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I

TELEMACHUS Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead,

bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay

crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained

gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the

bowl aloft and intoned:

—Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and

called out coarsely:

—Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round

gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the

tower, the surrounding land and the awaking mountains.

Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards

him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his

throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased

and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and

looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him,

equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair,

grained and hued like pale oak.

Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and

then covered the bowl smartly.

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—Back to barracks! he said sternly.

He added in a preacher’s tone:

—For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine:

body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please.

Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about

those white corpuscles. Silence, all.

He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of

call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white

teeth glistening here and there with gold points.

Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered

through the calm.

—Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do

nicely. Switch off the current, will you?

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his

watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his

gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl

recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A

pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.

—The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name,

an ancient Greek!

He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to

the parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped

up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the

edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his

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mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and

lathered cheeks and neck.

Buck Mulligan’s gay voice went on.

—My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two

dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn’t it? Tripping and

sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will

you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?

He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight,

cried:

—Will he come? The jejune jesuit!

Ceasing, he began to shave with care.

—Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.

—Yes, my love?

—How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?

Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right

shoulder.

—God, isn’t he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous

Saxon. He thinks you’re not a gentleman. God, these

bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion.

Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you

have the real Oxford manner. He can’t make you out. O,

my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.

He shaved warily over his chin.

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—He was raving all night about a black panther,

Stephen said. Where is his guncase?

—A woful lunatic! Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?

—I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear.

Out here in the dark with a man I don’t know raving and

moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You

saved men from drowning. I’m not a hero, however. If he

stays on here I am off.

Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade.

He hopped down from his perch and began to search his

trouser pockets hastily.

—Scutter! he cried thickly.

He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into

Stephen’s upper pocket, said:

—Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.

Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show

by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck

Mulligan wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over

the handkerchief, he said:

—The bard’s noserag! A new art colour for our Irish

poets: snotgreen. You can almost taste it, can’t you?

He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over

Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.

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—God! he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a

great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The

scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the

Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the

original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother.

Come and look.

Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet.

Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the

mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown.

—Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said.

He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea

to Stephen’s face.

—The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said.

That’s why she won’t let me have anything to do with

you.

—Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.

—You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when

your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I’m

hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother

begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray

for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in

you ...

He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther

cheek. A tolerant smile curled his lips.

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—But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself.

Kinch, the loveliest mummer of them all!

He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.

Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned

his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of

his shiny black coat-sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain

of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come

to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose

brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and

rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute,

reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the

threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet

mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay

and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of

white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the

green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting

liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.

Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade.

—Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must

give you a shirt and a few noserags. How are the

secondhand breeks?

—They fit well enough, Stephen answered.

Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his

underlip.

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—The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg

they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them

off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You’ll

look spiffing in them. I’m not joking, Kinch. You look

damn well when you’re dressed.

—Thanks, Stephen said. I can’t wear them if they are

grey.

—He can’t wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in

the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but

he can’t wear grey trousers.

He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of

fingers felt the smooth skin.

Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump

face with its smokeblue mobile eyes.

—That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said

Buck Mulligan, says you have g.p.i. He’s up in Dottyville

with Connolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane!

He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the

tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His

curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white

glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit

trunk.

—Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!

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Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out

to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and

others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody

to rid of vermin. It asks me too.

—I pinched it out of the skivvy’s room, Buck Mulligan

said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps

plainlooking servants for Malachi. Lead him not into

temptation. And her name is Ursula.

Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from

Stephen’s peering eyes.

—The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a

mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!

Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with

bitterness:

—It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass

of a servant.

Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen’s

and walked with him round the tower, his razor and

mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.

—It’s not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said

kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of

them.

Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that

of his. The cold steelpen.

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—Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the

oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He’s

stinking with money and thinks you’re not a gentleman.

His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or

some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I

could only work together we might do something for the

island. Hellenise it.

Cranly’s arm. His arm.

—And to think of your having to beg from these

swine. I’m the only one that knows what you are. Why

don’t you trust me more? What have you up your nose

against me? Is it Haines? If he makes any noise here I’ll

bring down Seymour and we’ll give him a ragging worse

than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.

Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive

Kempthorpe’s rooms. Palefaces: they hold their ribs with

laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the

news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons

of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round

the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of

Magdalen with the tailor’s shears. A scared calf’s face

gilded with marmalade. I don’t want to be debagged!

Don’t you play the giddy ox with me!

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Shouts from the open window startling evening in the

quadrangle. A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with

Matthew Arnold’s face, pushes his mower on the sombre

lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.

To ourselves ... new paganism ... omphalos.

—Let him stay, Stephen said. There’s nothing wrong

with him except at night.

—Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently.

Cough it up. I’m quite frank with you. What have you

against me now?

They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray

Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping

whale. Stephen freed his arm quietly.

—Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.

—Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don’t

remember anything.

He looked in Stephen’s face as he spoke. A light wind

passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and

stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.

Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:

—Do you remember the first day I went to your house

after my mother’s death?

Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:

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—What? Where? I can’t remember anything. I

remember only ideas and sensations. Why? What

happened in the name of God?

—You were making tea, Stephen said, and went across

the landing to get more hot water. Your mother and some

visitor came out of the drawingroom. She asked you who

was in your room.

—Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.

—You said, Stephen answered, O, it’s only Dedalus

whose mother is beastly dead.

A flush which made him seem younger and more

engaging rose to Buck Mulligan’s cheek.

—Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?

He shook his constraint from him nervously.

—And what is death, he asked, your mother’s or yours

or my own? You saw only your mother die. I see them

pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up

into tripes in the dissectingroom. It’s a beastly thing and

nothing else. It simply doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t kneel

down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she

asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain

in you, only it’s injected the wrong way. To me it’s all a

mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not

functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks

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buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it’s over. You

crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me

because I don’t whinge like some hired mute from

Lalouette’s. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn’t mean to

offend the memory of your mother.

He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen,

shielding the gaping wounds which the words had left in

his heart, said very coldly:

—I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.

—Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked.

—Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.

Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.

—O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.

He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen

stood at his post, gazing over the calm sea towards the

headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were

beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever

of his cheeks.

A voice within the tower called loudly:

—Are you up there, Mulligan?

—I’m coming, Buck Mulligan answered.

He turned towards Stephen and said:

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—Look at the sea. What does it care about offences?

Chuck Loyola, Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenach

wants his morning rashers.

His head halted again for a moment at the top of the

staircase, level with the roof:

—Don’t mope over it all day, he said. I’m

inconsequent. Give up the moody brooding.

His head vanished but the drone of his descending

voice boomed out of the stairhead:

And no more turn aside and brood

Upon love’s bitter mystery

For Fergus rules the brazen cars.

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning

peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore

and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by

lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The

twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the

harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite

wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly,

shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay beneath him, a

bowl of bitter waters. Fergus’ song: I sang it alone in the

house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was

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open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and

pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched

bed. For those words, Stephen: love’s bitter mystery.

Where now?

Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards,

powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked

drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her

house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in

the pantomime of Turko the Terrible and laughed with

others when he sang:

I am the boy

That can enjoy

Invisibility.

Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.

And no more turn aside and brood.

Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys.

Memories beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water

from the kitchen tap when she had approached the

sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting

for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely

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fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from

the children’s shirts.

In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted

body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of

wax and rosewood, her breath, bent over him with mute

secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.

Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and

bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her

agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud

breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees.

Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te

confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus

excipiat.

Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!

No, mother! Let me be and let me live.

—Kinch ahoy!

Buck Mulligan’s voice sang from within the tower. It

came nearer up the staircase, calling again. Stephen, still

trembling at his soul’s cry, heard warm running sunlight

and in the air behind him friendly words.

—Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is

ready. Haines is apologising for waking us last night. It’s all

right.

—I’m coming, Stephen said, turning.

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—Do, for Jesus’ sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake

and for all our sakes.

His head disappeared and reappeared.

—I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it’s very

clever. Touch him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.

—I get paid this morning, Stephen said.

—The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much?

Four quid? Lend us one.

—If you want it, Stephen said.

—Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with

delight. We’ll have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy

druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.

He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone

stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent:

O, won’t we have a merry time,

Drinking whisky, beer and wine!

On coronation,

Coronation day!

O, won’t we have a merry time

On coronation day!

Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel

shavingbowl shone, forgotten, on the parapet. Why should

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I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten

friendship?

He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling

its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in

which the brush was stuck. So I carried the boat of incense

then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A

servant too. A server of a servant.

In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck

Mulligan’s gowned form moved briskly to and fro about

the hearth, hiding and revealing its yellow glow. Two

shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the

high barbacans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of

coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.

—We’ll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open

that door, will you?

Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall

figure rose from the hammock where it had been sitting,

went to the doorway and pulled open the inner doors.

—Have you the key? a voice asked.

—Dedalus has it, Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I’m

choked!

He howled, without looking up from the fire:

—Kinch!

—It’s in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.

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The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the

heavy door had been set ajar, welcome light and bright air

entered. Haines stood at the doorway, looking out.

Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down

to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside

him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to

the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.

—I’m melting, he said, as the candle remarked when ...

But, hush! Not a word more on that subject! Kinch, wake

up! Bread, butter, honey. Haines, come in. The grub is

ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts. Where’s the

sugar? O, jay, there’s no milk.

Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the

buttercooler from the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a

sudden pet.

—What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come

after eight.

—We can drink it black, Stephen said thirstily. There’s

a lemon in the locker.

—O, damn you and your Paris fads! Buck Mulligan

said. I want Sandycove milk.

Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:

—That woman is coming up with the milk.

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—The blessings of God on you! Buck Mulligan cried,

jumping up from his chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea

there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I can’t go fumbling at

the damned eggs.

He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it

out on three plates, saying:

—In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

Haines sat down to pour out the tea.

—I’m giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say,

Mulligan, you do make strong tea, don’t you?

Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said

in an old woman’s wheedling voice:

—When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan

said. And when I makes water I makes water.

—By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.

Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:

—So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma’am, says Mrs

Cahill, God send you don’t make them in the one pot.

He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice

of bread, impaled on his knife.

—That’s folk, he said very earnestly, for your book,

Haines. Five lines of text and ten pages of notes about the

folk and the fishgods of Dundrum. Printed by the weird

sisters in the year of the big wind.

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He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled

voice, lifting his brows:

—Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan’s tea and

water pot spoken of in the Mabinogion or is it in the

Upanishads?

—I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.

—Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone.

Your reasons, pray?

—I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or

out of the Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one

imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.

Buck Mulligan’s face smiled with delight.

—Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing

his white teeth and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you

think she was? Quite charming!

Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he

growled in a hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again

vigorously at the loaf:

—For old Mary Ann

She doesn’t care a damn.

But, hising up her petticoats ...

He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and

droned.

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The doorway was darkened by an entering form.

—The milk, sir!

—Come in, ma’am, Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.

An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen’s

elbow.

—That’s a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to

God.

—To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be

sure!

Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the

locker.

—The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak

frequently of the collector of prepuces.

—How much, sir? asked the old woman.

—A quart, Stephen said.

He watched her pour into the measure and thence into

the jug rich white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She

poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old and secret she

had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger.

She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out.

Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a

witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the

squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew,

dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman,

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names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly

form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay

betrayer, their common cuckquean, a messenger from the

secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he could

not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.

—It is indeed, ma’am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring

milk into their cups.

—Taste it, sir, she said.

He drank at her bidding.

—If we could live on good food like that, he said to

her somewhat loudly, we wouldn’t have the country full

of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp,

eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust,

horsedung and consumptives’ spits.

—Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.

—I am, ma’am, Buck Mulligan answered.

—Look at that now, she said.

Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old

head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter,

her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will

shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her

woman’s unclean loins, of man’s flesh made not in God’s

likeness, the serpent’s prey. And to the loud voice that

now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.

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—Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.

—Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said

to Haines.

Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.

—Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?

—I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it.

Are you from the west, sir?

—I am an Englishman, Haines answered.

—He’s English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we

ought to speak Irish in Ireland.

—Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I’m

ashamed I don’t speak the language myself. I’m told it’s a

grand language by them that knows.

—Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan.

Wonderful entirely. Fill us out some more tea, Kinch.

Would you like a cup, ma’am?

—No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the

ring of the milkcan on her forearm and about to go.

Haines said to her:

—Have you your bill? We had better pay her,

Mulligan, hadn’t we?

Stephen filled again the three cups.

—Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it’s seven mornings a

pint at twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence

25 of 1305

over and these three mornings a quart at fourpence is three

quarts is a shilling. That’s a shilling and one and two is two

and two, sir.

Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with

a crust thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his

legs and began to search his trouser pockets.

—Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him,

smiling.

Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring

faintly the thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a

florin, twisted it round in his fingers and cried:

—A miracle!

He passed it along the table towards the old woman,

saying:

—Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I

give.

Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand.

—We’ll owe twopence, he said.

—Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time

enough. Good morning, sir.

She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck

Mulligan’s tender chant:

26 of 1305

—Heart of my heart, were it more,

More would be laid at your feet.

He turned to Stephen and said:

—Seriously, Dedalus. I’m stony. Hurry out to your

school kip and bring us back some money. Today the

bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects that every

man this day will do his duty.

—That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to

visit your national library today.

—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.

He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:

—Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?

Then he said to Haines:

—The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a

month.

—All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said

as he let honey trickle over a slice of the loaf.

Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a

scarf about the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:

—I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you

will let me.

Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub.

Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here’s a spot.

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—That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant

being the symbol of Irish art is deuced good.

Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen’s foot under the table

and said with warmth of tone:

—Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.

—Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to

Stephen. I was just thinking of it when that poor old

creature came in.

—Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked.

Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from

the holdfast of the hammock, said:

—I don’t know, I’m sure.

He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent

across to Stephen and said with coarse vigour:

—You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that

for?

—Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money.

From whom? From the milkwoman or from him. It’s a

toss up, I think.

—I blow him out about you, Buck Mulligan said, and

then you come along with your lousy leer and your

gloomy jesuit jibes.

—I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.

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Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on

Stephen’s arm.

—From me, Kinch, he said.

In a suddenly changed tone he added:

—To tell you the God’s truth I think you’re right.

Damn all else they are good for. Why don’t you play them

as I do? To hell with them all. Let us get out of the kip.

He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of

his gown, saying resignedly:

—Mulligan is stripped of his garments.

He emptied his pockets on to the table.

—There’s your snotrag, he said.

And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he

spoke to them, chiding them, and to his dangling

watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged in his

trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, we’ll

simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and

green boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very

well then, I contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp

black missile flew out of his talking hands.

—And there’s your Latin quarter hat, he said.

Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to

them from the doorway:

—Are you coming, you fellows?

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—I’m ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards

the door. Come out, Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I

suppose. Resigned he passed out with grave words and

gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:

—And going forth he met Butterly.

Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace,

followed them out and, as they went down the ladder,

pulled to the slow iron door and locked it. He put the

huge key in his inner pocket.

At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:

—Did you bring the key?

—I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.

He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan

club with his heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or

grasses.

—Down, sir! How dare you, sir!

Haines asked:

—Do you pay rent for this tower?

—Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.

—To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over

his shoulder.

They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said

at last:

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—Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello

you call it?

—Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, when

the French were on the sea. But ours is the omphalos.

—What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.

—No, no, Buck Mulligan shouted in pain. I’m not

equal to Thomas Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has

made out to prop it up. Wait till I have a few pints in me

first.

He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly

the peaks of his primrose waistcoat:

—You couldn’t manage it under three pints, Kinch,

could you?

—It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can

wait longer.

—You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it

some paradox?

—Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of

Wilde and paradoxes. It’s quite simple. He proves by

algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather

and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.

—What? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen.

He himself?

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Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck

and, bending in loose laughter, said to Stephen’s ear:

—O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a

father!

—We’re always tired in the morning, Stephen said to

Haines. And it is rather long to tell.

Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.

—The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of

Dedalus, he said.

—I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they

followed, this tower and these cliffs here remind me

somehow of Elsinore. That beetles o’er his base into the sea,

isn’t it?

Buck Mulligan turned suddenly. for an instant towards

Stephen but did not speak. In the bright silent instant

Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning

between their gay attires.

—It’s a wonderful tale, Haines said, bringing them to

halt again.

Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm

and prudent. The seas’ ruler, he gazed southward over the

bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat vague

on the bright skyline and a sail tacking by the Muglins.

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—I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere,

he said bemused. The Father and the Son idea. The Son

striving to be atoned with the Father.

Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling

face. He looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open

happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn

all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a

doll’s head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat

quivering, and began to chant in a quiet happy foolish

voice:

—I’m the queerest young fellow that ever you

heard.

My mother’s a jew, my father’s a bird.

With Joseph the joiner I cannot agree.

So here’s to disciples and Calvary.

He held up a forefinger of warning.

—If anyone thinks that I amn’t divine

He’ll get no free drinks when I’m making the

wine

But have to drink water and wish it were plain

That i make when the wine becomes water

again.

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He tugged swiftly at Stephen’s ashplant in farewell and,

running forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands

at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air,

and chanted:

—Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I

said

And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the

dead.

What’s bred in the bone cannot fail me to fly

And Olivet’s breezy ... Goodbye, now,

goodbye!

He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot

hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly,

Mercury’s hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back

to them his brief birdsweet cries.

Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on

beside Stephen and said:

—We oughtn’t to laugh, I suppose. He’s rather

blasphemous. I’m not a believer myself, that is to say. Still

his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn’t it?

What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?

—The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered.

—O, Haines said, you have heard it before?

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—Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.

—You’re not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I

mean, a believer in the narrow sense of the word.

Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God.

—There’s only one sense of the word, it seems to me,

Stephen said.

Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in

which twinkled a green stone. He sprang it open with his

thumb and offered it.

—Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.

Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put

it back in his sidepocket and took from his

waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too,

and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk

towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.

—Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either

you believe or you don’t, isn’t it? Personally I couldn’t

stomach that idea of a personal God. You don’t stand for

that, I suppose?

—You behold in me, Stephen said with grim

displeasure, a horrible example of free thought.

He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his

ashplant by his side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the

path, squealing at his heels. My familiar, after me, calling,

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Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the path.

They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He

wants that key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his

salt bread. Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it.

That was in his eyes.

—After all, Haines began ...

Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had

measured him was not all unkind.

—After all, I should think you are able to free yourself.

You are your own master, it seems to me.

—I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an

English and an Italian.

—Italian? Haines said.

A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.

—And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for

odd jobs.

—Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?

—The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his

colour rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic

church.

Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of

tobacco before he spoke.

—I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An

Irishman must think like that, I daresay. We feel in

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England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems

history is to blame.

The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen’s

memory the triumph of their brazen bells: et unam sanctam

catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam: the slow growth and

change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a

chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for

pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in

affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of

the church militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs.

A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and

the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and

Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of

the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ’s

terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius

who held that the Father was Himself His own Son.

Words Mulligan had spoken a moment since in mockery

to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all

them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a

worsting from those embattled angels of the church,

Michael’s host, who defend her ever in the hour of

conflict with their lances and their shields.

Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu!

37 of 1305

—Of course I’m a Britisher, Haines’s voice said, and I

feel as one. I don’t want to see my country fall into the

hands of German jews either. That’s our national problem,

I’m afraid, just now.

Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching:

businessman, boatman.

—She’s making for Bullock harbour.

The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay

with some disdain.

—There’s five fathoms out there, he said. It’ll be swept

up that way when the tide comes in about one. It’s nine

days today.

The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the

blank bay waiting for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll

over to the sun a puffy face, saltwhite. Here I am.

They followed the winding path down to the creek.

Buck Mulligan stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his

unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A young man

clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly

frogwise his green legs in the deep jelly of the water.

—Is the brother with you, Malachi?

—Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.

—Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found

a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.

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—Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.

Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly

man shot up near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He

scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate

and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest

and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging

loincloth.

Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and,

glancing at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously

with his thumbnail at brow and lips and breastbone.

—Seymour’s back in town, the young man said,

grasping again his spur of rock. Chucked medicine and

going in for the army.

—Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said.

—Going over next week to stew. You know that red

Carlisle girl, Lily?

—Yes.

—Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father

is rotto with money.

—Is she up the pole?

—Better ask Seymour that.

—Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said.

He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and

stood up, saying tritely:

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—Redheaded women buck like goats.

He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his

flapping shirt.

—My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I’m the

Uebermensch. Toothless Kinch and I, the supermen.

He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to

where his clothes lay.

—Are you going in here, Malachi?

—Yes. Make room in the bed.

The young man shoved himself backward through the

water and reached the middle of the creek in two long

clean strokes. Haines sat down on a stone, smoking.

—Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.

—Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.

Stephen turned away.

—I’m going, Mulligan, he said.

—Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep

my chemise flat.

Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it

across his heaped clothes.

—And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.

Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing,

undressing. Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before

him, said solemnly:

40 of 1305

—He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord.

Thus spake Zarathustra.

His plump body plunged.

—We’ll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen

walked up the path and smiling at wild Irish.

Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.

—The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.

—Good, Stephen said.

He walked along the upwardcurving path.

Liliata rutilantium.

Turma circumdet.

Iubilantium te virginum.

The priest’s grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed

discreetly. I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I

cannot go.

A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from

the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called

again. A sleek brown head, a seal’s, far out on the water,

round.

Usurper.

* * * * *

92 of 1305

II

CALYPSO Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of

beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards,

a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs,

fried hencods’ roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton

kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly

scented urine.

Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the

kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy

tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of

doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel

a bit peckish.

The coals were reddening.

Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right.

She didn’t like her plate full. Right. He turned from the

tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the

fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of

tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a

leg of the table with tail on high.

—Mkgnao!

—O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the

fire.

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The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly

round a leg of the table, mewing. Just how she stalks over

my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr.

Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black

form. Clean to see: the gloss of her sleek hide, the white

button under the butt of her tail, the green flashing eyes.

He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.

—Milk for the pussens, he said.

—Mrkgnao! the cat cried.

They call them stupid. They understand what we say

better than we understand them. She understands all she

wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice

never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to

her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.

—Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly.

Afraid of the chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid

pussens as the pussens.

Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to

like it.

—Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.

She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes,

mewing plaintively and long, showing him her milkwhite

teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed

till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the

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dresser, took the jug Hanlon’s milkman had just filled for

him, poured warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it

slowly on the floor.

—Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.

He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light

as she tipped three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it

true if you clip them they can’t mouse after. Why? They

shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or kind of feelers in

the dark, perhaps.

He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No

good eggs with this drouth. Want pure fresh water.

Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton kidney at

Buckley’s. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a

pork kidney at Dlugacz’s. While the kettle is boiling. She

lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are their

tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing

she can eat? He glanced round him. No.

On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the

hall, paused by the bedroom door. She might like

something tasty. Thin bread and butter she likes in the

morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.

He said softly in the bare hall:

—I’m going round the corner. Be back in a minute.

And when he had heard his voice say it he added:

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—You don’t want anything for breakfast?

A sleepy soft grunt answered:

—Mn.

No. She didn’t want anything. He heard then a warm

heavy sigh, softer, as she turned over and the loose brass

quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must get those settled

really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any

little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for

it. Old style. Ah yes! of course. Bought it at the governor’s

auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a bargain, old

Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the

ranks, sir, and I’m proud of it. Still he had brains enough

to make that corner in stamps. Now that was farseeing.

His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled

heavy overcoat and his lost property office secondhand

waterproof. Stamps: stickyback pictures. Daresay lots of

officers are in the swim too. Course they do. The sweated

legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto’s

high grade ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather

headband. White slip of paper. Quite safe.

On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the

latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off. Must get it.

Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use disturbing her.

She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor

96 of 1305

to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped

gently over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All

right till I come back anyhow.

He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose

cellarflap of number seventyfive. The sun was nearing the

steeple of George’s church. Be a warm day I fancy.

Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black

conducts, reflects, (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn’t

go in that light suit. Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank

quietly often as he walked in happy warmth. Boland’s

breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers

yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. Makes you

feel young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off

at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day’s

march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older

technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a

city gate, sentry there, old ranker too, old Tweedy’s big

moustaches, leaning on a long kind of a spear. Wander

through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark

caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated

crosslegged, smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the

streets. Drink water scented with fennel, sherbet. Dander

along all day. Might meet a robber or two. Well, meet

him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the

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mosques among the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A

shiver of the trees, signal, the evening wind. I pass on.

Fading gold sky. A mother watches me from her doorway.

She calls her children home in their dark language. High

wall: beyond strings twanged. Night sky, moon, violet,

colour of Molly’s new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl

playing one of those instruments what do you call them:

dulcimers. I pass.

Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read:

in the track of the sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He

smiled, pleasing himself. What Arthur Griffith said about

the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule sun

rising up in the northwest from the laneway behind the

bank of Ireland. He prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey

touch that: homerule sun rising up in the north-west.

He approached Larry O’Rourke’s. From the cellar

grating floated up the flabby gush of porter. Through the

open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger,

teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end

of the city traffic. For instance M’Auley’s down there: n.

g. as position. Of course if they ran a tramline along the

North Circular from the cattlemarket to the quays value

would go up like a shot.

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Baldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use

canvassing him for an ad. Still he knows his own business

best. There he is, sure enough, my bold Larry, leaning

against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the

aproned curate swab up with mop and bucket. Simon

Dedalus takes him off to a tee with his eyes screwed up.

Do you know what I’m going to tell you? What’s that, Mr

O’Rourke? Do you know what? The Russians, they’d

only be an eight o’clock breakfast for the Japanese.

Stop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad

thing about poor Dignam, Mr O’Rourke.

Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting

through the doorway:

—Good day, Mr O’Rourke.

—Good day to you.

—Lovely weather, sir.

—’Tis all that.

Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded

curates from the county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old

man in the cellar. Then, lo and behold, they blossom out

as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then thin of the

competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross

Dublin without passing a pub. Save it they can’t. Off the

drunks perhaps. Put down three and carry five. What is

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that, a bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the

wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with the

town travellers. Square it you with the boss and we’ll split

the job, see?

How much would that tot to off the porter in the

month? Say ten barrels of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off.

O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint Joseph’s National

school. Brats’ clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps

memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue

rustyouvee doubleyou. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk.

Inishark. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve

Bloom.

He halted before Dlugacz’s window, staring at the

hanks of sausages, polonies, black and white. Fifteen

multiplied by. The figures whitened in his mind,

unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links,

packed with forcemeat, fed his gaze and he breathed in

tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs’

blood.

A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned

dish: the last. He stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter.

Would she buy it too, calling the items from a slip in her

hand? Chapped: washingsoda. And a pound and a half of

Denny’s sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips.

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Woods his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish.

New blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms.

Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack it,

by George. The way her crooked skirt swings at each

whack.

The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had

snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat

there: like a stallfed heifer.

He took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the

model farm at Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can

become ideal winter sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I

thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle

cropping. He held the page from him: interesting: read it

nearer, the title, the blurred cropping cattle, the page

rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the

cattlemarket, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded

sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed

boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a

ripemeated hindquarter, there’s a prime one, unpeeled

switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently,

bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest.

