us;
It isn't in them to twist even a sugaun;
The province of Munster without nicety, without prosperity.

Disgust for ever on the province of Munster,
That they do not leave us the floor;
The province of Munster of the foul clumsy people.
They cannot even twist a sugaun!

SHEAMUS (_coming back_). Here's the hay now.

HANRAHAN. Give it here to me; I'll show ye what the
well-learned, hardy, honest, clever, sensible Connachtman will do, that
has activity and full deftness in his hands, and sense in his head, and
courage in his heart; but that the misfortune and the great trouble of
the world directed him among the _lebidins_ of the province of Munster,
without honour, without nobility, without knowledge of the swan beyond
the duck, or of the gold beyond the brass, or of the lily beyond the
thistle, or of the star of young women, and the pearl of the white
breast, beyond their own share of sluts and slatterns. Give me a
kippeen. (_A man hands him a stick; he puts a wisp of hay round it, and
begins twisting it; and_ SHEELA _giving him out the hay._)

HANRAHAN.

There is a pearl of a woman giving light to us;
She is my love; she is my desire;
She is fair Oona, the gentle queen-woman.
And the Munstermen do not understand half her courtesy.

These Munstermen are blinded by God;
They do not recognise the swan beyond the grey duck;
But she will come with me, my fine Helen,
Where her person and her beauty shall be praised for ever.

Arrah, wisha, wisha, wisha! isn't this the fine village? isn't this the
exceeding village? The village where there be that many rogues hanged
that the people have no want of ropes with all the ropes that they steal
from the hangman!

The sensible Connachtman makes
A rope for himself;
But the Munsterman steals it
From the hangman;
That I may see a fine rope,
A rope of hemp yet,
A stretching on the throats
Of every person here!

On account of one woman only the Greeks departed, and they never
stopped, and they never greatly stayed, till they destroyed Troy; and on
account of one woman only this village shall be damned; _go deo, ma
neoir_, and to the womb of judgment, by God of the graces, eternally and
everlastingly, because they did not understand that Oona ni Regaun is
the second Helen, who was born in their midst, and that she overcame in
beauty Deirdre and Venus, and all that came before