Ulysses by James Joyce - Penn State University

Ulysses 

by 

James Joyce 

A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

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age of publication. 

Copyright © 2007 The Pennsylvania State University 

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by 


— I — 

STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN came from the stairhead, 

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

crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained 

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

bowl aloft and intoned: 

—Introibo ad altare Dei. 

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called 

out coarsely: 

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

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. 

He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the sur- 


3 

rounding land and the awaking mountains. Then, catching 

sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made 

rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his 

head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms 

on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking 

gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at 

the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak. 

Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and 

then covered the bowl smartly. 

—Back to barracks! he said sternly. 

He added in a preacher’s tone: 

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

and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your 

eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white 

corpuscles. Silence, all. 

He peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of 

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

teeth glistening here and there with gold points. 

Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through 

the calm. 

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

Switch off the current, will you? 

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his 

watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. 

The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a 

prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile 

broke quietly over his lips. 

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

ancient Greek! 

He pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the 

parapet, laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, 

followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the edge of 

the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on 

the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks 

and neck. 

Buck Mulligan’s gay voice went on. 

—My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. 

But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn’t it? Tripping and sunny like 

the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I 

can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid? 

He laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried: 

—Will he come? The jejune jesuit! 


4 

Ceasing, he began to shave with care. 

—Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly. 

—Yes, my love? 

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

Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder. 

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

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

English! Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he 

comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus, you have the real 

Oxford manner. He can’t make you out. O, my name for 

you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade. 

He shaved warily over his chin. 

—He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen 

said. Where is his guncase? 

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

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

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

to himself about shooting a black panther. You saved 

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

here I am off.

Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He 

hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser 

pockets hastily. 

—Scutter! he cried thickly. 

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

Stephen’s upper pocket, said: 

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

Stephen suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by 

its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan 

wiped the razorblade neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, 

he said: 

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

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

He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over 

Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly. 

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

great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The 

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

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

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

and look. 


5 

Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning 

on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboat clearing 

the harbourmouth of Kingstown. 

—Our mighty mother! Buck Mulligan said. 

He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to 

Stephen’s face. 

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

why she won’t let me have anything to do with you. 

—Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily. 

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

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

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

begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for 

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

He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. 

A tolerant smile curled his lips. 

—But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. Kinch, 

the loveliest mummer of them all! 

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

Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his 

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

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

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

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

graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her 

breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint 

odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he 

saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed 

voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull 

green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside 

her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had 

torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting. 

Buck Mulligan wiped again his razorblade. 

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

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

breeks? 

—They fit well enough, Stephen answered. 

Buck Mulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip. 

—The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they 

should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have 

a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You’ll look spiffing in 


6 

them. I’m not joking, Kinch. You look damn well when you’re 

dressed. 

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

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

mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can’t 

wear grey trousers. 

He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers 

felt the smooth skin. 

Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump 

face with its smokeblue mobile eyes. 

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

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

Connolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane! 

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

tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling 

shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white glittering 

teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk. 

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

Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to 

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

see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of

vermin. It asks me too. 

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

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

servants for Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And 

her name is Ursula. 

Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen’s 

peering eyes. 

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

said. If Wilde were only alive to see you! 

Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness: 

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

servant. 

Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen’s and 

walked with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking 

in the pocket where he had thrust them. 

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

kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of them. 

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

his. The cold steelpen. 

—Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy 

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


7 

with money and thinks you’re not a gentleman. His old fellow 

made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody 

swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work 

together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it. 

Cranly’s arm. His arm. 

—And to think of your having to beg from these swine. 

I’m the only one that knows what you are. Why don’t you 

trust me more? What have you up your nose against me? Is it 

Haines? If he makes any noise here I’ll bring down Seymour 

and we’ll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive 

Kempthorpe. 

Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe’s 

rooms. Palefaces: they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping 

another. O, I shall expire! Break the news to her gently, 

Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping 

the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with trousers 

down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the tailor’s 

shears. A scared calf’s face gilded with marmalade. I don’t 

want to be debagged! Don’t you play the giddy ox with me! 

Shouts from the open window startling evening in the 

quadrangle. A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with Mat-

thew Arnold’s face, pushes his mower on the sombre lawn 

watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms. 

To ourselves … new paganism … omphalos. 

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

him except at night. 

—Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. 

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

me now? 

They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head 

that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale. 

Stephen freed his arm quietly. 

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

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

anything. 

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

his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring 

silver points of anxiety in his eyes. 

Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said: 

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

after my mother’s death? 

Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said: 


8 

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

only ideas and sensations. Why? What happened in the name 

of God? 

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

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

came out of the drawingroom. She asked you who was in 

your room. 

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

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

mother is beastly dead. 

A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging 

rose to Buck Mulligan’s cheek. 

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

He shook his constraint from him nervously. 

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

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

every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up into tripes 

in the dissectingroom. It’s a beastly thing and nothing else. 

It simply doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t kneel down to pray 

for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why? 

Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it’s

injected the wrong way. To me it’s all a mockery and beastly. 

Her cerebral lobes are not functioning. She calls the doctor 

sir Peter Teazle and picks buttercups off the quilt. Humour 

her till it’s over. You crossed her last wish in death and yet 

you sulk with me because I don’t whinge like some hired 

mute from Lalouette’s. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn’t 

mean to offend the memory of your mother. 

He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding 

the gaping wounds which the words had left in his heart, 

said very coldly: 

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

—Of what then? Buck Mulligan asked. 

—Of the offence to me, Stephen answered. 

Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel. 

—O, an impossible person! he exclaimed. 

He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood 

at his post, gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. 

Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were beating in his 

eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever of his cheeks. 

A voice within the tower called loudly: 

—Are you up there, Mulligan? 


9 

—I’m coming, Buck Mulligan answered. 

He turned towards Stephen and said: 

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

Loyola, Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenach wants his 

morning rashers. 

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

level with the roof: 

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

Give up the moody brooding. 

His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice 

boomed out of the stairhead: 

And no more turn aside and brood 

Upon love’s bitter mystery 

For Fergus rules the brazen cars. 

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning 

peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore 

and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by 

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

twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings,

merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words 

shimmering on the dim tide. 

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing 

the bay in deeper green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter 

waters. Fergus’ song: I sang it alone in the house, holding 

down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted 

to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her 

bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, 

Stephen: love’s bitter mystery. 

Where now? 

Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered 

with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A 

birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house when she 

was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the pantomime of 

Turko the Terrible and laughed with others when he sang: 

I am the boy 

That can enjoy 

Invisibility. 

Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed. 


10 

And no more turn aside and brood. 

Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories 

beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the 

kitchen tap when she had approached the sacrament. A cored 

apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob on 

a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by 

the blood of squashed lice from the children’s shirts. 

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

within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and 

rosewood, her breath, bent over him with mute secret words, 

a faint odour of wetted ashes. 

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

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

Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath 

rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes 

on me to strike me down. Liliata rutilantium te confessorum 

turma circumdet: Iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat. 

Ghoul! Chewer of corpses! 

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

—Kinch ahoy! 

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

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

at his soul’s cry, heard warm running sunlight and in the air 

behind him friendly words. 

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

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

right. 

—I’m coming, Stephen said, turning. 

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

and for all our sakes. 

His head disappeared and reappeared. 

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

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

—I get paid this morning, Stephen said. 

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

quid? Lend us one. 

—If you want it, Stephen said. 

—Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight. 

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

Four omnipotent sovereigns. 


11 

He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, 

singing out of tune with a Cockney accent: 

O, won’t we have a merry time, 

Drinking whisky, beer and wine! 

On coronation, 

Coronation day! 

O, won’t we have a merry time 

On coronation day! 

Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel 

shavingbowl shone, forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I 

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

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

coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which 

the brush was stuck. So I carried the boat of incense then at 

Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servant 

too. A server of a servant. 

In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck 

Mulligan’s gowned form moved briskly to and fro about the 

hearth, hiding and revealing its yellow glow. Two shafts of

soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high 

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

coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning. 

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

door, will you? 

Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure 

rose from the hammock where it had been sitting, went to 

the doorway and pulled open the inner doors. 

—Have you the key? a voice asked. 

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

choked! 

He howled, without looking up from the fire: 

—Kinch! 

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

The key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy 

door had been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. 

Haines stood at the doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his 

upended valise to the table and sat down to wait. Buck 

Mulligan tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he 

carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them 

down heavily and sighed with relief. 


12 

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

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

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

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

jay, there’s no milk. 

Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the 

buttercooler from the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a 

sudden pet. 

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

after eight. 

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

lemon in the locker. 

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

want Sandycove milk. 

Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly: 

—That woman is coming up with the milk. 

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

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

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

damned eggs. 

He hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out

on three plates, saying: 

—In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. 

Haines sat down to pour out the tea. 

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

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

Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in 

an old woman’s wheedling voice: 

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

said. And when I makes water I makes water. 

—By Jove, it is tea, Haines said. 

Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling: 

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

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

He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of 

bread, impaled on his knife. 

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

Five lines of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and 

the fishgods of Dundrum. Printed by the weird sisters in the 

year of the big wind. 

He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, 

lifting his brows: 


13 

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

pot spoken of in the Mabinogion or is it in the 

Upanishads? 

—I doubt it, said Stephen gravely. 

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

reasons, pray? 

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

of the Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a 

kinswoman of Mary Ann. 

Buck Mulligan’s face smiled with delight. 

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

white teeth and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think 

she was? Quite charming! 

Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled 

in a hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at 

the loaf: 

—For old Mary Ann 

She doesn’t care a damn.. 

But, hising up her petticoats …

He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned. 

The doorway was darkened by an entering form. 

—The milk, sir! 

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

An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen’s elbow. 

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

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

Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker. 

—The islanders, Mulligan said to Haines casually, speak 

frequently of the collector of prepuces. 

—How much, sir? asked the old woman. 

—A quart, Stephen said. 

He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the 

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

again a measureful and a tilly. Old and secret she had entered 

from a morning world, maybe a messenger. She praised 

the goodness of the milk, pouring it out. Crouching by a 

patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her 

toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. 

They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk 


14 

of the kine and poor old woman, names given her in old 

times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving 

her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common 

cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve 

or to upbraid, whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg 

her favour. 

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

into their cups. 

—Taste it, sir, she said. 

He drank at her bidding. 

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

somewhat loudly, we wouldn’t have the country full of rotten 

teeth and rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap 

food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives’ 

spits. 

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

—I am, ma’am, Buck Mulligan answered. 

—Look at that now, she said. 

Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head 

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

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

and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman’s unclean 

loins, of man’s flesh made not in God’s likeness, the 

serpent’s prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be 

silent with wondering unsteady eyes. 

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

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

Haines. 

Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently. 

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

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

you from the west, sir? 

—I am an Englishman, Haines answered. 

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

ought to speak Irish in Ireland. 

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

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

by them that knows. 

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

entirely. Fill us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you 

like a cup, ma’am? 

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


15 

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

Haines said to her: 

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

hadn’t we? 

Stephen filled again the three cups. 

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

pint at twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence 

over and these three mornings a quart at fourpence is three 

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

and two, sir. 

Buck Mulligan sighed and, having filled his mouth with a 

crust thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs 

and began to search his trouser pockets. 

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

Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly 

the thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, 

twisted it round in his fingers and cried: 

—A miracle! 

He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying: 

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

give.

Stephen laid the coin in her uneager hand. 

—We’ll owe twopence, he said. 

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

Good morning, sir. 

She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan’s 

tender chant: 

—Heart of my heart, were it more, 

More would be laid at your feet. 

He turned to Stephen and said: 

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

kip and bring us back some money. Today the bards must 

drink and junket. Ireland expects that every man this day 

will do his duty. 

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

visit your national library today. 

—Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said. 

He turned to Stephen and asked blandly: 

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

Then he said to Haines: 


16 

—The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a 

month. 

—All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as 

he let honey trickle over a slice of the loaf. 

Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a 

scarf about the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke: 

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

let me. 

Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite 

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

—That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant 

being the symbol of Irish art is deuced good. 

Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen’s foot under the table and 

said with warmth of tone: 

—Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines. 

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

was just thinking of it when that poor old creature came in. 

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

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

holdfast of the hammock, said: 

—I don’t know, I’m sure.

He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across 

to Stephen and said with coarse vigour: 

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

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

whom? From the milkwoman or from him. It’s a toss up, I 

think. 

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

you come along with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit 

jibes. 

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

Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on 

Stephen’s arm. 

—From me, Kinch, he said. 

In a suddenly changed tone he added: 

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

all else they are good for. Why don’t you play them as I do? 

To hell with them all. Let us get out of the kip. 

He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of 

his gown, saying resignedly: 

—Mulligan is stripped of his garments. 

He emptied his pockets on to the table. 


17 

—There’s your snotrag, he said. 

And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke 

to them, chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His 

hands plunged and rummaged in his trunk while he called 

for a clean handkerchief. God, we’ll simply have to dress the 

character. I want puce gloves and green boots. Contradiction. 

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict 

myself. Mercurial Malachi. A limp black missile flew out of 

his talking hands. 

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

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

from the doorway: 

—Are you coming, you fellows? 

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

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

Resigned he passed out with grave words and gait, saying, 

wellnigh with sorrow: 

—And going forth he met Butterly. 

Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed 

them out and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the 

slow iron door and locked it. He put the huge key in his

inner pocket. 

At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked: 

—Did you bring the key? 

—I have it, Stephen said, preceding them. 

He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club 

with his heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses. 

—Down, sir! How dare you, sir! 

Haines asked: 

—Do you pay rent for this tower? 

—Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said. 

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

shoulder. 

They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at 

last: 

—Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you 

call it? 

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

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

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

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

to Thomas Aquinas and the fifty-five reasons he has made 


18 

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

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

the peaks of his primrose waistcoat: 

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

you? 

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

longer. 

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

paradox? 

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

and paradoxes. It’s quite simple. He proves by algebra that 

Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he 

himself is the ghost of his own father. 

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

himself? 

Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolewise round his neck 

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

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

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

Haines. And it is rather long to tell. 

Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.

—The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, 

he said. 

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

this tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow 

of Elsinore. That beetles o’er his base into the sea, isn’t it? 

Buck Mulligan turned suddenly. for an instant towards 

Stephen but did not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen 

saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning between their 

gay attires. 

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

again. 

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

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

bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat vague 

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

—I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he 

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

to be atoned with the Father. 

Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling 

face. He looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, 

his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn all 


19 

shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a doll’s 

head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and 

began to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice: 

—I’m the queerest young fellow that ever you heard. 

My mother’s a Jew, my bather’s a bird. 

With Jospeh the Joiner I cannot agree. 

So here’s to disciples and Calvary. 

He held up a forefinger of warning. 

—If anyone thinks that I amn’t divine 

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

But have to drink water and wish it were plain 

That I make when the wine becomes water again. 

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

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

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

chanted:

—Goodbye, now, goodbye! Write down all I said 

And tell Tom, Diek and Hary I rose from the dead. 

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

And Olivet’s breezy … goodbye, now, goodye! 

He capered before them down towards the forty-foot hole, 

fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury’s hat 

quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief 

birdsweet cries. 

Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside 

Stephen and said: 

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

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

takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn’t it? What did he 

call it? Joseph the Joiner? 

—The ballad of joking Jesus, Stephen answered. 

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

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

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

believer in the narrow sense of the word. Creation from noth- 


20 

ing and miracles and a personal God. 

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

Stephen said. 

Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which 

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

and offered it. 

—Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette. 

Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it 

back in his sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a 

nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, 

held the flaming spunk towards Stephen in the shell of 

his hands. 

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

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

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

suppose? 

—You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, 

a horrible example of free thought. 

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

by his side. Its ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing 

at his heels. My familiar, after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen!

A wavering line along the path. They will walk on it tonight, 

coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It is mine. I 

paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him the key too. 

All. He will ask for it. That was in his eyes. 

—After all, Haines began … 

Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured 

him was not all unkind. 

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

You are your own master, it seems to me. 

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

and an Italian. 

—Italian? Haines said. 

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

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

odd jobs. 

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

—The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour 

rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church. 

Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco 

before he spoke. 

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


21 

must think like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we 

have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame. 

The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen’s memory 

the triumph of their brazen bells: et unam sanctam catholicam 

et apostolicam ecclesiam: the slow growth and change of rite 

and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a chemistry of stars. 

Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus, the 

voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind 

their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant 

disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies 

fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers 

of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life long 

upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and 

Valentine, spurning Christ’s terrene body, and the subtle African 

heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself 

His own Son. Words Mulligan had spoken a moment 

since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void 

awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming 

and a worsting from those embattled angels of the 

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

conflict with their lances and their shields.

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

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

one. I don’t want to see my country fall into the hands of German 

jews either. That’s our national problem, I’m afraid, just now. 

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

boatman. 

—She’s making for Bullock harbour. 

The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with 

some disdain. 

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

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

today. 

The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank 

bay waiting for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the 

sun a puffy face, saltwhite. Here I am. 

They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck 

Mulligan stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie 

rippling over his shoulder. A young man clinging to a spur 

of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise his green legs in the 

deep jelly of the water. 

—Is the brother with you, Malachi? 


22 

—Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons. 

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

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

—Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure. 

Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly 

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

scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate and 

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

paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth. 

Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, 

glancing at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with 

his thumbnail at brow and lips and breastbone. 

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

again his spur of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for 

the army. 

—Ah, go to God! Buck Mulligan said. 

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

girl, Lily? 

—Yes. 

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

rotto with money.

—Is she up the pole? 

—Better ask Seymour that. 

—Seymour a bleeding officer! Buck Mulligan said. 

He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood 

up, saying tritely: 

—Redheaded women buck like goats. 

He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping 

shirt. 

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

Toothless Kinch and I, the supermen. 

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

where his clothes lay. 

—Are you going in here, Malachi? 

—Yes. Make room in the bed. 

The young man shoved himself backward through the 

water and reached the middle of the creek in two long clean 

strokes. Haines sat down on a stone, smoking. 

—Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked. 

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

Stephen turned away. 

—I’m going, Mulligan, he said. 


23 

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

my chemise flat. 

Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across 

his heaped clothes. 

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

Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. 

Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, 

said solemnly: 

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

Thus spake Zarathustra. 

His plump body plunged. 

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

walked up the path and smiling at wild Irish. 

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

—The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve. 

—Good, Stephen said. 

He walked along the upwardcurving path. 

Liliata rutilantium. 

Turma circumdet. 

Iubilantium te virginum.

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

I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go. 

A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the 

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

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

Usurper. 

* * * 

—You, Cochrane, what city sent for him? 

—Tarentum, sir. 

—Very good. Well? 

—There was a battle, sir. 

—Very good. Where? 

The boy’s blank face asked the blank window. 

Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some 

way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, 

thud of Blake’s wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all 

space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one 

livid final flame. What’s left us then? 


24 

—I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C. 

—Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date 

in the gorescarred book. 

—Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are 

done for. 

That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the 

mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking 

to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general to any 

officers. They lend ear. 

—You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of 

Pyrrhus? 

—End of Pyrrhus, sir? 

—I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said. 

—Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about 

Pyrrhus? 

A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong’s satchel. He curled 

them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. 

Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his lips. A sweetened boy’s 

breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the 

navy. Vico road, Dalkey. 

—Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.

All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong 

looked round at his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment 

they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule 

and of the fees their papas pay. 

—Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy’s shoulder 

with the book, what is a pier. 

—A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water. A 

kind of a bridge. Kingstown pier, sir. 

Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in 

the back bench whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned 

nor ever been innocent. All. With envy he watched their 

faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Their likes: their breaths, too, 

sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the 

struggle. 

—Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge. 

The words troubled their gaze. 

—How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river. 

For Haines’s chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly 

amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his 

mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master, indulged 

and disesteemed, winning a clement master’s praise. 


25 

Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth 

caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too 

often heard, their land a pawnshop. 

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or 

Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. They are not to be 

thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are 

lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have 

ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they 

never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? 

Weave, weaver of the wind. 

—Tell us a story, sir. 

—O, do, sir. A ghoststory. 

—Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening 

another book. 

—Weep no more, Comyn said. 

—Go on then, Talbot. 

—And the story, sir? 

—After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot. 

A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under 

the breastwork of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse 

with odd glances at the text:

—Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more 

For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 

Sunk though he be beneath the warery floor … 

It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as 

possible. Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within the gabbled 

verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library 

of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin 

of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese 

conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about 

me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: 

and in my mind’s darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, 

shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. 

Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The 

soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. 

Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. 

Talbot repeated: 

—Through the dear might of him that walked the waves, 

Through the dear might … 


26 

—Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don’t see anything. 

—What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward. 

His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went 

on again, having just remembered. Of him that walked the 

waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and 

on the scoffer’s heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their 

eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar 

what is Caesar’s, to God what is God’s. A long look from 

dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the 

church’s looms. Ay. 

Riddle me, riddle me, Randy Ro. 

My father gave me seeds to sow. 

Talbot slid his closed book into his satchel. 

—Have I heard all? Stephen asked. 

—Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir. 

—Half day, sir. Thursday. 

—Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked. 

They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages

ustling. Crowding together they strapped and buckled their 

satchels, all gabbling gaily: 

—A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir. 

—O, ask me, sir. 

—A hard one, sir. 

—This is the riddle, Stephen said: 

The cock crew, 

The sky was blue: 

The bells in heaven 

Were striking eleven. 

’Tis time for this poor soul 

To go to heaven. 

What is that? 

—What, sir? 

—Again, sir. We didn’t hear. 

Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a 

silence Cochrane said: 

—What is it, sir? We give it up. 

Stephen, his throat itching, answered: 


27 

—The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush. 

He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which 

their cries echoed dismay. 

A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called: 

—Hockey! 

They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping 

them. Quickly they were gone and from the lumberroom 

came the rattle of sticks and clamour of their boots and 

tongues. 

Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing 

an open copybook. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave 

witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak 

eyes looked up pleading. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a 

soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail’s 

bed. 

He held out his copybook. The word sums was written on 

the headline. Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a 

crooked signature with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: 

his name and seal. 

—Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, 

and show them to you, sir.

Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility. 

—Do you understand how to do them now? he asked. 

—Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Deasy 

said I was to copy them off the board, sir. 

—Can you do them. yourself? Stephen asked. 

—No, sir. 

Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of 

ink, a snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in 

her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world 

would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless 

snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her 

own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His 

mother’s prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal 

bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig 

burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. 

She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had 

gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and 

on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in 

his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, 

scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. 

Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He 


28 

proves by algebra that Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather. 

Sargent peered askance through his slanted glasses. 

Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the hollow knock 

of a ball and calls from the field. 

Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in 

the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares 

and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of 

fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and 

Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing 

in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a 

darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not 

comprehend. 

—Do you understand now? Can you work the second for 

yourself? 

—Yes, sir. 

In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always 

for a word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady 

symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his 

dull skin. Amor matris: subjective and objective genitive. With 

her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid 

from sight of others his swaddling bands.

Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. 

My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand 

there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. 

Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: 

secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned. 

The sum was done. 

—It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up. 

—Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered. 

He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and 

carried his copybook back to his bench. 

—You had better get your stick and go out to the others, 

Stephen said as he followed towards the door the boy’s graceless 

form. 

—Yes, sir. 

In the corridor his name was heard, called from the 

playfield. 

—Sargent! 

—Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you. 

He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards 

the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. 


29 

They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy came away stepping 

over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. When he had 

reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to 

him. He turned his angry white moustache. 

—What is it now? he cried continually without listening. 

—Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen 

said. 

—Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy 

said, till I restore order here. 

And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man’s 

voice cried sternly: 

—What is the matter? What is it now? 

Their sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many 

forms closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the 

honey of his illdyed head. 

Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab 

abraded leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained 

with me here. As it was in the beginning, is now. On the 

sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a bog: and 

ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, 

faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles:

world without end. 

A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing 

out his rare moustache Mr Deasy halted at the table. 

—First, our little financial settlement, he said. 

He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather 

thong. It slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of 

joined halves, and laid them carefully on the table. 

—Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook 

away. 

And now his strongroom for the gold. Stephen’s embarrassed 

hand moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone 

mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and 

this, whorled as an emir’s turban, and this, the scallop of 

saint James. An old pilgrim’s hoard, dead treasure, hollow 

shells. 

A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the 

tablecloth. 

—Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about 

in his hand. These are handy things to have. See. This is for 

sovereigns. This is for shillings. Sixpences, halfcrowns. And 

here crowns. See. 


30 

He shot from it two crowns and two shillings. 

—Three twelve, he said. I think you’ll find that’s right. 

—Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together 

with shy haste and putting it all in a pocket of his 

trousers. 

—No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it. 

Stephen’s hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. 

Symbols too of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket: 

symbols soiled by greed and misery. 

—Don’t carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You’ll pull it out 

somewhere and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. 

You’ll find them very handy. 

Answer something. 

—Mine would be often empty, Stephen said. 

The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the 

same. Three times now. Three nooses round me here. Well? 

I can break them in this instant if I will. 

—Because you don’t save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. 

You don’t know yet what money is. Money is power. 

When you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If 

youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but

money in thy purse. 

—Iago, Stephen murmured. 

He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man’s stare. 

—He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made 

money. A poet, yes, but an Englishman too. Do you know 

what is the pride of the English? Do you know what is the 

proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman’s 

mouth? 

The seas’ ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: 

it seems history is to blame: on me and on my words, 

unhating. 

—That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets. 

—Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That’s not English. A French Celt 

said that. He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail. 

—I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest 

boast. I paid my way. 

Good man, good man. 

—I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can 

you feel that? I owe nothing. Can you? 

Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair 

brogues, ties. Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred 


31 

Ryan, two shillings. Temple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, 

Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler, 

three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five weeks’ board. The lump 

I have is useless. 

—For the moment, no, Stephen answered. 

Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his 

savingsbox. 

—I knew you couldn’t, he said joyously. But one day you 

must feel it. We are a generous people but we must also be 

just. 

—I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so 

unhappy. 

Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece 

at the shapely bulk of a man in tartan filibegs: Albert 

Edward, prince of Wales. 

—You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful 

voice said. I saw three generations since O’Connell’s time. 

I remember the famine in ’46. Do you know that the orange 

lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before 

O’Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced 

him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things.

Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond 

in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of 

papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the planters’ covenant. 

The black north and true blue bible. Croppies lie down. 

Stephen sketched a brief gesture. 

—I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said. On the 

spindle side. But I am descended from sir John Blackwood 

who voted for the union. We are all Irish, all kings’ sons. 

—Alas, Stephen said. 

—Per vias rectas,, Mr Deasy said firmly, was his motto. He 

voted for it and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from 

the Ards of Down to do so. 

Lal the ral the ra 

The rocky road to Dublin. 

A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, 

sir John! Soft day, your honour! … Day! … Day! … Two 

topboots jog dangling on to Dublin. Lal the ral the ra. Lal 

the ral the raddy. 

—That reminds me, Mr Deasy said. You can do me a 


32 

favour, Mr Dedalus, with some of your literary friends. I 

have a letter here for the press. Sit down a moment. I have 

just to copy the end. 

He went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair 

twice and read off some words from the sheet on the drum 

of his typewriter. 

—Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, The dictates 

of common sense. Just a moment. 

He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript 

by his elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons 

of the keyboard slowly, sometimes blowing as he screwed up 

the drum to erase an error. 

Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence. 

Framed around the walls images of vanished horses stood 

in homage, their meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings’ Repulse, 

the duke of Westminster’s Shotover, the duke of 

Beaufort’s Ceylon, Prix de Paris, 1866. Elfin riders sat them, 

watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, backing king’s colours, 

and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds. 

—Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation 

of this allimportant question …

Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners 

among the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies 

on their pitches and reek of the canteen, over the motley 

slush. Fair Rebel! Fair Rebel! Even money the favourite: ten 

to one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by 

after the hoofs, the vying caps and jackets and past the 

meatfaced woman, a butcher’s dame, nuzzling thirstily her 

clove of orange. 

Shouts rang shrill from the boys’ playfield and a whirring 

whistle. 

Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies 

in a medley, the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed 

mother’s darling who seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. 

Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. Jousts, slush and 

uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain, a shout 

of spearspikes baited with men’s bloodied guts. 

—Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising. 

He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen 

stood up. 

—I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It’s 

about the foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There 


33 

can be no two opinions on the matter. 

May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of 

laissez faire which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. 

The way of all our old industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed 

the Galway harbour scheme. European conflagration. 

Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the channel. 

The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of agriculture. 

Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a 

woman who was no better than she should be. To come to 

the point at issue. 

—I don’t mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen 

read on. 

Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch’s preparation. 

Serum and virus. Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. 

Emperor’s horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. 

Mr Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous offer a fair 

trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In 

every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking 

you for the hospitality of your columns. 

—I want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You 

will see at the next outbreak they will put an embargo on

Irish cattle. And it can be cured. It is cured. My cousin, 

Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated and cured 

in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over 

here. I am trying to work up influence with the department. 

Now I’m going to try publicity. I am surrounded by difficulties, 

by … intrigues by … backstairs influence by … 

He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his 

voice spoke. 

—Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the 

hands of the jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her 

press. And they are the signs of a nation’s decay. Wherever 

they gather they eat up the nation’s vital strength. I have 

seen it coming these years. As sure as we are standing here 

the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. 

Old England is dying. 

He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they 

passed a broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again. 

—Dying, he said again, if not dead by now. 

The harlot’s cry from street to street 

Shall weave old England’s windingsheet. 


34 

His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam 

in which he halted. 

—A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and 

sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not? 

—They sinned against the light, Mr Deasy said gravely. 

And you can see the darkness in their eyes. And that is why 

they are wanderers on the earth to this day. 

On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned 

men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. 

They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads 

thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these 

clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes belied 

the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew 

the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was 

vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would 

scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and 

passing on. Their eyes knew their years of wandering and, 

patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh. 

—Who has not? Stephen said. 

—What do you mean? Mr Deasy asked.

He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His 

underjaw fell sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? 

He waits to hear from me. 

—History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am 

trying to awake. 

From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring 

whistle: goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick? 

—The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy 

said. All human history moves towards one great goal, the 

manifestation of God. 

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying: 

—That is God. 

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee! 

—What? Mr Deasy asked. 

—A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his 

shoulders. 

Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of 

his nose tweaked between his fingers. Looking up again he 

set them free. 

—I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed 

many errors and many sins. A woman brought sin into the 


35 

world. For a woman who was no better than she should be, 

Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks 

made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers 

to our shore here, MacMurrough’s wife and her leman, 

O’Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell 

low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a 

struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the 

right till the end. 

For Ulster will fight 

And Ulster will be right. 

Stephen raised the sheets in his hand. 

—Well, sir, he began … 

—I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here 

very long at this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I 

think. Perhaps I am wrong. 

—A learner rather, Stephen said. 

And here what will you learn more? 

Mr Deasy shook his head. 

—Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But

life is the great teacher. 

Stephen rustled the sheets again. 

—As regards these, he began. 

—Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you 

can have them published at once. 

Telegraph. Irish Homestead. 

—I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I 

know two editors slightly. 

—That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night 

to Mr Field, M.P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders’ 

association today at the City Arms hotel. I asked him to lay 

my letter before the meeting. You see if you can get it into 

your two papers. What are they? 

—The Evening Telegraph … 

—That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. 

Now I have to answer that letter from my cousin. 

—Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in 

his pocket. Thank you. 

—Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on 

his desk. I like to break a lance with you, old as I am. 

—Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his 


36 

bent back. 

He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path 

under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks 

from the playfield. The lions couchant on the pillars as he 

passed out through the gate: toothless terrors. Still I will help 

him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: the 

bullockbefriending bard. 

—Mr Dedalus! 

Running after me. No more letters, I hope. 

—Just one moment. 

—Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate. 

Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath. 

—I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the 

honour of being the only country which never persecuted 

the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why? 

He frowned sternly on the bright air. 

—Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile. 

—Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly. 

A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging 

after it a rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, 

coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to the air.

—She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter 

as he stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. 

That’s why. 

On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves 

the sun flung spangles, dancing coins. 


37 

INELUCTABLE MODALITY OF THE VISIBLE: AT LEAST THAT IF NO MORE, 

thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here 

to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty 

boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of 

the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of 

them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking 

his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a 

millionaire, maestro di color che sanno. Limit of the diaphane 

in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five 

fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes 

and see. 

Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling 

wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I 

am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through 

very short times of space. Five, six: the nacheinander. Exactly: 

and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. 

Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles 

o’er his base, fell through the nebeneinancer ineluctably! I 

am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my 

side. Tap with it: they do. My two feet in his boots are at the 

ends of his legs, nebeneinancer. Sounds solid: made by the

mallet of Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along 

Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea 

money. Dominie Deasy kens them a’. 

Won’t you come to Sandymount, 

Madeline the Mare? 

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of 

iambs marching. No, agallop: Deline the Mare. 

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished 

since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. 

Basta! I will see if I can see. 

See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, 

world without end. 

They came down the steps from Leahy’s terrace prudently, 

Frauenzimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily, their 

splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, 

coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung 

lourdily her midwife’s bag, the other’s gamp poked in the 

beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence 

MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, 


38 

of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing 

into life. Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A 

misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. 

The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. 

That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in 

your omphalos. Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. 

Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one. 

Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. 

She had no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, 

a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and 

immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting. Womb 

of sin. 

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. 

By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a 

ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and 

sundered, did the coupler’s will. From before the ages He 

willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex 

eterna stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance 

wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor 

dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon 

the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred

heresiarch’ In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. 

With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon 

his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed 

omophorion, with clotted hinderparts. 

Airs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are 

coming, waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, 

brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan. 

I mustn’t forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, 

half twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good 

young imbecile. 

Yes, I must. 

His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Sara’s or 

not? My consubstantial father’s voice. Did you see anything 

of your artist brother Stephen lately? No? Sure he’s not down 

in Strasburg terrace with his aunt 

Sally? Couldn’t he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and 

and and tell us, Stephen, how is uncle Si? O, weeping God, 

the things I married into! De boys up in de hayloft. The 

drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. 

Highly respectable gondoliers! And skeweyed Walter sirring 

his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no 


39 

wonder, by Christ! 

I pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. 

They take me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage. 

—It’s Stephen, sir. 

—Let him in. Let Stephen in. 

A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me. 

—We thought you were someone else. 

In his broad bed nuncle Richie, pillowed and blanketed, 

extends over the hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. 

Cleanchested. He has washed the upper moiety. 

—Morrow, nephew. 

He lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of 

costs for the eyes of master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, 

filing consents and common searches and a writ of Duces 

Tecum. A bogoak frame over his bald head: Wilde’s Requiescat. 

The drone of his misleading whistle brings Walter back. 

—Yes, sir? 

—Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she? 

—Bathing Crissie, sir. 

Papa’s little bedpal. Lump of love. 

—No, uncle Richie …

—Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. 

Whusky! 

—Uncle Richie, really … 

—Sit down or by the law Harry I’ll knock you down. 

Walter squints vainly for a chair. 

—He has nothing to sit down on, sir. 

—He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our 

chippendale chair. Would you like a bite of something? None 

of your damned lawdeedaw airs here. The rich of a rasher 

fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better. We have nothing 

in the house but backache pills. 

All’erta! 

He drones bars of Ferrando’s Aria di Sortita. The grandest 

number, Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen. 

His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes 

of the air, his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees. 

This wind is sweeter. 

Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes 

gentry you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in 

the army. Come out of them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. 

Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh’s library where you read 


40 

the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For whom? The 

hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his 

kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming 

in the moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, 

horsenostrilled. The oval equine faces, Temple, Buck 

Mulligan, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas father,—furious 

dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! 

Descende, calve, ut ne amplius decalveris. A garland of grey 

hair on his comminated head see him me clambering down 

to the footpace (descende!), clutching a monstrance, 

basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back menace 

and echo, assisting about the altar’s horns, the snorted Latin 

of jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled 

and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat. 

And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner 

is elevating it. Dringdring! And two streets off another locking 

it into a pyx. Dringadring! And in a ladychapel another 

taking housel all to his own cheek. Dringdring! Down, up, 

forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that, invincible doctor. 

A misty English morning the imp hypostasis tickled his 

brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine

with his second bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting 

his) and, rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he 

is kneeling) twang in diphthong. 

Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. 

You were awfully holy, weren’t you? You prayed to the Blessed 

Virgin that you might not have a red nose. You prayed to the 

devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front 

might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O si, 

certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a 

squaw. More tell me, more still!! On the top of the Howth 

tram alone crying to the rain: Naked women! Naked women! 

What about that, eh? 

What about what? What else were they invented for? 

Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I 

was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping 

forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the 

Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books 

you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read 

his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, 

W. Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, 

deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great 


41 

libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was 

to read them there after a few thousand years, a 

mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a 

whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone 

one feels that one is at one with one who once … 

The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots 

trod again a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking 

pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved 

by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats 

waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage 

breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a 

midden of man’s ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A 

porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand 

dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on 

the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther 

away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a 

dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of 

brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells. 

He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara’s. Am I not 

going there? Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast 

and crossed the firmer sand towards the Pigeonhouse.

—Qui vous a mis dans cette fichue position? 

—C’est le pigeon, Joseph. 

Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in 

the bar MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of 

Paris. My father’s a bird, he lapped the sweet lait chaud with 

pink young tongue, plump bunny’s face. Lap, lapin. He hopes 

to win in the gros lots. About the nature of women he read in 

Michelet. But he must send me La Vie de Jesus by M. Leo 

Taxil. Lent it to his friend. 

—C’est tordant, vous savez. Moi, je suis socialiste. Je ne crois 

pas en l’existence de Dieu. Fautg pas le dire a mon p-re. 

—Il croit? 

—Mon pere, oui. 

Schluss. He laps. 

My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. 

I want puce gloves. You were a student, weren’t you? 

Of what in the other devil’s name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you 

know: physiques, chimiques et naturelles. Aha. Eating your 

groatsworth of mou en civet, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by 

belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone: when I 

was in Paris; boul’ Mich’, I used to. Yes, used to carry punched 


42 

tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere. 

Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 

1904 the prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow 

did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. Lui, c’est moi. You 

seem to have enjoyed yourself. 

Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: 

a dispossessed. With mother’s money order, eight shillings, 

the banging door of the post office slammed in your 

face by the usher. Hunger toothache. Encore deux minutes. 

Look clock. Must get. Ferme. Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody 

bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass 

buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, 

that’s all right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that’s 

all right. Shake a shake. O, that’s all only all right. 

You were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe 

after fiery Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their 

creepystools in heaven spilt from their pintpots, 

loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending to speak broken 

English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across 

the slimy pier at Newhaven. Comment? Rich booty you 

brought back; Le Tutu, five tattered numbers of Pantalon

Blanc et Culotte Rouge; a blue French telegram, curiosity to 

show: 

—Mother dying come home father. 

The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That’s why she 

won’t. 

Then here’s a health to Mulligan’s aunt 

And I’ll tell you the reason why. 

She always kept things decentg in 

The Hannigan famileye. 

His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand 

furrows, along by the boulders of the south wall. He stared 

at them proudly, piled stone mammoth skulls. Gold light on 

sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is there, the slender trees, 

the lemon houses. 

Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. 

Moist pith of farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her 

matin incense, court the air. Belluomo rises from the bed of 

his wife’s lover’s wife, the kerchiefed housewife is astir, a saucer 

of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot’s Yvonne and 


43 

Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with 

gold teeth chaussons of pastry, their mouths yellowed with 

the pus of flan breton. Faces of Paris men go by, their 

wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores. 

Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes 

through fingers smeared with printer’s ink, sipping his green 

fairy as Patrice his white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans 

down their gullets. Un demi setier! A jet of coffee steam from 

the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. Il est 

irlandais, Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous, 

Irlandais, vous savez ah, oui! She thought you wanted a cheese 

hollandais. Your postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. 

There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer 

fellow, used to call it his postprandial. Well: slainte! Around 

the slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and grumbling 

gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained plates, 

the green fairy’s fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, 

the Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith 

now, a e, pimander, good shepherd of men. To yoke me as 

his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause. You’re your 

father’s son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt,

sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. 

M. Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he 

called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille 

ogresse with the dents jaunes. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, 

La Patrie, M. Millevoye, Felix Faure, know how he died? 

Licentious men. The froeken, bonne à tout faire, who rubs 

male nakedness in the bath at Upsala. Moi faire, she said, 

tous les messieurs. Not this monsieur, I said. Most licentious 

custom. Bath a most private thing. I wouldn’t let my brother, 

not even my own brother, most lascivious thing. Green eyes, 

I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people. 

The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. 

Loose tobaccoshreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light 

our corner. Raw facebones under his peep of day boy’s hat. 

How the head centre got away, authentic version. Got up as 

a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms, drove out the road 

to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed, wild 

escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here. 

Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that 

time, I tell you. I’ll show you my likeness one day. I was, 

faith. Lover, for her love he prowled with colonel Richard 


44 

Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of Clerkenwell and, 

crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in 

the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree 

he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making 

his day’s stations, the dingy printingcase, his three taverns, 

the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue de la 

Goutte-d’Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone. 

Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without 

her outcast man, madame in rue Git-le-Coeur, canary and 

two buck lodgers. Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a 

young thing’s. Spurned and undespairing. Tell Pat you saw 

me, won’t you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time. Mon 

fils, soldier of France. I taught him to sing The boys of Kilkenny 

are stout roaring blades. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice 

that. Old Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strongbow’s castle on the 

Nore. Goes like this. O, O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by 

the hand. 

O, O the boys of 

Kilkenny …

Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin 

Egan, not he them. Remembering thee, O Sion. 

He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand 

slapped his boots. The new air greeted him, harping in wild 

nerves, wind of wild air of seeds of brightness. Here, I am 

not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I? He stood suddenly, 

his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil. 

Turn back. 

Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again 

slowly in new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower 

waits. Through the barbacans the shafts of light are moving 

ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking, creeping duskward 

over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night. In 

the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, 

my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who 

to clear it? He has the key. I will not sleep there when this 

night comes. A shut door of a silent tower, entombing their— 

blind bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. 

He lifted his feet up from the suck and turned back by 

the mole of boulders. Take all, keep all. My soul walks with 


45 

me, form of forms. So in the moon’s midwatches I pace the 

path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore’s 

tempting flood. 

The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from 

here. Get back then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. 

He climbed over the sedge and eely oarweeds and sat on a 

stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a grike. 

A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before 

him the gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensablé 

Louis Veuillot called Gautier’s prose. These heavy sands are 

language tide and wind have silted here. And these, the 

stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats. Hide 

gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy 

of the past. Sir Lout’s toys. Mind you don’t get one bang on 

the ear. I’m the bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well 

boulders, bones for my steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz 

de bloodz odz an Iridzman. 

A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep 

of sand. Lord, is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. 

You will not be master of others or their slave. I have my 

stick. Sit tight. From farther away, walking shoreward across

from the crested tide, figures, two. The two maries. They 

have tucked it safe mong the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see you. 

No, the dog. He is running back to them. Who? 

Galleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of 

prey, their bloodbeaked prows riding low on a molten pewter 

surf. Dane vikings, torcs of tomahawks aglitter on their 

breasts when Malachi wore the collar of gold. A school of 

turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting, hobbling 

in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework city a horde 

of jerkined dwarfs, my people, with flayers’ knives, running, 

scaling, hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine, plague 

and slaughters. Their blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I 

moved among them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a changeling, 

among the spluttering resin fires. I spoke to no-one: 

none to me. 

The dog’s bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog 

of my enemy. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. 

