English Notes

Key Quotes 

• ‘A big bouncing baby every year.’ (Cathalawan singing a song and giving a blessing for the wedding)
• ‘There is money making everywhere.’ Pats giving a monologue on the changing nature of Irish society. 
• Pats points to Sean Dota and says, ‘money will be in a-plenty. The likes of him will be the new lords of the land. God help the land!’.
• Mena chastises him for insulting Sean Dota, but he simply replies, ‘Tis only what I see in my travels, a-woman- only what I see on my travels.’
• Mena’s greed is highlighted when Thomasheen tells Mike, ‘Given for Sive but the two of us know that Mena will have £40 out of the £50 for herself.’
• Importance of the clergy is highlighted when Mike reluctantly had to go see the priest about the marriage. ‘I’ll shave if I’m to see the priest,’.
• Liam pleads with Mike and says he will stay away until Sive is a woman. ‘Do not give her to that rotting old man with his gloating eyes and trembling hands.’
• Sive asks Mena about her father. ‘He was no father. He had no name. You have no name. You will have no name till you take a husband.’ She continues, ‘you are a bye-child, a common bye child, a bastard.’
• Sive returns from a walk with Sean Dota, telling Nanna that he ‘Nearly tore the coat off me…like an ould sick thing.’
• Sive feels like the whole thing was pre-planned, Nanna replies, ‘there are queer doin’s goin’ on between Mena Thomasheen Rua.’
• Thomasheen talking about his father. ‘I swear to you he never would have hanged himself but he knew my two pigs would pay for his wake and funeral.’
• Thomasheen gives an account to Mena about what it is to be a lonely man in rural Ireland. ‘I know what a man have to do who have no woman to lie with him. He have to drink hard, or he have to walk under a black sky when every eye is closed in sleep.’
• Nanna tells Thomasheen that he would ‘sell your soul to the devil for a drink of buttermilk.’
• Mike is angry at Mena’s proposal for Sive. ‘Sive and that ‘oul corpse of a man, Sean Dota.’
• Thomasheen shows his cruel and callous nature when Mena says Sive has ‘high notions.’ ‘tell her you will bell-rag her through the parish if she goes against you. Tell her you will hunt the old woman into the county home.’
• Thomasheen says to Mena, ‘You could say he would be for the grave within a year of two..’ 
• Thomasheen telling Mena that there is someone to marry Sive. ‘He have the mouth half-open when he do be talking about her. ‘Tis the sign of love, women!’
• Mena is shocked that Thomasheen would be interested in finding match for Sive. ‘what is she but a schoolgirl and illegitimate, to crown all.’
• Expectations in relation to gender roles. Nanna to Mena; ‘every woman of your age in the parish has a child of her own and nothing to show by you.’
• Marriage is more a business transaction and little to do with love. Thomasheen telling Mena about Sean Dota, ‘he have the grass of twenty cows. He have fat cattle besides and he have the holding of money.’
• Thomasheen threatens Nanna, ‘You are a lone woman with your husband feeding the worms in his trench. You have terrible gumption with no one left to back you.’
• Thomasheen believed women were incapable of independence. He claims a woman ‘never knows from one minute to the next what way her mind is going to act’ and tells Mike that men must ‘make up the mind for them.’ 
• Mike is horrified that Sive’s suicide will mean that she cannot be ‘buried in holy ground’. 
• Superstition: Following Sive’s death, Mike mentions the need for a priest but when Liam offers to go, he says there is ‘no luck in going for a priest alone’.