Short Plays

I’m thinking it’s a poor herd does be running back and forward after a little handful of ewes the way I seen yourself running this day, young fellow, and you coming from the fair. Nora comes back to the table. Nora To Micheal in a low voice. Let you not mind him at all, Micheal Dara, he has a drop taken and it’s soon he’ll be falling asleep. Micheal It’s no lie he’s telling, I was destroyed surely. They were that wilful they were running off into one man’s bit of oats, and another man’s bit of hay, and tumbling into the red bogs till it’s more like a pack of old goats than sheep they were.⁠ ⁠… Mountain ewes is a queer breed, Nora Burke, and I not used to them at all. Nora Settling the tea things. There’s no one can drive a mountain ewe but the men do be reared in the Glenmalure, I’ve heard them say, and above by Rathvanna, and the Glen Imaal⁠—men the like of Patch Darcy, God spare his soul, who would walk through five hundred sheep and miss one of them, and he not reckoning them at all. Micheal Uneasily. Is it the man went queer in his head the year that’s gone? Nora It is, surely. Tramp Plaintively. That was a great man, young fellow⁠—a great man, I’m telling you. There was never a lamb from his own ewes he wouldn’t know before it was marked, and he’d run from this to the city of Dublin and never catch for his breath. Nora Turning round quickly. He was a great man surely, stranger, and isn’t it a grand thing when you hear a living man saying a good word of a dead man, and he mad dying? Tramp It’s the truth I’m saying, God spare his soul. He puts the needle under the collar of his coat, and settles himself to sleep in the chimney corner. Nora sits down at the table; Nora and Micheael’s backs are turned to the bed. Micheal Looking at her with a queer look. I heard tell this day, Nora Burke, that it was on the path below Patch Darcy would be passing up and passing down, and I heard them say he’d never past it night or morning without speaking with yourself. Nora In a low voice. It was no lie you heard, Micheal Dara. Micheal I’m thinking it’s a power of men you’re after knowing if it’s in a lonesome place you live itself. Nora Giving him his tea. It’s in a lonesome place you do have to be talking with someone, and looking for someone, in the evening of the day, and if it’s a power of men I’m after knowing they were fine men, for I was a hard child to please, and a hard girl to please she looks at him a little sternly, and it’s a hard woman I am to please this day, Micheal Dara, and it’s no lie I’m telling you. Micheal Looking over to see that the Tramp is asleep, and then pointing to the dead man. Was it a hard woman to please you were when you took himself for your man? Nora What way would I live, and I an old woman, if I didn’t marry a man with a bit of a farm, and cows on it, and sheep on the back hills? Micheal Considering. That’s true, Nora, and maybe it’s no fool you were, for there’s good grazing on it, if it is a lonesome place, and I’m thinking it’s a good sum he’s left behind. Nora Taking the stocking with the money from her pocket, and putting it on the table. I do be thinking in the long nights it was a big fool I was that time, Micheal Dara, for what good is a bit of a farm with cows on it, and sheep on the back hills, when you do be sitting looking out from a door the like of that door, and seeing nothing but the mists rolling down the bog, and the mists again and they rolling up the bog, and hearing nothing but the wind crying out in the bits of broken trees were left from the great storm, and the streams roaring with the rain. Micheal Looking at her uneasily. What is it ails you, this night, Nora Burke? I’ve heard tell it’s the like of that talk you do hear from men, and they after being a great while on the back hills. Nora Putting out the money on the table. It’s a bad night, and a wild night, Micheal Dara, and isn’t it a great while I am at the foot of the back hills, sitting up here boiling food for himself, and food for the brood sow, and baking a cake when the night falls? She puts up the money listlessly in little piles on the table. Isn’t it a long while I am sitting here in the winter and the summer, and the fine spring, with the young growing behind me and the old passing, saying to myself one time, to look on Mary Brien, who wasn’t that height holding out her hand, and I a fine girl growing up, and there she is now with two children, and another coming on her in three months or four. She pauses. Micheal Moving over three of the piles. That’s three pounds we have now, Nora Burke. Nora Continuing in the same voice. And saying to myself another time, to look on Peggy Cavanagh, who had the lightest hand at milking a cow that wouldn’t be easy, or turning a cake, and there she is now walking round on the roads, or sitting in a dirty old house, with no teeth in her mouth, and no sense, and no more hair than you’d see on a bit of a hill and they after burning the furze from it. Micheal That’s five pounds