with two --
She breaks off coughing. -- My singing voice
is gone for this night, Sarah Casey. (She
lights her pipe.) But if it's flighty you are
itself, you're a grand handsome woman, the
glory of tinkers, the pride of Wicklow, the
Beauty of Ballinacree. I wouldn't have you
lying down and you lonesome to sleep this
night in a dark ditch when the spring is coming
in the trees; so let you sit down there by the
big bough, and I'll be telling you the finest


29

story you'd hear any place from Dundalk to
Ballinacree, with great queens in it, making
themselves matches from the start to the end,
and they with shiny silks on them the length
of the day, and white shifts for the night.
MICHAEL -- 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