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OLD WOMAN

. I thought I heard the noise I used to hear when my friends came to visit me. [She begins singing half to herself.]

I will go cry with the woman,
For yellow-haired Donough is dead,
With a hempen rope for a neckcloth,
And a white cloth on his head,–

MICHAEL

[coming from the door]. What is that you are singing, ma’am?

OLD WOMAN

. Singing I am about a man I knew one time, yellow-haired Donough, that was hanged in Galway. [She goes on singing, much louder.]

I am come to cry with you, woman,
My hair is unwound and unbound;
I remember him ploughing his field,
Turning up the red side of the ground,

And building his barn on the hill
With the good mortared stone;
O! we’d have pulled down the gallows
Had it happened in Enniscrone!

MICHAEL

. What was it brought him to his death?

OLD WOMAN

. He died for love of me: many a man has died for love of me.

PETER

[aside to BRIDGET]. Her trouble has put her wits astray.

MICHAEL

. Is it long since that song was made? Is it long since he got his death?

OLD WOMAN

. Not long, not long. But there were others that died for love of me a long time ago.

MICHAEL

. Were they neighbours of your own, ma’am?

OLD WOMAN

. Come here beside me and I’ll tell you about them. [MICHAEL sits down beside her at the hearth.] There was a red man of the O’Donnells from the north, and a man of the O’Sullivans from the south, and there was one Brian that lost his life at Clontarf by the sea, and there were a great many in the west, some that died hundreds of years ago, and there are some that will die to-morrow.

MICHAEL

. Is it in the west that men will die to-morrow?

OLD WOMAN

. Come nearer, nearer to me.

BRIDGET

. Is she right, do you think? Or is she a woman from beyond the world?

PETER

. She doesn’t know well what she’s talking about, with the want and the trouble she has gone through.

BRIDGET

. The poor thing, we should treat her well.

PETER

. Give her a drink of milk and a bit of the oaten cake.

BRIDGET

. Maybe we should give her something along with that, to bring her on her way. A few pence, or a shilling itself, and we with so much money in the house.

PETER

. Indeed I’d not begrudge it to her if we had it to spare, but if we go running through what we have, we’ll soon have to break the hundred pounds, and that would be a pity.

BRIDGET

. Shame on you, Peter. Give her the shilling, and your blessing with it, or our own luck will go from us.

[PETER goes to the box and takes out a shilling.]

BRIDGET

[to the OLD WOMAN]. Will you have a drink of milk?

OLD WOMAN

. It is not food or drink that I want.

PETER

[offering the shilling]. Here is something for you.

OLD WOMAN

. That is not what I want. It is not silver I want.

PETER

. What is it you would be asking for?

OLD WOMAN

. If anyone would give me help he must give me himself, he must give me all.

[PETER goes over to the table, staring at the shilling in his hand in a bewildered way, and stands whispering to BRIDGET.]