— We bought our colt just after Christmas …
— A white-headed mare. A ton and a half was no bother to her …
— Our young colt is a big strong one, God bless him. We were making a new pen for him …
— … “The Golden Apple” won, I’m telling you, a hundred to one.
— Galway won. They beat the lard out of Kerry.
— You’re totally off the wall just like that wanker who goes on and on about Kerry winning. Galway whipped them, I’m telling you …
— But there was no “Galway” running in the big race at three o’clock.
— There was no “Golden Apple” on the team that won the All-Ireland in 1941. Maybe you meant Cannon …
— … “Fi-ire-side Tom was there with his …”
— … There were seventeen houses in our town land and every single one of them voted for Eamon de Valera …
— Seventeen houses! And after all that, not one shot was fired at the Black and Tans in your place! Not as much as a bullet. Not a piss, nor a pellet, nor even one mangy bullet …
— Ah, come on, like, there was an ambush. The end of a dark night. They crocked Curran’s donkey from going into Curran’s field up his road.
— I remember it well. I twisted my ankle …
— … You’re one of Paddy Larry’s? … The third youngfella. You used to come to my school. You were a fine strapping youngfella. A head of blond hair. Brown eyes. Beautiful rosy cheeks. You were brilliant at handball … The Derry Lough gang gone to England …
The Schoolmistress is fine, brilliant, just great, that’s what you said. But Billy the Postman is down and out … very sick …
— That’s exactly what I said, Master. They say it’s rheumatism. They told him he’d have to give the letters to whoever or whoever would be best, and then he had to start distributing them to the houses himself …
— That’s the way he was, the chancer …
— He was caught out badly on the marsh. He was drowned to the skin. When he came home he took to the bed …
— Who gives a fuck! The chancer! The robber! The …
— He was always going on about taking off to England, Master, that’s before he was clobbered …
— Taking off to England! Taking off to England! … Spit it out. Don’t be afraid …
— Some people are saying, Master, that his health wasn’t that good since he got married …
— Oh, the robber! The swine-swiver! …
— She didn’t feel a bit like letting him go. When I was ready to pop off, she was talking to my father about it, and she said that if Billy went she’d drop down and die …
— The bog pig …
— She brought three doctors up from Dublin to look at him, Master …
— With my money! She never brought a doctor to see me, the whore … the twat twerp …
— De grâce, Master!
— … “Fireside Tom there, and he whoring to marry …”
— I had no intention of getting married. I’d have gone to England except that I took bad. The whole parishes of Derry Lough and Gort Ribbuck have gone …
— And Glen Booley and Derry Lough. I know just as well as you who have gone. But are any of the younger gang getting married? …
— There’s lots of talk about Fireside Tom getting married.
— They’ll still be talking about him, the nitwit. But who else? …
— The foxy cop with a nurse from the Fancy City. The Young Master also …
— Schoolteachers are really up for getting hooked. There must be another raise of pay in the offing.
— They don’t have it easy at times. You just heard the Old Master. But who’s the young one? …
— A lovely girl from the Fancy City. A fine thing, actually! That day when I was drawing pictures in the hope of going to England, I saw the two of them together. They went in to the Western Hotel.
— What kind of cut or shape of a woman was she?
— A long tall sally. Blondy hair dripping down along her back …
— Earrings?
— Of course …
— Dark eyes?
— I haven’t a clue what kind of eyes she had. I wasn’t thinking about them …
— A broad bright grin?
— She was gawping away at the Master all right. But she wasn’t gawping at me …
— Did you hear where she hangs out?
— No I didn’t. But she’s working in Barry’s Bookies, if there’s such a joint. The Derry Lough master and the priest’s sister are getting married next month. They say he’ll get the new school.
— The one with the pants?
— The very one.
— Isn’t that weird that she’d marry him?
— Why so? Isn’t he a fine-looking specimen, and he doesn’t touch a drop.
— But all the same. It’s not every man would want to marry a woman who wears the trousers. They’d be a bit more pernickety than other women …
— Ah, cop on and get an ounce of sense! My own son is married to a French one in England and you wouldn’t have the least clue on God’s earth what she was gabbling on about no more than the gobshite buried over there. Shouldn’t she be even more pernickity than any one that wears a pair of pants …
— God help you and your Frenchie one! My son is married to an Italian in England. Is that good enough for you?
— Forget about yourself and your Italian. My son is married in England to a black. Can you do better than that?
— A black! My son is married in England to a Jew. Can you credit that? To a slylock Jew. A Jew wouldn’t be happy to marry any old kind of man …
— And not every man would marry her either. Some of them wouldn’t fancy her …
— There’s many more than that who wouldn’t fancy the thing your son married. A black. For fuck’s sake! …
— The big boss is to marry some woman from Glen Booley. That youngfella of John Willy’s, he’s made the kip of a shack and all, and they say he’s sniffing around looking for a woman. The daughter of your man Tim Top of the Road sent him packing.
— Tim Top of the Road who spent all his time robbing my turf …
— And mine …
— And my hammer …
— Oh, I hope she chokes! Trying to sneak into my land …
— It was she who threatened me with the law to ruin me about the wrack. You’re telling me that John Willy’s boy wouldn’t marry her? …
— She’d be good enough for him. What was John Willy ever any good for? Periwinkles. And what is he any good for now? Perifucking-winkles …
— There was nothing much wrong with the periwinkles ever, there wasn’t really. Myself and the youngfella got most of what we needed to buy a colt. And now we have something that you don’t have: a fine big colt and a pen that only needed some covering. I told him that when the pen was finished he should get some bit of a thing of a woman for himself …
— The youngfella was sent packing as well from the house up above; and Rootey’s daughter in Bally Donough refused him, and the carpenter’s daughter in Gort Ribbuck …
— That youngfella is a totally useless git. Did he say that we nearly got the price of a colt from the periwinkles; that we had made a clean new pen; that we bought a fine new colt after Christmas? He’d never have managed it himself, I’m afraid. If I hadn’t gone so quickly myself …
— Hey, John Willy, that Rootey in Bally Donough is my cousin. He didn’t do half enough rejecting your son. I rejected you about my daughter. Do you remember the time you came looking for her?
— I had neither colt nor pen that time.
— Aren’t you so uppity to talk about Rootey from Bally Donough, no more than anyone else. You’d think he was some kind of a snooty snotty Earl or something, and my father rejecting his woman. “Do you think, Rootey tootey,” my father says, “that I’d condemn my daughter to live in Bally Donough to live on nettles and the chirping of crickets?”