Book
2
Chapter
1
In
which the children play a game of colours, which requires that Shem (or Glugg)
must guess the colour of Issy’s (Izod’s)
knickers. He tries three times, going into exile between guesses and telling
stories about his parents. With his final wrong guess, he loses Issy
and is cast into exile. Then ALP comes to fetch the children for study and
food, when HCE suddenly roars, in a roll of thunder, ‘Shut the door!’ and
the children scamper inside terrified, and assign HCE with the godlike status
of ‘Loud’.
Pages, 219, 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237, 238, 239, 240, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259
The following story or play occurs every night at the
Phoenix Playhouse. Entrance fee for the stalls is one shilling; for the circle,
one large shilling. On Sunday, matinees. Children’s hours explicated [i.e. subtitles
of II.2]. The players and parts are redistributed nightly [i.e. in history,
after every Fall or incarnation…] by the producer, with the blessing of the
Holy Genesis archbishop [?] and the patronage of the Four Historians [a blend
here of new testament and old Irish legends] and oversight by the Chief [HCE?
The donkey/Shem?]. The character parts are played by two brothers [Shaun and
Shem] after many revivals [of HCE], and is broadcast across the seven seas in
all manner of languages and in Four Books [i.e. FW]. The play is called: ‘The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies’, featuring:
GLUGG (played by Shem) the bad boy of the storybooks, who
when…
…he knew too much, found himself in disgrace with
THE FLORAS (Girl Scouts from St Bride’s Finishing School
[i.e. 28 Rainbow girls]) a month’s worth of pretty maidens who are the maids of
honour for
IZOD (Miss Beauty Spot [Issy]) a
bewitching blonde who is only matched in her beauty by her sister reflection in
a mirror, who having jilted Glugg, is fascinated by
CHUFF (Shaun, see the picture of him on the safety curtain),
a frank, fair-haired fellow, who wrestles to get to the top with Glugg, usually arguing about school caps, shoes or bags, or
shooting redskins generally [Russian General?], until they merge into someone
else or other [i.e. the hindoo] after which they are
taken home to be washed and scrubbed again by
ANN (Corrie of the Stream, she brings her babes to school
and distributes charity money, 111 entries, and her little chicks must not miss
national schooling [flag?]) who is their poor old mother, playing opposite to
HUMP (Mr Michael
Gone, who also plays parts in Icelandic sagas and the play about King Eric of
Sweden [i.e. Northmen]), a cad with a pipe, with his
watch and top hat, coat and a family crest, is the cause of all our grievances,
and who after recovering from recent impeachment, due to an issue with god
everlasting, but he is now converted [Middle East], has the semblance of the
[original] substance and recalls his spirit with a reminiscence that reveals an
ancient treasure [supercargo? or Saunderson his
father?], and who lives in The Rockery, a customhouse [pub] where he entertain
his customers
THE CUSTOMERS (Members of After Hours Drinking at St
Patrick’s Academy for Grown-up Gentlemen [priests?]) a dozen locomotion civic
engineers, who are sloppily served by
SAUNDERSON (Mr Knut Beer Brandisher, [a Scandinavian] who
has Tuesdays off, doesn’t wash, looks like a flatfish or a torch-bearing ape, a
dud half-sovereign [royal bastard?] who doesn’t drink tea or eat puddings [is really
a policeman?], always trying to gain something, farts like an earthquake [source
of later thunder?] and smokes Lucky Strike [also strong connection with Norse
gods]) a scissor-sharpener and ruined priest [Father Michael?], unconcerned
with the mystery, but under the influence of
KATE (Miss Rachael Lea Varian [Jewish connection], who tells
fortunes for bachelors, behind a curtain with card, palm and tealeaf reader
Madam d’Elta, between shows) plays a cook and
dishwasher, who believes one thing, that whether playing the ‘House by the Churchyard’
or ‘What’s up in Asgaard’, the show must go on.
Time: the present.
With a futurist-style, and battle portrayed as ballet
pictures, and the Pageant of Past History created by Messrs Blood and Thunder…
[more credits]… Jests and jokes for the Wake from the estate of Mr Tim
Finnegan…Buckley’s shot [at the Russian General] created by the fire…
…men in the pit… The whole thing, including portions omitted
as the result of certain titulars failing to arrive,
would be summarised in a final Magnificant
Transformation Scene, showing the wedding of Night and Morning and the dawn of
peace, pure, perfect and everlasting [Book IV?] that wakes the weary of the
world [i.e. Finnegans Wake].
The story is as follows.
Chuffy [i.e. Shaun
or Mick] was an angel, and his sword flashed like lightning. Holy Michael defend
us! Make a sign of the cross. Amen.
But the devil was in Glugger [Shem
or Nick], that lost-in-learning punk. He was coughing and spluttering, wiping
his eyes and gnashing his teeth over the secrets of existence and other books
of life. He had overcome the shamrock [i.e. renounced
In that sombre evening, the first stars appeared, the girls
released their glittering light and circles of earwigs formed, and they
shimmered as they descended in the air and shyly beckoned from behind his back.
‘Shemmy, come…
… on!’ The little lamb [Izod] was
suffering from dizziness. Would the archangel [Chuff] save this angel from the
wiles of the wolf [Glugg]? If only the Irish signs of
the deaf and dumb alphabet might stop Glugg guessing
the colour of her bride dress [riddle of colour of underwear]! It isn’t any of
the rainbow colours. ‘Like a montage [of colours] stuck in a mother lode, I am
all these colours [a gem i.e. heliotrope]. To pronounce it, the tongue goes
high at the start, down in the middle, rolls then finishes with a pop. What is
it? O Holy Troopers [heliotrope]! Isn’t that giving it to you?’
Up Glugg stumbled, such a thing he’d
never seen. ‘You will be my own’, she said, ‘if you call my colour.’
And they met, face to face. And no horse was more certain to
fail.
Stop, brother! demanded Chuff, pointing his sword to kill or
maim him, and I’ll be damned but he proffered to Izod
a shamrock from the grass.
Chuff: ‘Who are you?’ Glugg: ‘The
cat’s mother.’ Chuff: ‘And what do you lack?’ Glugg:
‘A queen [i.e. Izod].’
Chuff: ‘But what are you trying to comprehend’ [?]. Chuff,
puzzling his brain: ‘I seek the finder.’ [answer/asker – i.e. Izod]
The how-do-you-say-it what-is-it word that is the answer. A
dark-tongue cunning riddle! Glugg asked the sky. He
sought the answer in the air and in the ground. At last he went back to the
stream where she was prancing so jauntily.
With not a hint of the word from the other girls or Chuff
[wordless] either.
