From Dancing at Lughnasa' by Brian Friel
From Dancing at Lughnasa' by Brian Friel
You remember when the crash came? We were all in the salon. You were singing—a Cockney song I think?
You were very beautiful. I remember a woman on my right saying: “How pretty she is! I wonder if she is married.”
Strange how some idiotic remark like that will stick in one’s brain when all else is vague and confused. A tragedy
happens—we are in the midst of it—and one of our clearest remembrances afterwards is a remark that might have
been overheard in any subway train. You were very beautiful. I was looking at you and wondering what kind of a
woman you were. You know I had never met you personally—only seen you in my walks around the deck. Then came
the crash—that horrible dull crash. We were all thrown forward on the floor of the salon; then screams, oaths,
fainting women, the hollow boom of a bulkhead giving way. Then I was on deck fighting in the midst of the crowd.
Somehow I got into a boat—but it was overloaded and was swamped immediately. I swam to another boat.
They beat me off with the oars. That boat too was swamped a moment later. And then the gurgling, choking cries of
the drowning! Something huge rushed by me in the water leaving a gleaming trail of phosphorescence. A woman
near me with a life belt around her gave a cry of agony and disappeared—then I realized—sharks! I became frenzied
with terror. I swam. I beat the water with my hands. The ship had gone down. I swam and swam with but one idea—
to put all that horror behind me. I saw something white on the water before me. I clutched it—climbed on it. It was
this raft. You and he were on it. I fainted. The whole thing is a horrible nightmare in my brain—but I remember clearly
that idiotic remark of the woman in the salon. What pitiful creatures we are!
Monologues From Plays
From ‘Bold Girls’ by Rhona Munro
It was a terrible wet day when I got married. A wet grey day in 1974 and I couldn't get to the church
for the roadblocks. I was standing on my step there with my mammy screaming at me to come in before I
got my good white dress dirty from the rain …. only I was wetter from crying than the clouds could make
me because Michael Donnelly was the only boy I'd ever wanted for myself and me just seventeen, he was
the only boy that I had ever wanted and it was still a miracle to me he wanted me back… but then I’ve
always had to work hardest of believe in miracles, and anyway I knew they could only fall in the laps of the
pure in heart …..now it seems certain to me that a pile of Brits and a roadblock would lose me and Michael
altogether…… for why would he wait an hour or more at the church when he’s that smile on him that made
you feel wicked and glad about it, and that look to him that caught your eye when he was walking down the
streets, just with the way he put his feet down, bold and happy together; and those hands they were so
warm and gentle you hardly worried where he was putting them. And why would a man like that wait two
hours in a cold church for a wee girl in a damp wedding dress?
And my mammy is trying to pull my daddy in ‘cause he’s shouting at the Brits, saying this was the
greatest day of his daughter's life and hadn’t they just spoiled it all together? Then this big Saracen pulls up
and they've all jumped out my mammy’s going to scream when they do not offer us an escort through the
roadblock? So that was my bridal car to the wedding, a big Saracens tank full of Brits all grinning and
offering us fags and as pleased as punch with themselves for the favour they were doing us. I hardly dared
look at them I was certain the big hulk sitting next to me was one of them that had lifted Michael just the
year before. But oh they were as nice as anything.
There were wanted men at my wedding and sure I’d grey hairs even before I was married. And then
I was married and Michael brought me here and the rain stopped it, it even looked like the sun had come
out. And I stared and stared, just standing at the top of the Park in my wee white dress and that's still half
soaked it felt like we’d won through everything, the weather and the roadblocks and the Brits and there
was never going to be bad times again….. because I was never going to be without him again. Well I was just
seventeen after all.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Anne Curtis_ Just Above Dogs
It’s been years since I was home. Since I walked out of Horan’s bar and stood by the shore, the damp sod leaking
through me boots, the rain spitting on my jacket thinking of all the people like me who’d sailed away and the price
we’d paid for that leaving. I thought of the building work in England that wouldn’t happen in Ireland. And do you
know what I thought? ‘I thought that this is mine’.
Understand it isn’t the work on site that’s the hardest, you get used to being cold, tired, aching from back
breaking work. Nor is it waiting at the counter till the landlord decides whether you’ve bought enough stout for him
to cash your pay cheque. Tisn’t picking yourself up from the ground after fellas with too much in them have thrown
punches at you because you’re from Cork and they’re from…. Kerry, Clare, Limerick anywhere that you’re not … I tell
you Frank these things are mine. These are the things that keep me alive, that tell me in the dark of the tunnels and
the cramp of the footings that I come from somewhere that I belong.
It’s the Sunday afternoons that kill you…when the work stops, when there’s no site, no pub, no fellas to talk
to. Just yourself in a room or launderette, listening to time passing, thinking back and wondering what is happening
everywhere else. Working all over but belonging nowhere. Watching as the walls move in and then out again as if
your breathing and theirs are one…just you, the walls and the tick and the tock of the clock. There’s no outside…no
fields…no skies…..no breath of wind …. Nothing that’s yours.
A lot of fellas made the journey to this country and many have done well. You might say that fellas like me
are of a different kind and maybe you’re right. But I’ll tell you one thing. One thing. There’s not a man who walked a
ferryboat gangway who’d lay mortar on bricks to build walls that would imprison a fellow Irishman whose only crime
was his poverty. Don’t forget that Frank? (Mikey exits.)