Terribilia meditans. A primrose doublet, fortune’s knave, 

smiled on my fear. For that are you pining, the bark of their 

applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce’s brother, 

Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York’s false 


46 

scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, 

and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion 

crowned. All kings’ sons. Paradise of pretenders then 

and now. He saved men from drowning and you shake at a 

cur’s yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or 

san Michele were in their own house. House of … We don’t 

want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do 

what he did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. Naturlich, 

put there for you. Would you or would you not? The man 

that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden’s rock. They are 

waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. 

I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. 

When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can’t 

see! Who’s behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the 

tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand 

quickly, shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I 

want his life still to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning 

man. His human eyes scream to me out of horror of his 

death. I … With him together down … I could not save her. 

Waters: bitter death: lost. 

A woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.

Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, 

sniffing on all sides. Looking for something lost in a 

past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears 

flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The 

man’s shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, 

bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. 

On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the 

lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, 

seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, 

herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, 

unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from 

far, from farther out, waves and waves. 

Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, 

stooping, soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded 

out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed 

them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with 

mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they 

came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf’s tongue redpanting 

from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and 

then loped off at a calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path. 

He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, 


47 

went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead 

dog’s bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, 

moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor 

dogsbody’s body. 

—Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel! 

The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a 

blunt bootless kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, 

crouched in flight. He slunk back in a curve. Doesn’t see me. 

Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped, dawdled, smelt a 

rock. and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He 

trotted forward and, lifting again his hindleg, pissed quick 

short at an unsmelt rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. 

His hindpaws then scattered the sand: then his forepaws 

dabbled and delved. Something he buried there, his grandmother. 

He rooted in the sand, dabbling, delving and stopped 

to listen to the air, scraped up the sand again with a fury of 

his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in spousebreach, 

vulturing the dead. 

After he woke me last night same dream or was it? Wait. 

Open hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al 

Raschid. I am almosting it. That man led me, spoke. I was

not afraid. The melon he had he held against my face. Smiled: 

creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In. Come. Red 

carpet spread. You will see who. 

Shouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. 

His blued feet out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy 

sand, a dull brick muffler strangling his unshaven neck. With 

woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling mort. 

Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit crusted her 

bare feet. About her windraw face hair trailed. Behind her 

lord, his helpmate, bing awast to Romeville. When night 

hides her body’s flaws calling under her brown shawl from 

an archway where dogs have mired. Her fancyman is treating 

two Royal Dublins in O’Loughlin’s of Blackpitts. Buss 

her, wap in rogues’ rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping 

dell! A shefiend’s whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally’s 

lane that night: the tanyard smells. 

White thy fambles, red thy gan 

And thy quarrons dainty is. 

Couch a hogshead with me then. 

In the darkmans clip and kiss. 


48 

Morose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, frate 

porcospino. Unfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away 

let him: thy quarrons dainty is. Language no whit worse than 

his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on their girdles: 

roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their pockets. 

Passing now. 

A side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked 

here as I sit? I am not. Across the sands of all the world, 

followed by the sun’s flaming sword, to the west, trekking to 

evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines 

her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, 

myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, oinopa ponton, 

a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep 

the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, 

bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te veniet. He 

comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails 

bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth’s kiss. 

Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth 

to her kiss. 

No. Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her

mouth’s kiss. 

His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to 

her moomb. Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded 

issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of cataractic 

planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayaway. 

Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Deasy’s letter. Here. 

Thanking you for the hospitality tear the blank end off. Turning 

his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and 

scribbled words. That’s twice I forgot to take slips from the 

library counter. 

His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not 

endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind 

this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, 

worlds. Me sits there with his augur’s rod of ash, in 

borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in 

violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw 

this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it 

back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who 

watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written 

words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in 

your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil 


49 

of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured 

emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a 

flat: yes, that’s right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, 

flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly, frozen 

in stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark. 

Darkness is in our souls do you not think? Flutier. Our souls, 

shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman 

to her lover clinging, the more the more. 

She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now 

where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into 

the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, 

she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis’ window on Monday 

looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going 

to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided 

jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a grief and 

kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a 

pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders 

and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about 

apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits? 

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. 

O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all

men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me. 

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming 

the scribbled note and pencil into a pock his hat. His hat 

down on his eyes. That is Kevin Egan’s movement I made, 

nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep. Et vidit Deus. Et erant 

valde bona. Alo! Bonjour. Welcome as the flowers in May. 

Under its leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes 

the southing sun. I am caught in this burning scene. Pan’s 

hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants, 

milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. 

Pain is far. 

And no more turn aside and brood. 

His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castoffs, 

nebeneinander. He counted the creases of rucked leather 

wherein another’s foot had nested warm. The foot that beat 

the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you were delighted 

when Esther Osvalt’s shoe went on you: girl I knew 

in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend, a brother soul: 

Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name. His arm: Cranly’s 

arm. He now will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I 

am. All or not at all. 


50 

In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, 

covering greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My 

ashplant will float away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, 

passing, chafing against the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better 

get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: 

seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid 

seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: 

flop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech 

ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, 

flower unfurling. 

Under the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift 

languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, 

in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. 

Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, 

they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose 

heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness 

of their times, diebus ac noctibus iniurias patiens 

ingemiscit. To no end gathered; vainly then released, 

forthflowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too 

in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in 

her courts, she draws a toil of waters.

Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At 

one, he said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. 

Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, 

silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing 

a pace a pace a porpoise landward. There he is. Hook it 

quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We 

have him. Easy now. 

Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, 

fat of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his 

buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man becomes fish becomes 

barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths 

I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from 

all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward 

the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to 

the sun. 

A seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest 

of all deaths known to man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris: 

beware of imitations. Just you give it a fair trial. We enjoyed 

ourselves immensely. 

Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, 

are there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning 


51 

of the intellect, Lucifer, dico, qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle 

hat and staff and hismy sandal shoon. Where? To evening 

lands. Evening will find itself. 

He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, 

dallying still. Yes, evening will find itself in me, without me. 

All days make their end. By the way next when is it Tuesday 

will be the longest day. Of all the glad new year, mother, the 

rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet. 

Già. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur 

Drumont, gentleman journalist. Già. My teeth are very bad. 

Why, I wonder. Feel. That one is going too. Shells. Ought I 

go to a dentist, I wonder, with that money? That one. This. 

Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or 

does it mean something perhaps? 

My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take 

it up? 

His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn’t. Better 

buy one. 

He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of 

rock, carefully. For the rest let look who will. 

Behind. Perhaps there is someone.

He turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving 

through the air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed 

up on the crosstrees, homing, upstream, silently moving, a 

silent ship. 


52 

— II — 

MR LEOPOLD BLOOM ate with relish the inner organs of beasts 

and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed 

roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ 

roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave 

to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine. 

Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen 

softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid 

light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle 

summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish. 

The coals were reddening. 

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

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

lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It 

sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. 

Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the 

table with tail on high. 

—Mkgnao! 

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

The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a

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

writingtable. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr. 

Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. 

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

under the butt of her tail, the green flashing eyes. He bent 

down to her, his hands on his knees. 

—Milk for the pussens, he said. 

—Mrkgnao! the cat cried. 

They call them stupid. They understand what we say better 

than we understand them. She understands all she wants 

to. Vindictive too. Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never 

squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to her. Height 

of a tower? No, she can jump me. 

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

of the chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the 

pussens. 

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

like it. 

—Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly. 

She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing 

plaintively and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He 


53 

watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed till her eyes 

were green stones. Then he went to the dresser, took the jug 

Hanlon’s milkman had just filled for him, poured 

warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor. 

—Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap. 

He watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as 

she tipped three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if 

you clip them they can’t mouse after. Why? They shine in 

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

perhaps. 

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

eggs with this drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not 

a good day either for a mutton kidney at Buckley’s. Fried 

with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork kidney at 

Dlugacz’s. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower, then 

licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To 

lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced 

round him. No. 

On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the 

hall, paused by the bedroom door. She might like something 

tasty. Thin bread and butter she likes in the morning. Still

perhaps: once in a way. 

He said softly in the bare hall: 

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

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

—You don’t want anything for breakfast? 

A sleepy soft grunt answered: 

—Mn. 

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

sigh, softer, as she turned over and the loose brass quoits of 

the bedstead jingled. Must get those settled really. Pity. All 

the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish she knew. 

Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah yes! of 

course. Bought it at the governor’s auction. Got a short knock. 

Hard as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna 

that was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I’m proud of it. Still 

he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. Now 

that was farseeing. 

His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy 

overcoat and his lost property office secondhand waterproof. 

Stamps: stickyback pictures. Daresay lots of officers are in 

the swim too. Course they do. The sweated legend in the 


54 

crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto’s high grade ha. He 

peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White slip of 

paper. Quite safe. 

On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. 

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

have. Creaky wardrobe. No use disturbing her. She turned 

over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor to after him 

very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the 

threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back 

anyhow. 

He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap 

of number seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of 

George’s church. Be a warm day I fancy. Specially in these 

black clothes feel it more. Black conducts, reflects, (refracts 

is it?), the heat. But I couldn’t go in that light suit. Make a 

picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as he walked in 

happy warmth. Boland’s breadvan delivering with trays our 

daily but she prefers yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp crowns 

hot. Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early 

morning: set off at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, 

steal a day’s march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a

day older technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come 

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

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

through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark caves 

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

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

streets. Drink water scented with fennel, sherbet. Dander 

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

Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques among 

the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, 

signal, the evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother 

watches me from her doorway. She calls her children home 

in their dark language. High wall: beyond strings twanged. 

Night sky, moon, violet, colour of Molly’s new garters. Strings. 

Listen. A girl playing one of those instruments what do you 

call them: dulcimers. I pass. 

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

the track of the sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, 

pleasing himself. What Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece 

over the Freeman leader: a homerule sun rising up in 

the northwest from the laneway behind the bank of Ireland. 


55 

He prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey touch that: homerule 

sun rising up in the north-west. 

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

floated up the flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway 

the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger, teadust, 

biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end of the city 

traffic. For instance M’Auley’s down there: n. g. as position. 

Of course if they ran a tramline along the North Circular 

from the cattlemarket to the quays value would go up like a 

shot. 

Baldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing 

him for an ad. Still he knows his own business best. There 

he is, sure enough, my bold Larry, leaning against the sugarbin 

in his shirtsleeves watching the aproned curate swab up with 

mop and bucket. Simon Dedalus takes him off to a tee with 

his eyes screwed up. Do you know what I’m going to tell 

you? What’s that, Mr O’Rourke? Do you know what? The 

Russians, they’d only be an eight o’clock breakfast for the 

Japanese. 

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

about poor Dignam, Mr O’Rourke.

Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting 

through the doorway: 

—Good day, Mr O’Rourke. 

—Good day to you. 

—Lovely weather, sir. 

—‘Tis all that. 

Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates 

from the county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man 

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

Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then thin of the competition. 

General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without 

passing a pub. Save it they can’t. Off the drunks perhaps. Put 

down three and carry five. What is that, a bob here and there, 

dribs and drabs. On the wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a 

double shuffle with the town travellers. Square it you with 

the boss and we’ll split the job, see? 

How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? 

Say ten barrels of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. 

Fifteen. He passed Saint Joseph’s National school. Brats’ 

clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps memory. Or a lilt. 

Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee doubleyou. 


56 

Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their 

joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom. 

He halted before Dlugacz’s window, staring at the hanks 

of sausages, polonies, black and white. Fifteen multiplied 

by. The figures whitened in his mind, unsolved: displeased, 

he let them fade. The shiny links, packed with forcemeat, 

fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath 

of cooked spicy pigs’ blood. 

A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: 

the last. He stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would 

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

Chapped: washingsoda. And a pound and a half of Denny’s 

sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his 

name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish. New blood. 

No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet 

on the clothesline. She does whack it, by George. The 

way her crooked skirt swings at each whack. 

The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had 

snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat 

there: like a stallfed heifer. 

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

farm at Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become 

ideal winter sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I thought he 

was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle cropping. He 

held the page from him: interesting: read it nearer, the title, 

the blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. A young white 

heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket, the beasts lowing 

in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the 

breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping 

a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there’s a prime 

one, unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page aslant 

patiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject 

gaze at rest. The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack by 

whack. 

The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, 

wrapped up her prime sausages and made a red grimace. 

—Now, my miss, he said. 

She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist 

out. 

—Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence 

change. For you, please? 

Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind 


57 

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

see first thing in the morning. Hurry up, damn it. Make hay 

while the sun shines. She stood outside the shop in sunlight 

and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed down his nose: 

they never understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails 

too. Brown scapulars in tatters, defending her both ways. 

The sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his 

breast. For another: a constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles 

lane. They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr 

Policeman, I’m lost in the wood. 

—Threepence, please. 

His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a 

sidepocket. Then it fetched up three coins from his trousers’ 

pocket and laid them on the rubber prickles. They lay, were 

read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the till. 

—Thank you, sir. Another time. 

A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew 

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

—Good morning, he said, moving away. 

—Good morning, sir. 

No sign. Gone. What matter?

He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. 

Agendath Netaim: planters’ company. To purchase waste 

sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with eucalyptus 

trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. 

Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You 

pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam of land for you 

with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper: oranges 

need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending 

of the crop. Your name entered for life as owner in the book 

of the union. Can pay ten down and the balance in yearly 

instalments. Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W. 15. 

Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it. 

He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. 

Silverpowdered olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning, ripening. 

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

Andrews. Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste of them 

now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. 

Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin’s parade. And 

Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had 

then. Molly in Citron’s basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen 

fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the 


58 

perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume. Always the 

same, year after year. They fetched high prices too, Moisel 

told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. 

Must be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, 

Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the 

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

handling them barefoot in soiled dungarees. There’s 

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

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

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

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

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

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

the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No 

wind could lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy 

waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of 

the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead 

sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, 

the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy’s, clutching a 

naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far 

away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying,

dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could 

bear no more. Dead: an old woman’s: the grey sunken cunt 

of the world. 

Desolation. 

Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his 

pocket he turned into Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold 

oils slid along his veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him 

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

Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. 

Must begin again those Sandow’s exercises. On the hands 

down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. 

Why is that? Valuation is only twenty-eight. Towers, 

Battersby, North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with 

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

fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample 

bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes. 

Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, 

swiftly, in slim sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, 

she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind. 

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

gathered them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quickened heart 


59 

slowed at once. Bold hand. Mrs Marion. 

—Poldy! 

Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked 

through warm yellow twilight towards her tousled head. 

—Who are the letters for? 

He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly. 

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

to you. And a letter for you. 

He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the 

curve of her knees. 

—Do you want the blind up? 

Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward 

eye saw her glance at the letter and tuck it under her pillow. 

—That do? he asked, turning. 

She was reading the card, propped on her elbow. 

—She got the things, she said. 

He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself 

back slowly with a snug sigh. 

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

—The kettle is boiling, he said. 

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

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

of the bed. 

As he went down the kitchen stairs she called: 

—Poldy! 

—What? 

—Scald the teapot. 

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

He scalded and rinsed out the teapot and put in four full 

spoons of tea, tilting the kettle then to let the water flow in. 

Having set it to draw he took off the kettle, crushed the pan 

flat on the live coals and watched the lump of butter slide 

and melt. While he unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed 

hungrily against him. Give her too much meat she won’t 

mouse. Say they won’t eat pork. Kosher. Here. He let the 

bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid 

the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his 

fingers ringwise from the chipped eggcup. 

Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and 

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

young student: Blazes Boylan’s seaside girls. 

The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown 


60 

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

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

she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown paper in the 

letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring. 

O, Milly Bloom, you are my darling. 

You are my looking glass from night to morning. 

I’d rather have you without a farthing 

Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden. 

Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he 

was a courteous old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow 

Molly off the platform. And the little mirror in his silk hat. 

The night Milly brought it into the parlour. O, look what I 

found in professor Goodwin’s hat! All we laughed. Sex breaking 

out even then. Pert little piece she was. 

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

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

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

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

hooked in the teapot handle.

Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray 

in and set it on the chair by the bedhead. 

—What a time you were! she said. 

She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an 

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

and between her large soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress 

like a shegoat’s udder. The warmth of her couched body 

rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she 

poured. 

A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled 

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

—Who was the letter from? he asked. 

Bold hand. Marion. 

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

—What are you singing? 

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

Sweet Song. 

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

leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater. 

—Would you like the window open a little? 


61 

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

—What time is the funeral? 

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

Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of 

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

garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole. 

—No: that book. 

Other stocking. Her petticoat. 

—It must have fell down, she said. 

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

pronounces that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid 

down. He stooped and lifted the valance. The book, fallen, 

sprawled against the bulge of the orangekeyed chamberpot. 

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

wanted to ask you. 

She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by 

nothandle and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the 

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

reached the word. 

—Met him what? he asked. 

—Here, she said. What does that mean?

He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail. 

—Metempsychosis? 

—Yes. Who’s he when he’s at home? 

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

Greek. That means the transmigration of souls. 

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

He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same 

young eyes. The first night after the charades. Dolphin’s Barn. 

He turned over the smudged pages. Ruby: the Pride of the 

Ring. Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. 

Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked. Sheet kindly 

lent. The monster Maffei desisted and flung his victim from 

him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze 

at Hengler’s. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping. 

Break your neck and we’ll break our sides. Families of them. 

Bone them young so they metamspychosis. That we live after 

death. Our souls. That a man’s soul after he dies. Dignam’s 

soul … 

—Did you finish it? he asked. 

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


62 

with the first fellow all the time? 

—Never read it. Do you want another? 

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

She poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways. 

Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they’ll 

write to Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that’s the 

word. 

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

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

reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands 

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

forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives. 

The sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her 

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

would be better. An example? 

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

Easter number of Photo Bits: Splendid masterpiece in art 

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

hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the frame. She 

said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs: Greece:

and for instance all the people that lived then. 

He turned the pages back. 

—Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks 

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

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

example. 

Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight 

before her, inhaling through her arched nostrils. 

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

on the fire? 

—The kidney! he cried suddenly. 

He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing 

his toes against the broken commode, hurried out towards 

the smell, stepping hastily down the stairs with a flurried 

stork’s legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an angry jet from 

a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the 

kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back. Only 

a little burnt. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let 

the scanty brown gravy trickle over it. 

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

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


63 

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

discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a turn. A 

mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one 

in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that about 

some young student and a picnic? He creased out the letter 

at his side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another 

die of bread in the gravy and raising it to his mouth. 

Dearest Papli, 

Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It 

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

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

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

business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs. Will 

send when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair day 

and all the beef to the heels were in. We are going to lough 

Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. 

Give my love to mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. 

I hear them at the piano downstairs. There is to be a concert 

in the Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a young student 

comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or

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

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

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

with fondest love 

Your fond daughter, MILLY. 

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

M. 

Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her 

first birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the 

summer morning she was born, running to knock up Mrs 

Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old woman. Lot of babies 

she must have helped into the world. She knew from the 

first poor little Rudy wouldn’t live. Well, God is good, sir. 

She knew at once. He would be eleven now if he had lived. 

His vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse 

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

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

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


64 

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

kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she might 

do worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He drank a 

draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read 

the letter again: twice. 

O, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, 

nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case 

till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim legs running up 

the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now. 

Vain: very. 

He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. 

Day I caught her in the street pinching her cheeks to make 

them red. Anemic a little. Was given milk too long. On the 

Erin’s King that day round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching 

about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the 

wind with her hair. 

All dimpled cheeks and curls, 

Your head it simply swirls. 

Seaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers’

pockets, jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. 

Swurls, he says. Pier with lamps, summer evening, band, 

Those girls, those girls, 

Those lovely seaside girls. 

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

Marion. Reading, lying back now, counting the strands of 

her hair, smiling, braiding. 

A soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. 

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

sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm 

spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed, kissing, 

kissed. Full gluey woman’s lips. 

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

a dog to pass the time. Might take a trip down there. August 

bank holiday, only two and six return. Six weeks off, however. 

Might work a press pass. Or through M’Coy. 

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

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

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


65 

door sometime it will open. Let her wait. Has the fidgets. 

Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her 

back to the fire too. 

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

He stood up, undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat 

mewed to him. 

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

Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up 

the stairs to the landing. 

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

knocking just as I’m. 

In the tabledrawer he found an old number of titbits. He 

folded it under his armpit, went to the door and opened it. 

The cat went up in soft bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, 

curl up in a ball on the bed. 

Listening, he heard her voice: 

—Come, come, pussy. Come. 

He went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood 

to listen towards the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging 

clothes out to dry. The maid was in the garden. Fine 

morning.

He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing 

by the wall. Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia 

creepers. Want to manure the whole place over, scabby 

soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil like that without dung. 

Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The hens in the 

next garden: their droppings are very good top dressing. Best 

of all though are the cattle, especially when they are fed on 

those oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Best thing to clean ladies’ kid 

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

Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always have fresh 

greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee or 

bluebottle here Whitmonday. 

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

put it back on the peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny I 

don’t remember that. Hallstand too full. Four umbrellas, her 

raincloak. Picking up the letters. Drago’s shopbell ringing. 

Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown brillantined 

hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder 

have I time for a bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the 

paybox there got away James Stephens, they say. O’Brien. 

Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? 


66 

Now, my miss. Enthusiast. 

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

not to get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, 

bowing his head under the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, 

amid the stench of mouldy limewash and stale cobwebs he 

undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered through a 

chink up at the nextdoor windows. The king was in his countinghouse. 

Nobody. 

Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning 

its pages over on his bared knees. Something new and easy. 

No great hurry. Keep it a bit. Our prize titbit: Matcham’s 

Masterstroke. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers’ Club, 

London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a column has 

been made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds 

three. Three pounds, thirteen and six. 

Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, 

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

resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease themselves 

quietly as he read, reading still patiently that slight constipation 

of yesterday quite gone. Hope it’s not too big bring on 

piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive. One tabloid of

cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or touch 

him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything 

now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own 

rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks of the 

masterstroke by which he won the laughing witch who now. 

Begins and ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced 

back through what he had read and, while feeling his water 

flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written 

it and received payment of three pounds, thirteen and six. 

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

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

down on my cuff what she said dressing. Dislike dressing 

together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her nether lip, hooking 

the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.l5. Did Roberts pay 

you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed 

me to buy this comb? 9.24. I’m swelled after that cabbage. 

A speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot. 

Rubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stockinged 

calf. Morning after the bazaar dance when May’s band played 

Ponchielli’s dance of the hours. Explain that: morning hours, 

noon, then evening coming on, then night hours. Washing 


67 

her teeth. That was the first night. Her head dancing. Her 

fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan well off? He has money. 

Why? I noticed he had a good rich smell off his breath dancing. 

No use humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind of 

music that last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed 

her handglass briskly on her woollen vest against her full 

wagging bub. Peering into it. Lines in her eyes. It wouldn’t 

pan out somehow. 

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

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

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

He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself 

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

himself. He pulled back the jerky shaky door of the 

jakes and came forth from the gloom into the air. 

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

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

of the knees. What time is the funeral? Better find out in 

the paper. 

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

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

Heigho! Heigho! 



Quarter to. There again: the overtone following through 

the air, a third. 

Poor Dignam! 


68 

BY LORRIES ALONG SIR JOHN ROGERSON’S QUAY MR BLOOM 

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

crusher, the postal telegraph office. Could have given that 

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

morning noises of the quayside and walked through Lime 

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

of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A smaller girl with 

scars of eczema on her forehead eyed him, listlessly holding 

her battered caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won’t grow. 

O let him! His life isn’t such a bed of roses. Waiting outside 

pubs to bring da home. Come home to ma, da. Slack hour: 

won’t be many there. He crossed Townsend street, passed 

the frowning face of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. 

And past Nichols’ the undertaker. At eleven it is. Time 

enough. Daresay Corny Kelleher bagged the job for O’Neill’s. 

Singing with his eyes shut. Corny. Met her once in the park. 

In the dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her name and address 

she then told with my tooraloom tooraloom tay. O, surely 

he bagged it. Bury him cheap in a whatyoumaycall. With 

my tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom. 

In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast

and Oriental Tea Company and read the legends of 

leadpapered packets: choice blend, finest quality, family tea. 

Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom Kernan. 

Couldn’t ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still 

read blandly he took off his hat quietly inhaling his hairoil 

and sent his right hand with slow grace over his brow and 

hair. Very warm morning. Under their dropped lids his eyes 

found the tiny bow of the leather headband inside his high 

grade ha. Just there. His right hand came down into the bowl 

of his hat. His fingers found quickly a card behind the 

headband and transferred it to his waistcoat pocket. 

So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over 

his brow and hair. Then he put on his hat again, relieved: 

and read again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon 

brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of 

the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery 

meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. 

Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun in dolce far niente, 

not doing a hand’s turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. 

Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers 

of idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in 


69 

Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants. Waterlilies. Petals too tired 

to. Sleeping sickness in the air. Walk on roseleaves. Imagine 

trying to eat tripe and cowheel. Where was the chap I saw in 

that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in the dead sea floating on 

his back, reading a book with a parasol open. Couldn’t sink 

if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the 

water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the 

weight of the what? Or is it the volume is equal to the weight? 

It’s a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking 

his fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking 

curriculum. What is weight really when you say the weight? 

Thirtytwo feet per second per second. Law of falling bodies: 

per second per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. 

It’s the force of gravity of the earth is the weight. 

He turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she 

walk with her sausages? Like that something. As he walked he 

took the folded Freeman from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled 

it lengthwise in a baton and tapped it at each sauntering step 

against his trouserleg. Careless air: just drop in to see. Per second 

per second. Per second for every second it means. From 

the curbstone he darted a keen glance through the door of the

postoffice. Too late box. Post here. No-one. In. 

He handed the card through the brass grill. 

—Are there any letters for me? he asked. 

While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at 

the recruiting poster with soldiers of all arms on parade: and 

held the tip of his baton against his nostrils, smelling 

freshprinted rag paper. No answer probably. Went too far 

last time. 

The postmistress handed him back through the grill his 

card with a letter. He thanked her and glanced rapidly at the 

typed envelope. 

Henry Flower Esq. 

c/o P. O. Westland Row, 

City. 

Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his 

sidepocket, reviewing again the soldiers on parade. Where’s 

old Tweedy’s regiment? Castoff soldier. There: bearskin cap 

and hackle plume. No, he’s a grenadier. Pointed cuffs. There 

he is: royal Dublin fusiliers. Redcoats. Too showy. That must 


70 

be why the women go after them. Uniform. Easier to enlist 

and drill. Maud Gonne’s letter about taking them off 

O’Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital. 

Griffith’s paper is on the same tack now: an army rotten with 

venereal disease: overseas or halfseasover empire. Half baked 

they look: hypnotised like. Eyes front. Mark time. Table: 

able. Bed: ed. The King’s own. Never see him dressed up as a 

fireman or a bobby. A mason, yes. 

He strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. 

Talk: as if that would mend matters. His hand went into his 

pocket and a forefinger felt its way under the flap of the 

envelope, ripping it open in jerks. Women will pay a lot of 

heed, I don’t think. His fingers drew forth the letter the letter 

and crumpled the envelope in his pocket. Something 

pinned on: photo perhaps. Hair? No. 

M’Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. 

Hate company when you. 

—Hello, Bloom. Where are you off to? 

—Hello, M’Coy. Nowhere in particular. 

—How’s the body? 

—Fine. How are you?

—Just keeping alive, M’Coy said. 

His eyes on the black tie and clothes he asked with low 

respect: 

—Is there any … no trouble I hope? I see you’re … 

—O, no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The 

funeral is today. 

—To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time? 

A photo it isn’t. A badge maybe. 

—E … eleven, Mr Bloom answered. 

—I must try to get out there, M’Coy said. Eleven, is it? I 

only heard it last night. Who was telling me? Holohan. You 

know Hoppy? 

—I know. 

Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up 

before the door of the Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the 

valise up on the well. She stood still, waiting, while the man, 

husband, brother, like her, searched his pockets for change. 

Stylish kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for a day like 

this, looks like blanketcloth. Careless stand of her with her 

hands in those patch pockets. Like that haughty creature at 

the polo match. Women all for caste till you touch the spot. 


71 

Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. 

The honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess 

her once take the starch out of her. 

—I was with Bob Doran, he’s on one of his periodical 

bends, and what do you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down 

there in Conway’s we were. 

Doran Lyons in Conway’s. She raised a gloved hand to her 

hair. In came Hoppy. Having a wet. Drawing back his head 

and gazing far from beneath his vailed eyelids he saw the 

bright fawn skin shine in the glare, the braided drums. Clearly 

I can see today. Moisture about gives long sight perhaps. 

Talking of one thing or another. Lady’s hand. Which side 

will she get up? 

—And he said: Sad thing about our poor friend Paddy! What 

Paddy? I said. Poor little Paddy Dignam, he said. 

Off to the country: Broadstone probably. High brown boots 

with laces dangling. Wellturned foot. What is he foostering 

over that change for? Sees me looking. Eye out for other 

fellow always. Good fallback. Two strings to her bow. 

—Why? I said. What’s wrong with him? I said. 

Proud: rich: silk stockings.

—Yes, Mr Bloom said. 

He moved a little to the side of M’Coy’s talking head. Getting 

up in a minute. 

—What’s wrong with him? He said. He’s dead, he said. And, 

faith, he filled up. Is it Paddy Dignam? I said. I couldn’t believe 

it when I heard it. I was with him no later than Friday 

last or Thursday was it in the Arch. Yes, he said. He’s gone. He 

died on Monday, poor fellow. Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich 

stockings white. Watch! 

A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between. 

Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. 

Paradise and the peri. Always happening like that. The very 

moment. Girl in Eustace street hallway Monday was it settling 

her garter. Her friend covering the display of. Esprit de 

corps. Well, what are you gaping at? 

—Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone. 

—One of the best, M’Coy said. 

The tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line 

bridge, her rich gloved hand on the steel grip. Flicker, flicker: 

the laceflare of her hat in the sun: flicker, flick. 

—Wife well, I suppose? M’Coy’s changed voice said. 


72 

—O, yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks. 

He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly: 

What is home without 

Plumtree’s potted meat? 

Incomplete 

With it an abode of bliss. 

—My missus has just got an engagement. At least it’s not 

settled yet. 

Valise tack again. By the way no harm. I’m off that, thanks. 

Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness. 

—My wife too, he said. She’s going to sing at a swagger 

affair in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, on the twenty-fifth. 

—That so? M’Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who’s 

getting it up? 

Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom 

eating bread and. No book. Blackened court cards laid 

along her thigh by sevens. Dark lady and fair man. Letter. 

Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope.

Love’s 

Old 

Sweet 

Song 

Comes lo-ove’s old … 

—It’s a kind of a tour, don’t you see, Mr Bloom said 

thoughtfully. Sweeeet song. There’s a committee formed. Part 

shares and part profits. 

M’Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble. 

—O, well, he said. That’s good news. 

He moved to go. 

—Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you 

knocking around. 


—Tell you what, M’Coy said. You might put down my 

name at the funeral, will you? I’d like to go but I mightn’t be 

able, you see. There’s a drowning case at Sandycove may turn 

up and then the coroner and myself would have to go down 

if the body is found. You just shove in my name if I’m not 


73 

there, will you? 

—I’ll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get off. That’ll 

be all right. 

—Right, M’Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I’d go if I 

possibly could. Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M’Coy will do. 

—That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly. 

Didn’t catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. 

Soft mark. I’d like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy 

for. Leather. Capped corners, rivetted edges, double action 

lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his for the Wicklow regatta 

concert last year and never heard tidings of it from that good 

day to this. 

Mr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My 

missus has just got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing 

nose. Nice enough in its way: for a little ballad. No guts in it. 

You and me, don’t you know: in the same boat. Softsoaping. 

Give you the needle that would. Can’t he hear the difference? 

Think he’s that way inclined a bit. Against my grain 

somehow. Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I hope that 

smallpox up there doesn’t get worse. Suppose she wouldn’t 

let herself be vaccinated again. Your wife and my wife.

Wonder is he pimping after me? 

Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the 

multicoloured hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane’s Ginger 

Ale (Aromatic). Clery’s Summer Sale. No, he’s going on 

straight. Hello. Leah tonight. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Like 

to see her again in that. Hamlet she played last night. Male 

impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia committed 

suicide. Poor papa! How he used to talk of Kate 

Bateman in that. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all 

the afternoon to get in. Year before I was born that was: 

sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What is this the right name 

is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was 

always talking about where the old blind Abraham recognises 

the voice and puts his fingers on his face. 

Nathan’s voice! His son’s voice! I hear the voice of Nathan 

who left his father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who 

left the house of his father and left the God of his father. 

Every word is so deep, Leopold. 

Poor papa! Poor man! I’m glad I didn’t go into the room to 

look at his face. That day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps 

it was best for him. 


74 

Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping 

nags of the hazard. No use thinking of it any more. 

Nosebag time. Wish I hadn’t met that M’Coy fellow. 

He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the 

gently champing teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as 

he went by, amid the sweet oaten reek of horsepiss. Their 

Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn all they know or care about 

anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags. Too full 

for words. Still they get their feed all right and their doss. 

Gelded too: a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp between 

their haunches. Might be happy all the same that way. 

Good poor brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very 

irritating. 

He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the 

newspaper he carried. Might just walk into her here. The 

lane is safer. 

He passed the cabman’s shelter. Curious the life of drifting 

cabbies. All weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of 

their own. Voglio e non. Like to give them an odd cigarette. 

Sociable. Shout a few flying syllables as they pass. He 

hummed:

La ci darem la mano 

La la la la la la. 

He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some 

paces, halted in the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade’s 

timberyard. Piled balks. Ruins and tenements. With careful 

tread he passed over a hopscotch court with its forgotten 

pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard a squatted 

child at marbles, alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb. 

A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. 

Pity to disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his 

mantle not to wake her. Open it. And once I played marbles 

when I went to that old dame’s school. She liked mignonette. 

Mrs Ellis’s. And Mr? He opened the letter within the 

newspaper. 

A flower. I think it’s a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. 

Not annoyed then? What does she say? 

Dear Henry, 

I got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. 


75 

I am sorry you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose 

the stamps? I am awfully angry with you. I do wish I 

could punish you for that. I called you naughty boy because 

I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real 

meaning of that word? Are you not happy in your home you 

poor little naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for 

you. Please tell me what you think of poor me. I often think 

of the beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will we 

meet? I think of you so often you have no idea. I have never 

felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so bad 

about. Please write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember 

if you do not I will punish you. So now you know 

what I will do to you, you naughty boy, if you do not wrote. 

O how I long to meet you. Henry dear, do not deny my 

request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell 

you all. Goodbye now, naughty darling, I have such a bad 

headache. today. and write by return to your longing 

Martha 

P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I

want to know. 

He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost 

no smell and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of 

flowers. They like it because no-one can hear. Or a poison 

bouquet to strike him down. Then walking slowly forward 

he read the letter again, murmuring here and there a word. 

Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus 

if you don’t please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to 

dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk 

wife Martha’s perfume. Having read it all he took it from the 

newspaper and put it back in his sidepocket. 

Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. 

Wonder did she wrote it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl 

of good family like me, respectable character. Could meet 

one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you: not having any. Usual 

love scrimmage. Then running round corners. Bad as a row 

with Molly. Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic. Go further 

next time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of words, of course. 

Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time. 

Fingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out 


76 

of it. Common pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her 

clothes somewhere: pinned together. Queer the number of 

pins they always have. No roses without thorns. 

Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts 

that night in the Coombe, linked together in the rain. 

O, Mary lost the pin of her drawers. 

She didn’t know what to do 

To keep it up 

To keep it up. 

It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. 

Or sitting all day typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. 

What perfume does your wife use. Now could you make out 

a thing like that? 


Martha, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old 

master or faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. 

Mysterious. Also the two sluts in the Coombe would listen. 


Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about.

Just loll there: quiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about 

places you have been, strange customs. The other one, jar on 

her head, was getting the supper: fruit, olives, lovely cool water 

out of a well, stonecold like the hole in the wall at Ashtown. 

Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the trottingmatches. 

She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell her: more and more: 

all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest. 

Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, 

tore it swiftly in shreds and scattered them towards the road. 

The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter, 

then all sank. 

Henry Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred 

pounds in the same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh 

once cashed a sevenfigure cheque for a million in the bank 

of Ireland. Shows you the money to be made out of porter. 

Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his shirt 

four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million 

pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a 

quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a 

gallon of porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about. 

Yes, exactly. Fifteen millions of barrels of porter. 


77 

What am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels 

all the same. 

An incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach 

after coach. Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped 

and churned inside. The bungholes sprang open and a huge 

dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through 

mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor 

bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth. 

He had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping 

into the porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his 

pocket and tucked it again behind the leather headband. 

Damn it. I might have tried to work M’Coy for a pass to 

Mullingar. 

Same notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend 

John Conmee S.J. on saint Peter Claver S.J. and the African 

Mission. Prayers for the conversion of Gladstone they had 

too when he was almost unconscious. The protestants are 

the same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the true 

religion. Save China’s millions. Wonder how they explain it 

to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. 

Rank heresy for them. Buddha their god lying on his side in

the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. 

Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns 

and cross. Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks? 

Conmee: Martin Cunningham knows him: 

distinguishedlooking. Sorry I didn’t work him about getting 

Molly into the choir instead of that Father Farley who looked 

a fool but wasn’t. They’re taught that. He’s not going out in 

bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, 

is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see 

them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. 

Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose. 

The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn 

steps, pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere. 

Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice 

discreet place to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? 

Jammed by the hour to slow music. That woman at midnight 

mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the benches 

with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch 

knelt at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, 

holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each, 


78 

took out a communion, shook a drop or two (are they in 

water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat and 

head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at once. Then 

the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to 

put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The 

next one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? Corpus: 

body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. 

Hospice for the dying. They don’t seem to chew it: only swallow 

it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the 

cannibals cotton to it. 

He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the 

aisle, one by one, and seek their places. He approached a 

bench and seated himself in its corner, nursing his hat and 

newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We ought to have 

hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here and 

there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting 

for it to melt in their stomachs. Something like those 

mazzoth: it’s that sort of bread: unleavened shewbread. Look 

at them. Now I bet it makes them feel happy. Lollipop. It 

does. Yes, bread of angels it’s called. There’s a big idea behind 

it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel. First commu-

nicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one family 

party, same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. 

I’m sure of that. Not so lonely. In our confraternity. Then 

come out a bit spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if you really 

believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of oblivion, and the Knock 

apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep near that 

confessionbox. Hence those snores. Blind faith. Safe in the 

arms of kingdom come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time next 

year. 

He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, 

and kneel an instant before it, showing a large grey bootsole 

from under the lace affair he had on. Suppose he lost the pin 

of his. He wouldn’t know what to do to. Bald spot behind. 

Letters on his back: I.N.R.I? No: I.H.S. Molly told me one 

time I asked her. I have sinned: or no: I have suffered, it is. 

And the other one? Iron nails ran in. 

Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. 

Turn up with a veil and black bag. Dusk and the light 

behind her. She might be here with a ribbon round her neck 

and do the other thing all the same on the sly. Their character. 

That fellow that turned queen’s evidence on the invincibles 


79 

he used to receive the, Carey was his name, the communion 

every morning. This very church. Peter Carey, yes. No, Peter 

Claver I am thinking of. Denis Carey. And just imagine that. 

Wife and six children at home. And plotting that murder all 

the time. Those crawthumpers, now that’s a good name for 

them, there’s always something shiftylooking about them. 

They’re not straight men of business either. O, no, she’s not 

here: the flower: no, no. By the way, did I tear up that envelope? 

Yes: under the bridge. 

The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off 

the dregs smartly. Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for 

example if he drank what they are used to Guinness’s porter 

or some temperance beverage Wheatley’s Dublin hop bitters 

or Cantrell and Cochrane’s ginger ale (aromatic). Doesn’t 

give them any of it: shew wine: only the other. Cold comfort. 

Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise they’d have one 

old booser worse than another coming along, cadging for a 

drink. Queer the whole atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly 

right that is. 

Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be 

any music. Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn

he knew how to make that instrument talk, the vibrato: fifty 

pounds a year they say he had in Gardiner street. Molly was 

in fine voice that day, the Stabat Mater of Rossini. Father 

Bernard Vaughan’s sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, but 

don’t keep us all night over it. Music they wanted. Footdrill 

stopped. Could hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch her voice 

against that corner. I could feel the thrill in the air, the full, 

the people looking up: 

Quis est homo. 

Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven 

last words. Mozart’s twelfth mass: Gloria in that. Those old 

popes keen on music, on art and statues and pictures of all 

kinds. Palestrina for example too. They had a gay old time 

while it lasted. Healthy too, chanting, regular hours, then 

brew liqueurs. Benedictine. Green Chartreuse. Still, having 

eunuchs in their choir that was coming it a bit thick. What 

kind of voice is it? Must be curious to hear after their own 

strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they wouldn’t feel anything 

after. Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall into flesh, don’t 

they? Gluttons, tall, long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One 

way out of it. 


80 

He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then 

face about and bless all the people. All crossed themselves 

and stood up. Mr Bloom glanced about him and then stood 

up, looking over the risen hats. Stand up at the gospel of 

course. Then all settled down on their knees again and he sat 

back quietly in his bench. The priest came down from the 

altar, holding the thing out from him, and he and the massboy 

answered each other in Latin. Then the priest knelt down 

and began to read off a card: 

—O God, our refuge and our strength … 

Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. 

Throw them the bone. I remember slightly. How long 

since your last mass? Glorious and immaculate virgin. Joseph, 

her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if you 

understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation 

certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants 

to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great 

weapon in their hands. More than doctor or solicitor. Woman 

dying to. And I schschschschschsch. And did you 

chachachachacha? And why did you? Look down at her ring 

to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears. Hus-

and learn to his surprise. God’s little joke. Then out she 

comes. Repentance skindeep. Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. 

Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Flowers, incense, candles melting. 

Hide her blushes. Salvation army blatant imitation. Reformed 

prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the 

Lord. Squareheaded chaps those must be in Rome: they work 

the whole show. And don’t they rake in the money too? Bequests 

also: to the P.P. for the time being in his absolute discretion. 

Masses for the repose of my soul to be said publicly 

with open doors. Monasteries and convents. The priest in 

that Fermanagh will case in the witnessbox. No browbeating 

him. He had his answer pat for everything. Liberty and exaltation 

of our holy mother the church. The doctors of the 

church: they mapped out the whole theology of it. 

The priest prayed: 

—Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of 

conflict. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares 

of the devil (may God restrain him, we humbly pray!): and 

do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God 

thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked 

spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls. 


81 

The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All 

over. The women remained behind: thanksgiving. 

Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with 

the plate perhaps. Pay your Easter duty. 

He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat 

open all the time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But 

we. Excuse, miss, there’s a (whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their 

skirt behind, placket unhooked. Glimpses of the moon. 

Annoyed if you don’t. Why didn’t you tell me before. Still 

like you better untidy. Good job it wasn’t farther south. He 

passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through 

the main door into the light. He stood a moment unseeing 

by the cold black marble bowl while before him and behind 

two worshippers dipped furtive hands in the low tide of holy 

water. Trams: a car of Prescott’s dyeworks: a widow in her 

weeds. Notice because I’m in mourning myself. He covered 

himself. How goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet. 

Better get that lotion made up. Where is this? Ah yes, the 

last time. Sweny’s in Lincoln place. Chemists rarely move. 

Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to stir. Hamilton 

Long’s, founded in the year of the flood. Huguenot church-

yard near there. Visit some day. 

He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe 

is in the other trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. 

Bore this funeral affair. O well, poor fellow, it’s not his fault. 

When was it I got it made up last? Wait. I changed a sovereign 

I remember. First of the month it must have been or the 

second. O, he can look it up in the prescriptions book. 

