ld heart, citizen? says
he.
-- Never better, a chara, says he. What Garry? Are we going to win? Eh?
And with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck
and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.
The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was
that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired
freely freckled shaggybearded wide-mouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced
barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. From
shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous
knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of his body wherever visible,
with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair in hue and toughness similar to
the mountain gorse (Ulex Europeus). The widewinged nostrils, from which
bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such capaciousness that
within their cavernous obscurity the field-lark might easily have lodged her
nest. The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were
of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful current of warm
breath issued at regular intervals from the profound cavity of his mouth
while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations of his
formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the
lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to vibrate and tremble.
He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide reaching to
the knees in a loose kilt and this was bound about his middle by a girdle of
plaited straw and rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of deerskin, roughly
stitched with gut. His nether extremities were encased in high Balbriggan
buskins dyed in lichen purple, the feet being shod with brogues of salted
cowhide laced with the windpipe of the same beast. From his girdle hung a
row of seastones which dangled at every movement of his portentous frame and
on these were graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of many
Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles,
Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the Ardri Malachi, Art MacMurragh,
Shane O'Neill, Father John Murphy, Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh
O'Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O'Growney, Michael Dwyer,
Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M'Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Thomas
Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain
Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan,
Marshal Mac-Mahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the
Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castille, the Man for
Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The
Woman Who Didn't, Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan,
Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton,
William Tell, Michelangelo, Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter
the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W. Shakespeare, Brian
Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan and
Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold Soldier
Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn,
Waddler Healy, Angus the Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben Howth,
Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss Croker,
Herodotus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of
Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle,
Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare. A
couched spear of acuminated granite rested by him while at his feet reposed
a savage animal of the canine tribe whose stertorous gasps announced that he
was sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and
spasmodic movements which his master repressed from time to time by
tranquillising blows of a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic
stone.
So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing and begob the
sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid. O, as true as I'm
telling you. A goodlooking sovereign.
-- And there's more where that came from, says he.
-- Were you robbing the poorbox, Joe? says I.
-- Sweat of my brow, says Joe. 'Twas the prudent member gave me the
wheeze.
-- I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill lane and
Greek street with his cod's eye counting up all the guts of the fish.
Who comes through Michan's land, bedight in sable armour? O'Bloom, the
son of Rory: it is he. Impervious to fear is Rory's son: he of the prudent
soul.
-- For the old woman of Prince's street, says the citizen, the
subsidised organ. The pledgebound party on the floor of the house. And look
at this blasted rag, says he. Look at this, says he. The Irish Independent,
if you please, founded by Parnell to be the workingman's friend. Listen to
the births and deaths in the Irish all for Ireland Independent and I'll
thank you and the marriages.
And he starts reading them out:
-- Gordon, Barnfield Crescent, Exeter; Redmayne of Iffley, Saint Anne's
on Sea, the wife of William T. Redmayne, of a son. How's that, eh? Wright
and Flint, Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa and the late
George Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham Road, Stockwell, Playwood and Ridsdale at
Saint Jude's Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, Dean of Worcester,
eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of
gastritis and heart disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow.
-- I know that fellow, says Joe, from bitter experience.
-- Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of Davie Dimsey, late of the admiralty:
Miller, Tottenham, aged eightyfive: Welsh, June 12, at 35 Canning Street,
Liverpool, Isabella Helen. How's that for a national press, eh, my brown
son? How's that for Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber?
-- Ah, well, says Joe, handing round the boose. Thanks be to God they
had the start of us. Drink that, citizen.
-- I will, says he, honourable person.
-- Health, Joe, says I. And all down the form.
Ah! Owl! Don't be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint.
Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a click.
And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came
swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a comely youth, and behind him
there passed an elder of noble gait and countenance, bearing the sacred
scrolls of law, and with him his lady wife, a dame of peerless lineage,
fairest of her race.
Little Alf Bergan popped in round the door and hid behind Barney's
snug, squeezed up with the laughing, and who was sitting up there in the
corner that I hadn't seen snoring drunk, blind to the world, only Bob Doran.
I didn't know what was up and Alf kept making signs out of the door. And
begob what was it only that bloody old pantaloon Denis Breen in his bath
slippers with two bloody big books tucked under his oxter and the wife
hotfoot after him, unfortunate wretched woman trotting like a poodle. I
thought Alf would split.
-- Look at him, says he. Breen. He's traipsing all round Dublin with a
postcard someone sent him with u. p.: up on it to take a li...
And he doubled up.
-- Take a what? says I.
-- Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds.
-- O hell! says I.
The bloody mongrel began to growl that'd put the fear of God in you
seeing something was up but the citizen gave him a kick in the ribs.
-- Bi i dho husht, says he.
-- Who? says Joe.
-- Breen, says Alf. He was in John Henry Menton's and then he went
round to Collis and Ward's and then Tom Rochford met him and sent him round
to the subsheriff's for a lark. O God, I've a pain laughing. U. p.: up. The
long fellow gave him an eye as good as a process and now the bloody old
lunatic is gone round to Green Street to look for a G. man.
-- When is long John going to hang that fellow in Mountjoy? says Joe.
Bergan, says Bob Doran, waking up. Is that Alf Bergan?
-- Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here, Terry, give us a
pony. That bloody old fool! Ten thousand pounds. You should have seen long
John's eye. U. p...
And he started laughing.
-- Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. Is that Bergan?
-- Hurry up, Terry boy, says Alf.
Terence O'Ryan heard him and straightway brought him a crystal cup full
of the foaming ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and
Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of
deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass
and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and
bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day from their
toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat.
Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the manner born,
that nectarous beverage and you offered the crystal cup to him that
thirsted, the soul of chivalry, in beauty akin to the immortals.
But he, the young chief of the O'Bergan's, could ill brook to be
outdone in generous deeds but gave therefor with gracious gesture a testoon
of costliest bronze. Thereon embossed in excellent smithwork was seen the
image of a queen of regal port, scion of the house of Brunswick, Victoria
her name, Her Most Excellent Majesty, by grace of God of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British dominions beyond the sea,
queen, defender of the faith, Empress of India, even she, who bore rule, a
victress over many peoples, the well-beloved, for they knew and loved her
from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, the pale, the dark,
the ruddy and the ethiop.
-- What's that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen, prowling up
and down outside?
-- What's that? says Joe.
-- Here you are, says Alf, chucking out the rhino. Talking about
hanging. I'll show you something you never saw. Hangmen's letters. Look at
here.
So he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes out of his
pocket.
-- Are you codding? says I.
-- Honest injun, says Alf. Read them.
So Joe took up the letters.
-- Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran.
So I saw there was going to be bit of a dust. Bob's a queer chap when
the porter's up in him so says I just to make talk:
-- How's Willy Murray those times, Alf?
-- I don't know, says Alf. I saw him just now in Capel Street with
Paddy Dignam. Only I was running after that.
-- You what? says Joe, throwing down the letters. With who?
-- With Dignam, says Alf.
-- Is it Paddy? says Joe.
-- Yes, says Alf. Why?
-- Don't you know he's dead? says Joe.
-- Paddy Dignam dead? says Alf.
-- Ay, says Joe.
-- Sure I'm after seeing him not five minutes ago, says Alf, as plain
as a pikestaff.
-- Who's dead? says Bob Doran.
-- You saw his ghost then, says Joe, God between us and harm.
-- What? says Alf. Good Christ, only five... What?... and Willie Murray
with him, the two of them there near what-doyoucallhim's... What? Dignam
dead?
-- What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who's talking about... ?
-- Dead! says Alf. He is no more dead than you are.
-- Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this
morning anyhow.
-- Paddy? says Alf.
-- Ay, says Joe. He paid the debt of nature, God be merciful to him.
-- Good Christ! says Alf.
Begob he was what you might call flabbergasted.
