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The online shorter Finnegans Wake (FW I.1 thru I.4, ch1-4)

[Anthony Burgess tried to do this too, but I think his version was very, very weak. All I've done is trim phrases and sections, smoothing the larger gaps with short summaries. In general, this restores the sentence structures of David Hayman's First Draft Version of FW [FDV]. But I've also tried to include all the most beautiful sounding phrases, so when the sense is obscure, just listen to the sounds.]

Vanity Fair (1929): "Are the sketches in Work in Progress to be consecutive and interrelated?"

Joyce: "It is all consecutive and interrelated."

• Contents
• FW I.1 thru I.4, ch1-4
  • # chapter one
    • # the Museyroom
    • # Mutt and Jute
    • # the Prankquean
  • # chapter two
    • # the Cad
    • # the Ballad
  • # chapter three
    • # the Plebiscite
    • # Peaches Browning
  • # chapter four
    • # the Trial
• FW I.5 thru I.8, ch5-8 [# Joyce's reading]
• FW II.1, ch9
• FW II.2, ch10
• FW II.3 and II.4, ch11-12
• FW III.1 and III.2, ch13-14
• FW III.3, ch15
• FW III.4, ch16
• FW IV, ch17

NEW: At the end of each chapter there's a link to a chatboard for that chapter.

Let's start at the end, composed in 1938, Finnegans Wake pp627-8 [fw].

Anna Livia Plurabelle Earwicker-- a personification of the Liffey river-- is flowing into Dublin bay, symbolically dying and being reborn as her own daughter Isobel, dying also as a tree losing its leaves, the river Liffey flowing into the masculine ocean, her husband, the incestuous father:

...And it's old and old
it's sad and old
it's sad and weary I go back to you,
my cold father,
my cold mad father,
my cold mad feary father,
till the near sight of the mere size of him,
the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning,
makes me seasilt saltsick
and I rush, my only, into your arms.
I see them rising!
Save me from those therrble prongs!
Two more. Onetwo moremens more. So. Avelaval.

Latin "ave et vale" = hail and farewell
French "l'aval" = downstream
alluvial = of river sediment

My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still.
I'll bear it on me. To remind me of. Lff!
So soft this morning, ours. Yes.
Carry me along, taddy, like you done through the toy fair!
If I seen him bearing down on me now
under whitespread wings like he'd come from Arkangels,
I sink I'd die down over his feet, humbly dumbly,
only to washup.
Yes, tid.

tidy, tide
Danish "tid" = time

There's where.
First. We pass through grass behush the bush to.
Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far!
End here. Us then. Finn, again!
Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps.
The keys to. Given!
A way a lone a last a loved a long the
 
riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

But between 'the' and 'riverrun' we've jumped back twelve years, from 1938 to 1926, to the opening passage on page 3 [fw] of the published book, composed in deliberate anticipation of that 12-years-off, broken-in-midthought closing image.

'Howth Castle and Environs' is Anna's husband-father HCE, Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, and also geographically the castle on the hill of Howth [pix] where the Liffey meets the sea, not so far from the Wicklow hills where it had its origin before circling south, west, north, and east again. [Liffey page] [bridges]

Howth castle: [pic] ditto

McH: Adam & Eve's Church [qv] [history] [pic] was in the center of Dublin

(Notes are mostly from Roland McHugh's "Annotations to FW" [McH] or Joyce's own comments [JAJ]. 'FDV' is Hayman's "First Draft Version", now online.)

JAJ: "I am trying to tell the story of this Chapelizod [see map] family in a new way. Time and the river and the mountain are the real heroes of my book. Yet the elements are exactly what every novelist might use: man and woman, birth, childhood, night, sleep, marriage, prayer, death. There is nothing paradoxical about this. Only I am trying to build many planes of narrative with a single esthetic purpose."

Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea,
had passencore rearrived from North Armorica
on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor
to wielderfight his penisolate war:

As ALP is reborn in her daughter Isobel, so HCE will be reborn as Tristram, who has apparently been in exile but now (or rather, not quite yet-- pas encore) returns triumphant.

JAJ: "Sir Amory Tristram 1st earl of Howth changed his name to Saint Lawrence, b in Brittany (North Armorica)"

nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee
exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios
while they went doublin their mumper all the time:

The 'sister city' [qv] of Dublin, Georgia, USA [qv] growing up on the Oconee river; probably an image of Tristram being successful in exile.

nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe
to tauftauf thuartpeatrick

God inspires/baptises Moses/Patrick/Jesus.

JAJ: "The flame of Christianity kindled by S. Patrick on Holy Saturday in defiance of royal orders"
JAJ: "bellowed: the response of the peatfire of faith to the windy words of the apostle"

not yet, though venissoon after,
had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac:

Son overthrows father, Jacob tricks Isaac, Parnell ousts Isaac Butt.

not yet, though all's fair in vanessy,
were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe.

Jonathan Swift brought low by his divided affections for two Esthers, nicknamed Stella and Vanessa [qv].

Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight

Noah and sons make wine after the Flood (and Ham sees Noah naked) [qv].

and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

God's covenant with Noah.

FDV: bad luck -> worse luck -> bloody end -> rory end

JAJ: "At the rainbow's end are dew and the colour red: bloody end to the lie in Anglo-Irish = no lie"
JAJ: "When all vegetation is covered by the flood there are no eyebrows on the face of the Waterworld"

(These themes are probably in reverse chronological order: peace to drink to sex to overthrow to exile and inspiration and return.)

The fall [*] of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy.

The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

HCE suffered a fall, that transformed him into the landscape upon which Dublin is built.

[*] is a parenthetical hundred-letter thunderclap:

(bababadal-
gharaghtakamminarronn-
konnbronntonnerronn-
tuonnthunntrovarrhoun-
awnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!)

The thunderclap was Giambattista Vico's image of the rebirth of the cycle of history, frightening the promiscuous prehistoric giants of the fields into terrified domesticity in caves.

FW has ten of these thunderwords [list], each with a dominant theme contributing syllables from many languages, here many words for 'thunder': karak (Hindi), kaminari (Japanese), brontao (Greek), tonnerre (French), tuono (Italian), trovao (Portuguese), aska (Swedish), tordenen (Danish), tornach (Irish)

Skipping a paragraph, and starting to trim phrases: [fw] [fdv]

Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand... lived in the broadest way immarginable... and during mighty odd years... piled buildung supra buildung pon the banks for the livers by the Soangso.

HCE at his peak was a builder of cities.

...with goodly trowel in grasp and ivoroiled overalls which he habitacularly fondseed, like Haroun Childeric Eggeberth he would caligulate by multiplicables the alltitude and malltitude until he seesaw by neatlight of the liquor wheretwin 'twas born, his roundhead staple of other days to rise in undress maisonry upstanded (joygrantit!), a waalworth of a skyerscape of most eyeful hoyth entowerly, erigenating from next to nothing and celescalating the himals and all, hierarchitectitiptitoploftical, with a burning bush abob off its baubletop and with larrons o'toolers clittering up and tombles a'buckets clottering down...

McH: St Laurence O'Toole [qv]; St Thomas a Becket

This city-building is strangely equated with masturbation. [fw]

What then agentlike brought about that tragoady thundersday this municipal sin business? ...It may half been a missfired brick, as some say, or it mought have been due to a collupsus of his back promises, as others looked at it. (There extand by now one thousand and one stories, all told, of the same).

But... wan warning Phill filt tippling full. His howd feeled heavy, his hoddit did shake. (There was a wall of course in erection) Dimb! He stottered from the latter. Damb! he was dud. Dumb! Mastabatoom, mastabadtomm, when a mon merries his lute is all long. For whole the world to see.

McH: Egyptian Mastaba tombs [qv]

Like Finnegan in the song "Finnegan's Wake" [qv] he fell from his ladder/ wall/ building while drunk. The wake (funeral) from the song is re-enacted as well: [fw]

Shize? I should shee! Macool, Macool, orra whyi deed ye diie? of a trying thirstay mournin? Sobs they sighdid at Fillagain's chrissormiss wake, all the hoolivans of the nation, prostrated in their consternation and their duodisimally profusive plethora of ululation. There was plumbs and grumes and cheriffs and citherers and raiders and cinemen too. And the all gianed in with the shoutmost shoviality. Agog and magog and the round of them agrog...

Sharpen his pillowscone, tap up his bier! E'erawhere in this whorl would ye hear sich a din again? With their deepbrow fundigs and the dusty fidelios. They laid him brawdawn alanglast bed. With a bockalips of finisky fore his feet. And a barrowload of guenesis hoer his head. Tee the tootal of the fluid hang the twoddle of the fuddled, O!

The wails of the mourners are musical: [fdv]

...From Shopalist to Bailywick or from ashtun to baronoath or from Buythebanks to Roundthehead or from the foot of the bill to ireglint's eye he calmly extensolies. And all the way (a horn!) from fjord to fjell his baywinds' oboboes shall wail him rockbound (hoahoahoah!) in swimswamswum and all the livvylong night, the delldale dalppling night, the night of bluerybells, her flittaflute in tricky trochees (O carina! O carina!) wake him...

And HCE's corpse becomes the meal spread for the mourners: [fw]

Grace before Glutton. For what we are, gifs a gross if we are, about to believe. So pool the begg and pass the kish for crawsake. Omen. So sigh us. Grampupus is fallen down but grinny sprids the boord. Whase on the joint of a desh? Finfoefom the Fush. Whase be his baken head? A loaf of Singpantry's Kennedy bread. And whase hitched to the hop in his tayle? A glass of Danu U'Dunnell's foamous olde Dobbelin ayle.

But he vanishes like a conman before they can eat him, like Jesus failing to return:

But, lo, as you would quaffoff his fraudstuff and sink teeth through that pyth of a flowerwhite bodey behold of him as behemoth for he is noewhemoe. Finiche! Only a fadograph of a yestern scene. Almost rubicund Salmosalar, ancient fromout the ages of the Agapemonides, he is smolten in our mist, woebecanned and packt away. So that meal's dead off for summan, schlook, schlice and goodridhirring.

(This twist is unexpected, and characteristically Joycean in its disappointment with existence.)

[Salmon lifecycle]

Yet may we not see still the brontoichthyan form outlined aslumbered.... The cranic head on him, caster of his reasons, peer yuthner in yondmist. Whooth? His clay feet, swarded in verdigrass, stick up starck where he last fellonem, by the mund of the magazine wall, where our maggy seen all, with her sisterin shawl. While over against this belles' alliance beyind Ill Sixty, ollollowed ill! bagsides of the fort, bom, tarabom, tarabom, lurk the ombushes, the site of the lyffing-in-wait of the upjock and hockums.

magazine wall: [pic]
Hill of Tara: [pic]

Hence when the clouds roll by, jamey, a proudseye view is enjoyable of our mounding's mass, now Wallinstone national museum, with, in some greenish distance, the charmful waterloose country and the two quitewhite villagettes who hear show of themselves so gigglesomes minxt the follyages, the prettilees! Penetrators are permitted into the museomound free... For her passkey supply to the janitrix, the mistress Kathe. Tip.

This older ALP gives a guided tour of the Wellington Monument in Phoenix Park [qv], probably accompanied by a flickering silent film, full of intense dreamlike Freudian suggestiveness, layered onto the battle of Waterloo (Wellington vs Napoleon [qv] [map] ditto), with many other battlefields mentioned in puns: [fw]

This the way to the museyroom. Mind your hats goan in! Now yiz are in the Willingdone Museyroom. This is a Prooshious gunn. This is a ffrinch. Tip... This is the triplewon hat of Lipoleum. Tip. Lipoleumhat. This is the Willingdone on his same white harse, the Cokenhape. This is the big Sraughter Willingdone, grand and magentic in his goldtin spurs and his ironed dux and his quarterbrass woodyshoes and his magnate's gharters and his bangkok's best and goliar's goloshes and his pulluponeasyan wartrews. This is his big wide harse. Tip.