The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled 

smell he seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for 

the philosopher’s stone. The alchemists. Drugs age you after 

mental excitement. Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime 

in a night. Gradually changes your character. Living all 

the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. All his alabaster 

lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te 

Virid. Smell almost cure you like the dentist’s doorbell. Doctor 

Whack. He ought to physic himself a bit. Electuary or 

emulsion. The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself 

had a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be careful. Enough 

stuff here to chloroform you. Test: turns blue litmus paper 

red. Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts. 

Lovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the 


82 

pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy where 

you least expect it. Clever of nature. 

—About a fortnight ago, sir? 


He waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of 

drugs, the dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of 

time taken up telling your aches and pains. 

—Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom 

said, and then orangeflower water … 

It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax. 

—And white wax also, he said. 

Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the 

sheet up to her eyes, Spanish, smelling herself, when I was 

fixing the links in my cuffs. Those homely recipes are often 

the best: strawberries for the teeth: nettles and rainwater: 

oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk. Skinfood. One of 

the old queen’s sons, duke of Albany was it? had only one 

skin. Leopold, yes. Three we have. Warts, bunions and 

pimples to make it worse. But you want a perfume too. What 

perfume does your? Peau d’Espagne. That orangeflower water 

is so fresh. Nice smell these soaps have. Pure curd soap.

Time to get a bath round the corner. Hammam. Turkish. 

Massage. Dirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a nice 

girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious 

longing I. Water to water. Combine business with pleasure. 

Pity no time for massage. Feel fresh then all the day. Funeral 

be rather glum. 

—Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have 

you brought a bottle? 

—No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I’ll call later in 

the day and I’ll take one of these soaps. How much are they? 

—Fourpence, sir. 

Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax. 

—I’ll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny. 

—Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, 

when you come back. 

—Good, Mr Bloom said. 

He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under 

his armpit, the coolwrappered soap in his left hand. 

At his armpit Bantam Lyons’ voice and hand said: 

—Hello, Bloom. What’s the best news? Is that today’s? 

Show us a minute. 


83 

Shaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper 

lip. To look younger. He does look balmy. Younger than I am. 

Bantam Lyons’s yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. 

Wants a wash too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, 

have you used Pears’ soap? Dandruff on his shoulders. 

Scalp wants oiling. 

—I want to see about that French horse that’s running 

today, Bantam Lyons said. Where the bugger is it? 

He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high 

collar. Barber’s itch. Tight collar he’ll lose his hair. Better 

leave him the paper and get shut of him. 

—You can keep it, Mr Bloom said. 

—Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a 

mo. Maximum the second. 

—I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said. 

Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly. 

—What’s that? his sharp voice said. 

—I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going 

to throw it away that moment. 

Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the 

outspread sheets back on Mr Bloom’s arms.

—I’ll risk it, he said. Here, thanks. 

He sped off towards Conway’s corner. God speed scut. 

Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and 

lodged the soap in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. 

Regular hotbed of it lately. Messenger boys stealing to put 

on sixpence. Raffle for large tender turkey. Your Christmas 

dinner for threepence. Jack Fleming embezzling to gamble 

then smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now. They never 

come back. Fleshpots of Egypt. 

He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. 

Remind you of a mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. 

College sports today I see. He eyed the horseshoe poster over 

the gate of college park: cyclist doubled up like a cod in a 

pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it round like a 

wheel. Then the spokes: sports, sports, sports: and the hub 

big: college. Something to catch the eye. 

There’s Hornblower standing at the porter’s lodge. Keep 

him on hands: might take a turn in there on the nod. How 

do you do, Mr Hornblower? How do you do, sir? 

Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket 

weather. Sit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. 


84 

They can’t play it here. Duck for six wickets. Still Captain 

Culler broke a window in the Kildare street club with a slog 

to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in their line. And the 

skulls we were acracking when M’Carthy took the floor. 

Heatwave. Won’t last. Always passing, the stream of life, 

which in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all. 

Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the 

gentle tepid stream. This is my body. 

He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a 

womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. 

He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, 

buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: 

and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating 

hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a 

languid floating flower.

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM, FIRST, POKED HIS SILKHATTED HEAD INTO 

the creaking carriage and, entering deftly, seated himself. Mr 

Power stepped in after him, curving his height with care. 

—Come on, Simon. 

—After you, Mr Bloom said. 

Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying: 

Yes, yes. 

—Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come 

along, Bloom. 

Mr Bloom entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled 

the door to after him and slammed it twice till it shut tight. 

He passed an arm through the armstrap and looked seriously 

from the open carriagewindow at the lowered blinds 

of the avenue. One dragged aside: an old woman peeping. 

Nose whiteflattened against the pane. Thanking her stars she 

was passed over. Extraordinary the interest they take in a 

corpse. Glad to see us go we give them such trouble coming. 

Job seems to suit them. Huggermugger in corners. Slop about 

in slipperslappers for fear he’d wake. Then getting it ready. 

Laying it out. Molly and Mrs Fleming making the bed. Pull 

it more to your side. Our windingsheet. Never know who 


85 

will touch you dead. Wash and shampoo. I believe they clip 

the nails and the hair. Keep a bit in an envelope. Grows all 

the same after. Unclean job. 

All waited. Nothing was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably. 

I am sitting on something hard. Ah, that soap: in my hip 

pocket. Better shift it out of that. Wait for an opportunity. 

All waited. Then wheels were heard from in front, turning: 

then nearer: then horses’ hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage 

began to move, creaking and swaying. Other hoofs and creaking 

wheels started behind. The blinds of the avenue passed 

and number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar. At walking 

pace. 

They waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned 

and were passing along the tramtracks. Tritonville road. 

Quicker. The wheels rattled rolling over the cobbled causeway 

and the crazy glasses shook rattling in the doorframes. 

—What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both 

windows. 

—Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. 

Brunswick street. 

Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out.

—That’s a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has 

not died out. 

All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats 

lifted by passers. Respect. The carriage swerved from the 

tramtrack to the smoother road past Watery lane. Mr Bloom 

at gaze saw a lithe young man, clad in mourning, a wide hat. 

—There’s a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said. 

—Who is that? 

—Your son and heir. 

—Where is he? Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across. 

The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of 

rippedup roadway before the tenement houses, lurched round 

the corner and, swerving back to the tramtrack, rolled on 

noisily with chattering wheels. Mr Dedalus fell back, saying: 

—Was that Mulligan cad with him? His fidus Achates! 

—No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone. 

—Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose, Mr Dedalus said, 

the Goulding faction, the drunken little costdrawer and 

Crissie, papa’s little lump of dung, the wise child that knows 

her own father. 

Mr Bloom smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros: 


86 

the bottleworks: Dodder bridge. 

Richie Goulding and the legal bag. Goulding, Collis and 

Ward he calls the firm. His jokes are getting a bit damp. 

Great card he was. Waltzing in Stamer street with Ignatius 

Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the landlady’s two hats pinned 

on his head. Out on the rampage all night. Beginning to tell 

on him now: that backache of his, I fear. Wife ironing his 

back. Thinks he’ll cure it with pills. All breadcrumbs they 

are. About six hundred per cent profit. 

—He’s in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. 

That Mulligan is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian 

by all accounts. His name stinks all over Dublin. But with 

the help of God and His blessed mother I’ll make it my business 

to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his 

aunt or whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a 

gate. I’ll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me. 

He cried above the clatter of the wheels: 

—I won’t have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A 

counterjumper’s son. Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul 

M’Swiney’s. Not likely. 

He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache

to Mr Power’s mild face and Martin Cunningham’s eyes and 

beard, gravely shaking. Noisy selfwilled man. Full of his son. 

He is right. Something to hand on. If little Rudy had lived. 

See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside 

Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange 

feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must have been 

that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window 

watching the two dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do 

evil. And the sergeant grinning up. She had that cream gown 

on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch, Poldy. 

God, I’m dying for it. How life begins. 

Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My 

son inside her. I could have helped him on in life. I could. 

Make him independent. Learn German too. 

—Are we late? Mr Power asked. 

—Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his 

watch. 

Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. 

O jumping Jupiter! Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she’s a dear 

girl. Soon be a woman. Mullingar. Dearest Papli. Young student. 

Yes, yes: a woman too. Life, life. 


87 

The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying. 

—Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, 

Mr Power said. 

—He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn’t that squint troubling 

him. Do you follow me? 

He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush 

away crustcrumbs from under his thighs. 

—What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs? 

—Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here 

lately, Mr Power said. 

All raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed 

buttonless leather of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting 

his nose, frowned downward and said: 

—Unless I’m greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin? 

—It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said. 

Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel 

my feet quite clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned 

these socks better. 

Mr Dedalus sighed resignedly. 

—After all, he said, it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

—Did Tom Kernan turn up? Martin Cunningham asked,

twirling the peak of his beard gently. 

—Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He’s behind with Ned Lambert 

and Hynes. 

—And Corny Kelleher himself? Mr Power asked. 

—At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said. 

—I met M’Coy this morning, Mr Bloom said. He said 

he’d try to come. 

The carriage halted short. 

—What’s wrong? 

—We’re stopped. 

—Where are we? 

Mr Bloom put his head out of the window. 

—The grand canal, he said. 

Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job 

Milly never got it. Poor children! Doubles them up black 

and blue in convulsions. Shame really. Got off lightly with 

illnesses compared. Only measles. Flaxseed tea. Scarlatina, 

influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don’t miss this 

chance. Dogs’ home over there. Poor old Athos! Be good to 

Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Thy will be done. We obey 

them in the grave. A dying scrawl. He took it to heart, pined 


88 

away. Quiet brute. Old men’s dogs usually are. 

A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant 

of shower spray dots over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. 

Like through a colander. I thought it would. My boots 

were creaking I remember now. 

—The weather is changing, he said quietly. 

—A pity it did not keep up fine, Martin Cunningham said. 

—Wanted for the country, Mr Power said. There’s the sun 

again coming out. 

Mr Dedalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled 

sun, hurled a mute curse at the sky. 

—It’s as uncertain as a child’s bottom, he said. 

—We’re off again. 

The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks 

swayed gently. Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly 

the peak of his beard. 

—Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said. And Paddy 

Leonard taking him off to his face. 

—O, draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait 

till you hear him, Simon, on Ben Dollard’s singing of The 

Croppy Boy.

—Immense, Martin Cunningham said pompously. His 

singing of that simple ballad, Martin, is the most trenchant 

rendering I ever heard in the whole course of my experience. 

—Trenchant, Mr Power said laughing. He’s dead nuts on 

that. And the retrospective arrangement. 

—Did you read Dan Dawson’s speech? Martin 

Cunningham asked. 

—I did not then, Mr Dedalus said. Where is it? 

—In the paper this morning. 

Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. That 

book I must change for her. 

—No, no, Mr Dedalus said quickly. Later on please. 

Mr Bloom’s glance travelled down the edge of the paper, 

scanning the deaths: Callan, Coleman, Dignam, Fawcett, 

Lowry, Naumann, Peake, what Peake is that? is it the chap 

was in Crosbie and Alleyne’s? no, Sexton, Urbright. Inked 

characters fast fading on the frayed breaking paper. Thanks 

to the Little Flower. Sadly missed. To the inexpressible grief 

of his. Aged 88 after a long and tedious illness. Month’s mind: 

Quinlan. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy. 


89 

It is now a month since dear Henry fled 

To his home up above in the sky 

While his family weeps and mourns his loss 

Hoping some day to meet him on high. 

I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after 

I read it in the bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There 

all right. Dear Henry fled. Before my patience are exhausted. 

National school. Meade’s yard. The hazard. Only two there 

now. Nodding. Full as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. 

The other trotting round with a fare. An hour ago I was 

passing there. The jarvies raised their hats. 

A pointsman’s back straightened itself upright suddenly 

against a tramway standard by Mr Bloom’s window. Couldn’t 

they invent something automatic so that the wheel itself much 

handier? Well but that fellow would lose his job then? Well 

but then another fellow would get a job making the new 

invention? 

Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff 

suit with a crape armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter 

mourning. People in law perhaps.

They went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark’s, under the 

railway bridge, past the Queen’s theatre: in silence. Hoardings: 

Eugene Stratton, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Could I go 

to see Leah tonight, I wonder. I said I. Or the Lily of Killarney? 

Elster Grimes Opera Company. Big powerful change. Wet 

bright bills for next week. Fun on the Bristol. Martin 

Cunningham could work a pass for the Gaiety. Have to stand 

a drink or two. As broad as it’s long. 

He’s coming in the afternoon. Her songs. 

Plasto’s. Sir Philip Crampton’s memorial fountain bust. 

Who was he? 

—How do you do? Martin Cunningham said, raising his 

palm to his brow in salute. 

—He doesn’t see us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do 

you do? 

—Who? Mr Dedalus asked. 

—Blazes Boylan, Mr Power said. There he is airing his 

quiff. 

Just that moment I was thinking. 

Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the 

Red Bank the white disc of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce 


90 

figure: passed. 

Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those 

of his right hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in 

him that they she sees? Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. 

That keeps him alive. They sometimes feel what a person is. 

Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just looking at 

them: well pared. And after: thinking alone. Body getting a 

bit softy. I would notice that: from remembering. What causes 

that? I suppose the skin can’t contract quickly enough when 

the flesh falls off. But the shape is there. The shape is there 

still. Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of the dance dressing. 

Shift stuck between the cheeks behind. 

He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent 

his vacant glance over their faces. 

Mr Power asked: 

—How is the concert tour getting on, Bloom? 

—O, very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. 

It’s a good idea, you see … 

—Are you going yourself? 

—Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go 

down to the county Clare on some private business. You see

the idea is to tour the chief towns. What you lose on one you 

can make up on the other. 

—Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is 

up there now. 

Have you good artists? 

—Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we’ll 

have all topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I 

hope and. The best, in fact. 

—And Madame, Mr Power said smiling. Last but not least. 

Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness 

and clasped them. Smith O’Brien. Someone has laid a 

bunch of flowers there. Woman. Must be his deathday. For 

many happy returns. The carriage wheeling by Farrell’s statue 

united noiselessly their unresisting knees. 

Oot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered 

his wares, his mouth opening: oot. 

—Four bootlaces for a penny. 

Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in 

Hume street. Same house as Molly’s namesake, Tweedy, crown 

solicitor for Waterford. Has that silk hat ever since. Relics of 

old decency. Mourning too. Terrible comedown, poor wretch! 


91 

Kicked about like snuff at a wake. O’Callaghan on his last 

legs. 

And Madame. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in 

to clean. Doing her hair, humming. Voglio e non vorrei. No. 

Vorrei e non. Looking at the tips of her hairs to see if they are 

split. Mitrema un poco il. Beautiful on that tre her voice is: 

weeping tone. A thrush. A throstle. There is a word throstle 

that expresses that. 

His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power’s goodlooking face. 

Greyish over the ears. Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A 

smile goes a long way. Only politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. 

Who knows is that true about the woman he keeps? Not 

pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told me, there 

is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played out 

pretty quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bringing 

her a pound of rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid 

in Jury’s. Or the Moira, was it? 

They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator’s form. 

Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power. 

—Of the tribe of Reuben, he said. 

A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round

the corner of Elvery’s Elephant house, showed them a curved 

hand open on his spine. 

—In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said. 

Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said 

mildly: 

—The devil break the hasp of your back! 

Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the 

window as the carriage passed Gray’s statue. 

—We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said 

broadly. 

His eyes met Mr Bloom’s eyes. He caressed his beard, adding: 

—Well, nearly all of us. 

Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his 

companions’ faces. 

—That’s an awfully good one that’s going the rounds about 

Reuben J and the son. 

—About the boatman? Mr Power asked. 

—Yes. Isn’t it awfully good? 

—What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn’t hear it. 

—There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he 


92 

determined to send him to the Isle of Man out of harm’s way 

but when they were both … 

—What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody 

hobbledehoy is it? 

—Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the 

boat and he tried to drown … 

—Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he 

did! 

Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils. 

—No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself … 

Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely: 

—Reuben and the son were piking it down the quay next 

the river on their way to the Isle of Man boat and the young 

chiseller suddenly got loose and over the wall with him into 

the Liffey. 

—For God’s sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he 

dead? 

—Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman 

got a pole and fished him out by the slack of the breeches 

and he was landed up to the father on the quay more dead 

than alive. Half the town was there.

—Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is … 

—And Reuben J, Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman 

a florin for saving his son’s life. 

A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power’s hand. 

—O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. 

A silver florin. 

—Isn’t it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly. 

—One and eightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily. 

Mr Power’s choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage. 

Nelson’s pillar. 

—Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny! 

—We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham 

said. 

Mr Dedalus sighed. 

—Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn’t 

grudge us a laugh. Many a good one he told himself. 

—The Lord forgive me! Mr Power said, wiping his wet 

eyes with his fingers. Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago 

when I saw him last and he was in his usual health that I’d be 

driving after him like this. He’s gone from us. 

—As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Dedalus 


93 

said. He went very suddenly. 

—Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart. 

He tapped his chest sadly. 

Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for 

a red nose. Drink like the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of 

money he spent colouring it. 

Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension. 

—He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said. 

—The best death, Mr Bloom said. 

Their wide open eyes looked at him. 

—No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like 

dying in sleep. 

No-one spoke. 

Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land 

agents, temperance hotel, Falconer’s railway guide, civil service 

college, Gill’s, catholic club, the industrious blind. Why? 

Some reason. Sun or wind. At night too. Chummies and 

slaveys. Under the patronage of the late Father Mathew. Foundation 

stone for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart. 

White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the

Rotunda corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry 

to bury. A mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. 

Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun. 

—Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child. 

A dwarf’s face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy’s was. 

Dwarf’s body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial 

friendly society pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. 

Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If 

it’s healthy it’s from the mother. If not from the man. Better 

luck next time. 

—Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It’s well out of it. 

The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland 

square. Rattle his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. 

Nobody owns. 

—In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said. 

—But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who 

takes his own life. 

Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed 

and put it back. 

—The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power 

added. 


94 

—Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said 

decisively. We must take a charitable view of it. 

—They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus 

said. 

—It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said. 

Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin 

Cunningham’s large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic 

human man he is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare’s face. Always 

a good word to say. They have no mercy on that here or 

infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to drive a stake 

of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn’t broken 

already. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the 

riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful 

drunkard of a wife of his. Setting up house for her time after 

time and then pawning the furniture on him every Saturday 

almost. Leading him the life of the damned. Wear the heart 

out of a stone, that. Monday morning. Start afresh. Shoulder 

to the wheel. Lord, she must have looked a sight that 

night Dedalus told me he was in there. Drunk about the 

place and capering with Martin’s umbrella.

And they call me the jewel of Asia, 

Of Asia, 

The geisha. 

He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones. 

That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the 

table. The room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it 

was. Sunlight through the slats of the Venetian blind. The 

coroner’s sunlit ears, big and hairy. Boots giving evidence. 

Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks on his 

face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose. 

Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son Leopold. 

No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns. 

The carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over 

the stones. 

—We are going the pace, I think, Martin Cunningham 

said. 

—God grant he doesn’t upset us on the road, Mr Power 

said. 

—I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a 

great race tomorrow in Germany. The Gordon Bennett. 


95 

—Yes, by Jove, Mr Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, 

faith. 

As they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the 

Basin sent over and after them a rollicking rattling song of 

the halls. Has anybody here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell 

wy. Dead March from Saul. He’s as bad as old Antonio. He 

left me on my ownio. Pirouette! The Mater Misericordiae. 

Eccles street. My house down there. Big place. Ward for 

incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady’s Hospice for 

the dying. Deadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs 

Riordan died. They look terrible the women. Her feeding 

cup and rubbing her mouth with the spoon. Then the screen 

round her bed for her to die. Nice young student that was 

dressed that bite the bee gave me. He’s gone over to the lying-in 

hospital they told me. From one extreme to the other. 

The carriage galloped round a corner: stopped. 

—What’s wrong now? 

A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, 

slouching by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly 

on their clotted bony croups. Outside them and through 

them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear.

—Emigrants, Mr Power said. 

—Huuuh! the drover’s voice cried, his switch sounding on 

their flanks. 

Huuuh! out of that! 

Thursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. 

Cuffe sold them about twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool 

probably. Roastbeef for old England. They buy up all the 

juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter lost: all that raw stuff, 

hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a year. Dead meat 

trade. Byproducts of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap, 

margarine. Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky 

meat off the train at Clonsilla. 

The carriage moved on through the drove. 

—I can’t make out why the corporation doesn’t run a 

tramline from the parkgate to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All 

those animals could be taken in trucks down to the boats. 

—Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin 

Cunningham said. Quite right. They ought to. 

—Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought, 

is to have municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, 

you know. Run the line out to the cemetery gates and have 


96 

special trams, hearse and carriage and all. Don’t you see what 

I mean? 

—O, that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman 

car and saloon diningroom. 

—A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added. 

—Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. 

Wouldn’t it be more decent than galloping two abreast? 

—Well, there’s something in that, Mr Dedalus granted. 

—And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn’t have scenes 

like that when the hearse capsized round Dunphy’s and upset 

the coffin on to the road. 

—That was terrible, Mr Power’s shocked face said, and the 

corpse fell about the road. Terrible! 

—First round Dunphy’s, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon 

Bennett cup. 

—Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously. 

Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst 

open. Paddy Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the 

dust in a brown habit too large for him. Red face: grey now. 

Mouth fallen open. Asking what’s up now. Quite right to 

close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose

quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also. 

With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all. 

—Dunphy’s, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned 

right. 

Dunphy’s corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning 

their grief. A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a 

pub. Expect we’ll pull up here on the way back to drink his 

health. Pass round the consolation. Elixir of life. 

But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail 

say cut him in the knocking about? He would and he 

wouldn’t, I suppose. Depends on where. The circulation stops. 

Still some might ooze out of an artery. It would be better to 

bury them in red: a dark red. 

In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty 

hearse trotted by, coming from the cemetery: looks relieved. 

Crossguns bridge: the royal canal. 

Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on 

his dropping barge, between clamps of turf. On the towpath 

by the lock a slacktethered horse. Aboard of the Bugabu. 

Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he 

had floated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a 


97 

haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked 

bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could 

make a walking tour to see Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. 

Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at 

the auction but a lady’s. Developing waterways. James 

M’Cann’s hobby to row me o’er the ferry. Cheaper transit. 

By easy stages. Houseboats. Camping out. Also hearses. To 

heaven by water. Perhaps I will without writing. Come as a 

surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down lock by lock to 

Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted 

his brown straw hat, saluting Paddy Dignam. 

They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now. 

—I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Power 

said. 

—Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said. 

—How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him weeping, 

I suppose? 

—Though lost to sight, Mr Dedalus said, to memory dear. 

The carriage steered left for Finglas road. 

The stonecutter’s yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on 

the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, hold-

ing out calm hands, knelt in grief, pointing. Fragments of 

shapes, hewn. In white silence: appealing. The best obtainable. 

Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor. 

Passed. 

On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton’s, an old 

tramp sat, grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of 

his huge dustbrown yawning boot. After life’s journey. 

Gloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses. 

Mr Power pointed. 

—That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last 

house. 

—So it is, Mr Dedalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour 

Bushe got him off. Murdered his brother. Or so they said. 

—The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said. 

—Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham added. That’s 

the maxim of the law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape 

than for one innocent person to be wrongfully condemned. 

They looked. Murderer’s ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, 

tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. 

Wrongfully condemned. Murder. The murderer’s image in 

the eye of the murdered. They love reading about it. Man’s 


98 

head found in a garden. Her clothing consisted of. How she 

met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used. Murderer 

is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed. 

Murder will out. 

Cramped in this carriage. She mightn’t like me to come 

that way without letting her know. Must be careful about 

women. Catch them once with their pants down. Never forgive 

you after. Fifteen. 

The high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark 

poplars, rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes 

thronged amid the trees, white forms and fragments streaming 

by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the air. 

The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin 

Cunningham put out his arm and, wrenching back the 

handle, shoved the door open with his knee. He stepped 

out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus followed. 

Change that soap now. Mr Bloom’s hand unbuttoned his 

hip pocket swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his 

inner handkerchief pocket. He stepped out of the carriage, 

replacing the newspaper his other hand still held. 

Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It’s all the same.

Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp 

of death. Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his 

barrow of cakes and fruit. Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: 

cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits. Who ate them? 

Mourners coming out. 

He followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert 

followed, Hynes walking after them. Corny Kelleher 

stood by the opened hearse and took out the two wreaths. 

He handed one to the boy. 

Where is that child’s funeral disappeared to? 

A team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding 

tread, dragging through the funereal silence a creaking 

waggon on which lay a granite block. The waggoner marching 

at their head saluted. 

Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking 

round at it with his plume skeowways. Dull eye: collar 

tight on his neck, pressing on a bloodvessel or something. 

Do they know what they cart out here every day? Must be 

twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for 

the protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere every 

minute. Shovelling them under by the cartload doublequick. 


99 

Thousands every hour. Too many in the world. 

Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. 

Leanjawed harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. 

Girl’s face stained with dirt and tears, holding the woman’s 

arm, looking up at her for a sign to cry. Fish’s face, bloodless 

and livid. 

The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through 

the gates. So much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping 

out of that bath. First the stiff: then the friends of the 

stiff. Corny Kelleher and the boy followed with their wreaths. 

Who is that beside them? Ah, the brother-in-law. 

All walked after. 

Martin Cunningham whispered: 

—I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before 

Bloom. 

—What? Mr Power whispered. How so? 

—His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. 

Had the Queen’s hotel in Ennis. You heard him say 

he was going to Clare. Anniversary. 

—O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned 

himself?

He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking 

eyes followed towards the cardinal’s mausoleum. Speaking. 

—Was he insured? Mr Bloom asked. 

—I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was 

heavily mortgaged. Martin is trying to get the youngster into 

Artane. 

—How many children did he leave? 

—Five. Ned Lambert says he’ll try to get one of the girls 

into Todd’s. 

—A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children. 

—A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added. 

—Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed. 

Has the laugh at him now. 

He looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. 

She had outlived him. Lost her husband. More dead for her 

than for me. One must outlive the other. Wise men say. There 

are more women than men in the world. Condole with her. 

Your terrible loss. I hope you’ll soon follow him. For Hindu 

widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who 

knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the old queen 

died. Drawn on a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore 


100 

memorial mourning. But in the end she put a few violets in 

her bonnet. Vain in her heart of hearts. All for a shadow. 

Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance. Something 

new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, 

waiting. It never comes. One must go first: alone, under the 

ground: and lie no more in her warm bed. 

—How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping 

hands. Haven’t seen you for a month of Sundays. 

—Never better. How are all in Cork’s own town? 

—I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, 

Ned Lambert said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped 

with Dick Tivy. 

—And how is Dick, the solid man? 

—Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered. 

—By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. 

Dick Tivy bald? 

—Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, 

Ned Lambert said, pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to 

keep them going till the insurance is cleared up. 

—Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest

oy in front? 

—Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife’s brother. John 

Henry Menton is behind. He put down his name for a quid. 

—I’ll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor 

Paddy he ought to mind that job. John Henry is not the 

worst in the world. 

—How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what? 

—Many a good man’s fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh. 

They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr 

Bloom stood behind the boy with the wreath looking down 

at his sleekcombed hair and at the slender furrowed neck 

inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was he there when the 

father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last moment 

and recognise for the last time. All he might have done. I 

owe three shillings to O’Grady. Would he understand? The 

mutes bore the coffin into the chapel. Which end is his head? 

After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the 

screened light. The coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, 

four tall yellow candles at its corners. Always in front of us. 

Corny Kelleher, laying a wreath at each fore corner, beckoned 

to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt here and there 


101 

in prayingdesks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, 

when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper 

from his pocket and knelt his right knee upon it. He 

fitted his black hat gently on his left knee and, holding its 

brim, bent over piously. 

A server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came 

out through a door. The whitesmocked priest came after him, 

tidying his stole with one hand, balancing with the other a 

little book against his toad’s belly. Who’ll read the book? I, 

said the rook. 

They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of 

his book with a fluent croak. 

Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Dominenamine. 

Bully about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. 

Muscular christian. Woe betide anyone that looks crooked 

at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst sideways like a sheep in 

clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him like a poisoned 

pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn: 

burst sideways. 

—Non intres in judici;um cum servo tuo, Domine. 

Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin.

Requiem mass. Crape weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your 

name on the altarlist. Chilly place this. Want to feed well, 

sitting in there all the morning in the gloom kicking his heels 

waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too. What swells 

him up that way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the 

place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an infernal 

lot of bad gas round the place. Butchers, for instance: they 

get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Browne. 

Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ hundred 

and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes 

to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. 

One whiff of that and you’re a doner. 

My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That’s better. 

The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of 

the boy’s bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked 

to the other end and shook it again. Then he came back and 

put it back in the bucket. As you were before you rested. It’s 

all written down: he has to do it. 

—Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. 

The server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought 

it would be better to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. 


102 

After that, of course … 

Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He 

must be fed up with that job, shaking that thing over all the 

corpses they trot up. What harm if he could see what he was 

shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged 

men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men 

with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with 

little sparrows’ breasts. All the year round he prayed the same 

thing over them all and shook water on top of them: sleep. 

On Dignam now. 

—In paradisum. 

Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that 

over everybody. Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say 

something. 

The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the 

server. Corny Kelleher opened the sidedoors and the 

gravediggers came in, hoisted the coffin again, carried it out 

and shoved it on their cart. Corny Kelleher gave one wreath 

to the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All followed them 

out of the sidedoors into the mild grey air. Mr Bloom came 

last folding his paper again into his pocket. He gazed gravely

at the ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the left. The 

metal wheels ground the gravel with a sharp grating cry and 

the pack of blunt boots followed the trundled barrow along 

a lane of sepulchres. 

The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn’t lilt 

here. 

—The O’Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him. 

Mr Power’s soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone. 

—He’s at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old 

Dan O’. But his heart is buried in Rome. How many broken 

hearts are buried here, Simon! 

—Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I’ll soon 

be stretched beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes. 

Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling 

a little in his walk. Mr Power took his arm. 

—She’s better where she is, he said kindly. 

—I suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose 

she is in heaven if there is a heaven. 

Corny Kelleher stepped aside from his rank and allowed 

the mourners to plod by. 

—Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely. 


103 

Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head. 

—The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I 

suppose we can do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a 

treacherous place. 

They covered their heads. 

—The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, 

don’t you think? Mr Kernan said with reproof. 

Mr Bloom nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot 

eyes. Secret eyes, secretsearching. Mason, I think: not sure. 

Beside him again. We are the last. In the same boat. Hope 

he’ll say something else. 

Mr Kernan added: 

—The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is 

simpler, more impressive I must say. 

Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course 

was another thing. 

Mr Kernan said with solemnity: 

—I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man’s 

inmost heart. 

—It does, Mr Bloom said. 

Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet

y two with his toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of 

the affections. Broken heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands 

of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it gets 

bunged up: and there you are. Lots of them lying around 

here: lungs, hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing 

else. The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you 

are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them all up out of 

their graves. Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and 

lost the job. Get up! Last day! Then every fellow mousing 

around for his liver and his lights and the rest of his traps. 

Find damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight of powder 

in a skull. Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure. 

Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side. 

—Everything went off A1, he said. What? 

He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman’s 

shoulders. With your tooraloom tooraloom. 

—As it should be, Mr Kernan said. 

—What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said. 

Mr Kernan assured him. 

—Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry 


104 

Menton asked. I know his face. 

Ned Lambert glanced back. 

—Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I 

mean, the soprano. She’s his wife. 

—O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven’t seen 

her for some time. he was a finelooking woman. I danced 

with her, wait, fifteen seventeen golden years ago, at Mat 

Dillon’s in Roundtown. And a good armful she was. 

He looked behind through the others. 

—What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn’t he in 

the stationery line? I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, 

at bowls. 

Ned Lambert smiled. 

—Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely’s. A traveller for 

blottingpaper. 

—In God’s name, John Henry Menton said, what did she 

marry a coon like that for? She had plenty of game in her 

then. 

—Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing 

for ads. 

John Henry Menton’s large eyes stared ahead.

The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed 

among the grasses, raised his hat in homage. The 

gravediggers touched their caps. 

—John O’Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets 

a friend. 

Mr O’Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus 

said: 

—I am come to pay you another visit. 

—My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I 

don’t want your custom at all. 

Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked 

on at Martin Cunningham’s side puzzling two long keys at 

his back. 

—Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy 

from the Coombe? 

—I did not, Martin Cunningham said. 

They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his 

ear. The caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold 

watchchain and spoke in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles. 

—They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out 

here one foggy evening to look for the grave of a friend of 


105 

theirs. They asked for Mulcahy from the Coombe and were 

told where he was buried. After traipsing about in the fog 

they found the grave sure enough. One of the drunks spelt 

out the name: Terence Mulcahy. The other drunk was blinking 

up at a statue of Our Saviour the widow had got put up. 

The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they 

passed. He resumed: 

—And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, Not a bloody 

bit like the man, says he. That’s not Mulcahy, says he, whoever 

done it. 

Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny 

Kelleher, accepting the dockets given him, turning them over 

and scanning them as he walked. 

—That’s all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham 

explained to Hynes. 

—I know, Hynes said. I know that. 

—To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It’s pure 

goodheartedness: damn the thing else. 

Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All 

want to be on good terms with him. Decent fellow, John 

O’Connell, real good sort. Keys: like Keyes’s ad: no fear of

anyone getting out. No passout checks. Habeat corpus. I must 

see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge 

on the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing 

to Martha? Hope it’s not chucked in the dead letter office. 

Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That’s 

the first sign when the hairs come out grey. And temper getting 

cross. Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his 

wife. Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. 

Come out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. 

It might thrill her first. Courting death ... Shades of night 

hovering here with all the dead stretched about. The shadows 

of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel 

O’Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used 

to say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same 

like a big giant in the dark. Will o’ the wisp. Gas of graves. 

Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women especially 

are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make 

her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a 

pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve. Still 

they’d kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish 

graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You might pick 


106 

up a young widow here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones. 

Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we 

are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising for the poor dead. 

Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the starving. Gnawing their 

vitals. Desire to grig people. Molly wanting to do it at the 

window. Eight children he has anyway. 

He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around 

him field after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried 

them standing. Sitting or kneeling you couldn’t. Standing? 

His head might come up some day above ground in a landslip 

with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground 

must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim 

grass and edgings. His garden Major Gamble calls Mount 

Jerome. Well, so it is. Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese 

cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the best 

opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic Gardens are just 

over there. It’s the blood sinking in the earth gives new life. 

Same idea those jews they said killed the christian boy. Every 

man his price. Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, 

invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of William 

Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three

pounds thirteen and six. With thanks. 

I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, 

bones, flesh, nails. Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green 

and pink decomposing. Rot quick in damp earth. The lean 

old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy kind of a cheesy. 

Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing out of them. 

Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever 

they are go on living. Changing about. Live for ever practically. 

Nothing to feed on feed on themselves. 

But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must 

be simply swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. 

Those pretty little seaside gurls. He looks cheerful enough 

over it. Gives him a sense of power seeing all the others go 

under first. Wonder how he looks at life. Cracking his jokes 

too: warms the cockles of his heart. The one about the bulletin. 

Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. 11 p.m. 

(closing time). Not arrived yet. Peter. The dead themselves 

the men anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women 

to know what’s in fashion. A juicy pear or ladies’ punch, hot, 

strong and sweet. Keep out the damp. You must laugh sometimes 

so better do it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Shows 


107 

the profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren’t joke 

about the dead for two years at least. De mortuis nil nisi prius. 

Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral. Seems 

a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary notice they say you 

live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life. 

—How many have-you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked. 

—Two, Corny Kelleher said. Half ten and eleven. 

The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow 

had ceased to trundle. The mourners split and moved to each 

side of the hole, stepping with care round the graves. The 

gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose on the brink, 

looping the bands round it. 

Burying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of March 

or June. He doesn’t know who is here nor care. Now who is 

that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh? Now 

who is he I’d like to know? Now I’d give a trifle to know who 

he is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow 

could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he’d 

have to get someone to sod him after he died though he could 

dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No, ants too. 

First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson

Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every 

Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it. 

O, poor Robinson Crusoe! 

How could you possibly do so? 

Poor Dignam! His last lie on the earth in his box. When 

you think of them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed 

through. They could invent a handsome bier with a kind of 

panel sliding, let it down that way. Ay but they might object 

to be buried out of another fellow’s. They’re so particular. 

Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land. 

Only a mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one 

coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him as long as 

possible even in the earth. The Irishman’s house is his coffin. 

Embalming in catacombs, mummies the same idea. 

Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting 

the bared heads. Twelve. I’m thirteen. No. The chap in the 

macintosh is thirteen. Death’s number. Where the deuce did 

he pop out of? He wasn’t in the chapel, that I’ll swear. Silly 

superstition that about thirteen. 


108 

Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of 

purple. I had one like that when we lived in Lombard street 

west. Dressy fellow he was once. Used to change three suits 

in the day. Must get that grey suit of mine turned by Mesias. 

Hello. It’s dyed. His wife I forgot he’s not married or his 

landlady ought to have picked out those threads for him. 

The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men 

straddled on the gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: 

and all uncovered. Twenty. 

Pause. 

If we were all suddenly somebody else. 

Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a 

dead one, they say. Shame of death. They hide. Also poor 

papa went away. 

Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. 

Whisper. The boy by the gravehead held his wreath with 

both hands staring quietly in the black open space. Mr Bloom 

moved behind the portly kindly caretaker. Wellcut frockcoat. 

Weighing them up perhaps to see which will go next. Well, 

it is a long rest. Feel no more. It’s the moment you feel. Must 

be damned unpleasant. Can’t believe it at first. Mistake must

e: someone else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. 

I haven’t yet. Then darkened deathchamber. Light they want. 

Whispering around you. Would you like to see a priest? Then 

rambling and wandering. Delirium all you hid all your life. 

The death struggle. His sleep is not natural. Press his lower 

eyelid. Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw sinking are 

the soles of his feet yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it 

off on the floor since he’s doomed. Devil in that picture of 

sinner’s death showing him a woman. Dying to embrace her 

in his shirt. Last act of Lucia. Shall I nevermore behold thee? 

Bam! He expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit: 

forget you. Don’t forget to pray for him. Remember him in 

your prayers. Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they 

follow: dropping into a hole, one after the other. 

We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping 

you’re well and not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the 

fryingpan of life into the fire of purgatory. 

Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They 

say you do when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking 

over it. Callboy’s warning. Near you. Mine over there towards 

Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma, poor mamma, 


109 

and little Rudy. 

The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods 

of clay in on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned away his face. 

And if he was alive all the time? Whew! By jingo, that would 

be awful! No, no: he is dead, of course. Of course he is dead. 

Monday he died. They ought to have some law to pierce the 

heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the 

coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of distress. 

Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as 

well to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there’s no. 

The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, 

out of mind. 

The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. 

Had enough of it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by 

one, covering themselves without show. Mr Bloom put on 

his hat and saw the portly figure make its way deftly through 

the maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his ground, he traversed 

the dismal fields. 

Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the 

names. But he knows them all. No: coming to me. 

—I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath.

What is your christian name? I’m not sure. 

—L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down 

M’Coy’s name too. He asked me to. 

—Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the Freeman 

once. 

So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis 

Byrne. Good idea a postmortem for doctors. Find out what 

they imagine they know. He died of a Tuesday. Got the run. 

Levanted with the cash of a few ads. Charley, you’re my darling. 

That was why he asked me to. O well, does no harm. I 

saw to that, M’Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged. Leave 

him under an obligation: costs nothing. 

—And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, 

fellow was over there in the … 

He looked around. 

—Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is 

he now? 

—M’Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don’t know who he 

is. Is that his name? 

He moved away, looking about him. 

—No, Mr Bloom began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes! 


110 

Didn’t hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a 

sign. Well of all the. Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double 

ell. Become invisible. Good Lord, what became of him? 

A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up 

an idle spade. 

—O, excuse me! 

He stepped aside nimbly. 

Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. 

Nearly over. A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and 

the gravediggers rested their spades. All uncovered again for 

a few instants. The boy propped his wreath against a corner: 

the brother-in-law his on a lump. The gravediggers put on 

their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. 

Then knocked the blades lightly on the turf: clean. One 

bent to pluck from the haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving 

his mates, walked slowly on with shouldered weapon, its blade 

blueglancing. Silently at the gravehead another coiled the 

coffinband. His navelcord. The brother-in-law, turning away, 

placed something in his free hand. Thanks in silence. Sorry, 

sir: trouble. Headshake. I know that. For yourselves just. 

The mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devi-

ous paths, staying at whiles to read a name on a tomb. 

—Let us go round by the chief’s grave, Hynes said. We 

have time. 

—Let us, Mr Power said. 

They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. 

With awe Mr Power’s blank voice spoke: 

—Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin 

was filled with stones. That one day he will come again. 

Hynes shook his head. 

—Parnell will never come again, he said. He’s there, all 

that was mortal of him. Peace to his ashes. 

Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened 

angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying 

with upcast eyes, old Ireland’s hearts and hands. More 

sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. 

Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really? Plant 

him and have done with him. Like down a coalshoot. Then 

lump them together to save time. All souls’ day. 

Twentyseventh I’ll be at his grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. 

He keeps it free of weeds. Old man himself. Bent 

down double with his shears clipping. Near death’s door. Who 


111 

passed away. Who departed this life. As if they did it of their 

own accord. Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the 

bucket. More interesting if they told you what they were. So 

and So, wheelwright. I travelled for cork lino. I paid five 

shillings in the pound. Or a woman’s with her saucepan. I 

cooked good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country churchyard it 

ought to be that poem of whose is it Wordsworth or Thomas 

Campbell. Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr 

Murren’s. The great physician called him home. Well it’s God’s 

acre for them. Nice country residence. Newly plastered and 

painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke and read the Church 

Times. Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty wreaths 

hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil. Better value that for 

the money. Still, the flowers are more poetical. The other 

gets rather tiresome, never withering. Expresses nothing. 

Immortelles. 

A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. 

Like the wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo! 

Not a budge out of him. Knows there are no catapults to let 

fly at him. Dead animal even sadder. Silly-Milly burying the 

little dead bird in the kitchen matchbox, a daisychain and

its of broken chainies on the grave. 

The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. 

Ought to be sideways and red it should be painted like a real 

heart. Ireland was dedicated to it or whatever that. Seems 

anything but pleased. Why this infliction? Would birds come 

then and peck like the boy with the basket of fruit but he 

said no because they ought to have been afraid of the boy. 

Apollo that was. 

How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. 

Faithful departed. As you are now so once were we. 

Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, 

voice. Well, the voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone 

in every grave or keep it in the house. After dinner on a 

Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather. Kraahraark! 

Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain 

hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the 

photograph reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn’t 

remember the face after fifteen years, say. For instance who? 

For instance some fellow that died when I was in Wisdom 

Hely’s. 

Rtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop! 


112 

He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. 

Wait. There he goes. 

An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving 

the pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows 

the ropes. The grey alive crushed itself in under the plinth, 

wriggled itself in under it. Good hidingplace for treasure. 

Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. 

Robert Emmet was buried here by torchlight, wasn’t he? 

Making his rounds. 

Tail gone now. 

One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick 

the bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. 

A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of 

milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the Chinese say a 

white man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead 

against it. Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale burners and 

Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime feverpits 

to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. 

Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, 

fire, water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole 

life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can’t bury in

the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder does the 

news go about whenever a fresh one is let down. Underground 

communication. We learned that from them. Wouldn’t be 

surprised. Regular square feed for them. Flies come before he’s 

well dead. Got wind of Dignam. They wouldn’t care about 

the smell of it. Saltwhite crumbling mush of corpse: smell, 

taste like raw white turnips. 

