New Irish Comedies | Page 6

astray!
_Darby:_ Putting on your head a fine glossy hat and I thinking you to
have come with the spring-tide, the way you had luck through your
life!
_Taig:_ Letting on to be Dermot Melody! You that are but the cull and
the weakling of a race! It is a queer game you played on me and a
crooked game. I never would have brought my legs so far to meet with
the sooty likes of you!
_Darby:_ Letting on to be my poor Timothy O'Harragha!
_Taig:_ I never was called but Taig. Timothy was a sort of a Holy day
name.
_Darby:_ Where now are our two cousins? Or is it that the both of us

are cracked?
_Taig:_ It is, or our mothers before us.
_Darby:_ My mother was a McGarrity woman from Loughrea. It is
Mary was her Christened name.
_Taig:_ So was my own mother of the McGarritys. It is sisters they
were sure enough.
_Darby:_ That makes us out to be full cousins in the heel.
_Taig:_ You no better than myself! And the prayers I used to be saying
for you, and you but a sketch and an excuse of a man!
_Darby:_ Ah, I am thinking people put more in their prayers than was
ever put in them by God.
_Taig:_ Our mothers picturing us to one another as if we were the best
in the world.
_Darby:_ Lies I suppose they were drawing down, for to startle us into
good behaviour.
_Taig:_ Wouldn't you say now mothers to be a terror?
_Darby:_ And we nothing at all after but two chimney sweepers and
two harmless drifty lads.
_Taig:_ Where is the great quality dinner yourself was to give me,
having seven sorts of dressed meat? Pullets and bacon I was looking for,
and to fall on an easy life.
_Darby:_ Gone like the clouds of the winter's fog. We rose out of it the
same as we went in.
_Taig:_ We have nothing to do but to starve with the hunger, and you
being as bare as myself.
_Darby:_ We are in a bad shift surely. We must perish with the want of
support. It is one of the tricks of the world does be played upon the
children of Adam.
_Taig:_ All we have to do is to crawl to the poorhouse gate. Or to go
dig a pit in the graveyard, as it is short till we'll be stretched there with
the want of food.
_Darby:_ Food is it? There is nothing at this time against me eating my
bit of a herring.
_(Seizes it and takes a bite.)_
_Taig:_ Give me a divide of it.
_Darby:_ Give me a drop of your own porter so, is in the bottle. There
need be no dread on you now, of you being no match for your grand

man.
_Taig:_ That is so. _(Drinks.)_ I'll strive no more to fit myself for high
quality relations. I am free from patterns of high up cousins from this
out. I'll be a pattern to myself.
_Darby:_ I am well content being free of you, the way you were
pictured to be. I declare to my goodness, the name of you put terror on
me through the whole of my lifetime, and your image to be clogging
and checking me on every side.
_Taig:_ To be thinking of you being in the world was a holy terror to
myself. I give you my word you came through my sleep the same as a
scarecrow or a dragon.
_Darby:_ It is great things I will be doing from this out, we two having
nothing to cast up against one another. To be quit of Timothy the bogie
and to get Taig for a comrade, I'm as proud as the Crown of France!
_Taig:_ I'm in dread of neither bumble or bagman or bugaboo! I will
regulate things from myself from this out.
_Darby:_ There to be fineness of living in the world, why wouldn't I
make it out for myself?
_Taig:_ It is to the harbours of America we will work our way across
the wideness of the sea. It is well able we should be to go mounting up
aloft in ropes. Come on Darby out of this!
_Darby:_ There is magic and mastery come into me! This day has put
wings to my heart!
_Taig:_ Be easy now. We are maybe not clear of the chimneys yet.
_Darby:_ What signifies chimneys? We'll go up in them till we'll take a
view of the Seven Stars! It is out beyond the hills of Burren I will cast
my eye, till I'll see the three gates of Heaven!
_Taig:_ It's like enough, luck will flow to you. The way most people
fail is in not keeping up the