The Well of the Saints | Page 8

of the roads, asking a bit of copper from

them that do pass, or stripping rushes for lights, and they not mournful
at all, but talking out straight with a full voice, and making game with
them that likes it.
SAINT -- [to Martin Doul and Mary Doul.] -- It's a hard life you've had
not seeing sun or moon, or the holy priests itself praying to the Lord,
but it's the like of you who are brave in a bad time will make a fine use
of the gift of sight the Almighty God will bring to you today. (He takes
his cloak and puts it about him.) It's on a bare starving rock that there's
the grave of the four beauties of God, the way it's little wonder, I'm
thinking, if it's with bare starving people the water should be used. (He
takes the water and bell and slings them round his shoulders.) So it's to
the like of yourselves I do be going, who are wrinkled and poor, a thing
rich men would hardly look at at all, but would throw a coin to or a
crust of bread.
MARTIN DOUL -- [moving uneasily.] -- When they look on herself,
who is a fine woman.
TIMMY -- [shaking him.] -- Whisht now, and be listening to the Saint.
SAINT -- [looks at them a moment, continues.] -- If it's raggy and dirty
you are itself, I'm saying, the Almighty God isn't at all like the rich men
of Ireland; and, with the power of the water I'm after bringing in a little
curagh into Cashla Bay, He'll have pity on you, and put sight into your
eyes.
MARTIN DOUL -- [taking off his hat.] -- I'm ready now, holy father.
SAINT -- [taking him by the hand.] -- I'll cure you first, and then I'll
come for your wife. We'll go up now into the church, for I must say a
prayer to the Lord. (To Mary Doul, as he moves off.) And let you be
making your mind still and saying praises in your heart, for it's a great
wonderful thing when the power of the Lord of the world is brought
down upon your like.
PEOPLE -- [pressing after him.] -- Come now till we watch.
BRIDE. Come, Timmy.
SAINT -- [waving them back.] -- Stay back where you are, for I'm not
wanting a big crowd making whispers in the church. Stay back there,
I'm saying, and you'd do well to be thinking on the way sin has brought
blindness to the world, and to be saying a prayer for your own sakes
against false prophets and heathens, and the words of women and
smiths, and all knowledge that would soil the soul or the body of a

man.
[People shrink back. He goes into church. Mary Doul gropes half-way
towards the door and kneels near path. People form a group at right.]
TIMMY. Isn't it a fine, beautiful voice he has, and he a fine, brave man
if it wasn't for the fasting?
BRIDE. Did you watch him moving his hands?
MOLLY BYRNE. It'd be a fine thing if some one in this place could
pray the like of him, for I'm thinking the water from our own blessed
well would do rightly if a man knew the way to be saying prayers, and
then there'd be no call to be bringing water from that wild place, where,
I'm told, there are no decent houses, or fine-looking people at all.
BRIDE -- [who is looking in at door from right.] -- Look at the great
trembling Martin has shaking him, and he on his knees.
TIMMY -- [anxiously.] -- God help him. . . What will he be doing
when he sees his wife this day? I'm thinking it was bad work we did
when we let on she was fine-looking, and not a wrinkled, wizened hag
the way she is.
MAT SIMON. Why would he be vexed, and we after giving him great
joy and pride, the time he was dark?
MOLLY BYRNE -- [sitting down in Mary Doul's seat and tidying her
hair.] -- If it's vexed he is itself, he'll have other things now to think on
as well as his wife; and what does any man care for a wife, when it's
two weeks or three, he is looking on her face?
MAT SIMON. That's the truth now, Molly, and it's more joy dark
Martin got from the lies we told of that hag is kneeling by the path than
your own man will get from you, day or night, and he living at your
side.
MOLLY BYRNE -- [defiantly.] -- Let you not be talking, Mat Simon,
for it's not yourself will be my man, though you'd be crowing and