In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by
tantras had been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing
luminosity of ruby light became gradually visible, the apparition of the
etheric double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge of jivic
rays from the crown of the head and face. Communication was effected through
the pituitary body and also by means of the orangefiery and scarlet rays
emanating from the sacral region and solar plexus. Questioned by his
earthname as to his whereabouts in the heaven-world he stated that he was
now on the path of pralaya or return but was still submitted to trial at the
hands of certain bloodthirsty entities on the lower astral levels. In reply
to a question as to his first sensations in the great divide beyond he
stated that previously he had seen as in a glass darkly but that those who
had passed over had summit possibilities of atmic development opened up to
them. Interrogated as to whether life there resembled our experience in the
flesh he stated that he had heard from more favoured beings now in the
spirit that their abodes were equipped with every modern home comfort such
as talafana, alavatar, hatakalda, wataklasat and that the highest adepts
were steeped in waves of volupcy of the very purest nature. Having requested
a quart of buttermilk this was brought and evidently afforded relief. Asked
if he had any message for the living he exhorted all who were still at the
wrong side of Maya to acknowledge the true path for it was reported in
devanic circles that Mars and Jupiter were out for mischief on the eastern
angle where the ram has power. It was then queried whether there were any
special desires on the part of the defunct and the reply was: We greet you,
friends of earth, who are still in the body. Mind C.K. doesn't pile it on.
It was ascertained that the reference was to Mr Cornelius Kelleher, manager
of Messrs H.J. O'Neill's popular funeral establishment, a personal friend of
the defunct, who had been responsible for the carrying out of the interment
arrangements. Before departing he requested that it should be told to his
dear son Patsy that the other boot which he had been looking for was at
present under the commode in the return room and that the pair should be
sent to Cullen's to be soled only as the heels were still good. He stated
that this had greatly perturbed his peace of mind in the other region and
earnestly requested that his desire should be made known.
Assurances were given that the matter would be attended to and it was
intimated that this had given satisfaction.
He is gone from mortal haunts: O'Dignam, sun of our morning. Fleet was
his foot on the bracken: Patrick of the beamy brow. Wail, Banba, with your
wind: and wail, O ocean, with your whirlwind.
-- There he is again, says the citizen, staring out.
-- Who? says I.
-- Bloom, says he. He's on point duty up and down there for the last
ten minutes.
And, begob, I saw his physog do a peep in and then slidder off again.
Little Alf was knocked bawways. Faith, he was.
-- Good Christ! says he. I could have sworn it was him.
And says Bob Doran, with the hat on the back of his poll, lowest
blackguard in Dublin when he's under the influence:
-- Who said Christ is good?
-- I beg your parsnips, says Alf.
-- Is that a good Christ, says Bob Doran, to take away poor little
Willy Dignam?
-- Ah, well, says Alf, trying to pass it off. He's over all his
troubles.
But Bob Doran shouts out of him.
-- He's a bloody ruffian I say, to take away poor little Willy Dignam.
Terry came down and tipped him the wink to keep quiet, that they didn't
want that kind of talk in a respectable licensed premises. And Bob Doran
starts doing the weeps about Paddy Dignam, true as you're there.
-- The finest man, says he, snivelling, the finest purest character.
The tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his bloody hat.
Fitter for him to go home to the little sleepwalking bitch he married,
Mooney, the bumbailiff's daughter. Mother kept a kip in Hardwicke street
that used to be stravaging about the landings Bantam Lyons told me that was
stopping there at two in the morning without a stitch on her, exposing her
person, open to all comers, fair field and no favour.
-- The noblest, the truest, says he. And he's gone, poor little Willy,
poor little Paddy Dignam.
And mournful and with a heavy heart he bewept the extinction of that
beam of heaven.
Old Garryowen started growling again at Bloom that was skeezing round
the door.
-- Come in, come on, he won't eat you, says the citizen.
So Bloom slopes in with his cod's eye on the dog and he asks Terry was
Martin Cunningham there.
-- O, Christ M'Keown, says Joe, reading one of the letters. Listen to
this, will you?
And he starts reading out one.
7, Hunter Street, Liverpool.
To the High Sheriff of Dublin, Dublin.
Honoured sir i beg to offer my services in the above-mentioned painful
case i hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the 12 of February 1900 and i
hanged...
-- Show us, Joe, says I.
-- ... private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit in
Pentonville prison and i was assistant when...
-- Jesus, says I.
-- ... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith...
The citizen made a grab at the letter.
-- Hold hard, says Joe, i have a special nack of putting the noose once
in he can't get out hoping to be favoured i remain, honoured sir' my teas is
five ginnese.
H. Rumbold,
Master Barber.
-- And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen.
-- And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here, says he, take
them to hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello, Bloom, says he, what will you
have?
So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying he wouldn't and
couldn't and excuse him no offence and all to that and then he said well
he'd just take a cigar. Gob, he's a prudent member and no mistake.
-- Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe.
And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a mourning card with
a black border round it.
-- They're all barbers, says he, from the black country that would hang
their own fathers for five quid down and travelling expenses.
And he was telling us there's two fellows waiting below to pull his
heels down when he gets the drop and choke him properly and then they chop
up the rope after and sell the bits for a few bob a skull.
In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the razor. Their
deadly coil they grasp: yea, and therein they lead to Erebus whatsoever
wight hath done a deed of blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so saith
the Lord.
So they started talking about capital punishment and of course Bloom
comes out with the why and the wherefore and all the codology of the
business and the old dog smelling him all the time I'm told those Jewies
does have a sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about I don't
know what all deterrent effect and so forth and so on.
-- There's one thing it hasn't a deterrent effect on, says Alf.
-- What's that? says Joe.
-- The poor bugger's tool that's being hanged, says Alf.
-- That so? says Joe.
-- God's truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head warder that was in
Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady, the invincible. He told me when they
cut him down after the drop it was standing up in their faces like a poker.
-- Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone said.
-- That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It's only a natural
phenomenon, don't you see, because on account of the...
And then he starts with his jawbreakers about phenomenon and science
and this phenomenon and the other phenomenon.
The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered
medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the
cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would,
according to the best approved traditions of medical science, be calculated
to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of
the nerve centres, causing the pores of the cobra cavernosa to rapidly
dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to
that part of the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in
the phenomenon which has been dominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and
outwards philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem
capitis.
So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of the word and
he starts gassing out of him about the invincibles and the old guard and the
men of sixtyseven and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Joe with him
about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and transported for the cause
by drumhead courtmartial and a new Ireland and new this, that and the other.
Talking about new Ireland he ought to go and get a new dog so he ought.
Mangy ravenous brute sniffling and sneezing all round the place and
scratching his scabs and round he goes to Bob Doran that was standing Alf a
half one sucking up for what he could get. So of course Bob Doran starts
doing the bloody fool with him:
-- Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old doggy. Give us the
paw here! Give us the paw!
Arrah! bloody end to the paw he'd paw and Alf trying to keep him from
tumbling off the bloody stool atop of the bloody old dog and he talking all
kinds of drivel about training by kindness and thoroughbred dog and
intelligent dog: give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping a few bits
of old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacob's tin he told Terry to bring.
Gob, he golloped it down like old boots and his tongue hanging out of him a
yard long for more. Near ate the tin and all, hungry bloody mongrel.
And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about the point, the
brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond on Arbour Hill and Robert Emmet and
die for your country, the Tommy Moore touch about Sara Curran and she's far
from the land. And Bloom, of course, with his knockmedown cigar putting on
swank with his lardy face. Phenomenon! The fat heap he married is a nice old
phenomenon with a back on her like a ballalley. Time they were stopping up
in the City Arms Pisser Burke told me there was an old one there with a
cracked loodheramaun of a nephew and Bloom trying to get the soft side of
her doing the mollycoddle playing bÉzique to come in for a bit of the wampum
in her will and not eating meat of a Friday because the old one was always
thumping her craw and taking the lout out for a walk. And one time he led
him the rounds of Dublin and, by the holy farmer, he never cried crack till
he brought him home as drunk as a boiled owl and he said he did it to teach
him the evils of alcohol and by herrings if the three women didn't near
roast him it's a queer story, the old one, Bloom's wife and Mrs O'Dowd that
kept the hotel. Jesus, I had to laugh at Pisser Burke taking them off
chewing the fat and Bloom with his but don't you see? and but on the other
hand. And sure, more be token, the lout I'm told was in Power's after, the
blender's, round in Cope street going home footless in a cab five times in
the week after drinking his way through all the samples in the bloody
establishment. Phenomenon!