The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack by whack.

The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile,

wrapped up her prime sausages and made a red grimace.

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—Now, my miss, he said.

She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick

wrist out.

—Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence

change. For you, please?

Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk

behind her if she went slowly, behind her moving hams.

Pleasant to see first thing in the morning. Hurry up, damn

it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the

shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He

sighed down his nose: they never understand.

Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars

in tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of disregard

glowed to weak pleasure within his breast. For another: a

constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles lane. They like

them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman,

I’m lost in the wood.

—Threepence, please.

His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it

into a sidepocket. Then it fetched up three coins from his

trousers’ pocket and laid them on the rubber prickles.

They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc,

into the till.

—Thank you, sir. Another time.

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A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He

withdrew his gaze after an instant. No: better not: another

time.

—Good morning, he said, moving away.

—Good morning, sir.

No sign. Gone. What matter?

He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely.

Agendath Netaim: planters’ company. To purchase waste

sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with

eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and

construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields

north of Jaffa. You pay eighty marks and they plant a

dunam of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or

citrons. Olives cheaper: oranges need artificial irrigation.

Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your name

entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can

pay ten down and the balance in yearly instalments.

Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15.

Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.

He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat.

Silverpowdered olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning,

ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few left

from Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste

of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates.

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Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin’s

parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant

evenings we had then. Molly in Citron’s basketchair. Nice

to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the

nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet,

wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They

fetched high prices too, Moisel told me. Arbutus place:

Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a

flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar,

Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the

quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies

handling them barefoot in soiled dungarees. There’s

whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn’t see.

Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is like

that Norwegian captain’s. Wonder if I’ll meet him today.

Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in

heaven.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey.

Far.

No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic

lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the

earth. No wind could lift those waves, grey metal,

poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining

down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom.

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All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old.

Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag

crossed from Cassidy’s, clutching a naggin bottle by the

neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the

earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born

everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more.

Dead: an old woman’s: the grey sunken cunt of the world.

Desolation.

Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his

pocket he turned into Eccles street, hurrying homeward.

Cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his blood: age

crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Yes, I

am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong

side of the bed. Must begin again those Sandow’s

exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick

houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation

is only twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby, North,

MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters

on a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of

the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed

flesh. Yes, yes.

Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley

road, swiftly, in slim sandals, along the brightening

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footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair

on the wind.

Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stooped

and gathered them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quickened

heart slowed at once. Bold hand. Mrs Marion.

—Poldy!

Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and

walked through warm yellow twilight towards her tousled

head.

—Who are the letters for?

He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.

—A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a

card to you. And a letter for you.

He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near

the curve of her knees.

—Do you want the blind up?

Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his

backward eye saw her glance at the letter and tuck it

under her pillow.

—That do? he asked, turning.

She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.

—She got the things, she said.

He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled

herself back slowly with a snug sigh.

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—Hurry up with that tea, she said. I’m parched.

—The kettle is boiling, he said.

But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat,

tossed soiled linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the

foot of the bed.

As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:

—Poldy!

—What?

—Scald the teapot.

On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the

spout. He scalded and rinsed out the teapot and put in

four full spoons of tea, tilting the kettle then to let the

water flow in. Having set it to draw he took off the kettle,

crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the

lump of butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the

kidney the cat mewed hungrily against him. Give her too

much meat she won’t mouse. Say they won’t eat pork.

Kosher. Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her

and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce.

Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from

the chipped eggcup.

Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page

and over. Thanks: new tam: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel

picnic: young student: Blazes Boylan’s seaside girls.

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The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup,

sham crown

Derby, smiling. Silly Milly’s birthday gift. Only five she

was then. No, wait: four. I gave her the amberoid

necklace she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown paper

in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.

O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling.

You are my lookingglass from night to morning.

I’d rather have you without a farthing

Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.

Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he

was a courteous old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to

bow Molly off the platform. And the little mirror in his

silk hat. The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O,

look what I found in professor Goodwin’s hat! All we

laughed. Sex breaking out even then. Pert little piece she

was.

He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over:

then fitted the teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he

took it up. Everything on it? Bread and butter, four, sugar,

spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs, his thumb

hooked in the teapot handle.

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Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the

tray in and set it on the chair by the bedhead.

—What a time you were! she said.

She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly,

an elbow on the pillow. He looked calmly down on her

bulk and between her large soft bubs, sloping within her

nightdress like a shegoat’s udder. The warmth of her

couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance

of the tea she poured.

A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the

dimpled pillow. In the act of going he stayed to straighten

the bedspread.

—Who was the letter from? he asked.

Bold hand. Marion.

—O, Boylan, she said. He’s bringing the programme.

—What are you singing?

—La ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love’s Old

Sweet Song.

Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that

incense leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater.

—Would you like the window open a little?

She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:

—What time is the funeral?

—Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn’t see the paper.

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Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg

of her soiled drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted

grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole.

—No: that book.

Other stocking. Her petticoat.

—It must have fell down, she said.

He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if

she pronounces that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must

have slid down. He stooped and lifted the valance. The

book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the

orangekeyed chamberpot.

—Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There’s a

word I wanted to ask you.

She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by

nothandle and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the

blanket, began to search the text with the hairpin till she

reached the word.

—Met him what? he asked.

—Here, she said. What does that mean?

He leaned downward and read near her polished

thumbnail.

—Metempsychosis?

—Yes. Who’s he when he’s at home?

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—Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It’s Greek: from

the Greek. That means the transmigration of souls.

—O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.

He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The

same young eyes. The first night after the charades.

Dolphin’s Barn. He turned over the smudged pages. Ruby:

the Pride of the Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with

carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor

naked. Sheet kindly lent. The monster Maffei desisted and

flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all.

Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler’s. Had to look the

other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and we’ll break

our sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they

metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That

a man’s soul after he dies. Dignam’s soul ...

—Did you finish it? he asked.

—Yes, she said. There’s nothing smutty in it. Is she in

love with the first fellow all the time?

—Never read it. Do you want another?

—Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock’s. Nice name he

has.

She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow

sideways.

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Must get that Capel street library book renewed or

they’ll write to Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation:

that’s the word.

—Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in

another body after death, that we lived before. They call it

reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth

thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we

have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives.

The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her

tea. Bette remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An

example would be better. An example?

The Bath of the Nymph over the bed. Given away with

the Easter number of Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in

art colours. Tea before you put milk in. Not unlike her

with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the

frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked

nymphs: Greece: and for instance all the people that lived

then.

He turned the pages back.

—Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks

called it. They used to believe you could be changed into

an animal or a tree, for instance. What they called nymphs,

for example.

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Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed

straight before her, inhaling through her arched nostrils.

—There’s a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave

anything on the fire?

—The kidney! he cried suddenly.

He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and,

stubbing his toes against the broken commode, hurried

out towards the smell, stepping hastily down the stairs

with a flurried stork’s legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an

angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of

the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it

turtle on its back. Only a little burnt. He tossed it off the

pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle

over it.

Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice

of the loaf. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to

the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth, chewing

with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a

turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread,

sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What

was that about some young student and a picnic? He

creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he

chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and

raising it to his mouth.

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Dearest Papli

Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It

suits me splendid. Everyone says I am quite the belle in

my new tam. I got mummy’s Iovely box of creams and am

writing. They are lovely. I am getting on swimming in the

photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and

Mrs. Will send when developed. We did great biz

yesterday. Fair day and all the beef to the heels were in.

We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few

friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy

and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the

piano downstairs. There is to be a concert in the Greville

Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes here

some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something

are big swells and he sings Boylan’s (I was on the pop of

writing Blazes Boylan’s) song about those seaside girls. Tell

him silly Milly sends my best respects. I must now close

with fondest love

Your fond daughter, MILLY.

P. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby. M.

Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too.

Her first birthday away from home. Separation.

Remember the summer morning she was born, running to

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knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old

woman. Lot of babies she must have helped into the

world. She knew from the first poor little Rudy wouldn’t

live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He would

be eleven now if he had lived.

His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse

bad writing. Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her

shell. Row with her in the XL Cafe about the bracelet.

Wouldn’t eat her cakes or speak or look. Saucebox. He

sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after

piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still,

she might do worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He

drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal.

Then he read the letter again: twice.

O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not?

No, nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in

any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim legs

running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now.

Vain: very.

He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen

window. Day I caught her in the street pinching her

cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was given milk

too long. On the ERIN’S KING that day round the Kish.

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Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale

blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair.

All dimpled cheeks and curls,

Your head it simply swirls.

Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his

trousers’ pockets, jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of

the family. Swurls, he says. Pier with lamps, summer

evening, band,

Those girls, those girls,

Those lovely seaside girls.

Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past.

Mrs Marion. Reading, lying back now, counting the

strands of her hair, smiling, braiding.

A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone,

increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can’t move.

Girl’s sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the

flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now.

Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman’s lips.

Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her.

Wanted a dog to pass the time. Might take a trip down

there. August bank holiday, only two and six return. Six

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weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or through

M’Coy.

The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the

meatstained paper, nosed at it and stalked to the door. She

looked back at him, mewing. Wants to go out. Wait

before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the

fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her

ear with her back to the fire too.

He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his

bowels. He stood up, undoing the waistband of his

trousers. The cat mewed to him.

—Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I’m ready.

Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag

up the stairs to the landing.

A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes

knocking just as I’m.

In the tabledrawer he found an old number of Titbits.

He folded it under his armpit, went to the door and

opened it. The cat went up in soft bounds. Ah, wanted to

go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.

Listening, he heard her voice:

—Come, come, pussy. Come.

He went out through the backdoor into the garden:

stood to listen towards the next garden. No sound.

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Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The maid was in the

garden. Fine morning.

He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint

growing by the wall. Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet

runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure the whole

place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil

like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is

this that is? The hens in the next garden: their droppings

are very good top dressing. Best of all though are the

cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes.

Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies’ kid gloves.

Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow

peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always have fresh

greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee

or bluebottle here Whitmonday.

He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must

have put it back on the peg. Or hanging up on the floor.

Funny I don’t remember that. Hallstand too full. Four

umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters. Drago’s

shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment.

Brown brillantined hair over his collar. Just had a wash

and brushup. Wonder have I time for a bath this morning.

Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got away James

Stephens, they say. O’Brien.

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Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is

it? Now, my miss. Enthusiast.

He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be

careful not to get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He

went in, bowing his head under the low lintel. Leaving

the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash and

stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he

peered through a chink up at the nextdoor windows. The

king was in his countinghouse. Nobody.

Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper,

turning its pages over on his bared knees. Something new

and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit. Our prize titbit:

Matcham’s Masterstroke. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy,

Playgoers’ Club, London. Payment at the rate of one

guinea a column has been made to the writer. Three and a

half. Three pounds three. Three pounds, thirteen and six.

Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column

and, yielding but resisting, began the second. Midway, his

last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease

themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that

slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it’s not

too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah!

Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so.

It did not move or touch him but it was something quick

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and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on,

seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat certainly.

Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke by which he won the

laughing witch who now. Begins and ends morally. Hand in

hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read

and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly

Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of

three pounds, thirteen and six.

Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom.

Invent a story for some proverb. Which? Time I used to

try jotting down on my cuff what she said dressing. Dislike

dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her

nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her.

9.l5. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta

Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb?

9.24. I’m swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on

the patent leather of her boot.

Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her

stockinged calf. Morning after the bazaar dance when

May’s band played Ponchielli’s dance of the hours. Explain

that: morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then

night hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first night.

Her head dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan

well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he had a good

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rich smell off his breath dancing. No use humming then.

Allude to it. Strange kind of music that last night. The

mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass briskly on

her woollen vest against her full wagging bub. Peering

into it. Lines in her eyes. It wouldn’t pan out somehow.

Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then:

black with daggers and eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then

golden, then grey, then black. Still, true to life also. Day:

then the night.

He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped

himself with it. Then he girded up his trousers, braced and

buttoned himself. He pulled back the jerky shaky door of

the jakes and came forth from the gloom into the air.

In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he

eyed carefully his black trousers: the ends, the knees, the

houghs of the knees. What time is the funeral? Better find

out in the paper.

A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells

of George’s church. They tolled the hour: loud dark iron.

Heigho! Heigho!

Heigho! Heigho!

Heigho! Heigho!

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Quarter to. There again: the overtone following

through the air, third.

Poor Dignam!

* * * * *

By lorries along sir John Rogerson’s quay Mr Bloom

walked soberly, past Windmill lane, Leask’s the linseed

crusher, the postal telegraph office. Could have given that

address too. And past the sailors’ home. He turned from

the morning noises of the quayside and walked through

Lime street. By Brady’s cottages a boy for the skins lolled,

his bucket of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A

smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed

him, listlessly holding her battered caskhoop. Tell him if

he smokes he won’t grow. O let him! His life isn’t such a

bed of roses. Waiting outside pubs to bring da home.

Come home to ma, da. Slack hour: won’t be many there.

He crossed Townsend street, passed the frowning face of

Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. And past Nichols’

the undertaker. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay

Corny Kelleher bagged the job for O’Neill’s. Singing with

his eyes shut. Corny. Met her once in the park. In the

dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her name and address she

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Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She’s passed. Then

and not till then. Tram kran kran kran. Good oppor.

Coming. Krandlkrankran. I’m sure it’s the burgund. Yes.

One, two. Let my epitaph be. Kraaaaaa. Written. I have.

Pprrpffrrppffff.

Done.

* * * * *

CYCLOPS

I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the

D. M. P. at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned

but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear

into my eye. I turned around to let him have the weight

of my tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony

Batter only Joe Hynes.

—Lo, Joe, says I. How are you blowing? Did you see

that bloody chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his

brush?

—Soot’s luck, says Joe. Who’s the old ballocks you

were talking to?

—Old Troy, says I, was in the force. I’m on two minds

not to give that fellow in charge for obstructing the

thoroughfare with his brooms and ladders.

—What are you doing round those parts? says Joe.

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—Devil a much, says I. There’s a bloody big foxy thief

beyond by the garrison church at the corner of Chicken

lane—old Troy was just giving me a wrinkle about him—

lifted any God’s quantity of tea and sugar to pay three bob

a week said he had a farm in the county Down off a hopof-

my-thumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there

near Heytesbury street.

—Circumcised? says Joe.

—Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named

Geraghty. I’m hanging on to his taw now for the past

fortnight and I can’t get a penny out of him.

—That the lay you’re on now? says Joe.

—Ay, says I. How are the mighty fallen! Collector of

bad and doubtful debts. But that’s the most notorious

bloody robber you’d meet in a day’s walk and the face on

him all pockmarks would hold a shower of rain. Tell him,

says he, I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him to send you

round here again or if he does, says he, I’ll have him summonsed

up before the court, so I will, for trading without a licence. And

he after stuffing himself till he’s fit to burst. Jesus, I had to

laugh at the little jewy getting his shirt out. He drink me my

teas. He eat me my sugars. Because he no pay me my moneys?

For nonperishable goods bought of Moses Herzog, of

13 Saint Kevin’s parade in the city of Dublin, Wood quay

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ward, merchant, hereinafter called the vendor, and sold

and delivered to Michael E. Geraghty, esquire, of 29

Arbour hill in the city of Dublin, Arran quay ward,

gentleman, hereinafter called the purchaser, videlicet, five

pounds avoirdupois of first choice tea at three shillings and

no pence per pound avoirdupois and three stone

avoirdupois of sugar, crushed crystal, at threepence per

pound avoirdupois, the said purchaser debtor to the said

vendor of one pound five shillings and sixpence sterling

for value received which amount shall be paid by said

purchaser to said vendor in weekly instalments every seven

calendar days of three shillings and no pence sterling: and

the said nonperishable goods shall not be pawned or

pledged or sold or otherwise alienated by the said

purchaser but shall be and remain and be held to be the

sole and exclusive property of the said vendor to be

disposed of at his good will and pleasure until the said

amount shall have been duly paid by the said purchaser to

the said vendor in the manner herein set forth as this day

hereby agreed between the said vendor, his heirs,

successors, trustees and assigns of the one part and the said

purchaser, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the

other part.

—Are you a strict t.t.? says Joe.

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—Not taking anything between drinks, says I.

—What about paying our respects to our friend? says

Joe.

—Who? says I. Sure, he’s out in John of God’s off his

head, poor man.

—Drinking his own stuff? says Joe.

—Ay, says I. Whisky and water on the brain.

—Come around to Barney Kiernan’s, says Joe. I want

to see the citizen.

—Barney mavourneen’s be it, says I. Anything strange

or wonderful, Joe?

—Not a word, says Joe. I was up at that meeting in the

City Arms.

—-What was that, Joe? says I.

—Cattle traders, says Joe, about the foot and mouth

disease. I want to give the citizen the hard word about it.

So we went around by the Linenhall barracks and the

back of the courthouse talking of one thing or another.

Decent fellow Joe when he has it but sure like that he

never has it. Jesus, I couldn’t get over that bloody foxy

Geraghty, the daylight robber. For trading without a

licence, says he.

In Inisfail the fair there lies a land, the land of holy

Michan. There rises a watchtower beheld of men afar.

532 of 1305

There sleep the mighty dead as in life they slept, warriors

and princes of high renown. A pleasant land it is in sooth

of murmuring waters, fishful streams where sport the

gurnard, the plaice, the roach, the halibut, the gibbed

haddock, the grilse, the dab, the brill, the flounder, the

pollock, the mixed coarse fish generally and other denizens

of the aqueous kingdom too numerous to be enumerated.

In the mild breezes of the west and of the east the lofty

trees wave in different directions their firstclass foliage, the

wafty sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted

planetree, the eugenic eucalyptus and other ornaments of

the arboreal world with which that region is thoroughly

well supplied. Lovely maidens sit in close proximity to the

roots of the lovely trees singing the most lovely songs

while they play with all kinds of lovely objects as for

example golden ingots, silvery fishes, crans of herrings,

drafts of eels, codlings, creels of fingerlings, purple seagems

and playful insects. And heroes voyage from afar to woo

them, from Eblana to Slievemargy, the peerless princes of

unfettered Munster and of Connacht the just and of

smooth sleek Leinster and of Cruahan’s land and of

Armagh the splendid and of the noble district of Boyle,

princes, the sons of kings.

533 of 1305

And there rises a shining palace whose crystal glittering

roof is seen by mariners who traverse the extensive sea in

barks built expressly for that purpose, and thither come all

herds and fatlings and firstfruits of that land for O’Connell

Fitzsimon takes toll of them, a chieftain descended from

chieftains. Thither the extremely large wains bring foison

of the fields, flaskets of cauliflowers, floats of spinach,

pineapple chunks, Rangoon beans, strikes of tomatoes,

drums of figs, drills of Swedes, spherical potatoes and

tallies of iridescent kale, York and Savoy, and trays of

onions, pearls of the earth, and punnets of mushrooms and

custard marrows and fat vetches and bere and rape and red

green yellow brown russet sweet big bitter ripe pomellated

apples and chips of strawberries and sieves of gooseberries,

pulpy and pelurious, and strawberries fit for princes and

raspberries from their canes.

I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him. Come out

here, Geraghty, you notorious bloody hill and dale robber!

And by that way wend the herds innumerable of

bellwethers and flushed ewes and shearling rams and lambs

and stubble geese and medium steers and roaring mares

and polled calves and longwoods and storesheep and

Cuffe’s prime springers and culls and sowpigs and

baconhogs and the various different varieties of highly

534 of 1305

distinguished swine and Angus heifers and polly bulllocks

of immaculate pedigree together with prime premiated

milchcows and beeves: and there is ever heard a trampling,

cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling,

grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and

heavyhooved kine from pasturelands of Lusk and Rush

and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of

Thomond, from the M’Gillicuddy’s reeks the inaccessible

and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle

declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their udders

distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter

and rennets of cheese and farmer’s firkins and targets of

lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great

hundreds, various in size, the agate with this dun.

So we turned into Barney Kiernan’s and there, sure

enough, was the citizen up in the corner having a great

confab with himself and that bloody mangy mongrel,

Garryowen, and he waiting for what the sky would drop

in the way of drink.

—There he is, says I, in his gloryhole, with his

cruiskeen lawn and his load of papers, working for the

cause.

The bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would

give you the creeps. Be a corporal work of mercy if

535 of 1305

someone would take the life of that bloody dog. I’m told

for a fact he ate a good part of the breeches off a

constabulary man in Santry that came round one time

with a blue paper about a licence.

—Stand and deliver, says he.

—That’s all right, citizen, says Joe. Friends here.

—Pass, friends, says he.

Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he:

—What’s your opinion of the times?

Doing the rapparee and Rory of the hill. But, begob,

Joe was equal to the occasion.

—I think the markets are on a rise, says he, sliding his

hand down his fork.

So begob the citizen claps his paw on his knee and he

says:

—Foreign wars is the cause of it.

And says Joe, sticking his thumb in his pocket:

—It’s the Russians wish to tyrannise.

—Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Joe, says I.

I’ve a thirst on me I wouldn’t sell for half a crown.

—Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.

—Wine of the country, says he.

—What’s yours? says Joe.

—Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.

536 of 1305

—Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how’s the old

heart, citizen? says he.

—Never better, a chara, says he. What Garry? Are we

going to win? Eh?

And with that he took the bloody old towser by the

scruff of the neck and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.

The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a

round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested

stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled

shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded

deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged

ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder

he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous

knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of his body

wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly

hair in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse

(Ulex Europeus). The widewinged nostrils, from which

bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such

capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the

fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in

which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were

of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful

current of warm breath issued at regular intervals from the

profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance

537 of 1305

the loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart

thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of

the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to

vibrate and tremble.

He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed

oxhide reaching to the knees in a loose kilt and this was

bound about his middle by a girdle of plaited straw and

rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of deerskin, roughly

stitched with gut. His nether extremities were encased in

high Balbriggan buskins dyed in lichen purple, the feet

being shod with brogues of salted cowhide laced with the

windpipe of the same beast. From his girdle hung a row of

seastones which jangled at every movement of his

portentous frame and on these were graven with rude yet

striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and

heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles,

Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the ardri Malachi,

Art MacMurragh, Shane O’Neill, Father John Murphy,

Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh O’Donnell, Red

Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O’Growney, Michael

Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M’Cracken, Goliath,

Horace Wheatley, Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the

Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott,

Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S.

538 of 1305

Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald

Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the

Mohicans, the Rose of Castile, the Man for Galway, The

Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in

the Gap, The Woman Who Didn’t, Benjamin

Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan,

Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus,

sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo Hayes,

Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the

Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W.

Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg,

Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the

first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold

Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig

Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the

Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben Howth,

Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley,

Boss Croker, Herodotus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama

Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the

Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle,

Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Don Philip

O’Sullivan Beare. A couched spear of acuminated granite

rested by him while at his feet reposed a savage animal of

the canine tribe whose stertorous gasps announced that he

539 of 1305

was sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by

hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which his master

repressed from time to time by tranquilising blows of a

mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic stone.

So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was

standing and begob the sight nearly left my eyes when I

saw him land out a quid O, as true as I’m telling you. A

goodlooking sovereign.

—And there’s more where that came from, says he.

—Were you robbing the poorbox, Joe? says I.

—Sweat of my brow, says Joe. ‘Twas the prudent

member gave me the wheeze.

—I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by

Pill lane and Greek street with his cod’s eye counting up

all the guts of the fish.

Who comes through Michan’s land, bedight in sable

armour? O’Bloom, the son of Rory: it is he. Impervious

to fear is Rory’s son: he of the prudent soul.

—For the old woman of Prince’s street, says the

citizen, the subsidised organ. The pledgebound party on

the floor of the house. And look at this blasted rag, says

he. Look at this, says he. The Irish Independent, if you

please, founded by Parnell to be the workingman’s friend.

540 of 1305

Listen to the births and deaths in the Irish all for Ireland

Independent, and I’ll thank you and the marriages.

And he starts reading them out:

—Gordon, Barnfield crescent, Exeter; Redmayne of

Iffley, Saint Anne’s on Sea: the wife of William T

Redmayne of a son. How’s that, eh? Wright and Flint,

Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa

and the late George Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham road,

Stockwell, Playwood and Ridsdale at Saint Jude’s,

Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, dean of

Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane,

London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart

disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow ...

—I know that fellow, says Joe, from bitter experience.

—Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of David Dimsey, late of

the admiralty: Miller, Tottenham, aged eightyfive: Welsh,

June 12, at 35 Canning street, Liverpool, Isabella Helen.

How’s that for a national press, eh, my brown son! How’s

that for Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber?

—Ah, well, says Joe, handing round the boose. Thanks

be to God they had the start of us. Drink that, citizen.

—I will, says he, honourable person.

—Health, Joe, says I. And all down the form.

541 of 1305

Ah! Ow! Don’t be talking! I was blue mouldy for the

want of that pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the

pit of my stomach with a click.

And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike

messenger came swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a

comely youth and behind him there passed an elder of

noble gait and countenance, bearing the sacred scrolls of

law and with him his lady wife a dame of peerless lineage,

fairest of her race.

Little Alf Bergan popped in round the door and hid

behind Barney’s snug, squeezed up with the laughing. And

who was sitting up there in the corner that I hadn’t seen

snoring drunk blind to the world only Bob Doran. I didn’t

know what was up and Alf kept making signs out of the

door. And begob what was it only that bloody old

pantaloon Denis Breen in his bathslippers with two bloody

big books tucked under his oxter and the wife hotfoot

after him, unfortunate wretched woman, trotting like a

poodle. I thought Alf would split.

—Look at him, says he. Breen. He’s traipsing all round

Dublin with a postcard someone sent him with U. p: up

on it to take a li ...

And he doubled up.

—Take a what? says I.

542 of 1305

—Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds.

—O hell! says I.

The bloody mongrel began to growl that’d put the fear

of God in you seeing something was up but the citizen

gave him a kick in the ribs.

—Bi i dho husht, says he.

—Who? says Joe.

—Breen, says Alf. He was in John Henry Menton’s and

then he went round to Collis and Ward’s and then Tom

Rochford met him and sent him round to the subsheriff’s

for a lark. O God, I’ve a pain laughing. U. p: up. The

long fellow gave him an eye as good as a process and now

the bloody old lunatic is gone round to Green street to

look for a G man.

—When is long John going to hang that fellow in

Mountjoy? says Joe.

—Bergan, says Bob Doran, waking up. Is that Alf

Bergan?

—Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here,

Terry, give us a pony. That bloody old fool! Ten thousand

pounds. You should have seen long John’s eye. U. p ...

And he started laughing.

—Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. Is that

Bergan?

543 of 1305

—Hurry up, Terry boy, says Alf.

Terence O’Ryan heard him and straightway brought

him a crystal cup full of the foamy ebon ale which the

noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew

ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of

deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the

hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they

mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred

fire and cease not night or day from their toil, those

cunning brothers, lords of the vat.

Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the

manner born, that nectarous beverage and you offered the

crystal cup to him that thirsted, the soul of chivalry, in

beauty akin to the immortals.

But he, the young chief of the O’Bergan’s, could ill

brook to be outdone in generous deeds but gave therefor

with gracious gesture a testoon of costliest bronze.

