rabbits on hills, for I was a devil to poach, God forgive me, (very naively)
and I near got six months for going with a dung fork and stabbing a fish.

PEGEEN. And it's that you'd call sport, is it, to be abroad in the darkness
with yourself alone?

CHRISTY. I did, God help me, and there I'd be as happy as the sunshine of St.
Martin's Day, watching the light passing the north or the patches of fog, till
I'd hear a rabbit starting to screech and I'd go running in the furze. Then
when I'd my full share I'd come walking down where you'd see the ducks and
geese stretched sleeping on the highway of the road, and before I'd pass the
dunghill, I'd hear himself snoring out, a loud lonesome snore he'd be making
all times, the while he was sleeping, and he a man 'd be raging all times, the
while he was waking, like a gaudy officer you'd hear cursing and damning and
swearing oaths.

PEGEEN. Providence and Mercy, spare us all!

CHRISTY. It's that you'd say surely if you seen him and he after drinking for
weeks, rising up in the red dawn, or before it maybe, and going out into the
yard as naked as an ash tree in the moon of May, and shying clods against the
visage of the stars till he'd put the fear of death into the banbhs and the
screeching sows.

PEGEEN. I'd be well-night afeard of that lad myself, I'm thinking. And there
was no one in it but the two of you alone?

CHRISTY. The divil a one, though he'd sons and daughters walking all great
states and territories of the world, and not a one of them, to this day, but
would say their seven curses on him, and they rousing up to let a cough or