-- The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pintglass and
glaring at Bloom.
-- Ay, ay, says Joe.
-- You don't grasp my point, says Bloom. What I mean is...
-- Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn fein amhain! The friends we love
are by our side and the foes we hate before us.
The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the belfries far
and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the
gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums
punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance. The deafening claps
of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up the ghastly
scene testified that the artillery of heaven had lent its supernatural pomp
to the already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain poured down from the
floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared heads of the assembled
multitude which numbered at the lowest computation five hundred thousand
persons. A posse of Dublin Metropolitan police superintended by the Chief
Commissioner in person maintained order in the vast throng for whom the York
Street brass and reed band whiled away the intervening time by admirably
rendering on their black draped instruments the matchless melody endeared to
us from the cradle by Speranza's plaintive muse. Special quick excursion
trains and upholstered charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our
country cousins of whom there were large contingents. Considerable amusement
was caused by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who
sang The Night before Larry was stretched in their usual mirth-provoking
fashion. Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their
broadsheets among lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner
in his heart for real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their
hardearned pennies. The children of the Male and Female Foundling Hospital
who thronged the windows overlooking the scene were delighted with this
unexpected addition to the day's entertainment and a word of praise is due
to the Little Sisters of the Poor for their excellent idea of affording the
poor fatherless and motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. The
viceregal houseparty which included many wellknown ladies was chaperoned by
Their Excellencies to the most favourable positions on the grand stand while
the picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends of the Emerald Isle
was accommodated on a tribune directly opposite. The delegation, present in
full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone (the
semi-paralysed doyen of the party who had to be assisted to his seat by the
aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul PetitÉpatant, the
Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von
Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Virdga KisÁszony PutrÁpesthi, Hiram
Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos Karamelopulos. Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat Lokum
Effendi, SeÑor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de
la Malora de la Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf
Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond
Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch, Herr Hurhausdirektorprasident Hans
Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanato
riumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocentgeneralhistoryspecialprofessordoctor
Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without exception expressed
themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous terms concerning the
nameless barbarity which they had been called upon to witness. An animated
altercation (in which all took part) ensued among F.O.T.E.I. as to whether
the eighth or the ninth of March was the correct date of the birth of
Ireland's patron saint. In the course of the argument cannonballs,
scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers, umbrellas,
catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig iron were resorted to and
blows were freely exchanged. The baby policeman, Constable MacFadden,
summoned by special courier from Booterstown, quickly restored order and
with lightning promptitude proposed the seventeenth of the month as a
solution equally honourable for both contending parties. The readywitted
ninefooter's suggestion at once appealed to all and was unanimously
accepted. Constable MacFadden was heartily congratulated by all the
F.O.T.E.I., several of whom were bleeding profusely. Commendatore
Beninobenone having been extricated from underneath the presidential
armchair, It was explained by his legal adviser Avvocato Pagamimi that the
various articles secreted in his thirtytwo pockets had been abstracted by
him during the affray from the pockets of his Junior colleagues in the hope
of bringing them to their senses. The objects (which included several
hundred ladies' and gentlemen's gold and silver watches) were promptly
restored to their rightful owners and general harmony reigned supreme.
Quietly, unassumingly, Rumbold stepped on to the scaffold in faultless
morning dress and wearing his favourite flower the Gladiolus Cruentus. He
announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so many have
tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate - short, painstaking yet withal so
characteristic of the man. The arrival of the world-renowned headsman was
greeted by a roar of acclamation from the huge concourse, the viceregal
ladies waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the even more
excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of cries, hoch,
banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah, amid
which the ringing evviva of the delegate of the land of song (a high double
F recalling those piercingly lovely notes with which the eunuch Catalani
beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily distinguishable. It was
exactly seventeen o'clock. The signal for prayer was then promptly given by
megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared, the commendatore's
patriarchal sombrero, which has been in the possession of his family since
the revolution of Rienzi, being removed by his medical adviser in
attendance, Dr Pippi. The learned prelate who administered the last comforts
of holy religion to the hero martyr when about to pay the death penalty
knelt in a most christian spirit in a pool of rainwater, his cassock above
his hoary head, and offered up to the throne of grace fervent prayers of
supplication. Hard by the block stood the grim figure of the executioner,
his visage being concealed in a tengallon pot with two circular perforated
apertures through which his eyes glowered furiously. As he awaited the fatal
signal he tested the edge of his horrible weapon by honing it upon his
brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid succession a flock of sheep which had
been provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary office. On a
handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged the quartering knife,
the various finely tempered disembowelling appliances (specially supplied by
the worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round and Sons, Sheffield), a
terracotta saucepan for the reception of the duodenum, colon, blind
intestine and appendix etc when successfully extracted and two commodious
milkjugs destined to receive the most precious blood of the most precious
victim. The housesteward of the amalgamated cats' and dogs' home was in
attendance to convey these vessels when replenished to that beneficent
institution. Quite an excellent repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried
steak and onions, done to a nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and
invigorating tea had been considerately provided by the authorities for the
consumption of the central figure of the tragedy who was in capital spirits
when prepared for death and evinced the keenest interest in the proceedings
from beginning to end but he, with an abnegation rare in these our times,
rose nobly to the occasion and expressed the dying wish (immediately acceded
to) that the meal should be divided in aliquot parts among the members of
the sick and indigent roomkeeper's association as a token of his regard and
esteem. The nec and non plus ultra of emotion were reached when the blushing
bride elect burst her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and
flung herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched
into eternity for her sake. The hero folded her willowy form in a loving
embrace murmuring fondly Sheila, my own. Encouraged by this use of her
christian name she kissed passionately all the various suitable areas of his
person which the decencies of prison garb permitted her ardour to reach. She
swore to him as they mingled the salt streams of their tears that she would
cherish his memory, that she would never forget her hero boy who went to his
death with a song on his lips as if he were but going to a hurling match in
Clonturk park. She brought back to his recollection the happy days of
blissful childhood together on the banks of Anna Liffey when they had
indulged in the innocent pastimes of the young and, oblivious of the
dreadful present, they both laughed heartily, all the spectators, including
the venerable pastor, joining in the general merriment. That monster
audience simply rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome with grief
and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh torrent of tears burst
from their lachrymal ducts and the vast concourse of people, touched to the
inmost core, broke into heartrending sobs, not the least affected being the
aged prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of the peace and genial
giants of the royal Irish constabulary, were making frank use of their
handkerchiefs and it is safe to say that there was not a dry eye in that
record assemblage. A most romantic incident occurred when a handsome young
Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped
forward and, presenting his visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree,
solicited the hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name the
day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the audience was presented
with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion in the shape of a skull and
crossbones brooch, a timely and generous act which evoked a fresh outburst
of emotion: and when the gallant young Oxonian (the bearer, by the way, of
one of the most timehonoured names in Albion's history) placed on the finger
of his blushing fiancÉe an expensive engagement ring with emeralds set in
the form of a fourleaved shamrock excitement knew no bounds. Nay, even the
stern provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel Tomkin-Maxwell ffrenchmullan
Tomlinson, who presided on the sad occasion, he who had blown a considerable
number of sepoys from the cannonmouth without flinching, could not now
restrain his natural emotion. With his mailed gauntlet he brushed away a
furtive tear and was overheard by those privileged burghers who happened to
be in his immediate entourage to murmur to himself in a faltering undertone:
-- God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey
it makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does, when I sees her cause I
thinks of my old mashtub what's waiting for me down Limehouse way.