Thereon embossed in excellent smithwork was seen the

image of a queen of regal port, scion of the house of

Brunswick, Victoria her name, Her Most Excellent

Majesty, by grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great

Britain and Ireland and of the British dominions beyond

the sea, queen, defender of the faith, Empress of India,

even she, who bore rule, a victress over many peoples, the

544 of 1305

wellbeloved, for they knew and loved her from the rising

of the sun to the going down thereof, the pale, the dark,

the ruddy and the ethiop.

—What’s that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen,

prowling up and down outside?

—What’s that? says Joe.

—Here you are, says Alf, chucking out the rhino.

Talking about hanging, I’ll show you something you

never saw. Hangmen’s letters. Look at here.

So he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes

out of his pocket.

—Are you codding? says I.

—Honest injun, says Alf. Read them.

So Joe took up the letters.

—Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran.

So I saw there was going to be a bit of a dust Bob’s a

queer chap when the porter’s up in him so says I just to

make talk:

—How’s Willy Murray those times, Alf?

—I don’t know, says Alf I saw him just now in Capel

street with Paddy Dignam. Only I was running after that

...

—You what? says Joe, throwing down the letters. With

who?

545 of 1305

—With Dignam, says Alf.

—Is it Paddy? says Joe.

—Yes, says Alf. Why?

—Don’t you know he’s dead? says Joe.

—Paddy Dignam dead! says Alf.

—Ay, says Joe.

—Sure I’m after seeing him not five minutes ago, says

Alf, as plain as a pikestaff.

—Who’s dead? says Bob Doran.

—You saw his ghost then, says Joe, God between us

and harm.

—What? says Alf. Good Christ, only five ... What? ...

And Willy Murray with him, the two of them there near

whatdoyoucallhim’s ... What? Dignam dead?

—What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who’s talking

about ...?

—Dead! says Alf. He’s no more dead than you are.

—Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying

him this morning anyhow.

—Paddy? says Alf.

—Ay, says Joe. He paid the debt of nature, God be

merciful to him.

—Good Christ! says Alf.

Begob he was what you might call flabbergasted.

546 of 1305

In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and

when prayer by tantras had been directed to the proper

quarter a faint but increasing luminosity of ruby light

became gradually visible, the apparition of the etheric

double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge of

jivic rays from the crown of the head and face.

Communication was effected through the pituitary body

and also by means of the orangefiery and scarlet rays

emanating from the sacral region and solar plexus.

Questioned by his earthname as to his whereabouts in the

heavenworld he stated that he was now on the path of pr l

ya or return but was still submitted to trial at the hands of

certain bloodthirsty entities on the lower astral levels. In

reply to a question as to his first sensations in the great

divide beyond he stated that previously he had seen as in a

glass darkly but that those who had passed over had

summit possibilities of atmic development opened up to

them. Interrogated as to whether life there resembled our

experience in the flesh he stated that he had heard from

more favoured beings now in the spirit that their abodes

were equipped with every modern home comfort such as

talafana, alavatar, hatakalda, wataklasat and that the highest

adepts were steeped in waves of volupcy of the very purest

nature. Having requested a quart of buttermilk this was

547 of 1305

brought and evidently afforded relief. Asked if he had any

message for the living he exhorted all who were still at the

wrong side of Maya to acknowledge the true path for it

was reported in devanic circles that Mars and Jupiter were

out for mischief on the eastern angle where the ram has

power. It was then queried whether there were any special

desires on the part of the defunct and the reply was: We

greet you, friends of earth, who are still in the body. Mind C. K.

doesn’t pile it on. It was ascertained that the reference was

to Mr Cornelius Kelleher, manager of Messrs H. J.

O’Neill’s popular funeral establishment, a personal friend

of the defunct, who had been responsible for the carrying

out of the interment arrangements. Before departing he

requested that it should be told to his dear son Patsy that

the other boot which he had been looking for was at

present under the commode in the return room and that

the pair should be sent to Cullen’s to be soled only as the

heels were still good. He stated that this had greatly

perturbed his peace of mind in the other region and

earnestly requested that his desire should be made known.

Assurances were given that the matter would be

attended to and it was intimated that this had given

satisfaction.

548 of 1305

He is gone from mortal haunts: O’Dignam, sun of our

morning. Fleet was his foot on the bracken: Patrick of the

beamy brow. Wail, Banba, with your wind: and wail, O

ocean, with your whirlwind.

—There he is again, says the citizen, staring out.

—Who? says I.

—Bloom, says he. He’s on point duty up and down

there for the last ten minutes.

And, begob, I saw his physog do a peep in and then

slidder off again.

Little Alf was knocked bawways. Faith, he was.

—Good Christ! says he. I could have sworn it was him.

And says Bob Doran, with the hat on the back of his

poll, lowest blackguard in Dublin when he’s under the

influence:

—Who said Christ is good?

—I beg your parsnips, says Alf.

—Is that a good Christ, says Bob Doran, to take away

poor little Willy Dignam?

—Ah, well, says Alf, trying to pass it off. He’s over all

his troubles.

But Bob Doran shouts out of him.

—He’s a bloody ruffian, I say, to take away poor little

Willy Dignam.

549 of 1305

Terry came down and tipped him the wink to keep

quiet, that they didn’t want that kind of talk in a

respectable licensed premises. And Bob Doran starts doing

the weeps about Paddy Dignam, true as you’re there.

—The finest man, says he, snivelling, the finest purest

character.

The tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his

bloody hat. Fitter for him go home to the little

sleepwalking bitch he married, Mooney, the bumbailiff’s

daughter, mother kept a kip in Hardwicke street, that used

to be stravaging about the landings Bantam Lyons told me

that was stopping there at two in the morning without a

stitch on her, exposing her person, open to all comers, fair

field and no favour.

—The noblest, the truest, says he. And he’s gone, poor

little Willy, poor little Paddy Dignam.

And mournful and with a heavy heart he bewept the

extinction of that beam of heaven.

Old Garryowen started growling again at Bloom that

was skeezing round the door.

—Come in, come on, he won’t eat you, says the

citizen.

So Bloom slopes in with his cod’s eye on the dog and

he asks Terry was Martin Cunningham there.

550 of 1305

—O, Christ M’Keown, says Joe, reading one of the

letters. Listen to this, will you?

And he starts reading out one.

7 Hunter Street, Liverpool.

To the High Sheriff of Dublin, Dublin.

Honoured sir i beg to offer my services in the abovementioned

painful case i hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the 12 of

Febuary 1900 and i hanged ...

—Show us, Joe, says I.

— ... private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit in

Pentonville prison and i was assistant when ...

—Jesus, says I.

— ... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith ...

The citizen made a grab at the letter.

—Hold hard, says Joe, i have a special nack of putting the

noose once in he can’t get out hoping to be favoured i remain,

honoured sir, my terms is five ginnees.

H. RUMBOLD,

MASTER BARBER.

—And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the

citizen.

—And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here,

says he, take them to hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello,

Bloom, says he, what will you have?

551 of 1305

So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying

he wouldn’t and he couldn’t and excuse him no offence

and all to that and then he said well he’d just take a cigar.

Gob, he’s a prudent member and no mistake.

—Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe.

And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a

mourning card with a black border round it.

—They’re all barbers, says he, from the black country

that would hang their own fathers for five quid down and

travelling expenses.

And he was telling us there’s two fellows waiting below

to pull his heels down when he gets the drop and choke

him properly and then they chop up the rope after and sell

the bits for a few bob a skull.

In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the

razor. Their deadly coil they grasp: yea, and therein they

lead to Erebus whatsoever wight hath done a deed of

blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so saith the Lord.

So they started talking about capital punishment and of

course Bloom comes out with the why and the wherefore

and all the codology of the business and the old dog

smelling him all the time I’m told those jewies does have a

sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about I

552 of 1305

don’t know what all deterrent effect and so forth and so

on.

—There’s one thing it hasn’t a deterrent effect on, says

Alf.

—What’s that? says Joe.

—The poor bugger’s tool that’s being hanged, says Alf.

—That so? says Joe.

—God’s truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head

warder that was in

Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady, the

invincible. He told me when they cut him down after the

drop it was standing up in their faces like a poker.

—Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone

said.

—That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It’s

only a natural phenomenon, don’t you see, because on

account of the ...

And then he starts with his jawbreakers about

phenomenon and science and this phenomenon and the

other phenomenon.

The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold

Blumenduft tendered medical evidence to the effect that

the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and

consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to

553 of 1305

the best approved tradition of medical science, be

calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a

violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres of the

genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of the

corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to

instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of

the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ

resulting in the phenomenon which has been

denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and

outwards philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per

diminutionem capitis.

So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink

of the word and he starts gassing out of him about the

invincibles and the old guard and the men of sixtyseven

and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Joe with him

about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and

transported for the cause by drumhead courtmartial and a

new Ireland and new this, that and the other. Talking

about new Ireland he ought to go and get a new dog so he

ought. Mangy ravenous brute sniffing and sneezing all

round the place and scratching his scabs. And round he

goes to Bob Doran that was standing Alf a half one

sucking up for what he could get. So of course Bob Doran

starts doing the bloody fool with him:

554 of 1305

—Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old

doggy! Give the paw here! Give us the paw!

Arrah, bloody end to the paw he’d paw and Alf trying

to keep him from tumbling off the bloody stool atop of

the bloody old dog and he talking all kinds of drivel about

training by kindness and thoroughbred dog and intelligent

dog: give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping a

few bits of old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacobs’ tin he

told Terry to bring. Gob, he golloped it down like old

boots and his tongue hanging out of him a yard long for

more. Near ate the tin and all, hungry bloody mongrel.

And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about

the point, the brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond

on Arbour Hill and Robert Emmet and die for your

country, the Tommy Moore touch about Sara Curran and

she’s far from the land. And Bloom, of course, with his

knockmedown cigar putting on swank with his lardy face.

Phenomenon! The fat heap he married is a nice old

phenomenon with a back on her like a ballalley. Time

they were stopping up in the City Arms pisser Burke told

me there was an old one there with a cracked

loodheramaun of a nephew and Bloom trying to get the

soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing bézique to

come in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not

555 of 1305

eating meat of a Friday because the old one was always

thumping her craw and taking the lout out for a walk.

And one time he led him the rounds of Dublin and, by

the holy farmer, he never cried crack till he brought him

home as drunk as a boiled owl and he said he did it to

teach him the evils of alcohol and by herrings, if the three

women didn’t near roast him, it’s a queer story, the old

one, Bloom’s wife and Mrs O’Dowd that kept the hotel.

Jesus, I had to laugh at pisser Burke taking them off

chewing the fat. And Bloom with his but don’t you see? and

but on the other hand. And sure, more be token, the lout

I’m told was in Power’s after, the blender’s, round in

Cope street going home footless in a cab five times in the

week after drinking his way through all the samples in the

bloody establishment. Phenomenon!

—The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up

his pintglass and glaring at Bloom.

—Ay, ay, says Joe.

—You don’t grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean

is ...

—Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn Fein amhain! The

friends we love are by our side and the foes we hate before

us.

556 of 1305

The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the

belfries far and near the funereal deathbell tolled

unceasingly while all around the gloomy precincts rolled

the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums

punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance.

The deafening claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of

lightning which lit up the ghastly scene testified that the

artillery of heaven had lent its supernatural pomp to the

already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain poured down

from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared

heads of the assembled multitude which numbered at the

lowest computation five hundred thousand persons. A

posse of Dublin Metropolitan police superintended by the

Chief Commissioner in person maintained order in the

vast throng for whom the York street brass and reed band

whiled away the intervening time by admirably rendering

on their blackdraped instruments the matchless melody

endeared to us from the cradle by Speranza’s plaintive

muse. Special quick excursion trains and upholstered

charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our

country cousins of whom there were large contingents.

Considerable amusement was caused by the favourite

Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The

Night before Larry was stretched in their usual mirth

557 of 1305

provoking fashion. Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring

trade with their broadsheets among lovers of the comedy

element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for real

Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their

hardearned pennies. The children of the Male and Female

Foundling Hospital who thronged the windows

overlooking the scene were delighted with this

unexpected addition to the day’s entertainment and a

word of praise is due to the Little Sisters of the Poor for

their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless and

motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. The

viceregal houseparty which included many wellknown

ladies was chaperoned by Their Excellencies to the most

favourable positions on the grandstand while the

picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends of the

Emerald Isle was accommodated on a tribune directly

opposite. The delegation, present in full force, consisted of

Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone (the

semiparalysed doyen of the party who had to be assisted to

his seat by the aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur

Pierrepaul Petitépatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire

Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von

Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Virága

Kisászony Putrápesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count

558 of 1305

Athanatos Karamelopulos, Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat

Lokum Effendi, Senor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y

Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria,

Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf

Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan

Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond Prhklstr

Kratchinabritchisitch, Borus Hupinkoff, Herr

Hurhausdirektorpresident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli,

Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumso

rdinaryprivatdocent- generalhistoryspecialprofessordoctor

Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without

exception expressed themselves in the strongest possible

heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless barbarity

which they had been called upon to witness. An animated

altercation (in which all took part) ensued among the F.

O. T. E. I. as to whether the eighth or the ninth of March

was the correct date of the birth of Ireland’s patron saint.

In the course of the argument cannonballs, scimitars,

boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers,

umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of

pig iron were resorted to and blows were freely

exchanged. The baby policeman, Constable MacFadden,

summoned by special courier from Booterstown, quickly

restored order and with lightning promptitude proposed

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the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally

honourable for both contending parties. The readywitted

ninefooter’s suggestion at once appealed to all and was

unanimously accepted. Constable MacFadden was heartily

congratulated by all the F.O.T.E.I., several of whom were

bleeding profusely. Commendatore Beninobenone having

been extricated from underneath the presidential armchair,

it was explained by his legal adviser Avvocato Pagamimi

that the various articles secreted in his thirtytwo pockets

had been abstracted by him during the affray from the

pockets of his junior colleagues in the hope of bringing

them to their senses. The objects (which included several

hundred ladies’ and gentlemen’s gold and silver watches)

were promptly restored to their rightful owners and

general harmony reigned supreme.

Quietly, unassumingly Rumbold stepped on to the

scaffold in faultless morning dress and wearing his favourite

flower, the Gladiolus Cruentus. He announced his presence

by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so many have

tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate—short, painstaking yet

withal so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the

worldrenowned headsman was greeted by a roar of

acclamation from the huge concourse, the viceregal ladies

waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the

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even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously

in a medley of cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla

kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah, amid which the ringing evviva of

the delegate of the land of song (a high double F recalling

those piercingly lovely notes with which the eunuch

Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was

easily distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o’clock.

The signal for prayer was then promptly given by

megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared, the

commendatore’s patriarchal sombrero, which has been in

the possession of his family since the revolution of Rienzi,

being removed by his medical adviser in attendance, Dr

Pippi. The learned prelate who administered the last

comforts of holy religion to the hero martyr when about

to pay the death penalty knelt in a most christian spirit in a

pool of rainwater, his cassock above his hoary head, and

offered up to the throne of grace fervent prayers of

supplication. Hand by the block stood the grim figure of

the executioner, his visage being concealed in a tengallon

pot with two circular perforated apertures through which

his eyes glowered furiously. As he awaited the fatal signal

he tested the edge of his horrible weapon by honing it

upon his brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid

succession a flock of sheep which had been provided by

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the admirers of his fell but necessary office. On a

handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged

the quartering knife, the various finely tempered

disembowelling appliances (specially supplied by the

worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round and

Sons, Sheffield), a terra cotta saucepan for the reception of

the duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc

when successfully extracted and two commodious

milkjugs destined to receive the most precious blood of

the most precious victim. The housesteward of the

amalgamated cats’ and dogs’ home was in attendance to

convey these vessels when replenished to that beneficent

institution. Quite an excellent repast consisting of rashers

and eggs, fried steak and onions, done to a nicety,

delicious hot breakfast rolls and invigorating tea had been

considerately provided by the authorities for the

consumption of the central figure of the tragedy who was

in capital spirits when prepared for death and evinced the

keenest interest in the proceedings from beginning to end

but he, with an abnegation rare in these our times, rose

nobly to the occasion and expressed the dying wish

(immediately acceded to) that the meal should be divided

in aliquot parts among the members of the sick and

indigent roomkeepers’ association as a token of his regard

562 of 1305

and esteem. The nec and non plus ultra of emotion were

reached when the blushing bride elect burst her way

through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung

herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about

to be launched into eternity for her sake. The hero folded

her willowy form in a loving embrace murmuring fondly

Sheila, my own. Encouraged by this use of her christian

name she kissed passionately all the various suitable areas of

his person which the decencies of prison garb permitted

her ardour to reach. She swore to him as they mingled the

salt streams of their tears that she would ever cherish his

memory, that she would never forget her hero boy who

went to his death with a song on his lips as if he were but

going to a hurling match in Clonturk park. She brought

back to his recollection the happy days of blissful

childhood together on the banks of Anna Liffey when

they had indulged in the innocent pastimes of the young

and, oblivious of the dreadful present, they both laughed

heartily, all the spectators, including the venerable pastor,

joining in the general merriment. That monster audience

simply rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome

with grief and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh

torrent of tears burst from their lachrymal ducts and the

vast concourse of people, touched to the inmost core,

563 of 1305

broke into heartrending sobs, not the least affected being

the aged prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of

the peace and genial giants of the royal Irish constabulary,

were making frank use of their handkerchiefs and it is safe

to say that there was not a dry eye in that record

assemblage. A most romantic incident occurred when a

handsome young Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry

towards the fair sex, stepped forward and, presenting his

visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree, solicited the

hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name

the day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the

audience was presented with a tasteful souvenir of the

occasion in the shape of a skull and crossbones brooch, a

timely and generous act which evoked a fresh outburst of

emotion: and when the gallant young Oxonian (the

bearer, by the way, of one of the most timehonoured

names in Albion’s history) placed on the finger of his

blushing fiancée an expensive engagement ring with

emeralds set in the form of a fourleaved shamrock the

excitement knew no bounds. Nay, even the ster

provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel Tomkin-Maxwell

ffrenchmullan Tomlinson, who presided on the sad

occasion, he who had blown a considerable number of

sepoys from the cannonmouth without flinching, could

564 of 1305

not now restrain his natural emotion. With his mailed

gauntlet he brushed away a furtive tear and was overheard,

by those privileged burghers who happened to be in his

immediate entourage, to murmur to himself in a faltering

undertone:

—God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding

tart. Blimey it makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it

does, when I sees her cause I thinks of my old mashtub

what’s waiting for me down Limehouse way.

So then the citizen begins talking about the Irish

language and the corporation meeting and all to that and

the shoneens that can’t speak their own language and Joe

chipping in because he stuck someone for a quid and

Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump

that he cadged off of Joe and talking about the Gaelic

league and the antitreating league and drink, the curse of

Ireland. Antitreating is about the size of it. Gob, he’d let

you pour all manner of drink down his throat till the Lord

would call him before you’d ever see the froth of his pint.

And one night I went in with a fellow into one of their

musical evenings, song and dance about she could get up

on a truss of hay she could my Maureen Lay and there was

a fellow with a Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing out

of him in Irish and a lot of colleen bawns going about

565 of 1305

with temperance beverages and selling medals and oranges

and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh

entertainment, don’t be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland

free. And then an old fellow starts blowing into his

bagpipes and all the gougers shuffling their feet to the tune

the old cow died of. And one or two sky pilots having an

eye around that there was no goings on with the females,

hitting below the belt.

So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the

tin was empty starts mousing around by Joe and me. I’d

train him by kindness, so I would, if he was my dog. Give

him a rousing fine kick now and again where it wouldn’t

blind him.

—Afraid he’ll bite you? says the citizen, jeering.

—No, says I. But he might take my leg for a lamppost.

So he calls the old dog over.

—What’s on you, Garry? says he.

Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him

in Irish and the old towser growling, letting on to answer,

like a duet in the opera. Such growling you never heard as

they let off between them. Someone that has nothing

better to do ought to write a letter pro bono publico to the

papers about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that.

Growling and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the

566 of 1305

drouth is in it and the hydrophobia dropping out of his

jaws.

All those who are interested in the spread of human

culture among the lower animals (and their name is

legion) should make a point of not missing the really

marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given by the famous

old Irish red setter wolfdog formerly known by the

sobriquet of Garryowen and recently rechristened by his

large circle of friends and acquaintances Owen Garry. The

exhibition, which is the result of years of training by

kindness and a carefully thoughtout dietary system,

comprises, among other achievements, the recitation of

verse. Our greatest living phonetic expert (wild horses

shall not drag it from us!) has left no stone unturned in his

efforts to delucidate and compare the verse recited and has

found it bears a striking resemblance (the italics are ours) to

the ranns of ancient Celtic bards. We are not speaking so

much of those delightful lovesongs with which the writer

who conceals his identity under the graceful pseudonym

of the Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the bookloving

world but rather (as a contributor D. O. C. points out in

an interesting communication published by an evening

contemporary) of the harsher and more personal note

which is found in the satirical effusions of the famous

567 of 1305

Raftery and of Donal MacConsidine to say nothing of a

more modern lyrist at present very much in the public

eye. We subjoin a specimen which has been rendered into

English by an eminent scholar whose name for the

moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we

believe that our readers will find the topical allusion rather

more than an indication. The metrical system of the

canine original, which recalls the intricate alliterative and

isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more

complicated but we believe our readers will agree that the

spirit has been well caught. Perhaps it should be added that

the effect is greatly increased if Owen’s verse be spoken

somewhat slowly and indistinctly in a tone suggestive of

suppressed rancour.

The curse of my curses

Seven days every day

And seven dry Thursdays

On you, Barney Kiernan,

Has no sup of water

To cool my courage,

And my guts red roaring

After Lowry’s lights.

568 of 1305

So he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and,

gob, you could hear him lapping it up a mile off. And Joe

asked him would he have another.

—I will, says he, a chara, to show there’s no ill feeling.

Gob, he’s not as green as he’s cabbagelooking. Arsing

around from one pub to another, leaving it to your own

honour, with old Giltrap’s dog and getting fed up by the

ratepayers and corporators. Entertainment for man and

beast. And says Joe:

—Could you make a hole in another pint?

—Could a swim duck? says I.

—Same again, Terry, says Joe. Are you sure you won’t

have anything in the way of liquid refreshment? says he.

—Thank you, no, says Bloom. As a matter of fact I just

wanted to meet Martin Cunningham, don’t you see, about

this insurance of poor Dignam’s. Martin asked me to go to

the house. You see, he, Dignam, I mean, didn’t serve any

notice of the assignment on the company at the time and

nominally under the act the mortgagee can’t recover on

the policy.

—Holy Wars, says Joe, laughing, that’s a good one if

old Shylock is landed. So the wife comes out top dog,

what?

569 of 1305

—Well, that’s a point, says Bloom, for the wife’s

admirers.

—Whose admirers? says Joe.

—The wife’s advisers, I mean, says Bloom.

Then he starts all confused mucking it up about

mortgagor under the act like the lord chancellor giving it

out on the bench and for the benefit of the wife and that a

trust is created but on the other hand that Dignam owed

Bridgeman the money and if now the wife or the widow

contested the mortgagee’s right till he near had the head of

me addled with his mortgagor under the act. He was

bloody safe he wasn’t run in himself under the act that

time as a rogue and vagabond only he had a friend in

court. Selling bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal

Hungarian privileged lottery. True as you’re there. O,

commend me to an israelite! Royal and privileged

Hungarian robbery.

So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to

tell Mrs Dignam he was sorry for her trouble and he was

very sorry about the funeral and to tell her that he said and

everyone who knew him said that there was never a truer,

a finer than poor little Willy that’s dead to tell her.

Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking Bloom’s hand

570 of 1305

doing the tragic to tell her that. Shake hands, brother.

You’re a rogue and I’m another.

—Let me, said he, so far presume upon our

acquaintance which, however slight it may appear if

judged by the standard of mere time, is founded, as I hope

and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem as to request

of you this favour. But, should I have overstepped the

limits of reserve let the sincerity of my feelings be the

excuse for my boldness.

—No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the

motives which actuate your conduct and I shall discharge

the office you entrust to me consoled by the reflection

that, though the errand be one of sorrow, this proof of

your confidence sweetens in some measure the bitterness

of the cup.

—Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The

goodness of your heart, I feel sure, will dictate to you

better than my inadequate words the expressions which

are most suitable to convey an emotion whose poignancy,

were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even

of speech.

And off with him and out trying to walk straight.

Boosed at five o’clock. Night he was near being lagged

only Paddy Leonard knew the bobby, 14A. Blind to the

571 of 1305

world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing time,

fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking

porter out of teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for

the shawls, Joseph Manuo, and talking against the Catholic

religion, and he serving mass in Adam and Eve’s when he

was young with his eyes shut, who wrote the new

testament, and the old testament, and hugging and

smugging. And the two shawls killed with the laughing,

picking his pockets, the bloody fool and he spilling the

porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching

laughing at one another. How is your testament? Have you

got an old testament? Only Paddy was passing there, I tell

you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his little

concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle

of the chapel with her patent boots on her, no less, and

her violets, nice as pie, doing the little lady. Jack Mooney’s

sister. And the old prostitute of a mother procuring rooms

to street couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told

him if he didn’t patch up the pot, Jesus, he’d kick the shite

out of him.

So Terry brought the three pints.

—Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen.

—Slan leat, says he.

—Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen.

572 of 1305

Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler

already. Want a small fortune to keep him in drinks.

—Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty,

Alf? says Joe.

—Friend of yours, says Alf.

—Nannan? says Joe. The mimber?

—I won’t mention any names, says Alf.

—I thought so, says Joe. I saw him up at that meeting

now with William Field, M. P., the cattle traders.

—Hairy Iopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano,

the darling of all countries and the idol of his own.

So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and

mouth disease and the cattle traders and taking action in

the matter and the citizen sending them all to the

rightabout and Bloom coming out with his sheepdip for

the scab and a hoose drench for coughing calves and the

guaranteed remedy for timber tongue. Because he was up

one time in a knacker’s yard. Walking about with his

book and pencil here’s my head and my heels are coming

till Joe Cuffe gave him the order of the boot for giving lip

to a grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your grandmother

how to milk ducks. Pisser Burke was telling me in the

hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears some times with

Mrs O’Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches of

573 of 1305

fat all over her. Couldn’t loosen her farting strings but old

cod’s eye was waltzing around her showing her how to do

it. What’s your programme today? Ay. Humane methods.

Because the poor animals suffer and experts say and the

best known remedy that doesn’t cause pain to the animal

and on the sore spot administer gently. Gob, he’d have a

soft hand under a hen.

Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen.

She lays eggs for us. When she lays her egg she is so glad.

Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Then comes good uncle Leo.

He puts his hand under black Liz and takes her fresh egg.

Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook.

—Anyhow, says Joe, Field and Nannetti are going over

tonight to London to ask about it on the floor of the

house of commons.

—Are you sure, says Bloom, the councillor is going? I

wanted to see him, as it happens.