The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world 

again. Enough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every 

time. Last time I was here was Mrs Sinico’s funeral. Poor 

papa too. The love that kills. And even scraping up the earth 

at night with a lantern like that case I read of to get at fresh 

buried females or even putrefied with running gravesores. 

Give you the creeps after a bit. I will appear to you after 

death. You will see my ghost after death. My ghost will haunt 

you after death. There is another world after death named 

hell. I do not like that other world she wrote. No more do I. 

Plenty to see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings 

near you. Let them sleep in their maggoty beds. They are 

not going to get me this innings. Warm beds: warm 

fullblooded life. 


113 

Martin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking 

gravely. 

Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton, John Henry, 

solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used 

to be in his office. Mat Dillon’s long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial 

evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the Tantalus glasses. Heart of 

gold really. Yes, Menton. Got his rag out that evening on the 

bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of mine: 

the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at 

first sight. Molly and Floey Dillon linked under the lilactree, 

laughing. Fellow always like that, mortified if women are by. 

Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably. 

—Excuse me, sir, Mr Bloom said beside them. 

They stopped. 

—Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said pointing. 

John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without 

moving. 

—There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also. John 

Henry Menton took off his hat, bulged out the dinge and 

smoothed the nap with care on his coatsleeve. He clapped 

the hat on his head again.

—It’s all right now, Martin Cunningham said. 

John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment. 

—Thank you, he said shortly. 

They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, 

drew behind a few paces so as not to overhear. Martin laying 

down the law. Martin could wind a sappyhead like that round 

his little finger, without his seeing it. 

Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it 

dawns on him. Get the pull over him that way. 

Thank you. How grand we are this morning! 


114 

IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN 

METROPOLIS 

BEFORE NELSON’S PILLAR TRAMS SLOWED, shunted, changed 

trolley, started for Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, 

Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure, Palmerston Park and upper 

Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines, Ringsend 

and Sandymount Tower, Harold’s Cross. The hoarse Dublin 

United Tramway Company’s timekeeper bawled them off: 

—Rathgar and Terenure! 

—Come on, Sandymount Green! 

Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and 

a singledeck moved from their railheads, swerved to the down 

line, glided parallel. 

—Start, Palmerston Park!

THE WEARER OF THE CROWN 

Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called 

and polished. Parked in North Prince’s street His Majesty’s 

vermilion mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, 

E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, 

lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local, provincial, 

British and overseas delivery. 

GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS 

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of 

Prince’s stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. 

On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled 

by grossbooted draymen out of Prince’s stores. 

—There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes. 

—Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I’ll take it 

round to the Telegraph office. 

The door of Ruttledge’s office creaked again. Davy 

Stephens, minute in a large capecoat, a small felt hat crown- 


115 

ing his ringlets, passed out with a roll of papers under his 

cape, a king’s courier. 

Red Murray’s long shears sliced out the advertisement from 

the newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste. 

—I’ll go through the printingworks, Mr Bloom said, taking 

the cut square. 

—Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, 

a pen behind his ear, we can do him one. 

—Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I’ll rub that in. 

We. 

WILLIAM BRAYDEN, 

ESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS, SANDYMOUNT 

Red Murray touched Mr Bloom’s arm with the shears and 

whispered: 

—Brayden. 

Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered 

cap as a stately figure entered between the newsboards 

of the Weekly Freeman and National Press and the Freeman’s

Journal and National Press. Dullthudding Guinness’s barrels. 

It passed statelily up the staircase, steered by an umbrella, a 

solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back ascended each 

step: back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck, Simon 

Dedalus says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck, 

fat, neck, fat, neck. 

—Don’t you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray 

whispered. 

The door of Ruttledge’s office whispered: ee: cree. They 

always build one door opposite another for the wind to. Way 

in. Way out. 

Our Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. 

Mary, Martha. Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights: 

Mario the tenor. 

—Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said. 

—Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the 

picture of Our Saviour. 

Jesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. 

Hand on his heart. In Martha. 


116 

Co-ome thou lost one, 

Co-ome thou dear one! 

THE CROZIER AND THE PEN 

—His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray 

said gravely. 

They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck. 

A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on 

the counter and stepped off posthaste with a word: 

—Freeman! 

Mr Bloom said slowly: 

—Well, he is one of our saviours also. 

A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, 

as he passed in through a sidedoor and along the warm dark 

stairs and passage, along the now reverberating boards. But 

will he save the circulation? Thumping. Thumping. 

He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping 

over strewn packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums 

he made his way towards Nannetti’s reading closet.

Hynes here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. 

Thump. 

WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE 

ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A 

MOST RESPECTED DUBLIN BURGESS 

This morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. 

Machines. Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught. 

Rule the world today. His machineries are pegging away too. 

Like these, got out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing 

away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in. 

HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED 

OUT 

Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman’s spare body, admiring 

a glossy crown. 

Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. 


117 

Member for College green. He boomed that workaday worker 

tack for all it was worth. It’s the ads and side features sell a 

weekly, not the stale news in the official gazette. Queen Anne 

is dead. Published by authority in the year one thousand 

and. Demesne situate in the townland of Rosenallis, barony 

of Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern schedule pursuant 

to statute showing return of number of mules and jennets 

exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil 

Blake’s weekly Pat and Bull story. Uncle Toby’s page for tiny 

tots. Country bumpkin’s queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a 

good cure for flatulence? I’d like that part. Learn a lot teaching 

others. The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. 

Shapely bathers on golden strand. World’s biggest balloon. 

Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms 

laughing heartily at each other. Cuprani too, printer. More 

Irish than the Irish. 

The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, 

thump. Now if he got paralysed there and no-one knew how 

to stop them they’d clank on and on the same, print it over 

and over and up and back. Monkeydoodle the whole thing. 

Want a cool head.

—Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes 

said. 

Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing 

him, they say. 

The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner 

of the sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed 

the sheet silently over the dirty glass screen. 

—Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off. 

Mr Bloom stood in his way. 

—If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he 

said, pointing backward with his thumb. 

—Did you? Hynes asked. 

—Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you’ll catch him. 

—Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I’ll tap him too. 

He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman’s Journal. 

Three bob I lent him in Meagher’s. Three weeks. Third 

hint. 


118 

WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK 

Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr Nannetti’s desk. 

—Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, 

you remember? 

Mr Nannetti considered the cutting awhile and nodded. 

—He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said. 

The foreman moved his pencil towards it. 

—But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, 

you see. He wants two keys at the top. 

Hell of a racket they make. He doesn’t hear it. Nannan. 

Iron nerves. Maybe he understands what I. 

The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting 

an elbow, began to scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca 

jacket. 

—Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the 

top. 

Let him take that in first. 

Mr Bloom, glancing sideways up from the cross he had 

made, saw the foreman’s sallow face, think he has a touch of 

jaundice, and beyond the obedient reels feeding in huge webs

of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it unreeled. What becomes 

of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses, 

thousand and one things. 

Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking 

he drew swiftly on the scarred woodwork. 

HOUSE OF KEY(E)S 

—Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then 

here the name. Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. 

So on. 

Better not teach him his own business. 

—You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then 

round the top in leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you 

think that’s a good idea? 

The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs 

and scratched there quietly. 

—The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know, 

councillor, the Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. 

Tourists, you know, from the isle of Man. Catches the eye, 


119 

you see. Can you do that? 

I could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that 

voglio. But then if he didn’t know only make it awkward for 

him. Better not. 

—We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design? 

—I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. 

He has a house there too. I’ll just run out and ask him. Well, 

you can do that and just a little par calling attention. You 

know the usual. Highclass licensed premises. Longfelt want. 

So on. 

The foreman thought for an instant. 

—We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months’ 

renewal. 

A typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to 

check it silently. Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs 

of cranks, watching the silent typesetters at their cases.

ORTHOGRAPHICAL 

Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin 

Cunningham forgot to give us his spellingbee conundrum 

this morning. It is amusing to view the unpar one ar alleled 

embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed pedlar 

while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear 

under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn’t it? Cemetery put in of course 

on account of the symmetry. 

I should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank 

you. I ought to have said something about an old hat or 

something. No. I could have said. Looks as good as new 

now. See his phiz then. 

Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward 

its flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. 

Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt to call attention. 

Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt creaking, 

asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt. 


120 

NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL 

CONTRIBUTOR 

The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying: 

—Wait. Where’s the archbishop’s letter? It’s to be repeated 

in the Telegraph. Where’s what’s his name? 

He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines. 

—Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox. 

—Ay. Where’s Monks? 

—Monks! 

Mr Bloom took up his cutting. Time to get out. 

—Then I’ll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you’ll 

give it a good place I know. 

—Monks! 

—Yes, sir. 

Three months’ renewal. Want to get some wind off my 

chest first. Try it anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: 

horseshow month. Ballsbridge. Tourists over for the show.

A DAYFATHER 

He walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, 

bowed, spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. 

Queer lot of stuff he must have put through his hands in his 

time: obituary notices, pubs’ ads, speeches, divorce suits, 

found drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now. Sober 

serious man with a bit in the savingsbank I’d say. Wife a 

good cook and washer. Daughter working the machine in 

the parlour. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense. 

AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASS- 

OVER 

He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing 

type. Reads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must 

require some practice that. mangiD kcirtaP. Poor papa with 

his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to me. 

Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long 

business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and 


121 

into the house of bondage alleluia. Shema Israel Adonai 

Elohenu. No, that’s the other. Then the twelve brothers, Jacob’s 

sons. And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the 

stick and the water and the butcher. And then the angel of 

death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills 

the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you come to look into it well. 

Justice it means but it’s everybody eating everyone else. That’s 

what life is after all. How quickly he does that job. Practice 

makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers. 

Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through 

the gallery on to the landing. Now am I going to tram it out 

all the way and then catch him out perhaps. Better phone 

him up first. Number? Yes. Same as Citron’s house. 

Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four. 

ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP 

He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled 

all over those walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for 

a bet. Heavy greasy smell there always is in those works.

Lukewarm glue in Thom’s next door when I was there. 

He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? 

Ah, the soap I put there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting 

back his handkerchief he took out the soap and stowed it 

away, buttoned, into the hip pocket of his trousers. 

What perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: 

tram: something I forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. 

Here. No. 

A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph 

office. Know who that is. What’s up? Pop in a minute 

to phone. Ned Lambert it is. 

He entered softly. 

ERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA 

—The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, 

biscuitfully to the dusty windowpane. 

Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned 

Lambert’s quizzing face, asked of it sourly: 

—Agonising Christ, wouldn’t it give you a heartburn on 

your arse? 


122 

Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on: 

—Or again, note the meanderings of some purling rill as it 

babbles on its way, tho’ quarrelling with the stony obstacles, to 

the tumbling waters of Neptune’s blue domain, ‘mid mossy banks, 

fanned by gentlest zephyrs, played on by the glorious sunlight or 

‘neath the shadows cast o’er its pensive bosom by the overarching 

leafage of the giants of the forest. What about that, Simon? he 

asked over the fringe of his newspaper. How’s that for high? 

—Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said. 

Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, 

repeating: 

—The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage. O boys! O 

boys! 

—And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Dedalus 

said, looking again on the fireplace and to the window, and 

Marathon looked on the sea. 

—That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. 

I don’t want to hear any more of the stuff. 

He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling 

and, hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in his

other hand. 

High falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a 

day off I see. Rather upsets a man’s day, a funeral does. He 

has influence they say. Old Chatterton, the vicechancellor, 

is his granduncle or his greatgranduncle. Close on ninety 

they say. Subleader for his death written this long time perhaps. 

Living to spite them. Might go first himself. Johnny, 

make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges 

Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque 

or two on gale days. Windfall when he kicks out. Alleluia. 

—Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said. 

—What is it? Mr Bloom asked. 

—A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor 

MacHugh answered with pomp of tone. Our lovely land. 

SHORT BUT TO THE POINT 

—Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply. 

—Most pertinent question, the professor said between his 

chews. With an accent on the whose. 

—Dan Dawson’s land Mr Dedalus said. 


123 

—Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked. 

Ned Lambert nodded. 

—But listen to this, he said. 

The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as 

the door was pushed in. 

—Excuse me, J. J. O’Molloy said, entering. 

Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside. 

—I beg yours, he said. 

—Good day, Jack. 

—Come in. Come in. 

—Good day. 

—How are you, Dedalus? 

—Well. And yourself? 

J. J. O’Molloy shook his head. 

SAD 

Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, 

poor chap. That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch 

and go with him. What’s in the wind, I wonder. Money worry. 

—Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks.

—You’re looking extra. 

—Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O’Molloy asked, looking 

towards the inner door. 

—Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and 

heard. He’s in his sanctum with Lenehan. 

J. J. O’Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to 

turn back the pink pages of the file. 

Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. 

Debts of honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get 

good retainers from D. and T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show 

the grey matter. Brains on their sleeve like the statue in 

Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the Express 

with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began 

on the Independent. Funny the way those newspaper men veer 

about when they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. 

Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn’t know which to 

believe. One story good till you hear the next. Go for one 

another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over. Hail 

fellow well met the next moment. 

—Ah, listen to this for God’ sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. 

Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks … 


124 

—Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the 

inflated windbag! 

—Peaks, Ned Lambert went on, towering high on high, to 

bathe our souls, as it were … 

—Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! 

Yes? Is he taking anything for it? 

—As ‘twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland’s portfolio, 

unmatched, despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted 

prize regions, for very beauty, of bosky grove and undulating 

plain and luscious pastureland of vernal green, steeped in the 

transcendent translucent glow of our mild mysterious Irish twilight 

… 

HIS NATIVE DORIC 

—The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet. 

—That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the 

glowing orb of the moon shine forth to irradiate her silver 

effulgence … 

—O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. 

Shite and onions! That’ll do, Ned. Life is too short.

He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his 

bushy moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers. 

Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with 

delight. An instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over 

professor MacHugh’s unshaven blackspectacled face. 

—Doughy Daw! he cried. 

WHAT WETHERUP SAID 

All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down 

like hot cake that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn’t 

he? Why they call him Doughy Daw. Feathered his nest well 

anyhow. Daughter engaged to that chap in the inland revenue 

office with the motor. Hooked that nicely. Entertainments. 

Open house. Big blowout. Wetherup always said that. 

Get a grip of them by the stomach. 

The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked 

face, crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The 

bold blue eyes stared about them and the harsh voice asked: 

—What is it? 

—And here comes the sham squire himself! professor 


125 

MacHugh said grandly. 

—Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said 

in recognition. 

—Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must 

get a drink after that. 

—Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass. 

—Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, 

Ned. 

Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor’s blue 

eyes roved towards Mr Bloom’s face, shadowed by a smile. 

—Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked. 

MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED 

—North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. 

We won every time! North Cork and Spanish officers! 

—Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective 

glance at his toecaps. 

—In Ohio! the editor shouted. 

—So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed. 

Passing out he whispered to J. J. O’Molloy:

—Incipient jigs. Sad case. 

—Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted 

scarlet face. My Ohio! 

—A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long. 

O, HARP EOLIAN! 

He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket 

and, breaking off a piece, twanged it smartly between two 

and two of his resonant unwashed teeth. 

—Bingbang, bangbang. 

Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door. 

—Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to 

phone about an ad. 

He went in. 

—What about that leader this evening? professor MacHugh 

asked, coming to the editor and laying a firm hand on his 

shoulder. 

—That’ll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. 

Never you fret. Hello, Jack. That’s all right. 

—Good day, Myles, J. J. O’Molloy said, letting the pages 


126 

he held slip limply back on the file. Is that Canada swindle 

case on today? 

The telephone whirred inside. 

—Twentyeight … No, twenty … Double four … Yes. 

SPOT THE WINNER 

Lenehan came out of the inner office with Sport’s tissues. 

—Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. 

Sceptre with O. Madden up. 

He tossed the tissues on to the table. 

Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and 

the door was flung open. 

—Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops. 

Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the 

cringing urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of 

the hall and down the steps. The tissues rustled up in the 

draught, floated softly in the air blue scrawls and under the 

table came to earth. 

—It wasn’t me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir. 

—Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There’s

a hurricane blowing. 

Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting 

as he stooped twice. 

—Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It 

was Pat Farrell shoved me, sir. 

He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe. 

—Him, sir. 

—Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly. 

He hustled the boy out and banged the door to. 

J. J. O’Molloy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, 

seeking: 

—Continued on page six, column four. 

—Yes, Evening Telegraph here, Mr Bloom phoned from 

the inner office. Is the boss …? Yes, Telegraph … To where? 

Aha! Which auction rooms? … Aha! I see … Right. I’ll catch 

him. 


127 

A COLLISION ENSUES 

The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly 

and bumped against Lenehan who was struggling up with 

the second tissue. 

—Pardon, monsieur, Lenehan said, clutching him for an 

instant and making a grimace. 

—My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Are you 

hurt? I’m in a hurry. 

—Knee, Lenehan said. 

He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee: 

—The accumulation of the anno Domini. 

—Sorry, Mr Bloom said. 

He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. 

O’Molloy slapped the heavy pages over. The noise of two 

shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed in the bare hallway from 

the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps: 

—We are the boys of Wexford 

Who fought with heart and hand.

EXIT BLOOM 

—I’m just running round to Bachelor’s walk, Mr Bloom 

said, about this ad of Keyes’s. Want to fix it up. They tell me 

he’s round there in Dillon’s. 

He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The 

editor who, leaning against the mantelshelf, had propped 

his head on his hand, suddenly stretched forth an arm amply. 

—Begone! he said. The world is before you. 

—Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out. 

J. J. O’Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan’s hand and 

read them, blowing them apart gently, without comment. 

—He’ll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring 

through his blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look 

at the young scamps after him. 

—Show. Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window. 


128 

A STREET CORTEGE 

Both smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys 

in Mr Bloom’s wake, the last zigzagging white on the 

breeze a mocking kite, a tail of white bowknots. 

—Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, 

Lenehan said, and you’ll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off 

his flat spaugs and the walk. Small nines. Steal upon larks. 

He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor 

on sliding feet past the fireplace to J. J. O’Molloy who placed 

the tissues in his receiving hands. 

—What’s that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where 

are the other two gone? 

—Who? the professor said, turning. They’re gone round 

to the Oval for a drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Jack 

Hall. Came over last night. 

—Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where’s my hat? 

He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent 

of his jacket, jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled 

then in the air and against the wood as he locked his desk 

drawer.

—He’s pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low 

voice. 

—Seems to be, J. J. O’Molloy said, taking out a 

cigarettecase in murmuring meditation, but it is not always 

as it seems. Who has the most matches? 

THE CALUMET OF PEACE 

He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. 

Lenehan promptly struck a match for them and lit their 

cigarettes in turn. J. J. O’Molloy opened his case again and 

offered it. 

—Thanky vous, Lenehan said, helping himself. 

The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on 

his brow. He declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor 

MacHugh: 

—’Twas rank and fame that tempted thee, 

’Twas empire charmed they heart. 


129 

The professor grinned, locking his long lips. 

—Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford 

said. 

He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting 

it for him with quick grace, said: 

—Silence for my brandnew riddle! 

—Imperium Romanum, J. J. O’Molloy said gently. It sounds 

nobler than British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow 

of fat in the fire. 

Myles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the 

ceiling. 

—That’s it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in 

the fire. We haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell. 

THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME 

—Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two 

quiet claws. We mustn’t be led away by words, by sounds of 

words. We think of Rome, imperial, imperious, imperative. 

He extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained

shirtcuffs, pausing: 

—What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: 

sewers. The Jews in the wilderness and on the 

mountaintop said: It is meet to be here. Let us build an altar to 

Jehovah. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in 

his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his 

foot (on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. 

He gazed about him in his toga and he said: It is meet to be 

here. Let us construct a watercloset. 

—Which they accordingly did do, Lenehan said. Our old 

ancient ancestors, as we read in the first chapter of Guinness’s, 

were partial to the running stream. 

—They were nature’s gentlemen, J. J. O’Molloy murmured. 

But we have also Roman law. 

—And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh 

responded. 

—Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. 

O’Molloy asked. It was at the royal university dinner. Everything 

was going swimmingly ... 

—First my riddle, Lenehan said. Are you ready? 

Mr O’Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal 


130 

tweed, came in from the hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind 

him, uncovered as he entered. 

—Entrez, mes enfants! Lenehan cried. 

—I escort a suppliant, Mr O’Madden Burke said melodiously. 

Youth led by Experience visits Notoriety. 

—How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. 

Come in. Your governor is just gone. 

? ? ? 

Lenehan said to all: 

—Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, 

ponder, excogitate, reply. 

Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title 

and signature. 

—Who? the editor asked. 

Bit torn off. 

—Mr Garrett Deasy, Stephen said. 

—That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he 

short taken?

On swift sail flaming 

From storm and south 

He comes, pale vampire, 

Mouth to my mouth. 

—Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer 

over their shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned ...? 

Bullockbefriending bard. 

SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT 

—Good day, sir, Stephen answered blushing. The letter is 

not mine. Mr Garrett Deasy asked me to ... 

—O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his 

wife too. The bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, 

she had the foot and mouth disease and no mistake! The 

night she threw the soup in the waiter’s face in the Star and 

Garter. Oho! 

A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the run- 


131 

away wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O’Rourke, 

prince of Breffni. 

—Is he a widower? Stephen asked. 

—Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running 

down the typescript. Emperor’s horses. Habsburg. An 

Irishman saved his life on the ramparts of Vienna. Don’t you 

forget! Maximilian Karl O’Donnell, graf von Tirconnell in 

Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an Austrian 

fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild 

geese. O yes, every time. Don’t you forget that! 

—The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O’Molloy said 

quietly, turning a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a 

thank you job. 

Professor MacHugh turned on him. 

—And if not? he said. 

—I’ll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian 

it was one day …

LOST CAUSES 

NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED 

—We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. 

Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. 

We were never loyal to the successful. We serve them. 

I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the tongue of a 

race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money. 

Material domination. Dominus! Lord! Where is the spirituality? 

Lord Jesus? Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club. 

But the Greek! 

KYRIE ELEISON! 

A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened 

his long lips. 

—The Greek! he said again. Kyrios! Shining word! The 

vowels the Semite and the Saxon know not. Kyrie! The radiance 

of the intellect. I ought to profess Greek, the language 

of the mind. Kyrie eleison! The closetmaker and the 


132 

cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege 

subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at 

Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit, not an imperium, 

that went under with the Athenian fleets at Ægospotami. 

Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made 

a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a 

lost cause. 

He strode away from them towards the window. 

—They went forth to battle, Mr O’Madden Burke said 

greyly, but they always fell. 

—Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a 

brick received in the latter half of the matinée. Poor, poor, 

poor Pyrrhus! 

He whispered then near Stephen’s ear: 

LENEHAN’S LIMERICK 

—There’s a ponderous pundit Machugh 

Who wears goggles of ebony hue. 

As he mostly sees double

To wear them why trouble? 

I can’t see the Joe Miller can you. Can you? 

In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is 

beastly dead. 

Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket. 

—That’ll be all right, he said. I’ll read the rest after. That’ll 

be all right. 

Lenehan extended his hands in protest. 

—But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railwayline? 

—Opera? Mr O’Madden Burke’s sphinx face reriddled. 

Lenehan announced gladly: 

—The Rose of Castile. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. 

Gee! 

He poked Mr O’Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr 

O’Madden Burke fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning 

a gasp. 

—Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness. 

Lenehan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the 

rustling tissues. 

The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand 


133 

across Stephen’s and Mr O’Madden Burke’s loose ties. 

—Paris, past and present, he said. You look like 

communards. 

—Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O’Molloy 

said in quiet mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant 

of Finland between you? You look as though you had done 

the deed. General Bobrikoff. 

OMNIUM GATHERUM 

—We were only thinking about it, Stephen said. 

—All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics ... 

—The turf, Lenehan put in. 

—Literature, the press. 

—If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of 

advertisement. 

—And Madam Bloom, Mr O’Madden Burke added. The 

vocal muse. Dublin’s prime favourite. 

Lenehan gave a loud cough. 

—Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I

caught a cold in the park. The gate was open. 

YOU CAN DO IT! 

The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen’s shoulder. 

—I want you to write something for me, he said. Something 

with a bite in it. You can do it. I see it in your face. In 

the lexicon of youth … 

See it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer. 

—Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. 

Great nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All 

balls! Bulldosing the public! Give them something with a 

bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father, Son and 

Holy Ghost and Jakes M’Carthy. 

—We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O’Madden 

Burke said. 

Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare. 

—He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O’Molloy said. 


134 

THE GREAT GALLAHER 

—You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his 

hand in emphasis. Wait a minute. We’ll paralyse Europe as 

Ignatius Gallaher used to say when he was on the shaughraun, 

doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, that was a 

pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made 

his mark? I’ll tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism 

ever known. That was in eightyone, sixth of May, 

time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before 

you were born, I suppose. I’ll show you. 

He pushed past them to the files. 

—Look at here, he said turning. The New York World cabled 

for a special. Remember that time? 

Professor MacHugh nodded. 

—New York World, the editor said, excitedly pushing back 

his straw hat. Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I 

mean. Joe Brady and the rest of them. Where Skin-the-Goat 

drove the car. Whole route, see? 

—Skin-the-Goat, Mr O’Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. 

He has that cabman’s shelter, they say, down there at Butt

idge. Holohan told me. You know Holohan? 

—Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said. 

—And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, 

minding stones for the corporation. A night watchman. 

Stephen turned in surprise. 

—Gumley? he said. You don’t say so? A friend of my father’s, 

is it? 

—Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let 

Gumley mind the stones, see they don’t run away. Look at 

here. What did Ignatius Gallaher do? I’ll tell you. Inspiration 

of genius. Cabled right away. Have you Weekly Freeman 

of 17 March? Right. Have you got that? 

He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a 

point. 

—Take page four, advertisement for Bransome’s coffee, let 

us say. Have you got that? Right. 

The telephone whirred. 


135 

A DISTANT VOICE 

—I’ll answer it, the professor said, going. 

—B is parkgate. Good. 

His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating. 

—T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is 

Knockmaroon gate. 

The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock’s wattles. An 

illstarched dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust 

it back into his waistcoat. 

—Hello? EVENING TELEGRAPH here … Hello?… 

Who’s there?… Yes … Yes … Yes. 

—F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an 

alibi, Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston 

Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P. Got that? X is Davy’s publichouse 

in upper Leeson street. 

The professor came to the inner door. 

—Bloom is at the telephone, he said. 

—Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy’s 

publichouse, see?

CLEVER, VERY 

—Clever, Lenehan said. Very. 

—Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, 

the whole bloody history. 

Nightmare from which you will never awake. 

—I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick 

Adams, the besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put 

the breath of life in, and myself. 

Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing: 

—Madam, I’m Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba. 

—History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of 

Prince’s street was there first. There was weeping and gnashing 

of teeth over that. Out of an advertisement. Gregor Grey 

made the design for it. That gave him the leg up. Then Paddy 

Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the Star. Now 

he’s got in with Blumenfeld. That’s press. That’s talent. Pyatt! 

He was all their daddies! 

—The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and 

the brother-in-law of Chris Callinan. 

—Hello? … Are you there? … Yes, he’s here still. Come 


136 

across yourself. 

—Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the 

editor cried. He flung the pages down. 

—Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O’Madden Burke. 

—Very smart, Mr O’Madden Burke said. 

Professor MacHugh came from the inner office. 

—Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that 

some hawkers were up before the recorder ... 

—O yes, J. J. O’Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was 

walking home through the park to see all the trees that were 

blown down by that cyclone last year and thought she’d buy 

a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a commemoration 

postcard of Joe Brady or Number One or Skin-the-Goat. 

Right outside the viceregal lodge, imagine! 

—They’re only in the hook and eye department, Myles 

Crawford said. Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a 

man now at the bar like those fellows, like Whiteside, like 

Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O’Hagan. Eh? Ah, bloody nonsense. 

Psha! Only in the halfpenny place. 

His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls 

of disdain.

Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you 

know? Why did you write it then? 

RHYMES AND REASONS 

Mouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south 

a mouth? Must be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. 

Rhymes: two men dressed the same, looking the same, two 

by two. 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .la a tua pace 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .che parlar ti piace 

. . . . .mentrem che il vento, come fa, si tace. 

He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, 

in rose, in russet, entwining, per l’aer perso, in mauve, in 

purple, quella pacifica oriafiamma, gold of oriflamme, di 

rimirar fe piu ardenti. But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, 

underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb. 

—Speak up for yourself, Mr O’Madden Burke said. 


137 

SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY … 

J. J. O’Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage. 

—My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you 

put a false construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at 

present advised, for the third profession qua profession but 

your Cork legs are running away with you. Why not bring 

in Henry Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund 

Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod 

boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American 

cousin of the Bowery guttersheet not to mention Paddy Kelly’s 

Budget, Pue’s Occurrences and our watchful friend The 

Skibbereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic eloquence 

like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof. 

LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE 

—Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor 

cried in his face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 

1763. Dr Lucas. Who have you now like John

Philpot Curran? Psha! 

—Well, J. J. O’Molloy said, Bushe K.C., for example. 

—Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a 

strain of it in his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour 

Bushe. 

—He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor 

said, only for ... But no matter. 

J. J. O’Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and 

slowly: 

—One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened 

to in my life fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in 

that case of fratricide, the Childs murder case. Bushe defended 

him. 

AND IN THE PORCHES OF MINE EAR DID POUR. 

By the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. 

Or the other story, beast with two backs? 

—What was that? the professor asked. 


138 

ITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM 

—He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O’Molloy said, of 

Roman justice as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, 

the lex talionis. And he cited the Moses of Michelangelo in 

the vatican. 

—Ha. 

—A few wellchosen words, Lenehan prefaced. Silence! 

Pause. J. J. O’Molloy took out his cigarettecase. 

False lull. Something quite ordinary. 

Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his 

cigar. 

I have often thought since on looking back over that strange 

time that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of 

that match, that determined the whole aftercourse of both 

our lives.

A POLISHED PERIOD 

J. J. O’Molloy resumed, moulding his words: 

—He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen music, horned and 

terrible, of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of wisdom 

and of prophecy which, if aught that the imagination or 

the hand of sculptor has wroght in marble of soultransfigured 

and of soultransfiguring deserves to live, deserves to live. 

His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall. 

—Fine! Myles Crawford said at once. 

—The divine afflatus, Mr O’Madden Burke said. 

—You like it? J. J. O’Molloy asked Stephen. 

Stephen, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, 

blushed. He took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O’Molloy 

offered his case to Myles Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes 

as before and took his trophy, saying: 

—Muchibus thankibus. 


139 

A MAN OF HIGH MORALE 

—Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. 

O’Molloy said to Stephen. What do you think really of that 

hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets: A. E. the mastermystic? 

That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a nice old bag of 

tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that 

you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask 

him about planes of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must 

have been pulling A. E.’s leg. He is a man of the very highest 

morale, Magennis. 

Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? 

What did he say about me? Don’t ask. 

—No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the 

cigarettecase aside. Wait a moment. Let me say one thing. 

The finest display of oratory I ever heard was a speech made 

by John F Taylor at the college historical society. Mr Justice 

Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken 

and the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days), 

advocating the revival of the Irish tongue. 

He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:

—You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine 

the style of his discourse. 

—He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O’Molloy said, rumour 

has it, on the Trinity college estates commission. 

—He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, 

in a child’s frock. Go on. Well? 

—It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a 

finished orator, full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in 

chastened diction I will not say the vials of his wrath but 

pouring the proud man’s contumely upon the new movement. 

It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore 

worthless. 

He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, 

raised an outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling 

thumb and ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, 

steadied them to a new focus. 


140 

IMPROMPTU 

In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O’Molloy: 

—Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. 

That he had prepared his speech I do not believe for there 

was not even one shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean 

face had a growth of shaggy beard round it. He wore a loose 

white silk neckcloth and altogether he looked (though he 

was not) a dying man. 

His gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O’Molloy’s 

towards Stephen’s face and then bent at once to the ground, 

seeking. His unglazed linen collar appeared behind his bent 

head, soiled by his withering hair. Still seeking, he said: 

—When Fitzgibbon’s speech had ended John F Taylor rose 

to reply. Briefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his 

words were these. 

He raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves 

once more. Witless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and 

fro, seeking outlet. 

He began: 

—Mr Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great was my ad-

miration in listening to the remarks addressed to the youth of 

Ireland a moment since by my learned friend. It seemed to me 

that I had been transported into a country far away from this 

country, into an age remote from this age, that I stood in ancient 

Egypt and that I was listening to the speech of some high 

priest of that land addressed to the youthful moses. 

His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their 

smokes ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. 

And let our crooked smokes. Noble words coming. Look 

out. Could you try your hand at it yourself? 

—And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian 

high priest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride. I 

heard his words and their meaning was revealed to me. 

FROM THE FATHERS 

It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet 

are corrupted which neither if they were supremely good 

nor unless they were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse 

you! That’s saint Augustine. 


141 

—Why will you Jews not accept our culture, our religion and 

our language? You are a tribe of nomad herdsmen; we are mighty 

people. You have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of 

humanity and our galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with 

all manner merchandise furrow the waters of the known globe. 

You have but emerged from primitive conditions: we have literature, 

a priesthood, an agelong history and a polity. 

Nile. 

Child, man, effigy. 

By the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: 

a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart 

of stone. 

—You pray to a local and obsure idol: our temples, majestic 

and mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horus and 

Ammon Ra. Yours serfdom, awe and humbleness: ours thunder 

and the seas. Israel is weak and few are her children: Egypt is an 

host and terrible are her arms.Vagrants and daylabourers are 

you called: the world trembles at our name. 

A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his 

voice above it boldly:

—But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthful Moses listened 

to and accepted that view of life, had he bowed his head and 

bowed his will and bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition 

he would never have brought the chosen people out of 

their house of bondage, nor followed the pillar of the cloud by 

day. He would never have spoken with the eternal amid lightnings 

of Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have come down with the 

light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in 

his arms the tables of the law, graven in the language of the 

outlaw. 

He ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence. 

OMINOUS—FOR HIM! 

J. J. O’Molloy said not without regret: 

—And yet he died without having entered the land of 

promise. 

—A sudden—at—the—moment—though—from—lingering—illness—often—previously—expectorated—demise, 

Lenehan added. And with a great future behind him. 


142 

The troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway 

and pattering up the staircase. 

—That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted. Gone 

with the wind. Hosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. 

Miles of ears of porches. The tribune’s words, howled and 

scattered to the four winds. A people sheltered within his 

voice. Dead noise. Akasic records of all that ever anywhere 

wherever was. Love and laud him: me no more. 

I have money. 

—Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the 

agenda paper may I suggest that the house do now adjourn? 

—You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French 

compliment? Mr O’Madden Burke asked. ’Tis the hour, 

methinks, when the winejug, metaphorically speaking, is 

most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry. 

—That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are 

in favour say ay, Lenehan announced. The contrary no. I 

declare it carried. To which particular boosing shed? ... My 

casting vote is: Mooney’s! 

He led the way, admonishing: 

—We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will

we not? Yes, we will not. By no manner of means. 

Mr O’Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally’s 

lunge of his umbrella: 

—Lay on, Macduff! 

—Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Stephen 

on the shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys? 

He fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed 

typesheets. 

—Foot and mouth. I know. That’ll be all right. That’ll go 

in. Where are they? That’s all right. 

He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office. 

LET US HOPE 

J. J. O’Molloy, about to follow him in, said quietly to 

Stephen: 

—I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment. 

He went into the inner office, closing the door behind 

him. 


143 

—Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, 

isn’t it? It has the prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium! The sack of 

windy Troy. Kingdoms of this world. The masters of the 

Mediterranean are fellaheen today. 

The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their 

heels and rushed out into the street, yelling: 

—Racing special! 

Dublin. I have much, much to learn. 

They turned to the left along Abbey street. 

—I have a vision too, Stephen said. 

—Yes? the professor said, skipping to get into step. 

Crawford will follow. 

Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran: 

—Racing special! 

DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN 

Dubliners. 

—Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have 

lived fifty and fiftythree years in Fumbally’s lane.

—Where is that? the professor asked. 

—Off Blackpitts, Stephen said. 

Damp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. 

Face glistering tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. 

Akasic records. Quicker, darlint! 

On now. Dare it. Let there be life. 

—They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of 

Nelson’s pillar. They save up three and tenpence in a red tin 

letterbox moneybox. They shake out the threepenny bits and 

sixpences and coax out the pennies with the blade of a knife. 

Two and three in silver and one and seven in coppers. They 

put on their bonnets and best clothes and take their umbrellas 

for fear it may come on to rain. 

—Wise virgins, professor MacHugh said. 

LIFE ON THE RAW 

—They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four 

slices of panloaf at the north city diningrooms in Marlborough 

street from Miss Kate Collins, proprietress ... They purchase 


144 

four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at the foot of Nelson’s 

pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn. They give two 

threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile and begin to 

waddle slowly up the winding staircase, grunting, encouraging 

each other, afraid of the dark, panting, one asking the 

other have you the brawn, praising God and the Blessed Virgin, 

threatening to come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory 

be to God. They had no idea it was that high. 

Their names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne 

Kearns has the lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, 

given her by a lady who got a bottleful from a passionist 

father. Florence MacCabe takes a crubeen and a bottle of 

double X for supper every Saturday. 

—Antithesis, the professor said nodding twice. Vestal virgins. 

I can see them. What’s keeping our friend? 

He turned. 

A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, 

scattering in all directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. 

Hard after them Myles Crawford appeared on the 

steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face, talking with J. J. 

O’Molloy.

—Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm. 

He set off again to walk by Stephen’s side. 

RETURN OF BLOOM 

—Yes, he said. I see them. 

Mr Bloom, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys 

near the offices of the Irish Catholic and Dublin Penny Journal, 

called: 

—Mr Crawford! A moment! 

—Telegraph! Racing special! 

—What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace. 

A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom’s face: 

—Terrible tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows! 

INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR 

—Just this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through towards 

the steps, puffing, and taking the cutting from his pocket. I 


145 

spoke with Mr Keyes just now. He’ll give a renewal for two 

months, he says. After he’ll see. But he wants a par to call 

attention in the Telegraph too, the Saturday pink. And he 

wants it copied if it’s not too late I told councillor Nannetti 

from the Kilkenny People. I can have access to it in the national 

library. House of keys, don’t you see? His name is Keyes. 

It’s a play on the name. But he practically promised he’d give 

the renewal. But he wants just a little puff. What will I tell 

him, Mr Crawford? 

K.M.A. 

—Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford 

said throwing out his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight 

from the stable. 

A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm 

in arm. Lenehan’s yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual 

blarney. Wonder is that young Dedalus the moving spirit. 

Has a good pair of boots on him today. Last time I saw him 

he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck somewhere.

Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown? 

—Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the 

design I suppose it’s worth a short par. He’d give the ad, I 

think. I’ll tell him … 

K.M.R.I.A. 

—He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried 

loudly over his shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him. 

While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to 

smile he strode on jerkily. 

RAISING THE WIND 

—Nulla bona, Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. 

I’m up to here. I’ve been through the hoop myself. I was 

looking for a fellow to back a bill for me no later than last 

week. Sorry, Jack. You must take the will for the deed. With 

a heart and a half if I could raise the wind anyhow. 


146 

J. J. O’Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. 

They caught up on the others and walked abreast. 

—When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and 

wiped their twenty fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped 

in they go nearer to the railings. 

—Something for you, the professor explained to Myles 

Crawford. Two old Dublin women on the top of Nelson’s 

pillar. 

SOME COLUMN!—THAT’S WHAT WADDLER 

ONE SAID 

—That’s new, Myles Crawford said. That’s copy. Out for 

the waxies Dargle. Two old trickies, what? 

—But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. 

They see the roofs and argue about where the different 

churches are: Rathmines’ blue dome, Adam and Eve’s, saint 

Laurence O’Toole’s. But it makes them giddy to look so they 

pull up their skirts …

THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES 

—Easy all, Myles Crawford said. No poetic licence. We’re 

in the archdiocese here. 

—And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up 

at the statue of the onehandled adulterer. 

—Onehandled adulterer! the professor cried. I like that. I 

see the idea. I see what you mean. 

DAMES DONATE DUBLIN’S CITS SPEEDPILLS 

VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS, BELIEF 

—It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and 

they are too tired to look up or down or to speak. They put 

the bag of plums between them and eat the plums out of it, 

one after another, wiping off with their handkerchiefs the 

plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and spitting the 

plumstones slowly out between the railings. 

He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan 

and Mr O’Madden Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and 


147 

led on across towards Mooney’s. 

—Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no 

worse. 

SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE 

ON PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS GNASH MOLARS. 

ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP. 

—You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple 

of Gorgias, the sophist. It is said of him that none could 

tell if he were bitterer against others or against himself. He 

was the son of a noble and a bondwoman. And he wrote a 

book in which he took away the palm of beauty from Argive 

Helen and handed it to poor Penelope. 

Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich. 

They made ready to cross O’Connell street.

HELLO THERE, CENTRAL! 

At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless 

trolleys stood in their tracks, bound for or from 

Rathmines, Rathfarnham, Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, 

Sandymount Green, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, 

Donnybrook, Palmerston Park and Upper Rathmines, all still, 

becalmed in short circuit. Hackney cars, cabs, delivery 

waggons, mailvans, private broughams, aerated mineral water 

floats with rattling crates of bottles, rattled, rolled, 

horsedrawn, rapidly. 

WHAT?—AND LIKEWISE—WHERE? 

—But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where 

did they get the plums? 


148 

VIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE. 

SOPHOMORE PLUMPS FOR OLD MAN MOSES. 

—Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips 

wide to reflect. Call it, let me see. Call it: dues nobis hæc otia 

fecit. 

—No, Stephen said. I call it A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or 

the Parable of the Plums. 

—I see, the professor said. 

He laughed richly. 

—I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the 

promised land. We gave him that idea, he added to J. J. 

O’Molloy. 

HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAY 

J. J. O’Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the 

statue and held his peace. 

—I see, the professor said. 

He halted on sir John Gray’s pavement island and peered

aloft at Nelson through the meshes of his wry smile. 

DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING 

FOR FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE WIMBLES, FLO 

WANGLES—YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM? 

—Onehandled adulterer, he said smiling grimly. That tickles 

me, I must say. 

—Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the 

God Almighty’s truth was known. 


149 

PINEAPPLE ROCK, LEMON PLATT, BUTTER SCOTCH. A SUGARSTICKY 

girl shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. 

Some school treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit 

manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting 

on his throne sucking red jujubes white. 

A sombre Y.M.C.A. young man, watchful among the warm 

sweet fumes of Graham Lemon’s, placed a throwaway in a 

hand of Mr Bloom. 

Heart to heart talks. 

Bloo … Me? No. 

Blood of the Lamb. 

His slow feet walked him riverward, reading. Are you saved? 

All are washed in the blood of the lamb. God wants blood 

victim. Birth, hymen, martyr, war, foundation of a building, 

sacrifice, kidney burntoffering, druids’ altars. Elijah is coming. 

Dr John Alexander Dowie restorer of the church in Zion 

is coming.

Is coming! Is coming!! Is coming!!! 

All heartily welcom. 

Paying game. Torry and Alexander last year. Polygamy. His 

wife will put the stopper on that. Where was that ad some 

Birmingham firm the luminous crucifix. Our Saviour. Wake 

up in the dead of night and see him on the wall, hanging. 

Pepper’s ghost idea. Iron nails ran in. 

Phosphorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of 

codfish for instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night 

I went down to the pantry in the kitchen. Don’t like all the 

smells in it waiting to rush out. What was it she wanted? 

The Malaga raisins. Thinking of Spain. Before Rudy was 

born. The phosphorescence, that bluey greeny. Very good 

for the brain. 

