PRIEST --
with despondency. -- It's a hard
life, I'm telling you, a hard life, Mary Byrne;
and there's the bishop coming in the morning,
and he an old man, would have you destroyed
if he seen a thing at all.
MARY --
with great sympathy. -- It'd
break my heart to hear you talking and sigh-
ing the like of that, your reverence.
(She
pats him on the knee.) Let you rouse up,
now, if it's a poor, single man you are itself,
and I'll be singing you songs unto the dawn
of day.
PRIEST --
interrupting her. -- What is it
I want with your songs when it'd be better
for the like of you, that'll soon die, to be down
on your two knees saying prayers to the
Almighty God?
MARY. If it's prayers I want, you'd have
a right to say one yourself, holy father; for
we don't have them at all, and I've heard tell
a power of times it's that you're for. Say
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one now, your reverence, for I've heard a
power of queer things and I walking the
world, but there's one thing I never heard any
time, and that's a real priest saying a prayer.
PRIEST. The Lord protect us!
MARY. It's no lie, holy father. I often
heard the rural people making a queer noise
and they going to rest; but who'd mind the
like of them? And I'm thinking it should be
great game to hear a scholar, the like of you,
speaking Latin to the saints above.
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