He was hard pressed and wanted to go somewhere else. He
wished to take his problem to …
…the Four Historians. And not long after he was feeling better,
for he had a good purse [?] and shortly after felt like a ‘mahout’ [elephant
driver] might feel as an [train] engine driver [??]. He was at his wits end and
wanted to give the Four Historians the present of his purse. He found the Four.
They found the stones [money?] and they fell in eating a duck. He sat down and
ate the leftovers.
At which begins our tale.
‘Poor Glugg!’ As was often said
about this ‘word mother’ [foul mouth]. Deplorable! Oh dear! All the
frightfulness he inherited from his progenitor. With hairy ankles and bulging
eyes, and she [Issy] asked him: ‘How do you do who
lacks the lock, and pass me the key, please?’ [i.e. the riddle answer – similar
to Prankquean’s question] She then asks him to answer
her bright and early [in the morning]. ‘Sing to me the answer anon!’ she asks.
And Glugg, in the Limpopo [river] of his subconscious
[confusion], looked as though he didn’t know whether someone was bursting
bladders [sounds] or whether her vocal tones that reached his ears were in fact
those of his school master [?].
The delightful girls showed their drawers, all except one [Issy], but drew up together at the sight of their guardian
[Chuff]. Her potential boyfriend [Glugg/Shem] arrived
as a troubadour, thinking how he might guess what the colour was by looking at
the Flora girl’s underwear. ‘Does that not satisfy you, Sir?’ she said. ‘Lots
of pretty girls here Madam Liffey!’ he replied, ‘And
what are you going to ask them to do, Madam?’ She put on her slipper – it was
so shiny and would bring her a groom. Glugg must ask
for them from their guardian [Chuff] at the next line-up [game] (of the two, Chuff
holds the rapier but Glugg holds a pen) to release
the thing of his heart [Izod]. ‘Are you wearing red
ones?’ asked Glugg. At this…
… there is a tittering of hilarity, and the work-chary Glugg is advised by those assembled with a shrug to ‘go try
asking that of the Ulster marines’
Otherwise, holding their noses they said in private, ‘No, he talks peace
in his preaching just for the esteem’ [or he pisses in his trousers and plays
with the steam].
Beware the wolf! Go off! Taboo! [they said to him]
So off he made for his topee [hat],
as fast as leg could run, and he sat down hard pressed by his hungry belly. He
asked himself: What’s my [thoughts] for these times? To wit: bread and water and
life’s a curse. Then bread and more water and more curses. Then no bread, no
water, and what a lot of worms. And that all Shem [Glugg]
shall have.
A rivulet on a mountain [Izod],
she wasn’t sure what she meant. All she wanted was golden syrup, and some
Knight’s plum jam. It was driving her mad
that he’s so stupid. If only he’d talk instead of gawk as though someone had
stuck a stick through his spokes, if only he would not worry so! Speak, tweety bird! I’m not a bog monster [or dog fox, or sl. doxie=girl…]
- Are they moonstone coloured?
- No, replied Izod.
- Or Hellfire stone?
- No
- Or a coral pearl [pink/orange]
‘He has lost the game!’ they said.
‘Off to jail Glugg!’ ‘For what?’
he asked. ‘Shake your arse, Glugg!’ [i.e. get going]
‘Let’s ring-around Chuff!’ ‘Farewell Glugg!’ ‘Chuff’s
in his heaven and all’s right with the world!’
Yet Izod was in tears. ‘What can
the matter be?’ He promised he’d buy her… to tie up her pretty [hair]… But he is
so long gone and so far… Goodbye!
The flower on her hatbrim drooped.
The bow knots wilted.
The face on her mother-of-pearl brooch […or in the
photograph …] didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The lovely girls always
vaunt their pictures.
Poor Izod sat in gloom, tarnished
tinsel round her neck. Why was she gloomy, peripatetic Isolde?
Her beau has gone all cool. She’ll follow him anyway, except to
So, toe to toe, to and fro the Floras dance around, for they
are Izod’s garland of angels.
Cashmere stockings,
They are the colours of the rainbow, their dancing
entrancing…
…the [young becoming older and the younger dancing] over and
over again.
[In a medley of life] The grocer’s girls slips her hand and
takes some haricot beans, the lady in waiting takes paraffin from the can, Mrs Quickdoctor holds up her skirts whenever she hears thunder,
a widow knits cat’s cradles, an actress hides a coin under her tongue, and here’s
a girl confessing to her priest that she’s hot about a chap, and another girl
writes fortunes in the dust. What a buzz: all of them like runaway sheep bound
to go back to Bopeep [Izod],
leaving their teenage years behind them. That’s the way of life they took, and
here’s a new lot come back, for they are the Flora girls, all the flowers of
the handmaids’ [whores’] garden.
But switching from those palms of perfection [the Flora
girls] back to ‘anger arbour’ [with Glugg/Shem],
green with anger, with flushes of rage that went from his head to his stomach,
and stomach to hat, the outward signs of his disgrace. He was floored [or hit up
to the floor] by his lack of the riddle’s answer; he didn’t know the colour
[hue]. Goodness gracious if they would smile at him, he would appreciate it.
But no sign from them was given. They were all at odds against him, the beasts.
He fought with his school chums [or against the sacraments
of the church]… and had a bout with McAdoo over nothing… and defiled himself…
… with what was left [?] from the breeches of the MacSiccaries. [… may refer to Shem’s creation of ink and
writing over himself]
All the while, the much misuse he received preyed in his
mind, and he swore: he would leave. He squeals like holy Patrick. [?] He would
seek the patriot’s absolution. Enough! He took a boat the next morning over the
sea with just three sheets in the wind, a crew of the
… yard! With ham and eggs until father falters! Wild horses
won’t stop him from writing! Gout stop the English! And send St George for some
ink! And don’t laugh at his wine tavern! [e.g. FW] For he is General Jinglesome.’ [i.e. James Joyce]
He had a position as a scribe with the Society of Authors to
inform the press and the English nation of shopkeepers about the truth
concerning his parents [or Chuff and Issy?], the
sorrows of ‘milady’ [from Three
Musketeers] as a melody, with her as his lioness and he as her knight
errant. Written as a letter from him to her. This was to be read out over the
radio to all in range of the signal.
