The Tinkers Wedding | Page 8

standing up with the tin can in his hand. -- Let you go asleep, and not have us destroyed. MARY -- lying back sleepily. -- Don't mind him, Sarah Casey. Sit down now, and I'll be telling you a story would be fit to tell a woman the like of you in the springtime of the year. SARAH -- taking the can from Michael, and tying it up in a piece of sacking. -- That'll not be rusting now in the dews of night. I'll put it up in the ditch the way it will be handy in the morning; and now we've that done, Michael Byrne, I'll go along with you and welcome for Tim Flaherty's hens. [She puts the can in the ditch. MARY -- sleepily. -- I've a grand story of the great queens of Ireland with white necks on them the like of Sarah Casey, and fine arms would hit you a slap the way Sarah Casey would hit you. SARAH -- beckoning on the left. -- Come along now, Michael, while she's falling asleep.
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[He goes towards left. Mary sees that they are going, starts up suddenly, and turns over on her hands and knees. MARY -- piteously. -- Where is it you're going? Let you walk back here, and not be leaving me lonesome when the night is fine. SARAH. Don't be waking the world with your talk when we're going up through the back wood to get two of Tim Flaherty's hens are roosting in the ash-tree above at the well. MARY. And it's leaving me lone you are? Come back here, Sarah Casey. Come back here, I'm saying; or if it's off you must go, leave me the two little coppers you have, the way I can walk up in a short while, and get another pint for my sleep. SARAH. It's too much you have taken. Let you stretch yourself out and take a long sleep; for isn't that the best thing any woman can do, and she an old drinking heathen like yourself. [She and Michael go out left. MARY -- standing up slowly. -- It's gone they are, and I with my feet that weak under me you'd knock me down with a rush, and my head with a noise in it the like of what
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you'd hear in a stream and it running between two rocks and rain falling. (She goes over to the ditch where the can is tied in sacking, and takes it down.) What good am I this night, God help me? What good are the grand stories I have when it's few would listen to an old woman, few but a girl maybe would be in great fear the time her hour was come, or a little child wouldn't be sleeping with the hunger on a cold night? (She takes the can from the sacking and fits in three empty bottles and straw in its place, and ties them up.) Maybe the two of them have a good right to be walking out the little short while they'd be young; but if they have itself, they'll not keep Mary Byrne from her full pint when the night's fine, and 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 to-morrow 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
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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
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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 excite- ment. -- 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.