I would eat my supper
With no less mirth if squatting by the hearth
Were dulacaun or demon of the pit
Clawing its knees, its hoof among the ashes.
With no less mirth if squatting by the hearth
Were dulacaun or demon of the pit
Clawing its knees, its hoof among the ashes.
Yeats
Is yonder quicken wood?
SHEMUS.
[_Picking the bough from the table. _]
He swayed about,
And so I tied him to a quicken bough
And slung him from my shoulder.
MAIRE.
[_Taking the bough from him. _]
Shemus! Shemus!
What, would you burn the blessed quicken wood?
A spell to ward off demons and ill faeries.
You know not what the owls were that peeped in,
For evil wonders live in this old wood,
And they can show in what shape please them best.
And we have had no milk to leave of nights
To keep our own good people kind to us.
And Aleel, who has talked with the great Sidhe,
Is full of terrors to come.
[_She lays the bough on a chair. _
SHEMUS.
I would eat my supper
With no less mirth if squatting by the hearth
Were dulacaun or demon of the pit
Clawing its knees, its hoof among the ashes.
[_He rings another piece of money. A sound of footsteps
outside the door. _
MAIRE.
Who knows what evil you have brought to us?
I fear the wood things, Shemus.
[_A knock at the door. _
Do not open.
SHEMUS.
A crown and twenty pennies are not enough
To stop the hole that lets the famine in.
[_The little shrine falls. _
MAIRE.
Look! look!
SHEMUS.
[_Crushing it underfoot.