From Butler’s monument house corner he glanced along 

Bachelor’s walk. Dedalus’ daughter there still outside Dillon’s 

auctionrooms. Must be selling off some old furniture. Knew 

her eyes at once from the father. Lobbing about waiting for 

him. Home always breaks up when the mother goes. Fifteen 

children he had. Birth every year almost. That’s in their the- 


150 

ology or the priest won’t give the poor woman the confession, 

the absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever 

hear such an idea? Eat you out of house and home. No families 

themselves to feed. Living on the fat of the land. Their 

butteries and larders. I’d like to see them do the black fast 

Yom Kippur. Crossbuns. One meal and a collation for fear 

he’d collapse on the altar. A housekeeper of one of those fellows 

if you could pick it out of her. Never pick it out of her. 

Like getting l.s.d. out of him. Does himself well. No guests. 

All for number one. Watching his water. Bring your own 

bread and butter. His reverence: mum’s the word. 

Good Lord, that poor child’s dress is in flitters. Underfed 

she looks too. Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It’s 

after they feel it. Proof of the pudding. Undermines the constitution. 

As he set foot on O’Connell bridge a puffball of smoke 

plumed up from the parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. 

England. Sea air sours it, I heard. Be interesting some day 

get a pass through Hancock to see the brewery. Regular world 

in itself. Vats of porter wonderful. Rats get in too. Drink 

themselves bloated as big as a collie floating. Dead drunk on

the porter. Drink till they puke again like christians. Imagine 

drinking that! Rats: vats. Well, of course, if we knew all 

the things. 

Looking down he saw flapping strongly, wheeling between 

the gaunt quaywalls, gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw 

myself down? Reuben J’s son must have swallowed a good 

bellyful of that sewage. One and eightpence too much. 

Hhhhm. It’s the droll way he comes out with the things. 

Knows how to tell a story too. 

They wheeled lower. Looking for grub. Wait. 

He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah 

thirtytwo feet per sec is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed 

unheeded on the wake of swells, floated under by the 

bridgepiers. Not such damn fools. Also the day I threw that 

stale cake out of the Erin’s King picked it up in the wake fifty 

yards astern. Live by their wits. They wheeled, flapping. 

The hungry famished gull 

Flaps o’er the water’s dull. 

That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then 


151 

Shakespeare has no rhymes: blank verse. The flow of the 

language it is. The thoughts. Solemn. 

Hamlet, I am thy father’s spirit 

Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth. 

—Two apples a penny! Two for a penny! 

His gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand. 

Australians they must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes 

them up with a rag or a handkerchief. 

Wait. Those poor birds. 

He halted again and bought from the old applewoman 

two Banbury cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste 

and threw its fragments down into the Liffey. See that? The 

gulls swooped silently, two, then all from their heights, pouncing 

on prey. Gone. Every morsel. 

Aware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery 

crumb from his hands. They never expected that. Manna. 

Live on fish, fishy flesh they have, all seabirds, gulls, seagoose. 

Swans from Anna Liffey swim down here sometimes to preen 

themselves. No accounting for tastes. Wonder what kind is

swanmeat. Robinson Crusoe had to live on them. 

They wheeled flapping weakly. I’m not going to throw any 

more. Penny quite enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a 

caw. They spread foot and mouth disease too. If you cram a 

turkey say on chestnutmeal it tastes like that. Eat pig like 

pig. But then why is it that saltwater fish are not salty? How 

is that? 

His eyes sought answer from the river and saw a rowboat 

rock at anchor on the treacly swells lazily its plastered board. 

Kino’s 

11/- 

Trousers 

Good idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. 

How can you own water really? It’s always flowing in a stream, 

never the same, which in the stream of life we trace. Because 

life is a stream. All kinds of places are good for ads. That 

quack doctor for the clap used to be stuck up in all the greenhouses. 

Never see it now. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks. 

Didn’t cost him a red like Maginni the dancing master self 

advertisement. Got fellows to stick them up or stick them 

up himself for that matter on the q. t. running in to loosen a 


152 

button. Flybynight. Just the place too. POST NO BILLS. POST 

110 PILLS. Some chap with a dose burning him. 

If he …? 

O! 

Eh? 

No … No. 

No, no. I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t surely? 

No, no. 

Mr Bloom moved forward, raising his troubled eyes. Think 

no more about that. After one. Timeball on the ballastoffice 

is down. Dunsink time. Fascinating little book that is of sir 

Robert Ball’s. Parallax. I never exactly understood. There’s a 

priest. Could ask him. Par it’s Greek: parallel, parallax. Met 

him pike hoses she called it till I told her about the transmigration. 

O rocks! 

Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the 

ballastoffice. She’s right after all. Only big words for ordinary 

things on account of the sound. She’s not exactly witty. 

Can be rude too. Blurt out what I was thinking. Still, I don’t 

know. She used to say Ben Dollard had a base barreltone 

voice. He has legs like barrels and you’d think he was singing

into a barrel. Now, isn’t that wit. They used to call him big 

Ben. Not half as witty as calling him base barreltone. Appetite 

like an albatross. Get outside of a baron of beef. Powerful 

man he was at stowing away number one Bass. Barrel of 

Bass. See? It all works out. 

A procession of whitesmocked sandwichmen marched 

slowly towards him along the gutter, scarlet sashes across their 

boards. Bargains. Like that priest they are this morning: we 

have sinned: we have suffered. He read the scarlet letters on 

their five tall white hats: H. E. L. Y. S. Wisdom Hely’s. Y 

lagging behind drew a chunk of bread from under his 

foreboard, crammed it into his mouth and munched as he 

walked. Our staple food. Three bob a day, walking along the 

gutters, street after street. Just keep skin and bone together, 

bread and skilly. They are not Boyl: no, M Glade’s men. 

Doesn’t bring in any business either. I suggested to him about 

a transparent showcart with two smart girls sitting inside 

writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blottingpaper. I bet 

that would have caught on. Smart girls writing something 

catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know what she’s 

writing. Get twenty of them round you if you stare at noth- 


153 

ing. Have a finger in the pie. Women too. Curiosity. Pillar of 

salt. Wouldn’t have it of course because he didn’t think of it 

himself first. Or the inkbottle I suggested with a false stain 

of black celluloid. His ideas for ads like Plumtree’s potted 

under the obituaries, cold meat department. You can’t lick 

‘em. What? Our envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? 

Can’t stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the 

only reliable inkeraser Kansell, sold by Hely’s Ltd, 85 Dame 

street. Well out of that ruck I am. Devil of a job it was collecting 

accounts of those convents. Tranquilla convent. That 

was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her 

small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love 

by her eyes. Very hard to bargain with that sort of a woman. 

I disturbed her at her devotions that morning. But glad to 

communicate with the outside world. Our great day, she said. 

Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name too: caramel. 

She knew I, I think she knew by the way she. If she had 

married she would have changed. I suppose they really were 

short of money. Fried everything in the best butter all the 

same. No lard for them. My heart’s broke eating dripping. 

They like buttering themselves in and out. Molly tasting it,

her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the pawnbroker’s daughter. It 

was a nun they say invented barbed wire. 

He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had 

plodded by. Rover cycleshop. Those races are on today. How 

long ago is that? Year Phil Gilligan died. We were in Lombard 

street west. Wait: was in Thom’s. Got the job in Wisdom 

Hely’s year we married. Six years. Ten years ago: ninetyfour 

he died yes that’s right the big fire at Arnott’s. Val Dillon was 

lord mayor. The Glencree dinner. Alderman Robert O’Reilly 

emptying the port into his soup before the flag fell. Bobbob 

lapping it for the inner alderman. Couldn’t hear what the 

band played. For what we have already received may the Lord 

make us. Milly was a kiddy then. Molly had that elephantgrey 

dress with the braided frogs. Mantailored with selfcovered 

buttons. She didn’t like it because I sprained my ankle first 

day she wore choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old 

Goodwin’s tall hat done up with some sticky stuff. Flies’ picnic 

too. Never put a dress on her back like it. Fitted her like 

a glove, shoulders and hips. Just beginning to plump it out 

well. Rabbitpie we had that day. People looking after her. 

Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the 


154 

red wallpaper. Dockrell’s, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly’s 

tubbing night. American soap I bought: elderflower. Cosy 

smell of her bathwater. Funny she looked soaped all over. 

Shapely too. Now photography. Poor papa’s daguerreotype 

atelier he told me of. Hereditary taste. 

He walked along the curbstone. 

Stream of life. What was the name of that priestylooking 

chap was always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, 

woman. Stopped in Citron’s saint Kevin’s parade. Pen something. 

Pendennis? My memory is getting. Pen ...? Of course 

it’s years ago. Noise of the trams probably. Well, if he couldn’t 

remember the dayfather’s name that he sees every day. 

Bartell d’Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing 

her home after practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup 

moustache. Gave her that song Winds That Blow from the 

South. 

Windy night that was I went to fetch her there was that 

lodge meeting on about those lottery tickets after Goodwin’s 

concert in the supperroom or oakroom of the Mansion house. 

He and I behind. Sheet of her music blew out of my hand 

against the High school railings. Lucky it didn’t. Thing like

that spoils the effect of a night for her. Professor Goodwin 

linking her in front. Shaky on his pins, poor old sot. His 

farewell concerts. Positively last appearance on any stage. May 

be for months and may be for never. Remember her laughing 

at the wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of Harcourt 

road remember that gust. Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and 

her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin. She did get flushed 

in the wind. Remember when we got home raking up the 

fire and frying up those pieces of lap of mutton for her supper 

with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the mulled rum. 

Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping 

the busk of her stays: white. 

Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. Always 

warm from her. Always liked to let her self out. Sitting there 

after till near two taking out her hairpins. Milly tucked up in 

beddyhouse. Happy. Happy. That was the night ... 

—O, Mr Bloom, how do you do? 

—O, how do you do, Mrs Breen? 

—No use complaining. How is Molly those times? Haven’t 

seen her for ages. 

—In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily. Milly has a position 


155 

down in Mullingar, you know. 

—Go away! Isn’t that grand for her? 

—Yes. In a photographer’s there. Getting on like a house 

on fire. How are all your charges? 

—All on the baker’s list, Mrs Breen said. 

How many has she? No other in sight. 

—You’re in black, I see. You have no … 

—No, Mr Bloom said. I have just come from a funeral. 

Going to crop up all day, I foresee. Who’s dead, when and 

what did he die of? Turn up like a bad penny. 

—O, dear me, Mrs Breen said. I hope it wasn’t any near 

relation. 

May as well get her sympathy. 

—Dignam, Mr Bloom said. An old friend of mine. He 

died quite suddenly, poor fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. 

Funeral was this morning. 

Your funeral’s tomorrow 

While you’re coming through the rye. 

Diddlediddle dumdum 

Diddlediddle …

—Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Breen’s womaneyes said 

melancholily. 

Now that’s quite enough about that. Just: quietly: husband. 

—And your lord and master? 

Mrs Breen turned up her two large eyes. Hasn’t lost them 

anyhow. 

—O, don’t be talking! she said. He’s a caution to rattlesnakes. 

He’s in there now with his lawbooks finding out the 

law of libel. He has me heartscalded. Wait till I show you. 

Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs 

rolypoly poured out from Harrison’s. The heavy noonreek 

tickled the top of Mr Bloom’s gullet. Want to make good 

pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara sugar, or they’d taste it 

with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab stood 

over the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw 

of hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife 

and fork chained to the table. 

Opening her handbag, chipped leather. Hatpin: ought to 

have a guard on those things. Stick it in a chap’s eye in the 

tram. Rummaging. Open. Money. Please take one. Devils if 


156 

they lose sixpence. Raise Cain. Husband barging. Where’s 

the ten shillings I gave you on Monday? Are you feeding 

your little brother’s family? Soiled handkerchief: 

medicinebottle. Pastille that was fell. What is she? ... 

—There must be a new moon out, she said. He’s always 

bad then. Do you know what he did last night? 

Her hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves 

on him, wide in alarm, yet smiling. 

—What? Mr Bloom asked. 

Let her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust 

me. 

—Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a 

nightmare. 

Indiges. 

—Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs. 

—The ace of spades! Mr Bloom said. 

She took a folded postcard from her handbag. 

—Read that, she said. He got it this morning. 

—What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U.P.? 

—U.P.: up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It’s 

a great shame for them whoever he is.

—Indeed it is, Mr Bloom said. 

She took back the card, sighing. 

—And now he’s going round to Mr Menton’s office. He’s 

going to take an action for ten thousand pounds, he says. 

She folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the 

catch. 

Same blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching. 

Seen its best days. Wispish hair over her ears. And that 

dowdy toque: three old grapes to take the harm out of it. 

Shabby genteel. She used to be a tasty dresser. Lines round 

her mouth. Only a year or so older than Molly. 

See the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair 

sex. 

He looked still at her, holding back behind his look his 

discontent. Pungent mockturtle oxtail mulligatawny. I’m 

hungry too. Flakes of pastry on the gusset of her dress: daub 

of sugary flour stuck to her cheek. Rhubarb tart with liberal 

fillings, rich fruit interior. Josie Powell that was. In Luke 

Doyle’s long ago. Dolphin’s Barn, the charades. U.P.: up. 

Change the subject. 

—Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy? Mr Bloom 


157 

asked. 

—Mina Purefoy? she said. 

Philip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers’ Club. Matcham 

often thinks of the masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. 

The last act. 

—Yes. 

—I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She’s in 

the lying-in hospital in Holles street. Dr Horne got her in. 

She’s three days bad now. 

—O, Mr Bloom said. I’m sorry to hear that. 

—Yes, Mrs Breen said. And a houseful of kids at home. It’s 

a very stiff birth, the nurse told me. 

—O, Mr Bloom said. 

His heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue 

clacked in compassion. Dth! Dth! 

—I’m sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thing! Three days! 

That’s terrible for her. 

Mrs Breen nodded. 

—She was taken bad on the Tuesday ... 

Mr Bloom touched her funnybone gently, warning her: 

—Mind! Let this man pass.

A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river 

staring with a rapt gaze into the sunlight through a 

heavystringed glass. Tight as a skullpiece a tiny hat gripped 

his head. From his arm a folded dustcoat, a stick and an 

umbrella dangled to his stride. 

—Watch him, Mr Bloom said. He always walks outside 

the lampposts. Watch! 

—Who is he if it’s a fair question? Mrs Breen asked. Is he 

dotty? 

—His name is Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall 

Farrell, Mr Bloom said smiling. Watch! 

—He has enough of them, she said. Denis will be like that 

one of these days. 

She broke off suddenly. 

—There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. 

Remember me to Molly, won’t you? 

—I will, Mr Bloom said. 

He watched her dodge through passers towards the 

shopfronts. Denis Breen in skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas 

shoes shuffled out of Harrison’s hugging two heavy tomes 

to his ribs. Blown in from the bay. Like old times. He suf- 


158 

fered her to overtake him without surprise and thrust his 

dull grey beard towards her, his loose jaw wagging as he spoke 

earnestly. 

Meshuggah. Off his chump. 

Mr Bloom walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in 

sunlight the tight skullpiece, the dangling 

stickumbrelladustcoat. Going the two days. Watch him! Out 

he goes again. One way of getting on in the world. And that 

other old mosey lunatic in those duds. Hard time she must 

have with him. 

U.P.: up. I’ll take my oath that’s Alf Bergan or Richie 

Goulding. Wrote it for a lark in the Scotch house I bet anything. 

Round to Menton’s office. His oyster eyes staring at 

the postcard. Be a feast for the gods. 

He passed the Irish Times. There might be other answers 

Iying there. Like to answer them all. Good system for criminals. 

Code. At their lunch now. Clerk with the glasses there 

doesn’t know me. O, leave them there to simmer. Enough 

bother wading through fortyfour of them. Wanted, smart 

lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work. I called you 

naughty darling because I do not like that other world. Please

tell me what is the meaning. Please tell me what perfume 

does your wife. Tell me who made the world. The way they 

spring those questions on you. And the other one Lizzie 

Twigg. My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet 

with the approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo. Russell). 

No time to do her hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of 

poetry. 

Best paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces 

now. Cook and general, exc. cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted 

live man for spirit counter. Resp. girl (R.C.) wishes to hear 

of post in fruit or pork shop. James Carlisle made that. Six 

and a half per cent dividend. Made a big deal on Coates’s 

shares. Ca’ canny. Cunning old Scotch hunks. All the toady 

news. Our gracious and popular vicereine. Bought the Irish 

Field now. Lady Mountcashel has quite recovered after her 

confinement and rode out with the Ward Union staghounds 

at the enlargement yesterday at Rathoath. Uneatable fox. 

Pothunters too. Fear injects juices make it tender enough for 

them. Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man. Weightcarrying 

huntress. No sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Joe. First 

to the meet and in at the death. Strong as a brood mare some 


159 

of those horsey women. Swagger around livery stables. Toss 

off a glass of brandy neat while you’d say knife. That one at 

the Grosvenor this morning. Up with her on the car: 

wishswish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount to it. 

Think that pugnosed driver did it out of spite. Who is this 

she was like? O yes! Mrs Miriam Dandrade that sold me her 

old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel. 

Divorced Spanish American. Didn’t take a feather out of her 

my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in 

the viceregal party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in 

with Whelan of the Express. Scavenging what the quality left. 

High tea. Mayonnaise I poured on the plums thinking it 

was custard. Her ears ought to have tingled for a few weeks 

after. Want to be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No nursery 

work for her, thanks. 

Poor Mrs Purefoy! Methodist husband. Method in his madness. 

Saffron bun and milk and soda lunch in the educational 

dairy. Y. M. C. A. Eating with a stopwatch, thirtytwo 

chews to the minute. And still his muttonchop whiskers grew. 

Supposed to be well connected. Theodore’s cousin in Dublin 

Castle. One tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals he

presents her with. Saw him out at the Three Jolly Topers 

marching along bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying one 

in a marketnet. The squallers. Poor thing! Then having to 

give the breast year after year all hours of the night. Selfish 

those t.t’s are. Dog in the manger. Only one lump of sugar in 

my tea, if you please. 

He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval. A 

sixpenny at Rowe’s? Must look up that ad in the national 

library. An eightpenny in the Burton. Better. On my way. 

He walked on past Bolton’s Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. 

Tea. I forgot to tap Tom Kernan. 

Sss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed 

with a vinegared handkerchief round her forehead, her belly 

swollen out. Phew! Dreadful simply! Child’s head too big: 

forceps. Doubled up inside her trying to butt its way out 

blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me that would. Lucky 

Molly got over hers lightly. They ought to invent something 

to stop that. Life with hard labour. Twilight sleep idea: queen 

Victoria was given that. Nine she had. A good layer. Old 

woman that lived in a shoe she had so many children. Suppose 

he was consumptive. Time someone thought about it 


160 

instead of gassing about the what was it the pensive bosom 

of the silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on. They 

could easily have big establishments whole thing quite painless 

out of all the taxes give every child born five quid at 

compound interest up to twentyone five per cent is a hundred 

shillings and five tiresome pounds multiply by twenty 

decimal system encourage people to put by money save hundred 

and ten and a bit twentyone years want to work it out 

on paper come to a tidy sum more than you think. 

Not stillborn of course. They are not even registered. 

Trouble for nothing. 

Funny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Molly 

and Mrs Moisel. Mothers’ meeting. Phthisis retires for the 

time being, then returns. How flat they look all of a sudden 

after. Peaceful eyes. Weight off their mind. Old Mrs Thornton 

was a jolly old soul. All my babies, she said. The spoon of 

pap in her mouth before she fed them. O, that’s nyumnyum. 

Got her hand crushed by old Tom Wall’s son. His first bow 

to the public. Head like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy Dr Murren. 

People knocking them up at all hours. For God’ sake, doctor. 

Wife in her throes. Then keep them waiting months for

their fee. To attendance on your wife. No gratitude in people. 

Humane doctors, most of them. 

Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament 

a flock of pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who 

will we do it on? I pick the fellow in black. Here goes. Here’s 

good luck. Must be thrilling from the air. Apjohn, myself 

and Owen Goldberg up in the trees near Goose green playing 

the monkeys. Mackerel they called me. 

A squad of constables debouched from College street, 

marching in Indian file. Goosestep. Foodheated faces, sweating 

helmets, patting their truncheons. After their feed with a 

good load of fat soup under their belts. Policeman’s lot is oft 

a happy one. They split up in groups and scattered, saluting, 

towards their beats. Let out to graze. Best moment to attack 

one in pudding time. A punch in his dinner. A squad of 

others, marching irregularly, rounded Trinity railings making 

for the station. Bound for their troughs. Prepare to receive 

cavalry. Prepare to receive soup. 

He crossed under Tommy Moore’s roguish finger. They 

did right to put him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters. 

Ought to be places for women. Running into cakeshops. 


161 

Settle my hat straight. There is not in this wide world a vallee. 

Great song of Julia Morkan’s. Kept her voice up to the very 

last. Pupil of Michael Balfe’s, wasn’t she? 

He gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to 

tackle. Jack Power could a tale unfold: father a G man. If a 

fellow gave them trouble being lagged they let him have it 

hot and heavy in the bridewell. Can’t blame them after all 

with the job they have especially the young hornies. That 

horsepoliceman the day Joe Chamberlain was given his degree 

in Trinity he got a run for his money. My word he did! 

His horse’s hoofs clattering after us down Abbey street. Lucky 

I had the presence of mind to dive into Manning’s or I was 

souped. He did come a wallop, by George. Must have cracked 

his skull on the cobblestones. I oughtn’t to have got myself 

swept along with those medicals. And the Trinity jibs in their 

mortarboards. Looking for trouble. Still I got to know that 

young Dixon who dressed that sting for me in the Mater 

and now he’s in Holles street where Mrs Purefoy. Wheels 

within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still. All skedaddled. 

Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it began.

—Up the Boers! 

—Three cheers for De Wet! 

—We’ll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapple tree. 

Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar 

hill. The Butter exchange band. Few years’ time half of 

them magistrates and civil servants. War comes on: into the 

army helterskelter: same fellows used to. Whether on the 

scaffold high. 

Never know who you’re talking to. Corny Kelleher he has 

Harvey Duff in his eye. Like that Peter or Denis or James 

Carey that blew the gaff on the invincibles. Member of the 

corporation too. Egging raw youths on to get in the know all 

the time drawing secret service pay from the castle. Drop 

him like a hot potato. Why those plainclothes men are always 

courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. 

Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then 

the next thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does 

be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything? 

Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded 

young student fooling round her fat arms ironing. 

—Are those yours, Mary? 


162 

—I don’t wear such things ... Stop or I’ll tell the missus on 

you. Out half the night. 

—There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see. 

—Ah, gelong with your great times coming. 

Barmaids too. Tobaccoshopgirls. 

James Stephens’ idea was the best. He knew them. Circles 

of ten so that a fellow couldn’t round on more than his own 

ring. Sinn Fein. Back out you get the knife. Hidden hand. 

Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey’s daughter got him out of 

Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the Buckingham 

Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi. 

You must have a certain fascination: Parnell. Arthur Griffith 

is a squareheaded fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. 

Or gas about our lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin 

Bakery Company’s tearoom. Debating societies. That republicanism 

is the best form of government. That the language 

question should take precedence of the economic question. 

Have your daughters inveigling them to your house. Stuff them 

up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here’s a good 

lump of thyme seasoning under the apron for you. Have another 

quart of goosegrease before it gets too cold. Halffed en-

thusiasts. Penny roll and a walk with the band. No grace for 

the carver. The thought that the other chap pays best sauce in 

the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show us 

over those apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. 

Homerule sun rising up in the northwest. 

His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun 

slowly, shadowing Trinity’s surly front. Trams passed one 

another, ingoing, outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things 

go on same, day after day: squads of police marching out, 

back: trams in, out. Those two loonies mooching about. 

Dignam carted off. Mina Purefoy swollen belly on a bed 

groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every 

second somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed 

the birds five minutes. Three hundred kicked the bucket. 

Other three hundred born, washing the blood off, all are 

washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa. 

Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away 

too: other coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, 

streets, miles of pavements, piledup bricks, stones. Changing 

hands. This owner, that. Landlord never dies they say. 

Other steps into his shoes when he gets his notice to quit. 


163 

They buy the place up with gold and still they have all the 

gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn away 

age after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and onions. 

Slaves Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. 

Rest rubble, sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan’s mushroom 

houses built of breeze. Shelter, for the night. 

No-one is anything. 

This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, 

gloomy: hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed. 

Provost’s house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. 

Well tinned in there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn’t live 

in it if they paid me. Hope they have liver and bacon today. 

Nature abhors a vacuum. 

The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the 

silverware opposite in Walter Sexton’s window by which John 

Howard Parnell passed, unseeing. 

There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. 

Now that’s a coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think 

of a person and don’t meet him. Like a man walking in his 

sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a corporation meeting 

today. They say he never put on the city marshal’s uniform

since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on 

his high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. 

Look at the woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached 

eyes on ghost. I have a pain. Great man’s brother: his brother’s 

brother. He’d look nice on the city charger. Drop into the 

D.B.C. probably for his coffee, play chess there. His brother 

used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to pass a 

remark on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That’s 

the fascination: the name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and 

his other sister Mrs Dickinson driving about with scarlet 

harness. Bolt upright lik surgeon M’Ardle. Still David Sheehy 

beat him for south Meath. Apply for the Chiltern Hundreds 

and retire into public life. The patriot’s banquet. Eating 

orangepeels in the park. Simon Dedalus said when they put 

him in parliament that Parnell would come back from the 

grave and lead him out of the house of commons by the 

arm. 

—Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the 

head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to 

come while the other speaks with a Scotch accent. The tentacles 

… 


164 

They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. 

Beard and bicycle. Young woman. 

And there he is too. Now that’s really a coincidence: second 

time. Coming events cast their shadows before. With 

the approval of the eminent poet, Mr Geo. Russell. That 

might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E.: what does that mean? 

Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund, Alphonsus 

Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the world 

with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult: 

symbolism. Holding forth. She’s taking it all in. Not saying 

a word. To aid gentleman in literary work. 

His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and 

bicycle, a listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. 

Only weggebobbles and fruit. Don’t eat a beefsteak. 

If you do the eyes of that cow will pursue you through all 

eternity. They say it’s healthier. Windandwatery though. Tried 

it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a bloater. Dreams all 

night. Why do they call that thing they gave me nutsteak? 

Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating 

rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you 

sitting by the tap all night.

Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so 

tasteless. Those literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, 

cloudy, symbolistic. Esthetes they are. I wouldn’t be surprised 

if it was that kind of food you see produces the like waves of 

the brain the poetical. For example one of those policemen 

sweating Irish stew into their shirts you couldn’t squeeze a 

line of poetry out of him. Don’t know what poetry is even. 

Must be in a certain mood. 

The dreamy cloudy gull 

Waves o’er the waters dull. 

He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the 

window of Yeates and Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I 

drop into old Harris’s and have a chat with young Sinclair? 

Wellmannered fellow. Probably at his lunch. Must get those 

old glasses of mine set right. Goerz lenses six guineas. Germans 

making their way everywhere. Sell on easy terms to 

capture trade. Undercutting. Might chance on a pair in the 

railway lost property office. Astonishing the things people 

leave behind them in trains and cloakrooms. What do they 


165 

be thinking about? Women too. Incredible. Last year travelling 

to Ennis had to pick up that farmer’s daughter’s ba 

and hand it to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed money 

too. There’s a little watch up there on the roof of the bank to 

test those glasses by. 

His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can’t 

see it. If you imagine it’s there you can almost see it. Can’t 

see it. 

He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held 

out his right hand at arm’s length towards the sun. Wanted to 

try that often. Yes: completely. The tip of his little finger blotted 

out the sun’s disk. Must be the focus where the rays cross. 

If I had black glasses. Interesting. There was a lot of talk about 

those sunspots when we were in Lombard street west. Looking 

up from the back garden. Terrific explosions they are. There 

will be a total eclipse this year: autumn some time. 

Now that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich 

time. It’s the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. 

Must go out there some first Saturday of the month. If I 

could get an introduction to professor Joly or learn up something 

about his family. That would do to: man always feels

complimented. Flattery where least expected. Nobleman 

proud to be descended from some king’s mistress. His 

foremother. Lay it on with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through 

the land. Not go in and blurt out what you know you’re not 

to: what’s parallax? Show this gentleman the door. 

Ah. 

His hand fell to his side again. 

Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs 

spinning about, crossing each other, passing. Same old 

dingdong always. Gas: then solid: then world: then cold: 

then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock, like that pineapple 

rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she said. I 

believe there is. 

He went on by la maison Claire. 

Wait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight 

exactly there is a new moon. Walking down by the 

Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview moon. She was humming. 

The young May moon she’s beaming, love. He other side of 

her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm’s la-amp is gleaming, love. 

Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes. 

Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must. 


166 

Mr Bloom, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam 

court. 

With a keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street 

here middle of the day of Bob Doran’s bottle shoulders. On 

his annual bend, M Coy said. They drink in order to say or 

do something or cherchez la femme. Up in the Coombe with 

chummies and streetwalkers and then the rest of the year 

sober as a judge. 

Yes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain 

soda would do him good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp 

theatre before Whitbred ran the Queen’s. Broth of a boy. 

Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon face in a 

poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How time 

flies, eh? Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers, 

drinking, laughed spluttering, their drink against their 

breath. More power, Pat. Coarse red: fun for drunkards: guffaw 

and smoke. Take off that white hat. His parboiled eyes. 

Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The harp that once 

did starve us all. 

I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? 

Twentyeight I was. She twentythree. When we left Lombard

street west something changed. Could never like it again after 

Rudy. Can’t bring back time. Like holding water in your 

hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then. 

Would you? Are you not happy in your home you poor little 

naughty boy? Wants to sew on buttons for me. I must answer. 

Write it in the library. 

Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. 

Muslin prints, silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, 

hoofthuds lowringing in the baking causeway. Thick feet that 

woman has in the white stockings. Hope the rain mucks 

them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef to 

the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Molly 

looks out of plumb. 

He passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Thomas, silk 

mercers. Cascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted 

urn poured from its mouth a flood of bloodhued poplin: 

lustrous blood. The huguenots brought that here. La causa è 

santa! Tara Tara. Great chorus that. Taree tara. Must be washed 

in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom. 

Pincushions. I’m a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking 

them all over the place. Needles in window curtains. 


167 

He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not 

today anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday 

perhaps. Junejulyaugseptember eighth. Nearly three 

months off. Then she mightn’t like it. Women won’t pick up 

pins. Say it cuts lo. 

Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat 

silk stockings. 

Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all. 

High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a 

woman, home and houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy 

from Jaffa. Agendath Netaim. Wealth of the world. 

A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His 

brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With 

hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore. 

Duke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better 

then. 

He turned Combridge’s corner, still pursued. Jingling, 

hoofthuds. Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: 

in deep summer fields, tangled pressed grass, in trickling 

hallways of tenements, along sofas, creaking beds. 

—Jack, love!

—Darling! 

—Kiss me, Reggy! 

—My boy! 

—Love! 

His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. 

Stink gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, 

slush of greens. See the animals feed. 

Men, men, men. 

Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the 

tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing 

gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted 

moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his tumbler 

knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. 

A man with an infant’s saucestained napkin tucked 

round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man 

spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no 

teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting 

to get it over. Sad booser’s eyes. Bitten off more than he 

can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry 

man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don’t! O! 

A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the 


168 

schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. 

Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint 

Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn’t swallow it 

all however. 

—Roast beef and cabbage. 

—One stew. 

Smells of men. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarette 

smoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men’s beery piss, the 

stale of ferment. 

His gorge rose. 

Couldn’t eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and 

fork to eat all before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight 

spasm, full, chewing the cud. Before and after. Grace after 

meals. Look on this picture then on that. Scoffing up 

stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate, 

man! Get out of this. 

He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening 

the wings of his nose. 

—Two stouts here. 

—One corned and cabbage. 

That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his

life depended on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to 

look. Safer to eat from his three hands. Tear it limb from 

limb. Second nature to him. Born with a silver knife in his 

mouth. That’s witty, I think. Or no. Silver means born rich. 

Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost. 

An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the 

head bailiff, standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from 

his tankard. Well up: it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, 

knife and fork upright, elbows on table, ready for a second 

helping stared towards the foodlift across his stained square 

of newspaper. Other chap telling him something with his 

mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I munched hum 

un thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith? 

Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His 

eyes said: 

—Not here. Don’t see him. 

Out. I hate dirty eaters. 

He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy 

Byrne’s. Stopgap. Keep me going. Had a good breakfast. 

—Roast and mashed here. 

—Pint of stout. 


169 

Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. 

Gobstuff. 

He came out into clearer air and turned back towards 

Grafton street. Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill! 

Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. 

All trotting down with porringers and tommycans to be filled. 

Devour contents in the street. John Howard Parnell example 

the provost of Trinity every mother’s son don’t talk of your 

provosts and provost of Trinity women and children cabmen 

priests parsons fieldmarshals archbishops. From Ailesbury 

road, Clyde road, artisans’ dwellings, north Dublin union, 

lord mayor in his gingerbread coach, old queen in a bathchair. 

My plate’s empty. After you with our incorporated 

drinkingcup. Like sir Philip Crampton’s fountain. Rub off 

the microbes with your handkerchief. Next chap rubs on a 

new batch with his. Father O’Flynn would make hares of 

them all. Have rows all the same. All for number one. Children 

fighting for the scrapings of the pot. Want a souppot as 

big as the Phoenix park. Harpooning flitches and hindquarters 

out of it. Hate people all round you. City Arms hotel 

table d’hôte she called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know

whose thoughts you’re chewing. Then who’d wash up all the 

plates and forks? Might be all feeding on tabloids that time. 

Teeth getting worse and worse. 

After all there’s a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things 

from the earth garlic of course it stinks after Italian 

organgrinders crisp of onions mushrooms truffles. Pain to 

the animal too. Pluck and draw fowl. Wretched brutes there 

at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split their skulls 

open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. 

Bubble and squeak. Butchers’ buckets wobbly lights. Give 

us that brisket off the hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. 

Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from their haunches, 

sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust. 

Top and lashers going out. Don’t maul them pieces, young 

one. 

Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always 

needed. Insidious. Lick it up smokinghot, thick sugary. Famished 

ghosts. 

Ah, I’m hungry. 

He entered Davy Byrne’s. Moral pub. He doesn’t chat. 

Stands a drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. 


170 

Cashed a cheque for me once. 

What will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. 

Shandygaff? 

—Hello, Bloom, Nosey Flynn said from his nook. 

—Hello, Flynn. 

—How’s things? 

—Tiptop … Let me see. I’ll take a glass of burgundy and 

… let me see. 

Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. 

Sandwich? Ham and his descendants musterred and bred 

there. Potted meats. What is home without Plumtree’s potted 

meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the obituary 

notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Dignam’s potted 

meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary 

too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes 

the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. 

His wives in a row to watch the effect. There was a right royal 

old nigger. Who ate or something the somethings of the reverend 

Mr Mactrigger. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what 

concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced 

up. Puzzle find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together.

Hygiene that was what they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring 

cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend on some fellow’s 

digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter 

of innocents. Eat drink and be merry. Then casual wards full 

after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mity 

cheese. 

—Have you a cheese sandwich? 

—Yes, sir. 

Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. 

Good glass of burgundy take away that. Lubricate. A nice 

salad, cool as a cucumber, Tom Kernan can dress. Puts gusto 

into it. Pure olive oil. Milly served me that cutlet with a sprig 

of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the devil 

the cooks. Devilled crab. 

—Wife well? 

—Quite well, thanks … A cheese sandwich, then. 

Gorgonzola, have you? 

—Yes, sir. 

Nosey Flynn sipped his grog. 

—Doing any singing those times? 

Look at his mouth. Could whistle in his own ear. Flap ears 


171 

to match. Music. Knows as much about it as my coachman. 

Still better tell him. Does no harm. Free ad. 

—She’s engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may 

have heard perhaps. 

—No. O, that’s the style. Who’s getting it up? 

The curate served. 

—How much is that? 

—Seven d., sir … Thank you, sir. 

Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. Mr 

MacTrigger. Easier than the dreamy creamy stuff. His five 

hundred wives. Had the time of their lives. 

—Mustard, sir? 

—Thank you. 

He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. Their lives. 

I have it. It grew bigger and bigger and bigger. 

—Getting it up? he said. Well, it’s like a company idea, 

you see. Part shares and part profits. 

—Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand 

in his pocket to scratch his groin. Who is this was telling 

me? Isn’t Blazes Boylan mixed up in it? 

A warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr

Bloom’s heart. He raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious 

clock. Two. Pub clock five minutes fast. Time going on. 

Hands moving. Two. Not yet. 

His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned 

more longly, longingly. 

Wine. 

He smellsipped the cordial juice and, bidding his throat 

strongly to speed it, set his wineglass delicately down. 

—Yes, he said. He’s the organiser in point of fact. 

No fear: no brains. 

Nosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good 

square meal. 

—He had a good slice of luck, Jack Mooney was telling 

me, over that boxingmatch Myler Keogh won again that soldier 

in the Portobello barracks. By God, he had the little 

kipper down in the county Carlow he was telling me ... 

Hope that dewdrop doesn’t come down into his glass. No, 

snuffled it up. 

—For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck 

eggs by God till further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? 

O, by God, Blazes is a hairy chap. 


172 

Davy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched 

shirtsleeves, cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. 

Herring’s blush. Whose smile upon each feature plays with 

such and such replete. Too much fat on the parsnips. 

—And here’s himself and pepper on him, Nosey Flynn 

said. Can you give us a good one for the Gold cup? 

—I’m off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never 

put anything on a horse. 

—You’re right there, Nosey Flynn said. 

Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, 

with relish of disgust pungent mustard, the feety savour of 

green cheese. Sips of his wine soothed his palate. Not logwood 

that. Tastes fuller this weather with the chill off. 

Nice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely 

planed. Like the way it curves there. 

—I wouldn’t do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne 

said. It ruined many a man, the same horses. 

Vintners’ sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine 

and spirits for consumption on the premises. Heads I win 

tails you lose. 

—True for you, Nosey Flynn said. Unless you’re in the

know. There’s no straight sport going now. Lenehan gets some 

good ones. He’s giving Sceptre today. Zinfandel’s the 

favourite, lord Howard de Walden’s, won at Epsom. Morny 

Cannon is riding him. I could have got seven to one against 

Saint Amant a fortnight before. 

—That so? Davy Byrne said … 

He went towards the window and, taking up the pettycash 

book, scanned its pages. 

—I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. That was a 

rare bit of horseflesh. Saint Frusquin was her sire. She won 

in a thunderstorm, Rothschild’s filly, with wadding in her 

ears. Blue jacket and yellow cap. Bad luck to big Ben Dollard 

and his John O’Gaunt. He put me off it. Ay. 

He drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers 

down the flutes. 

—Ay, he said, sighing. 

Mr Bloom, champing, standing, looked upon his sigh. 

Nosey numbskull. Will I tell him that horse Lenehan? He 

knows already. Better let him forget. Go and lose more. Fool 

and his money. Dewdrop coming down again. Cold nose 

he’d have kissing a woman. Still they might like. Prickly beards 


173 

they like. Dogs’ cold noses. Old Mrs Riordan with the rumbling 

stomach’s Skye terrier in the City Arms hotel. Molly 

fondling him in her lap. O, the big doggybowwowsywowsy! 

Wine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a 

moment mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because 

I’m not thirsty. Bath of course does that. Just a bite or 

two. Then about six o’clock I can. Six. Six. Time will be 

gone then. She … 

Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. 

Felt so off colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins: 

sardines, gaudy lobsters’ claws. All the odd things people pick 

up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, 

snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea with 

bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. 

If you didn’t know risky putting anything into your mouth. 

Poisonous berries. Johnny Magories. Roundness you think 

good. Gaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another 

and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the 

look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. 

Orangegroves for instance. Need artificial irrigation. 

Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about oysters. Unsightly like a

clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who 

found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and 

Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in 

the Red Bank this morning. Was he oysters old fish at table 

perhaps he young flesh in bed no June has no ar no oysters. 

But there are people like things high. Tainted game. Jugged 

hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years 

old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each 

dish harmless might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. 

That archduke Leopold was it no yes or was it Otto one of 

those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat the scruff off his 

own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course aristocrats, 

then the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock oil 

and flour. Raw pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters 

they throw back in the sea to keep up the price. Cheap noone 

would buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock in green glasses. 

Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls. The élite. 

Crème de la crème. They want special dishes to pretend they’re. 

Hermit with a platter of pulse keep down the stings of the 

flesh. Know me come eat with me. Royal sturgeon high sheriff, 

Coffey, the butcher, right to venisons of the forest from 


174 

his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread I saw down 

in the Master of the Rolls’ kitchen area. Whitehatted chef 

like a rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage à la duchesse 

de Parme. Just as well to write it on the bill of fare so you can 

know what you’ve eaten. Too many drugs spoil the broth. I 

know it myself. Dosing it with Edwards’ desiccated soup. 

Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive. Do ptake 

some ptarmigan. Wouldn’t mind being a waiter in a swell 

hotel. Tips, evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I tempt you 

to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do 

bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect that. A 

miss Dubedat lived in Killiney, I remember. Du, de la French. 

Still it’s the same fish perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore 

street ripped the guts out of making money hand over fist 

finger in fishes’ gills can’t write his name on a cheque think 

he was painting the landscape with his mouth twisted. 

Moooikill A Aitcha Ha ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth 

fifty thousand pounds. 

Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck. 

Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing 

in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems

to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened 

remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth below 

us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple 

by the Lion’s head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards 

Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, 

buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs 

in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll toss me 

all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched 

me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished 

over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. 

Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and 

chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour 

of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave 

me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes 

were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. 

No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat 

walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns 

she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: 

eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, woman’s breasts 

full in her blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I 

tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she 


175 

tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me. 

Me. And me now. 

Stuck, the flies buzzed. 

His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken 

slab. Beauty: it curves: curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, 

Venus, Juno: curves the world admires. Can see them library 

museum standing in the round hall, naked goddesses. Aids 

to digestion. They don’t care what man looks. All to see. 

Never speaking. I mean to say to fellows like Flynn. Suppose 

she did Pygmalion and Galatea what would she say first? 

Mortal! Put you in your proper place. Quaffing nectar at 

mess with gods golden dishes, all ambrosial. Not like a tanner 

lunch we have, boiled mutton, carrots and turnips, bottle 

of Allsop. Nectar imagine it drinking electricity: gods’ food. 

Lovely forms of women sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely. 

And we stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, 

blood, dung, earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an engine. 

They have no. Never looked. I’ll look today. Keeper 

won’t see. Bend down let something drop see if she. 

Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to 

do not to do there to do. A man and ready he drained his

glass to the lees and walked, to men too they gave themselves, 

manly conscious, lay with men lovers, a youth enjoyed 

her, to the yard. 

When the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said 

from his book: 

—What is this he is? Isn’t he in the insurance line? 

—He’s out of that long ago, Nosey Flynn said. He does 

canvassing for the Freeman. 

—I know him well to see, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble? 

—Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why? 

—I noticed he was in mourning. 

—Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him 

how was all at home. You’re right, by God. So he was. 

—I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, 

if I see a gentleman is in trouble that way. It only brings it up 

fresh in their minds. 

—It’s not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him 

the day before yesterday and he coming out of that Irish 

farm dairy John Wyse Nolan’s wife has in Henry street with 

a jar of cream in his hand taking it home to his better half. 

She’s well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast. 


176 

—And is he doing for the Freeman? Davy Byrne said. 

Nosey Flynn pursed his lips. 

—He doesn’t buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can 

make bacon of that. 

—How so? Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book. 

Nosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling 

fingers. He winked. 

—He’s in the craft, he said. 

—Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said. 

—Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted 

order. He’s an excellent brother. Light, life and love, 

by God. They give him a leg up. I was told that by a—well, 

I won’t say who. 

—Is that a fact? 

—O, it’s a fine order, Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you 

when you’re down. I know a fellow was trying to get into it. 

But they’re as close as damn it. By God they did right to 

keep the women out of it. 

Davy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one: 

—Iiiiiichaaaaaaach! 

—There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in

a clock to find out what they do be doing. But be damned 

but they smelt her out and swore her in on the spot a master 

mason. That was one of the saint Legers of Doneraile. 

Davy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tearwashed 

eyes: 

—And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw 

him in here and I never once saw him—you know, over the 

line. 

—God Almighty couldn’t make him drunk, Nosey Flynn 

said firmly. Slips off when the fun gets too hot. Didn’t you 

see him look at his watch? Ah, you weren’t there. If you ask 

him to have a drink first thing he does he outs with the watch 

to see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to God he does. 

—There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He’s a safe 

man, I’d say. 

—He’s not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He’s 

been known to put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give 

the devil his due. O, Bloom has his good points. But there’s 

one thing he’ll never do. 

His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog. 

—I know, Davy Byrne said. 


177 

—Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said. 

Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford 

followed frowning, a plaining hand on his claret waistcoat. 

—Day, Mr Byrne. 

—Day, gentlemen. 

They paused at the counter. 

—Who’s standing? Paddy Leonard asked. 

—I’m sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered. 

—Well, what’ll it be? Paddy Leonard asked. 

—I’ll take a stone ginger, Bantam Lyons said. 

—How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God’ 

sake? What’s yours, Tom? 

—How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping. 

For answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone 

and hiccupped. 

—Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? 

he said. 

—Certainly, sir. 

Paddy Leonard eyed his alemates. 

—Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I’m standing 

drinks to! Cold water and gingerpop! Two fellows that would

suck whisky off a sore leg. He has some bloody horse up his 

sleeve for the Gold cup. A dead snip. 

—Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked. 

Tom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the 

water set before him. 

—That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking. 

—Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said. 

Tom Rochford nodded and drank. 

—Is it Zinfandel? 

—Say nothing! Bantam Lyons winked. I’m going to plunge 

five bob on my own. 

—Tell us if you’re worth your salt and be damned to you, 

Paddy Leonard said. Who gave it to you? 

Mr Bloom on his way out raised three fingers in greeting. 

—So long! Nosey Flynn said. 

The others turned. 

—That’s the man now that gave it to me, Bantam Lyons 

whispered. 

—Prrwht! Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, 

we’ll take two of your small Jamesons after that and a ... 

—Stone ginger, Davy Byrne added civilly. 


178 

—Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby. 

Mr Bloom walked towards Dawson street, his tongue 

brushing his teeth smooth. Something green it would have 

to be: spinach, say. Then with those Rontgen rays searchlight 

you could. 

At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly 

cud on the cobblestones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. 

Returned with thanks having fully digested the contents. First 

sweet then savoury. Mr Bloom coasted warily. Ruminants. 

His second course. Their upper jaw they move. Wonder if 

Tom Rochford will do anything with that invention of his? 

Wasting time explaining it to Flynn’s mouth. Lean people 

long mouths. Ought to be a hall or a place where inventors 

could go in and invent free. Course then you’d have all the 

cranks pestering. 

He hummed, prolonging in solemn echo the closes of the 

bars: 

Don Giovanni, a cenar teco 

M’invitasti.

Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled 

first? Some chap in the blues. Dutch courage. That Kilkenny 

People in the national library now I must. 

Bare clean closestools waiting in the window of William 

Miller, plumber, turned back his thoughts. They could: and 

watch it all the way down, swallow a pin sometimes come 

out of the ribs years after, tour round the body changing 

biliary duct spleen squirting liver gastric juice coils of intestines 

like pipes. But the poor buffer would have to stand all 

the time with his insides entrails on show. Science. 

—A cenar teco. 

What does that teco mean? Tonight perhaps. 

Don Giovanni, thou hast me invited 

To come to supper tonight, 

The rum the rumdum. 

Doesn’t go properly. 

Keyes: two months if I get Nannetti to. That’ll be two 

pounds ten about two pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. 

Two eleven. Prescott’s dyeworks van over there. If I get Billy 


179 

Prescott’s ad: two fifteen. Five guineas about. On the pig’s 

back. 

Could buy one of those silk petticoats for Molly, colour of 

her new garters. 

Today. Today. Not think. 

Tour the south then. What about English wateringplaces? 

Brighton, Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating 

out. Those lovely seaside girls. Against John Long’s a drowsing 

loafer lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted 

knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will eat anything. 

Mr Bloom turned at Gray’s confectioner’s window of 

unbought tarts and passed the reverend Thomas Connellan’s 

bookstore. Why I left the church of Rome? Birds’ Nest. Women 

run him. They say they used to give pauper children soup to 

change to protestants in the time of the potato blight. Society 

over the way papa went to for the conversion of poor 

jews. Same bait. Why we left the church of Rome. 

A blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender 

cane. No tram in sight. Wants to cross. 

—Do you want to cross? Mr Bloom asked.

The blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned 

weakly. He moved his head uncertainly. 

—You’re in Dawson street, Mr Bloom said. Molesworth 

street is opposite. Do you want to cross? There’s nothing in 

the way. 

The cane moved out trembling to the left. Mr Bloom’s eye 

followed its line and saw again the dyeworks’ van drawn up 

before Drago’s. Where I saw his brillantined hair just when I 

was. Horse drooping. Driver in John Long’s. Slaking his 

drouth. 

—There’s a van there, Mr Bloom said, but it’s not moving. 

I’ll see you across. Do you want to go to Molesworth street? 

—Yes, the stripling answered. South Frederick street. 

—Come, Mr Bloom said. 

He touched the thin elbow gently: then took the limp seeing 

hand to guide it forward. 

Say something to him. Better not do the condescending. 

They mistrust what you tell them. Pass a common remark. 

—The rain kept off. 

No answer. 

Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all 


180 

different for him. Have to be spoonfed first. Like a child’s 

hand, his hand. Like Milly’s was. Sensitive. Sizing me up I 

daresay from my hand. Wonder if he has a name. Van. Keep 

his cane clear of the horse’s legs: tired drudge get his doze. 

That’s right. Clear. Behind a bull: in front of a horse. 

—Thanks, sir. 

Knows I’m a man. Voice. 

—Right now? First turn to the left. 

The blind stripling tapped the curbstone and went on his 

way, drawing his cane back, feeling again. 

Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of 

herringbone tweed. Poor young fellow! How on earth did he 

know that van was there? Must have felt it. See things in 

their forehead perhaps: kind of sense of volume. Weight or 

size of it, something blacker than the dark. Wonder would 

he feel it if something was removed. Feel a gap. Queer idea 

of Dublin he must have, tapping his way round by the stones. 

Could he walk in a beeline if he hadn’t that cane? Bloodless 

pious face like a fellow going in to be a priest. 

Penrose! That was that chap’s name. 

Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their

fingers. Tune pianos. Or we are surprised they have any brains. 

Why we think a deformed person or a hunchback clever if 

he says something we might say. Of course the other senses 

are more. Embroider. Plait baskets. People ought to help. 

Workbasket I could buy for Molly’s birthday. Hates sewing. 

Might take an objection. Dark men they call them. 

Sense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides, 

bunched together. Each street different smell. Each person 

too. Then the spring, the summer: smells. Tastes? They say 

you can’t taste wines with your eyes shut or a cold in the 

head. Also smoke in the dark they say get no pleasure. 

And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. 

That girl passing the Stewart institution, head in the air. 

Look at me. I have them all on. Must be strange not to see her. 

Kind of a form in his mind’s eye. The voice, temperatures: 

when he touches her with his fingers must almost see the lines, 

the curves. His hands on her hair, for instance. Say it was 

black, for instance. Good. We call it black. Then passing over 

her white skin. Different feel perhaps. Feeling of white. 

Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order 

two shillings, half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer’s 


181 

just here too. Wait. Think over it. 

With a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed 

back above his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then 

gently his finger felt the skin of his right cheek. Downy hair 

there too. Not smooth enough. The belly is the smoothest. 

No-one about. There he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps 

to Levenston’s dancing academy piano. Might be settling my 

braces. 

Walking by Doran’s publichouse he slid his hand between 

his waistcoat and trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, 

felt a slack fold of his belly. But I know it’s whitey yellow. 

Want to try in the dark to see. 

He withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to. 

Poor fellow! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What 

dreams would he have, not seeing? Life a dream for him. 

Where is the justice being born that way? All those women 

and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in 

New York. Holocaust. Karma they call that transmigration 

for sins you did in a past life the reincarnation met him pike 

hoses. Dear, dear, dear. Pity, of course: but somehow you 

can’t cotton on to them someway.

Sir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons’ hall. Solemn 

as Troy. After his good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old 

legal cronies cracking a magnum. Tales of the bench and 

assizes and annals of the bluecoat school. I sentenced him to 

ten years. I suppose he’d turn up his nose at that stuff I drank. 

Vintage wine for them, the year marked on a dusty bottle. 

Has his own ideas of justice in the recorder’s court. 

Wellmeaning old man. Police chargesheets crammed with 

cases get their percentage manufacturing crime. Sends them 

to the rightabout. The devil on moneylenders. Gave Reuben 

J. a great strawcalling. Now he’s really what they call a dirty 

jew. Power those judges have. Crusty old topers in wigs. Bear 

with a sore paw. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul. 

Hello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant. 

Sixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer’s 

hospital. The Messiah was first given for that. Yes. Handel. 

What about going out there: Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. 

No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome. 

Sure to know someone on the gate. 

Mr Bloom came to Kildare street. First I must. Library. 

Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. 


182 

It is. 

His heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. 

He swerved to the right. 

Is it? Almost certain. Won’t look. Wine in my face. Why 

did I? Too heady. Yes, it is. The walk. Not see. Get on. 

Making for the museum gate with long windy steps he 

lifted his eyes. Handsome building. Sir Thomas Deane designed. 

Not following me? 

Didn’t see me perhaps. Light in his eyes. 

The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. 

Cold statues: quiet there. Safe in a minute. 

No. Didn’t see me. After two. Just at the gate. 

My heart! 

His eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. 

Sir Thomas Deane was the Greek architecture. 

Look for something I. 

His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read 

unfolded Agendath Netaim. Where did I? 

Busy looking. 

He thrust back quick Agendath. 

Afternoon she said.

I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. 

Freeman. Where did I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Potato. Purse. 

Where? 

Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart. 

His hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip 

pocket soap lotion have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah soap 

there I yes. Gate. 

Safe! 


183 

URBANE, TO COMFORT THEM, THE QUAKER LIBRARIAN PURRED: 

—And we have, have we not, those priceless pages of 

Wilhelm Meister. A great poet on a great brother poet. A hesitating 

soul taking arms against a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting 

doubts, as one sees in real life. 

He came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking 

and a step backward a sinkapace on the solemn floor. 

A noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly 

made him a noiseless beck. 

—Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The 

beautiful ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard 

facts. One always feels that Goethe’s judgments are so true. 

True in the larger analysis. 

Twicreakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous 

by the door he gave his large ear all to the attendant’s 

words: heard them: and was gone. 

Two left.

—Monsieur de la Palice, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen 

minutes before his death. 

—Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton 

asked with elder’s gall, to write Paradise Lost at your dictation? 

The Sorrows of Satan he calls it. 

Smile. Smile Cranly’s smile. 

First he tickled her 

Then he patted her 

Then he passed the female catheter. 

For he was a medical 

Jolly old medi … 

—I feel you would need one more for Hamlet. Seven is 

dear to the mystic mind. The shining seven W.B. calls them. 

Glittereyed his rufous skull close to his greencapped 

desklamp sought the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, 

an ollav, holyeyed. He laughed low: a sizar’s laugh of Trinity: 

unanswered. 


184 

Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood 

Tears such as angels weep. 

Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta. 

He holds my follies hostage. 

Cranly’s eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. 

Gaptoothed Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the 

stranger in her house. And one more to hail him: ave, rabbi: 

the Tinahely twelve. In the shadow of the glen he cooees for 

them. My soul’s youth I gave him, night by night. God speed. 

Good hunting. 

Mulligan has my telegram. 

Folly. Persist. 

—Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have 

yet to create a figure which the world will set beside Saxon 

Shakespeare’s Hamlet though I admire him, as old Ben did, 

on this side idolatry. 

—All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled 

out of his shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare 

or James I or Essex. Clergymen’s discussions of the historicity 

of Jesus. Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual

essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of 

how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave 

Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, 

the words of Hamlet bring our minds into contact with the 

eternal wisdom, Plato’s world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation 

of schoolboys for schoolboys. 

A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, 

tarnation strike me! 

—The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said 

superpolitely. Aristotle was once Plato’s schoolboy. 

—And has remained so, one should hope, John Eglinton 

sedately said. One can see him, a model schoolboy with his 

diploma under his arm. 

He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face. 

Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, 

the heavenly man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, 

the Logos who suffers in us at every moment. This verily is 

that. I am the fire upon the altar. I am the sacrificial butter. 

Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A.E., Arval, 

the Name Ineffable, in heaven hight: K.H., their master, 

whose identity is no secret to adepts. Brothers of the great 


185 

white lodge always watching to see if they can help. The 

Christ with the bridesister, moisture of light, born of an 

ensouled virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the plane of 

buddhi. The life esoteric is not for ordinary person. O.P. 

must work off bad karma first. Mrs Cooper Oakley once 

glimpsed our very illustrious sister H.P.B.’s elemental. 

O, fie! Out on’t! Pfuiteufel! You naughtn’t to look, missus, 

so you naughtn’t when a lady’s ashowing of her elemental. 

Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his 

hand with grace a notebook, new, large, clean, bright. 

—That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find 

Hamlet’s musings about the afterlife of his princely soul, the 

improbable, insignificant and undramatic monologue, as 

shallow as Plato’s. 

John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth: 

—Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone 

compare Aristotle with Plato. 

—Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished 

me from his commonwealth? 

Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the 

whatness of allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they

worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: 

what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller 

than red globules of man’s blood they creepycrawl after Blake’s 

buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a 

shadow. Hold to the now, the here, through which all future 

plunges to the past. 

Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague. 

—Haines is gone, he said. 

—Is he? 

—I was showing him Jubainville’s book. He’s quite enthusiastic, 

don’t you know, about Hyde’s Lovesongs of Connacht. 

I couldn’t bring him in to hear the discussion. He’s gone to 

Gill’s to buy it. 

Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick 

To greet the callous public. 

Writ, I ween, ‘twas not my wish 

In lean unlovely English. 

—The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton 

opined. 


186 

We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his 

baccy. Green twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of 

the sea. 

—People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, 

the auric egg of Russell warned occultly. The movements 

which work revolutions in the world are born out of the 

dreams and visions in a peasant’s heart on the hillside. For 

them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living 

mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce 

the sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces 

the finest flower of corruption in Mallarme but the 

desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of 

Homer’s Phaeacians. 

From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to 

Stephen. 

—Mallarme, don’t you know, he said, has written those 

wonderful prose poems Stephen MacKenna used to read to 

me in Paris. The one about Hamlet. He says: il se promene, 

lisant au livre de lui-meme, don’t you know, reading the book 

himself. He describes Hamlet given in a French town, don’t 

you know, a provincial town. They advertised it.

His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air. 

HAMLET 

ou 

LE DISTRAIT 

Pièce de Shakespeare 

He repeated to John Eglinton’s newgathered frown: 

—Pièce de Shakespeare, don’t you know. It’s so French. The 

French point of view. Hamlet ou … 

—The absentminded beggar, Stephen ended. 

John Eglinton laughed. 

—Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no 

doubt, but distressingly shortsighted in some matters. 

Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder. 

—A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, 

Stephen said. Not for nothing was he a butcher’s son, wielding 

the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his palms. Nine lives 

are taken off for his father’s one. Our Father who art in purgatory. 

Khaki Hamlets don’t hesitate to shoot. The 

bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the con- 


187 

centration camp sung by Mr Swinburne. 

Cranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar. 

Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none 

But we had spared … 

Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and 

the deep sea. 

—He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton 

said for Mr Best’s behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he 

wants to make our flesh creep. 

List! List! O list! 

My flesh hears him: creeping, hears. 

If thou didst ever … 

—What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One 

who has faded into impalpability through death, through 

absence, through change of manners. Elizabethan London

lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from virgin 

Dublin. Who is the ghost from limbo patrum, returning to 

the world that has forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet? 

John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge. 

Lifted. 

—It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging 

with a swift glance their hearing. The flag is up on the 

playhouse by the bankside. The bear Sackerson growls in the 

pit near it, Paris garden. Canvasclimbers who sailed with 

Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings. 

Local colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices. 

—Shakespeare has left the huguenot’s house in Silver street 

and walks by the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does 

not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards 

the rushes. The swan of Avon has other thoughts. 

Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me! 

—The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, 

made up in the castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man 

with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a king and no 

king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied Hamlet 


188 

all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play 

the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the 

young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, 

calling him by a name: 

Hamlet, I am thy fatgher’s spirit, 

bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the 

prince, young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet 

Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake 

may live for ever. 

Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, 

and in the vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by 

death, speaking his own words to his own son’s name (had 

Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been prince 

Hamlet’s twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable 

that he did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those 

premises: you are the dispossessed son: I am the murdered 

father: your mother is the guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare, 

born Hathaway? 

—But this prying into the family life of a great man, Russell

egan impatiently. 

Art thou there, truepenny? 

—Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the 

plays. I mean when we read the poetry of King Lear what is 

it to us how the poet lived? As for living our servants can do 

that for us, Villiers de l’Isle has said. Peeping and prying into 

greenroom gossip of the day, the poet’s drinking, the poet’s 

debts. We have King Lear: and it is immortal. 

Mr Best’s face, appealed to, agreed. 

Flow over them with your waves and with your waters, Mananaan, 

Mananaan Maclir … 

How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were 

hungry? 

Marry, I wanted it. 

Take thou this noble. 

Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson’s bed, 

clergyman’s daughter. Agenbite of inwit. 

Do you intend to pay it back? 

O, yes. 


189 

When? Now? 

Well … No. 

When, then? 

I paid my way. I paid my way. 

Steady on. He’s from beyant Boyne water. The northeast 

corner. You owe it. 

Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. 

Other I got pound. 

Buzz. Buzz. 

But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because 

under everchanging forms. 

I that sinned and prayed and fasted. 

A child Conmee saved from pandies. 

I, I and I. I. 

A.E.I.O.U. 

—Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three 

centuries? John Eglinton’s carping voice asked. Her ghost at 

least has been laid for ever. She died, for literature at least, 

before she was born. 

—She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she 

was born. She saw him into and out of the world. She took

his first embraces. She bore his children and she laid pennies 

on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he lay on his 

deathbed. 

Mother’s deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who 

brought me into this world lies there, bronzelidded, under 

few cheap flowers. Liliata rutilantium. 

I wept alone. 

John Eglinton looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp. 

—The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he 

said, and got out of it as quickly and as best he could. 

—Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no 

mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery. 

Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, 

softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous. 

—A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful 

portal of discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery 

did Socrates learn from Xanthippe? 

—Dialectic, Stephen answered: and from his mother how 

to bring thoughts into the world. What he learnt from his 

other wife Myrto (absit nomen!), Socratididion’s 


190 

Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever know. But 

neither the midwife’s lore nor the caudlelectures saved him 

from the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock. 

—But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best’s quiet voice said forgetfully. 

Yes, we seem to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself 

forgot her. 

His look went from brooder’s beard to carper’s skull, to 

remind, to chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink 

lollard costard, guiltless though maligned. 

—He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no 

truant memory. He carried a memory in his wallet as he 

trudged to Romeville whistling The Girl I Left Behind Me. If 

the earthquake did not time it we should know where to 

place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the 

studded bridle and her blue windows. That memory, Venus 

and Adonis, lay in the bedchamber of every light-of-love in 

London. Is Katharine the shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls 

her young and beautiful. Do you think the writer of Antony 

and Cleopatra, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the back 

of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire 

to lie withal? Good: he left her and gained the world of men.

But his boywomen are the women of a boy. Their life, 

thought, speech are lent them by males. He chose badly? He 

was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann 

hath a way. By cock, she was to blame. She put the comether 

on him, sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who 

bends over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue 

to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who 

tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger than herself. 

And my turn? When? 

Come! 

—Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new 

book, gladly, brightly. 

He murmured then with blond delight for all: 

Between the acres of the rye 

These pretty countryfolk would lie. 

Paris: the wellpleased pleaser. 

A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and 

unveiled its cooperative watch. 

—I am afraid I am due at the homestead. 


191 

Whither away? Exploitable ground. 

—Are you going? John Eglinton’s active eyebrows asked. 

Shall we see you at Moore’s tonight? Piper is coming. 

—Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back? 

Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper. 

—I don’t know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. 

If I can get away in time. 

Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. Isis Unveiled. Their 

Pali book we tried to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel 

umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral 

levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The faithful hermetists 

await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him. 

Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them 

i’the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god, he 

thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. 

Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing 

creecries, whirled, whirling, they bewail. 

In quintessential triviality 

For years in this fleshcase a shesoul dwelt.

—They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker 

librarian said, friendly and earnest. Mr Russell, rumour has 

it, is gathering together a sheaf of our younger poets’ verses. 

We are all looking forward anxiously. 

Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three 

faces, lighted, shone. 

See this. Remember. 

Stephen looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung 

on his ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. 

Touch lightly with two index fingers. Aristotle’s experiment. 

One or two? Necessity is that in virtue of which it is impossible 

that one can be otherwise. Argal, one hat is one hat. 

Listen. 

Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the 

commercial part. Longworth will give it a good puff in the 

Express. O, will he? I liked Colum’s Drover. Yes, I think he 

has that queer thing genius. Do you think he has genius 

really? Yeats admired his line: As in wild earth a Grecian vase. 

Did he? I hope you’ll be able to come tonight. Malachi 

Mulligan is coming too. Moore asked him to bring Haines. 


192 

Did you hear Miss Mitchell’s joke about Moore and Martyn? 

That Moore is Martyn’s wild oats? Awfully clever, isn’t it? 

They remind one of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Our 

national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore 

is the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in 

Dublin. With a saffron kilt? O’Neill Russell? O, yes, he must 

speak the grand old tongue. And his Dulcinea? James 

Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We are becoming 

important, it seems. 

Cordelia. Cordoglio. Lir’s loneliest daughter. 

Nookshotten. Now your best French polish. 

—Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. 

If you will be so kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman ... 

—O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We 

have so much correspondence. 

—I understand, Stephen said. Thanks. 

God ild you. The pigs’ paper. Bullockbefriending. 

Synge has promised me an article for Dana too. Are we 

going to be read? I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something 

in Irish. I hope you will come round tonight. Bring 

Starkey.

Stephen sat down. 

The quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing, 

his mask said: 

—Mr Dedalus, your views are most illuminating. 

He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the 

altitude of a chopine, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, 

said low: 

—Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the 

poet? 

Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an 

inward light? 

—Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must 

have been first a sundering. 

—Yes. 

Christfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted 

treeforks, from hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking 

lonely in the chase. Women he won to him, tender people, a 

whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters’ wives. 

Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack dishonoured body 

that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, 

now her leaves falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow grave 


193 

and unforgiven. 

—Yes. So you think … 

The door closed behind the outgoer. 

Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of 

warm and brooding air. 

A vestal’s lamp. 

Here he ponders things that were not: what Caesar would 

have lived to do had he believed the soothsayer: what might 

have been: possibilities of the possible as possible: things not 

known: what name Achilles bore when he lived among 

women. 

Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed 

in spice of words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, 

moonycrowned. And I heard the voice of that Egyptian 

highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks. 

They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but 

an itch of death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin 

tale, urge me to wreak their will. 

—Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is 

the most enigmatic. We know nothing but that he lived and 

suffered. Not even so much. Others abide our question. A

shadow hangs over all the rest. 

—But Hamlet is so personal, isn’t it? Mr Best pleaded. I 

mean, a kind of private paper, don’t you know, of his private 

life. I mean, I don’t care a button, don’t you know, who is 

killed or who is guilty … 

He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling 

his defiance. His private papers in the original. Ta an bad 

ar an tir. Taim in mo shagart. Put beurla on it, littlejohn. 

Quoth littlejohn Eglinton: 

—I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi 

Mulligan told us but I may as well warn you that if you want 

to shake my belief that Shakespeare is Hamlet you have a 

stern task before you. 

Bear with me. 

Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern 

under wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E quando vede l’uomo 

l’attosca. Messer Brunetto, I thank thee for the word. 

—As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, 

Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to 

and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. 

And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I 


194 

was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff 

time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father 

the image of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense 

instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a 

fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that 

which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the 

sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by 

reflection from that which then I shall be. 

Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile. 

—Yes, Mr Best said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. 

The bitterness might be from the father but the passages 

with Ophelia are surely from the son. 

Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in 

his son. 

—That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing. 

John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow. 

—If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would 

be a drug in the market. The plays of Shakespeare’s later years 

which Renan admired so much breathe another spirit. 

—The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian 

breathed.

—There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there 

has not been a sundering. 

Said that. 

—If you want to know what are the events which cast their 

shadow over the hell of time of King Lear, Othello, Hamlet, 

Troilus and Cressida, look to see when and how the shadow 

lifts. What softens the heart of a man, shipwrecked in storms 

dire, Tried, like another Ulysses, Pericles, prince of Tyre? 

Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded. 

—A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina. 

—The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha 

is a constant quantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads 

are dreary but they lead to the town. 

Good Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon’s wild oats. 

Cypherjugglers going the highroads. Seekers on the great 

quest. What town, good masters? Mummed in names: A. E., 

eon: Magee, John Eglinton. East of the sun, west of the moon: 

Tir na n-og. Booted the twain and staved. 

How many miles to Dublin? 

Three score and ten, sir. 


195 

Will we be there by candlelight? 

—Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of 

the closing period. 

—Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon 

Lazarus as some aver his name is, say of it? 

—Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, 

Perdita, that which was lost. What was lost is given back 

to him: his daughter’s child. My dearest wife, Pericles says, 

was like this maid. Will any man love the daughter if he has 

not loved the mother? 

—The art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. 

L’art d’être grand … 

—Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his 

own youth added, another image? 

Do you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word 

known to all men. Amor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde 

et ea quae concupiscimus … 

—His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is 

the standard of all experience, material and moral. Such an 

appeal will touch him. The images of other males of his blood

will repel him. He will see in them grotesque attempts of 

nature to foretell or to repeat himself. 

The benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily 

with hope. 

—I hope Mr Dedalus will work out his theory for the enlightenment 

of the public. And we ought to mention another 

Irish commentator, Mr George Bernard Shaw. Nor 

should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on Shakespeare 

in the Saturday Review were surely brilliant. Oddly enough 

he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady 

of the sonnets. The favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of 

Pembroke. I own that if the poet must be rejected such a 

rejection would seem more in harmony with—what shall I 

say?—our notions of what ought not to have been. 

Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, 

auk’s egg, prize of their fray. 

He thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost 

love, Miriam? Dost love thy man? 

—That may be too, Stephen said. There’s a saying of 

Goethe’s which Mr Magee likes to quote. Beware of what 

you wish for in youth because you will get it in middle life. 


196 

Why does he send to one who is a buonaroba, a bay where all 

men ride, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a 

lordling to woo for him? He was himself a lord of language 

and had made himself a coistrel gentleman and he had written 

Romeo and Juliet. Why? Belief in himself has been untimely 

killed. He was overborne in a cornfield first (ryefield, 

I should say) and he will never be a victor in his own eyes 

after nor play victoriously the game of laugh and lie down. 

Assumed dongiovannism will not save him. No later undoing 

will undo the first undoing. The tusk of the boar has 

wounded him there where love lies ableeding. If the shrew is 

worsted yet there remains to her woman’s invisible weapon. 

There is, I feel in the words, some goad of the flesh driving 

him into a new passion, a darker shadow of the first, darkening 

even his own understanding of himself. A like fate awaits 

him and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool. 

They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour. 

—The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison 

poured in the porch of a sleeping ear. But those who are 

done to death in sleep cannot know the manner of their 

quell unless their Creator endow their souls with that knowl-

edge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast with 

two backs that urged it King Hamlet’s ghost could not know 

of were he not endowed with knowledge by his creator. That 

is why the speech (his lean unlovely English) is always turned 

elsewhere, backward. Ravisher and ravished, what he would 

but would not, go with him from Lucrece’s bluecircled ivory 

globes to Imogen’s breast, bare, with its mole cinquespotted. 

He goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up to hide 

him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because 

loss is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished 

personality, untaught by the wisdom he has written 

or by the laws he has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a 

ghost, a shadow now, the wind by Elsinore’s rocks or what 

you will, the sea’s voice, a voice heard only in the heart of 

him who is the substance of his shadow, the son consubstantial 

with the father. 

—Amen! was responded from the doorway. 

Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? 

Entr’acte. 

A ribald face, sullen as a dean’s, Buck Mulligan came forward, 

then blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their 


197 

smiles. My telegram. 

—You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake 

not? he asked of Stephen. 

Primrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as 

with a bauble. 

They make him welcome. Was Du verlachst wirst Du noch 

dienen. 

Brood of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most. 

He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself 

sent Himself, Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, 

Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was 

nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who let 

Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven and 

there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand 

of His Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom 

the quick and dead when all the quick shall be dead already. 

Glo — o — ri — a in ex — cel — sis De — o.

He lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with 

bells aquiring. 

—Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive 

discussion. Mr Mulligan, I’ll be bound, has his theory 

too of the play and of Shakespeare. All sides of life should be 

represented. 

He smiled on all sides equally. 

Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled: 

—Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name. 

A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features. 

—To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap 

that writes like Synge. 

Mr Best turned to him. 

—Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He’ll 

see you after at the D. B. C. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy Hyde’s 

Lovesongs of Connacht. 

—I came through the museum, Buck Mulligan said. Was 

he here? 

—The bard’s fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, 

are rather tired perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I 


198 

hear that an actress played Hamlet for the 

fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining held 

that the prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to 

be an Irishman? Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some 

clues. He swears (His Highness not His Lordship) by saint 

Patrick. 

—The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde’s, Mr Best 

said, lifting his brilliant notebook. That Portrait of Mr. W. H. 

where he proves that the sonnets were written by a Willie 

Hughes, a man all hues. 

—For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked. 

Or Hughie Wills? Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I? 

—I mean, for Willie Hughes, Mr Best said, amending his 

gloss easily. Of course it’s all paradox, don’t you know, Hughes 

and hews and hues, the colour, but it’s so typical the way he 

works it out. It’s the very essence of Wilde, don’t you know. 

The light touch. 

His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond 

ephebe. Tame essence of Wilde. 

You’re darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank 

with Dan Deasy’s ducats.

How much did I spend? O, a few shillings. 

For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry. 

Wit. You would give your five wits for youth’s proud livery 

he pranks in. Lineaments of gratified desire. 

There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, 

a cool ruttime send them. Yea, turtledove her. 

Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in’s 

kiss. 

—Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian 

was asking. The mocker is never taken seriously when he is 

most serious. 

They talked seriously of mocker’s seriousness. 

Buck Mulligan’s again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. 

Then, his head wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram 

from his pocket. His mobile lips read, smiling with 

new delight. 

—Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A 

papal bull! 

He sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully: 

—The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incur- 


199 

ring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. 

Where did you launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. 

Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt is going to call on 

your unsubstantial father. Telegram! Malachi Mulligan, The 

Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you 

priestified Kinchite! 

Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but 

keened in a querulous brogue: 

—It’s what I’m telling you, mister honey, it’s queer and 

sick we were, Haines and myself, the time himself brought it 

in. ’Twas murmur we did for a gallus potion would rouse a 

friar, I’m thinking, and he limp with leching. And we one 

hour and two hours and three hours in Connery’s sitting 

civil waiting for pints apiece. 

He wailed: 

—And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst 

sending us your conglomerations the way we to 

have our tongues out a yard long like the drouthy clerics do 

be fainting for a pussful. 

Stephen laughed. 

Quickly, warningfully Buck Mulligan bent down.

—The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder 

you. He heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. 

He’s out in pampooties to murder you. 

—Me! Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to 

literature. 

Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark 

eavesdropping ceiling. 

—Murder you! he laughed. 

Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess 

of hash of lights in rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts. In words of 

words for words, palabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he 

met in Clamart woods, brandishing a winebottle. C’est 

vendredi saint! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he 

met. I mine. I met a fool i’the forest. 

—Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar. 

— … in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice 

Madden in his Diary of Master William Silence has found the 

hunting terms … Yes? What is it? 

—There’s a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming 

forward and offering a card. From the Freeman. He wants 

to see the files of the Kilkenny People for last year. 


200 

—Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman? ... 

He took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down 

unglanced, looked, asked, creaked, asked: 

—Is he? … O, there! 

Brisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he 

talked with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, 

most kind, most honest broadbrim. 

—This gentleman? Freeman’s Journal? Kilkenny People? To 

be sure. Good day, sir. Kilkenny … We have certainly … 

A patient silhouette waited, listening. 

—All the leading provincial … Northern Whig, Cork Examiner, 

Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903 … Will you please? … 

Evans, conduct this gentleman … If you just follow the atten 

… Or, please allow me … This way … Please, sir … 

Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, 

a bowing dark figure following his hasty heels. 

The door closed. 

—The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried. 

He jumped up and snatched the card. 

—What’s his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom. 

He rattled on:

—Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him 

over in the museum where I went to hail the foamborn 

Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that has never been twisted in 

prayer. Every day we must do homage to her. Life of life, they 

lips enkindle. 

Suddenly he turned to Stephen: 

—He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, 

he is Greeker than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were 

upon her mesial groove. Venus Kallipyge. O, the thunder of 

those loins! The god pursuing the maiden hid. 

—We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr 

Best’s approval. We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now 

we had thought of her, if at all, as a patient Griselda, a 

Penelope stayathome. 

—Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the 

palm of beauty from Kyrios Menelaus’ brooddam, Argive 

Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes 

slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty years he lived 

in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary 

equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was 

rich. His art, more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman 


201 

called it, is the art of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of 

sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried 

pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, when they arrested 

him, had half a million francs on his back including a pair of 

fancy stays. The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen 

enough to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied 

there between conjugial love and its chaste delights and 

scortatory love and its foul pleasures. You know 

Manningham’s story of the burgher’s wife who bade Dick 

Burbage to her bed after she had seen him in Richard III and 

how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado about nothing, 

took the cow by the horns and, when Burbage came 

knocking at the gate, answered from the capon’s blankets: 

William the Conqueror came before Richard III. And the gay 

lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and his dainty 

birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited 

for a player, and the punks of the bankside, a penny a time. 

Cours la Reine. Encore vingt sous. Nous ferons de petites 

cochonneries. Minette? Tu veux? 

—The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of 

oxford’s mother with her cup of canary for any cockcanary.

Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed: 

—Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock! 

—And Harry of six wives’ daughter. And other lady friends 

from neighbour seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, 

sings. But all those twenty years what do you suppose poor 

Penelope in Stratford was doing behind the diamond panes? 

Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, 

herbalist, he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like 

her veins. Lids of Juno’s eyes, violets. He walks. One life is 

all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor, 

hands are laid on whiteness. 

Buck Mulligan rapped John Eglinton’s desk sharply. 

—Whom do you suspect? he challenged. 

—Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once 

spurned twice spurned. But the court wanton spurned him 

for a lord, his dearmylove. 

Love that dare not speak its name. 

—As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put 

in, he loved a lord. 

Old wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I 

watched them. 


202 

—It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, 

and for all other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office 

an ostler does for the stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he 

had a midwife to mother as he had a shrew to wife. But she, 

the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two deeds are 

rank in that ghost’s mind: a broken vow and the dullbrained 

yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased husband’s 

brother. Sweet Ann, I take it, was hot in the blood. Once a 

wooer, twice a wooer. 

Stephen turned boldly in his chair. 

—The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said 

frowning. If you deny that in the fifth scene of Hamlet he 

has branded her with infamy tell me why there is no mention 

of her during the thirtyfour years between the day she 

married him and the day she buried him. All those women 

saw their men down and under: Mary, her goodman John, 

Ann, her poor dear Willun, when he went and died on her, 

raging that he was the first to go, Joan, her four brothers, 

Judith, her husband and all her sons, Susan, her husband 

too, while Susan’s daughter, Elizabeth, to use granddaddy’s 

words, wed her second, having killed her first.

O, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living 

richly in royal London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty 

shillings from her father’s shepherd. Explain you then. Explain 

the swansong too wherein he has commended her to 

posterity. 

He faced their silence. 

To whom thus Eglinton: 

You mean the will. 

But that has been explained, I believe, by jurists. 

She was entitled to her widow’s dower 

At common law. His legal knowledge was great 

Our judges tell us. 

Him Satan fleers, 

Mocker: 

And therefore he left out her name 

From the first draft but he did not leave out 

The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters, 

For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford 

And in London. And therefore when he was urged, 

As I believe, to name her 


203 

He left her his 

Secondbest 

Bed. 

Punkt 

Leftherhis 

Secondbest 

Leftherhis 

Bestabed 

Secabest 

Leftabed. 

Woa! 

Amplius. In societate humana hoc est maxime necessarium ut 

sit amicitia inter multos. 

—Saint Thomas, Stephen began … 

—Ora pro nobis, Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a 

chair. 

There he keened a wailing rune. 

—Pogue mahone! Acushla machree! It’s destroyed we are from 

this day! It’s destroyed we are surely! 

All smiled their smiles.

—Saint Thomas, Stephen smiling said, whose gorbellied 

works I enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from 

a standpoint different from that of the new Viennese school 

Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to 

an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given 

to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some 

stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians 

tax with avarice, are of all races the most given to intermarriage. 

Accusations are made in anger. The christian laws which 

built up the hoards of the jews (for whom, as for the lollards, 

storm was shelter) bound their affections too with hoops of 

steel. Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will 

tell us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so tightly to 

what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold 

tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls 

his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife 

or his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass. 

—Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned. 

—Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best 

said gently. 

—Which will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are get- 


204 

ting mixed. 

—The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor 

Ann, Will’s widow, is the will to die. 

—Requiescat! Stephen prayed. 

What of all the will to do? 

It has vanished long ago … 

—She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, 

the mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those 

days was as rare as a motorcar is now and that its carvings 

were the wonder of seven parishes. In old age she takes up 

with gospellers (one stayed with her at New Place and drank 

a quart of sack the town council paid for but in which bed 

he slept it skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul. She 

read or had read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the 

Merry Wives and, loosing her nightly waters on the jordan, 

she thought over Hooks and Eyes for Believers’ Breeches and 

The Most Spiritual Snuffbox to Make the Most Devout Souls 

Sneeze. Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: 

remorse of conscience. It is an age of exhausted whoredom

groping for its god. 

—History shows that to be true, inquit Eglintonus 

Chronolologos. The ages succeed one another. But we have it 

on high authority that a man’s worst enemies shall be those 

of his own house and family. I feel that Russell is right. What 

do we care for his wife or father? I should say that only family 

poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man. I 

feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation. 

Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. 

Shy, supping with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in 

Ultonian Antrim bade it him. Visits him here on quarter 

days. Mr Magee, sir, there’s a gentleman to see you. Me? 

Says he’s your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter 

Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in 

strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks bemired 

with clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand. 

Your own? He knows your old fellow. The widower. 

Hurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the 

quayside I touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. 

Dr Bob Kenny is attending her. The eyes that wish me 

well. But do not know me. 


205 

—A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is 

a necessary evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed 

his father’s death. If you hold that he, a greying man 

with two marriageable daughters, with thirtyfive years of life, 

nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, with fifty of experience, 

is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you 

must hold that his seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. 

No. The corpse of John Shakespeare does not walk the night. 

From hour to hour it rots and rots. He rests, disarmed of 

fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate upon his son. 

Boccaccio’s Calandrino was the first and last man who felt 

himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious 

begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic 

succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On 

that mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning 

Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is 

founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the 

world, macro and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, 

upon unlikelihood. Amor matris, subjective and objective 

genitive, may be the only true thing in life. Paternity 

may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any

son should love him or he any son? 

What the hell are you driving at? 

I know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons. 

Amplius. Adhuc. Iterum. Postea. 

Are you condemned to do this? 

—They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that 

the criminal annals of the world, stained with all other incests 

and bestialities, hardly record its breach. Sons with mothers, 

sires with daughters, lesbic sisters, loves that dare not speak 

their name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, 

queens with prize bulls. The son unborn mars beauty: 

born, he brings pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a 

new male: his growth is his father’s decline, his youth his 

father’s envy, his friend his father’s enemy. 

In rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it. 

—What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut. 

Am I a father? If I were? 

Shrunken uncertain hand. 

—Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts 

of the field, held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. 

The bulldog of Aquin, with whom no word shall be impos- 


206 

sible, refutes him. Well: if the father who has not a son be 

not a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When 

Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of 

the same name in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was 

not the father of his own son merely but, being no more a 

son, he was and felt himself the father of all his race, the 

father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson 

who, by the same token, never was born, for nature, as 

Mr Magee understands her, abhors perfection. 

Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. 

Gladly glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine. 

Flatter. Rarely. But flatter. 

—Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. 

I am big with child. I have an unborn child in my brain. 

Pallas Athena! A play! The play’s the thing! Let me parturiate! 

He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands. 

—As for his family, Stephen said, his mother’s name lives 

in the forest of Arden. Her death brought from him the scene 

with Volumnia in Coriolanus. His boyson’s death is the 

deathscene of young Arthur in King John. Hamlet, the black

prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the girls in The Tempest, 

in Pericles, in Winter’s Tale are we know. Who Cleopatra, 

fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess. 

But there is another member of his family who is recorded. 

—The plot thickens, John Eglinton said. 

The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, 

quake, with haste, quake, quack. 

Door closed. Cell. Day. 

They list. Three. They. 

I you he they. 

Come, mess. 

Stephen: He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. 

Gilbert in his old age told some cavaliers he got a pass 

for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time mass he did and 

he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon 

in a wrastling play wud a man on’s back. The playhouse sausage 

filled Gilbert’s soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund 

and a Richard are recorded in the works of sweet William. 

Mageeglinjohn: Names! What’s in a name? 

Best: That is my name, Richard, don’t you know. I hope 

you are going to say a good word for Richard, don’t you 


207 

know, for my sake. 

(Laughter) 

Buckmulligan: (Piano, diminuendo) 

Then outspoke medical Dick 

To his comrade medical Davy … 

Stephen: In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, 

Iago, Richard Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear 

the wicked uncles’ names. Nay, that last play was written or 

being written while his brother Edmund lay dying in 

Southwark. 

Best: I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don’t want Richard, 

my name … 

(Laughter) 

Quakerlyster: (A tempo) But he that filches from me my 

good name …

Stephen: (Stringendo) He has hidden his own name, a fair 

name, William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a 

painter of old Italy set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. 

He has revealed it in the sonnets where there is Will in overplus. 

Like John o’Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as 

the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or 

steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his 

glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What’s in a name? 

That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write 

the name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake, 

rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter 

than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in 

Cassiopeia, the recumbent constellation which is the signature 

of his initial among the stars. His eyes watched it, 

lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as he walked 

by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from 

Shottery and from her arms. 

Both satisfied. I too. 

Don’t tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched. 

And from her arms. 

Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you? 


208 

Read the skies. Autontimorumenos. Bous Stephanoumenos. 

Where’s your configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread 

even. S. D: Sua donna. Gia: Di lui. Gelindo risolve di non 

amare S. D. 

—What is that, Mr Dedalus? the quaker librarian asked. 

Was it a celestial phenomenon? 

—A star by night, Stephen said. A pillar of the cloud by day. 