HCE's major entrances in FW are marked by a description of seven items of his clothing. (Cf the early Berkeley vignette)

Joyce's first draft includes a 'map' of this scene: [fdv]

This is the three lipoleum boyne grouching down in the living detch... This is the petty lipoleum boy that was nayther bag nor bug. Assaye, assaye! Touchole Fitz Tuomush. Dirty MacDyke. And Hairy O'Hurry. All of them arminus-varminus...

This is the crimealine of the alps hooping to sheltershock the three lipoleums. This is the jinnies with their legahorns feinting to read in their handmade's book of stralegy while making their war undisides the Willingdone. The jinnies is a cooin her hand and the jinnies is a ravin her hair and the Willingdone git the band up.

The phallic monument becomes a telescope: [fdv]

This is big Willingdone mormorial tallowscoop Wounderworker obscides on the flanks of the jinnies. Sexcaliber hrosspower. Tip. This is me Belchum sneaking his phillippy out of his most [toocisive bottle of Tilsiter. This is the libel on the battle.] Awful Grimmest Sunshat Cromwelly. Looted.

(The bracketed line was dropped by the printer, perversely unrestored by Joyce.)

This is the jinnies' hastings dispatch for to irrigate the Willingdone. Dispatch in thin red lines cross the shortfront of me Belchum. Yaw, yaw, yaw! ...That was the tictacs of the jinnies for to fontannoy the Willingdone. Shee, shee, shee! The jinnies is jillous agincourting all the lipoleums. And the lipoleums is gonn boycottoncrezy onto the one Willingdone. And the Willingdone git the band up...

This is the Willingdone's hurold dispitchback... Cherry jinnies. Figtreeyou! Damn fairy ann, Voutre. Willingdone... This is jinnies cry. Underwetter! Goat strip Finnlambs! This is jinnies rinning away to their ousterlists dowan a bunkersheels. With a nip nippy nip and a trip trippy trip so airy. For their heart's right there. Tip...

This is the Willingdone branlish his same marmorial tallowscoop Sophy-Key-Po for his royal divorsion on the rinnaway jinnies... Lipoleums is nice hung bushellors. This is hiena hinnessy laughing alout at the Willingdone... This is the wixy old Willingdone picket up the half of the threefoiled hat of lipoleums fromoud of the bluddle filth... This is the Willingdone hanking the half of the hat of lipoleums up the tail on the buckside of his big white harse. Tip. That was the last joke of Willingdone. Hit, hit, hit!

This is the same white harse of the Willingdone, Culpenhelp, waggling his tailoscrupp with the half of a hat of lipoleums to insoult on the hinndoo seeboy. Hney, hney, hney! (Bullsrag! Foul!) This is the seeboy, madrashattaras, upjump and pumpim, cry to the Willingdone: Ap Pukkaru! Pukka Yurap! This is the Willingdone, bornstable ghentleman, tinders his maxbotch to the cursigan Shimar Shin. Basucker youstead! This is the dooforhim seeboy blow the whole of the half of the hat of lipoleums off of the top of the tail on the back of his big wide harse. Tip (Bullseye! Game!) How Copenhagen ended. This way the museyroom. Mind your boots goan out.

Phew!

Joyce acknowledges this dream is sexually harrowing, and offers relief. [fw] [fdv]

What a warm time we were in there but how keling is here the airabouts! ...there's that gnarlybird ygathering... a peacefugle, a parody's bird, a peri potmother, a pringlpik in the ilandiskippy, with peewee and powwows in beggybaggy on her bickybacky and a flick flask fleckflinging its pixylighting pacts' huemeramybows, picking here, pecking there, pussypussy plunderpussy... She's burrowed the coacher's headlight the better to pry... and all spoiled goods go into her nabsack: curtrages and rattlin buttins, nappy spattees and flasks of all nations, clavicures and scampulars, maps, keys and woodpiles of haypennies and moonled brooches with bloodstaned breeks in em, boaston nightgarters and masses of shoesets and nickelly nacks and foder allmicheal and a lugly parson of cates and howitzer muchears and midgers and maggets, ills and ells with loffs of toffs and pleures of bells and the last sigh that come fro the hart (bucklied!) and the fairest sin the sunsaw (that's cearc!). With Kiss. Kiss Criss. Cross Criss. Kiss Cross. Undo lives 'end. Slain....

ALP has morphed into a hen scratching up battle-relics from a midden heap-- another version of her spreading a meal for the mourners, after the fall/Flood: [fw]

Gricks may rise and Troysirs fall (there being two sights for ever a picture)... Though the length of the land lies under liquidation (floote!) and there's nare a hairbrow nor an eyebush on this glaubrous phace of Herrschuft Whatarwelter she'll loan a vesta and hire some peat and sarch the shores her cockles to heat and she'll do all a turfwoman can to piff the business on. Paff. To puff the blaziness on. Poffpoff. And even if Humpty shell fall frumpty times as awkward again in the beardsboosoloom of all our grand remonstrancers there'll be iggs for the brekkers come to mournhim, sunny side up with care....

But all they are all there scraping along to sneeze out a likelihood that will solve and salve life's robulous rebus, hopping round his middle like kippers on a griddle, O, as he lays dormont from the macroborg of Holdhard to the microbirg of Pied de Poudre....

So This Is Dyoublong?
Hush! Caution! Echoland!

...Four things therefore, saith our herodotary Mammon Lujius in his grand old historiorum, wrote near Boriorum, bluest book in baile's annals, f t. in Dyffinarsky ne'er sall fail til heathersmoke and cloudweed Eire's ile sall pall. And here now they are, the fear of um. T. Totities!

Unum. (Adar.) A bulbenboss surmounted upon an alderman. Ay, ay!

Duum. (Nizam.) A shoe on a puir old wobban. Ah, ho!

Triom. (Tamuz.) An auburn mayde, o'brine a'bride, to be desarted. Adear, adear!

Quodlibus. (Marchessvan.) A penn no weightier nor a polepost. And so. And all. (Succoth.)

So, how idlers' wind turning pages on pages, as innocens with anaclete play popeye antipop, the leaves of the living in the boke of the deeds, annals of themselves timing the cycles of events grand and national, bring fassilwise to pass how.

1132 A.D. Men like to ants or emmets wondern upon a groot hwide Whallfisk which lay in a Runnel. Blubby wares upat Ublanium.

566 A.D. On Baalfire's night of this year after deluge a crone that hadde a wickered Kish for to hale dead turves from the bog lookit under the blay of her Kish as she ran for to sothisfeige her cowrieosity and be me sawl but she found hersell sackvulle of swart goody quickenshoon and small illigant brogues, so rich in sweat. Blurry works at Hurdlesford.

(Silent.)

566 A.D. At this time it fell out that a brazenlockt damsel grieved (sobralasolas!) because that Puppette her minion was ravisht of her by the ogre Puropeus Pious. Bloody wars in Ballyaughacleeaghbally.

1132 A.D. Two sons at an hour were born until a goodman and his hag. These sons called themselves Caddy and Primas. Primas was a santryman and drilled all decent people. Caddy went to Winehouse and wrote o peace a farce. Blotty words for Dublin.

(This is a parody of the Annals of the Four Masters [qv].)

The mysterious word 'Silent' is further discussed: [fw] [fdv]

Somewhere, parently, in the ginnandgo gap between antediluvious and annadominant the copyist must have fled with his scroll. The billy flood rose or an elk charged him or the sultrup worldwright from the excelsissimost empyrean (bolt, in sum) earthspake or the Dannamen gallous banged pan the bliddy duran.

A lovely sentence compares older and newer penal codes:

A scribicide then and there is led off under old's code with some fine covered by six marks or ninepins in metalmen for the sake of his labour's dross while it will be only now and again in our rear of o'er era, as an upshoot of military and civil engagements, that a gynecure was let on to the scuffold for taking that same fine sum covertly by meddlement with the drawers of his neighbour's safe....

A literary parody [qv] contrasts wars with wildflowers (and courtship): [fw]

Since the bouts of Hebear and Hairyman the cornflowers have been staying at Ballymun, the duskrose has choosed out Goatstown's hedges, twolips have pressed togatherthem by sweet Rush, townland of twinedlights, the whitethorn and the redthorn have fairygeyed the mayvalleys of Knockmaroon, and, though for rings round them, during a chiliad of perihelygangs, the Formoreans have brittled the tooath of the Danes and the Oxman has been pestered by the Firebugs and the Joynts have thrown up jerrybuilding to the Kevanses and Little on the Green is childsfather to the City (Year! Year! And laughtears!), these paxsealing buttonholes have quadrilled across the centuries and whiff now whafft to us, fresh and made-of-all-smiles as, on the eve of Killallwho...

And still nowanights and by nights of yore do all bold floras of the field to their shyfaun lovers say only: Cull me ere I wilt to thee!: and, but a little later: Pluck me whilst I blush! Well may they wilt, marry, and profusedly blush, be troth! For that saying is as old as the howitts. Lave a whale a while in a whillbarrow (isn't it the truath I'm tallin ye?) to have fins and flippers that shimmy and shake. Tim Timmycan timped hir, tampting Tam. Fleppety! Flippety! Fleapow!

Hop!

In the name of Anem this carl on the kopje in pelted thongs a parth a lone who the joebiggar be he? Forshapen his pigmaid hoagshead, shroonk his plodsfoot. He hath locktoes, this shortshins, and, Obeold that's pectoral, his mammamuscles most mousterious. It is slaking nuncheon out of some thing's brain pan. Me seemeth a dragon man... What a quhare soort of a mahan. It is evident the michindaddy. Lets we overstep his fire defences and these kraals of slitsucked marrogbones. (Cave!) He can prapsposterus the pillory way to Hirculos pillar.

Come on, fool porterfull, hosiered women blown monk sewer? Scuse us, chorley guy! You tollerday donsk? N. You tolkatiff scowegian? Nn. You spigotty anglease? Nnn. You phonio saxo? Nnnn. Clear all so! 'Tis a Jute. Let us swop hats and excheck a few strong verbs weak oach eather yapyazzard abast the blooty creeks.

Jute.-- Yutah!

Mutt.-- Mukk's pleasurad.

Jute.-- Are you jeff?

Mutt.-- Somehards.

Jute.-- But you are not jeffmute?

Mutt.-- Noho. Only an utterer.

Jute.-- Whoa? Whoat is the mutter with you?

Mutt.-- I became a stun a stummer.

Jute.-- What a hauhauhauhaudibble thing, to be cause! How, Mutt?

Mutt.-- Aput the buttle, surd.

Jute.-- Whose poddle? Wherein?

Mutt.-- The Inns of Dungtarf where Used awe to be he.

FDV: ...where used ought to be.

Jute.-- You that side your voise are almost inedible to me. Become a bitskin more wiseable, as if I were you.

Mutt.-- Has? Has at? Hasatency? Urp, Boohooru! Booru Usurp! I trumple from rath in mine mines when I rimimirim!

Jute.-- One eyegonblack. Bisons is bisons. Let me fore all your hasitancy cross your qualm with trink gilt. Here have sylvan coyne, a piece of oak. Ghinees hies good for you.

Jute offers a bribe to calm him.

Mutt.-- Louee, louee! How wooden I not know it, the intellible greytcloak of Cedric Silkyshag! Cead mealy faulty rices for one dabblin bar. Old grilsy growlsy! He was poached on in that eggtentical spot. Here where the liveries, Monomark. There where the missers moony, Minnikin passe.

Jute.-- Simply because as Taciturn pretells, our wrongstoryshortener, he dumptied the wholeborrow of rubbages on to soil here.

Mutt.-- Just how a puddinstone inat the brookcells by a riverpool.

Jute.-- Load Allmarshy! Wid wad for a norse like?

Mutt.-- Somular with a bull on a clompturf. Rooks roarum rex roome! I could snore to him of the spumy horn, with his woolseley side in, by the neck I am sutton on, did Brian d' of Linn.