So then the citizens begin talking about the Irish language and the
corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can't speak their
own language and Joe chipping in because he stuck someone for a quid and
Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump that he cadged off Joe
and talking about the Gaelic league and the antitreating league and drink,
the curse of Ireland. Antitreating is about the size of it. Gob, he'd let
you pour all manner of drink down his throat till the Lord would call him
before you'd ever see the froth of his pint. And one night I went in with a
fellow into one of their musical evenings, song and dance about she could
get up on a truss of hay she could my Maureen Lay, and there was a fellow
with a Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing out of him in Irish and a lot
of colleen bawns going about with temperance beverages and selling medals
and oranges and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh
entertainment, don't be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland free. And then an
old fellow starts blowing into his bagpipes and all the gougers shuffling
their feet to the tune the old cow died of. And one or two sky pilots having
an eye around that there was no goings on with the females, hitting below
the belt.
So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the tin was empty
starts mousing around by Joe and me. I'd train him by kindness, so I would,
if he was my dog. Give him a rousing fine kick now and again where it
wouldn't blind him.
-- Afraid he'll bite you? says the citizen, sneering.
-- No, says 1. But he might take my leg for a lampost.
So he calls the old dog over.
-- What's on you, Garry? says he.
Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him in Irish and the
old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera. Such
growling you never heard as they let off between them. Someone that has
nothing better to do ought to write a letter pm bono publico to the papers
about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that. Growling and grousing
and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is in it and the hydrophobia
dropping out of his jaws.
All those who are interested in the spread of human culture among the
lower animals (and their name is legion) should make a point of not missing
the really marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given by the famous old
Irish red wolfdog setter formerly known by the sobriquet of Garryowen and
recently rechristened by his large circle of friends and acquaintances Owen
Garry. The exhibition, which is the result of years of training by kindness
and a carefully thoughtout dietary system, comprises, among other
achievements, the recitation of verse. Our greatest living phonetic expert
(wild horses shall not drag it from us!) has left no stone unturned in his
efforts to delucidate and compare the verse recited and has found it bears a
striking resemblance (the italics are ours) to the ranns of ancient Celtic
bards. We are not speaking so much of those delightful lovesongs with which
the writer who conceals his identity under the graceful pseudonym of the
Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the bookloving world but rather (as a
contributor D. O. C. points out in an interesting communication published by
an evening contemporary) of the harsher and more personal note which is
found in the satirical effusions of the famous Raftery and of Donald
MacConsidine to say nothing of a more modern lyrist at present very much in
the public eye. We subjoin a specimen which has been rendered into English
by an eminent scholar whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to
disclose though we believe our readers will find the topical allusion rather
more than an indication. The metrical system of the canine original, which
recalls the intricate alliterative and isosyllabic rules of the Welsh
englyn, is infinitely more complicated but we believe our readers will agree
that the spirit has been well caught. Perhaps it should be added that the
effect is greatly increased if Owen's verse be spoken somewhat slowly and
indistinctly in a tone suggestive of suppressed rancour.
The curse of my curses
Seven days every day
And seven dry Thursdays
On you, Barney Kiernan,
Has no sup of water
To cool my courage,
And my guts red roaring
After Lowry's lights.
So he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and, gob, you could
hear him lapping it up a mile off. And Joe asked him would he have another.
-- I will, says he, a chara, to show there's no ill feeling.
Gob, he's not as green as he's cabbagelooking. Arsing around from one
pub to another, leaving it to your own honour, with old Giltrap's dog and
getting fed up by the ratepayers and corporators. Entertainment for man and
beast. And says Joe:
-- Could you make a hole in another pint?
-- Could a swim duck? says I.
-- Same again, Terry, says Joe. Are you sure you won't have anything in
the way of liquid refreshment? says he.
-- Thank you, no, says Bloom. As a matter of fact I just wanted to meet
Martin Cunningham, don't you see, about this insurance of poor Dignam's.
Martin asked me to go to the house. You see, he, Dignam, I mean, didn't
serve any notice of the assignment on the company at the time and nominally
under the act the mortgagee can't recover on the policy.
-- Holy Wars, says Joe laughing, that's a good one if old Shylock is
landed. So the wife comes out top dog, what?
-- Well, that's a point, says Bloom, for the wife's admirers.
-- Whose admirers? says Joe.
-- The wife's advisers, I mean, says Bloom.
Then he starts all confused mucking it up about the mortgagor under the
act like the lord chancellor giving it out on the bench and for the benefit
of the wife and that a trust is created but on the other hand that Dignam
owed Bridgeman the money and if now the wife or the widow contested the
mortgagee's right till he near had the head of me addled with his mortgagor
under the act. He was bloody safe he wasn't run in himself under the act
that time as a rogue and vagabond only he had a friend in court. Selling
bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal Hungarian privileged lottery.
True as you re there. O, commend me to an israelite! Royal and privileged
Hungarian robbery.
So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to tell Mrs Dignam he
was sorry for her trouble and he was very sorry about the funeral and to
tell her that he said and everyone who knew him said that there was never a
truer, a finer than poor little Willy that's dead to tell her. Choking with
bloody foolery. And shaking Bloom's hand doing the tragic to tell her that.
Shake hands, brother. You're a rogue and I'm another.
-- Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance which, however
slight it may appear if judged by the standard of mere time, is founded, as
I hope and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem, as to request of you
this favour. But, should I have overstepped the limits of reserve let the
sincerity of my feelings be the excuse for my boldness.
-- No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives which
actuate your conduct and I shall discharge the office you entrust to me
consoled by the reflection that, though the errand be one of sorrow, this
proof of your confidence sweetens in some measure the bitterness of the cup.
-- Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness of your
heart, I feel sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words the
expressions which are most suitable to convey an emotion whose poignancy,
were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even of speech.
And off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed at five
o'clock. Night he was near being lagged only Paddy Leonard knew the bobby,
14 A. Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing time,
fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out of
teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph Manuo, and
talking against the catholic religion and he serving mass in Adam and Eve's
when he was young with his eyes shut who wrote the new testament and the old
testament and hugging and snugging. And the two shawls killed with the
laughing, picking his pockets the bloody fool and he spilling the porter all
over the bed and the two shawls screeching laughing at one another. How is
your testament? Have you got an old testament? Only Paddy was passing there,
I tell you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his little concubine of a
wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of the chapel, with her patent
boots on her, no less, and her violets, nice as pie, doing the little lady.
Jack Mooney's sister. And the old prostitute of a mother procuring rooms to
street couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told him if he didn't patch
up the pot, Jesus, he'd kick the shite out of him.
So Terry brought the three pints.
-- Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen.
-- Slan leat, says he.
-- Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen.
Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler already. Want a small
fortune to keep him in drinks.
-- Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty, Alf? says Joe.
-- Friend of yours, says Alf.
-- Nannan? says Joe. The mimber?
-- I won't mention any names, says Alf.
-- I thought so, says Joe. I saw him up at that meeting now with
William Field, M. P., the cattle traders. _ -- Hairy Iopas, says the
citizen, that exploded volcano, the darling of all countries and the idol of
his own.
So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth disease and
the cattle traders and taking action in the matter and the citizen sending
them all to the rightabout and Bloom coming out with his sheepdip for the
scab and a hoose drench for coughing calves and the guaranteed remedy for
timber tongue. Because he was up one time in a knacker's yard. Walking about
with his book and pencil here's my head and my heels are coming till Joe
Cuffe gave him the order of the boot for giving lip to a grazier. Mister
Knowall. Teach your grandmother how to milk ducks. Pisser Burke was telling
me in the hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears sometimes with Mrs
O'Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches of fat all over her.
Couldn't loosen her farting strings but old cod's eye was waltzing around
her showing her how to do it. What's your programme today? Ay. Humane
methods. Because the poor animals suffer and experts say and the best known
remedy that doesn't cause pain to the animal and on the sore spot administer
gently. Gob, he'd have a soft hand under a hen.
Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen. She lays eggs for
us. When she lays her egg she is so glad. Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Then
comes good uncle Leo. He puts his hand under black Liz and takes her fresh
egg. Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook.
-- Anyhow, says Joe. Field and Nannetti are going over tonight to
London to ask about it on the floor of the House of Commons.
-- Are you sure, says Bloom, the councillor is going? I wanted to see
him, as it happens.
-- Well, he's going off by the mailboat, says Joe, tonight.
-- That's too bad, says Bloom. I wanted particularly. Perhaps only Mr
Field is going. I couldn't phone. No. You're sure?
-- Nannan's going too, says Joe. The league told him to ask a question
tomorrow about the commissioner of police forbidding Irish games in the
park. What do you think of that, citizen? The Sluagh na h-Eireann.
Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat): Arising out of _the question of my
honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, may I ask the right honourable
gentleman whether the Government has issued orders that these animals shall
be slaughtered though no medical evidence is forthcoming as to their
pathological condition?
Mr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con): Honourable members are already in
possession of the evidence produced before a committee of the whole house. I
feel I cannot usefully add anything to that. The answer to the honourable
member's question is in the affirmative.
Mr Orelli (Montenotte. Nat): Have similar orders been issued for the
slaughter of human animals who dare to play Irish games in the Phnix
park?
Mr Allfours: The answer is in the negative.
Mr Cowe Conacre: Has the right honourable gentleman's famous
Mitchelstown telegram inspired the policy of gentlemen on the treasury
bench? (O! O!)
Mr Allfours: I must have notice of that question.
Mr Staylewit (Buncombe. Ind.): Don't hesitate to shoot.
(Ironical opposition cheers.)
The speaker: Order! Order!
(The house rises. Cheers.)
-- There's the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival.
There he is sitting there. The man that got away James Stephens. The
champion of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your
best throw, citizen?
-- Na bacleis, says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a
time I was as good as the next fellow anyhow.
-- Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better.
-- Is that really a fact? says Alf.
-- Yes, says Bloom. That's well known. Do you not know that?
So off they started about Irish sport and shoneen games the like of the
lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and
building up a nation once again and all of that. And of course Bloom had to
have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was
bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody
floor and if you said to Bloom: Look at, Bloom. Do you see that straw?
That's a straw. Declare to my aunt he'd talk about it for an hour so he
would and talk steady.
A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of Brian
O'Ciarnain's in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag, under the auspices of Sluagh na
h-Eireann, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of
physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and
ancient Ireland, for the development of the race. The venerable president of
this noble order was in the chair and the attendance was of large
dimensions. After an instructive discourse by the chairman, a magnificent
oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most interesting and
instructive discussion of the usual high standard of excellence ensued as to
the desirability of the revivability of the ancient games and sports of our
ancient panceltic forefathers. The wellknown and highly respected worker in
the cause o! our old tongue, Mr Joseph M'Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent
appeal for the resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes,
practised morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive the
best traditions of manly strength and power handed down to us from ancient
ages. L. Bloom, who met with a mixed reception of applause and hisses,
having espoused the negative the vocalist chairman brought the discussion to
a close, in response to repeated requests and hearty plaudits from all parts
of a bumper house, by a remarkably noteworthy rendering of the immortal
Thomas Osborne Davis' evergreen verses (happily too familiar to need
recalling here) A nation once again in the execution of which the veteran
patriot champion may be said without fear of contradiction to have fairly
excelled himself. The Irish Caruso-Garibaldi was in superlative form and his
stentorian notes were heard to the greatest advantage in the timehonoured
anthem sung as only our citizen can sing it. His superb highclass vocalism,
which by its superquality greatly enchanced his already international
reputation, was vociferously applauded by the large audience amongst which
were to be noticed many prominent members of the clergy as well as
representatives of the press and the bar and the other learned professions.
The proceedings then terminated.
Amongst the clergy present were the very rev. William _Delany, S. J.,
L. L. D.; the rt rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D.; the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, C. S.
Sp.; the rev. T. Waters, C. C.; the rev. John M. Ivers, P. P.; the rev. P.
J. Cleary, O. S. F.; the rev. L. J. Hickey, O. P.; the very rev. Fr.
Nicholas, O. S. F. C.; the very rev. B. Gorman. O. D. C.; the rev. T. Maher,
S. J.; the very rev. James Murphy, S. J.; the rev. John Lavery, V. F.; the
very rev. William Doherty, D. D.; the rev. Peter Fagan, O. M.; the rev. T.
Brangan, O. S. A.; the rev. J. Flavin, C. C.; the rev. M. A. Hackett, C. C.;
the rev. W. Hurley, C. C.; the rt rev. Mgr M'Manus, V. G.; the rev. B. R.
Slattery, O. M. I.; the very rev. M. D. Scally, P. P.; the rev. F. T.
Purcell, O. P.; the very rev. Timothy canon Gorman, P. P.; the rev. J.
Flanagan, C. C. The laity included P. Fay, T. Quirke, etc., etc.
-- Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at that
Keogh-Bennett match?
-- No, says Joe.
-- I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it, says Alf.
-- Who? Blazes? says Joe.
And says Bloom:
-- What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and training
of the eye.
-- Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to run
the odds and he swatting all the time.
-- We know him, says the citizen. The traitor's son. We know what put
English gold in his pocket.
-- True for you, says Joe.
And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the circulation of the
blood, asking Alf:
-- Now don't you think, Bergan?
-- Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan and Sayers was
only a bloody fool to it. Handed him the father and mother of a beating. See
the little kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, he
gave him one last puck in the wind. Queensberry rules and all, made him puke
what he never ate.
It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were
scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty _sovereigns. Handicapped
as he was by lack of poundage, Dublin's pet lamb made up for it by
superlative skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a gruelling
for both champions. The welterweight sergeantmajor had tapped some lively
claret in the previous mixup during which Keogh had been receivergeneral of
rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting in some neat work on the pet's
nose, and Myler came on looking groggy. The soldier got to business leading
off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by
shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Bennett's jaw. The redcoat
ducked but the Dubliner lifted him with a left hook, the body punch being a
fine one. The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy and got his
man under, the bout ending with the bulkier man on the ropes, Myler
punishing him. The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his
corner where he was liberally drenched with water and, when the bell went,
came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic
Eblanite in jigtime. It was a fight to a finish and the best man for it. The
two fought like tigers and excitement ran fever high. The referee twice
cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet was tricky and his footwork
a treat to watch. After a brisk exchange of courtesies during which a smart
upper cut of the military man brought blood freely from his opponent's mouth
the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and landed a terrific left to
Battling Bennett's stomach, flooring him flat. It was a knockout clean and
clever. Amid tense expectation the Portobello bruiser was being counted out
when Bennett's second Ole Pfotts Wettstein threw in the towel and the Santry
boy was declared victor to the frenzied cheers of the public who broke
through the ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight.
-- He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he's
running a concert tour now up in the north.
-- He is, says Joe. Isn't he?
-- Who? says Bloom. Ah, yes. That's quite true. Yes, a kind of summer
tour, you see. Just a holiday.
-- Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn't she? says Joe.
-- My wife? says Bloom. She's singing, yes. I think it _will be a
success too. He's an excellent man to organise. Excellent.
Hoho begob, says I to myself, says I. That explains the milk in the
cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal's chest. Blazes doing the tootle
on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger's son off Island bridge
that sold the same horses twice over to the government to fight the Boers.
Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate, Mr Boylan. You what?
The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat? That's the bucko that'll organise
her, take my tip. 'Twixt me and you Caddereesh.
Pride of Calpe's rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy. There
grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the air. The
gardens of Alameda knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed. The
chaste spouse of Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful bosoms.
And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O'Molloys, a comely hero
of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty's counsel learned in
the law, and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of Lambert.
-- Hello, Ned.
-- Hello, Alf.
-- Hello, Jack.
-- Hello, Joe.
-- God save you, says the citizen.
