The Playboy of the Western World

sort. Hold out your hand and you’ll see it’s no lie I’m telling you.

Christy
Coming forward shyly, and holding out his left hand. They’re a great and weighty size.


Susan
And I run up with a pat of butter, for it’d be a poor thing to have you eating your spuds dry, and you after running a great way since you did destroy your da.


Christy
Thank you kindly.


Honor
And I brought you a little cut of cake, for you should have a thin stomach on you, and you that length walking the world.


Nelly
And I brought you a little laying pullet⁠—boiled and all she is⁠—was crushed at the fall of night by the curate’s car. Feel the fat of that breast, Mister.


Christy
It’s bursting, surely. He feels it with the back of his hand, in which he holds the presents.


Sara
Will you pinch it? Is your right hand too sacred for to use at all? She slips round behind him. It’s a glass he has. Well, I never seen to this day a man with a looking glass held to his back. Them that kills their fathers is a vain lot surely. Girls giggle.


Christy
Smiling innocently and piling presents on glass. I’m very thankful to you all today.⁠ ⁠…


Widow Quin
Coming in quickly, at door. Sara Tansey, Susan Brady, Honor Blake! What in glory has you here at this hour of day?


Girls
Giggling. That’s the man killed his father.


Widow Quin
Coming to them. I know well it’s the man; and I’m after putting him down in the sports below for racing, leaping, pitching, and the Lord knows what.


Sara
Exuberantly. That’s right, Widow Quin. I’ll bet my dowry that he’ll lick the world.


Widow Quin
If you will, you’d have a right to have him fresh and nourished in place of nursing a feast. Taking presents. Are you fasting or fed, young fellow?


Christy
Fasting, if you please.


Widow Quin
Loudly. Well, you’re the lot. Stir up now and give him his breakfast. To Christy. Come here to me She puts him on bench beside her while the girls make tea and get his breakfast. and let you tell us your story before Pegeen will come, in place of grinning your ears off like the moon of May.


Christy
Beginning to be pleased. It’s a long story; 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 misbehaviour 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 wouldn’t 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