Jute.-- Boildoyle and rawhoney on me when I can beuraly forsstand a weird from sturk to finnic in such a patwhat as your rutterdamrotter. Onheard of and umscene! Gut aftermeal! See you doomed.

As Jute goes into denial about what Mutt tells him. Mutt regains his tongue: [fdv]

Mutt.-- Quite agreem. Bussave a sec. Walk a dun blink roundward this albutisle and you skull see how olde ye plaine of my Elters, hunfree and ours, where wone to wail whimbrel to peewee o'er the saltings, where wilby citie by law of isthmon, where by a droit of signory, icefloe was from his Inn the Byggning to whose Finishthere Punct. Let erehim ruhmuhrmuhr. Mearmerge two races, swete and brack. Morthering rue. Hither, craching eastuards, they are in surgence: hence, cool at ebb, they requiesce. Countlessness of livestories have netherfallen by this plage, flick as flowflakes, litters from aloft, like a waast wizzard all of whirlworlds. Now are all tombed to the mound, isges to isges, erde from erde. Pride, O pride, thy prize!

Jute.-- 'Stench!

Mutt.-- Fiatfuit! Hereinunder lyethey. Llarge by the smal an' everynight life olso th'estrange, babylone the greatgrandhotelled with tit tit tittlehouse, alp on earwig, drukn on ild, likeas equal to anequal in this sound seemetery which iz leebez luv.

Jute.-- 'Zmorde!

Mutt.-- Meldundleize! By the fearse wave behoughted. Despond's sung. And thanacestross mound have swollup them all. This ourth of years is not save brickdust and being humus the same roturns. He who runes may rede it on all fours. O'c'stle, n'wc'stle, tr'c'stle, crumbling! Sell me sooth the fare for Humblin! Humblady Fair. But speak it allsosiftly, moulder! Be in your whisht!

Jute.-- Whysht?

Mutt.-- The gyant Forficules with Amni the fay.

Jute.-- Howe?

Mutt.-- Here is viceking's graab.

FDV: 'Tis viking soil.

Jute.-- Hwaad!

Mutt.-- Ore you astoneaged, jute you?

Jute.-- Oye am thonthorstrok, thing mud.

... A hatch, a celt, an earshare the pourquose of which was to cassay the earthcrust at all of hours, furrowards, bagawards, like yoxen at the turnpaht. Here say figurines billycoose arming and mounting. Mounting and arming bellicose figurines see here. Futhorc, this liffle effingee is for a firefing called a flintforfall. Face at the eased! O I fay! Face at the waist! Ho, you fie! Upwap and dump em, Face to Face!

(These last Fs are actually rotated 90 degrees CW and CCW. Joyce wanted the second to be mirror reversed as well, but the typeface didn't allow it.)

When a part so ptee does duty for the holos we soon grow to use of an allforabit. Here (please to stoop) are selveran cued peteet peas of quite a pecuniar interest inaslittle as they are the pellets that make the tomtummy's pay roll...

What a meanderthalltale to unfurl and with what an end in view of squattor and anntisquattor and postproneauntisquattor! To say too us to be every tim, nick and larry of us, sons of the sod, sons, littlesons, yea and lealittlesons, when usses not to be, every sue, siss and sally of us, dugters of Nan! Accusative ahnsire! Damadam to infinities!

...The movibles are scrawling in motions, marching, all of them ago, in pitpat and zingzang for every busy eerie whig's a bit of a torytale to tell. One's upon a thyme and two's behind their lettice leap and three's among the strubbely beds... That one of a wife with folty barnets. For then was the age when hoops ran high. Of a noarch and a chopwife; of a pomme full grave and a fammy of levity; or of golden youths that wanted gelding; or of what the mischievmiss made a man do... But lay it easy, gentle mien, we are in rearing of a norewhig. So weenybeenyveenyteeny. Comsy see! Het wis if ee newt.

It was of a night.

Lissom! lissom! I am doing it. Hark, the corne entreats! And the larpnotes prittle.

Storytelling leads to daughter Issy, and the seductive sound of her urination. Which somehow leads to the vignette of the prankquean: [fw] [fdv]

It was of a night, late, lang time agone, in an auldstane eld, when Adam was delvin and his madameen spinning watersilts, when mulk mountynotty man was everybully and the first leal ribberrobber that ever had her ainway everybuddy to his lovesaking eyes and everybilly lived alove with everybiddy else, and Jarl van Hoother had his burnt head high up in his lamphouse, laying cold hands on himself. And his two little jiminies, cousins of ourn, Tristopher and Hilary, were kickaheeling their dummy on the oil cloth flure of his homerigh, castle and earthenhouse. And, be dermot, who come to the keep of his inn only the niece-of-his-in-law, the prankquean.

FDV: prankwench

And the prankquean pulled a rosy one and made her wit foreninst the dour. And she lit up and fireland was ablaze. And spoke she to the dour in her petty perusienne: Mark the Wans, why do I am alook alike a poss of porterpease?

FDV: I want a cup of porter.

(I think her part should be played [pic] by MadTV's Ms Swan [qv].)

The pirate queen is the historical Grace (Granuaile) O'Malley [qv] and the vignette retells her (legendary) spat [qv] with the Lord of Howth:

And that was how the skirtmisshes began. But the dour handworded her grace in dootch nossow: Shut! So her grace o'malice kidsnapped up the jiminy Tristopher and into the shandy westerness she rain, rain, rain. And Jarl van Hoother warlessed after her with soft dovesgall: Stop deef stop come back to my earin stop. But she swaradid to him: Unlikelihud.

She kidnaps one son because HCE/Mark gives her the wrong answer. (The italics here are mine, not Joyce's.) The story continues:

And there was a brannewail that same sabboath night of falling angles somewhere in Erio. And the prankquean went for her forty years' walk in Tourlemonde and she washed the blessings of the lovespots off the jiminy with soap sulliver suddles and she had her four owlers masters for to tauch him his tickles and she convorted him to the onesure allgood and he became a luderman.

FDV: she washed the scabs off the jiminy and taught him his tickles

So then she started to rain and to rain and, be redtom, she was back again at Jarl van Hoother's in a brace of samers and the jiminy with her in her pinafrond, lace at night, at another time. And where did she come but to the bar of his bristolry. And Jarl von Hoother had his baretholobruised heels drowned in his cellarmalt, shaking warm hands with himself and the jimminy Hilary and the dummy in their first infancy were below on the tearsheet, wringing and coughing, like brodar and histher.

And the prankquean nipped a paly one and lit up again and redcocks flew flackering from the hillcombs. And she made her witter before the wicked, saying: Mark the Twy, why do I am alook alike two poss of porterpease? And: Shut! says the wicked, handwording her madesty. So her madesty a forethought set down a jiminy and took up a jiminy and all the lilipath ways to Woeman's Land she rain, rain, rain. And Jarl von Hoother bleethered atter her with a loud finegale: Stop domb stop come back with my earring stop. But the prankquean swaradid: Am liking it.

The story repeats with the second son.

And there was a wild old grannewwail that laurency night of starshootings somewhere in Erio. And the prankquean went for her forty years' walk in Turnlemeem and she punched the curses of cromcruwell with the nail of a top into the jiminy and she had her four larksical monitrix to touch him his tears and she provorted him to the onecertain allsecure and he became a tristian.

FDV: she punched holes in him and taught him his tears [fdv]

So then she started raining, raining, and in a pair of changers, be dom ter, she was back again at Jarl von Hoother's and the Larryhill with her under her abromette. And why would she halt at all if not by the ward of his mansionhome of another nice lace for the third charm? And Jarl von Hoother had his hurricane hips up to his pantrybox, ruminating in his holdfour stomachs (Dare! O dare!), and the jiminy Toughertrees and the dummy were belove on the watercloth, kissing and spitting, and roguing and poghuing, like knavepaltry and naivebride and in their second infancy.

And the prankquean picked a blank and lit out and the valleys lay twinkling. And she made her wittest in front of the arkway of trihump, asking: Mark the Tris, why do I am alook alike three poss of porter pease?

But that was how the skirtmishes endupped. For like the campbells acoming with a fork lance of lightning, Jarl von Hoother Boanerges himself, the old terror of the dames, came hip hop handihap out through the pikeopened arkway of his three shuttoned castles, in his broadginger hat and his civic chollar and his allabuff hemmed and his bullbraggin soxangloves and his ladbroke breeks and his cattegut bandolair and his furframed panuncular cumbottes like a rudd yellan gruebleen orangeman in his violet indigonation, to the whole longth of the strongth of his bowman's bill. And he clopped his rude hand to his eacy hitch and he ordurd and his thick spch spck for her to shut up shop, dappy. And the duppy shot the shutter clup [*] And they all drank free. For one man in his armour was a fat match always for any girls under shurts.

And that was the first peace of illiterative porthery in all the flamend floody flatuous world. How kirssy the tiler made a sweet unclose to the Narwhealian captol. Saw fore shalt thou sea. Betoun ye and be. The prankquean was to hold her dummyship and the jimminies was to keep the peacewave and van Hoother was to git the wind up. Thus the hearsomeness of the burger felicitates the whole of the polis.

[*] another thunderword [list]

Poncy essay on this vignette

...Only for that these will not breathe upon Norronesen or Irenean the secrest of their soorcelossness. Quarry silex, Homfrie Noanswa! Undy gentian festyknees, Livia Noanswa? Wolkencap is on him, frowned; audiurient, he would evesdrip, were it mous at hand, were it dinn of bottles in the far ear. Murk, his vales are darkling. With lipth she lithpeth to him all to time of thuch on thuch and thow on thow. She he she ho she ha to la.

(She had to laugh?)

Hairfluke, if he could bad twig her! Impalpabunt, he abhears. The soundwaves are his buffeteers; they trompe him with their trompes; the wave of roary and the wave of hooshed and the wave of hawhawhawrd and the wave of neverheedthemhorseluggarsandlistletomine.

FDV: dontmindthesefellowsbutlistentome [fdv]

Landloughed by his neaghboormistress and perpetrified in his offsprung, sabes and suckers, the moaning pipers could tell him to his faceback, the louthly one whose loab we are devorers of, how butt for his hold halibutt, or her to her pudor puff, the lipalip one whose libe we drink at, how biff for her tiddywink of a windfall, our breed and washer givers, there would not be a holey spier on the town nor a vestal flouting in the dock...

Usqueadbaugham!
Anam muck an dhoul! Did ye drink me doornail?

(This refers back to the song of Finnegan's Wake [qv].)

McH: usquebaugh = whiskey (AngloIrish)
McH: thanam o'n dhoul = your souls to the devil! (AngloIrish)

Finnegan wakes, but the mourners urge him to stay dead: [fw]

Now be aisy, good Mr Finnimore, sir. And take your laysure like a god on pension and don't be walking abroad... You're better off, sir, where you are, primesigned in the full of your dress, bloodeagle waistcoat and all, remembering your shapes and sizes on the pillow of your babycurls under your sycamore... And we'll be coming here, the ombre players, to rake your gravel and bringing you presents, won't we, fenians? ...Your fame is spreading like Basilico's ointment since the Fintan Lalors piped you overborder and there's whole households beyond the Bothnians and they calling names after you...

And admiring to our supershillelagh where the palmsweat on high is the mark of your manument... There was never a warlord in Great Erinnes and Brettland, no, nor in all Pike County like you, they say. No, nor a king nor an ardking, bung king, sung king or hung king. That you could fell an elmstree twelve urchins couldn't ring round and hoist high the stone that Liam failed...

So may the priest of seven worms and scalding tayboil, Papa Vestray, come never anear you as your hair grows wheater beside the Liffey that's in Heaven! Hep, hep, hurrah there! Hero! Seven times thereto we salute you! ...Your heart is in the system of the Shewolf and your crested head is in the tropic of Copricapron. Your feet are in the cloister of Virgo...

