send me
off, to have a horny-fingered hangman hitching his bloody slip-knots at
the butt of my ear.

MEN -- [pulling rope.] -- Come on, will you? [He is pulled down on the
floor.]

CHRISTY -- [twisting his legs round the table.] -- Cut the rope, Pegeen,
and I'll quit the lot of you, and live from this out, like the madmen of
Keel, eating muck and green weeds, on the faces of the cliffs.

PEGEEN. And leave us to hang, is it, for a saucy liar, the like of you?
(To men.) Take him on, out from this.

SHAWN. Pull a twist on his neck, and squeeze him so.

PHILLY. Twist yourself. Sure he cannot hurt you, if you keep your
distance from his teeth alone.

SHAWN. I'm afeard of him. (To Pegeen.) Lift a lighted sod, will you, and
scorch his leg.

PEGEEN -- [blowing the fire, with a bellows.] Leave go now, young
fellow, or I'll scorch your shins.

CHRISTY. You're blowing for to torture me (His voice rising and growing
stronger.) That's your kind, is it? Then let the lot of you be wary,
for, if I've to face the gallows, I'll have a gay march down, I tell
you, and shed the blood of some of you before I die.

SHAWN -- [in terror.] -- Keep a good hold, Philly. Be wary, for the love
of God. For I'm thinking he would liefest wreak his pains on me.

CHRISTY -- [almost gaily.] -- If I do lay my hands on you, it's the way
you'll be at the fall of night, hanging as a scarecrow for the fowls of
hell. Ah, you'll have a gallous jaunt I'm saying, coaching out through
Limbo with my father's ghost.

SHAWN -- [to Pegeen.] -- Make haste, will you? Oh, isn't he a holy
terror, and isn't it true for Father Reilly, that all drink's a curse
that has the lot of you so shaky and uncertain now?

CHRISTY. If I can wring a neck among you, I'll have a royal judgment
looking on the trembling jury in the courts of law. And won't there be
crying out in Mayo the day I'm stretched upon the rope with ladies in
their silks and satins snivelling in their lacy kerchiefs, and they
rhyming songs and ballads on the terror of my fate? [He squirms round on
the floor and bites Shawn's leg.]

SHAWN -- [shrieking.] My leg's bit on me. He's the like of a mad dog,
I'm thinking, the way that I will surely die.

CHRISTY -- [delighted with himself.] -- You will then, the way you can
shake out hell's flags of welcome for my coming in two weeks or three,
for I'm thinking Satan hasn't many have killed their da in Kerry, and
in Mayo too. [Old Mahon comes in behind on a