Page:The Aran Islands, parts III and IV (Synge).djvu/105

 I had a long evening with the scholar and two story-tellers—both old men who had been pilots—taking down stories and poems. We were at work for nearly six hours, and the more matter we got the more the old men seemed to remember.

'I was to go out fishing to-night,' said the younger as he came in; 'but I promised you to come, and you're a civil man, so I wouldn't take five pounds to break my word to you. And now'—taking up his glass of whisky—'here's to your good health, and may you live till they make you a coffin out of a gooseberry bush, or till you die in child-bed.'

They drank my health and our work began.

'Have you heard tell of the poet MacSweeny?' said the same man, sitting down near me.

'I have,' I said, 'in the town of Galway.'

'Well,' he said, 'I'll tell you his piece "The Big Wedding," for it's a fine piece, and there aren't many that know it. There was a poor servant girl out in the country, and she got married to a poor servant boy. MacSweeny knew the two of them, and he was away at that time, and it was a month before he came back. When he came back he went to see Peggy O'Hara—that was the name of the girl—and he asked her if they had had a great wedding. Peggy said it was only middling,