A progress report on Shaun (Kevin) and Shem (Jerry) and Issy (Hetty Jane): [fw]

Everything's going on the same or so it appeals to all of us, in the old holmsted here. Coughings all over the sanctuary, bad scrant to me aunt Florenza... The same shop slop in the window. Jacob's lettercrackers and Dr Tipple's Vi-Cocoa and the Eswuards' desippated soup beside Mother Seagull's syrup...

The lads is attending school nessans regular, sir, spelling beesknees with hathatansy and turning out tables by mudapplication... Kevin's just a doat with his cherub cheek, chalking oghres on walls, and his little lamp and schoolbelt and bag of knicks, playing postman's knock round the diggings... but, laus sake, the devil does be in that knirps of a Jerry sometimes, the tarandtan plaidboy, making encostive inkum out of the last of his lavings and writing a blue streak over his bourseday shirt.

Hetty Jane's a child of Mary. She'll be coming (for they're sure to choose her) in her white of gold with a tourch of ivy to rekindle the flame on Felix Day. But Essie Shanahan has let down her skirts. You remember Essie in our Luna's Convent? They called her Holly Merry her lips were so ruddyberry and Pia de Purebelle when the redminers riots was on about her. Were I a clerk designate to the Williamswoodsmenufactors I'd poster those pouters on every jamb in the town....

And a progress report on ALP (and her cat): [fw]

Boald Tib does be yawning and smirking cat's hours on the Pollockses' woolly round tabouretcushion watching her sewing a dream together, the tailor's daughter, stitch to her last. Or while waiting for winter to fire the enchantement, decoying more nesters to fall down the flue. It's allavalonche that blows nopussy food.

If you only were there to explain the meaning, best of men, and talk to her nice of guldenselver. The lips would moisten once again. As when you drove with her to Findrinny Fair. What with reins here and ribbons there all your hands were employed so she never knew was she on land or at sea or swooped through the blue like Airwinger's bride. She was flirtsome then and she's fluttersome yet... She's seeking her way, a chickle a chuckle, in and out of their serial story, Les Loves of Selskar et Pervenche, freely adapted to The Novvergin's Viv. There'll be bluebells blowing in salty sepulchres the night she signs her final tear. Zee End. But that's a world of ways away... Her hair's as brown as ever it was. And wivvy and wavy. Repose you now! Finn no more!

HCE should stay dead because his successor has arrived, the new HCE: [fdv]

For, be that samesake sibsubstitute of a hooky salmon, there's already a big rody ram lad at random on the premises... with a pocked wife in pickle that's a flyfire and three lice nittle clinkers, two twilling bugs and one midgit pucelle...

FDV of complex trimmed passage: ...and either he did what you know or he did not what you know with the clouds alone for witnesses...

But however 'twas 'tis sure for one thing... that the man, Humme the Cheapner, Esc, overseen as we thought him, yet a worthy of the naym, came... with a bumrush in a hull of a wherry, the twin turbane dhow, The Bey for Dybbling, this archipelago's first visiting schooner, with a wicklowpattern waxenwench at her prow for a figurehead, the deadsea dugong updipdripping from his depths, and has been repreaching himself like a fishmummer these siktyten years ever since, his shebi by his shide, adi and aid, growing hoarish under his turban and changing cane sugar into sethulose starch... as also that, batin the bulkihood he bloats about when innebbiated, our old offender was humile, commune and ensectuous from his nature, which you may gauge after the bynames was put under him... and, totalisating him, even hamissim of himashim that he, sober serious, he is ee and no counter he who will be ultimendly respunchable for the hubbub caused in Edenborough.

FDV: for the high cost of everything.

Summary by Bill Cadbury

Discuss chapter one

Thruout chapter one we saw the initials HCE, referring to Joyce's adult-male Everyman, and his sin in the Park, but now we get specific (for FW, anyway) details of his history, starting with his last name, 'Earwicker': [fw] [fdv]

Now... concerning the genesis of Harold or Humphrey Chimpden's occupational agnomen... the best authenticated version, the Dumlat, read the Reading of Hofed-ben-Edar, has it that it was this way.

We are told how in the beginning it came to pass that like cabbaging Cincinnatus the grand old gardener was saving daylight under his redwoodtree one sultry sabbath afternoon, Hag Chivychas Eve, in prefall paradise peace by following his plough for rootles in the rere garden of mobhouse, ye olde marine hotel, when royalty was announced by runner to have been pleased to have halted itself on the highroad along which a leisureloving dogfox had cast followed, also at walking pace, by a lady pack of cocker spaniels.

cast = throw off the pursuing dogs (hunting)
(so there's an implied comma after 'cast')

Marine Hotel: [old pic] ditto

HCE's plowing is interrupted by the king's hunting party.

Forgetful of all save his vassal's plain fealty to the ethnarch Humphrey or Harold stayed not to yoke or saddle but stumbled out hotface as he was (his sweatful bandanna loose from his pocketcoat) hasting to the forecourts of his public in topee, surcingle, solascarf and plaid, plus fours, puttees and bulldog boots ruddled cinnabar with flagrant marl, jingling his turnpike keys and bearing aloft amid the fixed pikes of the hunting party a high perch atop of which a flowerpot was fixed earthside hoist with care.

public: frequently in FW, HCE is a publican or tavern-keeper. The pub is most often located in Chapelizod, based on a real precursor [qv] more.

The double entendre here is apparently that HCE was masturbating, and hasn't even rearranged his clothes.

On his majesty, who was, or often feigned to be, noticeably longsighted from green youth and had been meaning to inquire what, in effect, had caused yon causeway to be thus potholed, asking substitutionally to be put wise as to whether paternoster and silver doctors were not now more fancied bait for lobstertrapping honest blunt Haromphreyld answered in no uncertain tones very similarly with a fearless forehead: Naw, yer maggers, aw war jist a cotchin on thon bluggy earwuggers.

the king seems to think HCE's flowerpot-on-a-stick is for catching lobsters, but HCE says it's for catching earwigs

innocent truth meets subtle corruption? (my italics again.)

Our sailor king, who was draining a gugglet of obvious adamale, gift both and gorban, upon this, ceasing to swallow, smiled most heartily beneath his walrus moustaches and indulging that none too genial humour which William the Conk on the spindle side had inherited with the hereditary whitelock and some shortfingeredness from his greataunt Sophy, turned towards two of his retinue... and remarked dilsydulsily: Holybones of Saint Hubert how our red brother of Pouringrainia would audibly fume did he know that we have for surtrusty bailiwick a turnpiker who is by turns a pikebailer no seldomer than an earwigger!

FDV: How our brother of Burgundy would fume did he know that he have this trusty vassal [who is] a turnpiker who is also an earwicker.

somehow the key here is that the king has given HCE a new name, Earwicker, that brings the status of nobility.

...Comes the question are these the facts of his nominigentilisation as recorded and accolated in both or either of the collateral andrewpaulmurphyc narratives... We shall perhaps not so soon see... The great fact emerges that after that historic date all holographs so far exhumed initialled by Haromphrey bear the sigla H.C.E. and while he was only and long and always good Dook Umphrey for the hungerlean spalpeens of Lucalizod and Chimbers to his cronies it was equally certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him as sense of those normative letters the nickname Here Comes Everybody.

McH: anthropomorphic
FDV: Here Comes Everything

McH: In 1886, the British Home Secretary was named HCE Childers [qv], nicknamed 'Here Comes Everybody' because of his girth.

HCE's new status is symbolised by his seating at the theater (and the repurposing of his handkerchief): [fw] [fdv]

An imposing everybody he always indeed looked, constantly the same as and equal to himself and magnificently well worthy of any and all such universalisation, every time he continually surveyed... the truly catholic assemblage gathered together... unanimously to clapplaud... Mr Wallenstein Washington Semperkelly's immergreen tourers in a command performance... the homedromed and enliventh performance of the problem passion play of the millentury, running strong since creation, A Royal Divorce, then near the approach towards the summit of its climax, with ambitious interval band selections from The Bo' Girl and The Lily on all horserie show command nights from his viceregal booth... where, a veritable Napoleon the Nth... this folksforefather all of the time sat, having the entirety of his house about him, with the invariable broadstretched kerchief cooling his whole neck, nape and shoulderblades and in a wardrobe panelled tuxedo completely thrown back from a shirt well entitled a swallowall, on every point far outstarching the laundered clawhammers and marbletopped highboys of the pit stalls and early amphitheatre....

But the new initials also have a secondary, dishonorable reading: [fw]

A baser meaning has been read into these characters the literal sense of which decency can safely scarcely hint. It has been blurtingly bruited by certain wisecrackers... that he suffered from a vile disease. Athma, unmanner them! To such a suggestion the one selfrespecting answer is to affirm that there are certain statements which ought not to be, and one should like to hope to be able to add, ought not to be allowed to be made.

Nor have his detractors, who, an imperfectly warmblooded race, apparently conceive him as a great white caterpillar capable of any and every enormity in the calendar recorded to the discredit of the Juke and Kellikek families, mended their case by insinuating that, alternately, he lay at one time under the ludicrous imputation of annoying Welsh fusiliers in the people's park....

To anyone who knew and loved the christlikeness of the big cleanminded giant H. C. Earwicker throughout his excellency long vicefreegal existence the mere suggestion of him as a lustsleuth nosing for trouble in a boobytrap rings particularly preposterous....

Jukes and Kallikaks [backgrounder]

And now we get the story, hinted thruout chapter one, of HCE spying on two pissing nursemaids, spied upon by three soldiers: [fw]

Slander, let it lie its flattest, has never been able to convict our good and great and no ordinary Southron Earwicker, that homogenius man, as a pious author called him, of any graver impropriety than that, advanced by some woodwards or regarders, who did not dare deny, the shomers, that they had... that day consumed their soul of the corn, of having behaved with ongentilmensky immodus opposite a pair of dainty maidservants in the swoolth of the rushy hollow whither, or so the two gown and pinners pleaded, dame nature in all innocency had spontaneously and about the same hour of the eventide sent them both but whose published combinations of silkinlaine testimonies are, where not dubiously pure, visibly divergent, as wapt from wept, on minor points touching the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison which was admittedly an incautious but, at its wildest, a partial exposure with such attenuating circumstances... as an abnormal Saint Swithin's summer and... a ripe occasion to provoke it...

Guiltless of much laid to him he was clearly for once at least he clearly expressed himself as being with still a trace of his erstwhile burr and hence it has been received of us that it is true. They tell the story... how one happygogusty Ides-of-April morning (the anniversary, as it fell out, of his first assumption of his mirthday suit and rights in appurtenance to the confusioning of human races) ages and ages after the alleged misdemeanour when the tried friend of all creation, tigerwood roadstaff to his stay, was billowing across the wide expanse of our greatest park in his caoutchouc kepi and great belt and hideinsacks and his blaufunx fustian and ironsides jackboots and Bhagafat gaiters and his rubberised inverness, he met a cad with a pipe.

The latter... hardily accosted him with: Guinness thaw tool in jew me dinner ouzel fin? (a nice how-do-you-do in Poolblack at the time as some of our olddaisers may still tremblingly recall) to ask could he tell him how much a clock it was that the clock struck had he any idea by cock's luck as his watch was bradys....

McH: Conas ta tu indiu mo dhuine uasal fionn? = How are you today, my fair gentleman? (Irish Gaelic)

The double entendre here is apparently a European code for gay pickups, asking for the time and replying that it's 12:00. [fw]

The Earwicker of that spurring instant, realising on fundamental liberal principles the supreme importance, nexally and noxally, of physical life... and unwishful as he felt of being hurled into eternity right then, plugged by a softnosed bullet from the sap, halted, quick on the draw, and replyin that he was feelin tipstaff, cue, prodooced from his gunpocket his Jurgensen's shrapnel waterbury, ours by communionism, his by usucapture, but, on the same stroke, hearing above the skirling of harsh Mother East old Fox Goodman, the bellmaster, over the wastes to south, at work upon the ten ton tonuant thunderous tenor toller in the speckled church... told the inquiring kidder, by Jehova, it was twelve of em sidereal and tankard time, adding, buttall, as he bended deeply with smoked sardinish breath to give more pondus to the copperstick he presented, (though this seems in some cumfusium with the chapstuck ginger which, as being of sours, acids, salts, sweets and bitters compompounded, we know him to have used as chawchaw for bone, muscle, blood, flesh and vimvital,) that whereas the hakusay accusation againstm had been made, what was known in high quarters as was stood stated in Morganspost, by a creature in youman form who was quite beneath parr and several degrees lower than yore triplehydrad snake.