What more’s to speak? 

Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots. 

Stephanos, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling 

the shape of my feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief 

too. 

—You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. 

Your own name is strange enough. I suppose it explains your 

fantastical humour. 

Me, Magee and Mulligan. 

Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto? 

Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. 

Icarus. Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing 

you are. Lapwing be. 

Mr Best eagerquietly lifted his book to say:

—That’s very interesting because that brother motive, don’t 

you know, we find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you 

say. The three brothers Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don’t 

you know, the fairytales. The third brother that always marries 

the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize. 

Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best. 

The quaker librarian springhalted near. 

—I should like to know, he said, which brother you … I 

understand you to suggest there was misconduct with one of 

the brothers … But perhaps I am anticipating? 

He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained. 

An attendant from the doorway called: 

—Mr Lyster! Father Dineen wants … 

—O, Father Dineen! Directly. 

Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone. 

John Eglinton touched the foil. 

—Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard 

and Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn’t you? 

—In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen 

nuncle Richie and nuncle Edmund, Stephen answered, I feel 

I am asking too much perhaps. A brother is as easily forgot- 


209 

ten as an umbrella. 

Lapwing. 

Where is your brother? Apothecaries’ hall. My whetstone. 

Him, then Cranly, Mulligan: now these. Speech, speech. But 

act. Act speech. They mock to try you. Act. Be acted on. 

Lapwing. 

I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for 

a drink. 

On. 

—You will say those names were already in the chronicles 

from which he took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take 

them rather than others? Richard, a whoreson crookback, 

misbegotten, makes love to a widowed Ann (what’s in a 

name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow. Richard 

the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered. 

The other four acts of that play hang limply from 

that first. Of all his kings Richard is the only king unshielded 

by Shakespeare’s reverence, the angel of the world. Why is 

the underplot of King Lear in which Edmund figures lifted 

out of Sidney’s Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend 

older than history?

—That was Will’s way, John Eglinton defended. We should 

not now combine a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel 

by George Meredith. Que voulez-vous? Moore would say. He 

puts Bohemia on the seacoast and makes Ulysses quote 

Aristotle. 

—Why? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of 

the false or the usurping or the adulterous brother or all three 

in one is to Shakespeare, what the poor are not, always with 

him. The note of banishment, banishment from the heart, 

banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly from The 

Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, 

buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. 

It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in 

another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. 

It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when 

his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused 

of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding, 

weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination 

to evil. The words are those of my lords bishops of 

Maynooth. An original sin and, like original sin, committed 

by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the 


210 

lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone 

under which her four bones are not to be laid. Age has 

not withered it. Beauty and peace have not done it away. It is 

in infinite variety everywhere in the world he has created, in 

Much Ado about Nothing, twice in As You Like It, in The 

Tempest, in Hamlet, in Measure for Measure—and in all the 

other plays which I have not read. 

He laughed to free his mind from his mind’s bondage. 

Judge Eglinton summed up. 

—The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and 

the prince. He is all in all. 

—He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature 

man of act five. All in all. In Cymbeline, in Othello he is 

bawd and cuckold. He acts and is acted on. Lover of an ideal 

or a perversion, like Jose he kills the real Carmen. His unremitting 

intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing that 

the moor in him shall suffer. 

—Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O 

word of fear! 

Dark dome received, reverbed. 

—And what a character is Iago! undaunted John Eglinton

exclaimed. When all is said Dumas fils (or is it Dumas père?) 

is right. After God Shakespeare has created most. 

—Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. 

He returns after a life of absence to that spot of earth where 

he was born, where he has always been, man and boy, a silent 

witness and there, his journey of life ended, he plants 

his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion is ended. 

Gravediggers bury Hamlet père and Hamlet fils. A king and 

a prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what 

though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender 

hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only 

husband from whom they refuse to be divorced. If you like 

the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the good 

man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa’s lump of love, and nuncle 

Richie, the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the place 

where the bad niggers go. Strong curtain. He found in the 

world without as actual what was in his world within as possible. 

Maeterlinck says: If Socrates leave his house today he will 

find the sage seated on his doorstep. If Judas go forth tonight it is 

to Judas his steps will tend. Every life is many days, day after 

day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, 


211 

giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, 

but always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote the 

folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first 

and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom 

the most Roman of catholics call dio boia, hangman god, is 

doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would 

be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, 

foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified 

man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself. 

—Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka! 

Suddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride 

John Eglinton’s desk. 

—May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi. 

He began to scribble on a slip of paper. 

Take some slips from the counter going out. 

—Those who are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all 

save one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are. 

He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a 

bachelor. 

Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly 

each his variorum edition of The Taming of the Shrew.

—You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to 

Stephen. You have brought us all this way to show us a French 

triangle. Do you believe your own theory? 

—No, Stephen said promptly. 

—Are you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to 

make it a dialogue, don’t you know, like the Platonic dialogues 

Wilde wrote. 

John Eclecticon doubly smiled. 

—Well, in that case, he said, I don’t see why you should 

expect payment for it since you don’t believe it yourself. 

Dowden believes there is some mystery in Hamlet but will 

say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper met in Berlin, 

who is working up that Rutland theory, believes that the 

secret is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to 

visit the present duke, Piper says, and prove to him that his 

ancestor wrote the plays. It will come as a surprise to his 

grace. But he believes his theory. 

I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to 

believe or help me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? 

Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other chap. 

—You are the only contributor to Dana who asks for pieces 


212 

of silver. Then I don’t know about the next number. Fred 

Ryan wants space for an article on economics. 

Fraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. 

Economics. 

—For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this interview. 

Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, 

laughing: and then gravely said, honeying malice: 

—I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in 

upper Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study 

of the Summa contra Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal 

ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, the coalquay whore. 

He broke away. 

—Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Aengus of the birds. 

Come, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve 

you your orts and offals. 

Stephen rose. 

Life is many days. This will end. 

—We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami 

Moore says Malachi Mulligan must be there. 

Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.

—Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to 

the youth of Ireland. I’ll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards 

must drink. Can you walk straight? 

Laughing, he … 

Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment. 

Lubber … 

Stephen followed a lubber … 

One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. 

After. His lub back: I followed. I gall his kibe. 

Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, 

a wellkempt head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into 

a shattering daylight of no thought. 

What have I learned? Of them? Of me? 

Walk like Haines now. 

The constant readers’ room. In the readers’ book Cashel 

Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. 

Item: was Hamlet mad? The quaker’s pate godlily 

with a priesteen in booktalk. 

—O please do, sir … I shall be most pleased … 

Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with 

himself, selfnodding: 


213 

—A pleased bottom. 

The turnstile. 

Is that? … Blueribboned hat … Idly writing … What? 

Looked? … 

The curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius. 

Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, 

iambing, trolling: 

John Eglinton, my jo, John, 

Why won’t you wed a wife? 

He spluttered to the air: 

—O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We 

went over to their playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers’ hall. 

Our players are creating a new art for Europe like the Greeks 

or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I smell the pubic sweat 

of monks. 

He spat blank. 

Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy 

gave him. And left the femme de trente ans. And why no 

other children born? And his first child a girl?

Afterwit. Go back. 

The dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce 

youngling, minion of pleasure, Phedo’s toyable fair hair. 

Eh … I just eh … wanted … I forgot … he … 

—Longworth and M’Curdy Atkinson were there … 

Puck Mulligan footed featly, trilling: 

I hardly hear the purlieu cry 

Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by 

Before my thoughts begin to run 

On F. M’Curdy Atkinson, 

The same that had the wooden leg 

And that filibustering filibeg 

That never dared to slake his drouth, 

Magee that had the chinless mouth. 

Being afraid to marry on earth 

They masturbated for all they were worth. 

Jest on. Know thyself. 

Halted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt. 

—Mournful mummer, Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has 


214 

left off wearing black to be like nature. Only crows, priests 

and English coal are black. 

A laugh tripped over his lips. 

—Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote 

about that old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken 

jewjesuit! She gets you a job on the paper and then you go 

and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn’t you do the Yeats touch? 

He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving 

graceful arms: 

—The most beautiful book that has come out of our country 

in my time. One thinks of Homer. 

He stopped at the stairfoot. 

—I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly. 

The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the 

nine men’s morrice with caps of indices. 

In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:

Everyman His Own Wife 

Or 

A Honeymoon in the Hand 

(A National Immorality in Three Orgasms) 

By 

Ballocky Mulligan 

He turned a happy patch’s smirk to Stephen, saying: 

—The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen. 

He read, Marcato: 

—Characters: 

TODY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole) 

CRAB (a bushranger) 

MEDICAL DICK 

} 

and (two birds with one stone) 

MEDICAL DAVY 

MOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier) 

FRESH NELLY 

and 

ROSALIE (the coalquay whore). 


215 

He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed 

by Stephen: and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls 

of men: 

—O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of 

Erin had to lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your 

mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit! 

—The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom 

they ever lifted them. 

About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, 

he stood aside. 

Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave 

his house today, if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in 

space which I in time must come to, ineluctably. 

My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between. 

A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting. 

—Good day again, Buck Mulligan said. 

The portico. 

Here I watched the birds for augury. Aengus of the birds. 

They go, they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. 

Street of harlots after. A creamfruit melon he held to

me. In. You will see. 

—The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with 

clown’s awe. Did you see his eye? He looked upon you to 

lust after you. I fear thee, ancient mariner. O, Kinch, thou 

art in peril. Get thee a breechpad. 

Manner of Oxenford. 

Day. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge. 

A dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out 

by the gateway, under portcullis barbs. 

They followed. 

Offend me still. Speak on. 

Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No 

birds. Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, 

pluming, and in a flaw of softness softly were blown. 

Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: 

hierophantic: from wide earth an altar. 

Laud we the gods 

And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils 

From our bless’d altars. 


216 

THE SUPERIOR, THE VERY REVEREND JOHN CONMEE S.J. RESET 

his smooth watch in his interior pocket as he came down the 

presbytery steps. Five to three. Just nice time to walk to 

Artane. What was that boy’s name again? Dignam. Yes. Vere 

dignum et iustum est. Brother Swan was the person to see. 

Mr Cunningham’s letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible. Good 

practical catholic: useful at mission time. 

A onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks 

of his crutches, growled some notes. He jerked short before 

the convent of the sisters of charity and held out a peaked 

cap for alms towards the very reverend John Conmee S. J. 

Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his purse held, he 

knew, one silver crown. 

Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, 

but not for long, of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been 

shot off by cannonballs, ending their days in some pauper 

ward, and of cardinal Wolsey’s words: If I had served my God

as I have served my king He would not have abandoned me in 

my old days. He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking 

leaves: and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy 

M.P. 

—Very well, indeed, father. And you, father? 

Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would 

go to Buxton probably for the waters. And her boys, were 

they getting on well at Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee 

was very glad indeed to hear that. And Mr Sheehy himself? 

Still in London. The house was still sitting, to be sure it was. 

Beautiful weather it was, delightful indeed. Yes, it was very 

probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would come again to 

preach. O, yes: a very great success. A wonderful man really. 

Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David 

Sheehy M.P. Iooking so well and he begged to be remembered 

to Mr David Sheehy M.P. Yes, he would certainly call. 

—Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy. 

Father Conmee doffed his silk hat and smiled, as he took 

leave, at the jet beads of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. 

And smiled yet again, in going. He had cleaned his teeth, he 

knew, with arecanut paste. 


217 

Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought 

on Father Bernard Vaughan’s droll eyes and cockney voice. 

—Pilate! Wy don’t you old back that owlin mob? 

A zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great 

good in. his way. Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, 

and he loved the Irish. Of good family too would one think 

it? Welsh, were they not? 

O, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial. 

Father Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner 

of Mountjoy square. Yes: they were from Belvedere. The 

little house. Aha. And were they good boys at school? O. 

That was very good now. And what was his name? Jack Sohan. 

And his name? Ger. Gallaher. And the other little man? His 

name was Brunny Lynam. O, that was a very nice name to 

have. 

Father Conmee gave a letter from his breast to Master 

Brunny Lynam and pointed to the red pillarbox at the corner 

of Fitzgibbon street. 

—But mind you don’t post yourself into the box, little 

man, he said. 

The boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed:

—O, sir. 

—Well, let me see if you can post a letter, Father Conmee 

said. 

Master Brunny Lynam ran across the road and put Father 

Conmee’s letter to father provincial into the mouth of the 

bright red letterbox. Father Conmee smiled and nodded and 

smiled and walked along Mountjoy square east. 

Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, in silk hat, 

slate frockcoat with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender 

trousers, canary gloves and pointed patent boots, walking 

with grave deportment most respectfully took the curbstone 

as he passed lady Maxwell at the corner of Dignam’s court. 

Was that not Mrs M’Guinness? 

Mrs M’Guinness, stately, silverhaired, bowed to Father 

Conmee from the farther footpath along which she sailed. 

And Father Conmee smiled and saluted. How did she do? 

A fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something. 

And to think that she was a pawnbroker! Well, now! 

Such a … what should he say? … such a queenly mien. 

Father Conmee walked down Great Charles street and 

glanced at the shutup free church on his left. The reverend 


218 

T. R. Greene B.A. will (D.V.) speak. The incumbent they 

called him. He felt it incumbent on him to say a few words. 

But one should be charitable. Invincible ignorance. They 

acted according to their lights. 

Father Conmee turned the corner and walked along the 

North Circular road. It was a wonder that there was not a 

tramline in such an important thoroughfare. Surely, there 

ought to be. 

A band of satchelled schoolboys crossed from Richmond 

street. All raised untidy caps. Father Conmee greeted them 

more than once benignly. Christian brother boys. 

Father Conmee smelt incense on his right hand as he 

walked. Saint Joseph’s church, Portland row. For aged and 

virtuous females. Father Conmee raised his hat to the Blessed 

Sacrament. Virtuous: but occasionally they were also 

badtempered. 

Near Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that 

spendthrift nobleman. And now it was an office or something. 

Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road 

and was saluted by Mr William Gallagher who stood in the

doorway of his shop. Father Conmee saluted Mr William 

Gallagher and perceived the odours that came from 

baconflitches and ample cools of butter. He passed Grogan’s 

the Tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told 

of a dreadful catastrophe in New York. In America those 

things were continually happening. Unfortunate people to 

die like that, unprepared. Still, an act of perfect contrition. 

Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin’s publichouse against 

the window of which two unlabouring men lounged. They 

saluted him and were saluted. 

Father Conmee passed H. J. O’Neill’s funeral establishment 

where Corny Kelleher totted figures in the daybook 

while he chewed a blade of hay. A constable on his beat saluted 

Father Conmee and Father Conmee saluted the constable. 

In Youkstetter’s, the porkbutcher’s, Father Conmee 

observed pig’s puddings, white and black and red, lie neatly 

curled in tubes. 

Moored under the trees of Charleville Mall Father Conmee 

saw a turfbarge, a towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman 

with a hat of dirty straw seated amidships, smoking and staring 

at a branch of poplar above him. It was idyllic: and Fa- 


219 

ther Conmee reflected on the providence of the Creator who 

had made turf to be in bogs whence men might dig it out 

and bring it to town and hamlet to make fires in the houses 

of poor people. 

On Newcomen bridge the very reverend John Conmee 

S.J. of saint Francis Xavier’s church, upper Gardiner street, 

stepped on to an outward bound tram. 

Off an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas 

Dudley C. C. of saint Agatha’s church, north William street, 

on to Newcomen bridge. 

At Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward 

bound tram for he disliked to traverse on foot the dingy 

way past Mud Island. 

Father Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket 

tucked with care in the eye of one plump kid glove, while 

four shillings, a sixpence and five pennies chuted from his 

other plump glovepalm into his purse. Passing the ivy church 

he reflected that the ticket inspector usually made his visit 

when one had carelessly thrown away the ticket. The solemnity 

of the occupants of the car seemed to Father Conmee 

excessive for a journey so short and cheap. Father Conmee

liked cheerful decorum. 

It was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite 

Father Conmee had finished explaining and looked 

down. His wife, Father Conmee supposed. A tiny yawn 

opened the mouth of the wife of the gentleman with the 

glasses. She raised her small gloved fist, yawned ever so gently, 

tiptapping her small gloved fist on her opening mouth 

and smiled tinily, sweetly. 

Father Conmee perceived her perfume in the car. He perceived 

also that the awkward man at the other side of her 

was sitting on the edge of the seat. 

Father Conmee at the altarrails placed the host with difficulty 

in the mouth of the awkward old man who had the 

shaky head. 

At Annesley bridge the tram halted and, when it was about 

to go, an old woman rose suddenly from her place to alight. 

The conductor pulled the bellstrap to stay the car for her. 

She passed out with her basket and a marketnet: and Father 

Conmee saw the conductor help her and net and basket 

down: and Father Conmee thought that, as she had nearly 

passed the end of the penny fare, she was one of those good 


220 

souls who had always to be told twice bless you, my child, that 

they have been absolved, pray for me. But they had so many 

worries in life, so many cares, poor creatures. 

From the hoardings Mr Eugene Stratton grimaced with 

thick niggerlips at Father Conmee. 

Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown 

and yellow men and of his sermon on saint Peter Claver S.J. 

and the African mission and of the propagation of the faith 

and of the millions of black and brown and yellow souls that 

had not received the baptism of water when their last hour 

came like a thief in the night. That book by the Belgian 

jesuit, le nombre des elus, seemed to Father Conmee a reasonable 

plea. Those were millions of human souls created by 

God in His Own likeness to whom the faith had not (D.V.) 

been brought. But they were God’s souls, created by God. It 

seemed to Father Conmee a pity that they should all be lost, 

a waste, if one might say. 

At the Howth road stop Father Conmee alighted, was saluted 

by the conductor and saluted in his turn. 

The Malahide road was quiet. It pleased Father Conmee, 

road and name. The joybells were ringing in gay Malahide.

Lord Talbot de Malahide, immediate hereditary lord admiral 

of Malahide and the seas adjoining. Then came the call 

to arms and she was maid, wife and widow in one day. Those 

were old worldish days, loyal times in joyous townlands, old 

times in the barony. 

Father Conmee, walking, thought of his little book Old 

Times in the Barony and of the book that might be written 

about jesuit houses and of Mary Rochfort, daughter of lord 

Molesworth, first countess of Belvedere. 

A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of 

lough Ennel, Mary, first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking 

in the evening, not startled when an otter plunged. Who 

could know the truth? Not the jealous lord Belvedere and 

not her confessor if she had not committed adultery fully, 

eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale mulieris, with her 

husband’s brother? She would half confess if she had not all 

sinned as women did. Only God knew and she and he, her 

husband’s brother. 

Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, 

needed however for man’s race on earth, and of the ways of 

God which were not our ways. 


221 

Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. 

He was humane and honoured there. He bore in mind secrets 

confessed and he smiled at smiling noble faces in a 

beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit clusters. And 

the hands of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble, 

were impalmed by Don John Conmee. 

It was a charming day. 

The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of 

cabbages, curtseying to him with ample underleaves. The 

sky showed him a flock of small white clouds going slowly 

down the wind. Moutonner, the French said. A just and 

homely word. 

Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of 

muttoning clouds over Rathcoffey. His thinsocked ankles 

were tickled by the stubble of Clongowes field. He walked 

there, reading in the evening, and heard the cries of the boys’ 

lines at their play, young cries in the quiet evening. He was 

their rector: his reign was mild. 

Father Conmee drew off his gloves and took his rededged 

breviary out. An ivory bookmark told him the page. 

Nones. He should have read that before lunch. But lady

Maxwell had come. 

Father Conmee read in secret Pater and Ave and crossed 

his breast. Deus in adiutorium. 

He walked calmly and read mutely the nones, walking and 

reading till he came to Res in Beati immaculati: Principium 

verborum tuorum veritas: in eternum omnia indicia iustitiæ 

tuæ. 

A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and 

after him came a young woman with wild nodding daisies in 

her hand. The young man raised his cap abruptly: the young 

woman abruptly bent and with slow care detached from her 

light skirt a clinging twig. 

Father Conmee blessed both gravely and turned a thin page 

of his breviary. Sin: Principes persecuti sunt me gratis: et a verbis 

tuis formidavit cor meum. 

* * * 

Corny Kelleher closed his long daybook and glanced with 

his drooping eye at a pine coffinlid sentried in a corner. He 

pulled himself erect, went to it and, spinning it on its axle, 


222 

viewed its shape and brass furnishings. Chewing his blade of 

hay he laid the coffinlid by and came to the doorway. There 

he tilted his hatbrim to give shade to his eyes and leaned 

against the doorcase, looking idly out. 

Father John Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram 

on Newcomen bridge. 

Corny Kelleher locked his largefooted boots and gazed, 

his hat downtilted, chewing his blade of hay. 

Constable 57C, on his beat, stood to pass the time of day. 

—That’s a fine day, Mr Kelleher. 

—Ay, Corny Kelleher said. 

—It’s very close, the constable said. 

Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from 

his mouth while a generous white arm from a window in 

Eccles street flung forth a coin. 

—What’s the best news? he asked. 

—I seen that particular party last evening, the constable 

said with bated breath. 

* * *

A onelegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell’s 

corner, skirting Rabaiotti’s icecream car, and jerked himself 

up Eccles street. Towards Larry O’Rourke, in shirtsleeves in 

his doorway, he growled unamiably: 

—For England … 

He swung himself violently forward past Katey and Boody 

Dedalus, halted and growled: 

—Home and beauty. 

J. J. O’Molloy’s white careworn face was told that Mr Lambert 

was in the warehouse with a visitor. 

A stout lady stopped, took a copper coin from her purse 

and dropped it into the cap held out to her. The sailor 

grumbled thanks, glanced sourly at the unheeding windows, 

sank his head and swung himself forward four strides. 

He halted and growled angrily: 

—For England … 

Two barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces, halted 

near him, gaping at his stump with their yellowslobbered 

mouths. 

He swung himself forward in vigorous jerks, halted, lifted 

his head towards a window and bayed deeply: 


223 

—Home and beauty. 

The gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or 

two, ceased. The blind of the window was drawn aside. A 

card Unfurnished Apartements slipped from the sash and fell. 

A plump bare generous arm shone, was seen, held forth from 

a white petticoatbodice and taut shiftstraps. A woman’s hand 

flung forth a coin over the area railings. It fell on the path. 

One of the urchins ran to it, picked it up and dropped it 

into the minstrel’s cap, saying: 

—There, sir. 

* * * 

Katey and Boody Dedalus shoved in the door of the 

closesteaming kitchen. 

—Did you put in the books? Boody asked. 

Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish mass beneath 

bubbling suds twice with her potstick and wiped her brow. 

—They wouldn’t give anything on them, she said. 

Father Conmee walked through Clongowes fields, his 

thinsocked ankles tickled by stubble.

—Where did you try? Boody asked. 

—M’Guinness’s. 

Boody stamped her foot and threw her satchel on the table. 

—Bad cess to her big face! she cried. 

Katey went to the range and peered with squinting eyes. 

—What’s in the pot? she asked. 

—Shirts, Maggy said. 

Boody cried angrily: 

—Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat? 

Katey, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, 

asked: 

—And what’s in this? 

A heavy fume gushed in answer. 

—Peasoup, Maggy said. 

—Where did you get it? Katey asked. 

—Sister Mary Patrick, Maggy said. 

The lacquey rang his bell. 

—Barang! 

Boody sat down at the table and said hungrily: 

—Give us it here. 

Maggy poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a 


224 

bowl. Katey, sitting opposite Boody, said quietly, as her fingertip 

lifted to her mouth random crumbs: 

—A good job we have that much. Where’s Dilly? 

—Gone to meet father, Maggy said. 

Boody, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, 

added: 

—Our father who art not in heaven. 

Maggy, pouring yellow soup in Katey’s bowl, exclaimed: 

—Boody! For shame! 

A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly 

down the Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids 

where water chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward 

past hulls and anchorchains, between the Customhouse old 

dock and George’s quay. 

* * * 

The blond girl in Thornton’s bedded the wicker basket with 

rustling fibre. Blazes Boylan handed her the bottle swathed 

in pink tissue paper and a small jar. 

—Put these in first, will you? he said.

—Yes, sir, the blond girl said. And the fruit on top. 

—That’ll do, game ball, Blazes Boylan said. 

She bestowed fat pears neatly, head by tail, and among 

them ripe shamefaced peaches. 

Blazes Boylan walked here and there in new tan shoes about 

the fruitsmelling shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled 

and plump red tomatoes, sniffing smells. 

H. E. L. Y.’S filed before him, tallwhitehatted, past Tangier 

lane, plodding towards their goal. 

He turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a 

gold watch from his fob and held it at its chain’s length. 

—Can you send them by tram? Now? 

A darkbacked figure under Merchants’ arch scanned books 

on the hawker’s cart. 

—Certainly, sir. Is it in the city? 

—O, yes, Blazes Boylan said. Ten minutes. 

The blond girl handed him a docket and pencil. 

—Will you write the address, sir? 

Blazes Boylan at the counter wrote and pushed the docket 

to her. 

—Send it at once, will you? he said. It’s for an invalid. 


225 

—Yes, sir. I will, sir. 

Blazes Boylan rattled merry money in his trousers’ pocket. 

—What’s the damage? he asked. 

The blond girl’s slim fingers reckoned the fruits. 

Blazes Boylan looked into the cut of her blouse. A young 

pullet. He took a red carnation from the tall stemglass. 

—This for me? he asked gallantly. 

The blond girl glanced sideways at him, got up regardless, 

with his tie a bit crooked, blushing. 

—Yes, sir, she said. 

Bending archly she reckoned again fat pears and blushing 

peaches. 

Blazes Boylan looked in her blouse with more favour, the 

stalk of the red flower between his smiling teeth. 

—May I say a word to your telephone, missy? he asked 

roguishly. 

* * * 

—Ma! Almidano Artifoni said. 

He gazed over Stephen’s shoulder at Goldsmith’s knobby poll.

Two carfuls of tourists passed slowly, their women sitting 

fore, gripping the handrests. Palefaces. Men’s arms frankly 

round their stunted forms. They looked from Trinity to the 

blind columned porch of the bank of Ireland where pigeons 

roocoocooed. 

—Anch’io ho avuto di queste idee, Almidano Artifoni said, 

quand’ ero Giovine come lei. Eppoi mi sono convinto che il 

mondo è una bestia. É peccato. Perchè la sua voce … sarabbe 

un cespite di rendita, via. Invece, lei si sacrifica. 

—Sacrifizio incruento, Stephen said smiling, swaying his 

ashplant in slow swingswong from its midpoint, lightly. 

—Speriamo, the round mustachioed face said pleasantly. 

Ma, dia retta a me. Ci rifletta 

By the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an 

Inchicore tram unloaded straggling Highland soldiers of a 

band. 

—Ci rifletterò, Stephen said, glancing down the solid 

trouserleg. 

—Ma, sul serio, eh? Almidano Artifoni said. 

His heavy hand took Stephen’s firmly. Human eyes. They 

gazed curiously an instant and turned quickly towards a 


226 

Dalkey tram. 

—Eccolo, Almidano Artifoni said in friendly haste. Venga a 

trovarmi e ci pensi. Addio, caro. 

—Arrivederla, maestro, Stephen said, raising his hat when 

his hand was freed. E grazie. 

—Di che? Almidano Artifoni said. Scusi, eh? Tante belle 

cose! 

Almidano Artifoni, holding up a baton of rolled music as 

a signal, trotted on stout trousers after the Dalkey tram. In 

vain he trotted, signalling in vain among the rout of barekneed 

gillies smuggling implements of music through Trinity gates. 

* * * 

Miss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of The Woman 

in White far back in her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy 

notepaper into her typewriter. 

Too much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that 

one, Marion? Change it and get another by Mary Cecil Haye. 

The disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased 

and ogled them: six.

Miss Dunne clicked on the keyboard: 

—16 June 1904. 

Five tallwhitehatted sandwichmen between Monypeny’s 

corner and the slab where Wolfe Tone’s statue was not, eeled 

themselves turning H. E. L. Y.’S and plodded back as they 

had come. 

Then she stared at the large poster of Marie Kendall, charming 

soubrette, and, listlessly lolling, scribbled on the jotter 

sixteens and capital esses. Mustard hair and dauby cheeks. 

She’s not nicelooking, is she? The way she’s holding up her 

bit of a skirt. Wonder will that fellow be at the band tonight. 

If I could get that dressmaker to make a concertina skirt like 

Susy Nagle’s. They kick out grand. Shannon and all the 

boatclub swells never took his eyes off her. Hope to goodness 

he won’t keep me here till seven. 

The telephone rang rudely by her ear. 

—Hello. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll ring them up after 

five. Only those two, sir, for Belfast and Liverpool. All right, 

sir. Then I can go after six if you’re not back. A quarter after. 

Yes, sir. Twentyseven and six. I’ll tell him. Yes: one, seven, 

six. 


227 

She scribbled three figures on an envelope. 

—Mr Boylan! Hello! That gentleman from SPORT was 

in looking for you. Mr Lenehan, yes. He said he’ll be in the 

Ormond at four. No, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll ring them up after five. 

* * * 

Two pink faces turned in the flare of the tiny torch. 

—Who’s that? Ned Lambert asked. Is that Crotty? 

—Ringabella and Crosshaven, a voice replied groping for 

foothold. 

—Hello, Jack, is that yourself? Ned Lambert said, raising 

in salute his pliant lath among the flickering arches. Come 

on. Mind your steps there. 

The vesta in the clergyman’s uplifted hand consumed itself 

in a long soft flame and was let fall. At their feet its red 

speck died: and mouldy air closed round them. 

—How interesting! a refined accent said in the gloom. 

—Yes, sir, Ned Lambert said heartily. We are standing in 

the historic council chamber of saint Mary’s abbey where 

silken Thomas proclaimed himself a rebel in 1534. This is

the most historic spot in all Dublin. O’Madden Burke is 

going to write something about it one of these days. The old 

bank of Ireland was over the way till the time of the union 

and the original jews’ temple was here too before they built 

their synagogue over in Adelaide road. You were never here 

before, Jack, were you? 

—No, Ned. 

—He rode down through Dame walk, the refined accent 

said, if my memory serves me. The mansion of the Kildares 

was in Thomas court. 

—That’s right, Ned Lambert said. That’s quite right, sir. 

—If you will be so kind then, the clergyman said, the next 

time to allow me perhaps ... 

—Certainly, Ned Lambert said. Bring the camera whenever 

you like. I’ll get those bags cleared away from the windows. 

You can take it from here or from here. 

In the still faint light he moved about, tapping with his 

lath the piled seedbags and points of vantage on the floor. 

From a long face a beard and gaze hung on a chessboard. 

—I’m deeply obliged, Mr Lambert, the clergyman said. I 

won’t trespass on your valuable time ... 


228 

—You’re welcome, sir, Ned Lambert said. Drop in whenever 

you like. Next week, say. Can you see? 

—Yes, yes. Good afternoon, Mr Lambert. Very pleased to 

have met you. 

—Pleasure is mine, sir, Ned Lambert answered. 

He followed his guest to the outlet and then whirled his 

lath away among the pillars. With J. J. O’Molloy he came 

forth slowly into Mary’s abbey where draymen were loading 

floats with sacks of carob and palmnut meal, O’Connor, 

Wexford. 

He stood to read the card in his hand. 

—The reverend Hugh C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address: 

Saint Michael’s, Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He’s 

writing a book about the Fitzgeralds he told me. He’s well 

up in history, faith. 

The young woman with slow care detached from her light 

skirt a clinging twig. 

—I thought you were at a new gunpowder plot, J. J. 

O’Molloy said. 

Ned Lambert cracked his fingers in the air. 

—God! he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the

earl of Kildare after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know 

that one? I’m bloody sorry I did it, says he, but I declare to God 

I thought the archbishop was inside. He mightn’t like it, though. 

What? God, I’ll tell him anyhow. That was the great earl, the 

Fitzgerald Mor. Hot members they were all of them, the 

Geraldines. 

The horses he passed started nervously under their slack 

harness. He slapped a piebald haunch quivering near him 

and cried: 

—Woa, sonny! 

He turned to J. J. O’Molloy and asked: 

—Well, Jack. What is it? What’s the trouble? Wait awhile. 

Hold hard. 

With gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, 

after an instant, sneezed loudly. 

—Chow! he said. Blast you! 

—The dust from those sacks, J. J. O’Molloy said politely. 

—No, Ned Lambert gasped, I caught a … cold night before 

… blast your soul … night before last … and there was 

a hell of a lot of draught … 

He held his handkerchief ready for the coming … 


229 

—I was … Glasnevin this morning … poor little … what 

do you call him … Chow! … Mother of Moses! 

* * * 

Tom Rochford took the top disk from the pile he clasped 

against his claret waistcoat. 

—See? he said. Say it’s turn six. In here, see. Turn Now On. 

He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove, 

wobbled a while, ceased, ogling them: six. 

Lawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pass from 

the consolidated taxing office to Nisi Prius court Richie 

Goulding carrying the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward 

and heard rustling from the admiralty division of king’s bench 

to the court of appeal an elderly female with false teeth smiling 

incredulously and a black silk skirt of great amplitude. 

—See? he said. See now the last one I put in is over here: 

Turns Over. The impact. Leverage, see? 

He showed them the rising column of disks on the right. 

—Smart idea, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow coming 

in late can see what turn is on and what turns are over.

—See? Tom Rochford said. 

He slid in a disk for himself: and watched it shoot, wobble, 

ogle, stop: four. Turn Now On. 

—I’ll see him now in the Ormond, Lenehan said, and 

sound him. One good turn deserves another. 

—Do, Tom Rochford said. Tell him I’m Boylan with impatience. 

—Goodnight, M’Coy said abruptly. When you two begin 

Nosey Flynn stooped towards the lever, snuffling at it. 

—But how does it work here, Tommy? he asked. 

—Tooraloo, Lenehan said. See you later. 

He followed M’Coy out across the tiny square of Crampton 

court. 

—He’s a hero, he said simply. 

—I know, M’Coy said. The drain, you mean. 

—Drain? Lenehan said. It was down a manhole. 

They passed Dan Lowry’s musichall where Marie Kendall, 

charming soubrette, smiled on them from a poster a dauby 

smile. 

Going down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire 

musichall Lenehan showed M’Coy how the whole thing 


230 

was. One of those manholes like a bloody gaspipe and there 

was the poor devil stuck down in it, half choked with sewer 

gas. Down went Tom Rochford anyhow, booky’s vest and 

all, with the rope round him. And be damned but he got the 

rope round the poor devil and the two were hauled up. 

—The act of a hero, he said. 

At the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to 

gallop past them for Jervis street. 

—This way, he said, walking to the right. I want to pop 

into Lynam’s to see Sceptre’s starting price. What’s the time 

by your gold watch and chain? 

M’Coy peered into Marcus Tertius Moses’ sombre office, 

then at O’Neill’s clock. 

—After three, he said. Who’s riding her? 

—O. Madden, Lenehan said. And a game filly she is. 

While he waited in Temple bar M’Coy dodged a banana 

peel with gentle pushes of his toe from the path to the gutter. 

Fellow might damn easy get a nasty fall there coming 

along tight in the dark. 

The gates of the drive opened wide to give egress to the 

viceregal cavalcade.

—Even money, Lenehan said returning. I knocked against 

Bantam Lyons in there going to back a bloody horse someone 

gave him that hasn’t an earthly. Through here. 

They went up the steps and under Merchants’ arch. A 

darkbacked figure scanned books on the hawker’s cart. 

—There he is, Lenehan said. 

—Wonder what he’s buying, M’Coy said, glancing behind. 

—Leopoldo or the Bloom is on the Rye, Lenehan said. 

—He’s dead nuts on sales, M’Coy said. I was with him 

one day and he bought a book from an old one in Liffey 

street for two bob. There were fine plates in it worth double 

the money, the stars and the moon and comets with long 

tails. Astronomy it was about. 

Lenehan laughed. 

—I’ll tell you a damn good one about comets’ tails, he 

said. Come over in the sun. 

They crossed to the metal bridge and went along 

Wellington quay by the riverwall. 

Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam came out of Mangan’s, 

late Fehrenbach’s, carrying a pound and a half of porksteaks. 

—There was a long spread out at Glencree reformatory, 


231 

Lenehan said eagerly. The annual dinner, you know. Boiled 

shirt affair. The lord mayor was there, Val Dillon it was, and 

sir Charles Cameron and Dan Dawson spoke and there was 

music. Bartell d’Arcy sang and Benjamin Dollard ... 

—I know, M’Coy broke in. My missus sang there once. 

—Did she? Lenehan said. 

A card Unfurnished Apartments reappeared on the 

windowsash of number 7 Eccles street. 

He checked his tale a moment but broke out in a wheezy 

laugh. 

—But wait till I tell you, he said. Delahunt of Camden 

street had the catering and yours truly was chief bottlewasher. 

Bloom and the wife were there. Lashings of stuff we put up: 

port wine and sherry and curacao to which we did ample 

justice. Fast and furious it was. After liquids came solids. 

Cold joints galore and mince pies … 

—I know, M’Coy said. The year the missus was there … 

Lenehan linked his arm warmly. 

—But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch 

too after all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was 

blue o’clock the morning after the night before. Coming

home it was a gorgeous winter’s night on the Featherbed 

Mountain. Bloom and Chris Callinan were on one side of 

the car and I was with the wife on the other. We started 

singing glees and duets: Lo, the early beam of morning. She 

was well primed with a good load of Delahunt’s port under 

her bellyband. Every jolt the bloody car gave I had her bumping 

up against me. Hell’s delights! She has a fine pair, God 

bless her. Like that. 

He held his caved hands a cubit from him, frowning: 

—I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all 

the time. Know what I mean? 

His hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes 

tight in delight, his body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp 

from his lips. 

—The lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. 

She’s a gamey mare and no mistake. Bloom was pointing out 

all the stars and the comets in the heavens to Chris Callinan 

and the jarvey: the great bear and Hercules and the dragon, 

and the whole jingbang lot. But, by God, I was lost, so to 

speak, in the milky way. He knows them all, faith. At last she 

spotted a weeny weeshy one miles away. And what star is 


232 

that, Poldy? says she. By God, she had Bloom cornered. That 

one, is it? says Chris Callinan, Sure that’s only what you might 

call a pinprick. By God, he wasn’t far wide of the mark. 

Lenehan stopped and leaned on the riverwall, panting with 

soft laughter. 

—I’m weak, he gasped. 

M’Coy’s white face smiled about it at instants and grew 

grave. Lenehan walked on again. He lifted his yachtingcap 

and scratched his hindhead rapidly. He glanced sideways in 

the sunlight at M’Coy. 

—He’s a cultured allroundman, Bloom is, he said seriously. 

He’s not one of your common or garden … you know … 

There’s a touch of the artist about old Bloom. 

* * * 

Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of The Awful Disclosrues of 

Maria Monk, then of Aristotle’s Masterpiece. Crooked botched 

print. Plates: infants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs 

like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of them like that at this 

moment all over the world. All butting with their skulls to

get out of it. Child born every minute somewhere. Mrs 

Purefoy. 

He laid both books aside and glanced at the third: Tales of 

the Ghetto by Leopold von Sacher Masoch. 

—That I had, he said, pushing it by. 

The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter. 

—Them are two good ones, he said. 

Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his 

ruined mouth. He bent to make a bundle of the other books, 

hugged them against his unbuttoned waistcoat and bore them 

off behind the dingy curtain. 

On O’Connell bridge many persons observed the grave 

deportment and gay apparel of Mr Denis J Maginni, professor 

of dancing &c. 

Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. Fair Tyrants by James 

Lovebirch. Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes. 

He opened it. Thought so. 

A woman’s voice behind the dingy curtain. Listen: the man. 

No: she wouldn’t like that much. Got her it once. 

He read the other title: Sweets of Sin. More in her line. Let 

us see. 


233 

He read where his finger opened. 

—All the dollar bills her husband gave her were spent in the 

stores on wondrous gowns and constliest frillies. For him! For 

Raoul! 

Yes. This. Here. Try. 

—Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while 

his hands felt for the opulent curves inside her deshabille. 

Yes. Take this. The end. 

—You are late, he spoke hoarsely, eyeing her with a suspicious 

glare. The beautiful woman threw off her sabletrimmed wrap, 

displaying her queenly shoulders and heaving embonponpoint. 

An imperceptible smile played round her perfect lips as she turned 

to him calmly. 

Mr Bloom read again: The beautiful woman. 

Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh 

yielded amply amid rumpled clothes: whites of eyes swooning 

up. His nostrils arched themselves for prey. Melting breast 

ointments (for him! For Raoul!). Armpits’ oniony sweat. 

Fishgluey slime (her heaving embonpoint!). Feel! Press! 

Crushed! Sulphur dung of lions! 

Young! Young!

An elderly female, no more young, left the building of the 

courts of chancery, king’s bench, exchequer and common 

pleas, having heard in the lord chancellor’s court the case in 

lunacy of Potterton, in the admiralty division the summons, 

exparte motion, of the owners of the Lady Cairns versus the 

owners of the barque Mona, in the court of appeal reservation 

of judgment in the case of Harvey versus the Ocean 

Accident and Guarantee Corporation. 

Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging 

out the dingy curtains. The shopman’s uncombed grey head 

came out and his unshaven reddened face, coughing. He 

raked his throat rudely, puked phlegm on the floor. He put 

his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it, and 

bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired. 

Mr Bloom beheld it. 

Mastering his troubled breath, he said: 

—I’ll take this one. 

The shopman lifted eyes bleared with old rheum. 

—Sweets of Sin, he said, tapping on it. That’s a good one. 

* * * 


234 

The lacquey by the door of Dillon’s auctionrooms shook his 

handbell twice again and viewed himself in the chalked mirror 

of the cabinet. 

Dilly Dedalus, loitering by the curbstone, heard the beats 

of the bell, the cries of the auctioneer within. Four and nine. 

Those lovely curtains. Five shillings. Cosy curtains. Selling 

new at two guineas. Any advance on five shillings? Going 

for five shillings. 

The lacquey lifted his handbell and shook it: 

—Barang! 

Bang of the lastlap bell spurred the halfmile wheelmen to 

their sprint. J. A. Jackson, W. E. Wylie, A. Munro and H. T. 

Gahan, their stretched necks wagging, negotiated the curve 

by the College library. 

Mr Dedalus, tugging a long moustache, came round from 

Williams’s row. He halted near his daughter. 

—It’s time for you, she said. 

—Stand up straight for the love of the lord Jesus, Mr 

Dedalus said. Are you trying to imitate your uncle John, the 

cornetplayer, head upon shoulder? Melancholy God!

Dilly shrugged her shoulders. Mr Dedalus placed his hands 

on them and held them back. 

—Stand up straight, girl, he said. You’ll get curvature of 

the spine. Do you know what you look like? 

He let his head sink suddenly down and forward, hunching 

his shoulders and dropping his underjaw. 

—Give it up, father, Dilly said. All the people are looking 

at you. 

Mr Dedalus drew himself upright and tugged again at his 

moustache. 

—Did you get any money? Dilly asked. 

—Where would I get money? Mr Dedalus said. There is 

no-one in Dublin would lend me fourpence. 

—You got some, Dilly said, looking in his eyes. 

—How do you know that? Mr Dedalus asked, his tongue 

in his cheek. 

Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked, walked 

boldly along James’s street. 

—I know you did, Dilly answered. Were you in the Scotch 

house now? 

—I was not, then, Mr Dedalus said, smiling. Was it the 


235 

little nuns taught you to be so saucy? Here. 

He handed her a shilling. 

—See if you can do anything with that, he said. 

—I suppose you got five, Dilly said. Give me more than 

that. 

—Wait awhile, Mr Dedalus said threateningly. You’re like 

the rest of them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches 

since your poor mother died. But wait awhile. You’ll all get a 

short shrift and a long day from me. Low blackguardism! 

