Sarah. I’ll not go a step till I have her head broke, or till I’m wed with himself. If you want to get shut of us, let you marry us now, for I’m thinking the ten shillings in gold is a good price for the like of you, and you near burst with the fat.

Priest. I wouldn’t have you coming in on me and soiling my church; for there’s nothing at all, I’m thinking, would keep the like of you from hell. (He throws down the ten shillings on the ground.) Gather up your gold now, and begone from my sight, for if ever I set an eye on you again you’ll hear me telling the peelers who it was stole the black ass belonging to Philly O’Cullen, and whose hay it is the grey ass does be eating,

Sarah. You’d do that?

Priest. I would, surely.

Sarah. If you do, you’ll be getting all the tinkers from Wicklow and Wexford, and the county Meath, to put up blockt in in the place of glass to shield your windows where you do be looking out and blinking at the girls. It’s hard set you’ll be that time, I’m telling you, to fill the depth of your belly the long days of Lent; for we wouldn’t leave a laying pullet in your yard at all.

Priest (losing his temper finally). Go on, now, or I’ll send the Lords of Justice a dated story of your villainies—burning, stealing, robbing, raping to this mortal day. Go on now, I’m saying, if you’d run from Kilmainham or the rope itself.

Michael (taking off his coat). Is it run from the like of you, holy father? Go up to your own shanty, or I’ll beat you with the ass’s reins till the world would hear you roaring from this place to the coast of Clare.

Priest. Is it lift your hand upon myself when the Lord would blight your members if you’d touch me now? Go on from this.

He gives him a shove.

Michael. Blight me, is it? Take it then, your reverence, and God help you so.

He runs at him with the reins.

Priest (runs up to ditch, crying out). There are the peelers passing, by the grace of God. Hey, below!

Mary (clapping her hand over his mouth). Knock him down on the road; they didn’t hear him at all.

Michael pulls him down.

Sarah. Gag his jaws.

Mary. Stuff the sacking in his teeth.

They gag him with the sack that had the can in it.

Sarah. Tie the bag around his head, and if the peelers come, we’ll put him headfirst in the boghole is beyond the ditch.

They tie him up in some sacking.

Michael (to Mary). Keep him quiet, and the rags tight on him for fear he’d screech. (He goes back to their camp.) Hurry with the things, Sarah Casey. The peelers aren’t coming this way, and maybe we’ll get off from them now.