The Playboy of the Western World

stocking or stitching a shift; and odd times again looking out on the schooners, hookers, trawlers is sailing the sea, and I thinking on the gallant hairy fellows are drifting beyond, and myself long years living alone. Christy Interested. You’re like me, so. Widow Quin I am your like, and it’s for that I’m taking a fancy to you, and I with my little houseen above where there’d be myself to tend you, and none to ask were you a murderer or what at all. Christy And what would I be doing if I left Pegeen? Widow Quin I’ve nice jobs you could be doing, gathering shells to make a whitewash for our hut within, building up a little goose-house, or stretching a new skin on an old curragh I have, and if my hut is far from all sides, it’s there you’ll meet the wisest old men, I tell you, at the corner of my wheel, and it’s there yourself and me will have great times whispering and hugging.⁠ ⁠… Voices Outside, calling far away. Christy! Christy Mahon! Christy! Christy Is it Pegeen Mike? Widow Quin It’s the young girls, I’m thinking, coming to bring you to the sports below, and what is it you’ll have me to tell them now? Christy Aid me for to win Pegeen. It’s herself only that I’m seeking now. Widow Quin gets up and goes to window. Aid me for to win her, and I’ll be asking God to stretch a hand to you in the hour of death, and lead you shortcuts through the Meadows of Ease, and up the floor of Heaven to the Footstool of the Virgin’s Son. Widow Quin There’s praying. Voices Nearer. Christy! Christy Mahon! Christy With agitation. They’re coming. Will you swear to aid and save me for the love of Christ? Widow Quin Looks at him for a moment. If I aid you, will you swear to give me a right of way I want, and a mountainy ram, and a load of dung at Michaelmas, the time that you’ll be master here? Christy I will, by the elements and stars of night. Widow Quin Then we’ll not say a word of the old fellow, the way Pegeen won’t know your story till the end of time. Christy And if he chances to return again? Widow Quin We’ll swear he’s a maniac and not your da. I could take an oath I seen him raving on the sands today. Girls run in. Susan Come on to the sports below. Pegeen says you’re to come. Sara The lepping’s beginning, and we’ve a jockey’s suit to fit upon you for the mule race on the sands below. Honor Come on, will you? Christy I will then if Pegeen’s beyond. Sara She’s in the boreen making game of Shaneen Keogh. Christy Then I’ll be going to her now. He runs out followed by the girls. Widow Quin Well, if the worst comes in the end of all, it’ll be great game to see there’s none to pity him but a widow woman, the like of me, has buried her children and destroyed her man. She goes out. Curtain.

Act III

Scene as before. Later in the day. Jimmy comes in, slightly drunk.

Jimmy	Calls. Pegeen! Crosses to inner door. Pegeen Mike! Comes back again into the room. Pegeen! Philly comes in in the same state. To Philly. Did you see herself?
Philly	I did not; but I sent Shawn Keogh with the ass cart for to bear him home. Trying cupboards which are locked. Well, isn’t he a nasty man to get into such staggers at a morning wake; and isn’t herself the divil’s daughter for locking, and she so fussy after that young gaffer, you might take your death with drought and none to heed you?
Jimmy	It’s little wonder she’d be fussy, and he after bringing bankrupt ruin on the roulette man, and the trick-o’-the-loop man, and breaking the nose of the cockshot-man, and winning all in the sports below, racing, lepping, dancing, and the Lord knows what! He’s right luck, I’m telling you.
Philly	If he has, he’ll be rightly hobbled yet, and he not able to say ten words without making a brag of the way he killed his father, and the great blow he hit with the loy.
Jimmy	A man can’t hang by his own informing, and his father should be rotten by now.
	Old Mahon passes window slowly.
Philly	Supposing a man’s digging spuds in that field with a long spade, and supposing he flings up the two halves of that skull, what’ll be said then in the papers and the courts of law?
Jimmy	They’d say it was an old Dane, maybe, was drowned in the flood.
	Old Mahon comes in and sits down near door listening.
	Did you never hear tell of the skulls they have in the city of Dublin, ranged out like blue jugs in a cabin of Connaught?
Philly	And you believe that?
Jimmy	Pugnaciously. Didn’t a lad see them and he after coming from harvesting in the Liverpool boat? “They have them there,” says he, “making a show of the great people there was one time walking the world. White skulls and black skulls and yellow skulls, and some with full teeth, and some haven’t only but one.”
Philly	It was no lie, maybe, for when I was a young lad there was a graveyard beyond the house with the remnants of a man who had thighs as long as your arm. He was a horrid man, I’m telling you, and there was many a fine Sunday I’d put him together for fun, and he with shiny bones, you wouldn’t meet the like of these days in the cities of the world.
Mahon	Getting up. You wouldn’t is it? Lay your eyes on that skull, and tell me where and when there was another the like of it, is splintered only from the blow of a loy.
Philly	Glory be to God! And who hit you