—Well, he’s going off by the mailboat, says Joe,

tonight.

—That’s too bad, says Bloom. I wanted particularly.

Perhaps only Mr Field is going. I couldn’t phone. No.

You’re sure?

—Nannan’s going too, says Joe. The league told him to

ask a question tomorrow about the commissioner of police

574 of 1305

forbidding Irish games in the park. What do you think of

that, citizen? The Sluagh na h-Eireann.

Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat.): Arising out

of the question of my honourable friend, the member for

Shillelagh, may I ask the right honourable gentleman

whether the government has issued orders that these

animals shall be slaughtered though no medical evidence is

forthcoming as to their pathological condition?

Mr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con.): Honourable members

are already in possession of the evidence produced before a

committee of the whole house. I feel I cannot usefully add

anything to that. The answer to the honourable member’s

question is in the affirmative.

Mr Orelli O’Reilly (Montenotte. Nat.): Have similar

orders been issued for the slaughter of human animals who

dare to play Irish games in the Phoenix park?

Mr Allfours: The answer is in the negative.

Mr Cowe Conacre: Has the right honourable

gentleman’s famous Mitchelstown telegram inspired the

policy of gentlemen on the Treasury bench? (O! O!)

Mr Allfours: I must have notice of that question.

Mr Staylewit (Buncombe. Ind.): Don’t hesitate to

shoot.

(Ironical opposition cheers.)

575 of 1305

The speaker: Order! Order!

(The house rises. Cheers.)

—There’s the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic

sports revival. There he is sitting there. The man that got

away James Stephens. The champion of all Ireland at

putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best

throw, citizen?

—Na bacleis, says the citizen, letting on to be modest.

There was a time I was as good as the next fellow

anyhow.

—Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody

sight better.

—Is that really a fact? says Alf.

—Yes, says Bloom. That’s well known. Did you not

know that?

So off they started about Irish sports and shoneen games

the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the

stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once

again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his

say too about if a fellow had a rower’s heart violent

exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took

up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom:

Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? That’s a straw.

576 of 1305

Declare to my aunt he’d talk about it for an hour so he

would and talk steady.

A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient

hall of Brian O’ciarnain’s in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag, under

the auspices of Sluagh na h-Eireann, on the revival of

ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical

culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient

Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the

race. The venerable president of the noble order was in

the chair and the attendance was of large dimensions. After

an instructive discourse by the chairman, a magnificent

oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most

interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high

standard of excellence ensued as to the desirability of the

revivability of the ancient games and sports of our ancient

Panceltic forefathers. The wellknown and highly respected

worker in the cause of our old tongue, Mr Joseph

M’Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal for the

resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes,

practised morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as

calculated to revive the best traditions of manly strength

and prowess handed down to us from ancient ages. L.

Bloom, who met with a mixed reception of applause and

hisses, having espoused the negative the vocalist chairman

577 of 1305

brought the discussion to a close, in response to repeated

requests and hearty plaudits from all parts of a bumper

house, by a remarkably noteworthy rendering of the

immortal Thomas Osborne Davis’ evergreen verses

(happily too familiar to need recalling here) A nation once

again in the execution of which the veteran patriot

champion may be said without fear of contradiction to

have fairly excelled himself. The Irish Caruso-Garibaldi

was in superlative form and his stentorian notes were

heard to the greatest advantage in the timehonoured

anthem sung as only our citizen can sing it. His superb

highclass vocalism, which by its superquality greatly

enhanced his already international reputation, was

vociferously applauded by the large audience among

which were to be noticed many prominent members of

the clergy as well as representatives of the press and the bar

and the other learned professions. The proceedings then

terminated.

Amongst the clergy present were the very rev. William

Delany, S. J., L. L. D.; the rt rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D.;

the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, C. S. Sp.; the rev. T. Waters, C.

C.; the rev. John M. Ivers, P. P.; the rev. P. J. Cleary, O.

S. F.; the rev. L. J. Hickey, O. P.; the very rev. Fr.

Nicholas, O. S. F. C.; the very rev. B. Gorman, O. D. C.;

578 of 1305

the rev. T. Maher, S. J.; the very rev. James Murphy, S. J.;

the rev. John Lavery, V. F.; the very rev. William

Doherty, D. D.; the rev. Peter Fagan, O. M.; the rev. T.

Brangan, O. S. A.; the rev. J. Flavin, C. C.; the rev. M. A.

Hackett, C. C.; the rev. W. Hurley, C. C.; the rt rev. Mgr

M’Manus, V. G.; the rev. B. R. Slattery, O. M. I.; the

very rev. M. D. Scally, P. P.; the rev. F. T. Purcell, O. P.;

the very rev. Timothy canon Gorman, P. P.; the rev. J.

Flanagan, C. C. The laity included P. Fay, T. Quirke,

etc., etc.

—Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at

that Keogh-Bennett match?

—No, says Joe.

—I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it,

says Alf.

—Who? Blazes? says Joe.

And says Bloom:

—What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility

and training the eye.

—Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on

the beer to run up the odds and he swatting all the time.

—We know him, says the citizen. The traitor’s son.

We know what put English gold in his pocket.

—-True for you, says Joe.

579 of 1305

And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the

circulation of the blood, asking Alf:

—Now, don’t you think, Bergan?

—Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan

and Sayers was only a bloody fool to it. Handed him the

father and mother of a beating. See the little kipper not up

to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, he gave him

one last puck in the wind, Queensberry rules and all, made

him puke what he never ate.

It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and

Percy were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of

fifty sovereigns. Handicapped as he was by lack of

poundage, Dublin’s pet lamb made up for it by superlative

skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a

gruelling for both champions. The welterweight

sergeantmajor had tapped some lively claret in the

previous mixup during which Keogh had been

receivergeneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting

in some neat work on the pet’s nose, and Myler came on

looking groggy. The soldier got to business, leading off

with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator

retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of

Bennett’s jaw. The redcoat ducked but the Dubliner lifted

him with a left hook, the body punch being a fine one.

580 of 1305

The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy

and got his man under, the bout ending with the bulkier

man on the ropes, Myler punishing him. The Englishman,

whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where

he was liberally drenched with water and when the bell

went came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of

knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime. It was a fight to

a finish and the best man for it. The two fought like tigers

and excitement ran fever high. The referee twice

cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet was

tricky and his footwork a treat to watch. After a brisk

exchange of courtesies during which a smart upper cut of

the military man brought blood freely from his opponent’s

mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and

landed a terrific left to Battling Bennett’s stomach, flooring

him flat. It was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense

expectation the Portobello bruiser was being counted out

when Bennett’s second Ole Pfotts Wettstein threw in the

towel and the Santry boy was declared victor to the

frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the

ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight.

—He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I

hear he’s running a concert tour now up in the north.

—He is, says Joe. Isn’t he?

581 of 1305

—Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That’s quite true. Yes, a

kind of summer tour, you see. Just a holiday.

—Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn’t she? says Joe.

—My wife? says Bloom. She’s singing, yes. I think it

will be a success too.

He’s an excellent man to organise. Excellent.

Hoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the

milk in the cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal’s

chest. Blazes doing the tootle on the flute. Concert tour.

Dirty Dan the dodger’s son off Island bridge that sold the

same horses twice over to the government to fight the

Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water

rate, Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan.

You whatwhat? That’s the bucko that’ll organise her, take

my tip. ‘Twixt me and you Caddareesh.

Pride of Calpe’s rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter

of Tweedy. There grew she to peerless beauty where

loquat and almond scent the air. The gardens of Alameda

knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed. The

chaste spouse of Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful

bosoms.

And lo, there entered one of the clan of the

O’Molloy’s, a comely hero of white face yet withal

somewhat ruddy, his majesty’s counsel learned in the law,

582 of 1305

and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of

Lambert.

—Hello, Ned.

—Hello, Alf.

—Hello, Jack.

—Hello, Joe.

—God save you, says the citizen.

—Save you kindly, says J. J. What’ll it be, Ned?

—Half one, says Ned.

So J. J. ordered the drinks.

—Were you round at the court? says Joe.

—Yes, says J. J. He’ll square that, Ned, says he.

—Hope so, says Ned.

Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the

grand jury list and the other give him a leg over the stile.

With his name in Stubbs’s. Playing cards, hobnobbing

with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye, adrinking

fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders.

Pawning his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street

where no-one would know him in the private office

when I was there with Pisser releasing his boots out of the

pop. What’s your name, sir? Dunne, says he. Ay, and done

says I. Gob, he’ll come home by weeping cross one of

those days, I’m thinking.

583 of 1305

—Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there?

says Alf. U. p: up.

—Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective.

—Ay, says Ned. And he wanted right go wrong to

address the court only Corny Kelleher got round him

telling him to get the handwriting examined first.

—Ten thousand pounds, says Alf, laughing. God, I’d

give anything to hear him before a judge and jury.

—Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole

truth and nothing but the truth, so help you Jimmy

Johnson.

—Me? says Alf. Don’t cast your nasturtiums on my

character.

—Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be

taken down in evidence against you.

—Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies

that he is not compos mentis. U. p: up.

—Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know

that he’s balmy? Look at his head. Do you know that

some mornings he has to get his hat on with a shoehorn.

—Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to

an indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law.

—Ha ha, Alf, says Joe.

584 of 1305

—Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I

mean his wife.

—Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman

marries a half and half.

—How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he ...

—Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that’s

neither fish nor flesh.

—Nor good red herring, says Joe.

—That what’s I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if

you know what that is.

Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom

explaining he meant on account of it being cruel for the

wife having to go round after the old stuttering fool.

Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody

povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out

tripping him, bringing down the rain. And she with her

nose cockahoop after she married him because a cousin of

his old fellow’s was pewopener to the pope. Picture of

him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney’s moustaches,

the signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal

Zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to

Moss street. And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair

back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and he

585 of 1305

covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to

the world.

—And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It

was held to be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase

Sadgrove v. Hole. In my opinion an action might lie.

Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion?

Let us drink our pints in peace. Gob, we won’t be let even

do that much itself.

—Well, good health, Jack, says Ned.

—Good health, Ned, says J. J.

—-There he is again, says Joe.

—Where? says Alf.

And begob there he was passing the door with his

books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny

Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past,

talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a

secondhand coffin.

—How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.

—Remanded, says J. J.

One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the

name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro,

put an ad in the papers saying he’d give a passage to

Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in

the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney.

586 of 1305

What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the

county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling

us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something

weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing

by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid.

—Who tried the case? says Joe.

—Recorder, says Ned.

—Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up

to the two eyes.

—Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of

woe about arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of

kids and, faith, he’ll dissolve in tears on the bench.

—Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn’t

clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little

Gumley that’s minding stones, for the corporation there

near Butt bridge.

And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to

cry:

—A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking

man! How many children? Ten, did you say?

—Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid.

—And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave

the court immediately, sir. No, sir, I’ll make no order for

payment. How dare you, sir, come up before me and ask

587 of 1305

me to make an order! A poor hardworking industrious

man! I dismiss the case.

And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the

oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of

the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies,

the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to

pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of

law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber,

gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a

jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the

claim of the first chargeant upon the property in the

matter of the will propounded and final testamentary

disposition in re the real and personal estate of the late

lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus

Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another.

And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir

Frederick the Falconer. And he sat him there about the

hour of five o’clock to administer the law of the brehons

at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden

in and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat

with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar,

for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Patrick and of the

tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the tribe of

Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus

588 of 1305

and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of

the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the

tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all

twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by

Him who died on rood that they should well and truly try

and true deliverance make in the issue joined between

their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar

and true verdict give according to the evidence so help

them God and kiss the book. And they rose in their seats,

those twelve of Iar, and they swore by the name of Him

Who is from everlasting that they would do His

rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led

forth from their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds

of justice had apprehended in consequence of information

received. And they shackled him hand and foot and would

take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge

against him for he was a malefactor.

—Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over

here to Ireland filling the country with bugs.

So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking

with Joe, telling him he needn’t trouble about that little

matter till the first but if he would just say a word to Mr

Crawford. And so Joe swore high and holy by this and by

that he’d do the devil and all.

589 of 1305

—Because, you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement

you must have repetition. That’s the whole secret.

—Rely on me, says Joe.

—Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor

of Ireland. We want no more strangers in our house.

—O, I’m sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom.

It’s just that Keyes, you see.

—Consider that done, says Joe.

—Very kind of you, says Bloom.

—The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We

let them come in. We brought them in. The adulteress

and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers here.

—Decree nisi, says J. J.

And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested

in nothing, a spider’s web in the corner behind the barrel,

and the citizen scowling after him and the old dog at his

feet looking up to know who to bite and when.

—A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that’s what’s

the cause of all our misfortunes.

—And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the

Police Gazette with Terry on the counter, in all her

warpaint.

—Give us a squint at her, says I.

590 of 1305

And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures

Terry borrows off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging

your private parts. Misconduct of society belle. Norman

W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty but

faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor. Belle in her bloomers

misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling for her

tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his

peashooter just in time to be late after she doing the trick

of the loop with officer Taylor.

—O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is!

—There’s hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of

corned beef off of that one, what?

So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan

with him with a face on him as long as a late breakfast.

—Well, says the citizen, what’s the latest from the

scene of action? What did those tinkers in the city hall at

their caucus meeting decide about the Irish language?

O’Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made

obeisance to the puissant and high and mighty chief of all

Erin and did him to wit of that which had befallen, how

that the grave elders of the most obedient city, second of

the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after

due prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had

taken solemn counsel whereby they might, if so be it

591 of 1305

might be, bring once more into honour among mortal

men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael.

—It’s on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the

bloody brutal Sassenachs and their patois.

So J. J. puts in a word, doing the toff about one story

was good till you heard another and blinking facts and the

Nelson policy, putting your blind eye to the telescope and

drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a nation, and

Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration

and their colonies and their civilisation.

—Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To

hell with them! The curse of a goodfornothing God light

sideways on the bloody thicklugged sons of whores’ gets!

No music and no art and no literature worthy of the

name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us.

Tonguetied sons of bastards’ ghosts.

—The European family, says J. J. ...

—They’re not European, says the citizen. I was in

Europe with Kevin Egan of Paris. You wouldn’t see a

trace of them or their language anywhere in Europe

except in a cabinet d’aisance.

And says John Wyse:

—Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.

And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo:

592 of 1305

—Conspuez les Anglais! Perfide Albion!

He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny

strengthy hands the medher of dark strong foamy ale and,

uttering his tribal slogan Lamh Dearg Abu, he drank to the

undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes,

rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as

the deathless gods.

—What’s up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look

like a fellow that had lost a bob and found a tanner.

—Gold cup, says he.

—Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry.

—Throwaway, says he, at twenty to one. A rank

outsider. And the rest nowhere.

—And Bass’s mare? says Terry.

—Still running, says he. We’re all in a cart. Boylan

plunged two quid on my tip Sceptre for himself and a lady

friend.

—I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on Zinfandel

that Mr Flynn gave me. Lord Howard de Walden’s.

—Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an

outhouse. Throwaway, says he. Takes the biscuit, and

talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name is Sceptre.

So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see

if there was anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur

593 of 1305

after him backing his luck with his mangy snout up. Old

Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard.

—Not there, my child, says he.

—Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She’d have won the

money only for the other dog.

And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history

with Bloom sticking in an odd word.

—Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in

others’ eyes but they can’t see the beam in their own.

—Raimeis, says the citizen. There’s no-one as blind as

the fellow that won’t see, if you know what that means.

Where are our missing twenty millions of Irish should be

here today instead of four, our lost tribes? And our

potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world! And

our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal

and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim

and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint

glass down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin

that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk

and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the

Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the

whole wide world. Where are the Greek merchants that

came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now

grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian

594 of 1305

purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read

Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine,

peltries, Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second

to none, our farfamed horses even today, the Irish hobbies,

with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties

for the right to fish in our waters. What do the

yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our

ruined hearths? And the beds of the Barrow and Shannon

they won’t deepen with millions of acres of marsh and bog

to make us all die of consumption?

—As treeless as Portugal we’ll be soon, says John Wyse,

or Heligoland with its one tree if something is not done to

reafforest the land. Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer

family are going fast. I was reading a report of lord

Castletown’s ...

—Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway

and the chieftain elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and

an acre of foliage. Save the trees of Ireland for the future

men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O.

—Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan.

The fashionable international world attended EN

MASSE this afternoon at the wedding of the chevalier

Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the Irish

National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley.

595 of 1305

Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll

Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss

Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan

Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss Virginia Creeper,

Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche

Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss

Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace

Poplar, Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the

Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Mrs

Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs Gloriana

Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and

Mrs Norma Holyoake of Oakholme Regis graced the

ceremony by their presence. The bride who was given

away by her father, the M’Conifer of the Glands, looked

exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green

mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming

grey, sashed with a yoke of broad emerald and finished

with a triple flounce of darkerhued fringe, the scheme

being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn

bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and

Miss Spruce Conifer, sisters of the bride, wore very

becoming costumes in the same tone, a dainty motif of

plume rose being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and

repeated capriciously in the jadegreen toques in the form

596 of 1305

of heron feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor

presided at the organ with his wellknown ability and, in

addition to the prescribed numbers of the nuptial mass,

played a new and striking arrangement of Woodman, spare

that tree at the conclusion of the service. On leaving the

church of Saint Fiacre in Horto after the papal blessing the

happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of

hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod,

hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and

Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon

in the Black Forest.

—And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We

had our trade with Spain and the French and with the

Flemings before those mongrels were pupped, Spanish ale

in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway.

—And will again, says Joe.

—And with the help of the holy mother of God we

will again, says the citizen, clapping his thigh. our harbours

that are empty will be full again, Queenstown, Kinsale,

Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom of Kerry,

Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with

a fleet of masts of the Galway Lynches and the Cavan

O’Reillys and the O’Kennedys of Dublin when the earl of

Desmond could make a treaty with the emperor Charles

597 of 1305

the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when the first

Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own

flag to the fore, none of your Henry Tudor’s harps, no,

the oldest flag afloat, the flag of the province of Desmond

and Thomond, three crowns on a blue field, the three

sons of Milesius.

And he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All

wind and piss like a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have

long horns. As much as his bloody life is worth to go

down and address his tall talk to the assembled multitude

in Shanagolden where he daren’t show his nose with the

Molly Maguires looking for him to let daylight through

him for grabbing the holding of an evicted tenant.

—Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you

have?

—An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate

the occasion.

—Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up.

Terry! Are you asleep?

—Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of

Allsop. Right, sir.

Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for

spicy bits instead of attending to the general public.

Picture of a butting match, trying to crack their bloody

598 of 1305

skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down

like a bull at a gate. And another one: Black Beast Burned in

Omaha, Ga. A lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and

they firing at a Sambo strung up in a tree with his tongue

out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought to drown

him in the sea after and electrocute and crucify him to

make sure of their job.

—But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that

keeps our foes at bay?

—I’ll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon

earth it is. Read the revelations that’s going on in the

papers about flogging on the training ships at Portsmouth.

A fellow writes that calls himself Disgusted One.

So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and

about the crew of tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn

up in cocked hats and the parson with his protestant bible

to witness punishment and a young lad brought out,

howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend

of a gun.

—A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that

old ruffian sir John Beresford called it but the modern

God’s Englishman calls it caning on the breech.

And says John Wyse:

599 of 1305

—’Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in

the observance.

Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along

with a long cane and he draws out and he flogs the bloody

backside off of the poor lad till he yells meila murder.

—That’s your glorious British navy, says the citizen,

that bosses the earth.

The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only

hereditary chamber on the face of God’s earth and their

land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs and cottonball

barons. That’s the great empire they boast about of

drudges and whipped serfs.

—On which the sun never rises, says Joe.

—And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe

it. The unfortunate yahoos believe it.

They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of

hell upon earth, and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who

was conceived of unholy boast, born of the fighting navy,

suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, flayed and

curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose

again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his

beamend till further orders whence he shall come to

drudge for a living and be paid.

600 of 1305

—But, says Bloom, isn’t discipline the same

everywhere. I mean wouldn’t it be the same here if you

put force against force?

Didn’t I tell you? As true as I’m drinking this porter if

he was at his last gasp he’d try to downface you that dying

was living.

—We’ll put force against force, says the citizen. We

have our greater Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven

out of house and home in the black 47. Their mudcabins

and their shielings by the roadside were laid low by the

batteringram and the Times rubbed its hands and told the

whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in

Ireland as redskins in America. Even the Grand Turk sent

us his piastres. But the Sassenach tried to starve the nation

at home while the land was full of crops that the British

hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they drove

out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died

in the coffinships. But those that came to the land of the

free remember the land of bondage. And they will come

again and with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of

Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan.

—Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was ...

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—We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says

Ned. Since the poor old woman told us that the French

were on the sea and landed at Killala.

—Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts

that reneged us against the Williamites and they betrayed

us. Remember Limerick and the broken treatystone. We

gave our best blood to France and Spain, the wild geese.

Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O’Donnell, duke of

Tetuan in Spain, and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was

fieldmarshal to Maria Teresa. But what did we ever get for

it?

—The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing masters!

Do you know what it is? They were never worth a roasted

fart to Ireland. Aren’t they trying to make an Entente

cordiale now at Tay Pay’s dinnerparty with perfidious

Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they always were.

—Conspuez les Français, says Lenehan, nobbling his

beer.

—And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says

Joe, haven’t we had enough of those sausageeating bastards

on the throne from George the elector down to the

German lad and the flatulent old bitch that’s dead?

Jesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that

about the old one with the winkers on her, blind drunk in

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her royal palace every night of God, old Vic, with her

jorum of mountain dew and her coachman carting her up

body and bones to roll into bed and she pulling him by

the whiskers and singing him old bits of songs about Ehren

on the Rhine and come where the boose is cheaper.

—Well, says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker

now.

—Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There’s a bloody

sight more pox than pax about that boyo. Edward

Guelph-Wettin!

—And what do you think, says Joe, of the holy boys,

the priests and bishops of Ireland doing up his room in

Maynooth in His Satanic Majesty’s racing colours and

sticking up pictures of all the horses his jockeys rode. The

earl of Dublin, no less.

—They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode

himself, says little Alf.

And says J. J.:

—Considerations of space influenced their lordships’

decision.

—Will you try another, citizen? says Joe.

—Yes, sir, says he. I will.

—You? says Joe.

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—Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow

never grow less.

—Repeat that dose, says Joe.

Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he

quite excited with his dunducketymudcoloured mug on

him and his old plumeyes rolling about.

—Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is

full of it. Perpetuating national hatred among nations.

—But do you know what a nation means? says John

Wyse.

—Yes, says Bloom.

—What is it? says John Wyse.

—A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people

living in the same place.

—By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that’s so I’m a

nation for I’m living in the same place for the past five

years.

So of course everyone had the laugh at Bloom and says

he, trying to muck out of it:

—Or also living in different places.

—That covers my case, says Joe.

—What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen.

—Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.

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The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his

gullet and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right

in the corner.

—After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his

handkerchief to swab himself dry.

—Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your

right hand and repeat after me the following words.

The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient

Irish facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and

Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of the Book of

Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth

prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary

beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one

can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn

presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical

symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American puma (a far

nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in

passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from

Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the emunctory

field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs

and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones,

are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as

when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic

fantasy long long ago in the time of the Barmecides.

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Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of

Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve

Pins, Ireland’s Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh

Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and

Company (Limited), Lough Neagh’s banks, the vale of

Ovoca, Isolde’s tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick

Dun’s hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Lynch’s

castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at

Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids,

Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury’s

Hotel, S. Patrick’s Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth

college refectory, Curley’s hole, the three birthplaces of

the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog

of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal’s Cave—all

these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered

more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have

passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time.

—Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which?

—That’s mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead

policeman.

—And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated

and persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very

instant.

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Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old

cigar.

—Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted.

Taking what belongs to us by right. At this very moment,

says he, putting up his fist, sold by auction in Morocco

like slaves or cattle.

—Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the

citizen.

—I’m talking about injustice, says Bloom.

—Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with

force like men.

That’s an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed

bullet. Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a

gun. Gob, he’d adorn a sweepingbrush, so he would, if he

only had a nurse’s apron on him. And then he collapses all

of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a

wet rag.

—But it’s no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all

that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred.

And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that

that is really life.

—What? says Alf.

—Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I

must go now, says he to John Wyse. Just round to the

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court a moment to see if Martin is there. If he comes just

say I’ll be back in a second. Just a moment.

Who’s hindering you? And off he pops like greased

lightning.

—A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen.

Universal love.

—Well, says John Wyse. Isn’t that what we’re told.

Love your neighbour.

—That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is

his motto. Love, moya! He’s a nice pattern of a Romeo

and Juliet.

Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist.

Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves

the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentleman.

Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the

elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle

with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the

turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a

lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty

the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor.

You love a certain person. And this person loves that

other person because everybody loves somebody but God

loves everybody.

608 of 1305

—Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song.

More power, citizen.

—Hurrah, there, says Joe.

—The blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you,

says the citizen.

And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle.

—We know those canters, says he, preaching and

picking your pocket. What about sanctimonious

Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and

children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God

is love pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible!

Did you read that skit in the United Irishman today about

that Zulu chief that’s visiting England?

—What’s that? says Joe.

So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers

and he starts reading out:

—A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of

Manchester was presented yesterday to His Majesty the

Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in Waiting, Lord Walkup

of Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt

thanks of British traders for the facilities afforded them in

his dominions. The delegation partook of luncheon at the

conclusion of which the dusky potentate, in the course of

a happy speech, freely translated by the British chaplain,

609 of 1305

the reverend Ananias Praisegod Barebones, tendered his

best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised the cordial

relations existing between Abeakuta and the British

empire, stating that he treasured as one of his dearest

possessions an illuminated bible, the volume of the word

of God and the secret of England’s greatness, graciously

presented to him by the white chief woman, the great

squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from the august

hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a

lovingcup of firstshot usquebaugh to the toast Black and

White from the skull of his immediate predecessor in the

dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty Warts, after

which he visited the chief factory of Cottonopolis and

signed his mark in the visitors’ book, subsequently

executing a charming old Abeakutic wardance, in the

course of which he swallowed several knives and forks,

amid hilarious applause from the girl hands.

—Widow woman, says Ned. I wouldn’t doubt her.

Wonder did he put that bible to the same use as I would.

—Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in

that fruitful land the broadleaved mango flourished

exceedingly.

—Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse.

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—No, says the citizen. It’s not signed Shanganagh. It’s

only initialled: P.

—And a very good initial too, says Joe.

—That’s how it’s worked, says the citizen. Trade

follows the flag.

—Well, says J. J., if they’re any worse than those

Belgians in the Congo Free State they must be bad. Did

you read that report by a man what’s this his name is?

—Casement, says the citizen. He’s an Irishman.

—Yes, that’s the man, says J. J. Raping the women and

girls and flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all

the red rubber they can out of them.

—I know where he’s gone, says Lenehan, cracking his

fingers.

—Who? says I.

—Bloom, says he. The courthouse is a blind. He had a

few bob on Throwaway and he’s gone to gather in the

shekels.

—Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never

backed a horse in anger in his life?

