The Playboy of the Western World

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, Pegeen Mike comes in with a milk can and stands aghast. They all spring away from Christy. He goes down left. Widow Quin remains seated.


Pegeen
Angrily, to Philly. What is it you’re wanting?


Sara
Twisting her apron. An ounce of tobacco.


Pegeen
Have you tuppence?


Sara
I’ve forgotten my purse.


Pegeen
Then you’d best be getting it and not fooling us here. To the Widow Quin, with more elaborate scorn. And what is it you’re wanting, Widow Quin?


Widow Quin
Insolently. A penn’orth of starch.


Pegeen
Breaking out. And you without a white shift or a shirt in your whole family since the drying of the flood. I’ve no starch for the like of you, and let you walk on now to Killamuck.


Widow Quin
Turning to Christy, as she goes out with the girls. Well, you’re mighty huffy this day, Pegeen Mike, and, you young fellow, let you not forget the sports and racing when the noon is by.



They go out.


Pegeen
Imperiously. Fling out that rubbish and put them cups away. Christy tidies away in great haste. Shove in the bench by the wall. He does so. And hang that glass on the nail. What disturbed it at all?


Christy
Very meekly. I was making myself decent only, and this a fine country for young lovely girls.


Pegeen
Sharply. Whisht your talking of girls. Goes to counter right.


Christy
Wouldn’t any wish to be decent in a place.⁠ ⁠…


Pegeen
Whisht I’m saying.


Christy
Looks at her face for a moment with great misgivings, then as a last effort, takes up a loy, and goes towards her, with feigned assurance. It was with a loy the like of that I killed my father.


Pegeen
Still sharply. You’ve told me that story six times since the dawn of day.


Christy
Reproachfully. It’s a queer thing you wouldn’t care to be hearing it and them girls after walking four miles to be listening to me now.


Pegeen
Turning round astonished. Four miles.


Christy
Apologetically. Didn’t himself say there were only bona fides living in the place?


Pegeen
It’s bona fides by the road they are, but that lot came over the river lepping the stones. It’s not three perches when you go like that, and I was down this morning looking on the papers the post-boy does have in his bag. With meaning and emphasis. For there was great news this day, Christopher Mahon.



She goes into room left.


Christy
Suspiciously. Is it news of my murder?


Pegeen
Inside. Murder, indeed.


Christy
Loudly. A murdered da?


Pegeen
Coming in again and crossing right. There was not, but a story filled half a page of the hanging of a man. Ah, that should be a fearful end, young fellow, and it worst of all for a man who destroyed his da, for the like of him would get small mercies, and when it’s dead he is, they’d put him in a narrow grave, with cheap sacking wrapping him round, and pour down quicklime on his head, the way you’d see a woman pouring any frish-frash from a cup.


Christy
Very miserably. Oh, God help me. Are you thinking I’m safe? You were saying at the fall of night, I was shut of jeopardy and I here with yourselves.


Pegeen
Severely. You’ll be shut of jeopardy no place if you go talking with a pack of wild girls the like of them do be walking abroad with the peelers, talking whispers at the fall of night.


Christy
With terror. And you’re thinking they’d tell?


Pegeen
With mock sympathy. Who knows, God help you.


Christy
Loudly. What joy would they have to bring hanging to the likes of me?


Pegeen
It’s queer joys they have, and who knows the thing they’d do, if it’d make the green stones cry itself to think of you swaying and swiggling at the butt of a rope, and you with a fine, stout neck, God bless you! the way you’d be a half an hour, in great anguish, getting your death.


Christy
Getting his boots and putting them on. If there’s that terror of them, it’d be best, maybe, I went on wandering like Esau or Cain and Abel on the sides of Neifin or the Erris plain.


Pegeen
Beginning to play with him. It would, maybe, for I’ve heard the Circuit Judges this place is a heartless crew.


Christy
Bitterly. It’s more than Judges this place is a heartless crew. Looking up at her. And isn’t it a poor thing to be starting again and I a lonesome fellow will be looking out on women and girls the way the needy fallen spirits do be looking on the Lord?


Pegeen
What call have you to be that lonesome when there’s poor girls walking Mayo in their thousands now?


Christy
Grimly. It’s well you know what call I have. It’s well you know it’s a lonesome thing to be passing small towns with the lights shining sideways when the night is down, or going in strange places with a dog nosing before you and a dog nosing behind, or drawn to the cities where you’d hear a voice kissing and talking deep love in every shadow of the ditch, and you passing on with an empty, hungry stomach failing from your heart.


Pegeen
I’m thinking you’re an odd man, Christy Mahon. The oddest walking fellow I ever set my eyes on to