[A number of chapters of Ulysses
are referred to, to indicate what is read out…]
He would expose to the entire world how his old father had a
big hole in the bottom of his hat [the arse of the Russian General…] and how
her ladyship his mother had never ceased making water [i.e. the Liffey] since the blow [her husband’s fall dealt her]
brought her down so low. He would just set it all right down in black and white,
yielding to no-one [i.e. external direction] in his ignorance, and all could
see how sorry he was in this ‘confessional’. Writing on vellum with a quill [or
on his own flesh, as per Inkbottle story] he wrote a miraculous biblical book
of sinning, for all people, which was thoroughly enjoyed, all about who stole
his [father’s] innocence…
… and why he was off colour and how he was ambushed by his
sons, first by Michael [Shaun] and then by Beelzebub [Shem], and why the
provincials expelled him from his home country, and how his only creature
comfort was an omelette in a small room at the ends of the earth, and how he
would have no truck with either form of socialism [national and left-wing
socialism], and it was the best way of blocking out the sorrows of Satan until
he could go tete-a-tete - as Wagner did with his
mistress - after what seemed the torments of a thousand years - with two women
[Issy and mirror image]. He would sit through several
centuries of whatever boredom to meet somewhere if, for a pension for life, his
payment was [enduring] go-to-sleep music and providing personal company,
following which she [ALP or Harriet Shaw Weaver?] could have all the personal
dedications [in his books] she boo-hooed after, while
he made recourse to poetry, his bread and butter. Was the Liffey
[ALP] worth leaving? No!
The tree and the stone. Thereart
he, reminiscing by the bandstand, dreaming of earlier times – the old suitors
of the family drama, starting with a simple pair whose descendents can be traced
down to the notorious nepotists, patriots all of
them, with the gloss of their faces, patriots to a man, and the levers of his
economy. Remember the castle overthrown. Once a prosperous tree, now a stone
baroque [sculpture?]. And I’ll paint you a poem [pome: apple] if you’ll tell…
… me the answer to when was a hovel not a hovel (that is the
first riddle of the universe) (give up?), when it is a sham [or home].
- My god, alas, the dear old [time-time] home
Where oft in
youthful sport I preyed
Amok the green grass,
convict vassal dazes
And loitered for amusement in thy bosom’s shade!
During his mouthful of ecstatic [poetry] (concerning a
sweet-young-thing in China from across the Timor Sea) hereupon a pain shot up
from the root of his wisdom tooth (she thought him Irish [?] a festy king from the gurgling Liffey,
regally feathered, when really [his poem was lifted from a number of minor
poets]) as though his tooth had been sawn in two. His anguish convulsed the
features of his face. Upon which his pain made him look like a crazy chimp. ‘Jesus
Christ, son of a nun!’ he said. Though he live for billion of years, he would
not forget that [pain?]. Like nothing on earth!
But after he had beaten his breastplate, and he had
forgotten his birthplace [or place in the poem, or by blaspheming], he soon repossessed
[?] himself. By prayer? No. By contrite attrition? No. Through exorcism? That’s
right.
And so it was he resumed [possession of] his soul. He recited
a line from an ancient song. Then threw a fit. It was a dance like a little
brown jug jig he learned in the place of fire whilst on a red hot turnspit.
That was under the reign of ‘old Roast’ in the old tavern [G. ratskeller, HCE?]. Look at him, how he’s knotting his
entrails! He’s biting his own head off.
He has a lump [?] of coal. And may eating his tar-pitch
delight not cause him a loss of colour! For this man that blanks you is mostly
black inside [?]. And [as coal] this inflammable [male] might pursue his
[female to be ‘burned’] with a real flame. The worst of his fit is over – but
wait. Hold the press. Just as he was to administer the coal treatment and
continue with the major operation [his poetry reading] , a telegram, like a
butterfly from her handbag, or a dove, came from Izod:
‘I’ll wait for you, oh darling!’ And at the top of the scorched message she
twined flames to let him know she was married. And back a message went from
him. ‘Dead’, burned its words [?]. Then another from her even before his was
posted or penned: ‘Come back to
So again he’ll have a run for his money [in the riddle
game]. And with his horse and dog, and a hop step and jump, and appreciably
less time than it take a glacier to submerge into the Atlantic, he was again
before the trembling sea, his cap off, double disguised, gotten up in a Sinbad sailor
suit [or tailored suit]. The smartest vessels wanted him as a lucky passenger.
Like some pigtailed foreigner [?]…
… if not for his toothache, he’d tell a tall tale of his
‘picture on a wall’ [i.e. FW] and his photo in the newspapers, letting on that,
despite his jests and japes, he has a tail all cocked [or tale cooked up].
And it’s a long one.
Girls, hide from sight those rainbow hues this beau may
bring to light! Though on your doorstep and bent on one knee, he mustn’t lodge
here.
For a hunting the girls will go [hunting scene] and you need
not make your choice. Find the fringe for your frock and lace with your socks
with lots of show and show.
Glugg is guessing
at hers [colour of underwear] for all he is worth. Listen to his wild guesses, and play fair Izod!
He falters, and says he hates to trouble them…
But leaving out god and king and exercising a liberty of
speech, he asks:
- Have you bright yellow [drawers]?
- No.
- Have you May yellow?
- No.
- Have you perhaps nun’s belly yellow?
- No ho ho.
- Enough! Enough! Enough!! I’m going!
And he did go, to their annoyance, slinking away, as though driven
away by stones or a storm. For he could swallow the sharp talk of that fallen
angel as much as your cow can speak Spanish [or, as easily as a cow could eat
spinach].
What a day! He was nauseous…
… his spirits had fallen most grievously, and he was
bedazzled and puzzled, and looked like hell. As though gun shy and being shot
at? Or a peasant conscripted into the Armada?
But could anyone [brother] have looked more winsome than
Chuff who he left behind? Of all the Irish green heroes he was the whitest, the
goldenest! He stood there, a child of a church father
from tonsure to toes, son of Buddha and a May Queen, a dazzler with oiled
curls, a sun surrounded by vestal priestesses, with gamecock spurs and a smile
like glue – while a host of flowergirl sprites circled
him like peahens with a chorus of congratulations, purring with excitement,
lauding him with nicknames they would only ever have bestowed upon their
intended husbands, their perfume setting him on fire rather than teasing him,
so that he, the fair-haired, might have mercy upon them and kiss them. ‘We know
you like that Latin lad with his impurities’, they said to Issy
[?], ‘and we certainly like the kisses of the riddle game, so tell that boy
Chuff to put bellows to his lungs and give us another of his answers.’ [?] Then
they began singing, swinging and hopping, in a choir. They said…
…their prayers to the messenger of his nibs, their prophet,
prostrating themselves. ‘May thy evenings be blissful! As we hope for your
ablution! [!] For the sake of the colour, the scent and the sweet drops [or
heliotrope]. Amen.
