Cutting the Timber

[Alan Sondheim]

Cutting the Timber

A man lay down across the threshold of the kitchen outside, head within.
He was to represent the saw. Two players now took hold of his feet
outside, while two others caught his head and shoulders in the kitchen.
They pulled against one another, forward and backwards, as if they were
sawing wood, until one pair proved too strong for the other.

- Irish Wake Amusements, Sean O Suilleabhain, Mercier, cork, 1967, p. 82.


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