HCE is unsure if he's been propositioned, so he simultaneously accepts and denies accepting it...? [fw]

In greater support of his word... the flaxen Gygas tapped his chronometrum drumdrum and, now standing full erect, above the ambijacent floodplain, scene of its happening, with one Berlin gauntlet chopstuck in the hough of his ellboge (by ancientest signlore his gesture meaning: E!) pointed at an angle of thirtytwo degrees towards his duc de Fer's overgrown milestone as fellow to his gage and after a rendypresent pause averred with solemn emotion's fire: Shsh shake, co-comeraid! Me only, them five ones, he is equal combat. I have won straight. Hence my nonation wide hotel and creamery establishments which for the honours of our mewmew mutual daughters, credit me, I am woowoo willing to take my stand, sir, upon the monument, that sign of our ruru redemption, any hygienic day to this hour and to make my hoath to my sinnfinners, even if I get life for it, upon the Open Bible and before the Great Taskmaster's (I lift my hat!) and in the presence of the Deity Itself andwell of Bishop and Mrs Michan of High Church of England as of all such of said my immediate withdwellers and of every living sohole in every corner wheresoever of this globe in general which useth of my British to my backbone tongue and commutative justice that there is not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest of fibfib fabrications.

This is really the climax of the narrative, and the rest of the book is more or less downhill, plot-wise.

HCE's stutter is a major motif, indicating his subconscious urge to betray his own lies, and the flawed performance that mistakenly repeats one stage in the natural cycle.

Here's some detectivework about Joyce's own run-in with a cad in 1922.

Gaping Gill... repeated in his secondmouth language as many of the bigtimer's verbaten words which he could balbly call to memory that same kveldeve...

Our cad's bit of strife... broke of the matter among a hundred and eleven others... the next night nudge one... to her particular reverend, the director... trusting... that the gossiple so delivered in his epistolear... would go no further than his jesuit's cloth, yet... it was this overspoiled priest Mr Browne, disguised as a vincentian, who, when seized of the facts, was overheard, in his secondary personality as a Nolan... to pianissime a slightly varied version of Crookedribs confidentials... and... hushly pierce the rubiend aurellum of one Philly Thurnston, a layteacher of rural science and orthophonethics... during a priestly flutter for safe and sane bets at the hippic runfields of breezy Baldoyle on a date... easily capable of rememberance... when the classic Encourage Hackney Plate was captured by two noses in a stablecloth finish, ek and nek, some and none, evelo nevelo, from the cream colt Bold Boy Cromwell after a clever getaway by Captain Chaplain Blount's roe hinny Saint Dalough, Drummer Coxon, nondepict third...

Browne and Nolan, Dublin publishers [note]; also Bruno of Nola

The rumor descends the social ladder, thru the criminal Frisky Shorty and the suicidal musician Hosty: [fw]

'Twas two pisononse Timcoves... of the name of Treacle Tom... and his own blood and milk brother Frisky Shorty, (he was, to be exquisitely punctilious about them, both shorty and frisky) a tipster, come off the hulks, both of them awful poor, what was out on the bumaround... as chanced... to ear the passon in the motor clobber make use of his law language... touchin the case of Mr Adams... and having a gurgle off his own along of the butty bloke in the specs.

Notebook Nov 1923: "It was 2 coves by the name of Treacle Tom + Frisky Shorty what was on the bum for a jimmyogoblin as heard the reverend gent make use of the language which he was having a laugh with the bloke in the blue specs"

This Treacle Tom... had been absent from his usual wild and woolly haunts... for some time previous to that (he was, in fact, in the habit of frequenting common lodginghouses where he slept in a nude state, hailfellow with meth, in strange men's cots) but on racenight, blotto after divers tots of hell fire, red biddy, bull dog, blue ruin and creeping jenny... he sought his wellwarmed leababobed in a housingroom... and... resnored alcoh alcoho alcoherently... the substance of the tale of the evangelical bussybozzy and the rusinurbean... during uneasy slumber in their hearings of a small and stonybroke cashdraper's executive, Peter Cloran (discharged), O'Mara, an exprivate secretary of no fixed abode (locally known as Mildew Lisa), who had passed several nights, funnish enough, in a doorway under the blankets of homelessness...

...and Hosty, (no slouch of a name), an illstarred beachbusker, who, sans rootie and sans scrapie, suspicioning as how he was setting on a twoodstool on the verge of selfabyss, most starved, with melancholia over everything in general... had been towhead tossing on his shakedown, devising ways and manners of means, of what he loved to ifidalicence somehow or other in the nation getting a hold of some chap's parabellum in the hope of taking a wing sociable and lighting upon a sidewheel dive somewhere off the Dullkey Downlairy and Bleakrooky tramaline where he could throw true and go and blow the sibicidal napper off himself for two bits to boldywell baltitude in the peace and quitybus of a one sure shot bottle, he after having being trying all he knew with the lady's help of Madam Gristle for upwards of eighteen calanders to get out of Sir Patrick Dun's, through Sir Humphrey Jervis's and into the Saint Kevin's bed in the Adelaide's hosspittles... without after having been able to jerrywangle it anysides.

Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital: [old pic]

The lowlifes get drunk and write a ballad about HCE: [fw] [fdv]

Lisa O'Deavis and Roche Mongan... as an understood thing slept their sleep of the swimborne in the one sweet undulant mother of tumblerbunks with Hosty... and the bustling tweeny-dawn-of-all-works... had not been many jiffies furbishing potlids, doorbrasses, scholars' applecheeks and linkboy's metals when... the rejuvenated busker (for after a goodnight's rave and rumble and a shinkhams topmorning with his coexes he was not the same man) and his broadawake bedroom suite (our boys, as our Byron called them) were up and ashuffle from the hogshome they lovenaned The Barrel, cross Ebblinn's chilled hamlet... and after a brisk pause at a pawnbroking establishment for the prothetic purpose of redeeming the songster's truly admirable false teeth and a prolonged visit to a house of call... after which... flushed with their firestufffostered friendship, the rascals came out of the licensed premises... wiping their laughleaking lipes on their sleeves... and the rhymers' world was with reason the richer for a wouldbe ballad, to the balledder of which the world of cumannity singing owes a tribute for having placed on the planet's melomap his lay of the vilest bogeyer but most attractionable avatar the world has ever had to explain for.

This, more krectly lubeen or fellow-me-lieder was first poured forth... to an overflow meeting... easily representative... of all sections and cross sections... of our liffeyside people....
 
The wararrow went round, so it did... and the ballad... stumpstampaded on to a slip of blancovide and headed by an excessively rough and red woodcut, privately printed at the rimepress of Delville, soon fluttered its secret on white highway and brown byway to the rose of the winds and the blew of the gaels, from archway to lattice and from black hand to pink ear, village crying to village, through the five pussyfours green of the united states of Scotia Picta... And around the lawn the rann it rann and this is the rann that Hosty made... [*]

[*] thunderwords for 'clap' [list]

broadside ballads: [history]

"THE BALLAD OF PERSSE O'REILLY."

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty
How he fell with a roll and a rumble
And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple
By the butt of the Magazine Wall,
(Chorus) Of the Magazine Wall,
Hump, helmet and all?

He was one time our King of the Castle
Now he's kicked about like a rotten old parsnip.
And from Green street he'll be sent by order of His Worship
To the penal jail of Mountjoy
(Chorus) To the jail of Mountjoy!
Jail him and joy.

[fdv]

He was fafafather of all schemes for to bother us
Slow coaches and immaculate contraceptives for the populace,
Mare's milk for the sick, seven dry Sundays a week,
Openair love and religion's reform,
(Chorus) And religious reform,
Hideous in form.

...Sweet bad luck on the waves washed to our island
The hooker of that hammerfast viking
And Gall's curse on the day when Eblana bay
Saw his black and tan man-o'-war.
(Chorus) Saw his man-o'-war.
On the harbour bar.

...It was during some fresh water garden pumping
Or, according to the Nursing Mirror, while admiring the monkeys
That our heavyweight heathen Humpharey
Made bold a maid to woo
(Chorus) Woohoo, what'll she doo!
The general lost her maidenloo!

...He was joulting by Wellinton's monument
Our rotorious hippopopotamuns
When some bugger let down the backtrap of the omnibus
And he caught his death of fusiliers,
(Chorus) With his rent in his rears.
Give him six years.

'Tis sore pity for his innocent poor children
But look out for his missus legitimate!
When that frew gets a grip of old Earwicker
Won't there be earwigs on the green?
(Chorus) Big earwigs on the green,
The largest ever you seen.

...And not all the king's men nor his horses
Will resurrect his corpus
For there's no true spell in Connacht or hell
(bis) That's able to raise a Cain.

The Zoo [old pic], the Hollow, and the People's Gardens are featured in the text along with Chapelizod and the Monument. [qv] (The Phoenix statue was where James Joyce's father was almost robbed by a different cad in 1887, while 1882's Phoenix Park murders took place near the entrance to the Viceregal Lodge.)

Summary by Bill Cadbury

Discuss chapter two

Of the persins sin this Eyrawyggla saga... of poor Osti-Fosti, described as quite a musical genius in a small way and the owner of an exceedingly niced ear, with tenorist voice to match... no one end is known...

His husband, poor old A'Hara (Okaroff?) crestfallen by things and down at heels at the time... enlisted in Tyrone's horse, the Irish whites, and soldiered a bit with Wolsey under the assumed name of Blanco Fusilovna Bucklovitch (spurious) after which... it transpires that on the other side of the water it came about that on the field of Vasileff's Cornix inauspiciously with his unit he perished...

Poor old dear Paul Horan, to satisfy his literary as well as his criminal aspirations, at the suggestion thrown out by the doomster in loquacity lunacy... was thrown into a Ridley's for inmates in the northern counties....

Sordid Sam, a dour decent deblancer, the unwashed, haunted always by his ham, the unwished, at a word from Israfel the Summoner, passed away painlessly after life's upsomdowns one hallowe'en night, ebbrous and in the state of nature, propelled from Behind into the great Beyond by footblows coulinclouted upon his oyster and atlas... of his last fishandblood bedscrappers, a Northwegian and his mate of the Sheawolving class.

FDV: Treacle Tom passed away painlessly in a state of nature propelled into the great beyond by footblows of his last bedfellows, 3 Norwegian sailors.

...her wife Langley, the prophet, and the decentest dozendest short of a frusker whoever stuck his spickle through his spoke, disappeared... from the sourface of this earth... so entirely spoorlessly... as to tickle the speculative to all but opine... that the hobo (who possessed a large amount of the humoresque) had transtuled his funster's latitat to its finsterest interrimost...

FDV: his habitat had become the interior.

A syntactic riddle ('if A is B was C D and was E F?'): [fw]

Again, if Father San Browne... is Padre Don Bruno... was the reverend, the sodality director, that eupeptic viceflayer, a barefaced carmelite... and was an objectionable ass who very occasionally cockaded a raffles ticket on his hat... and was semiprivately convicted of malpractices with his hotwashed tableknife... that same snob of the dunhill, fully several yearschaums riper, encountered by the General on that redletter morning or maynoon jovesday and were they?

FDV: Then was the reverend, the sodality director the fashionable vice preacher to whom society ladies often became so enthusiastically attached and was a nondescript who sometimes wore a raffle ticket in his hat + was openly guilty of malpractices with his tableknife the cad with a pipe encountered by HCE?

