The Playboy of the Western World

walking the world, looking over a low ditch or a high ditch on my north or my south, into stony scattered fields, or scribes of bog, where you’d see young, limber girls, and fine prancing women making laughter with the men.

Pegeen
If you weren’t destroyed travelling, you’d have as much talk and streeleen, I’m thinking, as Owen Roe O’Sullivan or the poets of the Dingle Bay, and I’ve heard all times it’s the poets are your like, fine fiery fellows with great rages when their temper’s roused.


Christy
Drawing a little nearer to her. You’ve a power of rings, God bless you, and would there be any offence if I was asking are you single now?


Pegeen
What would I want wedding so young?


Christy
With relief. We’re alike, so.


Pegeen
She puts sack on settle and beats it up. I never killed my father. I’d be afeard to do that, except I was the like of yourself with blind rages tearing me within, for I’m thinking you should have had great tussling when the end was come.


Christy
Expanding with delight at the first confidential talk he has ever had with a woman. We had not then. It was a hard woman was come over the hill, and if he was always a crusty kind when he’d a hard woman setting him on, not the divil himself or his four fathers could put up with him at all.


Pegeen
With curiosity. And isn’t it a great wonder that one wasn’t fearing you?


Christy
Very confidentially. Up to the day I killed my father, there wasn’t a person in Ireland knew the kind I was, and I there drinking, waking, eating, sleeping, a quiet, simple poor fellow with no man giving me heed.


Pegeen
Getting a quilt out of the cupboard and putting it on the sack. It was the girls were giving you heed maybe, and I’m thinking it’s most conceit you’d have to be gaming with their like.


Christy
Shaking his head, with simplicity. Not the girls itself, and I won’t tell you a lie. There wasn’t anyone heeding me in that place saving only the dumb beasts of the field. He sits down at fire.


Pegeen
With disappointment. And I thinking you should have been living the like of a king of Norway or the Eastern world. She comes and sits beside him after placing bread and mug of milk on the table.


Christy
Laughing piteously. The like of a king, is it? And I after toiling, moiling, digging, dodging from the dawn till dusk with never a sight of joy or sport saving only when I’d be abroad in the dark night poaching rabbits on hills, for I was a divil to poach, God forgive me, Very naively. and I near got six months for going with a dung fork and stabbing a fish.


Pegeen
And it’s that you’d call sport, is it, to be abroad in the darkness with yourself alone?


Christy
I did, God help me, and there I’d be as happy as the sunshine of  St. Martin’s Day, watching the light passing the north or the patches of fog, till I’d hear a rabbit starting to screech and I’d go running in the furze. Then when I’d my full share I’d come walking down where you’d see the ducks and geese stretched sleeping on the highway of the road, and before I’d pass the dunghill, I’d hear himself snoring out, a loud lonesome snore he’d be making all times, the while he was sleeping, and he a man ’d be raging all times, the while he was waking, like a gaudy officer you’d hear cursing and damning and swearing oaths.


Pegeen
Providence and Mercy, spare us all!


Christy
It’s that you’d say surely if you seen him and he after drinking for weeks, rising up in the red dawn, or before it maybe, and going out into the yard as naked as an ash tree in the moon of May, and shying clods against the visage of the stars till he’d put the fear of death into the banbhs and the screeching sows.


Pegeen
I’d be well-nigh afeard of that lad myself, I’m thinking. And there was no one in it but the two of you alone?


Christy
The divil a one, though he’d sons and daughters walking all great states and territories of the world, and not a one of them, to this day, but would say their seven curses on him, and they rousing up to let a cough or sneeze, maybe, in the deadness of the night.


Pegeen
Nodding her head. Well, you should have been a queer lot. I never cursed my father the like of that, though I’m twenty and more years of age.


Christy
Then you’d have cursed mine, I’m telling you, and he a man never gave peace to any, saving when he’d get two months or three, or be locked in the asylums for battering peelers or assaulting men With depression. the way it was a bitter life he led me till I did up a Tuesday and halve his skull.


Pegeen
Putting her hand on his shoulder. Well, you’ll have peace in this place, Christy Mahon, and none to trouble you, and it’s near time a fine lad like you should have your good share of the earth.


Christy
It’s time surely, and I a seemly fellow with great strength in me and bravery of.⁠ ⁠…



Someone knocks.


Christy
Clinging to Pegeen. Oh, glory! it’s late for knocking, and this last while I’m in terror of the peelers, and the walking dead.



Knocking again.


Pegeen
Who’s there?


Voice
Outside. Me.


Pegeen
Who’s me?


Voice
The Widow Quin.


Pegeen
Jumping up and giving him the bread and milk. Go on now with your supper, and let on to be sleepy, for if she found you were such a warrant to talk, she’d be stringing gabble till the dawn of day.



He takes bread and sits shyly with his back to the door.


Pegeen
Opening