I was myself on the morning of yesterday
Walking beside the wood at the break of day;
There was a bird there was singing sweetly,
How I love love, and is it not beautiful?
(_A shout and a noise, and_ SHEAMUS O'HERAN _rushes in._)
SHEAMUS. Ububu! Ohone-y-o, go deo! The big coach is overthrown
at the foot of the hill! The bag in which the letters of the country are
is bursted; and there is neither tie, nor cord, nor rope, nor anything
to bind it up. They are calling out now for a hay sugaun--whatever kind
of thing that is; the letters and the coach will be lost for want of a
hay sugaun to bind them.
HANRAHAN. Do not be bothering us; we have our poem done, and we
are going to dance. The coach does not come this way at all.
SHEAMUS. The coach does come this way now; but sure you're a
stranger, and you don't know. Doesn't the coach come over the hill now,
neighbours?
ALL. It does, it does, surely.
HANRAHAN. I don't care whether it does come or whether it
doesn't. I would sooner twenty coaches to be overthrown on the road than
the pearl of the white breast to be stopped from dancing to us. Tell the
coachman to twist a rope for himself.
SHEAMUS. Oh! murder! he can't. There's that much vigour, and
fire, and activity, and courage in the horses, that my poor coachman
must take them by the heads; it's on the pinch of his life he's able to
control them; he's afraid of his soul they'll go from him of a rout.
They are neighing like anything; you never saw the like of them for wild
horses.
HANRAHAN. Are there no other people in the coach that will make
a rope, if the coachman has to be at the horses' heads? Leave that, and
let us dance.
SHEAMUS. There are three others in it; but as to one of them,
he is one-handed, and another man of them, he's shaking and trembling
with the fright he got; it's not in him now to stand up on his two feet
with the fear that's on him; and as for the third man, there isn't a
person in this country would speak to him about a rope at all, for his
own father was hanged with a rope last year for stealing sheep.
HANRAHAN. Then let one of yourselves twist a rope so, and leave
the floor to us. (_To_ OONA.) Now, O star of women, show me how
Juno goes among the gods, or Helen for whom Troy was destroyed. By my
word, since Deirdre died, for whom Naoise son of Usnech, was put to
death, her heir is not in Ireland to-day but yourself. Let us begin.
SHEAMUS. Do not begin until we have a rope; we are not able to
twist a rope; there's nobody here can twist a rope.
HANRAHAN. There's nobody here is able to twist a rope?
ALL. Nobody at all.
SHEELA. And that's true; nobody in this place ever made a hay
sugaun. I don't believe there's a person in this house who ever saw one
itself but me. It's well I remember when I was a little girsha that I
saw one of them on a goat that my grandfather brought with him out of
Connacht. All the people used to be saying: "Aurah, what sort of a thing
is that at all?" And he said that it was a sugaun that was in it; and
that people used to make the like of that down in Connacht. He said that
one man would go holding the hay, and another man twisting it. I'll hold
the hay now; and you'll go twisting it.