-- Save you kindly, says J. J. What'll it be, Ned?
-- Half one, says Ned.
So J. J. ordered the drinks.
-- Were you round at the court? says Joe.
-- Yes, says J. J. He'll square that, Ned, says he.
-- Hope so, says Ned.
Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury list
and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in Stubbs's.
Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye,
drinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders. Pawning
his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street where no-one would know him in
the private office when I was there with Pisser releasing his boots out of
the pop. What's your name, sir? Dunne, says _he. Ay, and done, says I. Gob,
ye'll come home by weeping cross one of these days, I'm thinking.
-- Did you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there, says Alf. U. p.
up.
-- Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective.
-- Ay, says Ned, and he wanted right go wrong to address the court only
Corny Kelleher got round him telling him to get the handwriting examined
first.
-- Ten thousand pounds, says Alf laughing. God I'd give anything to
hear him before a judge and jury.
-- Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, so help you Jimmy Johnson.
-- Me? says Alf. Don't cast your nasturtiums on my character.
-- Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be taken down in
evidence against you.
-- Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is not
compos mentis. U. p. up.
-- Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he's balmy?
Look at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat on
with a shoehorn?
-- Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an
indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law.
-- Ha, ha, Alf, says Joe.
-- Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife.
-- Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half
and half.
-- How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he.
-- Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that's neither fish
nor flesh.
-- Nor good red herring, says Joe.
-- That what's I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what
that is.
Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explained he meant, on
account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old
stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody
povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out tripping him, bringing
down the rain. And she with _her nose cockahoop after she married him
because a cousin of his old fellow's was pew opener to the pope. Picture of
him on the wall with his smashall sweeney's moustaches. The signor Brini
from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal zouave to the Holy Father, has left
the quay and gone to Moss street. And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two
pair back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and he covered with all
kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to the world.
-- And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to
be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my
opinion an action might lie.
Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink our
pints in peace. Gob, we won't be let even do that much itself.
-- Well, good health, Jack, says Ned.
-- Good health, Ned, says J. J.
-- There he is again, says Joe.
-- Where? says Alf.
And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter
and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as
they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a
secondhand coffin.
-- How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.
-- Remanded, says J. J.
One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James
Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying
he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in
the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled them all,
skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J.
J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping
in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was
stuck for two quid.
-- Who tried the case? says Joe.
-- Recorder, says Ned.
-- Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two
eyes.
-- Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a tale of woe _about
arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he'll
dissolve in tears on the bench.
-- Ay, says Alf. Reuben J. was bloody lucky he didn't clap him in the
dock the other day for suing poor little Gumley that's minding stones for
the corporation there near Butt bridge.
And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry:
-- A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many
children? Ten, did you say?
-- Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid!
-- And a wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court
immediately, sir. No, sir, I'll make no order for payment. How dare you,
sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor hardworking
industrious man! I dismiss the case.
And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and
in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the
daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it
came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law.
There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave his rede and master
Justice Andrews sitting without a jury in the probate court, weighed well
and pondered the claims of the first chargeant upon the property in the
matter of the will propounded and final testamentary disposition in re the
real and personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner,
deceased versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to
the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And
he sat him there about the hour of five o'clock to administer the law of the
brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in and
for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high
sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the tribe
of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the
tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus and of
the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of the tribe of Cormac and
of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian,
there being in all twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by Him who
died on rood that they should _well and truly try and true delivrance make
in the issue joined between their sovereign lord the King and the prisoner
at the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God
and kiss the books. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and
they swore by the name of Him who is from everlasting that they would do His
rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from their
donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in
consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot and
would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against him
for he was a malefactor.
-- Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland
filling the country with bugs.
So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe
telling him he needn't trouble about that little matter till the first but
if he would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high and holy
by this and by that he'd do the devil and all.
-- Because you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have
repetition. That's the whole secret.
-- Rely on me, says Joe.
-- Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland.
We want no more strangers in our house.
-- O I'm sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It's just that
Keyes you see.
-- Consider that done, says Joe.
-- Very kind of you, says Bloom.
-- The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in.
We brought them. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers
here.
-- Decree nisi, says J. J.
And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a
spider's web in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling after
him and the old dog at his feet looking up to know who to bite and when.
-- A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that's what's the cause of all
our misfortunes.
-- And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the Police Gazette
with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint._ -- Give us a squint at her,
says I.
And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry borrows
off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private parts. Misconduct
of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty
but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor. Belle in her bloomers
misconducting herself and her fancy man feeling for her tickles and Norman
W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter just in time to be late after she
doing the trick of the loop with officer Taylor.
-- O Jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is!
-- There's hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef
off of that one, what?
So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with him with a face on
him as long as a late breakfast.
-- Well, says the citizen, what's the latest from the scene of action?
What did those tinkers in the cityhall at their caucus meeting decide about
the Irish language?
O'Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the
puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of that
which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient city,
second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after due
prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had taken solemn counsel
whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring once more into honour among
mortal men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael.
-- It's on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal
Sassenachs and their patois.
So J. J. puts in a word doing the toff about one story was good till
you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy putting your
blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a
nation and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration and their
colonies and their civilisation.
-- Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with them!
The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody thicklugged
sons of whores' gets! No music and no art and no literature worthy of the
name. Any civilisation _they have they stole from us. Tonguetied sons of
bastards' ghosts.
-- The European family, says J. J...
-- They're not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin
Egan of Paris. You wouldn't see a trace of them or their language anywhere
in Europe except in a cabinet d'aisance.
And says John Wyse:
-- Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.
And says Lenehan that knows a bit of the lingo:
-- Conspuez les Anglais! Perde Albion!
He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands the
medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan Lamh Dearg
Abu, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes,
rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as the deathless
gods.
-- What's up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a fellow that
had lost a bob and found a tanner.
-- Gold cup, says he.
-- Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry.
-- Throwaway, says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest
nowhere.
-- And Bass's mare? says Terry.
-- Still running, says he. We're all in a cart. Boylan plunged two quid
on my tip Sceptre for himself and a lady friend.
-- I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on Zinfandel that Mr Flynn
gave me. Lord Howard de Walden's.
-- Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse. Throwaway,
says he. Takes the biscuit and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name is
Sceptre.
So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was
anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his luck
with his mangy snout up. Old mother Hubbard went to the cupboard.
-- Not there, my child, says he.
-- Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She'd have won the money only for the
other dog.
And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom
sticking in an odd word. _ -- Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in
others' eyes but they can't see the beam in their own.
-- Raimeis, says the citizen. There's no-one as blind as the fellow
that won't see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing twenty
millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes? And
our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world! And our wool that
was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the
looms of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint
glass down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since
Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised
point from the Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole
wide world! Where are the Greek merchants that came through the pillars of
Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and
Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read Tacitus and
Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara marble, silver
from Tipperary, second to none, our far-famed horses even today, the Irish
hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for the
right to fish in our waters. What do the yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for
our ruined trade and our ruined hearths? And the beds of the Barrow and
Shannon they won't deepen with millions of acres of marsh and bog to make us
all die of consumption.
-- As treeless as Portugal we'll be soon, says John Wyse, or Heligoland
with its one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land. Larches,
firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast. I was reading a
report of lord Castletown's...
-- Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the
chieftain elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save
the trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of
Eire, O.
-- Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan.
The fashionable international world attended en masse this afternoon at
the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger
of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley. Lady
Sylvester _Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, Mrs Holly
Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twelvetrees,
Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys
Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra
Myrtle, Miss Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar,
Miss O. Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola
Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Mrs Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne,
Mrs Gloriana Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma
Holyoake of Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their presence. The bride
who was given away by her father, the M'Conifer of the Glands, looked
exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green mercerised silk,
moulded on an underslip of gloaming grey, sashed with a yoke of broad
emerald and finished with a triple flounce of darkerhued fringe, the scheme
being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn bronze. The maids of
honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer, sisters of the bride,
wore very becoming costumes in the same tone, a dainty motif of plume rose
being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and repeated capriciously in the
jadegreen toques in the form of heron feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor
Enrique Flor presided at the organ with his wellknown ability and, in
addition to the prescribed numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and
striking arrangement of Woodman, spare that tree at the conclusion of the
service. On leaving the church of Saint Fiacre in Horto after the papal
blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of hazelnuts,
beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, hollyberries, mistletoe
sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a
quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest.