...It is nebuless an autodidact fact of the commonest that the shape of the average human cloudyphiz, whereas sallow has long daze faded, frequently altered its ego with the possing of the showers (Not original!). Whence it is a slopperish matter, given the wet and low visibility (since in this scherzarade of one's thousand one nightinesses that sword of certainty which would indentifide the body never falls) to idendifine the individuone... who was asked by free boardschool shirkers... to tell them... that fishabed ghoatstory of the haardly creditable edventyres of the Haberdasher, the two Curchies and the three Enkelchums....

Here we're getting a comparatively vivid scene that depicts Joyce himself in July 1923, vacationing in Bognor, England [qv], telling yet another transformed version of the story of HCE and the cad, possibly to his son Giorgio (18yo) and daughter Lucia (16yo): [fw] [fdv]

...the request for a fully armed explanation was put... to the porty (a native of the sisterisle... by his brogue...) as he paused at evenchime... for a fragrend culubosh during his weekend pastime of executing with Anny Oakley deadliness... empties which had not very long before contained Reid's family... stout...

His Revenances... rose to his feet and there... in a quiet English garden... called up before the triad of precoxious scaremakers... the... mythical habiliments of Our Farfar and Arthor of our doyne.

The tale now takes on elements of an 1815 duel [qv] in which Daniel O'Connell killed a cad named D'Esterre who claimed to have been libelled by him: [fw]

The first Humphrey's latitudinous baver... the state slate umbrella... and the gauntlet upon the hand which in an hour not for him solely evil had struck down the might he mighthavebeen d'Esterre of whom his nation seemed almost already to be about to have need.

Then... in the befitting legomena of the smaller country... a bit duskish and flavoured with a smile, seein as ow his thoughts consisted chiefly of the cheerio, he aptly sketched for our soontobe second parents... the touching seene.

One of my favorite images:

The solence of that stilling! Here one might a fin fell... The augustan peacebetothem oaks, the monolith rising stark from the moonlit pinebarren... The angelus hour with ditchers bent upon their farm usetensiles, the soft belling of the fallow deers (doerehmoose genuane!) advertising their milky approach as midnight was striking the hours (letate!), and how brightly the great tribune outed the sharkskin smokewallet (imitation!) from his frock, kippers, and by Joshua, he tips un a topping swank cheroot... and how manfally he says... he was to just pluggy well suck that brown boyo, my son, and spend a whole half hour in Havana....

So now HCE offers the cad a cigar/penis, and his stuttered defense is completely rejumbled: [fw]

And, Cod, says he with mugger's tears... I call our univalse to witness, as sicker as moyliffey eggs is known by our good househalters from yorehunderts of mamooth to be which they commercially are in ahoy high British quarters (conventional!) my guesthouse and cowhaendel credits will immediately stand ohoh open as straight as that neighbouring monument's fabrication before the hygienic gllll (this was where the reverent sabboth and bottlebreaker... touched upon his tricoloured boater... cordially inwiting the adullescence who he was wising up to do in like manner what all did so as he was able to add) lobe before the Great Schoolmaster's. (I tell you no story.) Smile!

gllll...lobe = globe

...The scene, refreshed, reroused, was never to be forgotten... for later in the century one of that puisne band of factferreters... rehearsed it... to a namecousin of the late archdeacon F.X. Preserved Coppinger... in a pullwoman of our first transhibernian...

For as often as the Archicadenus... spoke of it by request all, hearing... the copycus's description of that fellowcommuter's play upon countenants, could simply imagine themselves... timesported acorss the yawning (abyss)... listening to the cockshyshooter's evensong evocation of the doomed but always ventriloquent Agitator... his manslayer's gunwielder protended towards that overgrown leadpencil which was soon, monumentally at least, to rise as Molyvdokondylon to, to be, to be his mausoleum... while olover his exculpatory features... the ghost of resignation diffused a spectral appealingness... similar in origin and akkurat in effective to a beam of sunshine upon a coffin plate...

Thus the unfacts, did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude, the evidencegivers by legpoll too untrustworthily irreperible... Nevertheless Madam's Toshowus waxes largely more lifeliked... And there many have paused before that exposure of him by old Tom Quad, a flashback in which he sits sated, gowndabout, in clericalease habit, watching bland sol slithe dodgsomely into the nethermore, a globule of maugdleness about to corrugitate his mild dewed cheek and the tata of a tiny victorienne, Alys, pressed by his limper looser...

[pic source]

One voiced an opinion in which... all the Finner Camps concurred... It was the first woman, they said, souped him, that fatal wellesday, Lili Coninghams, by suggesting him they go in a field...

A more nor usually sober cardriver, who was jauntingly hosing his runabout, Ginger Jane, took a strong view. Lorry hosed her as he talked and this is what he told rewritemen: Irewaker is just a plain pink joint reformee in private life but folks all have it by brehemons laws he has parliamentary honours...

Brian Lynsky, the cub curser, was questioned at his shouting box, Bawlonabraggat, and gave a snappy comeback, when saying: Paw! Once more I'll hellbowl! I am for caveman chase and sahara sex, burk you! Them two bitches ought to be leashed, canem!

...Missioner Ida Wombwell, the seventeenyearold revivalist, said... That perpendicular person is a brut! But a magnificent brut!

[fdv]

...Sylvia Silence, the girl detective... leaned back in her really truly easy chair to query restfully through her vowelthreaded syllabelles: Have you evew thought, wepowtew, that sheew gweatness was his twadgedy? Nevewtheless accowding to my considewed attitudes fow this act he should pay the full penalty, pending puwsuance, as pew Subsec. 32, section II, of the C.L.A. act 1885, anything in this act to the contwawy notwithstanding.

...thus cor replied to her other's thankskissing: I lay my two fingerbuttons, fiancee Meagher, (he speaks!) he was to blame about your two velvetthighs up Horniman's Hill -- as hook and eye blame him or any other piscman? -- but I also think, Puellywally, by the siege of his trousers there was someone else behind it -- you bet your boughtem blarneys -- about their three drummers down Keysars Lane. (Trite!)...

This section, called the Plebiscite, was built by Joyce on the foundation of a long literal quote from a 14 Dec 1922 survey in the Daily Sketch on the Bywaters murder case:

"Bywaters a waitress an omnibus driver a rlwy porter a dustman named Churches in the employ of 'We have been discussing the case All the fellows An actress 'Then he has been so wonderful' Three soldiers were walking in Fleet street. One gave an opinion in which all concurred. It was the woman. He proved himself a man afterwards a sailor on the embankment was encouraged to speak by his fiancee & said I think he was more to blame but I think there was someone else in it. A barmaid-- it wd be a shame A taxicab driver one shd not pay full penalty A chef I do not believe in the capital punishment a sh a commercial traveller escape the gallows"

Business bred to speak with a stiff upper lip... the Man we wot of took little short of fighting chances but for all that he or his or his care were subjected to the horrors of the premier terror of Errorland... It was after the show at Wednesbury that one tall man, humping a suspicious parcel... had a barkiss revolver placed to his faced with the words: you're shot, major: by an unknowable assailant (masked) against whom he had been jealous... More than that Whenn the Waylayer... mentioning... that he... had, in edition to Reade's cutless centiblade, a loaded Hobson's which left only twin alternatives as, viceversa, either he would surely shoot her, the aunt, by pistol... or, failing of such, bash in Patch's blank face beyond recognition...

Joyce's syntax has hidden the thread, but we now get the verb for 'when the waylayer':

...pointedly asked with gaeilish gall wodkar blizzard's business Thornton had with that Kane's fender only to be answered by the aggravated assaulted that that that was the snaps for him, Midweeks, to sultry well go and find out if he was showery well able. But how transparingly nontrue, gentlewriter! His feet one is not a tall man, not at all, man. No such parson. No such fender. No such lumber. No such race...

FDV: Six feet is not tall.

The 'fender' is a fireplace guard in the parcel the tall man is carrying, probably the cad's pipe (and HCE's cigar) deforming towards an anonymous lump. And then the assault is diminished to a banging at HCE's gate, dealt with by his butler, rationalised to the police as an innocent attempt to open a bottle of beer: [fw] [fdv]

Yet how lamely hobbles the hoy of his then pseudojocax axplanation how... he vas... merely trying to open zozimus a bottlop stoub by mortially hammering his magnum bonum... against the bludgey gate for the boots about the swan, Maurice Behan, who... came down... from the wastes a'sleep in his obi ohny overclothes or choker, attracted by the norse of guns playing... said war' prised safe in bed... when wokenp... out of his land of byelo... by hearing hammering on the pandywhank scale emanating from the blind pig and anything like it (oonagh! oonagh!) in the whole history of the Mullingcan Inn he never. This battering babel allower the door and sideposts, he always said, was not in the very remotest like the belzey babble of a bottle of boose which would not rouse him out o' slumber deep but reminded him loads more of the martiallawsey marses of foreign musikants' instrumongs or the overthrewer to the third last days of Pompery, if anything.

FDV: This was not in the remotest like a bottle of stout which would not rouse him out of sleep but much more like the overture to the last day if anything.

Take an old geeser who calls on his skirt. Note his sleek hair, so elegant, tableau vivant. He vows her to be his own honeylamb, swears they will be papa pals, by Sam, and share good times way down west in a guaranteed happy lovenest when May moon she shines and they twit twinkle all the night... But old grum he's not so clean dippy between sweet you and yum (not on your life, boy! not in those trousers! not by a large jugful!) for someplace on the sly, where Furphy he isn't by, old grum has his gel number two (bravevow, our Grum!) and he would like to canoodle her too some part of the time for he is downright fond of his number one but O he's fair mashed on peaches number two so that if he could only canoodle the two, chivee chivoo, all three would feel genuinely happy, it's as simple as A.B.C., the two mixers, we mean, with their cherrybum chappy (for he is simply shamming dippy) if they all were afloat in a dreamlifeboat, hugging two by two in his zoo-doo-you-doo, a tofftoff for thee, missymissy for me... in his tippy, upindown dippy, tiptoptippy canoodle, can you?

...With which clap, trap and soddenment, three to a loaf, our mutual friends the fender and the bottle at the gate seem to be implicitly in the same bateau, so to singen, bearing also several of the earmarks of design, for... the amount of all those sort of things which has been going on... among all kinds of promiscious individuals at all ages... has been particularly stupendous...

Backgrounder on 'Daddy' Browning (51yo) and 15yo 'Peaches' Heneen

Love Nest (song) [RealAud]

And finally the fender becomes ALP's letter-- one of the core images of FW-- and immediately a coffin: [fw]

But resuming inquiries. Will it ever be next morning the postal unionist's... strange fate... to hand in a huge chain envelope, written in seven divers stages of ink, from blanchessance to lavandaiette, every pothook and pancrook bespaking the wisherwife, superscribed and subpencilled by yours A Laughable Party... to Hyde and Cheek, Edenberry, Dubblenn, WC? ...The coffin, a triumph of the illusionist's art, at first blench naturally taken for a handharp... had been removed from the hardware premises of Oetzmann and Nephew...

The assaulter becomes a butcher: [fw]

In the bottled heliose case continuing, Long Lally Tobkids... swore like a Norewheezian tailliur on the stand before the proper functionary that he was up against a right querrshnorrt of a mand in the butcher of the blues who, he guntinued, on last epening after delivering some carcasses mattonchepps and meatjutes on behalf of Messrs Otto Sands and Eastman, Limericked, Victuallers, went and, with his unmitigated astonissment, hickicked at the dun and dorass against all the runes and, when challenged about the pretended hick (it was kickup and down with him) on his solemn by the imputant imputed, said simply: I appop pie oath, Phillyps Captain. You did, as I sostressed before.

You are deepknee in error, sir, Madam Tomkins, let me then tell you, replied with a gentlewomanly salaam MackPartland, (the meatman's family, and the oldest in the world except nick, name.) And Phelps was flayful with his peeler. But his phizz fell.