A pause. The horizon is white as Ottoman glory [
- Thankyou, thankyou,
thankyou! [Flora’s to Chuff] We thank you that you
brought it off [defeated Glugg]. In later years, even
should you have a desk job as a bank manager, we [Flora girls] shall reside with
all your obedient servants in The Rose Garden. Red brick houses have good
value, but we will save up and buy a timber house in a forest of trees. We’ll
have a letter box for lovesick letters, and swings and hammocks, so may
everyone envy and wonder when they spy on us with binoculars from their
windows. ‘Fiat Fiat’ [he was, he was] shall be our car license plate and Chuff
shall be our chauffeur. Tea will be waiting for us, as I told you. Our pup
Percy will sniff all callers, and our sister Tabitha [the cat] will extend a
hearty welcome. The cake, a Lady Marmalade Shortbread [Izod?],
will be for supper, with almonds and honey and…
…mint. Don’t miss it or you’ll be sorry. Charming clothes,
glittering jewels and perfumed cigarettes. Lemonade and chocolate will be
served. We think his sparkling headiness [lemonade/Chuff] should meet Lade Marmela [Izod]. Then a party and
song would begin. Alleluia.
Since the days of
The flower-girls are still in the night, their petals opening
and turning according to the course of…
…femininity toward him in worship, as though they may catch
all the parting shots from his masculine pistol, for he can see their drawer
colours [as Glugg could not] as they all dutifully
listen to his lovely elixir.
And they said to him:
- We are enchanted dear Stainless, our confessor, heaven
dweller. A pattern of innocence, and deliverer of letters round the world, and
when you are sightseeing on your round, send us a wise letter through your holy
post [or prayer through holy ghost], now that you have ascertained our names.
You are not unclean and an outcast [unlike Glugg].
[etc…] Lord of our hallowe’en, we maggies…
…wear drawers that are men’s BVD underpants, and so want to
win a lottery so as to be dainty if in dishabille with you. Let the revenger [Chuff] hurry back before this letter has even been
sent, and it will be all the more intimate if we can overshadow the coming
offensive [be dressed well for the third answer or a liaison with Chuff?]. Next
our shrinking selves we love the feel of sensitive garments, in rainbow
colours, an angel’s clothing. Promise us that you will keep this in confidence,
as though we were disrobing and you drew a veil, until next time! You do not
want to tell anyone, but by jingo if you do! But bashfulness be damned! May he
take her, may he take her, may he take her to the maximum! Listen, Kicky Lacey and Bianca Panties took their fool the Duke of
Wellington all the way to the finish [i.e. HCE with the two girls] but me and
my raven cousin, have a chance with three Bonapartist
soldiers. She’s like my smile and I love her like myself, like the blue of the
sky. How the men’s duels makes their trio! Honour is like wax for Sir Sword [Earwicker] – like dum-dum bullets for the Irish riflers, and the Queen’s wealth of hair combs for us
jennies. We are all buzzing with the effect you have on us. We are speechless
over here…
… so please communicate with the original [HCE and god?],
since we are only learning… Behold the handmaidens of the lord! To these nuns
we are that, but really we’re yours, immature yet, but we welcome the day we
shall open to you [like flowers]. Then you shall see a sight. No more
marriages! No more gifts in marriage. A girl may fancy a fellow’s friend, and
then that fellow fancy your friend and after that follow us. All is vanity.
Marriage is up [as in finished] and down and out. Soon there
shall be votes for women and food for the fettered [?], peace on earth and heat
in ovens. When every scullerymaid shall hold the same
rights as a yard scullion, and to stand as an equal in private or in public
[also a distinct sexual reading here]. When all the Roman Catholics are
emancipated and the world is made free. So much for the ‘his main is his right’
man! And all his creations [HCE/god]. So tell Coquette to teach Connie to teach
Cattie and tell Caminia to teach La Cherie [all about
this], though where he lives amongst us, nobody knows except Mary. And that why
we both wring our hands, and also hold hands and dance.
These bright young things were waltzing with their angelic
Chuff while those who were not there [i.e. Glugg]
were screaming oaths, bawling and groaning with belching hubbub as though in
hell below, damned and bedevilled as the defeated Lucifer.
… or you. Instead Glugg ate
sausage and mash. He could not go to their picnic party. He was not on the
social list. Poor Glugg was dazed and it was as
though he had laid in his grave.
But lo, he rises, with pitiful eyes and a woebegone voice.
‘Open Sesame!’ And he examined his conscience to the best of his ability. No
more could he sit on his seat. With his Thomas Aquinas on his judgement seat.
No more singing the days away in church. Thinking of the Trinity has muddled
his mind. He himself, born of a tribe of thugs into a brood of blackmail
[culture of making one submit?] duly recanted all the Genesis heresies [?]. He,
by the blessing of the blind [!] proffered his penance and would stop with
being ‘international’.[?] He, ex-commander-in-chief in the sport of guessing
colours, though with dust in his eyes, turned to make plenty of money from
white girls [i.e. Joyce teaching English/or ‘make gold from silver’] hiking all
over
After his attempted assassination [by Buckley] and while
under legal summons, he [Glugg’s father] would coax
pennies and silvers and offer oranges and candy to lithe maidens with his
purest of polygamous intentions, because of his peculiar ailment of running
away on payment-due days because he suffered from his domestic responsibilities
[house torts]. A colossal bragger not worth one brass lie, the schoolgirls say,
as he [Glugg’s father], like a great white
caterpillar as he crawls into their beds and dreams [?], like a pig in shit [?]
with all his runts [children?]. So little is she [the schoolgirl/ALP] and timorously
she greets his immenseness. But they were soon set, her ‘yes’ sounding in his
ears [Ulysses]. In the love nest, his
mistress, with her red tresses and her feminine form like an ampersand [ALP],
was as though [a model] in some arse doctor’s anatomy lecture. He [Glugg’s father] is as good as a mountain [i.e. Howth], and knew Meister Vikingson
[Wellington, Earwicker], the far-famed Norwegian
captain, with his blushing [or ruddy] complexion fanned by ocean [Ossian?]
breezes who never saw his grandfather or his bed head and never met his
mother-in-law, and [Glugg’s father] had as an ignominious
name ‘Master Milchkuh’ [Father Michael], the queerest
man in the world, and they say he found his kids in an advertisement [rather
than sired them…]. Others accuse [Glugg’s father] of
being a knock-kneed degenerate dope user, with melt-in-your-mouth romanticism
that was purely tommy rot and pro-British [Tommy
Atkins]. The curse of god on these Bedouins [the detractors – his children?]. But
even if she did take all her clothes off [ALP and Father Michael] there was no
truth [in these lies]. There were two whores of the
…Villains’ [or William], that this Lord Nelson [Glugg’s father HCE] of poor hearing, was diseased, had
adenoid problems, was highly accurate in his thinking, lived in house number
seven [Bloom/Rainbow girls], liked to bet, a weakling, and a geological mission
found his rear in a painting [i.e. picture motif – Russian General], he had bad
buck teeth, and was coming on ever so nicely at 81. [These lies] are why
everyone perks up at news of this grandfather. That’s why the ecclesiastics and
the prime ministers preach about him and get their power using his wicked
proverbs [or the story of wicked Glugg’s father].