-- And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with
Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were
pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway.
-- And will again, says Joe.
-- And with the help of the holy mother of God we will again, says the
citizen, clapping his thigh. Our harbours that _are empty will be full
again, Queenstown, Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom of
Kerry, Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with a fleet
of masts of the Galway Lynches and the Cavan O'Reillys and the O'Kennedys of
Dublin when the earl of Desmond could make a treaty with the emperor Charles
the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when the first Irish battleship
is seen breasting the waves with our own flag to the fore, none of your
Henry Tudor's harps, no, the oldest flag afloat, the flag of the province of
Desmond and Thomond, three crowns on a blue field, the three sons of
Milesius.
And he took the last swig out of the pint, Moya. All wind and piss like
a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody life
is worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled multitude in
Shanagolden where he daren't show his nose with the Molly Maguires looking
for him to let daylight through him for grabbing the holding of an evicted
tenant.
-- Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have?
-- An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion.
-- Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you
asleep?
-- Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir.
Hanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead
of attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match, trying to
crack their bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down
like a bull at a gate. And another one: Black Beast Burned in Omaha, Ga. A
lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a sambo strung up on
a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought to drown
him in the sea after and electrocute and crucify him to make sure of their
job.
-- But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps our foes at
bay?
-- I'Il tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it
is. Read the revelations that's going on in the papers about _flogging on
the training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself
Disgusted One.
So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the crew of
tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn up in cocked hats and the parson
with his protestant bible to witness punishment and a young lad brought out,
howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of a gun.
-- A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir
John Beresford called it but the modern God's Englishman calls it caning on
the breech.
And says John Wyse:
-- 'Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long cane
and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad till
he yells meila murder.
-- That's your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the
earth. The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary
chamber on the face of God's earth and their land in the hands of a dozen
gamehogs and cottonball barons. That's the great empire they boast about of
drudges and whipped serfs.
-- On which the sun never rises, says Joe.
-- And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The
unfortunate yahoos believe it.
They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth
and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast, born
of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, flayed
and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose again from the
bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his beamend till further orders whence
he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid.
But, says Bloom, isn't discipline the same everywhere? I mean wouldn't
it be the same here if you put force against force?
Didn't I tell you? As true as I'm drinking this porter if he was at his
last gasp he'd try to downface you that dying was living._
-- We'll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater
Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in the black
47. Their mudcabins and their shielings by the roadside were laid low by the
batteringram and the Times rubbed its hands and told the whitelivered Saxons
there would soon be as few Irish in Ireland as redskins in America. Even the
grand Turk sent us his piastres. But the Sassenach tried to starve the
nation at home while the land was full of crops that the British hyenas
bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they drove out the peasants in
hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in the coffinships. But those that came
to the land of the free remember the land of bondage. And they will come
again and with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions
of Kathleen ni Houlihan.
-- Perfectly true, says Bloom. But my point was...
-- We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Ned. Since
the poor old woman told us that the French were on the sea and landed at
Killala.
-- Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged us
against the Williamites and they betrayed us. Remember Limerick and the
broken treatystone. We gave our best blood to France and Spain, the wild
geese. Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O'Donnell, duke of Tetuan in Spain,
and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was fieldmarshal to Maria Teresa. But what
did we ever get for it?
-- The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing masters! Do you know
what it is? They were never worth a roasted fart to Ireland. Aren't they
trying to make an Entente cordiale now at Tay Pay's dinnerparty with
perfidious Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they always were?
-- Conspuez les FranÇais, says Lenehan, nobbling his beer.
-- And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says Joe, haven't we
had enough of those sausageeating bastards on the throne from George the
elector down to the German lad and the flatulent old bitch that's dead?
Jesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that about the old
one with the winkers on her blind drunk in her royal palace every night of
God, old Vic, with her jorum of mountain dew and her coachman carting her up
body and bones to roll _into bed and she pulling him by the whiskers and
singing him old bits of songs about Ehren on the Rhine and come where the
boose is cheaper.
-- Well! says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker now.
-- Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There's a bloody sight more
pox than pax about that boyo. Edward Guelph-Wettin!
-- And what do you think, says Joe, of the holy boys, the priests and
bishops of Ireland doing up his room in Maynooth in his Satanic Majesty's
racing colours and sticking up pictures of all the horses his jockeys rode.
The earl of Dublin, no less.
-- They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode himself, says
little Alf.
And says J. J.:
-- Considerations of space influenced their lordship's decision.
-- Will you try another, citizen? says Joe.
-- Yes, sir, says he, I will.
-- You? says Joe.
-- Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow never grow less.
-- Repeat that dose, says Joe.
Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he quite excited with
his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling about.
-- Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it.
Perpetuating national hatred among nations.
-- But do you know what a nation means? says John Wyse.
-- Yes, says Bloom.
-- What is it? says John Wyse.
-- A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the same
place.
-- By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm
living in the same place for the past five years.
So of course everyone had a laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to muck
out of it:
-- Or also living in different places.
-- That covers my case, says Joe.
-- What is your nation if I may ask, says the citizen.
-- Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland._
The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and,
gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner.
-- After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his handkerchief
to swab himself dry.
-- Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your right hand and
repeat after me the following words.
The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth
attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of
the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth
prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the
cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of
the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his
evangelical symbol a bogoak sceptre, 8 North American puma (a far nobler
king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry
calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the
emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and
grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as wonderfully
beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave
free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in the time of the
Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of
Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland's Eye, the
Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur
Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh's banks, the vale of Ovoca,
Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Patrick Dun's hospital, Cape Clear,
the glen of Aherlow, Lynch's castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union
Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids,
Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury's Hotel, S. Patrick's
Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley's hole, the
three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the
bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal's Cave - all these moving
scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the
waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations
of time. _ -- Shove us over the drink, says I. Which is which?
-- That's mine, says Joe, as the devil laid to the dead policeman.
-- And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and
persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very instant.
Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar.
-- Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking what
belongs to us by right. At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist,
sold by auction off in Morocco like slaves or cattles.
-- Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen.
-- I'm talking about injustice, says Bloom.
-- Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with force like men.
That's an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet. Old
lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he'd adorn a
sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse's apron on him. And then
he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a
wet rag.
-- But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's
not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's
the very opposite of that that is really life.
-- What? says Alf.
-- Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now, says
he to John Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see if Martin is there.
If he comes just say I'll be back in a second. Just a moment.
Who's hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning.
-- A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love.
-- Well, says John Wyse, isn't that what we're told? Love your
neighbours.
-- That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto. Love,
Moya! He's a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet. _ Love loves to love love.
Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell
loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair genteman. Li Chi Han
lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant.
Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the
turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His
Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves
officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other
person because everybody loves somebody but
God loves everybody.
-- Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song. More power,
citizen.
-- Hurrah, there, says Joe.
-- The blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you, says the citizen.
And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle.
-- We know those canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket.
What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and
children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text God is love pasted
round the mouth of his cannon? The bible! Did you read that skit in the
United Irishman today about that Zulu chief that's visiting England?
-- What's that? says Joe.
So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers and he starts
reading out:
-- A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester was
presented yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in
Waiting, Lord Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt thanks
of British traders for the facilities afforded them in his dominions. The
delegation partook of luncheon at the conclusion of which the dusky
potentate, in the course of a happy speech, freely translated by the British
chaplain, the reverend Ananias Praisegod Barebones, tendered his best thanks
to Massa Walkup and emphasised the cordial relations existing between
Abeakuta and the British Empire, stating that he treasured as one of his
dearest possessions an illuminated bible, the volume of the word of God and
the secret of England's greatness, graciously presented to him by the _white
chief woman, the great squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from the
august hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a lovingcup of
firstshot usquebaugh to the toast Black and White from the skull of his
immediate predecessor in the dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty Warts,
after which he visited the chief factory of Cottonopolis and signed his mark
in the visitors' book, subsequently executing an old Abeakutic wardance, in
the course of which he swallowed several knives and forks, amid hilarious
applause from the girl hands.