We return to the fate of the maggies: [fdv]

...these camelback excesses are thought to have been instigated by one or either of the causing causes of all, those rushy hollow heroines in their skirtsleeves... it is a horrible thing to have to say to say to day but one dilalah, Lupita Lorette, shortly after in a fit of the unexpectednesses drank carbolic with all her dear placid life before her and paled off while the other soiled dove that's her sister-in-love, Luperca Latouche, finding one day while dodging chores that she stripped teasily for binocular man and that her jambs were jimpjoyed to see each other, the nautchy girly soon found her fruitful hat too small for her and rapidly taking time, look, she rapidly took to necking, partying and selling her spare favours in the haymow or in lumber closets... serving whom in fine that same hot coney a la Zingara which our own little Graunya of the chilired cheeks dished up to the greatsire of Oscar...

Blackmail was involved: [fw]

If violence to life, limb and chattels, often as not, has been the expression, direct or through an agent male, of womanhid offended, (ah! ah!), has not levy of black mail from the times the fairies were in it, and fain for wilde erthe blothoms followed an impressive private reputation for whispered sins?

The history of the gate: [fw]

...There was once upon a wall and a hooghoog wall a was and such a wallhole did exist.... A stonehinged gate then was for another thing while the suroptimist had bought and enlarged that shack under fair rental of one yearlyng sheep, (prime) value of sixpence, and one small yearlyng goat (cadet) value of eightpence, to grow old and happy (hogg it and kidd him) for the reminants of his years; and when everything was got up for the purpose he put an applegate on the place by no means as some pretext a bedstead in loo thereof to keep out donkeys... and just thenabouts the iron gape, by old custom left open to prevent the cats from getting at the gout, was triplepatlockt on him on purpose by his faithful poorters to keep him inside probably and possibly enaunter he felt like sticking out his chest too far and tempting gracious providence by a stroll on the peoplade's eggday, unused as he was yet to being freely clodded.

FDV: and the gate was locked to keep HCE in, in case he felt like sticking out his chest too far and tempting providence.

Yet another version involves a guest being robbed at HCE's hotel:

O, by the by, lets wee brag of praties, it ought to be always remembered in connection with what has gone before that there was a northroomer, Herr Betreffender, out for his zimmer holedigs, digging in number 32 at the Rum and Puncheon... prior to that, a Kommerzial... paying... II/- in the week... consstated that one had on him the Lynn O'Brien, a meltoned lammswolle, disturbed...

Or a patron refusing to leave a pub at closing time: [fw]

Humphrey's unsolicited visitor... after having blew some quaker's (for you! Oates!) in through the houseking's keyhole to attract attention, bleated through the gale... first, be the hirsuiter, that he would break his bulsheywigger's head for him, next, be the heeltapper, that he would break the gage over his lankyduckling head the same way he would crack a nut with a monkeywrench and, last of all, be the stirabouter, that he would give him his (or theumperom's or anybloody else's) thickerthanwater to drink and his bleday steppebrodhar's into the bucket.

(Maybe also Stephen with the soldiers at the end of Circe.)

He demanded more wood alcohol to pitch in with, alleging... that it was only after ten o'connell... and then, not easily discouraged, opened the wrathfloods of his atillarery and went on at a wicked rate, weathering against him in mooxed metaphores from eleven thirty to two in the afternoon without even a luncheonette interval for House, son of Clod, to come out, you jewbeggar, to be Executed Amen.

HCE compiles a long list of the shouted insults, but refrains from replying himself:

Earwicker, that patternmind, that paradigmatic ear... longsuffering... in the sititout corner of his conservatory, behind faminebuilt walls, his thermos flask and ripidian flabel by his side and a walrus whiskerbristle for a tuskpick, compiled, while he mourned the flight of his wild guineese, a long list (now feared in part lost) to be kept on file of all abusive names he was called...: Firstnighter, Informer, Old Fruit, Yellow Whigger, Wheatears, ...Funnyface, ...Loose Luther, Hatches Cocks' Eggs, Muddle the Plan, Luck before Wedlock, I Divorce Thee Husband, ...Peculiar Person, ...Left Boot Sent on Approval, ...Sublime Porter, ...Enclosed find the Sons of Fingal, ...Sickfish Bellyup, ...Bad Humborg, ...Mister Fatmate, In Custody of the Polis, Boawwll's Alocutionist, Deposed, but anarchistically respectsful of the liberties of the noninvasive individual, did not respond a solitary wedgeword beyond such sedentarity, though it was as easy as kissanywhere for the passive resistant in the booth he was in to reach for the hello gripes and ring up Kimmage Outer 17.67, because, as the fundamentalist explained, when at last shocked into speech, touchin his woundid feelins in the fuchsiar the dominican mission for the sowsealist potty was on at the time and he thought the rowmish devowtion known as the howly rowsary might reeform ihm, Gonn.

FDV: because as he afterwards explained, the dominican mission was on at the time + he thought that might reform him.

The assaulter finally leaves: [fw]

That more than considerably unpleasant bullocky before he rang off drunkishly pegged a few glatt stones, all of a size, by way of final mocks for his grapes, at the wicket in support of his words that he was not guilphy but...reconnoitring through his semisubconscious the seriousness of what he might have done had he really polished off his terrible intentions finally caused him to change the bawling and leave downg the whole grumus of brookpebbles pangpung and, having sobered up a bit... this backblocks boor bruskly put out his langwedge and quite quit the paleologic scene... after exhorting Earwicker or, in slightly modified phraseology, Messrs or Missrs Earwicker, Seir, his feminisible name of multitude, to cocoa come outside to Mockerloo out of that for the honour of Crumlin... so as he could brianslog and burst him all dizzy... or if he didn't, for two and thirty straws, be Cacao Campbell, he didn't know what he wouldn't do for him nor nobody else nomore nor him after which... they bit goodbyte to their thumb and... proceeded with a Hubbleforth slouch in his slips backwords (Et Cur Heli!) in the directions of the duff and demb institutions about ten or eleven hundred years lurch away in the moonshiny gorge of Patself on the Bach. Adyoe!

...Humph is in his doge. Words weigh no no more to him than raindrips to Rethfernhim. Which we all like. Rain. When we sleep. Drops. But wait until our sleeping. Drain. Sdops.

Summary by Bill Cadbury

Discuss chapter three

We continue with the thoughts of HCE as he hides from his assaulter: [fw] [fdv]

As the lion in our teargarten remembers the nenuphars of his Nile... it may be... the besieged bedreamt him stil and solely of those lililiths undeveiled which had undone him, gone for age, and knew not the watchful treachers at his wake... It may be... that with his deepseeing insight... he conscious of enemies... prayed... during that three and a hellof hours' agony of silence... with unfeigned charity that his wordwounder... might... unfold into the first of a distinguished dynasty of his posteriors... his most besetting of ideas... being the formation... of a truly criminal stratum, Ham's cribcracking yeggs, thereby at last eliminating from all classes and masses [much desultory delinquency]... and so, to mark a bank taal she arter, the obedience of the citizens elp the ealth of the ole...

The teak coffin, Pughglasspanelfitted... was to turn in later... materially effecting the cause... Any number of conservative public bodies... before voting themselves and himself... once for all out of plotty existence... made him, while his body still persisted, their present of a protem grave in Moyelta of the best Lough Neagh pattern...

This wastohavebeen underground heaven, or mole's paradise which was probably also an inversion of a phallopharos... our misterbilder, Castlevillainous, openly damned and blasted by means of a hydromine... He afterwards... carefully lined the ferroconcrete result with rotproof bricks and mortar... and retired beneath the heptarchy of his towerettes... so encouraging... additional useful councils public... to present unto him with funebral pomp, over and above that, a stone slab...

The other spring offensive on the heights of Abraham may have come about all quite by accidence, Foughtarundser... had not been three monads in his watery grave... when portrifaction, dreyfussed as ever, began to ramp, ramp, ramp, the boys are parching...

Whether he's dead or hibernating or imprisoned or hiding or disguised, HCE lookalikes are still attacked: [fw]

From both Celtiberian camps... all conditions... were drawn toowards their Bellona's Black Bottom... some for want of proper feeding in youth, others already caught in the honourable act of slicing careers for family...

FDV: others already carving hon'ble careers for themselves

...and, if emaciated nough, the person garrotted may have suggested... low cirque waggery, nay, even the first old wugger of himself in the flesh, whiggissimus incarnadined, when falsesighted by the ifsuchhewas bully on the hill for there had circulated freely fairly among his opposition the feeling that in so hibernating Massa Ewacka, who, previous to that demidetached life, had been known of barmicidal days, cook said, between soups and savours, to get outside his own length of rainbow trout and taerts atta tarn as no man of woman born, nay could, like the great crested brebe, devour his threescoreten of roach per lifeday, ay, and as many minnow a minute... was, like the salmon of his ladderleap all this time of totality secretly and by suckage feeding on his own misplaced fat.

HCE's assault took place on a midden-dump, leaving tracks in ALP's excrement: [fw]

Ladies did not disdain those pagan ironed times... to carry, as earwigs do their dead, their soil to the earthball... Kate Strong, a widow (Tiptip!)... did most all the scavenging from good King Hamlaugh's gulden dayne... and her bare statement reads that, there being no macadamised sidetracks on those old nekropolitan nights... she left down... her filthdump near the Serpentine in Phornix Park... that dangerfield circling butcherswood where fireworker oh flaherty engaged a nutter of castlemallards... all over which fossil footprints, bootmarks, fingersigns, elbowdints, breechbowls, a.s.o. were all successively traced of a most envolving description. What subtler timeplace of the weald than such wolfsbelly castrament to will hide a leabhar from Thursmen's brandihands or a loveletter, lostfully hers, that would be lust on Ma...

Yet another version of the assault: [fw] [fdv]

It was hard by the howe's there... that the attackler, a cropatkin... with truly native pluck, engaged the Adversary... whom for plunder sake, he mistook in the heavy rain to be Oglethorpe or some other ginkus, Parr aparrently, to whom the headandheelless chickenestegg bore some Michelangiolesque resemblance, making use of sacrilegious languages to the defect that he would... cannonise the b -- y b -- r's life out of him and lay him out contritely... catching holst of an oblong bar he had and with which he usually broke furnitures he rose the stick at him. The boarder incident prerepeated itself. The pair... struggled apairently for some considerable time, (the cradle rocking equally to one and oppositely from the other on its law of capture and recapture)... and in the course of their tussle the toller man, who had opened his bully bowl to beg, said to the miner who was carrying the worm (a handy term for the portable distillery...): Let me go, Pautheen! I hardly knew ye.

The combatants suddenly resolve things when the cad (or HCE) offers to pay back the money stolen from the hotel-guest's coat, and HCE (or the cad) responds even more generously: [fw]

Later on, after the solstitial pause for refleshmeant, the same man (or a different and younger him of the same ham) asked in the vermicular with a very oggly chew-chin-grin: Was six victolios fifteen pigeon takee offa you, tell he me, stlongfella, by picky-pocky ten to foul months behindaside?

There were some further collidabanter and severe tries to convert for the best part of an hour and now a woden affair in the shape of a webley... fell from the intruser who... whereupon became friendly and, saying not his shirt to tear, to know wanted, joking and knobkerries all aside laying, if his change companion... happened to have the loots change of a tenpound crickler about him at the moment, addling that hap so, he would pay him back the six vics odd, do you see, out of that for what was taken on the man of samples last Yuni or Yuly, do you follow me, Capn?

To this the other, Billi with the Boule, who had mummed and mauled up to that... rather amusedly replied: Woowoo would you be grossly surprised, Hill, to learn that, as it so happens, I honestly have not such a thing as the loo, as the least chance of a tinpanned crackler anywhere about me at the present mohomoment but I believe I can see my way, as you suggest, it being Yuletide or Yuddanfest... to advance you something like four and sevenpence between hopping and trapping which you might just as well have, boy baches, to buy J.J. and S. with.