That’s why he, a Greek or Roman womaniser, was tried by jury, wearing a sunhat
while two nurses agitated his teapot, each a shy gay young eighteen year old.
Simply for inducing pretty young girls [tipidities:
younger versions of Kate] to forget their troubles (rainy days) and be nice and
dainty in the shade (29: Issy+Rainbow Girls). Grand
old toucher-up of young photographs [poets] [someone
said] and he turned around abruptly as though he heard falling salmon tin make
a noise [Shem’s favourite food]. Fare him well, the gigantic man. He is a
revelation! Tried by a jury of matrons, with his humble hump [HCE] living in
his dirty dump [Tip]. And the story is set in stone with a view [picture?] of
him going up
[And Glugg is also telling the
story of] his fiery hen mother too, to the princes of the age, the woman who did [who created so much?]. Meet the
Mum from Chapelizod. She’s just as funny as she’s vulgar.
However she’s still on her saw bones all upstanding. Sing a psalm of sex,
please, an apocryphal full of rhyme! [she would say.] She was her husband’s [HCE’s] beauty spot and he would have divorced her. So she
didn’t swap into her own home from
…came into the picture [picture motif], fresh and gushing [fume:
water rapids] at the mouth [of the Liffey], she was
wronged by somebody (and Magrath took the rap) and [falling]
ran forward with her 40 bonnets, terrified of the mere names of the mountains [HCE?]
and desperate to be back in her childhood bed [i.e. with the sea, her father]. She
feigned illness and got a pain in her stomach from the soldiers at war
[pregnancy]. Then, complaining about his poorliness
due to persecution and how he harboured her when she was all alone, he was her
sovereign lord and ‘guvner’-general (HCE), and he let
her into the ancient consort room and legally bound her to him [i.e. in
marriage], so if ever she’s bereaved of him, since both were parties to the
deed, it was HCE who pays the funeral bill. Meanwhile, she nurtured him from
her alms [or cooking] dish, singing and checking his ears for earwigs, she was like
a playful cat skidding about after hail, smoothing his ruffled clothing and
complaining about the wind lifting her dress [?]. She wandered wildly like a
wanton woman in the wind [Liffey meanders]. If only
he’d stopped smoking his pipe and listening to music, and renounced the
Dubliners in the their pubs and kept the streetwalkers out the parks, and Nestle’s milk from selling honeycomb [?] and Ali Barber
selling faulty traps [carpets?] - she would instead have made many dollars with
her souvenir dealings, dedicating her nutbrown cloak
to charity and hanging about Oxmantown’s church and
not bowing before Indians or Moslems, and would wave her lovely hat like a
purple cardinal’s princess, or a woman advising the papal legate, giving a
glass of milk to the legate’s comrade and children [i.e. HCE and children] on
account of all he had done for the honour of Rome, and the nations adored him [HCE],
and would give a coin to Saint Persse O’Reilly [HCE]
who gave the three [tenors, gondoliers, sons] their loyal devotion to offer
masses for widows.
Hear, O world! Glugg’s tiny
tattling [on his parents]! Backwoods be wary [Glugg
is there]!
But who comes yonder [over the pub where the children’s game
is played] with a fire atop a pole? The moon. Bring olive branches to mud
cabins and peace to tents [the game is over]. The dinner feast is at hand. Shut
the shop! The hag by the name of ‘curfew’ hisses from her lane. Haste, it’s
time for children to go home. Come home to roost little chicks, as the wild
wolf is abroad. Let’s away and stay where the log fire’s burning.
It darkens, our phenomenal world. The marsh pond by the bog
is visited by the tide. We are enveloped by darkness. Man and beast begins to
get cold. They don’t want to do anything. Or just get rugs/forage. Put some
coal on the fire. So cold! Where is our honoured spouse [ALP] – the foundress? The foolish one is within. Ha! Where is the
father? With Nancy Hands [hostess of public house]. The hound has fled. What
ho! It was a wolf under those lolling ears. Farewell. His trail can’t be found,
over cliffs, up mountains, down dells, a craggy road to walk. So long sky! The
moon is up, see! Nothing stirs in the undergrowth. The playful paths of dragon
fly and spider are still in the reeds. The deers and
birds are silent. The evening is turning into night. The lions and tigers are
shutting their eyes. Soon it will be time to lie together through the night
until the cock-crow of morning. Dreaming of the panther monster [U.] While the jungle sleeps. The
elephant has sung his last trumpet, ‘great is the elephant’s tusks’, and he’s said
a prayer for the hippopotamus and mammoth…
… and will rest from his toil. The rhino’s horn and snout
are so big, but he doesn’t care. So be it! No noises from the animals. Lights!
Bright lights, we’ll be alright. With the help of a hurricane lamp [we’ll sing
songs]. ‘When other lips and other hearts, then you’ll remember me.’ And now
with Brer Fox’s [HCE] fishy fable finished, the
threads somewhat torn and the knots in its arguments, the little fish in ALP’s fish bowl have stopped squabbling/wriggling about
Jonah and the whale [ALP/juno and the wall] and papal
infallibility [stone] and the procession [fish] of the holy ghost. And if a
tramp laid his ear to the river [or HCE’s chest:
ground], excepting the gurgling and the noise of his own mind, he wouldn’t a
flip or a flap in all Finnyland [the river or
… the Churchyard. And whoever comes over [i.e. invader] for
Whoopee Week [Finnegan’s Wake] must put up with the Judge and Chambers [the
later trial of HCE].