—That’s where he’s gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam

Lyons going to back that horse only I put him off it and

he told me Bloom gave him the tip. Bet you what you

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like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He’s the only

man in Dublin has it. A dark horse.

—He’s a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe.

—Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out.

—There you are, says Terry.

Goodbye Ireland I’m going to Gort. So I just went

round the back of the yard to pumpship and begob

(hundred shillings to five) while I was letting off my

(Throwaway twenty to) letting off my load gob says I to

myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe

and one in Slattery’s off) in his mind to get off the mark to

(hundred shillings is five quid) and when they were in the

(dark horse) pisser Burke was telling me card party and

letting on the child was sick (gob, must have done about a

gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube she’s

better or she’s (ow!) all a plan so he could vamoose with the

pool if he won or (Jesus, full up I was) trading without a

licence (ow!) Ireland my nation says he (hoik! phthook!)

never be up to those bloody (there’s the last of it)

Jerusalem (ah!) cuckoos.

So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong,

John Wyse saying it was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn

Fein to Griffith to put in his paper all kinds of

jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off

612 of 1305

of the government and appointing consuls all over the

world to walk about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter

to pay Paul. Gob, that puts the bloody kybosh on it if old

sloppy eyes is mucking up the show. Give us a bloody

chance. God save Ireland from the likes of that bloody

mouseabout. Mr Bloom with his argol bargol. And his old

fellow before him perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem

Bloom, the robbing bagman, that poisoned himself with

the prussic acid after he swamping the country with his

baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy

terms. Any amount of money advanced on note of hand.

Distance no object. No security. Gob, he’s like Lanty

MacHale’s goat that’d go a piece of the road with every

one.

—Well, it’s a fact, says John Wyse. And there’s the man

now that’ll tell you all about it, Martin Cunningham.

Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it

and Jack Power with him and a fellow named Crofter or

Crofton, pensioner out of the collector general’s, an

orangeman Blackburn does have on the registration and he

drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting around the

country at the king’s expense.

Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted

from their palfreys.

613 of 1305

—Ho, varlet! cried he, who by his mien seemed the

leader of the party. Saucy knave! To us!

So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon

the open lattice.

Mine host came forth at the summons, girding him

with his tabard.

—Give you good den, my masters, said he with an

obsequious bow.

—Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked.

Look to our steeds. And for ourselves give us of your best

for ifaith we need it.

—Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor

house has but a bare larder. I know not what to offer your

lordships.

—How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a

man of pleasant countenance, So servest thou the king’s

messengers, master Taptun?

An instantaneous change overspread the landlord’s

visage.

—Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you

be the king’s messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you

shall not want for aught. The king’s friends (God bless His

Majesty!) shall not go afasting in my house I warrant me.

614 of 1305

—Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken,

a lusty trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us?

Mine host bowed again as he made answer:

—What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty,

some collops of venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with

crisp hog’s bacon, a boar’s head with pistachios, a bason of

jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon of old Rhenish?

—Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well.

Pistachios!

—Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor

house and a bare larder, quotha! ‘Tis a merry rogue.

So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom.

—Where is he? says Lenehan. Defrauding widows and

orphans.

—Isn’t that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was telling

the citizen about Bloom and the Sinn Fein?

—That’s so, says Martin. Or so they allege.

—Who made those allegations? says Alf.

—I, says Joe. I’m the alligator.

—And after all, says John Wyse, why can’t a jew love

his country like the next fellow?

—Why not? says J. J., when he’s quite sure which

country it is.

615 of 1305

—Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a

swaddler or what the hell is he? says Ned. Or who is he?

No offence, Crofton.

—Who is Junius? says J. J.

—We don’t want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or

presbyterian.

—He’s a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in

Hungary and it was he drew up all the plans according to

the Hungarian system. We know that in the castle.

—Isn’t he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack

Power.

—Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name

was Virag, the father’s name that poisoned himself. He

changed it by deedpoll, the father did.

—That’s the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen.

Island of saints and sages!

—Well, they’re still waiting for their redeemer, says

Martin. For that matter so are we.

—Yes, says J. J., and every male that’s born they think

it may be their Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of

excitement, I believe, till he knows if he’s a father or a

mother.

—Expecting every moment will be his next, says

Lenehan.

616 of 1305

—O, by God, says Ned, you should have seen Bloom

before that son of his that died was born. I met him one

day in the south city markets buying a tin of Neave’s food

six weeks before the wife was delivered.

—En ventre sa mère, says J. J.

—Do you call that a man? says the citizen.

—I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Joe.

—Well, there were two children born anyhow, says

Jack Power.

—And who does he suspect? says the citizen.

Gob, there’s many a true word spoken in jest. One of

those mixed middlings he is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser

was telling me once a month with headache like a totty

with her courses. Do you know what I’m telling you? It’d

be an act of God to take a hold of a fellow the like of that

and throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable homicide, so

it would. Then sloping off with his five quid without

putting up a pint of stuff like a man. Give us your blessing.

Not as much as would blind your eye.

—Charity to the neighbour, says Martin. But where is

he? We can’t wait.

—A wolf in sheep’s clothing, says the citizen. That’s

what he is. Virag from Hungary! Ahasuerus I call him.

Cursed by God.

617 of 1305

—Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned.

—Only one, says Martin. We must be quick. J. J. and

S.

—You, Jack? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry.

—Saint Patrick would want to land again at Ballykinlar

and convert us, says the citizen, after allowing things like

that to contaminate our shores.

—Well, says Martin, rapping for his glass. God bless all

here is my prayer.

—Amen, says the citizen.

—And I’m sure He will, says Joe.

And at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a

crucifer with acolytes, thurifers, boatbearers, readers,

ostiarii, deacons and subdeacons, the blessed company

drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors and guardians and

monks and friars: the monks of Benedict of Spoleto,

Carthusians and Camaldolesi, Cistercians and Olivetans,

Oratorians and Vallombrosans, and the friars of Augustine,

Brigittines, Premonstratensians, Servi, Trinitarians, and the

children of Peter Nolasco: and therewith from Carmel

mount the children of Elijah prophet led by Albert bishop

and by Teresa of Avila, calced and other: and friars, brown

and grey, sons of poor Francis, capuchins, cordeliers,

minimes and observants and the daughters of Clara: and

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the sons of Dominic, the friars preachers, and the sons of

Vincent: and the monks of S. Wolstan: and Ignatius his

children: and the confraternity of the christian brothers led

by the reverend brother Edmund Ignatius Rice. And after

came all saints and martyrs, virgins and confessors: S. Cyr

and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the Less and S. Phocas

of Sinope and S. Julian Hospitator and S. Felix de

Cantalice and S. Simon Stylites and S. Stephen

Protomartyr and S. John of God and S. Ferreol and S.

Leugarde and S. Theodotus and S. Vulmar and S. Richard

and S. Vincent de Paul and S. Martin of Todi and S.

Martin of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S. Denis

and S. Cornelius and S. Leopold and S. Bernard and S.

Terence and S. Edward and S. Owen Caniculus and S.

Anonymous and S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and

S. Homonymous and S. Paronymous and S. Synonymous

and S. Laurence O’Toole and S. James of Dingle and

Compostella and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S.

Celestine and S. Colman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and

S. Frigidian and S. Senan and S. Fachtna and S.

Columbanus and S. Gall and S. Fursey and S. Fintan and

S. Fiacre and S. John Nepomuc and S. Thomas Aquinas

and S. Ives of Brittany and S. Michan and S. Herman-

Joseph and the three patrons of holy youth S. Aloysius

619 of 1305

Gonzaga and S. Stanislaus Kostka and S. John Berchmans

and the saints Gervasius, Servasius and Bonifacius and S.

Bride and S. Kieran and S. Canice of Kilkenny and S.

Jarlath of Tuam and S. Finbarr and S. Pappin of Ballymun

and Brother Aloysius Pacificus and Brother Louis

Bellicosus and the saints Rose of Lima and of Viterbo and

S. Martha of Bethany and S. Mary of Egypt and S. Lucy

and S. Brigid and S. Attracta and S. Dympna and S. Ita

and S. Marion Calpensis and the Blessed Sister Teresa of

the Child Jesus and S. Barbara and S. Scholastica and S.

Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. And all came with

nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps

and swords and olive crowns, in robes whereon were

woven the blessed symbols of their efficacies, inkhorns,

arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes, trees, bridges, babes in

a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies,

buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives,

soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells,

crutches, forceps, stags’ horns, watertight boots, hawks,

millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills,

unicorns. And as they wended their way by Nelson’s

Pillar, Henry street, Mary street, Capel street, Little Britain

street chanting the introit in Epiphania Domini which

beginneth Surge, illuminare and thereafter most sweetly the

620 of 1305

gradual Omnes which saith de Saba venient they did divers

wonders such as casting out devils, raising the dead to life,

multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the blind,

discovering various articles which had been mislaid,

interpreting and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and

prophesying. And last, beneath a canopy of cloth of gold

came the reverend Father O’Flynn attended by Malachi

and Patrick. And when the good fathers had reached the

appointed place, the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co,

limited, 8, 9 and 10 little Britain street, wholesale grocers,

wine and brandy shippers, licensed fo the sale of beer,

wine and spirits for consumption on the premises, the

celebrant blessed the house and censed the mullioned

windows and the groynes and the vaults and the arrises

and the capitals and the pediments and the cornices and

the engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas and

sprinkled the lintels thereof with blessed water and prayed

that God might bless that house as he had blessed the

house of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and make the

angels of His light to inhabit therein. And entering he

blessed the viands and the beverages and the company of

all the blessed answered his prayers.

—Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.

—Qui fecit coelum et terram.

621 of 1305

—Dominus vobiscum.

—Et cum spiritu tuo.

And he laid his hands upon that he blessed and gave

thanks and he prayed and they all with him prayed:

—Deus, cuius verbo sanctificantur omnia, benedictionem tuam

effunde super creaturas istas: et praesta ut quisquis eis secundum

legem et voluntatem Tuam cum gratiarum actione usus fuerit per

invocationem sanctissimi nominis Tui corporis sanitatem et

animae tutelam Te auctore percipiat per Christum Dominum

nostrum.

—And so say all of us, says Jack.

—Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or

Crawford.

—Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And

butter for fish.

I was just looking around to see who the happy

thought would strike when be damned but in he comes

again letting on to be in a hell of a hurry.

—I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking

for you. I hope I’m not ...

—No, says Martin, we’re ready.

Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down

with gold and silver. Mean bloody scut. Stand us a drink

622 of 1305

itself. Devil a sweet fear! There’s a jew for you! All for

number one. Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to five.

—Don’t tell anyone, says the citizen,

—Beg your pardon, says he.

—Come on boys, says Martin, seeing it was looking

blue. Come along now.

—Don’t tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out

of him. It’s a secret.

And the bloody dog woke up and let a growl.

—Bye bye all, says Martin.

And he got them out as quick as he could, Jack Power

and Crofton or whatever you call him and him in the

middle of them letting on to be all at sea and up with

them on the bloody jaunting car.

—-Off with you, says

Martin to the jarvey.

The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in

the golden poop the helmsman spread the bellying sail

upon the wind and stood off forward with all sail set, the

spinnaker to larboard. A many comely nymphs drew nigh

to starboard and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of

the noble bark, they linked their shining forms as doth the

cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart of

his wheel the equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to

623 of 1305

another and he binds them all with an outer ring and

giveth speed to the feet of men whenas they ride to a

hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair. Even so did

they come and set them, those willing nymphs, the

undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in a circle of

their foam: and the bark clave the waves.

But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint

when I saw the citizen getting up to waddle to the door,

puffing and blowing with the dropsy, and he cursing the

curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and candle in Irish,

spitting and spatting out of him and Joe and little Alf

round him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him.

—Let me alone, says he.

And begob he got as far as the door and they holding

him and he bawls out of him:

—Three cheers for Israel!

Arrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse

for Christ’ sake and don’t be making a public exhibition of

yourself. Jesus, there’s always some bloody clown or other

kicking up a bloody murder about bloody nothing. Gob,

it’d turn the porter sour in your guts, so it would.

And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round

the door and Martin telling the jarvey to drive ahead and

the citizen bawling and Alf and Joe at him to whisht and

624 of 1305

he on his high horse about the jews and the loafers calling

for a speech and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down

on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a

patch over his eye starts singing If the man in the moon was a

jew, jew, jew and a slut shouts out of her:

—Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister!

And says he:

—Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and

Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and

his father was a jew. Your God.

—He had no father, says Martin. That’ll do now. Drive

ahead.

—Whose God? says the citizen.

—Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a

jew. Christ was a jew like me.

Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop.

—By Jesus, says he, I’ll brain that bloody jewman for

using the holy name.

By Jesus, I’ll crucify him so I will. Give us that

biscuitbox here.

—Stop! Stop! says Joe.

A large and appreciative gathering of friends and

acquaintances from the metropolis and greater Dublin

assembled in their thousands to bid farewell to Nagyasagos

625 of 1305

uram Lipoti Virag, late of Messrs Alexander Thom’s,

printers to His Majesty, on the occasion of his departure

for the distant clime of Szazharminczbrojugulyas-Dugulas

(Meadow of Murmuring Waters). The ceremony which

went off with great éclat was characterised by the most

affecting cordiality. An illuminated scroll of ancient Irish

vellum, the work of Irish artists, was presented to the

distinguished phenomenologist on behalf of a large section

of the community and was accompanied by the gift of a

silver casket, tastefully executed in the style of ancient

Celtic ornament, a work which reflects every credit on the

makers, Messrs Jacob agus Jacob. The departing guest was

the recipient of a hearty ovation, many of those who were

present being visibly moved when the select orchestra of

Irish pipes struck up the wellknown strains of Come back to

Erin, followed immediately by Rakoczsy’s March. Tarbarrels

and bonfires were lighted along the coastline of the four

seas on the summits of the Hill of Howth, Three Rock

Mountain, Sugarloaf, Bray Head, the mountains of

Mourne, the Galtees, the Ox and Donegal and Sperrin

peaks, the Nagles and the Bograghs, the Connemara hills,

the reeks of M Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bernagh

and Slieve Bloom. Amid cheers that rent the welkin,

responded to by answering cheers from a big muster of

626 of 1305

henchmen on the distant Cambrian and Caledonian hills,

the mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away saluted

by a final floral tribute from the representatives of the fair

sex who were present in large numbers while, as it

proceeded down the river, escorted by a flotilla of barges,

the flags of the Ballast office and Custom House were

dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical power

station at the Pigeonhouse and the Poolbeg Light.

Visszontlátásra, kedves baráton! Visszontlátásra! Gone but not

forgotten.

Gob, the devil wouldn’t stop him till he got hold of the

bloody tin anyhow and out with him and little Alf

hanging on to his elbow and he shouting like a stuck pig,

as good as any bloody play in the Queen’s royal theatre:

—Where is he till I murder him?

And Ned and J. J. paralysed with the laughing.

—Bloody wars, says I, I’ll be in for the last gospel.

But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag’s head

round the other way and off with him.

—Hold on, citizen, says Joe. Stop!

Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly.

Mercy of God the sun was in his eyes or he’d have left

him for dead. Gob, he near sent it into the county

Longford. The bloody nag took fright and the old

627 of 1305

mongrel after the car like bloody hell and all the populace

shouting and laughing and the old tinbox clattering along

the street.

The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its

effect. The observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven

shocks, all of the fifth grade of Mercalli’s scale, and there is

no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our

island since the earthquake of 1534, the year of the

rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to have

been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the

Inn’s Quay ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a

surface of fortyone acres, two roods and one square pole

or perch. All the lordly residences in the vicinity of the

palace of justice were demolished and that noble edifice

itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important

legal debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins

beneath which it is to be feared all the occupants have

been buried alive. From the reports of eyewitnesses it

transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a

violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. An

article of headgear since ascertained to belong to the much

respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell

and a silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved

initials, crest, coat of arms and house number of the

628 of 1305

erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter sessions sir

Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been

discovered by search parties in remote parts of the island

respectively, the former on the third basaltic ridge of the

giant’s causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of one

foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near

the old head of Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that

they observed an incandescent object of enormous

proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying

velocity in a trajectory directed southwest by west.

Messages of condolence and sympathy are being hourly

received from all parts of the different continents and the

sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that

a special missa pro defunctis shall be celebrated

simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every

cathedral church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the

spiritual authority of the Holy See in suffrage of the souls

of those faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly

called away from our midst. The work of salvage, removal

of débris, human remains etc has been entrusted to Messrs

Michael Meade and Son, 159 Great Brunswick street, and

Messrs T. and C. Martin, 77, 78, 79 and 80 North Wall,

assisted by the men and officers of the Duke of Cornwall’s

light infantry under the general supervision of H. R. H.,

629 of 1305

rear admiral, the right honourable sir Hercules Hannibal

Habeas Corpus Anderson, K. G., K. P., K. T., P. C., K.

C. B., M. P, J. P., M. B., D. S. O., S. O. D., M. F. H.,

M. R. I. A., B. L., Mus. Doc., P. L. G., F. T. C. D., F.

R. U. I., F. R. C. P. I. and F. R. C. S. I.

You never saw the like of it in all your born puff. Gob,

if he got that lottery ticket on the side of his poll he’d

remember the gold cup, he would so, but begob the

citizen would have been lagged for assault and battery and

Joe for aiding and abetting. The jarvey saved his life by

furious driving as sure as God made Moses. What? O,

Jesus, he did. And he let a volley of oaths after him.

—Did I kill him, says he, or what?

And he shouting to the bloody dog:

—After him, Garry! After him, boy!

And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the

corner and old sheepsface on it gesticulating and the

bloody mongrel after it with his lugs back for all he was

bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb. Hundred

to five! Jesus, he took the value of it out of him, I promise

you.

When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness

and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to

heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed

630 of 1305

upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of

the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they

durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of

heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And He answered with a

main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him,

ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the

glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over

Donohoe’s in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel.

* * * * *

PENELOPE 1217 of 1305

Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask

to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the

City Arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid

up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself

interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he

thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a

farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest

miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her

1218 of 1305

methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too

much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and

the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help

the world if all the women were her sort down on

bathingsuits and lownecks of course nobody wanted her to

wear them I suppose she was pious because no man would

look at her twice I hope Ill never be like her a wonder she

didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a

welleducated woman certainly and her gabby talk about

Mr Riordan here and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was

glad to get shut of her and her dog smelling my fur and

always edging to get up under my petticoats especially

then still I like that in him polite to old women like that

and waiters and beggars too hes not proud out of nothing

but not always if ever he got anything really serious the

matter with him its much better for them to go into a

hospital where everything is clean but I suppose Id have to

dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have a

hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying

there till they throw him out or a nun maybe like the

smutty photo he has shes as much a nun as Im not yes

because theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick they

want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think it

was O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south

1219 of 1305

circular when he sprained his foot at the choir party at the

sugarloaf Mountain the day I wore that dress Miss Stack

bringing him flowers the worst old ones she could find at

the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into a mans

bedroom with her old maids voice trying to imagine he

was dying on account of her to never see thy face again

though he looked more like a man with his beard a bit

grown in the bed father was the same besides I hate

bandaging and dosing when he cut his toe with the razor

paring his corns afraid hed get bloodpoisoning but if it was

a thing I was sick then wed see what attention only of

course the woman hides it not to give all the trouble they

do yes he came somewhere Im sure by his appetite

anyway love its not or hed be off his feed thinking of her

so either it was one of those night women if it was down

there he was really and the hotel story he made up a pack

of lies to hide it planning it Hynes kept me who did I

meet ah yes I met do you remember Menton and who

else who let me see that big babbyface I saw him and he

not long married flirting with a young girl at Pooles

Myriorama and turned my back on him when he slinked

out looking quite conscious what harm but he had the

impudence to make up to me one time well done to him

mouth almighty and his boiled eyes of all the big stupoes I

1220 of 1305

ever met and thats called a solicitor only for I hate having

a long wrangle in bed or else if its not that its some little

bitch or other he got in with somewhere or picked up on

the sly if they only knew him as well as I do yes because

the day before yesterday he was scribbling something a

letter when I came into the front room to show him

Dignams death in the paper as if something told me and

he covered it up with the blottingpaper pretending to be

thinking about business so very probably that was it to

somebody who thinks she has a softy in him because all

men get a bit like that at his age especially getting on to

forty he is now so as to wheedle any money she can out of

him no fool like an old fool and then the usual kissing my

bottom was to hide it not that I care two straws now who

he does it with or knew before that way though Id like to

find out so long as I dont have the two of them under my

nose all the time like that slut that Mary we had in

Ontario terrace padding out her false bottom to excite him

bad enough to get the smell of those painted women off

him once or twice I had a suspicion by getting him to

come near me when I found the long hair on his coat

without that one when I went into the kitchen pretending

he was drinking water 1 woman is not enough for them it

was all his fault of course ruining servants then proposing

1221 of 1305

that she could eat at our table on Christmas day if you

please O no thank you not in my house stealing my

potatoes and the oysters 2/6 per doz going out to see her

aunt if you please common robbery so it was but I was

sure he had something on with that one it takes me to find

out a thing like that he said you have no proof it was her

proof O yes her aunt was very fond of oysters but I told

her what I thought of her suggesting me to go out to be

alone with her I wouldnt lower myself to spy on them the

garters I found in her room the Friday she was out that

was enough for me a little bit too much her face swelled

up on her with temper when I gave her her weeks notice

I saw to that better do without them altogether do out the

rooms myself quicker only for the damn cooking and

throwing out the dirt I gave it to him anyhow either she

or me leaves the house I couldnt even touch him if I

thought he was with a dirty barefaced liar and sloven like

that one denying it up to my face and singing about the

place in the W C too because she knew she was too well

off yes because he couldnt possibly do without it that long

so he must do it somewhere and the last time he came on

my bottom when was it the night Boylan gave my hand a

great squeeze going along by the Tolka in my hand there

steals another I just pressed the back of his like that with

1222 of 1305

my thumb to squeeze back singing the young May moon

shes beaming love because he has an idea about him and

me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out and going to

the Gaiety though Im not going to give him the

satisfaction in any case God knows hes a change in a way

not to be always and ever wearing the same old hat unless

I paid some nicelooking boy to do it since I cant do it

myself a young boy would like me Id confuse him a little

alone with him if we were Id let him see my garters the

new ones and make him turn red looking at him seduce

him I know what boys feel with that down on their cheek

doing that frigging drawing out the thing by the hour

question and answer would you do this that and the other

with the coalman yes with a bishop yes I would because I

told him about some dean or bishop was sitting beside me

in the jews temples gardens when I was knitting that

woollen thing a stranger to Dublin what place was it and

so on about the monuments and he tired me out with

statues encouraging him making him worse than he is who

is in your mind now tell me who are you thinking of who

is it tell me his name who tell me who the german

Emperor is it yes imagine Im him think of him can you

feel him trying to make a whore of me what he never will

he ought to give it up now at this age of his life simply

1223 of 1305

ruination for any woman and no satisfaction in it

pretending to like it till he comes and then finish it off

myself anyway and it makes your lips pale anyhow its

done now once and for all with all the talk of the world

about it people make its only the first time after that its

just the ordinary do it and think no more about it why

cant you kiss a man without going and marrying him first

you sometimes love to wildly when you feel that way so

nice all over you you cant help yourself I wish some man

or other would take me sometime when hes there and kiss

me in his arms theres nothing like a kiss long and hot

down to your soul almost paralyses you then I hate that

confession when I used to go to Father Corrigan he

touched me father and what harm if he did where and I

said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your

person my child on the leg behind high up was it yes

rather high up was it where you sit down yes O Lord

couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it

what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way

he put it I forget no father and I always think of the real

father what did he want to know for when I already

confessed it to God he had a nice fat hand the palm moist

always I wouldnt mind feeling it neither would he Id say

by the bullneck in his horsecollar I wonder did he know

1224 of 1305

me in the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of

course hed never turn or let on still his eyes were red

when his father died theyre lost for a woman of course

must be terrible when a man cries let alone them Id like to

be embraced by one in his vestments and the smell of

incense off him like the pope besides theres no danger

with a priest if youre married hes too careful about himself

then give something to H H the pope for a penance I

wonder was he satisfied with me one thing I didnt like his

slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall

though I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I I suppose

he was thinking of his fathers I wonder is he awake

thinking of me or dreaming am I in it who gave him that

flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of drink

not whisky or stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste

they stick their bills up with some liqueur Id like to sip

those richlooking green and yellow expensive drinks those

stagedoor johnnies drink with the opera hats I tasted once

with my finger dipped out of that American that had the

squirrel talking stamps with father he had all he could do

to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time after

we took the port and potted meat it had a fine salty taste

yes because I felt lovely and tired myself and fell asleep as

sound as a top the moment I popped straight into bed till

1225 of 1305

that thunder woke me up God be merciful to us I thought

the heavens were coming down about us to punish us

when I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary like those

awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar as if the world was coming

