The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays by J. M. Synge Page A

you’d be destroyed listening.
    WIDOW QUIN. Don’t be letting on to be shy, a fine, gamey, treacherous lad the like of you. Was it in your house beyond you cracked his skull?
    CHRISTY (shy but flattered). It was not. We were digging spuds in his cold, sloping, stony, divil’s patch of a field.
    WIDOW QUIN. And you went asking money of him, or making talk of getting a wife would drive him from his farm?
    CHRISTY. I did not, then; but there I was, digging and digging, and “You squinting idiot,” says he, “let you walk down now and tell the priest you’ll wed the Widow Casey in a score of days.”
    WIDOW QUIN. And what kind was she?
    CHRISTY (with horror). A walking terror from beyond the hills, and she two score and five years, and two hundredweights and five pounds in the weighing scales, with a limping leg on her, and a blinded eye, and she a woman of noted misbehavior with the old and young.
    GIRLS (clustering round him, serving him). Glory be.
    WIDOW QUIN. And what did he want driving you to wed with her? (She takes a bit of the chicken.)
    CHRISTY (eating with growing satisfaction). He was letting on I was wanting a protector from the harshness of the world, and he without a thought the whole while but how he’d have her hut to live in and her gold to drink.
    WIDOW QUIN. There’s maybe worse than a dry hearth and a widow woman and your glass at night. So you hit him then?
    CHRISTY (getting almost excited). I did not. “I won’t wed her,” says I, “when all know she did suckle me for six weeks when I came into the world, and she a hag this day with a tongue on her has the crows and seabirds scattered, the way they would cast a shadow on her garden with the dread of her curse.”
    WIDOW QUIN (teasingly). That one should be right company.
    SARA (eagerly). Don’t mind her. Did you kill him then?
    CHRISTY. “She’s too good for the like of you,” says he, “and go on now or I’ll flatten you out like a crawling beast has passed under a dray.” “You will not if I can help it,” says I. “Go on,” says he, “or I’ll have the divil making garters of your limbs tonight.” “You will not if I can help it,” says I. (He sits up, brandishing his mug.)
    SARA. You were right surely.
    CHRISTY (impressively). With that the sun came out between the cloud and the hill, and it shining green in my face. “God have mercy on your soul,” says he, lifting a scythe; “or on your own,” says I, raising the loy.
    SUSAN. That’s a grand story.
    HONOR. He tells it lovely.
    CHRISTY (flattered and confident, waving bone). He gave a drive with the scythe, and I gave a lep to the east. Then I turned around with my back to the north, and I hit a blow on the ridge of his skull, laid him stretched out, and he split to the knob of his gullet. (He raises the chicken bone to his Adam’s apple.)
    GIRLS (together). Well, you’re a marvel! Oh, God bless you! You’re the lad surely!
    SUSAN. I’m thinking the Lord God sent him this road to make a second husband to the Widow Quin, and she with a great yearning to be wedded, though all dread her here. Lift him on her knee, Sara Tansey.
    WIDOW QUIN. Don’t tease him.
    SARA (going over to dresser and counter very quickly, and getting two glasses and porter). You’re heroes surely, and let you drink a supeen with your arms linked like the outlandish lovers in the sailor’s song.
    (She links their arms and gives them the glasses.) There now. Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgments of the English law. (Brandishing the bottle.)
    WIDOW QUIN. That’s a right toast, Sara Tansey. Now, Christy.
    (They drink with their arms linked, he drinking with his left hand, she with her right. As they are drinking,