But heed! There’s a lull in the children’s game. All’s quite
on the field of glory. Hush, a horn! The father of the house [HCE] calls out
threateningly. Wearing a thundercloud periwig and with lightning bolts flashing
from his finger. My soul I hope he doesn’t shout at us! Anna is poking into her
dinner pot to see if the soup is cooked enough, listening to the bubbles
saying: ‘the coming man, the future woman, this food will build, what he with
fifteen years will do, the ring [song?] in her mouth [singing] of joyous god,
stars stirring about [in the sky/soup].’ A splash [or palace] for him, some
sauce [sperm?] for her, and spoons [women?] for the winners. But one and two
were never three [HCE plus sons – i.e. it is not straightforward: there must be
a competition]. So the children must have their final round since [Glugg] is on parole [released, returned?] And Napoleon [Glugg?] has to choose between the two girls Josephine and
Marie Louise [Issy and mirror] to wear the lily of
The whole camp calls them. The children are wild. And the
girls are marching. The horse show magnate [Chuff] draws them like a magnet,
and those fillies fly. The schoolgirls of Sorrento Point, they know the
Introducing again Jerry [Shem/Glugg],
the unchaste blade, with the flowing…
…language, who goes on to say how it was foretold, in an
argument about time and space en route between tree and stone, that, running
away with his use of reason and going amok with the breaking of his voice, his viciousness
was getting the best of his youth’s virtue [presumably a reference to Joyce’s
somewhat illicit sexual appetite as a youth] and his personality was being
controlled by the holy spirit [i.e. HCE merged with sons, or trinity]. He then
ate and went to bed and told the world to go to hell. He ate his bread with strangers [in exile].
Boo! You’re through! [they all said]
Who? I’m through. [he replies]
How do you do today, my dark gentleman? [Chuff’s challenge
to exile/foreigner?]
Not too bad [he replies]
God knows. Everything is ruined and meaningless. [Chuff’s response?]
After that Glugg wept. With such a
truth he seemed to love his sweetheart. Murmuring, in mourning, he sees her
there before him. Dressed in black from her knee to collar, though [underneath]
white [wide] from the garters up. He cursed the saints, it was a sight most
delicious, and his eyes reddened until like the oxide of mercury! And how it
saddened him that his eyes would rust [red?] And yet his red eyes bore false
witness about how deep was his hidden wound [love for her]. He didn’t want the Flora
girls of the other boy to see the wound he felt. Hence it pained the unchaste [Glugg] that he had lost his one-girl-for-every-man, even
though there might be more, or men [?], and the option of going to war [or
whores?: Ta ra ra Boom De
Ay, I met a girl today…]. He could become immaculate, and drink the shirt [off
his back?], and those whores with short skirts would then have to change their
tune. So he went from the first to the last [i.e. he lost the game] and in
between became an exile for life. Lifting the black [Izod’s
black dress, or white of petticoat?] he viewed as a veil [lifted?]! Split the
white [Izod’s undergarments/white light] and see
heaven [or seven colours/i.e. Izod
lifts her dress and shows him her white petticoat]. He knows now for he’s seen
them in black and white through his eyeglasses which was tantamount to a
photograph [camera obscura/chiaroscuro/picture].
The rainbow girls tried taunting him with different colours: red/green apple,
wine, yellow [28 colours etc]…
… What are they all beside her? [She, Rider Haggard]
If you knew her [or guessed her] in her prime [colour], you
would fall for her the very first time. Look, she’s signalling from among the
flowers. Turn again wistful one, lord mayor of
The first bit of the word [top] brought Achille’s
down [‘heel’], my middle I [‘I’] ope [‘O’] and my
bottom’s a waltz [‘TROPE’ ?] and my whole [hole] is the flower that is like a
star in the day [or follows the sun] and is well worth your pilgrimage [or the
sun’s]. There’s an aitch [H], a head [to come to a ‘T’] and let a hangman’s
halter [ROPE] hang the scoundrel. [Difficult set of taunts presumably from Izod follow…] I see through your ‘whereupon’ [literary
pretensions?], and that’s not a cock’s crow [cassock/i.e.
Glugg is not a Christ-figure], he is wearing makeup,
and if my language tutor [Glugg] here is cut out for
an old bore, I’m flowing away [Liffey]. If he beetles
over [falls], I’ll fly away. Pull the bow peep [beau pee/story of woman peeing…?]
and see how we’re all fast asleep. Is your lump of a tongue for lunch, or would
you prefer Turkish Delight [
…like a prawn, while I go flirt with any cockle. While here,
he who adores me is fast asleep [HCE]. If he could see me he’d be ever so
jealous. He was my first King Mark [drink] since Valentine’s Day. Wink [i.e.
heliotrope] is the winning word.
Look!
In her mouth lies that word [heliotrope/word known to all
men, U? ‘Yes’] The roof of her mouth
is like ruby, the teeth like ivory, and is filled with her breathing, and her
fairness, the fairness of fondant and milk and rhubarb, and the fairness of
promise. There in her mouth lies that word, dear reader! It vibrates on her
tongue and explodes from her lips. A few letters and you have it, old son
[Shem]. And sonny [Jim/Joyce] he’s coming to land her, the boy she adores! Make
way for them!
With a ‘ring ding dong’ they raise clasped hands and retreat
a few steps, then curtsey twice, with arms outstretched, like devotees.
Irrelevance.
They sing:
- I rose one morning and looked in my mirror and saw nobody
loves me but you.
They point at Shem as though to shun him.
- My name is Misha Misha [Shem] but call me Toffee Tough [Shaun/Patrick] I
mean muttonchops [i.e. call me Shaun?]. It was he [Glugg, an effeminate ‘her’] the boy who was left in the
lurch.
[By] Her reverence.
[The girls] All laugh.
They pretend to help by shouting insults at him to make him
speak [i.e. answer the riddle!]. ‘And it’s it’s not
cricket, Sally. Not by ever such a lot’. When 29 bloomers [Flora girls and Issy] are against one man and…
…rose up [against him]. I was there and thrilled about it.
She’s her sex [a girl] that’s for certain. So, to celebrate the occasion [Glugg makes more guesses]:
- Have you got red knickers?
He simulates having tight ribbons around his rump.
- Have you got black knickers like the colour of a broken
tile?
He simulates sweeping a chimney.
- Can you wave adieu from
He feigns cutting with a pair of scissors and buying
knickers [?] and putting them before their pale faces [also a double entendre
implications, and possible cutting up of the girls dolls and spitting their
heads at them…]
There, he has spoken at last!
Now be quiet, little ones. Rest and stay here beside me. For
the time being, now.
For a Birnam wood has come to Dunsinane. Glamour has murdered love, and now we must love
no more. Those lacking breath can love no more.
Lets laugh at the libel-man [Shem] writing his lore.
Lover-man you will love leaving the Liffey. Lift your
right arm to your Life Lord and link your left with your loss of liberty. Ha ha loverman, your love is all
behind you.
With a fork of hazel the virgins invoke the devil. ‘Get thee
behind me, free from evil smells’ and perdition opens before us.
Twice had he gone in quest of her and thrice has she
appeared before him. And the prankquean held her
skirts and left, with her troop of girls at her heel. And what how do you think
the bride was dressed? With vulcan’s [fool’s]
diamonds in her vests [or woolly vest]. Their scents in the air followed her.
