with your own family you might as well
take your coffin on your back!

_Celia_: (_Sings_.)

"We'll look on the stars and we'll list to the river
'Till you ask of your darling what gift you can give her."

_Conan_: That girl is a disgrace sitting on the
floor the way she is! If I had her for a while I'd
put betterment on her. No one that was under
me ever grew slack!

_Celia_: _You_ would never be satisfied and you
to see me working from dark to dark as hard as a
pismire in the tufts.

_Mother_: Leave her now, she's a quiet little girl
and comely.

_Conan_: Comely! I'd sooner her to be like the
ugliest sod of turf that is pockmarked in the bog,
and a handy housekeeper, and her pigeon doing
something for the world if it was but scaring its
comrades on a stick in a barley garden!

_Celia_: Ah, do you hear him! (_Stroking pigeon_.)
(_Sings_.)

"But when your friend is forced to flee
You'll spread your white wings on the sea
And fly and follow after me--
Go-de tu Mavourneen slan!"

_Mother_: I wonder you to be going into the rath
the way you do, Conan. It is a very haunted place.

_Conan_: Don't be bothering me. I have my
reason for that.

_Mother_: I often heard there is many a one lost
his wits in it.

_Conan_: It's likely they hadn't much to lose.
Without the education anyone is no good.

_Mother_: Ah, indeed you were always a tip-top
scholar. I didn't ever know how good you were
till I had my memory lost.

_Conan_: Indeed, it is a strange thing any wits
at all to be found in _this_ family.

_Mother_: Ah, sure we are as is allotted to us at
the time God made the world.

_Conan_: Now _I_ to make the world--

_Mother_: You are not saying you would make a
better hand of it?

_Conan_: I am certain sure I could.

_Mother_: Ah, don't be talking that way!

_Conan_: I'd make changes you'd wonder at.

_Celia_: It's likely you'd make the world in one
day in place of six.

_Mother_: It's best make changes little by little
the same as you'd put