to an end and then they come and tell you theres no God

what could you do if it was running and rushing about

nothing only make an act of contrition the candle I lit that

evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month of May

see it brought its luck though hed scoff if he heard because

he never goes to church mass or meeting he says your soul

you have no soul inside only grey matter because he

doesnt know what it is to have one yes when I lit the lamp

because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that

tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I thought the

vein or whatever the dickens they call it was going to

burst though his nose is not so big after I took off all my

things with the blinds down after my hours dressing and

perfuming and combing it like iron or some kind of a

thick crowbar standing all the time he must have eaten

oysters I think a few dozen he was in great singing voice

no I never in all my life felt anyone had one the size of

that to make you feel full up he must have eaten a whole

sheep after whats the idea making us like that with a big

hole in the middle of us or like a Stallion driving it up into

1226 of 1305

you because thats all they want out of you with that

determined vicious look in his eye I had to halfshut my

eyes still he hasnt such a tremendous amount of spunk in

him when I made him pull out and do it on me

considering how big it is so much the better in case any of

it wasnt washed out properly the last time I let him finish

it in me nice invention they made for women for him to

get all the pleasure but if someone gave them a touch of it

themselves theyd know what I went through with Milly

nobody would believe cutting her teeth too and Mina

Purefoys husband give us a swing out of your whiskers

filling her up with a child or twins once a year as regular as

the clock always with a smell of children off her the one

they called budgers or something like a nigger with a

shock of hair on it Jesusjack the child is a black the last

time I was there a squad of them falling over one another

and bawling you couldnt hear your ears supposed to be

healthy not satisfied till they have us swollen out like

elephants or I dont know what supposing I risked having

another not off him though still if he was married Im sure

hed have a fine strong child but I dont know Poldy has

more spunk in him yes thatd be awfully jolly I suppose it

was meeting Josie Powell and the funeral and thinking

about me and Boylan set him off well he can think what

1227 of 1305

he likes now if thatll do him any good I know they were

spooning a bit when I came on the scene he was dancing

and sitting out with her the night of Georgina Simpsons

housewarming and then he wanted to ram it down my

neck it was on account of not liking to see her a

wallflower that was why we had the standup row over

politics he began it not me when he said about Our Lord

being a carpenter at last he made me cry of course a

woman is so sensitive about everything I was fuming with

myself after for giving in only for I knew he was gone on

me and the first socialist he said He was he annoyed me so

much I couldnt put him into a temper still he knows a lot

of mixedup things especially about the body and the inside

I often wanted to study up that myself what we have

inside us in that family physician I could always hear his

voice talking when the room was crowded and watch him

after that I pretended I had a coolness on with her over

him because he used to be a bit on the jealous side

whenever he asked who are you going to and I said over

to Floey and he made me the present of Byron’s poems

and the three pairs of gloves so that finished that I could

quite easily get him to make it up any time I know how

Id even supposing he got in with her again and was going

out to see her somewhere Id know if he refused to eat the

1228 of 1305

onions I know plenty of ways ask him to tuck down the

collar of my blouse or touch him with my veil and gloves

on going out I kiss then would send them all spinning

however alright well see then let him go to her she of

course would only be too delighted to pretend shes mad in

love with him that I wouldnt so much mind Id just go to

her and ask her do you love him and look her square in

the eyes she couldnt fool me but he might imagine he was

and make a declaration to her with his plabbery kind of a

manner like he did to me though I had the devils own job

to get it out of him though I liked him for that it showed

he could hold in and wasnt to be got for the asking he was

on the pop of asking me too the night in the kitchen I was

rolling the potato cake theres something I want to say to

you only for I put him off letting on I was in a temper

with my hands and arms full of pasty flour in any case I let

out too much the night before talking of dreams so I didnt

want to let him know more than was good for him she

used to be always embracing me Josie whenever he was

there meaning him of course glauming me over and when

I said I washed up and down as far as possible asking me

and did you wash possible the women are always egging

on to that putting it on thick when hes there they know

by his sly eye blinking a bit putting on the indifferent

1229 of 1305

when they come out with something the kind he is what

spoils him I dont wonder in the least because he was very

handsome at that time trying to look like Lord Byron I

said I liked though he was too beautiful for a man and he

was a little before we got engaged afterwards though she

didnt like it so much the day I was in fits of laughing with

the giggles I couldnt stop about all my hairpins falling out

one after another with the mass of hair I had youre always

in great humour she said yes because it grigged her

because she knew what it meant because I used to tell her

a good bit of what went on between us not all but just

enough to make her mouth water but that wasnt my fault

she didnt darken the door much after we were married I

wonder what shes got like now after living with that dotty

husband of hers she had her face beginning to look drawn

and run down the last time I saw her she must have been

just after a row with him because I saw on the moment

she was edging to draw down a conversation about

husbands and talk about him to run him down what was it

she told me O yes that sometimes he used to go to bed

with his muddy boots on when the maggot takes him just

imagine having to get into bed with a thing like that that

might murder you any moment what a man well its not

the one way everyone goes mad Poldy anyhow whatever

1230 of 1305

he does always wipes his feet on the mat when he comes

in wet or shine and always blacks his own boots too and

he always takes off his hat when he comes up in the street

like then and now hes going about in his slippers to look

for 10000 pounds for a postcard U p up O sweetheart May

wouldnt a thing like that simply bore you stiff to

extinction actually too stupid even to take his boots off

now what could you make of a man like that Id rather die

20 times over than marry another of their sex of course

hed never find another woman like me to put up with

him the way I do know me come sleep with me yes and

he knows that too at the bottom of his heart take that Mrs

Maybrick that poisoned her husband for what I wonder in

love with some other man yes it was found out on her

wasnt she the downright villain to go and do a thing like

that of course some men can be dreadfully aggravating

drive you mad and always the worst word in the world

what do they ask us to marry them for if were so bad as all

that comes to yes because they cant get on without us

white Arsenic she put in his tea off flypaper wasnt it I

wonder why they call it that if I asked him hed say its

from the Greek leave us as wise as we were before she

must have been madly in love with the other fellow to run

the chance of being hanged O she didnt care if that was

1231 of 1305

her nature what could she do besides theyre not brutes

enough to go and hang a woman surely are they

theyre all so different Boylan talking about the shape of

my foot he noticed at once even before he was introduced

when I was in the D B C with Poldy laughing and trying

to listen I was waggling my foot we both ordered 2 teas

and plain bread and butter I saw him looking with his two

old maids of sisters when I stood up and asked the girl

where it was what do I care with it dropping out of me

and that black closed breeches he made me buy takes you

half an hour to let them down wetting all myself always

with some brandnew fad every other week such a long

one I did I forgot my suede gloves on the seat behind that

I never got after some robber of a woman and he wanted

me to put it in the Irish times lost in the ladies lavatory D

B C Dame street finder return to Mrs Marion Bloom and

I saw his eyes on my feet going out through the turning

door he was looking when I looked back and I went there

for tea 2 days after in the hope but he wasnt now how did

that excite him because I was crossing them when we

were in the other room first he meant the shoes that are

too tight to walk in my hand is nice like that if I only had

a ring with the stone for my month a nice aquamarine Ill

stick him for one and a gold bracelet I dont like my foot

1232 of 1305

so much still I made him spend once with my foot the

night after Goodwins botchup of a concert so cold and

windy it was well we had that rum in the house to mull

and the fire wasnt black out when he asked to take off my

stockings lying on the hearthrug in Lombard street west

and another time it was my muddy boots hed like me to

walk in all the horses dung I could find but of course hes

not natural like the rest of the world that I what did he say

I could give 9 points in 10 to Katty Lanner and beat her

what does that mean I asked him I forget what he said

because the stoppress edition just passed and the man with

the curly hair in the Lucan dairy thats so polite I think I

saw his face before somewhere I noticed him when I was

tasting the butter so I took my time Bartell dArcy too that

he used to make fun of when he commenced kissing me

on the choir stairs after I sang Gounods Ave Maria what

are we waiting for O my heart kiss me straight on the

brow and part which is my brown part he was pretty hot

for all his tinny voice too my low notes he was always

raving about if you can believe him I liked the way he

used his mouth singing then he said wasnt it terrible to do

that there in a place like that I dont see anything so

terrible about it Ill tell him about that some day not now

and surprise him ay and Ill take him there and show him

1233 of 1305

the very place too we did it so now there you are like it or

lump it he thinks nothing can happen without him

knowing he hadnt an idea about my mother till we were

engaged otherwise hed never have got me so cheap as he

did he was lo times worse himself anyhow begging me to

give him a tiny bit cut off my drawers that was the

evening coming along Kenilworth square he kissed me in

the eye of my glove and I had to take it off asking me

questions is it permitted to enquire the shape of my

bedroom so I let him keep it as if I forgot it to think of me

when I saw him slip it into his pocket of course hes mad

on the subject of drawers thats plain to be seen always

skeezing at those brazenfaced things on the bicycles with

their skirts blowing up to their navels even when Milly

and I were out with him at the open air fete that one in

the cream muslin standing right against the sun so he

could see every atom she had on when he saw me from

behind following in the rain I saw him before he saw me

however standing at the corner of the Harolds cross road

with a new raincoat on him with the muffler in the

Zingari colours to show off his complexion and the brown

hat looking slyboots as usual what was he doing there

where hed no business they can go and get whatever they

like from anything at all with a skirt on it and were not to

1234 of 1305

ask any questions but they want to know where were you

where are you going I could feel him coming along

skulking after me his eyes on my neck he had been

keeping away from the house he felt it was getting too

warm for him so I halfturned and stopped then he pestered

me to say yes till I took off my glove slowly watching him

he said my openwork sleeves were too cold for the rain

anything for an excuse to put his hand anear me drawers

drawers the whole blessed time till I promised to give him

the pair off my doll to carry about in his waistcoat pocket

O Maria Santisima he did look a big fool dreeping in the

rain splendid set of teeth he had made me hungry to look

at them and beseeched of me to lift the orange petticoat I

had on with the sunray pleats that there was nobody he

said hed kneel down in the wet if I didnt so persevering

he would too and ruin his new raincoat you never know

what freak theyd take alone with you theyre so savage for

it if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit and touched

his trousers outside the way I used to Gardner after with

my ring hand to keep him from doing worse where it was

too public I was dying to find out was he circumcised he

was shaking like a jelly all over they want to do everything

too quick take all the pleasure out of it and father waiting

all the time for his dinner he told me to say I left my purse

1235 of 1305

in the butchers and had to go back for it what a Deceiver

then he wrote me that letter with all those words in it

how could he have the face to any woman after his

company manners making it so awkward after when we

met asking me have I offended you with my eyelids down

of course he saw I wasnt he had a few brains not like that

other fool Henny Doyle he was always breaking or tearing

something in the charades I hate an unlucky man and if I

knew what it meant of course I had to say no for form

sake dont understand you I said and wasnt it natural so it is

of course it used to be written up with a picture of a

womans on that wall in Gibraltar with that word I couldnt

find anywhere only for children seeing it too young then

writing every morning a letter sometimes twice a day I

liked the way he made love then he knew the way to take

a woman when he sent me the 8 big poppies because

mine was the 8th then I wrote the night he kissed my

heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt describe it simply it

makes you feel like nothing on earth but he never knew

how to embrace well like Gardner I hope hell come on

Monday as he said at the same time four I hate people

who come at all hours answer the door you think its the

vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or the

door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old

1236 of 1305

frostyface Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard

street and I just after dinner all flushed and tossed with

boiling old stew dont look at me professor I had to say Im

a fright yes but he was a real old gent in his way it was

impossible to be more respectful nobody to say youre out

you have to peep out through the blind like the

messengerboy today I thought it was a putoff first him

sending the port and the peaches first and I was just

beginning to yawn with nerves thinking he was trying to

make a fool of me when I knew his tattarrattat at the door

he must have been a bit late because it was l/4 after 3

when I saw the 2 Dedalus girls coming from school I

never know the time even that watch he gave me never

seems to go properly Id want to get it looked after when I

threw the penny to that lame sailor for England home and

beauty when I was whistling there is a charming girl I love

and I hadnt even put on my clean shift or powdered

myself or a thing then this day week were to go to Belfast

just as well he has to go to Ennis his fathers anniversary the

27th it wouldnt be pleasant if he did suppose our rooms at

the hotel were beside each other and any fooling went on

in the new bed I couldnt tell him to stop and not bother

me with him in the next room or perhaps some protestant

clergyman with a cough knocking on the wall then hed

1237 of 1305

never believe the next day we didnt do something its all

very well a husband but you cant fool a lover after me

telling him we never did anything of course he didnt

believe me no its better hes going where he is besides

something always happens with him the time going to the

Mallow concert at Maryborough ordering boiling soup for

the two of us then the bell rang out he walks down the

platform with the soup splashing about taking spoonfuls of

it hadnt he the nerve and the waiter after him making a

holy show of us screeching and confusion for the engine

to start but he wouldnt pay till he finished it the two

gentlemen in the 3rd class carriage said he was quite right

so he was too hes so pigheaded sometimes when he gets a

thing into his head a good job he was able to open the

carriage door with his knife or theyd have taken us on to

Cork I suppose that was done out of revenge on him O I

love jaunting in a train or a car with lovely soft cushions I

wonder will he take a 1st class for me he might want to do

it in the train by tipping the guard well O I suppose therell

be the usual idiots of men gaping at us with their eyes as

stupid as ever they can possibly be that was an exceptional

man that common workman that left us alone in the

carriage that day going to Howth Id like to find out

something about him l or 2 tunnels perhaps then you have

1238 of 1305

to look out of the window all the nicer then coming back

suppose I never came back what would they say eloped

with him that gets you on on the stage the last concert I

sang at where its over a year ago when was it St Teresas

hall Clarendon St little chits of missies they have now

singing Kathleen Kearney and her like on account of

father being in the army and my singing the absentminded

beggar and wearing a brooch for Lord Roberts when I had

the map of it all and Poldy not Irish enough was it him

managed it this time I wouldnt put it past him like he got

me on to sing in the Stabat Mater by going around saying

he was putting Lead Kindly Light to music I put him up

to that till the jesuits found out he was a freemason

thumping the piano lead Thou me on copied from some

old opera yes and he was going about with some of them

Sinner Fein lately or whatever they call themselves talking

his usual trash and nonsense he says that little man he

showed me without the neck is very intelligent the

coming man Griffiths is he well he doesnt look it thats all I

can say still it must have been him he knew there was a

boycott I hate the mention of their politics after the war

that Pretoria and Ladysmith and Bloemfontein where

Gardner lieut Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd East Lancs Rgt of

enteric fever he was a lovely fellow in khaki and just the

1239 of 1305

right height over me Im sure he was brave too he said I

was lovely the evening we kissed goodbye at the canal

lock my Irish beauty he was pale with excitement about

going away or wed be seen from the road he couldnt stand

properly and I so hot as I never felt they could have made

their peace in the beginning or old oom Paul and the rest

of the other old Krugers go and fight it out between them

instead of dragging on for years killing any finelooking

men there were with their fever if he was even decently

shot it wouldnt have been so bad I love to see a regiment

pass in review the first time I saw the Spanish cavalry at La

Roque it was lovely after looking across the bay from

Algeciras all the lights of the rock like fireflies or those

sham battles on the 15 acres the Black Watch with their

kilts in time at the march past the 10th hussars the prince

of Wales own or the lancers O the lancers theyre grand or

the Dublins that won Tugela his father made his money

over selling the horses for the cavalry well he could buy

me a nice present up in Belfast after what I gave him

theyve lovely linen up there or one of those nice kimono

things I must buy a mothball like I had before to keep in

the drawer with them it would be exciting going round

with him shopping buying those things in a new city

better leave this ring behind want to keep turning and

1240 of 1305

turning to get it over the knuckle there or they might bell

it round the town in their papers or tell the police on me

but theyd think were married O let them all go and

smother themselves for the fat lot I care he has plenty of

money and hes not a marrying man so somebody better

get it out of him if I could find out whether he likes me I

looked a bit washy of course when I looked close in the

handglass powdering a mirror never gives you the

expression besides scrooching down on me like that all the

time with his big hipbones hes heavy too with his hairy

chest for this heat always having to lie down for them

better for him put it into me from behind the way Mrs

Mastiansky told me her husband made her like the dogs do

it and stick out her tongue as far as ever she could and he

so quiet and mild with his tingating cither can you ever be

up to men the way it takes them lovely stuff in that blue

suit he had on and stylish tie and socks with the skyblue

silk things on them hes certainly well off I know by the

cut his clothes have and his heavy watch but he was like a

perfect devil for a few minutes after he came back with the

stoppress tearing up the tickets and swearing blazes because

he lost 20 quid he said he lost over that outsider that won

and half he put on for me on account of Lenehans tip

cursing him to the lowest pits that sponger he was making

1241 of 1305

free with me after the Glencree dinner coming back that

long joult over the featherbed mountain after the lord

Mayor looking at me with his dirty eyes Val Dillon that

big heathen I first noticed him at dessert when I was

cracking the nuts with my teeth I wished I could have

picked every morsel of that chicken out of my fingers it

was so tasty and browned and as tender as anything only

for I didnt want to eat everything on my plate those forks

and fishslicers were hallmarked silver too I wish I had

some I could easily have slipped a couple into my muff

when I was playing with them then always hanging out of

them for money in a restaurant for the bit you put down

your throat we have to be thankful for our mangy cup of

tea itself as a great compliment to be noticed the way the

world is divided in any case if its going to go on I want at

least two other good chemises for one thing and but I

dont know what kind of drawers he likes none at all I

think didnt he say yes and half the girls in Gibraltar never

wore them either naked as God made them that

Andalusian singing her Manola she didnt make much

secret of what she hadnt yes and the second pair of silkette

stockings is laddered after one days wear I could have

brought them back to Lewers this morning and kicked up

a row and made that one change them only not to upset

1242 of 1305

myself and run the risk of walking into him and ruining

the whole thing and one of those kidfitting corsets Id want

advertised cheap in the Gentlewoman with elastic gores on

the hips he saved the one I have but thats no good what

did they say they give a delightful figure line 11/6

obviating that unsightly broad appearance across the lower

back to reduce flesh my belly is a bit too big Ill have to

knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it

the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake

he makes his money easy Larry they call him the old

mangy parcel he sent at Xmas a cottage cake and a bottle

of hogwash he tried to palm off as claret that he couldnt

get anyone to drink God spare his spit for fear hed die of

the drouth or I must do a few breathing exercises I

wonder is that antifat any good might overdo it the thin

ones are not so much the fashion now garters that much I

have the violet pair I wore today thats all he bought me

out of the cheque he got on the first O no there was the

face lotion I finished the last of yesterday that made my

skin like new I told him over and over again get that made

up in the same place and dont forget it God only knows

whether he did after all I said to him 111 know by the

bottle anyway if not I suppose 111 only have to wash in

my piss like beeftea or chickensoup with some of that

1243 of 1305

opoponax and violet I thought it was beginning to look

coarse or old a bit the skin underneath is much finer

where it peeled off there on my finger after the burn its a

pity it isnt all like that and the four paltry handkerchiefs

about 6/- in all sure you cant get on in this world without

style all going in food and rent when I get it Ill lash it

around I tell you in fine style I always want to throw a

handful of tea into the pot measuring and mincing if I buy

a pair of old brogues itself do you like those new shoes yes

how much were they Ive no clothes at all the brown

costume and the skirt and jacket and the one at the

cleaners 3 whats that for any woman cutting up this old

hat and patching up the other the men wont look at you

and women try to walk on you because they know youve

no man then with all the things getting dearer every day

for the 4 years more I have of life up to 35 no Im what am

I at all 111 be 33 in September will I what O well look at

that Mrs Galbraith shes much older than me I saw her

when I was out last week her beautys on the wane she was

a lovely woman magnificent head of hair on her down to

her waist tossing it back like that like Kitty OShea in

Grantham street 1st thing I did every morning to look

across see her combing it as if she loved it and was full of it

pity I only got to know her the day before we left and that

1244 of 1305

Mrs Langtry the jersey lily the prince of Wales was in love

with I suppose hes like the first man going the roads only

for the name of a king theyre all made the one way only a

black mans Id like to try a beauty up to what was she 45

there was some funny story about the jealous old husband

what was it at all and an oyster knife he went no he made

her wear a kind of a tin thing round her and the prince of

Wales yes he had the oyster knife cant be true a thing like

that like some of those books he brings me the works of

Master Francois Somebody supposed to be a priest about a

child born out of her ear because her bumgut fell out a

nice word for any priest to write and her a—e as if any

fool wouldnt know what that meant I hate that pretending

of all things with that old blackguards face on him

anybody can see its not true and that Ruby and Fair

Tyrants he brought me that twice I remember when I

came to page 5 o the part about where she hangs him up

out of a hook with a cord flagellate sure theres nothing for

a woman in that all invention made up about he drinking

the champagne out of her slipper after the ball was over

like the infant Jesus in the crib at Inchicore in the Blessed

Virgins arms sure no woman could have a child that big

taken out of her and I thought first it came out of her side

because how could she go to the chamber when she

1245 of 1305

wanted to and she a rich lady of course she felt honoured

H R H he was in Gibraltar the year I was born I bet he

found lilies there too where he planted the tree he planted

more than that in his time he might have planted me too

if hed come a bit sooner then I wouldnt be here as I am

he ought to chuck that Freeman with the paltry few

shillings he knocks out of it and go into an office or

something where hed get regular pay or a bank where

they could put him up on a throne to count the money all

the day of course he prefers plottering about the house so

you cant stir with him any side whats your programme

today I wish hed even smoke a pipe like father to get the .

smell of a man or pretending to be mooching about for

advertisements when he could have been in Mr Cuffes still

only for what he did then sending me to try and patch it

up I could have got him promoted there to be the

manager he gave me a great mirada once or twice first he

was as stiff as the mischief really and truly Mrs Bloom only

I felt rotten simply with the old rubbishy dress that I lost

the leads out of the tails with no cut in it but theyre

coming into fashion again I bought it simply to please him

I knew it was no good by the finish pity I changed my

mind of going to Todd and Bums as I said and not Lees it

was just like the shop itself rummage sale a lot of trash I

1246 of 1305

hate those rich shops get on your nerves nothing kills me

altogether only he thinks he knows a great lot about a

womans dress and cooking mathering everything he can

scour off the shelves into it if I went by his advices every

blessed hat I put on does that suit me yes take that thats

alright the one like a weddingcake standing up miles off

my head he said suited me or the dishcover one coming

down on my backside on pins and needles about the

shopgirl in that place in Grafton street I had the

misfortune to bring him into and she as insolent as ever

she could be with her smirk saying Im afraid were giving

you too much trouble what shes there for but I stared it

out of her yes he was awfully stiff and no wonder but he

changed the second time he looked Poldy pigheaded as

usual like the soup but I could see him looking very hard

at my chest when he stood up to open the door for me it

was nice of him to show me out in any case Im extremely

sorry Mrs Bloom believe me without making it too

marked the first time after him being insulted and me

being supposed to be his wife I just half smiled I know my

chest was out that way at the door when he said Im

extremely sorry and Im sure you were

yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like

that so long he made me thirsty titties he calls them I had

1247 of 1305

to laugh yes this one anyhow stiff the nipple gets for the

least thing Ill get him to keep that up and Ill take those

eggs beaten up with marsala fatten them out for him what

are all those veins and things curious the way its made 2

the same in case of twins theyre supposed to represent

beauty placed up there like those statues in the museum

one of them pretending to hide it with her hand are they

so beautiful of course compared with what a man looks

like with his two bags full and his other thing hanging

down out of him or sticking up at you like a hatrack no

wonder they hide it with a cabbageleaf that disgusting

Cameron highlander behind the meat market or that other

wretch with the red head behind the tree where the statue

of the fish used to be when I was passing pretending he

was pissing standing out for me to see it with his

babyclothes up to one side the Queens own they were a

nice lot its well the Surreys relieved them theyre always

trying to show it to you every time nearly I passed outside

the mens greenhouse near the Harcourt street station just

to try some fellow or other trying to catch my eye as if it

was I of the 7 wonders of the world O and the stink of

those rotten places the night coming home with Poldy

after the Comerfords party oranges and lemonade to make

you feel nice and watery I went into r of them it was so

1248 of 1305

biting cold I couldnt keep it when was that 93 the canal

was frozen yes it was a few months after a pity a couple of

the Camerons werent there to see me squatting in the

mens place meadero I tried to draw a picture of it before I

tore it up like a sausage or something I wonder theyre not

afraid going about of getting a kick or a bang of something

there the woman is beauty of course thats admitted when

he said I could pose for a picture naked to some rich

fellow in Holles street when he lost the job in Helys and I

was selling the clothes and strumming in the coffee palace

would I be like that bath of the nymph with my hair

down yes only shes younger or Im a little like that dirty

bitch in that Spanish photo he has nymphs used they go

about like that I asked him about her and that word met

something with hoses in it and he came out with some

jawbreakers about the incarnation he never can explain a

thing simply the way a body can understand then he goes

and burns the bottom out of the pan all for his Kidney this

one not so much theres the mark of his teeth still where

he tried to bite the nipple I had to scream out arent they

fearful trying to hurt you I had a great breast of milk with

Milly enough for two what was the reason of that he said I

could have got a pound a week as a wet nurse all swelled

out the morning that delicate looking student that stopped

1249 of 1305

in no 28 with the Citrons Penrose nearly caught me

washing through the window only for I snapped up the

towel to my face that was his studenting hurt me they

used to weaning her till he got doctor Brady to give me

the belladonna prescription I had to get him to suck them

they were so hard he said it was sweeter and thicker than

cows then he wanted to milk me into the tea well hes

beyond everything I declare somebody ought to put him

in the budget if I only could remember the I half of the

things and write a book out of it the works of Master

Poldy yes and its so much smoother the skin much an

hour he was at them Im sure by the clock like some kind

of a big infant I had at me they want everything in their

mouth all the pleasure those men get out of a woman I

can feel his mouth O Lord I must stretch myself I wished

he was here or somebody to let myself go with and come

again like that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream it

when he made me spend the 2nd time tickling me behind

with his finger I was coming for about 5 minutes with my

legs round him I had to hug him after O Lord I wanted to

shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or anything at all

only not to look ugly or those lines from the strain who

knows the way hed take it you want to feel your way with

a man theyre not all like him thank God some of them

1250 of 1305

want you to be so nice about it I noticed the contrast he

does it and doesnt talk I gave my eyes that look with my

hair a bit loose from the tumbling and my tongue between

my lips up to him the savage brute Thursday Friday one

Saturday two Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till Monday

frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the

strength those engines have in them like big giants and the

water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end

of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng the poor men that have to

