Short Plays

there’s a dry moon in the sky. She takes up the can, and puts the package back in the ditch. Jemmy Neill’s a decent lad; and he’ll give me a good drop for the can; and maybe if I keep near the peelers tomorrow for the first bit of the fair, herself won’t strike me at all; and if she does itself, what’s a little stroke on your head beside sitting lonesome on a fine night, hearing the dogs barking, and the bats squeaking, and you saying over, it’s a short while only till you die. She goes out singing “The night before Larry was stretched.” Curtain.

Act II

Scene: The same. Early morning. Sarah is washing her face in an old bucket; then plaits her hair. Michael is tidying himself also. Mary Byrne is asleep against the ditch.

Sarah	To Michael, with pleased excitement. Go over, now, to the bundle beyond, and you’ll find a kind of a red handkerchief to put upon your neck, and a green one for myself.
Michael	Getting them. You’re after spending more money on the like of them. Well, it’s a power we’re losing this time, and we not gaining a thing at all. With the handkerchief. Is it them two?
Sarah	It is, Michael. She takes one of them. Let you tackle that one round under your chin; and let you not forget to take your hat from your head when we go up into the church. I asked Biddy Flynn below, that’s after marrying her second man, and she told me it’s the like of that they do.
	Mary yawns, and turns over in her sleep.
Sarah	With anxiety. There she is waking up on us, and I thinking we’d have the job done before she’d know of it at all.
Michael	She’ll be crying out now, and making game of us, and saying it’s fools we are surely.
Sarah	I’ll send her to sleep again, or get her out of it one way or another; for it’d be a bad case to have a divil’s scholar the like of her turning the priest against us maybe with her godless talk.
Mary	Waking up, and looking at them with curiosity, blandly. That’s fine things you have on you, Sarah Casey; and it’s a great stir you’re making this day, washing your face. I’m that used to the hammer, I wouldn’t hear it at all, but washing is a rare thing, and you’re after waking me up, and I having a great sleep in the sun.
	She looks around cautiously at the bundle in which she has hidden the bottles.
Sarah	Coaxingly. Let you stretch out again for a sleep, Mary Byrne, for it’ll be a middling time yet before we go to the fair.
Mary	With suspicion. That’s a sweet tongue you have, Sarah Casey; but if sleep’s a grand thing, it’s a grand thing to be waking up a day the like of this, when there’s a warm sun in it, and a kind air, and you’ll hear the cuckoos singing and crying out on the top of the hills.
Sarah	If it’s that gay you are, you’d have a right to walk down and see would you get a few halfpence from the rich men do be driving early to the fair.
Mary	When rich men do be driving early, it’s queer tempers they have, the Lord forgive them; the way it’s little but bad words and swearing out you’d get from them all.
Sarah	Losing her temper and breaking out fiercely. Then if you’ll neither beg nor sleep, let you walk off from this place where you’re not wanted, and not have us waiting for you maybe at the turn of day.
Mary	Rather uneasy, turning to Michael. God help our spirits, Michael; there she is again rousing cranky from the break of dawn. Oh! isn’t she a terror since the moon did change? She gets up slowly. And I’d best be going forward to sell the gallon can.
	She goes over and takes up the bundle.
Sarah	Crying out angrily. Leave that down, Mary Byrne. Oh! aren’t you the scorn of women to think that you’d have that drouth and roguery on you that you’d go drinking the can and the dew not dried from the grass?
Mary	In a feigned tone of pacification, with the bundle still in her hand. It’s not a drouth but a heartburn I have this day, Sarah Casey, so I’m going down to cool my gullet at the blessed well; and I’ll sell the can to the parson’s daughter below, a harmless poor creature would fill your hand with shillings for a brace of lies.
Sarah	Leave down the tin can, Mary Byrne, for I hear the drouth upon your tongue today.
Mary	There’s not a drink-house from this place to the fair, Sarah Casey; the way you’ll find me below with the full price, and not a farthing gone.
	She turns to go off left.
Sarah	Jumping up, and picking up the hammer threateningly. Put down that can, I’m saying.
Mary	Looking at her for a moment in terror, and putting down the bundle in the ditch. Is it raving mad you’re going, Sarah Casey, and you the pride of women to destroy the world?
Sarah	Going up to her, and giving her a push off left. I’ll show you if it’s raving mad I am. Go on from this place, I’m saying, and be wary now.
Mary	Turning back after her. If I go, I’ll be telling old and young you’re a weathered heathen savage, Sarah Casey, the one did put down a head of the parson’s cabbage to boil in the pot with your clothes the Priest comes in behind her, on the left, and listens, and quenched the flaming candles on the throne of God the time your shadow fell within the pillars of the chapel door.