There was a minute silence before memory's fire's rekindling and then. Heart alive! Which at very first wind of gay gay and whiskwigs wick's ears pricked up, the starving gunman, strike him pink, became strangely calm and forthright sware by all his lards porsenal that the thorntree of sheol might ramify up his Sheofon to the lux apointlex but he would go good to him suntime marx my word fort, for a chip off the old Flint... seemingly much more highly pleased than tongue could tell... Goalball I've struck this daylit dielate night of nights, by golly! My hat, you have some bully German grit, sundowner! ...And... turning his fez menialstrait in the direction of Moscas, he... levanted off with tubular jurbulance at a bull's run over the assback bridge, spitting his teeths on rooths, with the seven and four in danegeld and their humoral hurlbat or other uncertain weapon of lignum vitae... picked up to keep some crowplucking appointment with some rival rialtos anywheres between Pearidge and the Littlehorn...

HCE limps to the police for first-aid: [fw]

... while this poor delaney, who they left along with the confederate fender behind and who albeit ballsbluffed, bore up wonderfully wunder all of it with a whole number of plumsized contusiums... all over him, reported the occurance in the best way he could, to the flabbergaze of the whole lab... in justifiable hope that... some lotion or fomentation of poppyheads would be jennerously exhibited to the parts, at the nearest watchhouse in Vicar Lane, the white ground of his face all covered with diagonally redcrossed nonfatal mammalian blood as proofpositive of the seriousness of his character and that he was bleeding in self defience (stanch it!) from the nostrils, lips, pavilion and palate, while some of his hitter's hairs had been pulled off his knut's head by Colt though otherwise his allround health appeared to be middling along as it proved most fortunate that not one of the two hundred and six bones and five hundred and one muscles in his corso was a whit the whorse for her whacking. Herwho?

...little headway, if any, was made in solving the wasnottobe crime cunundrum when a child of Maam, Festy King... was subsequently haled up at the Old Bailey... under an incompatibly framed indictment of both the counts... When the prisoner, soaked in methylated, appeared in dry dock... it was attempted by the crown (P.C. Robort) to show that King, elois Crowbar, once known as Meleky, impersonating a climbing boy, rubbed some pixes of any luvial peatsmoor o'er his face... as the best means of disguising himself and was to the middlewhite fair in Mudford of a Thoorsday... with a pedigree pig (unlicensed) and a hyacinth. ...the ballybricken... ate some of the doorweg, the pikey later selling the gentleman ratepayer because she, Francie's sister, that is to say, ate a whole side of his (the animal's) sty... in order to pay off, hiss or lick, six doubloons fifteen arrears of his, the villain's not the rumbler's rent.

Or was it the pig that tried to kill a king (or two)? [fw] [fdv]

Remarkable evidence was given, anon, by an eye, ear, nose and throat witness... who... stated... that he was patrified to see, hear, taste and smell, as his time of night, how Hyacinth O'Donnell, B.A., described in the calendar as a mixer and wordpainter, with part of a sivispacem (Gaeltact for dungfork) on the fair green at the hour of twenty-four o'clock sought... to sack, sock, stab and slaughter singlehanded another two of the old kings, Gush Mac Gale and Roaring O'Crian, Jr., both changelings... between him and whom... bad blood existed...

But it oozed out... through crossexanimation of the casehardened testis that when and where that knife of knifes the treepartied ambush was laid... there was not as much light from the widowed moon as would dim a child's altar... [*]

[*] thunderwords for 'whore' [list]

But a new complexion was put upon the matter when... the senior king of all, Pegger Festy, as soon as the outer layer of stucckomuck had been removed at the request of a few live jurors, declared in a loudburst of poesy, through his Brythonic interpreter on his oath... afore God and all their honours and king's commons that... he did not fire a stone either before or after he was born down and up to that time. And... the sockdologer had the neck to endorse... that... he skuld never ask to see sight or light of this world or the other world or any either world... if ever in all his exchequered career he up or lave a chancery hand to take or throw the sign of a mortal stick or stone at man, yoelamb or salvation army either before or after being puptised down to that most holy and every blessed hour. Here, upon the halfkneed castleknocker's attempting kithoguishly to... make the sign of the Roman Godhelic faix... outbroke much yellachters from owners in the heall (Ha!) in which... the testifighter reluctingly, but with ever so ladylike indecorum, joined. (Ha! Ha!)

Shaun (the witness? the defense attorney? the prosecutor?) has beaten Shem in the court of public opinion-- he's surrounded by female admirers (but singles out Issy): [fw]

The hilariohoot of Pegger's Windup cumjustled as neatly with the tristitone of the Wet Pinter's.... Distinctly different were their duasdestinies.

Whereas the maidies of the bar... when the eranthus myrrmyrred: Show'm the Posed: fluttered and flattered around the willingly pressed... complimenting him, the captivating youth, on his having all his senses about him, stincking thyacinths through his curls... and bringing busses to his cheeks... to belive them of all his untiring young dames and send treats in their times. Ymen.

But it was not unobserved of those presents, their worships, how, of one among all, her deputised to defeme him by the Lunar Sisters' Celibacy Club, a lovelooking leapgirl, all all alonely, Gentia Gemma of the Makegiddyculling Reeks, he, wan and pale in his unmixed admiration, seemed blindly, mutely, tastelessly, tactlessly, innamorate with heruponhim in shining aminglement, the shaym of his hisu shifting into the shimmering of her hers... till the wild wishwish of her sheeshea melted most musically mid the dark deepdeep of his shayshaun.

(This foreshadows chapter II.4, where Tristan and Issy consummate their love with a kiss, in one of the first vignettes [qv 1923], and also II.1, with Shem and Shaun competing for the Issies.)

Shaun's twin Shem, the defendant, loses in the court of public opinion, but still gets off: [fdv]

And... the four justicers laid their wigs together, Untius, Muncius, Punchus and Pylax but could do no worse than promulgate their standing verdict of Nolans Brumans whereoneafter King, having murdered all the English he knew, picked out his pockets and left the tribunal scotfree... with such a vinesmelling fortytudor ages rawdownhams tanyouhide... that all the twofromthirty advocatesses within echo, pulling up their briefs at the krigkry: Shun the Punman!: safely and soundly soccered that fenemine Parish Poser, (how dare he!)... the chassetitties belles conclaiming: You and your gift of your gaft of your garbage abaht our Farvver! and gaingridando: Hon! Verg! Nau! Putor! Skam! Schams! Shames!

...our special mentalists now holds... that by such playing possum our hagious curious encestor bestly saved his brush with his posterity... Gundogs of all breeds were beagling... hot to run him...

...the outlier... led bayers the run... But from the good turn when he last was lost... a deaf fuchser's volponism hid him close in covert, miraculously ravenfed and buoyed up... upon... the creamclotted sherriness of cinnamon syllabub...

One feared for his days.... He had laid violent hands on himself... lain down, all in, fagged out, with equally melancholy death.... He had fled again... this country of exile, sloughed off, sidleshomed via the subterranean shored with bedboards, stowed away and ankered in a dutch bottom tank... and was even now occupying... a physical body... in Asia Major...

Wires hummed. Peacefully general astonishment assisted by regrettitude had put a term till his existence: he... was recalled and scrapheaped by the Maker... and divers shivered to think what kaind of beast, wolves, croppis's or fourpenny friars, had devoured him.

FDV of trimmed passage: On his postern had been nailed the title: Move up, Dumpty. Make room for Humpty!

But signs confirm he still exists: [fw] [fdv]

But, their bright little contemporaries notwithstanding, on the morrowing morn of the suicidal murder of the unrescued expatriate... a quarter of nine... saw the infallible spike of smoke's jutstiff punctual from the seventh gable of our Quintus Centimachus' porphyroid buttertower...

Wherefore let it hardly by any being thinking be said either or thought that the prisoner of that sacred edifice... was at his best a onestone parable, a rude breathing on the void of to be, a venter hearing his own bauchspeech in backwords, or... the cluekey to a worldroom beyond the roomwhorld, for scarce one... cared... to doubt... the canonicity of his existence as a tesseract.

Backgrounder on how a Pope is chosen (explains puff of smoke)

A rhetorical question: [fw]

Who, but who (for second time of asking) was then the scourge of the parts about folkrich Lucalizod it was wont to be asked... or, to put it bluntly... who struck Buckley though nowadays as thentimes every schoolfilly of sevenscore moons or more... knows... how it was Buckleyself... who struck and the Russian generals, da! da!, instead of Buckley who was caddishly struck by him when be herselves.

And finally, in preparation for the next chapter, ALP herself steps back in, plotting to use her feminine wiles to defend him, in spite of all (foreshadowing I.8):

The loungelizards of the pumproom had their nine days' jeer... when, still believing in her owenglass... that the upper reaches of her mouthless face and her impermanent waves were the better half of her, one nearer him, dearer than all, first warming creature of his early morn, bondwoman of the man of the house... she who shuttered him after his fall and waked him widowt sparing... she who will not rast her from her running to seek him... stood forth... dragging the countryside in her train... with pawns, prelates and pookas pelotting in her piecebag, for Handiman the Chomp, Esquoro, biskbask, to crush the slander's head...

Bulk him no bulkis. And let him rest, thou wayfarre, and take no gravespoil from him! Neither mar his mound! The bane of Tut is on it. Ware! But there's a little lady waiting and her name is A.L.P. And you'll agree. She must be she. For her holden heirheaps hanging down her back.

He spenth his strenth amok haremscarems. Poppy Narancy, Giallia, Chlora, Marinka, Anileen, Parme. And ilk a those dames had her rainbow huemoures yet for whilko her whims but he coined a cure... Then who but Crippled-with-Children would speak up for Dropping-with-Sweat? ...For we, we have taken our sheet upon her stones where we have hanged our hearts in her trees; and we list, as she bibs us, by the waters of babalong.

Summary by Bill Cadbury

Discuss chapter four

Analysis by Bill Cadbury of the transition from Ch4 to Ch5.

[Next-- I.5 thru I.8]

Portrait:
etext: 1 2 3 4 5a 5b; main : ch1 notes : friends : Pinamonti : Stephen Hero : symmetry : prices

Ulysses:
chapters: summary : anchors : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12a 12b 13 14a 14b 15a 15b 15c 15d 16a 16b 17a 17b 18a 18b
notes: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
reference: Bloom : clocktime : prices : schemata : Tower : riddles : errors : Homeric parallels : [B-L Odyssey] : Eolus tropes : parable : Oxen : Circe : 1904 : Thom's : Gold Cup : Seaside Girls : M'appari : acatalectic : search
riddles: overview : Rudy : condom : Gerty : Hades : Strand : murder : Eccles
maps: Ulysses : WRocks : Strand : VR tour : aerial tour : Dublin : Leinster : Ireland : Europe
editing: etexts : lapses : Gabler : capitals : commas : compounds : deletes : punct : typists
drafts: prequel : Proteus : Cyclops : Circe
closereadings: notes : Oxen : Circe

Joyce: main : fast portal : portal
major: FW : Pomes : U : PoA : Ex : Dub : SH : CM : CM05 : CM04
minor: Burner : [Defoe] : [Office] : PoA04 : Epiph : Mang : Rab
bio: timeline : 1898-1904 : [Trieste] : eyesight : schools : Augusta
vocation: reading : tastes : publishers : craft : symmetry
people: 1898-1904 gossip : 1881 gossip : Nora : Lucia : Gogarty : Byrne : friends : siblings : Stannie
maps: Dublin : Leinster : Ireland : Europe : Paris : Ulysses
images: directory : [Ruch]
motifs: ontology : waves : lies : wanking : MonaLisa : murder
Irish lit: timeline : 100poems : Ireland : newspapers : gossip : Yeats : MaudG : AE : the Household : Theosophy : Eglinton : Ideals
classics: Shakespeare : Dante : Pre-Raphaelites : Homer : Patrick
industry: Bloomsday : [movies] : Ellmann : Rose : genetics : NewGame
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