be out all the night from their wives and families in those

roasting engines stifling it was today Im glad I burned the

half of those old Freemans and Photo Bits leaving things

like that lying about hes getting very careless and threw

the rest of them up in the W C 111 get him to cut them

tomorrow for me instead of having them there for the

next year to get a few pence for them have him asking

wheres last Januarys paper and all those old overcoats I

bundled out of the hall making the place hotter than it is

that rain was lovely and refreshing just after my beauty

sleep I thought it was going to get like Gibraltar my

goodness the heat there before the levanter came on black

as night and the glare of the rock standing up in it like a

big giant compared with their 3 Rock mountain they

think is so great with the red sentries here and there the

1251 of 1305

poplars and they all whitehot and the smell of the

rainwater in those tanks watching the sun all the time

weltering down on you faded all that lovely frock fathers

friend Mrs Stanhope sent me from the B Marche paris

what a shame my dearest Doggerina she wrote on it she

was very nice whats this her other name was just a p c to

tell you I sent the little present have just had a jolly warm

bath and feel a very clean dog now enjoyed it wogger she

called him wogger wd give anything to be back in Gib

and hear you sing Waiting and in old Madrid Concone is

the name of those exercises he bought me one of those

new some word I couldnt make out shawls amusing things

but tear for the least thing still there lovely I think dont

you will always think of the lovely teas we had together

scrumptious currant scones and raspberry wafers I adore

well now dearest Doggerina be sure and write soon kind

she left out regards to your father also captain Grove with

love yrs affly Hester x x x x x she didnt look a bit married

just like a girl he was years older than her wogger he was

awfully fond of me when he held down the wire with his

foot for me to step over at the bullfight at La Linea when

that matador Gomez was given the bulls ear these clothes

we have to wear whoever invented them expecting you to

walk up Killiney hill then for example at that picnic all

1252 of 1305

staysed up you cant do a blessed thing in them in a crowd

run or jump out of the way thats why I was afraid when

that other ferocious old Bull began to charge the

banderilleros with the sashes and the 2 things in their hats

and the brutes of men shouting bravo toro sure the

women were as bad in their nice white mantillas ripping

all the whole insides out of those poor horses I never

heard of such a thing in all my life yes he used to break his

heart at me taking off the dog barking in bell lane poor

brute and it sick what became of them ever I suppose

theyre dead long ago the 2 of them its like all through a

mist makes you feel so old I made the scones of course I

had everything all to myself then a girl Hester we used to

compare our hair mine was thicker than hers she showed

me how to settle it at the back when I put it up and whats

this else how to make a knot on a thread with the one

hand we were like cousins what age was I then the night

of the storm I slept in her bed she had her arms round me

then we were fighting in the morning with the pillow

what fun he was watching me whenever he got an

opportunity at the band on the Alameda esplanade when I

was with father and captain Grove I looked up at the

church first and then at the windows then down and our

eyes met I felt something go through me like all needles

1253 of 1305

my eyes were dancing I remember after when I looked at

myself in the glass hardly recognised myself the change he

was attractive to a girl in spite of his being a little bald

intelligent looking disappointed and gay at the same time

he was like Thomas in the shadow of Ashlydyat I had a

splendid skin from the sun and the excitement like a rose I

didnt get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have been nice on

account of her but I could have stopped it in time she

gave me the Moonstone to read that was the first I read of

Wilkie Collins East Lynne I read and the shadow of

Ashlydyat Mrs Henry Wood Henry Dunbar by that other

woman I lent him afterwards with Mulveys photo in it so

as he see I wasnt without and Lord Lytton Eugene Aram

Molly bawn she gave me by Mrs Hungerford on account

of the name I dont like books with a Molly in them like

that one he brought me about the one from Flanders a

whore always shoplifting anything she could cloth and

stuff and yards of it O this blanket is too heavy on me thats

better I havent even one decent nightdress this thing gets

all rolled under me besides him and his fooling thats better

I used to be weltering then in the heat my shift drenched

with the sweat stuck in the cheeks of my bottom on the

chair when I stood up they were so fattish and firm when

I got up on the sofa cushions to see with my clothes up

1254 of 1305

and the bugs tons of them at night and the mosquito nets I

couldnt read a line Lord how long ago it seems centuries

of course they never came back and she didnt put her

address right on it either she may have noticed her wogger

people were always going away and we never I remember

that day with the waves and the boats with their high

heads rocking and the smell of ship those Officers

uniforms on shore leave made me seasick he didnt say

anything he was very serious I had the high buttoned

boots on and my skirt was blowing she kissed me six or

seven times didnt I cry yes I believe I did or near it my lips

were taittering when I said goodbye she had a Gorgeous

wrap of some special kind of blue colour on her for the

voyage made very peculiarly to one side like and it was

extremely pretty it got as dull as the devil after they went I

was almost planning to run away mad out of it somewhere

were never easy where we are father or aunt or marriage

waiting always waiting to guiiiide him toooo me waiting

nor speeeed his flying feet their damn guns bursting and

booming all over the shop especially the Queens birthday

and throwing everything down in all directions if you

didnt open the windows when general Ulysses Grant

whoever he was or did supposed to be some great fellow

landed off the ship and old Sprague the consul that was

1255 of 1305

there from before the flood dressed up poor man and he in

mourning for the son then the same old bugles for reveille

in the morning and drums rolling and the unfortunate

poor devils of soldiers walking about with messtins

smelling the place more than the old longbearded jews in

their jellibees and levites assembly and sound clear and

gunfire for the men to cross the lines and the warden

marching with his keys to lock the gates and the bagpipes

and only captain Groves and father talking about Rorkes

drift and Plevna and sir Garnet Wolseley and Gordon at

Khartoum lighting their pipes for them everytime they

went out drunken old devil with his grog on the

windowsill catch him leaving any of it picking his nose

trying to think of some other dirty story to tell up in a

corner but he never forgot himself when I was there

sending me out of the room on some blind excuse paying

his compliments the Bushmills whisky talking of course

but hed do the same to the next woman that came along I

suppose he died of galloping drink ages ago the days like

years not a letter from a living soul except the odd few I

posted to myself with bits of paper in them so bored

sometimes I could fight with my nails listening to that old

Arab with the one eye and his heass of an instrument

singing his heah heah aheah all my compriments on your

1256 of 1305

hotchapotch of your heass as bad as now with the hands

hanging off me looking out of the window if there was a

nice fellow even in the opposite house that medical in

Holles street the nurse was after when I put on my gloves

and hat at the window to show I was going out not a

notion what I meant arent they thick never understand

what you say even youd want to print it up on a big

poster for them not even if you shake hands twice with

the left he didnt recognise me either when I half frowned

at him outside Westland row chapel where does their

great intelligence come in Id like to know grey matter

they have it all in their tail if you ask me those country

gougers up in the City Arms intelligence they had a damn

sight less than the bulls and cows they were selling the

meat and the coalmans bell that noisy bugger trying to

swindle me with the wrong bill he took out of his hat

what a pair of paws and pots and pans and kettles to mend

any broken bottles for a poor man today and no visitors or

post ever except his cheques or some advertisement like

that wonderworker they sent him addressed dear Madam

only his letter and the card from Milly this morning see

she wrote a letter to him who did I get the last letter from

O Mrs Dwenn now what possessed her to write from

Canada after so many years to know the recipe I had for

1257 of 1305

pisto madrileno Floey Dillon since she wrote to say she

was married to a very rich architect if Im to believe all I

hear with a villa and eight rooms her father was an awfully

nice man he was near seventy always goodhumoured well

now Miss Tweedy or Miss Gillespie theres the piannyer

that was a solid silver coffee service he had too on the

mahogany sideboard then dying so far away I hate people

that have always their poor story to tell everybody has

their own troubles that poor Nancy Blake died a month

ago of acute neumonia well I didnt know her so well as all

that she was Floeys friend more than mine poor Nancy its

a bother having to answer he always tells me the wrong

things and no stops to say like making a speech your sad

bereavement symphathy I always make that mistake and

newphew with 2 double yous in I hope hell write me a

longer letter the next time if its a thing he really likes me

O thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me

what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve

no chances at all in this place like you used long ago I

wish somebody would write me a loveletter his wasnt

much and I told him he could write what he liked yours

ever Hugh Boylan in old Madrid stuff silly women believe

love is sighing I am dying still if he wrote it I suppose

thered be some truth in it true or no it fills up your whole

1258 of 1305

day and life always something to think about every

moment and see it all round you like a new world I could

write the answer in bed to let him imagine me short just a

few words not those long crossed letters Atty Dillon used

to write to the fellow that was something in the four

courts that jilted her after out of the ladies letterwriter

when I told her to say a few simple words he could twist

how he liked not acting with precipat precip itancy with

equal candour the greatest earthly happiness answer to a

gentlemans proposal affirmatively my goodness theres

nothing else its all very fine for them but as for being a

woman as soon as youre old they might as well throw you

out in the bottom of the ashpit.

