here was a
messenger of a clerk came laying that down.

_McDonough:_ May ill luck attend him! Is it that he thinks she
that is gone has no person belonging to her to wake her through the
night-time?

_First Hag:_ He sent his men to coffin her. She will be brought
away in the heel of the day.

_McDonough:_ It is a great wake I will give her. It would not be
for honour she to go without that much. Cakes and candles and drink
and tobacco! The table of this house is too narrow. It is from the
neighbours we should borrow tables.

_First Hag:_ That cannot be. It is what the man said, "This is a
common lodging-house. It is right to banish the dead from the living."
He has the law with him, and custom. There is no use you thinking to
go outside of that.

_McDonough:_ My lasting grief it will be I not to get leave to
show her that respect!

_First Hag:_ "There will a car be sent," he said, "and two boys
from the Union for to bear her out from the house."

_McDonough:_ Men from the Union, are you saying? I would not give
leave to one of them to put a hand anigh or anear her! It is not
their car will bring her to the grave. That would be the most pity
in the world!

_First Hag:_ You have no other way to bring her on her road. It is
best for you give in to their say.

_McDonough:_ Where are the friends and the neighbours that they
would not put a hand tinder her?

_First Hag:_ They are after making their refusal. She was not well
liked in Galway. There is no one will come to her help.

_McDonough:_ Is that truth, or is it lies you have made up for my
tormenting?

_First Hag:_ It is no lie at all. It is as sure as the winter's
frost. You have no one to draw to but yourself.

_McDonough:_ It is mad jealous the women of Galway were and wild
with anger, and she coming among them, that was seventeen times
better than their best! My bitter grief I ever to have come next or
near them, or to have made music for the lugs or for the feet of
wide crooked hags! That they may dance to their death to the devil's
pipes and be the disgrace of the world! It is a great slur on
Ireland and a great scandal they to have made that refusing! That
the Corrib River may leave its merings and rise up out of its banks
till the waves will rise like mountains over the town and smother it,
with all that is left of its tribes!

_First Hag:_ Be whist now, or they will be angered and they
hearing you outside in the fair.

_McDonough:_ Let the