MARTIN DOUL -- [breaking out into a passionate cry.] -- Your hair, and your big eyes, is it? . . . I'm telling you there isn't a wisp on any gray mare on the ridge of the world isn't finer than the dirty twist on your head. There isn't two eyes in any starving sow isn't finer than the eyes you were calling blue like the sea.
MARY DOUL -- [interrupting him.] -- It's the devil cured you this day with your talking of sows; it's the devil cured you this day, I'm saying, and drove you crazy with lies.
MARTIN DOUL. Isn't it yourself is after playing lies on me, ten years, in the day and in the night; but what is that to you now the Lord God has given eyes to me, the way I see you an old wizendy hag, was never fit to rear a child to me itself.
MARY DOUL. I wouldn't rear a crumpled whelp the like of you.
It's many a woman is married with finer than yourself should be praising God if she's no child, and isn't loading the earth with things would make the heavens lonesome above, and they scaring the larks, and the crows, and the angels passing in the sky.
MARTIN DOUL. Go on now to be seeking a lonesome place where the earth can hide you away; go on now, I'm saying, or you'll be having men and women with their knees bled, and they screaming to God for a holy water would darken their sight, for there's no man but would liefer be blind a hundred years, or a thousand itself, than to be looking on your like.
MARY DOUL -- [raising her stick.] -- Maybe if I hit you a strong blow you'd be blind again, and having what you want.
[The Saint is seen in the church door with his head bent in prayer.]
MARTIN DOUL -- [raising his stick and driving Mary Doul back towards left.] -- Let you keep off from me now if you wouldn't have me strike out the little handful of brains you have about on the road.
[He is going to strike her, but Timmy catches him by the arm.]
TIMMY. Have you no shame to be making a great row, and the Saint above saying his prayers?
MARTIN DOUL. What is it I care for the like of him? (Struggling to free himself). Let me hit her one good one, for the love of the Almighty God, and I'll be quiet after till I die.
TIMMY -- [shaking him.] -- Will you whisht, I'm saying.
SAINT -- [coming forward, centre.] -- Are their minds troubled with joy, or is their sight uncertain, the way it does often be the day a person is restored?
TIMMY. It's too certain their sight is, holy father; and they're after making a great fight, because they're a pair of pitiful shows.
SAINT -- [coming between them.] -- May the Lord who has given you sight send a little sense into your heads, the way it won't be on your two selves you'll be looking -- on two pitiful sinners of the earth -- but on the splendour of the Spirit of God, you'll see an odd time shining out through the big hills, and steep streams falling to the sea. For if it's on the like of that you do be thinking, you'll not be minding the faces of men, but you'll be saying prayers and great praises, till you'll be living the way the great saints do be living, with little but old sacks, and skin covering their bones. (To Timmy.) Leave him go now, you're seeing he's quiet again. (He frees Martin Doul.) And let you (he turns to Mary Doul) not be raising your voice, a bad thing in a woman; but let the lot of you, who have seen the power of the Lord, be thinking on it in the dark night, and be saying to yourselves it's great pity and love He has for the poor, starving people of Ireland. (He gathers his cloak about him.)
And now the Lord send blessing to you all, for I am going on to Annagolan, where there is a deaf woman, and to Laragh, where there are two men without sense, and to Glenassil, where there are children blind from their birth; and then I'm going to sleep this night in the bed of the holy Kevin, and to be prais- ing God, and asking great blessing on you all. [He bends his head.]