Mulveys was the first when I was in bed that morning

and Mrs Rubio brought it in with the coffee she stood

there standing when I asked her to hand me and I pointing

at them I couldnt think of the word a hairpin to open it

with ah horquilla disobliging old thing and it staring her in

the face with her switch of false hair on her and vain about

her appearance ugly as she was near 80 or a loo her face a

mass of wrinkles with all her religion domineering because

she never could get over the Atlantic fleet coming in half

the ships of the world and the Union Jack flying with all

her carabineros because 4 drunken English sailors took all

1259 of 1305

the rock from them and because I didnt run into mass

often enough in Santa Maria to please her with her shawl

up on her except when there was a marriage on with all

her miracles of the saints and her black blessed virgin with

the silver dress and the sun dancing 3 times on Easter

Sunday morning and when the priest was going by with

the bell bringing the vatican to the dying blessing herself

for his Majestad an admirer he signed it I near jumped out

of my skin I wanted to pick him up when I saw him

following me along the Calle Real in the shop window

then he tipped me just in passing but I never thought hed

write making an appointment I had it inside my petticoat

bodice all day reading it up in every hole and corner while

father was up at the drill instructing to find out by the

handwriting or the language of stamps singing I remember

shall I wear a white rose and I wanted to put on the old

stupid clock to near the time he was the first man kissed

me under the Moorish wall my sweetheart when a boy it

never entered my head what kissing meant till he put his

tongue in my mouth his mouth was sweetlike young I put

my knee up to him a few times to learn the way what did

I tell him I was engaged for for fun to the son of a Spanish

nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora and he believed

me that I was to be married to him in 3 years time theres

1260 of 1305

many a true word spoken in jest there is a flower that

bloometh a few things I told him true about myself just for

him to be imagining the Spanish girls he didnt like I

suppose one of them wouldnt have him I got him excited

he crushed all the flowers on my bosom he brought me he

couldnt count the pesetas and the perragordas till I taught

him Cappoquin he came from he said on the black water

but it was too short then the day before he left May yes it

was May when the infant king of Spain was born Im

always like that in the spring Id like a new fellow every

year up on the tiptop under the rockgun near OHaras

tower I told him it was struck by lightning and all about

the old Barbary apes they sent to Clapham without a tail

careering all over the show on each others back Mrs

Rubio said she was a regular old rock scorpion robbing

the chickens out of Inces farm and throw stones at you if

you went anear he was looking at me I had that white

blouse on open in the front to encourage him as much as I

could without too openly they were just beginning to be

plump I said I was tired we lay over the firtree cove a wild

place I suppose it must be the highest rock in existence the

galleries and casemates and those frightful rocks and Saint

Michaels cave with the icicles or whatever they call them

hanging down and ladders all the mud plotching my boots

1261 of 1305

Im sure thats the way down the monkeys go under the sea

to Africa when they die the ships out far like chips that

was the Malta boat passing yes the sea and the sky you

could do what you liked lie there for ever he caressed

them outside they love doing that its the roundness there I

was leaning over him with my white ricestraw hat to take

the newness out of it the left side of my face the best my

blouse open for his last day transparent kind of shirt he had

I could see his chest pink he wanted to touch mine with

his for a moment but I wouldnt lee him he was awfully

put out first for fear you never know consumption or

leave me with a child embarazada that old servant Ines told

me that one drop even if it got into you at all after I tried

with the Banana but I was afraid it might break and get

lost up in me somewhere because they once took

something down out of a woman that was up there for

years covered with limesalts theyre all mad to get in there

where they come out of youd think they could never go

far enough up and then theyre done with you in a way till

the next time yes because theres a wonderful feeling there

so tender all the time how did we finish it off yes O yes I

pulled him off into my handkerchief pretending not to be

excited but I opened my legs I wouldnt let him touch me

inside my petticoat because I had a skirt opening up the

1262 of 1305

side I tormented the life out of him first tickling him I

loved rousing that dog in the hotel rrrsssstt awokwokawok

his eyes shut and a bird flying below us he was shy all the

same I liked him like that moaning I made him blush a

little when I got over him that way when I unbuttoned

him and took his out and drew back the skin it had a kind

of eye in it theyre all Buttons men down the middle on

the wrong side of them Molly darling he called me what

was his name Jack Joe Harry Mulvey was it yes I think a

lieutenant he was rather fair he had a laughing kind of a

voice so I went round to the whatyoucallit everything was

whatyoucallit moustache had he he said hed come back

Lord its just like yesterday to me and if I was married hed

do it to me and I promised him yes faithfully Id let him

block me now flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a

captain or admiral its nearly 20 years if I said firtree cove

he would if he came up behind me and put his hands over

my eyes to guess who I might recognise him hes young

still about 40 perhaps hes married some girl on the black

water and is quite changed they all do they havent half the

character a woman has she little knows what I did with

her beloved husband before he ever dreamt of her in

broad daylight too in the sight of the whole world you

might say they could have put an article about it in the

1263 of 1305

Chronicle I was a bit wild after when I blew out the old

bag the biscuits were in from Benady Bros and exploded it

Lord what a bang all the woodcocks and pigeons

screaming coming back the same way that we went over

middle hill round by the old guardhouse and the jews

burialplace pretending to read out the Hebrew on them I

wanted to fire his pistol he said he hadnt one he didnt

know what to make of me with his peak cap on that he

always wore crooked as often as I settled it straight H M S

Calypso swinging my hat that old Bishop that spoke off

the altar his long preach about womans higher functions

about girls now riding the bicycle and wearing peak caps

and the new woman bloomers God send him sense and

me more money I suppose theyre called after him I never

thought that would be my name Bloom when I used to

write it in print to see how it looked on a visiting card or

practising for the butcher and oblige M Bloom youre

looking blooming Josie used to say after I married him

well its better than Breen or Briggs does brig or those

awful names with bottom in them Mrs Ramsbottom or

some other kind of a bottom Mulvey I wouldnt go mad

about either or suppose I divorced him Mrs Boylan my

mother whoever she was might have given me a nicer

name the Lord knows after the lovely one she had Lunita

1264 of 1305

Laredo the fun we had running along Williss road to

Europa point twisting in and out all round the other side

of Jersey they were shaking and dancing about in my

blouse like Millys little ones now when she runs up the

stairs I loved looking down at them I was jumping up at

the pepper trees and the white poplars pulling the leaves

off and throwing them at him he went to India he was to

write the voyages those men have to make to the ends of

the world and back its the least they might get a squeeze

or two at a woman while they can going out to be

drowned or blown up somewhere I went up Windmill hill

to the flats that Sunday morning with captain Rubios that

was dead spyglass like the sentry had he said hed have one

or two from on board I wore that frock from the B

Marche paris and the coral necklace the straits shining I

could see over to Morocco almost the bay of Tangier

white and the Atlas mountain with snow on it and the

straits like a river so clear Harry Molly darling I was

thinking of him on the sea all the time after at mass when

my petticoat began to slip down at the elevation weeks

and weeks I kept the handkerchief under my pillow for

the smell of him there was no decent perfume to be got in

that Gibraltar only that cheap peau dEspagne that faded

and left a stink on you more than anything else I wanted

1265 of 1305

to give him a memento he gave me that clumsy Claddagh

ring for luck that I gave Gardner going to south Africa

where those Boers killed him with their war and fever but

they were well beaten all the same as if it brought its bad

luck with it like an opal or pearl still it must have been

pure 18 carrot gold because it was very heavy but what

could you get in a place like that the sandfrog shower

from Africa and that derelict ship that came up to the

harbour Marie the Marie whatyoucallit no he hadnt a

moustache that was Gardner yes I can see his face

cleanshaven Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that train again

weeping tone once in the dear deaead days beyondre call

close my eyes breath my lips forward kiss sad look eyes

open piano ere oer the world the mists began I hate that

istsbeg comes loves sweet sooooooooooong Ill let that out

full when I get in front of the footlights again Kathleen

Kearney and her lot of squealers Miss This Miss That Miss

Theother lot of sparrowfarts skitting around talking about

politics they know as much about as my backside anything

in the world to make themselves someway interesting Irish

homemade beauties soldiers daughter am I ay and whose

are you bootmakers and publicans I beg your pardon

coach I thought you were a wheelbarrow theyd die down

dead off their feet if ever they got a chance of walking

1266 of 1305

down the Alameda on an officers arm like me on the

bandnight my eyes flash my bust that they havent passion

God help their poor head I knew more about men and life

when I was I S than theyll all know at 50 they dont know

how to sing a song like that Gardner said no man could

look at my mouth and teeth smiling like that and not

think of it I was afraid he mightnt like my accent first he

so English all father left me in spite of his stamps Ive my

mothers eyes and figure anyhow he always said theyre so

snotty about themselves some of those cads he wasnt a bit

like that he was dead gone on my lips let them get a

husband first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter like

mine or see if they can excite a swell with money that can

pick and choose whoever he wants like Boylan to do it 4

or 5 times locked in each others arms or the voice either I

could have been a prima donna only I married him comes

looooves old deep down chin back not too much make it

double My Ladys Bower is too long for an encore about

the moated grange at twilight and vaunted rooms yes Ill

sing Winds that blow from the south that he gave after the

choirstairs performance Ill change that lace on my black

dress to show off my bubs and Ill yes by God Ill get that

big fan mended make them burst with envy my hole is

itching me always when I think of him I feel I want to I

1267 of 1305

feel some wind in me better go easy not wake him have

him at it again slobbering after washing every bit of myself

back belly and sides if we had even a bath itself or my own

room anyway I wish hed sleep in some bed by himself

with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart

God or do the least thing better yes hold them like that a

bit on my side piano quietly sweeeee theres that train far

away pianissimo eeeee one more song

that was a relief wherever you be let your wind go free

who knows if that pork chop I took with my cup of tea

after was quite good with the heat I couldnt smell

anything off it Im sure that queerlooking man in the

porkbutchers is a great rogue I hope that lamp is not

smoking fill my nose up with smuts better than having

him leaving the gas on all night I couldnt rest easy in my

bed in Gibraltar even getting up to see why am I so

damned nervous about that though I like it in the winter

its more company O Lord it was rotten cold too that

winter when I was only about ten was I yes I had the big

doll with all the funny clothes dressing her up and

undressing that icy wind skeeting across from those

mountains the something Nevada sierra nevada standing at

the fire with the little bit of a short shift I had up to heat

myself I loved dancing about in it then make a race back

1268 of 1305

into bed Im sure that fellow opposite used to be there the

whole time watching with the lights out in the summer

and I in my skin hopping around I used to love myself

then stripped at the washstand dabbing and creaming only

when it came to the chamber performance I put out the

light too so then there were 2 of us goodbye to my sleep

for this night anyhow I hope hes not going to get in with

those medicals leading him astray to imagine hes young

again coming in at 4 in the morning it must be if not more

still he had the manners not to wake me what do they find

to gabber about all night squandering money and getting

drunker and drunker couldnt they drink water then he

starts giving us his orders for eggs and tea and Findon

haddy and hot buttered toast I suppose well have him

sitting up like the king of the country pumping the wrong

end of the spoon up and down in his egg wherever he

learned that from and I love to hear him falling up the

stairs of a morning with the cups rattling on the tray and

then play with the cat she rubs up against you for her own

sake I wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a woman always

licking and lecking but I hate their claws I wonder do they

see anything that we cant staring like that when she sits at

the top of the stairs so long and listening as I wait always

what a robber too that lovely fresh place I bought I think

1269 of 1305

Ill get a bit of fish tomorrow or today is it Friday yes I will

with some blancmange with black currant jam like long

ago not those 2 lb pots of mixed plum and apple from the

London and Newcastle Williams and Woods goes twice as

far only for the bones I hate those eels cod yes Ill get a

nice piece of cod Im always getting enough for 3

forgetting anyway Im sick of that everlasting butchers

meat from Buckleys loin chops and leg beef and rib steak

and scrag of mutton and calfs pluck the very name is

enough or a picnic suppose we all gave 5/- each and or let

him pay it and invite some other woman for him who Mrs

Fleming and drove out to the furry glen or the strawberry

beds wed have him examining all the horses toenails first

like he does with the letters no not with Boylan there yes

with some cold veal and ham mixed sandwiches there are

little houses down at the bottom of the banks there on

purpose but its as hot as blazes he says not a bank holiday

anyhow I hate those ruck of Mary Ann coalboxes out for

the day Whit Monday is a cursed day too no wonder that

bee bit him better the seaside but Id never again in this life

get into a boat with him after him at Bray telling the

boatman he knew how to row if anyone asked could he

ride the steeplechase for the gold cup hed say yes then it

came on to get rough the old thing crookeding about and

1270 of 1305

the weight all down my side telling me pull the right reins

now pull the left and the tide all swamping in floods in

through the bottom and his oar slipping out of the stirrup

its a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim of course

me no theres no danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in

his flannel trousers Id like to have tattered them down off

him before all the people and give him what that one calls

flagellate till he was black and blue do him all the good in

the world only for that longnosed chap I dont know who

he is with that other beauty Burke out of the City Arms

hotel was there spying around as usual on the slip always

where he wasnt wanted if there was a row on youd vomit

a better face there was no love lost between us thats 1

consolation I wonder what kind is that book he brought

me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other

Mr de Kock I suppose the people gave him that nickname

going about with his tube from one woman to another I

couldnt even change my new white shoes all ruined with

the saltwater and the hat I had with that feather all blowy

and tossed on me how annoying and provoking because

the smell of the sea excited me of course the sardines and

the bream in Catalan bay round the back of the rock they

were fine all silver in the fishermens baskets old Luigi near

a hundred they said came from Genoa and the tall old

1271 of 1305

chap with the earrings I dont like a man you have to climb

up to to get at I suppose theyre all dead and rotten long

ago besides I dont like being alone in this big barracks of a

place at night I suppose Ill have to put up with it I never

brought a bit of salt in even when we moved in the

confusion musical academy he was going to make on the

first floor drawingroom with a brassplate or Blooms

private hotel he suggested go and ruin himself altogether

the way his father did down in Ennis like all the things he

told father he was going to do and me but I saw through

him telling me all the lovely places we could go for the

honeymoon Venice by moonlight with the gondolas and

the lake of Como he had a picture cut out of some paper

of and mandolines and lanterns O how nice I said

whatever I liked he was going to do immediately if not

sooner will you be my man will you carry my can he

ought to get a leather medal with a putty rim for all the

plans he invents then leaving us here all day youd never

know what old beggar at the door for a crust with his long

story might be a tramp and put his foot in the way to

prevent me shutting it like that picture of that hardened

criminal he was called in Lloyds Weekly news 20 years in

jail then he comes out and murders an old woman for her

money imagine his poor wife or mother or whoever she is

1272 of 1305

such a face youd run miles away from I couldnt rest easy

till I bolted all the doors and windows to make sure but its

worse again being locked up like in a prison or a

madhouse they ought to be all shot or the cat of nine tails

a big brute like that that would attack a poor old woman

to murder her in her bed Id cut them off him so I would

not that hed be much use still better than nothing the

night I was sure I heard burglars in the kitchen and he

went down in his shirt with a candle and a poker as if he

was looking for a mouse as white as a sheet frightened out

of his wits making as much noise as he possibly could for

the burglars benefit there isnt much to steal indeed the

Lord knows still its the feeling especially now with Milly

away such an idea for him to send the girl down there to

learn to take photographs on account of his grandfather

instead of sending her to Skerrys academy where shed

have to learn not like me getting all IS at school only hed

do a thing like that all the same on account of me and

Boylan thats why he did it Im certain the way he plots and

plans everything out I couldnt turn round with her in the

place lately unless I bolted the door first gave me the

fidgets coming in without knocking first when I put the

chair against the door just as I was washing myself there

below with the glove get on your nerves then doing the

1273 of 1305

loglady all day put her in a glasscase with two at a time to

look at her if he knew she broke off the hand off that little

gimcrack statue with her roughness and carelessness before

she left that I got that little Italian boy to mend so that you

cant see the join for 2 shillings wouldnt even teem the

potatoes for you of course shes right not to ruin her hands

I noticed he was always talking to her lately at the table

explaining things in the paper and she pretending to

understand sly of course that comes from his side of the

house he cant say I pretend things can he Im too honest as

a matter of fact and helping her into her coat but if there

was anything wrong with her its me shed tell not him I

suppose he thinks Im finished out and laid on the shelf

well Im not no nor anything like it well see well see now

shes well on for flirting too with Tom Devans two sons

imitating me whistling with those romps of Murray girls

calling for her can Milly come out please shes in great

demand to pick what they can out of her round in Nelson

street riding Harry Devans bicycle at night its as well he

sent her where she is she was just getting out of bounds

wanting to go on the skatingrink and smoking their

cigarettes through their nose I smelt it off her dress when I

was biting off the thread of the button I sewed on to the

bottom of her jacket she couldnt hide much from me I tell

1274 of 1305

you only I oughtnt to have stitched it and it on her it

brings a parting and the last plumpudding too split in 2

halves see it comes out no matter what they say her

tongue is a bit too long for my taste your blouse is open

too low she says to me the pan calling the kettle

blackbottom and I had to tell her not to cock her legs up

like that on show on the windowsill before all the people

passing they all look at her like me when I was her age of

course any old rag looks well on you then a great

touchmenot too in her own way at the Only Way in the

Theatre royal take your foot away out of that I hate

people touching me afraid of her life Id crush her skirt

with the pleats a lot of that touching must go on in

theatres in the crush in the dark theyre always trying to

wiggle up to you that fellow in the pit at the Gaiety for

Beerbohm Tree in Trilby the last time Ill ever go there to

be squashed like that for any Trilby or her barebum every

two minutes tipping me there and looking away hes a bit

daft I think I saw him after trying to get near two

stylishdressed ladies outside Switzers window at the same

little game I recognised him on the moment the face and

everything but he didnt remember me yes and she didnt

even want me to kiss her at the Broadstone going away

well I hope shell get someone to dance attendance on her

1275 of 1305

the way I did when she was down with the mumps and

her glands swollen wheres this and wheres that of course

she cant feel anything deep yet I never came properly till I

was what 22 or so it went into the wrong place always

only the usual girls nonsense and giggling that Conny

Connolly writing to her in white ink on black paper

sealed with sealingwax though she clapped when the

curtain came down because he looked so handsome then

we had Martin Harvey for breakfast dinner and supper I

thought to myself afterwards it must be real love if a man

gives up his life for her that way for nothing I suppose

there are a few men like that left its hard to believe in it

though unless it really happened to me the majority of

them with not a particle of love in their natures to find

two people like that nowadays full up of each other that

would feel the same way as you do theyre usually a bit

foolish in the head his father must have been a bit queer to

go and poison himself after her still poor old man I

suppose he felt lost shes always making love to my things

too the few old rags I have wanting to put her hair up at I

S my powder too only ruin her skin on her shes time

enough for that all her life after of course shes restless

knowing shes pretty with her lips so red a pity they wont

stay that way I was too but theres no use going to the fair

1276 of 1305

with the thing answering me like a fishwoman when I

asked to go for a half a stone of potatoes the day we met

Mrs Joe Gallaher at the trottingmatches and she pretended

not to see us in her trap with Friery the solicitor we

werent grand enough till I gave her 2 damn fine cracks

across the ear for herself take that now for answering me

like that and that for your impudence she had me that

exasperated of course contradicting I was badtempered too

because how was it there was a weed in the tea or I didnt

sleep the night before cheese I ate was it and I told her

over and over again not to leave knives crossed like that

because she has nobody to command her as she said herself

well if he doesnt correct her faith I will that was the last

time she turned on the teartap I was just like that myself

they darent order me about the place its his fault of course

having the two of us slaving here instead of getting in a

woman long ago am I ever going to have a proper servant

again of course then shed see him coming Id have to let

her know or shed revenge it arent they a nuisance that old

Mrs Fleming you have to be walking round after her

putting the things into her hands sneezing and farting into

the pots well of course shes old she cant help it a good job

I found that rotten old smelly dishcloth that got lost

behind the dresser I knew there was something and

1277 of 1305

opened the area window to let out the smell bringing in

his friends to entertain them like the night he walked

home with a dog if you please that might have been mad

especially Simon Dedalus son his father such a criticiser

with his glasses up with his tall hat on him at the cricket

match and a great big hole in his sock one thing laughing

at the other and his son that got all those prizes for

whatever he won them in the intermediate imagine

climbing over the railings if anybody saw him that knew

us I wonder he didnt tear a big hole in his grand funeral

trousers as if the one nature gave wasnt enough for

anybody hawking him down into the dirty old kitchen

now is he right in his head I ask pity it wasnt washing day

my old pair of drawers might have been hanging up too

on the line on exhibition for all hed ever care with the

ironmould mark the stupid old bundle burned on them he

might think was something else and she never even

rendered down the fat I told her and now shes going such

as she was on account of her paralysed husband getting

worse theres always something wrong with them disease

or they have to go under an operation or if its not that its

drink and he beats her Ill have to hunt around again for

someone every day I get up theres some new thing on

sweet God sweet God well when Im stretched out dead in

1278 of 1305

my grave I suppose 111 have some peace I want to get up

a minute if Im let wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has

come on me yes now wouldnt that afflict you of course all

the poking and rooting and ploughing he had up in me

now what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday wouldnt

that pester the soul out of a body unless he likes it some

men do God knows theres always something wrong with

us 5 days every 3 or 4 weeks usual monthly auction isnt it

simply sickening that night it came on me like that the

one and only time we were in a box that Michael Gunn

gave him to see Mrs Kendal and her husband at the Gaiety

something he did about insurance for him in Drimmies I

was fit to be tied though I wouldnt give in with that

gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his glasses

and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza and

his soul thats dead I suppose millions of years ago I smiled

the best I could all in a swamp leaning forward as if I was

interested having to sit it out then to the last tag I wont

forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry supposed to be a fast

play about adultery that idiot in the gallery hissing the

woman adulteress he shouted I suppose he went and had a

woman in the next lane running round all the back ways

after to make up for it I wish he had what I had then hed

boo I bet the cat itself is better off than us have we too

1279 of 1305

much blood up in us or what O patience above its

pouring out of me like the sea anyhow he didnt make me

pregnant as big as he is I dont want to ruin the clean sheets

I just put on I suppose the clean linen I wore brought it

on too damn it damn it and they always want to see a stain

on the bed to know youre a virgin for them all thats

troubling them theyre such fools too you could be a

widow or divorced 40 times over a daub of red ink would

do or blackberry juice no thats too purply O Jamesy let

me up out of this pooh sweets of sin whoever suggested

that business for women what between clothes and

cooking and children this damned old bed too jingling like

the dickens I suppose they could hear us away over the

other side of the park till I suggested to put the quilt on

the floor with the pillow under my bottom I wonder is it

nicer in the day I think it is easy I think Ill cut all this hair

off me there scalding me I might look like a young girl

wouldnt he get the great suckin the next time he turned

up my clothes on me Id give anything to see his face

wheres the chamber gone easy Ive a holy horror of its

breaking under me after that old commode I wonder was I

too heavy sitting on his knee I made him sit on the

easychair purposely when I took off only my blouse and

skirt first in the other room he was so busy where he

1280 of 1305

oughtnt to be he never felt me I hope my breath was

sweet after those kissing comfits easy God I remember one

time I could scout it out straight whistling like a man

almost easy O Lord how noisy I hope theyre bubbles on it

for a wad of money from some fellow 111 have to

perfume it in the morning dont forget I bet he never saw a

better pair of thighs than that look how white they are the

smoothest place is right there between this bit here how

soft like a peach easy God I wouldnt mind being a man

and get up on a lovely woman O Lord what a row youre

making like the jersey lily easy easy O how the waters

come down at Lahore

who knows is there anything the matter with my

insides or have I something growing in me getting that

thing like that every week when was it last I Whit

Monday yes its only about 3 weeks I ought to go to the

doctor only it would be like before I married him when I

had that white thing coming from me and Floey made me

go to that dry old stick Dr Collins for womens diseases on

Pembroke road your vagina he called it I suppose thats

how he got all the gilt mirrors and carpets getting round

those rich ones off Stephens green running up to him for

every little fiddlefaddle her vagina and her cochinchina

theyve money of course so theyre all right I wouldnt

1281 of 1305

marry him not if he was the last man in the world besides

theres something queer about their children always

smelling around those filthy bitches all sides asking me if

what I did had an offensive odour what did he want me to

do but the one thing gold maybe what a question if I

smathered it all over his wrinkly old face for him with all

my compriments I suppose hed know then and could you

pass it easily pass what I thought he was talking about the

rock of Gibraltar the way he put it thats a very nice

invention too by the way only I like letting myself down

after in the hole as far as I can squeeze and pull the chain

then to flush it nice cool pins and needles still theres

something in it I suppose I always used to know by Millys

when she was a child whether she had worms or not still

all the same paying him for that how much is that doctor

one guinea please and asking me had I frequent omissions

where do those old fellows get all the words they have

omissions with his shortsighted eyes on me cocked

sideways I wouldnt trust him too far to give me

chloroform or God knows what else still I liked him when

he sat down to write the thing out frowning so severe his

nose intelligent like that you be damned you lying strap O

anything no matter who except an idiot he was clever

enough to spot that of course that was all thinking of him

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and his mad crazy letters my Precious one everything

connected with your glorious Body everything underlined

that comes from it is a thing of beauty and of joy for ever

something he got out of some nonsensical book that he

had me always at myself 4 and 5 times a day sometimes

and I said I hadnt are you sure O yes I said I am quite sure

in a way that shut him up I knew what was coming next

only natural weakness it was he excited me I dont know

how the first night ever we met when I was living in

Rehoboth terrace we stood staring at one another for

about lo minutes as if we met somewhere I suppose on

account of my being jewess looking after my mother he

used to amuse me the things he said with the half

sloothering smile on him and all the Doyles said he was

going to stand for a member of Parliament O wasnt I the

born fool to believe all his blather about home rule and

the land league sending me that long strool of a song out

of the Huguenots to sing in French to be more classy O

beau pays de la Touraine that I never even sang once

explaining and rigmaroling about religion and persecution

he wont let you enjoy anything naturally then might he as

a great favour the very 1st opportunity he got a chance in

Brighton square running into my bedroom pretending the

ink got on his hands to wash it off with the Albion milk

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and sulphur soap I used to use and the gelatine still round

it O I laughed myself sick at him that day I better not

make an alnight sitting on this affair they ought to make

chambers a natural size so that a woman could sit on it

properly he kneels down to do it I suppose there isnt in all

creation another man with the habits he has look at the

way hes sleeping at the foot of the bed how can he

without a hard bolster its well he doesnt kick or he might

knock out all my teeth breathing with his hand on his

nose like that Indian god he took me to show one wet

Sunday in the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a

pinafore lying on his side on his hand with his ten toes

sticking out that he said was a bigger religion than the jews

and Our Lords both put together all over Asia imitating

him as hes always imitating everybody I suppose he used

to sleep at the foot of the bed too with his big square feet

up in his wifes mouth damn this stinking thing anyway

wheres this those napkins are ah yes I know I hope the old

press doesnt creak ah I knew it would hes sleeping hard

had a good time somewhere still she must have given him

great value for his money of course he has to pay for it

from her O this nuisance of a thing I hope theyll have

something better for us in the other world tying ourselves

up God help us thats all right for tonight now the lumpy

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old jingly bed always reminds me of old Cohen I suppose

he scratched himself in it often enough and he thinks

father bought it from Lord Napier that I used to admire

when I was a little girl because I told him easy piano O I

like my bed God here we are as bad as ever after 16 years

how many houses were we in at all Raymond terrace and

Ontario terrace and Lombard street and Holles street and

he goes about whistling every time were on the run again

his huguenots or the frogs march pretending to help the

men with our 4 sticks of furniture and then the City Arms

hotel worse and worse says Warden Daly that charming

place on the landing always somebody inside praying then

leaving all their stinks after them always know who was in

there last every time were just getting on right something

happens or he puts his big foot in it Thoms and Helys and

Mr Cuffes and Drimmies either hes going to be run into

prison over his old lottery tickets that was to be all our

salvations or he goes and gives impudence well have him

coming home with the sack soon out of the Freeman too

like the rest on account of those Sinner Fein or the

freemasons then well see if the little man he showed me

dribbling along in the wet all by himself round by Coadys

lane will give him much consolation that he says is so

capable and sincerely Irish he is indeed judging by the

1285 of 1305

sincerity of the trousers I saw on him wait theres Georges

church bells wait 3 quarters the hour l wait 2 oclock well

thats a nice hour of the night for him to be coming home

at to anybody climbing down into the area if anybody saw

him Ill knock him off that little habit tomorrow first Ill

look at his shirt to see or Ill see if he has that French letter

still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I dont know

deceitful men all their 20 pockets arent enough for their

lies then why should we tell them even if its the truth they

dont believe you then tucked up in bed like those babies

in the Aristocrats Masterpiece he brought me another time

as if we hadnt enough of that in real life without some old

Aristocrat or whatever his name is disgusting you more

with those rotten pictures children with two heads and no

legs thats the kind of villainy theyre always dreaming

about with not another thing in their empty heads they

ought to get slow poison the half of them then tea and

toast for him buttered on both sides and newlaid eggs I

suppose Im nothing any more when I wouldnt let him

lick me in Holles street one night man man tyrant as ever

for the one thing he slept on the floor half the night naked

the way the jews used when somebody dies belonged to

them and wouldnt eat any breakfast or speak a word

wanting to be petted so I thought I stood out enough for

1286 of 1305

one time and let him he does it all wrong too thinking

only of his own pleasure his tongue is too flat or I dont

know what he forgets that wethen I dont Ill make him do

it again if he doesnt mind himself and lock him down to

sleep in the coalcellar with the blackbeetles I wonder was

it her Josie off her head with my castoffs hes such a born

liar too no hed never have the courage with a married

woman thats why he wants me and Boylan though as for

her Denis as she calls him that forlornlooking spectacle

you couldnt call him a husband yes its some little bitch hes

got in with even when I was with him with Milly at the

College races that Hornblower with the childs bonnet on

the top of his nob let us into by the back way he was

throwing his sheeps eyes at those two doing skirt duty up

and down I tried to wink at him first no use of course and

thats the way his money goes this is the fruits of Mr Paddy

Dignam yes they were all in great style at the grand funeral

in the paper Boylan brought in if they saw a real officers

funeral thatd be something reversed arms muffled drums

the poor horse walking behind in black L Boom and Tom

Kernan that drunken little barrelly man that bit his tongue

off falling down the mens W C drunk in some place or

other and Martin Cunningham and the two Dedaluses and

Fanny MCoys husband white head of cabbage skinny

1287 of 1305

thing with a turn in her eye trying to sing my songs shed

want to be born all over again and her old green dress

with the lowneck as she cant attract them any other way

like dabbling on a rainy day I see it all now plainly and

they call that friendship killing and then burying one

another and they all with their wives and families at home

more especially Jack Power keeping that barmaid he does

of course his wife is always sick or going to be sick or just

getting better of it and hes a goodlooking man still though

hes getting a bit grey over the ears theyre a nice lot all of

them well theyre not going to get my husband again into

their clutches if I can help it making fun of him then

behind his back I know well when he goes on with his

idiotics because he has sense enough not to squander every

penny piece he earns down their gullets and looks after his

wife and family goodfornothings poor Paddy Dignam all

the same Im sorry in a way for him what are his wife and

5 children going to do unless he was insured comical little

teetotum always stuck up in some pub corner and her or

her son waiting Bill Bailey wont you please come home

her widows weeds wont improve her appearance theyre

awfully becoming though if youre goodlooking what men

wasnt he yes he was at the Glencree dinner and Ben

Dollard base barreltone the night he borrowed the

1288 of 1305

swallowtail to sing out of in Holles street squeezed and

squashed into them and grinning all over his big Dolly face

like a wellwhipped childs botty didnt he look a balmy

ballocks sure enough that must have been a spectacle on

the stage imagine paying 5/- in the preserved seats for that

to see him trotting off in his trowlers and Simon Dedalus

too he was always turning up half screwed singing the

second verse first the old love is the new was one of his so

sweetly sang the maiden on the hawthorn bough he was

always on for flirtyfying too when I sang Maritana with

him at Freddy Mayers private opera he had a delicious

glorious voice Phoebe dearest goodbye sweetheart

sweetheart he always sang it not like Bartell Darcy sweet

tart goodbye of course he had the gift of the voice so there

was no art in it all over you like a warm showerbath O

Maritana wildwood flower we sang splendidly though it

was a bit too high for my register even transposed and he

was married at the time to May Goulding but then hed say

or do something to knock the good out of it hes a

widower now I wonder what sort is his son he says hes an

author and going to be a university professor of Italian and

Im to take lessons what is he driving at now showing him

my photo its not good of me I ought to have got it taken

in drapery that never looks out of fashion still I look

1289 of 1305

young in it I wonder he didnt make him a present of it

altogether and me too after all why not I saw him driving

down to the Kingsbridge station with his father and

mother I was in mourning thats 11 years ago now yes hed

be 11 though what was the good in going into mourning

for what was neither one thing nor the other the first cry

was enough for me I heard the deathwatch too ticking in

the wall of course he insisted hed go into mourning for

the cat I suppose hes a man now by this time he was an

innocent boy then and a darling little fellow in his lord

Fauntleroy suit and curly hair like a prince on the stage

when I saw him at Mat Dillons he liked me too I

remember they all do wait by God yes wait yes hold on he

was on the cards this morning when I laid out the deck

union with a young stranger neither dark nor fair you met

before I thought it meant him but hes no chicken nor a

stranger either besides my face was turned the other way

what was the 7th card after that the 10 of spades for a

journey by land then there was a letter on its way and

scandals too the 3 queens and the 8 of diamonds for a rise

in society yes wait it all came out and 2 red 8s for new

garments look at that and didnt I dream something too yes

there was something about poetry in it I hope he hasnt

long greasy hair hanging into his eyes or standing up like a

1290 of 1305

red Indian what do they go about like that for only getting

themselves and their poetry laughed at I always liked

poetry when I was a girl first I thought he was a poet like

lord Byron and not an ounce of it in his composition I

thought he was quite different I wonder is he too young

hes about wait 88 I was married 88 Milly is 15 yesterday

89 what age was he then at Dillons 5 or 6 about 88 I

suppose hes 20 or more Im not too old for him if hes 23

or 24 I hope hes not that stuckup university student sort

no otherwise he wouldnt go sitting down in the old

kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa and talking of course

he pretended to understand it all probably he told him he

was out of Trinity college hes very young to be a professor

I hope hes not a professor like Goodwin was he was a

potent professor of John Jameson they all write about

some woman in their poetry well I suppose he wont find

many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar

where poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon

shining so beautifully coming back on the nightboat from

Tarifa the lighthouse at Europa point the guitar that fellow

played was so expressive will I ever go back there again all

new faces two glancing eyes a lattice hid Ill sing that for

him theyre my eyes if hes anything of a poet two eyes as

darkly bright as loves own star arent those beautiful words

1291 of 1305

as loves young star itll be a change the Lord knows to have

an intelligent person to talk to about yourself not always

listening to him and Billy Prescotts ad and Keyess ad and

Tom the Devils ad then if anything goes wrong in their

business we have to suffer Im sure hes very distinguished

Id like to meet a man like that God not those other ruck

besides hes young those fine young men I could see down

in Margate strand bathingplace from the side of the rock

standing up in the sun naked like a God or something and

then plunging into the sea with them why arent all men

like that thered be some consolation for a woman like that

lovely little statue he bought I could look at him all day

long curly head and his shoulders his finger up for you to

listen theres real beauty and poetry for you I often felt I

wanted to kiss him all over also his lovely young cock

there so simple I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth

if nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so

clean and white he looks with his boyish face I would too

in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went down what its

only like gruel or the dew theres no danger besides hed be

so clean compared with those pigs of men I suppose never

dream of washing it from I years end to the other the most

of them only thats what gives the women the moustaches

Im sure itll be grand if I can only get in with a handsome

1292 of 1305

young poet at my age Ill throw them the 1st thing in the

morning till I see if the wishcard comes out or Ill try

pairing the lady herself and see if he comes out Ill read and

study all I can find or learn a bit off by heart if I knew

who he likes so he wont think me stupid if he thinks all

women are the same and I can teach him the other part Ill

make him feel all over him till he half faints under me

then hell write about me lover and mistress publicly too

with our 2 photographs in all the papers when he becomes

famous O but then what am I going to do about him

though

no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no

refinement nor no nothing in his nature slapping us

behind like that on my bottom because I didnt call him

Hugh the ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a

cabbage thats what you get for not keeping them in their

proper place pulling off his shoes and trousers there on the

chair before me so barefaced without even asking

permission and standing out that vulgar way in the half of

a shirt they wear to be admired like a priest or a butcher

or those old hypocrites in the time of Julius Caesar of

course hes right enough in his way to pass the time as a

joke sure you might as well be in bed with what with a

lion God Im sure hed have something better to say for

1293 of 1305

himself an old Lion would O well I suppose its because

they were so plump and tempting in my short petticoat he

couldnt resist they excite myself sometimes its well for

men all the amount of pleasure they get off a womans

body were so round and white for them always I wished I

was one myself for a change just to try with that thing

they have swelling up on you so hard and at the same time

so soft when you touch it my uncle John has a thing long

I heard those cornerboys saying passing the comer of

Marrowbone lane my aunt Mary has a thing hairy because

it was dark and they knew a girl was passing it didnt make

me blush why should it either its only nature and he puts

his thing long into my aunt Marys hairy etcetera and turns

out to be you put the handle in a sweepingbrush men

again all over they can pick and choose what they please a

married woman or a fast widow or a girl for their different

tastes like those houses round behind Irish street no but

were to be always chained up theyre not going to be

chaining me up no damn fear once I start I tell you for

their stupid husbands jealousy why cant we all remain

friends over it instead of quarrelling her husband found it

out what they did together well naturally and if he did can

he undo it hes coronado anyway whatever he does and

then he going to the other mad extreme about the wife in

1294 of 1305

Fair Tyrants of course the man never even casts a 2nd

thought on the husband or wife either its the woman he

wants and he gets her what else were we given all those

desires for Id like to know I cant help it if Im young still

can I its a wonder Im not an old shrivelled hag before my

time living with him so cold never embracing me except

sometimes when hes asleep the wrong end of me not

knowing I suppose who he has any man thatd kiss a

womans bottom Id throw my hat at him after that hed kiss

anything unnatural where we havent I atom of any kind of

expression in us all of us the same 2 lumps of lard before

ever Id do that to a man pfooh the dirty brutes the mere

thought is enough I kiss the feet of you senorita theres

some sense in that didnt he kiss our halldoor yes he did

what a madman nobody understands his cracked ideas but

me still of course a woman wants to be embraced 20 times

a day almost to make her look young no matter by who so

long as to be in love or loved by somebody if the fellow

you want isnt there sometimes by the Lord God I was

thinking would I go around by the quays there some dark

evening where nobodyd know me and pick up a sailor off

the sea thatd be hot on for it and not care a pin whose I

was only do it off up in a gate somewhere or one of those

wildlooking gipsies in Rathfarnham had their camp

1295 of 1305

pitched near the Bloomfield laundry to try and steal our

things if they could I only sent mine there a few times for

the name model laundry sending me back over and over

some old ones odd stockings that blackguardlooking

fellow with the fine eyes peeling a switch attack me in the

dark and ride me up against the wall without a word or a

murderer anybody what they do themselves the fine

gentlemen in their silk hats that K C lives up somewhere

this way coming out of Hardwicke lane the night he gave

us the fish supper on account of winning over the boxing

match of course it was for me he gave it I knew him by

his gaiters and the walk and when I turned round a minute

after just to see there was a woman after coming out of it

too some filthy prostitute then he goes home to his wife

after that only I suppose the half of those sailors are rotten

again with disease O move over your big carcass out of

that for the love of Mike listen to him the winds that waft

my sighs to thee so well he may sleep and sigh the great

Suggester Don Poldo de la Flora if he knew how he came

out on the cards this morning hed have something to sigh

for a dark man in some perplexity between 2 7s too in

prison for Lord knows what he does that I dont know and

Im to be slooching around down in the kitchen to get his

lordship his breakfast while hes rolled up like a mummy

1296 of 1305

will I indeed did you ever see me running Id just like to

see myself at it show them attention and they treat you

like dirt I dont care what anybody says itd be much better

for the world to be governed by the women in it you

wouldnt see women going and killing one another and

slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around

drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have

and losing it on horses yes because a woman whatever she

does she knows where to stop sure they wouldnt be in the

world at all only for us they dont know what it is to be a

woman and a mother how could they where would they

all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look after them

what I never had thats why I suppose hes running wild

now out at night away from his books and studies and not

living at home on account of the usual rowy house I

suppose well its a poor case that those that have a fine son

like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not able to

make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was

watching the two dogs up in her behind in the middle of

the naked street that disheartened me altogether I suppose

I oughtnt to have buried him in that little woolly jacket I

knitted crying as I was but give it to some poor child but I

knew well Id never have another our 1st death too it was

we were never the same since O Im not going to think

1297 of 1305

myself into the glooms about that any more I wonder why

he wouldnt stay the night I felt all the time it was

somebody strange he brought in instead of roving around

the city meeting God knows who nightwalkers and

pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that if she was

alive ruining himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour

so silent I used to love coming home after dances the air

of the night they have friends they can talk to weve none

either he wants what he wont get or its some woman

ready to stick her knife in you I hate that in women no

wonder they treat us the way they do we are a dreadful lot

of bitches I suppose its all the troubles we have makes us

so snappy Im not like that he could easy have slept in

there on the sofa in the other room I suppose he was as

shy as a boy he being so young hardly 20 of me in the

next room hed have heard me on the chamber arrah what

harm Dedalus I wonder its like those names in Gibraltar

Delapaz Delagracia they had the devils queer names there

father Vilaplana of Santa Maria that gave me the rosary

Rosales y OReilly in the Calle las Siete Revueltas and

Pisimbo and Mrs Opisso in Governor street O what a

name Id go and drown myself in the first river if I had a

name like her O my and all the bits of streets Paradise

ramp and Bedlam ramp and Rodgers ramp and Crutchetts

1298 of 1305

ramp and the devils gap steps well small blame to me if I

am a harumscarum I know I am a bit I declare to God I

dont feel a day older than then I wonder could I get my

tongue round any of the Spanish como esta usted muy

bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten it all I thought I

had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any

person place or thing pity I never tried to read that novel

cantankerous Mrs Rubio lent me by Valera with the

questions in it all upside down the two ways I always

knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the Spanish

and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant

what a pity he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead

tired and wanted a good sleep badly I could have brought

him in his breakfast in bed with a bit of toast so long as I

didnt do it on the knife for bad luck or if the woman was

going her rounds with the watercress and something nice

and tasty there are a few olives in the kitchen he might

like I never could bear the look of them in Abrines I

could do the criada the room looks all right since I

changed it the other way you see something was telling

me all the time Id have to introduce myself not knowing

me from Adam very funny wouldnt it Im his wife or

pretend we were in Spain with him half awake without a

Gods notion where he is dos huevos estrellados senor Lord

1299 of 1305

the cracked things come into my head sometimes itd be

great fun supposing he stayed with us why not theres the

room upstairs empty and Millys bed in the back room he

could do his writing and studies at the table in there for all

the scribbling he does at it and if he wants to read in bed

in the morning like me as hes making the breakfast for I

he can make it for 2 Im sure Im not going to take in

lodgers off the street for him if he takes a gesabo of a

house like this Id love to have a long talk with an

intelligent welleducated person Id have to get a nice pair

of red slippers like those Turks with the fez used to sell or

yellow and a nice semitransparent morning gown that I

badly want or a peachblossom dressing jacket like the one

long ago in Walpoles only 8/6 or 18/6 Ill just give him

one more chance Ill get up early in the morning Im sick of

Cohens old bed in any case I might go over to the markets

to see all the vegetables and cabbages and tomatoes and

carrots and all kinds of splendid fruits all coming in lovely

and fresh who knows whod be the 1st man Id meet theyre

out looking for it in the morning Mamy Dillon used to

say they are and the night too that was her massgoing Id

love a big juicy pear now to melt in your mouth like

when I used to be in the longing way then Ill throw him

up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup she gave him to

1300 of 1305

make his mouth bigger I suppose hed like my nice cream

too I know what Ill do Ill go about rather gay not too

much singing a bit now and then mi fa pieta Masetto then

Ill start dressing myself to go out presto non son piu forte

Ill put on my best shift and drawers let him have a good

eyeful out of that to make his micky stand for him Ill let

him know if thats what he wanted that his wife is I s l o

fucked yes and damn well fucked too up to my neck

nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handrunning theres the

mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt bother to

even iron it out that ought to satisfy him if you dont

believe me feel my belly unless I made him stand there

and put him into me Ive a mind to tell him every scrap

and make him do it out in front of me serve him right its

all his own fault if I am an adulteress as the thing in the

gallery said O much about it if thats all the harm ever we

did in this vale of tears God knows its not much doesnt

everybody only they hide it I suppose thats what a woman

is supposed to be there for or He wouldnt have made us

the way He did so attractive to men then if he wants to

kiss my bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it

right out in his face as large as life he can stick his tongue 7

miles up my hole as hes there my brown part then Ill tell

him I want LI or perhaps 30/- Ill tell him I want to buy

1301 of 1305

underclothes then if he gives me that well he wont be too

bad I dont want to soak it all out of him like other women

do I could often have written out a fine cheque for myself

and write his name on it for a couple of pounds a few

times he forgot to lock it up besides he wont spend it Ill

let him do it off on me behind provided he doesnt smear

all my good drawers O I suppose that cant be helped Ill do

the indifferent l or 2 questions Ill know by the answers

when hes like that he cant keep a thing back I know every

turn in him Ill tighten my bottom well and let out a few

smutty words smellrump or lick my shit or the first mad

thing comes into my head then Ill suggest about yes O

wait now sonny my turn is coming Ill be quite gay and

friendly over it O but I was forgetting this bloody pest of a

thing pfooh you wouldnt know which to laugh or cry

were such a mixture of plum and apple no Ill have to wear

the old things so much the better itll be more pointed hell

never know whether he did it or not there thats good

enough for you any old thing at all then Ill wipe him off

me just like a business his omission then Ill go out Ill have

him eying up at the ceiling where is she gone now make

him want me thats the only way a quarter after what an

unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China

now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have

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the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to

spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night

office or the alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering

the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5

what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars

the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron

he gave me was like that something only I only wore it

twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get

up early Ill go to Lambes there beside Findlaters and get

them to send us some flowers to put about the place in

case he brings him home tomorrow today I mean no no

Fridays an unlucky day first I want to do the place up

someway the dust grows in it I think while Im asleep then

we can have music and cigarettes I can accompany him

first I must clean the keys of the piano with milk whatll I

wear shall I wear a white rose or those fairy cakes in

Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 7 1/2d a lb or

the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky

sugar I Id a couple of lbs of those a nice plant for the

middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this

I saw them not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the

whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres

nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and

the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the

1303 of 1305

fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the

fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to

see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and

smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches

primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres

no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all

their learning why dont they go and create something I

often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves

go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go

howling for the priest and they dying and why why

because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad

conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first

person in the universe before there was anybody that

made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so

there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from

rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we

were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in

the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to

propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out

of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago

my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he

said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers

all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in

his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I

1304 of 1305

liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a

woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I

gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he

asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked

out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many

things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and

Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors

playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes

they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the

governors house with the thing round his white helmet

poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in

their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the

morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the

devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and

Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby

Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the

vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps

and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old

castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome

Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit

down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old

windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for

her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at

night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at

1305 of 1305

Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp

and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea

crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and

the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer

little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and

the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and

cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the

mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the

Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he

kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as

well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to

ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes

my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him

yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts

all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I

said yes I will Yes.

Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921