While the boys’ went wild to see such a floral group.
Led by a light-bearer [Lucifer?], with four happy hops and
with chanting of the alphabet, with the wearer of the sword as yet uncrowned
[Chuff], they few fly away. ‘We put money on that piebald nigger [? Shem]. Will
anyone double…
…on the bay?’ ‘Definitely not on Jacob [Shem]’ ‘Get up,
god’s scourge on you! There’s a visitor for you.’ ‘The Hun, the Hun!’ [i.e.
Chuff]
He stands there, oblivious, as though forgetting himself
entirely (as leaden as a stockpot [writer], or like a cracked saucepan
[sense-pun] and out of his looming madness came instead a strength to be wise.
Thrust from the light, rejected, he imagines her hatred is instead love. He
blinks. But one’s anger is greater when it is wreathed with charity. All these
people had once been alive, then as time liquefied into state [i.e. a picture]
they become angels [i.e. fall of Lucifer]. Though, he considers as he stands
there, anything may have befallen him, the song of a witch [Issy]
mixing with the utterance of a demon [Shem], him a famished devil and she a
sorceress, in an eternal conjunction in their nightshirts [?]. If he spies east
he seethes with the truth [south], and if he looks north his heart wilts [west
– the Four Historians?] And what wonder with the murky wisdom of the shadows?
The writings on his pages are his foul deed thoughts, the hallmarks of his mad
imagination. The girls and Chuff take off! But Funnylegs
Glugg has to lean. They [the girls] would like to be
like her. Gosh they would. Gosh, they’re like ripe cherries.
Issy could have
shaken him [in her anger]. He was an oaf, and nothing more. Still he’d be a
good tutor number two, and she’d be like wax in his hands. Instead, he would
turn over and finger the most tantalising peaches in his book of the dark [i.e.
FW]. Look at this passage about Galileo!
‘I know it is difficult, but when you go left, I go right’. ‘No, turn to this
passage on Machiavelli!’ Zut alors,
he’s bound to tinker with it. T’was ever so in
schools since Headmaster Adam became Eve Harte’s teacher, in every time, with
the mischief in a man’s mind and while her heavenly pupils swam, let him be
exasperated, letters [classes/messages] be blowed!
[blown in the wind]. I am a feminine person, of a provocative gender. And not a
singular case.
Which is why cards [Cads] are often mixed up with duels [competition
between men for a woman], and here’s Bruno verses Nolan, for the prize of a thou
[you/thousand].
But listen to the mocking bird [Shaun] to the mocking bard
[Shem] making [out as] bored. We’ve heard it since
…squaring his shoulders. And I was clenching my fists. And
we were both shouting.
Come thrust! Go, parry! [fencing terms] I dare you brother.
The competition is seen in mankind’s long history of parlements,
which are both merciless and wonderful.
- May St Mowy of the monastery and
then a catholic cemetery be your future!
- Thank you.
And the reverse exchange.
- And may
- Thank you.
And each was wroth [or made] with his other. And his
countenance fell. The twins, her crown pretenders, violent-minded bickerers,
eyed each other over (and never did a cleaner of lamps [Shem – like Diogenes -
dusts-off other historical philosophers in FW]
frown more fiercely on an anointer of hinges [Shaun –> anoint -> religion/Issy -> hinge??) while the flora girls are in such a
confusion just to know between the twins who is Arthur and who is not equal,
the sheep and the goat, for shy and pretty, exceedingly nice girls can fall upon
exceedingly bad times unless they chose rightly [richly] (though of riches he
had none and his heart’s hopes are dashed) and make their lives greater. He
must be put on the spot [any suitor] and there’s no room for wishy-washy stuff,
it’s a selfmade world and you can’t believe a word he
says, and one is only chosen through natural selection. Charlie, you’re my
darling! [
Shem, creedless and crownless, hangs his haughty head. The
devil in his eye has faded. A goddam former son of a
trombone. He doesn’t know how his descendents will stammer…
…in Peruvian [i.e. Shem the exile] or in the first language
like it [?]. He dares not think of the provenance of his ancestors, his
great-great etc grandmother’s accent of a Russian whore, for the [degenerate]
language of the slave all but means ‘I once was otherwise’. Not that the world
has changed its pattern as youth moves from strength to strength since the
beginning of time and the human races, the ants have hoarded [Shaun] and
grasshoppers are spendthrifts [Shem], nothing new whatsoever under the silly
old sun, whether you’re a healthy go-to-bed type [Shaun?] or a wiser go-to-bed
later [Shem?]. Not that the activities of a
Evidently he has failed for the third time, because she is
wearing none of the three. And just as patently clear is the hole in the bally
trough [Issy?], through which the rest [answers?
babies?] fell out [and over which the two brothers fell out.] Because to
explain why the residue is, was, or will not be, [i.e. the fallout of the
game]: ever since then the twins could never live apart [or never could live
together], in the whirl of society with the pairings of lovers, the merriment
and general ‘thumb-to-nosery’ [!] but one must also
take into account the sudden and gigantic appearance in the middle of this
brawl of village children of the largely long-suffering Lord Lucan [i.e. the
father HCE].
But verily, by ‘Blank-de-blank’, the unknown god of
machineries, by being cut up and re-compounded, how do we account for [the
appearance of] this ancient poetic monster? [next few paras
concern HCE…]
Was he pushed, for example, as some have diagnosed, from our
seawall by the three soldiers, those stout swains – it is the product of these
extremes [of action?] that give us our means [of living?], and [it is a fate] as
might happen to anyone, from the lowest layman to the champion prince, or so we
read in history, even though the chroniclers of chivalry are suspicious [of
this negative reading] unless they read it themselves [in a book], for the
ancients are linked with the present as the human chain extends, and will be in
the future, as long as monks sell yew to archers or the waters of the Liffey go out to sea, with her love-lisp [noise of river]
to his monolith interred [Howth Head]? So goes the
dance of Perrichon and Bastienne,
and heavy Humphrey and hairy Anna. What do you say, sweet friend? [noises of
the Liffey] A babel of men,
a valley of tears.
The murmur of the mermaid [Liffey]
in the mind’s ear, with its uncharted rocks and dangerous seaweed. Only the caul [womb lining, telegraph of umbilical cords back to
Adam in U] knows his 1001 name, HCE,
Finn [the Fenian?] - how do you do, you foreigner!
