The Playboy of the Western World and Other Plays by J. M. Synge Page B

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    CHRISTY ( in a small voice ). God save all here!
    MEN. God save you kindly.
    CHRISTY ( going to the counter ). I’d trouble you for a glass of porter, woman of the house. ( He puts down coin. )
    PEGEEN (serving him). You’re one of the tinkers, young fellow, is beyond camped in the glen?
    CHRISTY. I am not; but I’m destroyed walking.
    MICHAEL (patronizingly). Let you come up then to the fire. You’re looking famished with the cold.
    CHRISTY. God reward you. (He takes up his glass and goes a little way across to the left, then stops and looks about him.) Is it often the police do be coming into this place, master of the house?
    MICHAEL. If you’d come in better hours, you’d have seen “Licensed for the sale of Beer and Spirits, to be consumed on the premises,” written in white letters above the door, and what would the polis want spying on me, and not a decent house within four miles, and way every living Christian in a bona fide, saving one widow alone?
    CHRISTY (with relief). It’s a safe house, so. (He goes over to the fire, sighing and moaning. Then he sits down, putting his glass beside him and begins gnawing a turnip, too miserable to feel the others staring at him with curiosity.)
    MICHAEL (going after him). Is it yourself is fearing the polis? You’re wanting, maybe?
    CHRISTY. There’s many wanting.
    MICHAEL. Many surely, with the broken harvest and the ended wars. (He picks up some stockings, etc., that are near the fire, and carries them away furtively.) It should be larceny, I’m thinking.
    CHRISTY (dolefully). I had it in my mind it was a different word and a bigger.
    PEGEEN. There’s a queer lad. Were you never slapped in school, young fellow, that you don’t know the name of your deed?
    CHRISTY (bashfully). I’m slow at learning, a middling scholar only.
    MICHAEL. If you’re a dunce itself, you’d have a right to know that larceny’s robbing and stealing. Is it for the like of that you’re wanting?
    CHRISTY (with a flash of family pride). And I the son of a strong farmer (with a sudden qualm). God rest his soul, could have bought up the whole of your old house awhile since, from the butt of his tailpocket, and not have missed the weight of it gone.
    MICHAEL (impressed). If it’s not stealing, it’s maybe something big.
    CHRISTY (flattered). Aye; it’s maybe something big.
    JIMMY. He’s a wicked-looking young fellow. Maybe he followed after a young woman on a lonesome night.
    CHRISTY (shocked). Oh, the saints forbid, mister; I was all times a decent lad.
    PHILLY (turning on JIMMY). You’re a silly man, Jimmy Farrell. He said his father was a farmer while since, and there’s himself now in a poor state. Maybe the land was grabbed from him, and he did what any decent man would do.
    MICHAEL ( to CHRISTY, mysteriously ). Was it bailiffs?
    CHRISTY. The divil a one.
    MICHAEL. Agents?
    CHRISTY. The divil a one.
    MICHAEL. Landlords?
    CHRISTY (peevishly). Ah, not at all, I’m saying. You’d see the like of them stories on any little paper of a Munster town. But I’m not calling to mind any person, gentle, simple, judge or jury, did the like of me.
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    (They all draw nearer with delighted curiosity.)
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    PHILLY. Well, that lad’s a puzzle-the-world. JIMMY. He’d beat Dan Davies’ circus, or the holy missioners making sermons on the villainy of man. Try him again, Philly.
    PHILLY. Did you strike golden guineas out of solder, young fellow, or shilling coins itself?
    CHRISTY. I did not, mister, not sixpence nor a farthing coin.
    JIMMY. Did you marry three wives maybe? I’m told there’s a sprinkling have done that among the holy Luthers of the preaching north.
    CHRISTY (shyly). I never married with one, let along with a couple or three.
    PHILLY. Maybe he went fighting for the Boers, the like of the man beyond, was judged to be hanged, quartered and drawn. Were you off east, young