Act II

[...]

COUNSELLOR HAMILTON: Here your husband comes.
MRS DIGGERTY: I am ashamed to see him.

Enter O’DOGHERTY.

O’DOGHERTY: Well, brother, have you spoke to her?
COUNSELLOR HAMILTON: There she is, sir - and as she should be - bathed in tears of humility and repentance.
COUNSELLOR HAMILTON: Here your husband comes.
O’DOGHERTY: Ogh! I am sorry to see this indeed - I am afraid you have gone too far. If I had been by, I assure you, brother, you should not have made her cry. - Yerrow, Nancy, my child, turn about, and don’t be crying there.
MRS DIGGERTY: Sir, I am asham’d to see your face –my errors I acknowledge – and for the future - O’DOGHERTY. Pooh, pooh – I will have no submissions nor acknowledgments; if you have settled every thing with your brother, that is sufficient.
MRS DIGGERTY: I hope he is satisfied – and it shall be the business of my life.
O’DOGHERTY: Pooh, pooh! say no more I tell you, but come, give me a kiss, and let us be friends at once –there – so, in that kiss, now, let all tears and uneasiness subside with you, as all fears and resentment shall die with me.
COUNSELLOR HAMILTON: Come, sister, give me your hand, for I must have my kiss of peace too. I own I have been a little severe with you, but your disease required sharp medicines.
O’DOGHERTY. Now we are friends, Nancy, I have a favour or two to beg of you.
MRS DIGGERTY: Pray, command them.
O’DOGHERTY: Why, then, the first thing that I ask, is, that you will send away that French rascal the cook, with his compots and combobs, his alamodes and aladobes, his crapandoes and frigandoes, and a thousand outlandish kickshaws,’ that I am sure were never designed for Christian food; and let the good rough rumps of beef, the jolly surloins, the geese and turkies, cram fowls, bacon and greens; and the pies, puddings and pasties, that used to be perfectly shoving one another off of the table, so that there was not room for the people’s plates; with a fine large cod too, as big as a young alderman – I say, let all those French kickshaws be banished from my table, and these good old Irish dishes be put in their places; and then the poor every day will have something to eat.
MRS DIGGERTY: They shall, sir.
O’DOGHERTY: And as to yourself, my dear Nancy, I hope I shall never have any more of your Lojdnon English; none of your this here’s, your that there’s, your winegars, your weals, your vindors, your toastesses, and your stone postesses; but let me have our own good plain, old Irish English, which I insist upon is better than all the English English that ever coquets and coxcombs brought into the land.
MRS DIGGERTY: I will get rid of these as fast as possible.
O’DOGHERTY: Pray, above all things, never call me Mr Diggerty – my name is Murrogh O’Dogherty, and I am not ashamed of it; but that damn’d name Diggerty always vexes me whenever I hear it.
MRS DIGGERTY: Then, upon my honour, Mr O’Dogherty, it shall never vex you again.
O’DOGHERTY: Ogh, that’s right, Nancy – O’Dogherty for ever – O’Dogherty! - there’s a sound for you – why they have not such a name in England as O’Dogherty – nor as any of our fine sounding Milesian names - what are your Jones and your Stones, your Rice and your Price, your Heads and your Foots, and Hands and your Wills, and Hills and Mills, and Sands, and a parcel of little pimping names that a man would not pick out of the street, compared to the O’Donovans, O’Callaghans, O’Sullivans, O’Brallaghans, O’Shagnesses, O’Flahertys, O’Gallaghers, and O’Doghertys, – Ogh, they have courage in the very sound of them, for they come out of the mouth like a storm; and are as old and as stout as the oak at the bottom of the bog of Allen, which was there before the flood – and though they have been dispossessed by upstarts and foreigners, buddoughs and sassanoughs, yet I hope they will flourish in the Island of Saints, while grass grows or water runs.