Does it not all come back to you, purity-snooper
[reader?], like a television broadcast from long dead ancient kings? The
charges [accusations, children] you may remember, though chances are you won’t,
but it’s Old Joe, older even than Adam, and we are recurrently meeting him, the
same giant, recycled through Anna, in the various faces of scripture and the
various pieces of tombs. Greetings Great God! Defend the king! Height of the
attack [H, Howth], whose word is soft [C, silent] and
whose hearing is acute [E, i.e.god listens…], he
whose hat is a fort [
… is the name of the hero, of Chapelizod,
two-handed [sword] slaughterer of the shadows in our lives.
Hold him!
Yet he still stirs. Go back to the clay!
Why will you wake him from his earth, O Summoner [someone or other]: he is woebegone in the dust of
ages? The hour of his closing [pub closing bell] lies at hand, the bell that
shall klaxon his whereabouts. If one, who remembered all his merchandise [and
wanted to try some – tomb spoils/or beer], were to ask why the storks were
quitting this eagle’s nest [see McHugh on stork], would he not sya [think] to another with him there to breach the barrel
spillway [of his pub – or castle] – ‘Jehosophat, what
doom is [in] here! [i.e. the storks were leaving, so HCE had returned]’ ‘Run through
to them, sire!’ ‘May he be protected [the sire]!’ ‘Cavalier, caution! Slaves to
Virtue, save him! May he be far away. Be his Hector protector! Keep your eyes
open’. [idea of a team of knights forcing their way into HCE’s
tomb or pub] ‘And try to remember these nights of valorous effort until the end
of the world’. Just as Pliny the Younger and other Romans wrote their works
[recalling those times]. Just like we learned from ancient Irish texts in
For the producer (Giambattista Vico/fate?) caused a weariness to come upon the Father of
Truants [HCE] and promptly brought onto the scene HCE’s
small consort [ALP], a foundling filly of a tailor and a shipman’s shop girl,
weighing ten stone ten, and five foot five in height, and 37” around the chest,
29” around the waist, and 37” around the answer to everything [hips], 23”
around each thigh, 14” round the beginning of happiness [i.e. calves] and a
nice 9” round her slender foot.
And before you could say ‘mercy to goodness’, HCE’s hen wife has collared [grabbed] her pullets [the
children playing the game]. That’s what they have ears for [to hold onto].
Their argument has vanished in an instant (and they all came clucking) while singing
‘The wren, the wren, the king of all birds’ and shouting ‘Beer, Wine, Spirits
for consumption on the premises’, and ‘Ma’s merry and Pa’s polite’, and the
children were the ruddiest of them all, though festooned with flowers and
colour, and despite the hue and cry [one could see in them the resemblance to
HCE].
All go home [says ALP]. Stop blaring on that ram’s horn
Edmund Burke! And cease your fuming, Kendal Bush! [burning bush] And Sherri-Goldies [Flower girls etc] move sternwards [toward home]!
For the holy language [bed time prayers?] is soon to come pass.
It’s good. It was the best [time].
For they are now tearing about, and turning. Too soon [they
think] they are coming in to read text books and get their bread and bible,
with jaggery sugar, and fine French phrases from the
Grammar, and fine words from the Four Masters, Matthew, Luke, Mark and John,
and what happened to our 11 in 32 AD, and why is limbo and where is it and what
are sound waves, and what is the radio saying since before they all went wrong,
with brother against brother [Able axes Cain? World War?] and the fisherman
fetching the ‘among flesh’ [Christ] from the Patrick bird [god/dove speaks in
Mary’s ear?], and why was Sinbad [HCE-Humphrey] sitting on him [the Wall] looking
like a sailor, French, hydraulics, chemistry, and mathematical problems.
The little cloud Nibulissa [Issy] still hangs in the sky. Sinbad sulks before bedtime.The night light has a picture of the
What is a maid to do? So angelic and weepy. Issy is most unhappy. ‘Is Issy
unhappy?’ laughs her mirror image, whispering.
Running about [still outside], coming and going, now
speaking of rhymes and rhomboids, now tripping over trapezoids, repeating a
story Grandma Geomater showed them about
grasshoppers, ants and rabbits and hares, they spoke of Dorian Gray and Maid
Marion, and all the boys and girls sang out a [skipping?] song – about, a fella in the house-belong-Daddy [pub], nin
nin nin nin,
that poor man’s clock chimed, nin nin
nin nin, [a song] about old
Father Barley [HCE] who got up early and met with two platinum blondes named
Hips and Haws [whores…two girls in Park] and fell out with some Trinity College
fellows called ‘Skyward Shows’ [?] with: [version of Four old Historians turned
lechers] (‘You’ll catch it, don’t fret, Mrs Timmy Lipton! Come indoors, Toffeenose and shed your swank!’)
Shut the door! [Hundred lettered thunder: door of pub? Issy’s promiscuity? Shout of HCE]
Applause!
Loud applause!
The play in the playhouse, ‘Game’, here ends. The curtain
drops by request [of HCE].
More applause!
Gone are the gods, gone are the performers. The game of
‘what is the colour’ has ended, with an answer of ‘lots of lives lost’. The
girl is upset with the boy. The historians snore.
The time of rending rocks and reckoning with rogues reigns. The
gods are in Gottdammerung. Hells bells. The timid
hearts of mere words have fled. How did that come about? By Dad, did you not
hear that thunder? The lightning and thunder of father tonight. And the
children did a bunk. In fear they broke, they ate the wind and ran. Go to, let
us extol this angel of death with our words, in our drinks, on our door jambs
and gates. [i.e. the birth of a god] To the mausoleum [museum?] with the devil,
did you think I was dead? [says the god on resurrection] Hip hip hurrah! And let Nick extol Mick and say: I am Shem [I
am the same?]. And shall not
Applaud the man again!
For he on high has spoken in the tumbledown world and metamorphosed
by that phenomenon [thunder], the inhabitants of the earth trembled all over.
Loud hear us!
Loud, graciously hear us!
Now have the children entered into their habitations [i.e.
children went inside/also in Vico, men fled thunder
into caves]. And the nation is glad, the meeting [of children] is over. Thou
hast closed the door of your house behind your children and set guards, the
twin policemen [Shem and Shaun], so that the children may read the books that
open the mind to light, and err not in the darkness [i.e. outside] which is the
after-thought of thy creation [?], guarded by your bondsmen, the cheery
cherubim boys, Timothy and Tom.
Till trees become stones, for ever.
O Loud, hear the beseeching of each of these little
[unlit/innocent] ones! Grant sleep in an hour’s time.
That they do not take a chill. That they don’t need the
lavatory [in the night]. That they shall not have bad dreams. [mad Hiawathas? /also, not kill or commit adultery]
Loud, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with
laughter!
AEIOU
Silence.