tell them about Big Hughie. DOALTY Cripes, if you'd seen your aul fella, Owen. BRIDGET They were all inside in Anna na mBreag's pub?all the crowd from
the wake? DOALTY And they hear the commotion and they all come out to the street? BRIDGET Your father in front; the Infant Prodigy footless6 behind him! DOALTY And your aul fella, he sees the army stretched across the
countryside?
BRIDGET O my God!
DOALTY And Cripes he starts roaring at them! BRIDGET 'Visigoths! Huns! Vandals!'7 DOALTY 'Ignari! Stulti! Rusticil'8
BRIDGET And wee Jimmy Jack jumping up and down and shouting, 'Thermopylae! Thermopylae!'9 DOALTY You never saw crack like it in your life, boys. Come away on out with
me, Sarah, and you'll see it all. BRIDGET Big Hughie's fit to take no class. Is Manus about? OWEN Manus is gone. BRIDGET Gone where? OWEN He's left?gone away.
2. Excitement. turies. 3. Plant with small leaves and flowers. 8. Ignoramuses! Fools! Peasants! [Latin; Friel's 4. Whores. note]. 5. Little bastard or little fool. 9. A narrow valley on the Aegean Sea, where in 6. Barefoot. 480 B.C.E. a small number of Greek soldiers 7. Nomadic tribes that militarily challenged the attempted to stave off a much larger Persian force. (Western) Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th cen
.
FRIEL: TRANSLATIONS, ACT 3 / 25 11
DOALTY Where to? OWEN He doesn't know. Mayo, maybe. DOALTY What's on in Mayo? OWEN [To BRIDGET.] Did you see George and Maire Chatach leave the dance
last night? BRIDGET We did. Didn't we, Doalty? OWEN Did you see Manus following them out? BRIDGET I didn't see him going out but I saw him coming in by himself later. OWEN Did George and Maire come back to the dance?
BRIDGET No . OWEN Did you see them again? BRIDGET He left her home. We passed them going up the back road?didn't
we, Doalty? OWEN And Manus stayed till the end of the dance? DOALTY We know nothing. WTiat are you asking us for? OWEN Because Lancey'll question me when he hears Manus's gone. [Back
to BRIDGET.] That's the way George went home? By the back road? That's where you saw him? BRIDGET Leave me alone, Owen. I know nothing about Yolland. If you want to know about Yolland, ask the Donnelly twins.
[Silence, DOALTY moves over to the window.] [To SARAH.] He's a powerful fiddler, O'Shea, isn't he? He told our Seamus he'll come back for a night at Hallowe'en.
[OWEN goes to DOALTY who looks resolutely out the window.] OWEN What's this about the Donnellys? [Pause.] Were they about last night? DOALTY Didn't see them if they were. [Begins whistling through his teeth.] OWEN George is a friend of mine. DOALTY So. OWEN I want to know what's happened to him. DOALTY Couldn't tell you. OWEN What have the Donnelly twins to do with it? [Pause.] Doalty! DOALTY I know nothing, Owen?nothing at all?I swear to God. All I know
is this: on my way to the dance I saw their boat beached at Port. It wasn't there on my way home, after I left Bridget. And that's all I know. As God's my judge.
The half-dozen times I met him I didn't know a word he said to me; but he seemed a right enough sort . . . [With sudden excessive interest in the scene outside.] Cripes, they're crawling all over the place! Cripes, there's millions of them! Cripes, they're levelling the whole land!
[OWEN moves away.
