Act III

Scene, as before. Later in the day. Jimmy comes in, slightly drunk.

Jimmy (calls). Pegeen! (Crosses to inner door.) Pegeen Mike! (Comes back again into the room.) Pegeen! (Philly comes in in the same state—To Philly.) Did you see herself?

Philly I did not; but I sent Shawn Keogh with the ass cart for to bear him home. (Trying cupboards which are locked.) Well, isn’t he a nasty man to get into such staggers at a morning wake? and isn’t herself the divil’s daughter for locking, and she so fussy after that young gaffer, you might take your death with drought and none to heed you?

Jimmy It’s little wonder she’d be fussy, and he after bringing bankrupt ruin on the roulette man, and the trick-o’-the-loop man, and breaking the nose of the cockshot-man, and winning all in the sports below, racing, lepping, dancing, and the Lord knows what! He’s right luck, I’m telling you.

Philly If he has, he’ll be rightly hobbled yet, and he not able to say ten words without making a brag of the way he killed his father, and the great blow he hit with the loy.

Jimmy A man can’t hang by his own informing, and his father should be rotten by now.

Old Mahon passes window slowly.

Philly Supposing a man’s digging spuds in that field with a long spade, and supposing he flings up the two halves of that skull, what’ll be said then in the papers and the courts of law?

Jimmy They’d say it was an old Dane, maybe, was drowned in the flood. (Old Mahon comes in and sits down near door listening.) Did you never hear tell of the skulls they have in the city of Dublin, ranged out like blue jugs in a cabin of Connaught?

Philly And you believe that?

Jimmy (pugnaciously). Didn’t a lad see them and he after coming from harvesting in the Liverpool boat? “They have them there,” says he, “making a show of the great people there was one time walking the world. White skulls and black skulls and yellow skulls, and some with full teeth, and some haven’t only but one.”

Philly It was no lie, maybe, for when I was a young lad there was a graveyard beyond the house with the remnants of a man who had thighs as long as your arm. He was a horrid man, I’m telling you, and there was many a fine Sunday I’d put him together for fun, and he with shiny bones, you wouldn’t meet the like of these days in the cities of the world.

Mahon (getting up). You wouldn’t is it? Lay your eyes on that skull, and tell me where and when there was another the like of it, is splintered only from the blow of a loy.

Philly Glory be to God! And who hit you at all?

Mahon (triumphantly). It was my own son hit me. Would you believe that?

Jimmy Well, there’s wonders hidden in the heart of man!

Philly (suspiciously). And what way was it done?

Mahon (wandering about the room). I’m after walking hundreds and long scores of miles, winning clean beds and the fill of my belly four times in the day, and I doing nothing but telling stories of that naked truth. (He comes to them a little aggressively.) Give me a supeen and I’ll tell you now.