ALL.  Nobody at all.

SHEELA.  And that’s true; nobody in this place ever made a hay sugaun.  I don’t believe there’s a person in this house who ever saw one itself but me.  It’s well I remember when I was a little girsha that I saw one of them on a goat that my grandfather brought with him out of Connacht.  All the people used to be saying:  “Aurah, what sort of a thing is that at all?” And he said that it was a sugaun that was in it; and that people used to make the like of that down in Connacht.  He said that one man would go holding the hay, and another man twisting it.  I’ll hold the hay now; and you’ll go twisting it.

SHEAMUS.  I’ll bring in a lock of hay. (He goes out.)

HANRAHAN.

    I will make a dispraising of the province of Munster
    They do not leave the floor to us;
    It isn’t in them to twist even a sugaun;
    The province of Munster without nicety, without prosperity.

    Disgust for ever on the province of Munster,
    That they do not leave us the floor;
    The province of Munster of the foul clumsy people. 
    They cannot even twist a sugaun!

SHEAMUS (coming back).  Here’s the hay now.

HANRAHAN.  Give it here to me; I’ll show ye what the well-learned, hardy, honest, clever, sensible Connachtman will do, that has activity and full deftness in his hands, and sense in his head, and courage in his heart; but that the misfortune and the great trouble of the world directed him among the lebidins of the province of Munster, without honour, without nobility, without knowledge of the swan beyond the duck, or of the gold beyond the brass, or of the lily beyond the thistle, or of the star of young women, and the pearl of the white breast, beyond their own share of sluts and slatterns.  Give me a kippeen. (A man hands him a stick; he puts a wisp of hay round it, and begins twisting it; and SHEELA giving him out the hay.)

HANRAHAN.

    There is a pearl of a woman giving light to us;
    She is my love; she is my desire;
    She is fair Oona, the gentle queen-woman. 
    And the Munstermen do not understand half her courtesy.

    These Munstermen are blinded by God;
    They do not recognise the swan beyond the grey duck;
    But she will come with me, my fine Helen,
    Where her person and her beauty shall be praised for ever.

Arrah, wisha, wisha, wisha! isn’t this the fine village? isn’t this the exceeding village?  The village where there be that many rogues hanged that the people have no want of ropes with all the ropes that they steal from the hangman!

    The sensible Connachtman makes
      A rope for himself;
    But the Munsterman steals it
      From the hangman;
    That I may see a fine rope,
      A rope of hemp yet,
    A stretching on the throats
      Of every person here!