-- Widow woman, says Ned, I wouldn't doubt her. Wonder did he put that
bible to the same use as I would.
-- Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in that fruitful
land the broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly.
-- Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse.
-- No, says the citizen. It's not signed Shanganagh. It's only
initialled: P.
-- And a very good initial too, says Joe.
-- That's how it's worked, says the citizen. Trade follows the flag.
-- Well, says J. J., if they're any worse than those Belgians in the
Congo Free State they must be bad. Did you read that report by a man what's
this his name is?
-- Casement, says the citizen. He's an Irishman.
-- Yes, that's the man, says J. J. Raping the women and girls and
flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they can out
of them.
-- I know where he's gone, says Lenehan, cracking his fingers.
-- Who? says I.
-- Bloom, says he, the courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on
Throwaway and he's gone to gather in the shekels.
-- Is it that whiteyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a
horse in anger in his life.
-- That's where he's gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam Lyons going to
back that horse only I put him off it and he told me Bloom gave him the tip.
Bet you what you like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He's the only
man in Dublin has it. A dark horse. _ -- He's a bloody dark horse himself,
says Joe.
-- Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out.
-- There you are, says Terry.
Goodbye Ireland I'm going to Gort. So I just went round to the back of
the yard to pumpship and begob (hundred shillings to five) while I was
letting off my (Throwaway twenty to) letting off my load gob says I to
myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe and one in
Slattery's off) in his mind to get off the mark to (hundred shillings is
five quid) and when they were in the (dark horse) Pisser Burke was telling
me card party and letting on the child was sick (gob, must have done about a
gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube she's better or she's
(ow!) all a plan so he could vamoose with the pool if he won or (Jesus, full
up I was) trading without a licence (ow!) Ireland my nation says he (hoik!
phthook!) never be up to those bloody (there's the last of it) Jerusalem
(ah!) cuckoos.
So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John Wyse saying it
was Bloom gave the idea for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in his paper all
kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off of the
Government and appointing consuls all over the world to walk about selling
Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gob, that puts the bloody
kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking up the show. Give us a bloody
chance. God save Ireland from the likes of that bloody mouseabout. Mr Bloom
with his argol bargol. And his old fellow before him perpetrating frauds,
old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing bagman, that poisoned himself with the
prussic acid after he swamping the country with his baubles and his penny
diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms. Any amount of money advanced on note
of hand. Distance no object. No security. Gob he's like Lanty MacHale's goat
that'd go a piece of the road with everyone.
-- Well, it's a fact, says John Wyse. And there's the man now that'll
tell you about it, Martin Cunningham.
Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it and Jack Power
with him and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, pensioner out of the
collector general's, an orangeman Blackburn _does have on the registration
and he drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting around the country at the
king's expense.
Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from their
palfreys.
-- Ho, varlet! cried he, who by his mien seemed the leader of the
party. Saucy knave! To us!
So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon the open lattice.
Mine host came forth at the summons girding him with his tabard.
-- Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious bow.
-- Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked. Look to our
steeds. And for ourselves give us of your best for faith we need it.
-- Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house has but a bare
larder. I know not what to offer your lordships.
-- How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a man of pleasant
countenance, so servest thou the king's messengers, Master Taptun?
An instantaneous change overspread the landlord's visage.
-- Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the king's
messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you shall not want for aught. The
king's friends (God bless His Majesty!) shall not go afasting in my house I
warrant me.
-- Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty
trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us?
Mine host bowed again as he made answer:
-- What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some collops of
venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog's bacon, a boar's head
with pistachios, a bason of jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon of
old Rhenish?
-- Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well. Pistachios!
-- Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor house and a bare
larder, quotha! 'Tis a merry rogue.
So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom.
-- Where is he? says Lenehan. Defrauding widows and orphans._
-- Isn't that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was telling the citizen
about Bloom and the Sinn Fein?
-- That's so, says Martin. Or so they allege.
-- Who made those allegations? says Alf.
-- I, says Joe. I'm the alligator.
-- And after all, says John Wyse, why can't a jew love his country like
the next fellow?
-- Why not? says J. J., when he's quite sure which country it is.
-- Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or what the
hell is he? says Ned. Or who is he? No offence, Crofton.
-- We don't want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian.
-- Who is Junius? says J. J.
-- He's a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in Hungary and it
was he drew up all the plans according to the Hungarian system. We know that
in the castle.
-- Isn't he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack Power.
-- Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name was Virag. The
father's name that poisoned himself. He changed it by deed poll, the father
did.
-- That's the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen. Island of
saints and sages!
-- Well, they're still waiting for their redeemer, says Martin. For
that matter so are we.
-- Yes, says J. J., and every male that's born they think it may be
their Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, I believe,
till he knows if he's a father or a mother.
-- Expecting every moment will be his next, says Lenehan.
-- O, by God, says Ned, you should have seen Bloom before that son of
his that died was born. I met him one day in the south city markets buying a
tin of Neave's food six weeks before the wife was delivered.
-- En ventre sa mere, says J. J.
-- Do you call that a man? says the citizen.
-- I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Joe.
-- Well, there were two children born anyhow, says Jack Power._
-- And who does he suspect? says the citizen.
Gob, there's many a true word spoken in jest. One of those mixed
middlings he is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser was telling me once a month
with headache like a totty with her courses. Do you know what I'm telling
you? It'd be an act of God to take a hold of a fellow the like of that and
throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable homicide, so it would. Then sloping
off with his five quid without putting up a pint of stuff like a man. Give
us your blessing. Not as much as would blind your eye.
-- Charity to the neighbour, says Martin. But where is he? We can't
wait.
-- A wolf in sheep's clothing, says the citizen. That's what he
is. Virag from Hungary! Ahasuerus I call him. Cursed by God.
-- Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned.
-- Only one, says Martin. We must be quick. J. J. and S.
-- You Jack? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry.
-- Saint Patrick would want to land again at Ballykinlar and convert
us, says the citizen, after allowing things like that to contaminate our
shores.
-- Well, says Martin, rapping for his glass. God bless all here is my
prayer.
-- Amen, says the citizen.
-- And I'm sure he will, says Joe.
And at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a crucifer with
acolytes, thurifers, boatbearers, readers, ostiarii, deacons and subdeacons,
the blessed company drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors and guardians and
monks and friars: the monks of Benedict of Spoleto, Carthusians and
Camaldolesi, Cistercians and Olivetans, Oratorians and Vallombrosans, and
the friars of Augustine, Brigittines, Premonstratesians, Servi,
Trinitarians, and the children of Peter Nolasco: and therewith from Carmel
mount the children of Elijah prophet led by Albert bishop and by Teresa of
Avila, calced and other: and friars brown and grey, sons of poor Francis,
capuchins, cordeliers, minimes and observants and the daughters of Clara:
and the sons of Dominic, the friars preachers, and the sons of Vincent: and
the monks of S. Wolstan: and Ignatius his children: and the confraternity of
the christian brothers led by the reverend brother Edmund Ignatius Rice. And
after _came all saints and martyrs, virgins and confessors: S. Cyr and S.
Isidore Arator and S. James the Less and S. Phocas of Sinope and S. Julian
Hospitator and S. Felix de Cantalice and S. Simon Stylites and S. Stephen
Protomartyr and S. John of God and S. Ferreol and S. Leugarde and S.
Theodotus and S. Vulmar and S. Richard and S. Vincent de Paul and S. Martin
of Todi and S. Martin of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S. Denis and
S. Cornelius and S. Leopold and S. Bernard and S. Terence and S. Edward and
S. Owen Caniculus and S. Anonymous and S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and
S