I’m going to get rid of you. Wouldn’t care if I was stretched 

out stiff. He’s dead. The man upstairs is dead. 

He left her and walked on. Dilly followed quickly and 

pulled his coat. 

—Well, what is it? he said, stopping. 

The lacquey rang his bell behind their backs. 

—Barang! 

—Curse your bloody blatant soul, Mr Dedalus cried, turning 

on him. 

The lacquey, aware of comment, shook the lolling clapper 

of his bell but feebly: 

—Bang!

Mr Dedalus stared at him. 

—Watch him, he said. It’s instructive. I wonder will he 

allow us to talk. 

—You got more than that, father, Dilly said. 

—I’m going to show you a little trick, Mr Dedalus said. 

I’ll leave you all where Jesus left the jews. Look, there’s all I 

have. I got two shillings from Jack Power and I spent 

twopence for a shave for the funeral. 

He drew forth a handful of copper coins, nervously. 

—Can’t you look for some money somewhere? Dilly said. 

Mr Dedalus thought and nodded. 

—I will, he said gravely. I looked all along the gutter in 

O’Connell street. I’ll try this one now. 

—You’re very funny, Dilly said, grinning. 

—Here, Mr Dedalus said, handing her two pennies. Get a 

glass of milk for yourself and a bun or a something. I’ll be 

home shortly. 

He put the other coins in his pocket and started to walk on. 

The viceregal cavalcade passed, greeted by obsequious policemen, 

out of Parkgate. 

—I’m sure you have another shilling, Dilly said. 


236 

The lacquey banged loudly. 

Mr Dedalus amid the din walked off, murmuring to himself 

with a pursing mincing mouth gently: 

—The little nuns! Nice little things! O, sure they wouldn’t 

do anything! O, sure they wouldn’t really! Is it little sister 

Monica! 

* * * 

From the sundial towards James’s gate walked Mr Kernan, 

pleased with the order he had booked for Pulbrook 

Robertson, boldly along James’s street, past Shackleton’s offices. 

Got round him all right. How do you do, Mr 

Crimmins? First rate, sir. I was afraid you might be up in 

your other establishment in Pimlico. How are things going? 

Just keeping alive. Lovely weather we’re having. Yes, indeed. 

Good for the country. Those farmers are always grumbling. 

I’ll just take a thimbleful of your best gin, Mr Crimmins. A 

small gin, sir. Yes, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum 

explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And 

heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and chil-

dren. Most brutal thing. What do they say was the cause? 

Spontaneous combustion. Most scandalous revelation. Not 

a single lifeboat would float and the firehose all burst. What 

I can’t understand is how the inspectors ever allowed a boat 

like that ... Now, you’re talking straight, Mr Crimmins. You 

know why? Palm oil. Is that a fact? Without a doubt. Well 

now, look at that. And America they say is the land of the 

free. I thought we were bad here. 

I smiled at him. America, I said quietly, just like that. What 

is it? The sweepings of every country including our own. Isn’t 

that true? That’s a fact. 

Graft, my dear sir. Well, of course, where there’s money 

going there’s always someone to pick it up. 

Saw him looking at my frockcoat. Dress does it. Nothing 

like a dressy appearance. Bowls them over. 

—Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things? 

—Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping. 

Mr Kernan halted and preened himself before the sloping 

mirror of Peter Kennedy, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a 

doubt. Scott of Dawson street. Well worth the half sovereign 

I gave Neary for it. Never built under three guineas. Fits me 


237 

down to the ground. Some Kildare street club toff had it 

probably. John Mulligan, the manager of the Hibernian bank, 

gave me a very sharp eye yesterday on Carlisle bridge as if he 

remembered me. 

Aham! Must dress the character for those fellows. Knight 

of the road. Gentleman. And now, Mr Crimmins, may we 

have the honour of your custom again, sir. The cup that cheers 

but not inebriates, as the old saying has it. 

North wall and sir John Rogerson’s quay, with hulls and 

anchorchains, sailing westward, sailed by a skiff, a crumpled 

throwaway, rocked on the ferrywash, Elijah is coming. 

Mr Kernan glanced in farewell at his image. High colour, 

of course. Grizzled moustache. Returned Indian officer. 

Bravely he bore his stumpy body forward on spatted feet, 

squaring his shoulders. Is that Ned Lambert’s brother over 

the way, Sam? What? Yes. He’s as like it as damn it. No. The 

windscreen of that motorcar in the sun there. Just a flash like 

that. Damn like him. 

Aham! Hot spirit of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his 

breath. Good drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in 

bright sunshine to his fat strut.

Down there Emmet was hanged, drawn and quartered. 

Greasy black rope. Dogs licking the blood off the street when 

the lord lieutenant’s wife drove by in her noddy. 

Bad times those were. Well, well. Over and done with. 

Great topers too. Fourbottle men. 

Let me see. Is he buried in saint Michan’s? Or no, there 

was a midnight burial in Glasnevin. Corpse brought in 

through a secret door in the wall. Dignam is there now. Went 

out in a puff. Well, well. Better turn down here. Make a 

detour. 

Mr Kernan turned and walked down the slope of Watling 

street by the corner of Guinness’s visitors’ waitingroom. 

Outside the Dublin Distillers Company’s stores an outside 

car without fare or jarvey stood, the reins knotted to the 

wheel. Damn dangerous thing. Some Tipperary bosthoon 

endangering the lives of the citizens. Runaway horse. 

Denis Breen with his tomes, weary of having waited an 

hour in John Henry Menton’s office, led his wife over 

O’Connell bridge, bound for the office of Messrs Collis and 

Ward. 

Mr Kernan approached Island street. 


238 

Times of the troubles. Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me 

those reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington. When you look 

back on it all now in a kind of retrospective arrangement. 

Gaming at Daly’s. No cardsharping then. One of those fellows 

got his hand nailed to the table by a dagger. Somewhere 

here lord Edward Fitzgerald escaped from major Sirr. Stables 

behind Moira house. 

Damn good gin that was. 

Fine dashing young nobleman. Good stock, of course. That 

ruffian, that sham squire, with his violet gloves gave him 

away. Course they were on the wrong side. They rose in dark 

and evil days. Fine poem that is: Ingram. They were gentlemen. 

Ben Dollard does sing that ballad touchingly. Masterly 

rendition. 

At the siege of Ross did my father fall. 

A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders 

leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. 

Cream sunshades. 

Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily.

His Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn 

it! What a pity! 

* * * 

Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the 

lapidary’s fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the 

window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers 

with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze 

and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and 

winedark stones. 

Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, 

lights shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung 

the stars of their brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root 

and root, gripe and wrest them. 

She dances in a foul gloom where gum bums with garlic. A 

sailorman, rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. 

A long and seafed silent rut. She dances, capers, wagging her 

sowish haunches and her hips, on her gross belly flapping a 

ruby egg. 

Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again 


239 

his gem, turned it and held it at the point of his Moses’ beard. 

Grandfather ape gloating on a stolen hoard. 

And you who wrest old images from the burial earth? The 

brainsick words of sophists: Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. 

Orient and immortal wheat standing from everlasting to everlasting. 

Two old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged 

through Irishtown along London bridge road, one with a 

sanded tired umbrella, one with a midwife’s bag in which 

eleven cockles rolled. 

The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos 

from the powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beingless 

beings. Stop! Throb always without you and the throb always 

within. Your heart you sing of. I between them. Where? 

Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter them, 

one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me 

you who can. Bawd and butcher were the words. I say! Not 

yet awhile. A look around. 

Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous 

time. You say right, sir. A Monday morning, ’twas so, 

indeed.

Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash 

clacking against his shoulderblade. In Clohissey’s window a 

faded 1860 print of Heenan boxing Sayers held his eye. Staring 

backers with square hats stood round the roped prizering. 

The heavyweights in tight loincloths proposed gently each 

to other his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing: heroes’ 

hearts. 

He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart. 

—Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence. 

Tattered pages. The Irish Beekeeper. Life and Miracles of the 

Curé of Ars. Pocket Guide to Killarney. 

I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. Stephano 

Dedalo, alumno optimo, palmam ferenti. 

Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through 

the hamlet of Donnycarney, murmuring vespers. 

Binding too good probably. What is this? Eighth and ninth 

book of Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. 

Thumbed pages: read and read. Who has passed here before 

me? How to soften chapped hands. Recipe for white wine 

vinegar. How to win a woman’s love. For me this. Say the 

following talisman three times with hands folded: 


240 

—Se el yilo nebrakada femininum! Amor me solo! Sanktus! 

Amen. 

Who wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most 

blessed abbot Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As 

good as any other abbot’s charms, as mumbling Joachim’s. 

Down, baldynoddle, or we’ll wool your wool. 

—What are you doing here, Stephen? 

Dilly’s high shoulders and shabby dress. 

Shut the book quick. Don’t let see. 

—What are you doing? Stephen said. 

A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its 

sides. It glowed as she crouched feeding the fire with broken 

boots. I told her of Paris. Late lieabed under a quilt of old 

overcoats, fingering a pinchbeck bracelet, Dan Kelly’s token. 

Nebrakada femininum. 

—What have you there? Stephen asked. 

—I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, 

laughing nervously. Is it any good? 

My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far 

and daring. Shadow of my mind. 

He took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal’s

French primer. 

—What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French? 

She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips. 

Show no surprise. Quite natural. 

—Here, Stephen said. It’s all right. Mind Maggy doesn’t 

pawn it on you. I suppose all my books are gone. 

—Some, Dilly said. We had to. 

She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against 

us. She will drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of 

seaweed hair around me, my heart, my soul. Salt green death. 

We. 

Agenbite of inwit. Inwit’s agenbite. 

Misery! Misery! 

* * * 

—Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How are things? 

—Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping. 

They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter’s. 

Father Cowley brushed his moustache often downward with 

a scooping hand. 


241 

—What’s the best news? Mr Dedalus said. 

—Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I’m barricaded 

up, Simon, with two men prowling around the house trying 

to effect an entrance. 

—Jolly, Mr Dedalus said. Who is it? 

—O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our 

acquaintance. 

—With a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked. 

—The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of 

that ilk. I’m just waiting for Ben Dollard. He’s going to say a 

word to long John to get him to take those two men off. All 

I want is a little time. 

He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big 

apple bulging in his neck. 

—I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy 

Ben! He’s always doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard! 

He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge 

an instant. 

—There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets. 

Ben Dollard’s loose blue cutaway and square hat above large 

slops crossed the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He

came towards them at an amble, scratching actively behind 

his coattails. 

As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted: 

—Hold that fellow with the bad trousers. 

—Hold him now, Ben Dollard said. 

Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points 

of Ben Dollard’s figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with 

a nod, he muttered sneeringly: 

—That’s a pretty garment, isn’t it, for a summer’s day? 

—Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled 

furiously, I threw out more clothes in my time than you ever 

saw. 

He stood beside them beaming, on them first and on his 

roomy clothes from points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, 

saying: 

—They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow. 

—Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard 

said. Thanks be to God he’s not paid yet. 

—And how is that basso profondo, Benjamin? Father Cowley 

asked. 

Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, mur- 


242 

muring, glassyeyed, strode past the Kildare street club. 

Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter’s 

mouth, gave forth a deep note. 

—Aw! he said. 

—That’s the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone. 

—What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? 

What? 

He turned to both. 

—That’ll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also. 

The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old 

chapterhouse of saint Mary’s abbey past James and Charles 

Kennedy’s, rectifiers, attended by Geraldines tall and personable, 

towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of hurdles. 

Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led 

them forward, his joyful fingers in the air. 

—Come along with me to the subsheriff’s office, he said. I 

want to show you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He’s 

a cross between Lobengula and Lynchehaun. He’s well worth 

seeing, mind you. Come along. I saw John Henry Menton 

casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a fall if I 

don’t … Wait awhile … We’re on the right lay, Bob, believe

you me. 

—For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously. 

Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a 

dangling button of his coat wagging brightbacked from its 

thread as he wiped away the heavy shraums that clogged his 

eyes to hear aright. 

—What few days? he boomed. Hasn’t your landlord 

distrained for rent? 

—He has, Father Cowley said. 

—Then our friend’s writ is not worth the paper it’s printed 

on, Ben Dollard said. The landlord has the prior claim. I 

gave him all the particulars. 29 Windsor avenue. Love is the 

name? 

—That’s right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. 

He’s a minister in the country somewhere. But are you sure 

of that? 

—You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that 

he can put that writ where Jacko put the nuts. 

He led Father Cowley boldly forward, linked to his bulk. 

—Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he 

dropped his glasses on his coatfront, following them. 


243 

* * * 

—The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, 

as they passed out of the Castleyard gate. 

The policeman touched his forehead. 

—God bless you, Martin Cunningham said, cheerily. 

He signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins 

and set on towards Lord Edward street. 

Bronze by gold, Miss Kennedy’s head by Miss Douce’s head, 

appeared above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel. 

—Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I 

wrote to Father Conmee and laid the whole case before him. 

—You could try our friend, Mr Power suggested backward. 

—Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not. 

John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came 

after them quickly down Cork hill. 

On the steps of the City hall Councillor Nannetti, descending, 

hailed Alderman Cowley and Councillor Abraham Lyon 

ascending. 

The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street. 

—Look here, Martin, John Wyse Nolan said, overtaking

them at the mail office. I see Bloom put his name down for 

five shillings. 

—Quite right, Martin Cunningham said, taking the list. 

And put down the five shillings too. 

—Without a second word either, Mr Power said. 

—Strange but true, Martin Cunningham added. 

John Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes. 

—I’ll say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted, 

elegantly. 

They went down Parliament street. 

—There’s Jimmy Henry, Mr Power said, just heading for 

Kavanagh’s. 

—Righto, Martin Cunningham said. Here goes. 

Outside La Maison Claire Blazes Boylan waylaid Jack Mooney’s 

brother-in-law, humpy, tight, making for the liberties. 

John Wyse Nolan fell back with Mr Power, while Martin 

Cunningham took the elbow of a dapper little man in a 

shower of hail suit, who walked uncertainly, with hasty steps 

past Micky Anderson’s watches. 

—The assistant town clerk’s corns are giving him some 

trouble, John Wyse Nolan told Mr Power. 


244 

They followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh’s 

winerooms. The empty castle car fronted them at rest in Essex 

gate. Martin Cunningham, speaking always, showed often 

the list at which Jimmy Henry did not glance. 

—And long John Fanning is here too, John Wyse Nolan 

said, as large as life. 

The tall form of long John Fanning filled the doorway 

where he stood. 

—Good day, Mr Subsheriff, Martin Cunningham said, as 

all halted and greeted. 

Long John Fanning made no way for them. He removed 

his large Henry Clay decisively and his large fierce eyes 

scowled intelligently over all their faces. 

—Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations? 

he said with rich acrid utterance to the assistant 

town clerk. 

Hell open to christians they were having, Jimmy Henry 

said pettishly, about their damned Irish language. Where was 

the marshal, he wanted to know, to keep order in the council 

chamber. And old Barlow the macebearer laid up with 

asthma, no mace on the table, nothing in order, no quorum

even, and Hutchinson, the lord mayor, in Llandudno and 

little Lorcan Sherlock doing locum tenens for him. Damned 

Irish language, language of our forefathers. 

Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips. 

Martin Cunningham spoke by turns, twirling the peak of 

his beard, to the assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while 

John Wyse Nolan held his peace. 

—What Dignam was that? long John Fanning asked. 

Jimmy Henry made a grimace and lifted his left foot. 

—O, my corns! he said plaintively. Come upstairs for goodness’ 

sake till I sit down somewhere. Uff! Ooo! Mind! 

Testily he made room for himself beside long John 

Fanning’s flank and passed in and up the stairs. 

—Come on up, Martin Cunningham said to the subsheriff. 

I don’t think you knew him or perhaps you did, though. 

With John Wyse Nolan Mr Power followed them in. 

—Decent little soul he was, Mr Power said to the stalwart 

back of long John Fanning ascending towards long John Fanning 

in the mirror. 

—Rather lowsized. Dignam of Menton’s office that was, 

Martin Cunningham said. 


245 

Long John Fanning could not remember him. 

Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air. 

—What’s that? Martin Cunningham said. 

All turned where they stood. John Wyse Nolan came down 

again. From the cool shadow of the doorway he saw the horses 

pass Parliament street, harness and glossy pasterns in sunlight 

shimmering. Gaily they went past before his cool unfriendly 

eyes, not quickly. In saddles of the leaders, leaping 

leaders, rode outriders. 

—What was it? Martin Cunningham asked, as they went 

on up the staircase. 

—The lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland, 

John Wyse Nolan answered from the stairfoot. 

* * * 

As they trod across the thick carpet Buck Mulligan whispered 

behind his Panama to Haines: 

—Parnell’s brother. There in the corner. 

They chose a small table near the window, opposite a 

longfaced man whose beard and gaze hung intently down

on a chessboard. 

—Is that he? Haines asked, twisting round in his seat. 

—Yes, Mulligan said. That’s John Howard, his brother, 

our city marshal. 

John Howard Parnell translated a white bishop quietly and 

his grey claw went up again to his forehead whereat it rested. 

An instant after, under its screen, his eyes looked quickly, 

ghostbright, at his foe and fell once more upon a working 

corner. 

—I’ll take a melange, Haines said to the waitress. 

—Two melanges, Buck Mulligan said. And bring us some 

scones and butter and some cakes as well. 

When she had gone he said, laughing: 

—We call it D.B.C. because they have damn bad cakes. 

O, but you missed Dedalus on Hamlet. 

Haines opened his newbought book. 

—I’m sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy 

huntingground of all minds that have lost their balance. 

The onelegged sailor growled at the area of 14 Nelson street: 

—England expects … 

Buck Mulligan’s primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter. 


246 

—You should see him, he said, when his body loses its 

balance. Wandering Aengus I call him. 

—I am sure he has an idee fixe, Haines said, pinching his 

chin thoughtfully with thumb and forefinger. Now I am 

speculating what it would be likely to be. Such persons always 

have. 

Buck Mulligan bent across the table gravely. 

—They drove his wits astray, he said, by visions of hell. 

He will never capture the Attic note. The note of Swinburne, 

of all poets, the white death and the ruddy birth. That is his 

tragedy. He can never be a poet. The joy of creation … 

—Eternal punishment, Haines said, nodding curtly. I see. 

I tackled him this morning on belief. There was something 

on his mind, I saw. It’s rather interesting because professor 

Pokorny of Vienna makes an interesting point out of that. 

Buck Mulligan’s watchful eyes saw the waitress come. He 

helped her to unload her tray. 

—He can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Haines 

said, amid the cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the 

sense of destiny, of retribution. Rather strange he should have 

just that fixed idea. Does he write anything for your movement?

He sank two lumps of sugar deftly longwise through the 

whipped cream. Buck Mulligan slit a steaming scone in two 

and plastered butter over its smoking pith. He bit off a soft 

piece hungrily. 

—Ten years, he said, chewing and laughing. He is going 

to write something in ten years. 

—Seems a long way off, Haines said, thoughtfully lifting 

his spoon. Still, I shouldn’t wonder if he did after all. 

He tasted a spoonful from the creamy cone of his cup. 

—This is real Irish cream I take it, he said with forbearance. 

I don’t want to be imposed on. 

Elijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by 

flanks of ships and trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, 

beyond new Wapping street past Benson’s ferry, and by the 

threemasted schooner Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks. 

* * * 

Almidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell’s 

yard. Behind him Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall 

Farrell, with stickumbrelladustcoat dangling, shunned the 


247 

lamp before Mr Law Smith’s house and, crossing, walked 

along Merrion square. Distantly behind him a blind stripling 

tapped his way by the wall of College park. 

Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked 

as far as Mr Lewis Werner’s cheerful windows, then turned 

and strode back along Merrion square, his 

stickumbrelladustcoat dangling. 

At the corner of Wilde’s house he halted, frowned at Elijah’s 

name announced on the Metropolitan hall, frowned at the 

distant pleasance of duke’s lawn. His eyeglass flashed frowning 

in the sun. With ratsteeth bared he muttered: 

—Coactus volui. 

He strode on for Clare street, grinding his fierce word. 

As he strode past Mr Bloom’s dental windows the sway of 

his dustcoat brushed rudely from its angle a slender tapping 

cane and swept onwards, having buffeted a thewless body. 

The blind stripling turned his sickly face after the striding 

form. 

—God’s curse on you, he said sourly, whoever you are! 

You’re blinder nor I am, you bitch’s bastard!

* * * 

Opposite Ruggy O’Donohoe’s Master Patrick Aloysius 

Dignam, pawing the pound and a half of Mangan’s, late 

Fehrenbach’s, porksteaks he had been sent for, went along 

warm Wicklow street dawdling. It was too blooming dull 

sitting in the parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and 

Mrs MacDowell and the blind down and they all at their 

sniffles and sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle 

Barney brought from Tunney’s. And they eating crumbs of 

the cottage fruitcake, jawing the whole blooming time and 

sighing. 

After Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, 

courtdress milliner, stopped him. He stood looking in at the 

two puckers stripped to their pelts and putting up their props. 

From the sidemirrors two mourning Masters Dignam gaped 

silently. Myler Keogh, Dublin’s pet lamb, will meet 

sergeantmajor Bennett, the Portobello bruiser, for a purse of 

fifty sovereigns. Gob, that’d be a good pucking match to see. 

Myler Keogh, that’s the chap sparring out to him with the 

green sash. Two bar entrance, soldiers half price. I could easy 


248 

do a bunk on ma. Master Dignam on his left turned as he 

turned. That’s me in mourning. When is it? May the 

twentysecond. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. He turned 

to the right and on his right Master Dignam turned, his cap 

awry, his collar sticking up. Buttoning it down, his chin lifted, 

he saw the image of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, beside 

the two puckers. One of them mots that do be in the 

packets of fags Stoer smokes that his old fellow welted hell 

out of him for one time he found out. 

Master Dignam got his collar down and dawdled on. The 

best pucker going for strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in 

the wind from that fellow would knock you into the middle 

of next week, man. But the best pucker for science was Jem 

Corbet before Fitzsimons knocked the stuffings out of him, 

dodging and all. 

In Grafton street Master Dignam saw a red flower in a toff’s 

mouth and a swell pair of kicks on him and he listening to 

what the drunk was telling him and grinning all the time. 

No Sandymount tram. 

Master Dignam walked along Nassau street, shifted the 

porksteaks to his other hand. His collar sprang up again and

he tugged it down. The blooming stud was too small for the 

buttonhole of the shirt, blooming end to it. He met schoolboys 

with satchels. I’m not going tomorrow either, stay away 

till Monday. He met other schoolboys. Do they notice I’m 

in mourning? Uncle Barney said he’d get it into the paper 

tonight. Then they’ll all see it in the paper and read my name 

printed and pa’s name. 

His face got all grey instead of being red like it was and 

there was a fly walking over it up to his eye. The scrunch 

that was when they were screwing the screws into the coffin: 

and the bumps when they were bringing it downstairs. 

Pa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle 

Barney telling the men how to get it round the bend. A big 

coffin it was, and high and heavylooking. How was that? 

The last night pa was boosed he was standing on the landing 

there bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney’s for to 

boose more and he looked butty and short in his shirt. Never 

see him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead. 

He told me to be a good son to ma. I couldn’t hear the other 

things he said but I saw his tongue and his teeth trying to say 

it better. Poor pa. That was Mr Dignam, my father. I hope 


249 

he’s in purgatory now because he went to confession to Father 

Conroy on Saturday night. 

* * * 

William Humble, earl of Dudley, and lady Dudley, accompanied 

by lieutenantcolonel Heseltine, drove out after luncheon 

from the viceregal lodge. In the following carriage were 

the honourable Mrs Paget, Miss de Courcy and the 

honourable Gerald Ward A.D.C. in attendance. 

The cavalcade passed out by the lower gate of Phoenix 

park saluted by obsequious policemen and proceeded past 

Kingsbridge along the northern quays. The viceroy was most 

cordially greeted on his way through the metropolis. At 

Bloody bridge Mr Thomas Kernan beyond the river greeted 

him vainly from afar Between Queen’s and Whitworth bridges 

lord Dudley’s viceregal carriages passed and were unsaluted 

by Mr Dudley White, B. L., M. A., who stood on Arran 

quay outside Mrs M. E. White’s, the pawnbroker’s, at the 

corner of Arran street west stroking his nose with his forefinger, 

undecided whether he should arrive at Phibsborough

more quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or 

on foot through Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone 

terminus. In the porch of Four Courts Richie Goulding with 

the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward saw him with surprise. 

Past Richmond bridge at the doorstep of the office of 

Reuben J Dodd, solicitor, agent for the Patriotic Insurance 

Company, an elderly female about to enter changed her plan 

and retracing her steps by King’s windows smiled credulously 

on the representative of His Majesty. From its sluice in Wood 

quay wall under Tom Devan’s office Poddle river hung out 

in fealty a tongue of liquid sewage. Above the crossblind of 

the Ormond hotel, gold by bronze, Miss Kennedy’s head by 

Miss Douce’s head watched and admired. On Ormond quay 

Mr Simon Dedalus, steering his way from the greenhouse 

for the subsheriff’s office, stood still in midstreet and brought 

his hat low. His Excellency graciously returned Mr Dedalus’ 

greeting. From Cahill’s corner the reverend Hugh C. Love, 

M.A., made obeisance unperceived, mindful of lords deputies 

whose hands benignant had held of yore rich advowsons. 

On Grattan bridge Lenehan and M’Coy, taking leave of each 

other, watched the carriages go by. Passing by Roger Greene’s 


250 

office and Dollard’s big red printinghouse Gerty MacDowell, 

carrying the Catesby’s cork lino letters for her father who 

was laid up, knew by the style it was the lord and lady lieutenant 

but she couldn’t see what Her Excellency had on because 

the tram and Spring’s big yellow furniture van had to 

stop in front of her on account of its being the lord lieutenant. 

Beyond Lundy Foot’s from the shaded door of Kavanagh’s 

winerooms John Wyse Nolan smiled with unseen coldness 

towards the lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of 

Ireland. The Right Honourable William Humble, earl of 

Dudley, G. C. V. O., passed Micky Anderson’s all times ticking 

watches and Henry and James’s wax smartsuited 

freshcheeked models, the gentleman Henry, dernier cri James. 

Over against Dame gate Tom Rochford and Nosey Flynn 

watched the approach of the cavalcade. Tom Rochford, seeing 

the eyes of lady Dudley fixed on him, took his thumbs 

quickly out of the pockets of his claret waistcoat and doffed 

his cap to her. A charming soubrette, great Marie Kendall, 

with dauby cheeks and lifted skirt smiled daubily from her 

poster upon William Humble, earl of Dudley, and upon 

lieutenantcolonel H. G. Heseltine, and also upon the

honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. From the window of the 

D. B. C. Buck Mulligan gaily, and Haines gravely, gazed 

down on the viceregal equipage over the shoulders of eager 

guests, whose mass of forms darkened the chessboard whereon 

John Howard Parnell looked intently. In Fownes’s street Dilly 

Dedalus, straining her sight upward from Chardenal’s first 

French primer, saw sunshades spanned and wheelspokes spinning 

in the glare. John Henry Menton, filling the doorway 

of Commercial Buildings, stared from winebig oyster eyes, 

holding a fat gold hunter watch not looked at in his fat left 

hand not feeling it. Where the foreleg of King Billy’s horse 

pawed the air Mrs Breen plucked her hastening husband back 

from under the hoofs of the outriders. She shouted in his ear 

the tidings. Understanding, he shifted his tomes to his left 

breast and saluted the second carriage. The honourable Gerald 

Ward A.D.C., agreeably surprised, made haste to reply. At 

Ponsonby’s corner a jaded white flagon H. halted and four 

tallhatted white flagons halted behind him, E.L.Y’S, while 

outriders pranced past and carriages. Opposite Pigott’s music 

warerooms Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing 

&c, gaily apparelled, gravely walked, outpassed by a viceroy 


251 

and unobserved. By the provost’s wall came jauntily Blazes 

Boylan, stepping in tan shoes and socks with skyblue clocks 

to the refrain of My Girl’s a Yorkshire Girl. 

Blazes Boylan presented to the leaders’ skyblue frontlets 

and high action a skyblue tie, a widebrimmed straw hat at a 

rakish angle and a suit of indigo serge. His hands in his jacket 

pockets forgot to salute but he offered to the three ladies the 

bold admiration of his eyes and the red flower between his 

lips. As they drove along Nassau street His Excellency drew 

the attention of his bowing consort to the programme of 

music which was being discoursed in College park. Unseen 

brazen highland laddies blared and drumthumped after the 

cortège: 

But though she’s a factory lass 

And wears no fancy clothes. 

Baraabum. 

Yet I’ve a sort of a 

Yorkshire relish for 

My little Yorkshire rose. 

Baraabum.

Thither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M. 

C. Green, H. Shrift, T. M. Patey, C. Scaife, J. B. Jeffs, G. N. 

Morphy, F. Stevenson, C. Adderly and W. C. Huggard, started 

in pursuit. Striding past Finn’s hotel Cashel Boyle O’Connor 

Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stared through a fierce eyeglass 

across the carriages at the head of Mr M. E. Solomons in the 

window of the Austro-Hungarian viceconsulate. Deep in 

Leinster street by Trinity’s postern a loyal king’s man, 

Hornblower, touched his tallyho cap. As the glossy horses 

pranced by Merrion square Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, 

waiting, saw salutes being given to the gent with the topper 

and raised also his new black cap with fingers greased by 

porksteak paper. His collar too sprang up. The viceroy, on 

his way to inaugurate the Mirus bazaar in aid of funds for 

Mercer’s hospital, drove with his following towards Lower 

Mount street. He passed a blind stripling opposite 

Broadbent’s. In Lower Mount street a pedestrian in a brown 

macintosh, eating dry bread, passed swiftly and unscathed 

across the viceroy’s path. At the Royal Canal bridge, from 

his hoarding, Mr Eugene Stratton, his blub lips agrin, bade 

all comers welcome to Pembroke township. At Haddington 


252 

road corner two sanded women halted themselves, an umbrella 

and a bag in which eleven cockles rolled to view with 

wonder the lord mayor and lady mayoress without his golden 

chain. On Northumberland and Lansdowne roads His Excellency 

acknowledged punctually salutes from rare male 

walkers, the salute of two small schoolboys at the garden 

gate of the house said to have been admired by the late queen 

when visiting the Irish capital with her husband, the prince 

consort, in 1849 and the salute of Almidano Artifoni’s sturdy 

trousers swallowed by a closing door.

BRONZE BY GOLD HEARD THE HOOFIRONS, STEELYRINGING 

Imperthnthn thnthnthn. 

Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips. 

Horrid! And gold flushed more. 

A husky fifenote blew. 

Blew. Blue bloom is on the. 

Goldpinnacled hair. 

A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile. 

Trilling, trilling: Idolores. 

Peep! Who’s in the … peepofgold? 

Tink cried to bronze in pity. 

And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call. 

Decoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes 

chirruping answer. 

O rose! Castile. The morn is breaking. 

Jingle jingle jaunted jingling. 

Coin rang. Clock clacked. 


253 

Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. 

Smack. La cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, 

goodbye! 

Jingle. Bloo. 

Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! 

The tympanum. 

A sail! A veil awave upon the waves. 

Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now. 

Horn. Hawhorn. 

When first he saw. Alas! 

Full tup. Full throb. 

Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring. 

Martha! Come! 

Clapclap. Clipclap. Clappyclap. 

Goodgod henev erheard inall. 

Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up. 

A moonlit nightcall: far, far. 

I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming. 

Listen! 

The spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each, 

and for other, plash and silent roar.

Pearls: when she. Liszt’s rhapsodies. Hissss. 

You don’t? 

Did not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra. 

Black. Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do. 

Wait while you wait. Hee hee. Wait while you hee. 

But wait! 

Low in dark middle earth. Embedded ore. 

Naminedamine. Preacher is he: 

All gone. All fallen. 

Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair. 

Amen! He gnashed in fury. 

Fro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding. 

Bronzelydia by Minagold. 

By bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. Bloom. Old 

Bloom. 

One rapped, one tapped, with a carra, with a cock. 

Pray for him! Pray, good people! 

His gouty fingers nakkering. 

Big Benaben. Big Benben. 

Last rose Castile of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone. 

Pwee! Little wind piped wee. 


254 

True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you 

men. Will lift your tschink with tschunk. 

Fff! Oo! 

Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where 

hoofs? 

Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl. 

Then not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt. 

Done. 

Begin! 

Bronze by gold, miss Douce’s head by miss Kennedy’s head, 

over the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal 

hoofs go by, ringing steel. 

—Is that her? asked miss Kennedy. 

Miss Douce said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and eau 

de Nil. 

—Exquisite contrast, miss Kennedy said. 

When all agog miss Douce said eagerly: 

—Look at the fellow in the tall silk. 

—Who? Where? gold asked more eagerly. 

—In the second carriage, miss Douce’s wet lips said, laughing 

in the sun.

He’s looking. Mind till I see. 

She darted, bronze, to the backmost corner, flattening her 

face against the pane in a halo of hurried breath. 

Her wet lips tittered: 

—He’s killed looking back. 

She laughed: 

—O wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots? 

With sadness. 

Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a 

loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she 

twisted twined a hair. 

Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving 

ear. 

—It’s them has the fine times, sadly then she said. 

A man. 

Bloowho went by by Moulang’s pipes bearing in his breast 

the sweets of sin, by Wine’s antiques, in memory bearing 

sweet sinful words, by Carroll’s dusky battered plate, for 

Raoul. 

The boots to them, them in the bar, them barmaids came. 

For them unheeding him he banged on the counter his tray 


255 

of chattering china. And 

—There’s your teas, he said. 

Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down 

to an upturned lithia crate, safe from eyes, low. 

—What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked. 

—Find out, miss Douce retorted, leaving her spyingpoint. 

—Your beau, is it? 

A haughty bronze replied: 

—I’ll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any 

more of your impertinent insolence. 

—Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootssnout sniffed rudely, as 

he retreated as she threatened as he had come. 

Bloom. 

On her flower frowning miss Douce said: 

—Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn’t conduct 

himself I’ll wring his ear for him a yard long. 

Ladylike in exquisite contrast. 

—Take no notice, miss Kennedy rejoined. 

She poured in a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. 

They cowered under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, 

crates upturned, waiting for their teas to draw. They

pawed their blouses, both of black satin, two and nine a yard, 

waiting for their teas to draw, and two and seven. 

Yes, bronze from anear, by gold from afar, heard steel from 

anear, hoofs ring from afar, and heard steelhoofs ringhoof 

ringsteel. 

—Am I awfully sunburnt? 

Miss bronze unbloused her neck. 

—No, said miss Kennedy. It gets brown after. Did you try 

the borax with the cherry laurel water? 

Miss Douce halfstood to see her skin askance in the 

barmirror gildedlettered where hock and claret glasses shimmered 

and in their midst a shell. 

—And leave it to my hands, she said. 

—Try it with the glycerine, miss Kennedy advised. 

Bidding her neck and hands adieu miss Douce 

—Those things only bring out a rash, replied, reseated. I 

asked that old fogey in Boyd’s for something for my skin. 

Miss Kennedy, pouring now a fulldrawn tea, grimaced and 

prayed: 

—O, don’t remind me of him for mercy’ sake! 

—But wait till I tell you, miss Douce entreated. 


256 

Sweet tea miss Kennedy having poured with milk plugged 

both two ears with little fingers. 

—No, don’t, she cried. 

—I won’t listen, she cried. 

But Bloom? 

Miss Douce grunted in snuffy fogey’s tone: 

—For your what? says he. 

Miss Kennedy unplugged her ears to hear, to speak: but 

said, but prayed again: 

—Don’t let me think of him or I’ll expire. The hideous old 

wretch! That night in the Antient Concert Rooms. 

She sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped, 

sweet tea. 

—Here he was, miss Douce said, cocking her bronze head 

three quarters, ruffling her nosewings. Hufa! Hufa! 

Shrill shriek of laughter sprang from miss Kennedy’s throat. 

Miss Douce huffed and snorted down her nostrils that quivered 

imperthnthn like a snout in quest. 

—O! shrieking, miss Kennedy cried. Will you ever forget 

his goggle eye? 

Miss Douce chimed in in deep bronze laughter, shouting:

—And your other eye! 

Bloowhose dark eye read Aaron Figatner’s name. Why do 

I always think Figather? Gathering figs, I think. And Prosper 

Lore’s huguenot name. By Bassi’s blessed virgins Bloom’s 

dark eyes went by. Bluerobed, white under, come to me. God 

they believe she is: or goddess. Those today. I could not see. 

That fellow spoke. A student. After with Dedalus’ son. He 

might be Mulligan. All comely virgins. That brings those 

rakes of fellows in: her white. 

By went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets. 

Of sin. 

In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended, Douce 

with Kennedy your other eye. They threw young heads back, 

bronze gigglegold, to let freefly their laughter, screaming, 

your other, signals to each other, high piercing notes. 

Ah, panting, sighing, sighing, ah, fordone, their mirth died 

down. 

Miss Kennedy lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip 

and gigglegiggled. Miss Douce, bending over the teatray, 

ruffled again her nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again 

Kennygiggles, stooping, her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, 


257 

her tortoise napecomb showed, spluttered out of her mouth 

her tea, choking in tea and laughter, coughing with choking, 

crying: 

—O greasy eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that! 

she cried. With his bit of beard! 

Douce gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full 

woman, delight, joy, indignation. 

—Married to the greasy nose! she yelled. 

Shrill, with deep laughter, after, gold after bronze, they 

urged each each to peal after peal, ringing in changes, 

bronzegold, goldbronze, shrilldeep, to laughter after laughter. 

And then laughed more. Greasy I knows. Exhausted, 

breathless, their shaken heads they laid, braided and pinnacled 

by glossycombed, against the counterledge. All flushed (O!), 

panting, sweating (O!), all breathless. 

Married to Bloom, to greaseabloom. 

—O saints above! miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping 

rose. I wished 

I hadn’t laughed so much. I feel all wet. 

—O, miss Douce! miss Kennedy protested. You horrid 

thing!

And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly. 

By Cantwell’s offices roved Greaseabloom, by Ceppi’s virgins, 

bright of their oils. Nannetti’s father hawked those things 

about, wheedling at doors as I. Religion pays. Must see him 

for that par. Eat first. I want. Not yet. At four, she said. Time 

ever passing. Clockhands turning. On. Where eat? The 

Clarence, Dolphin. On. For Raoul. Eat. If I net five guineas 

with those ads. The violet silk petticoats. Not yet. The sweets 

of sin. 

Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled. 

Into their bar strolled Mr Dedalus. Chips, picking chips 

off one of his rocky thumbnails. Chips. He strolled. 

—O, welcome back, miss Douce. 

He held her hand. Enjoyed her holidays? 

—Tiptop. 

He hoped she had nice weather in Rostrevor. 

—Gorgeous, she said. Look at the holy show I am. Lying 

out on the strand all day. 

Bronze whiteness. 

—That was exceedingly naughty of you, Mr Dedalus told 

her and pressed her hand indulgently. Tempting poor simple 


258 

males. 

Miss Douce of satin douced her arm away. 

—O go away! she said. You’re very simple, I don’t think. 

He was. 

—Well now I am, he mused. I looked so simple in the 

cradle they christened me simple Simon. 

—You must have been a doaty, miss Douce made answer. 

And what did the doctor order today? 

—Well now, he mused, whatever you say yourself. I think 

I’ll trouble you for some fresh water and a half glass of whisky. 

Jingle. 

—With the greatest alacrity, miss Douce agreed. 

With grace of alacrity towards the mirror gilt Cantrell and 

Cochrane’s she turned herself. With grace she tapped a measure 

of gold whisky from her crystal keg. Forth from the 

skirt of his coat Mr Dedalus brought pouch and pipe. Alacrity 

she served. He blew through the flue two husky fifenotes. 

—By Jove, he mused, I often wanted to see the Mourne 

mountains. Must be a great tonic in the air down there. But 

a long threatening comes at last, they say. Yes. Yes. 

Yes. He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her

mermaid’s, into the bowl. Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute. 

None nought said nothing. Yes. 

Gaily miss Douce polished a tumbler, trilling: 

—O, Idolores, queen of the eastern seas! 

—Was Mr Lidwell in today? 

In came Lenehan. Round him peered Lenehan. Mr Bloom 

reached Essex bridge. Yes, Mr Bloom crossed bridge of Yessex. 

To Martha I must write. Buy paper. Daly’s. Girl there civil. 

Bloom. Old Bloom. Blue bloom is on the rye. 

—He was in at lunchtime, miss Douce said. 

Lenehan came forward. 

—Was Mr Boylan looking for me? 

He asked. She answered: 

—Miss Kennedy, was Mr Boylan in while I was upstairs? 

She asked. Miss voice of Kennedy answered, a second teacup 

poised, her gaze upon a page: 

—No. He was not. 

Miss gaze of Kennedy, heard, not seen, read on. Lenehan 

round the sandwichbell wound his round body round. 

—Peep! Who’s in the corner? 

No glance of Kennedy rewarding him he yet made over- 


259 

tures. To mind her stops. To read only the black ones: round 

o and crooked ess. 

Jingle jaunty jingle. 

Girlgold she read and did not glance. Take no notice. She 

took no notice while he read by rote a solfa fable for her, 

plappering flatly: 

—Ah fox met ah stork. Said thee fox too thee stork: Will 

you put your bill down inn my troath and pull upp ah bone? 

He droned in vain. Miss Douce turned to her tea aside. 

He sighed aside: 

—Ah me! O my! 

He greeted Mr Dedalus and got a nod. 

—Greetings from the famous son of a famous father. 

—Who may he be? Mr Dedalus asked. 

Lenehan opened most genial arms. Who? 

—Who may he be? he asked. Can you ask? Stephen, the 

youthful bard. 

Dry. 

Mr Dedalus, famous father, laid by his dry filled pipe. 

—I see, he said. I didn’t recognise him for the moment. I hear 

he is keeping very select company. Have you seen him lately?

He had. 

—I quaffed the nectarbowl with him this very day, said 

Lenehan. In Mooney’s en ville and in Mooney’s sur mer. He 

had received the rhino for the labour of his muse. 

He smiled at bronze’s teabathed lips, at listening lips and 

eyes: 

—The élite of Erin hung upon his lips. The ponderous 

pundit, Hugh 

MacHugh, Dublin’s most brilliant scribe and editor and 

that minstrel boy of the wild wet west who is known by the 

euphonious appellation of the O’Madden Burke. 

After an interval Mr Dedalus raised his grog and 

—That must have been highly diverting, said he. I see. 

He see. He drank. With faraway mourning mountain eye. 

Set down his glass. 

He looked towards the saloon door. 

—I see you have moved the piano. 

—The tuner was in today, miss Douce replied, tuning it 

for the smoking concert and I never heard such an exquisite 

player. 

—Is that a fact? 


260 

—Didn’t he, miss Kennedy? The real classical, you know. 

And blind too, poor fellow. Not twenty I’m sure he was. 

—Is that a fact? Mr Dedalus said. 

He drank and strayed away. 

—So sad to look at his face, miss Douce condoled. 

God’s curse on bitch’s bastard. 

Tink to her pity cried a diner’s bell. To the door of the bar 

and diningroom came bald Pat, came bothered Pat, came 

Pat, waiter of Ormond. Lager for diner. Lager without alacrity 

she served. 

With patience Lenehan waited for Boylan with impatience, 

for jinglejaunty blazes boy. 

Upholding the lid he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) 

at the oblique triple (piano!) wires. He pressed (the same 

who pressed indulgently her hand), soft pedalling, a triple of 

keys to see the thicknesses of felt advancing, to hear the 

muffled hammerfall in action. 

Two sheets cream vellum paper one reserve two envelopes 

when I was in Wisdom Hely’s wise Bloom in Daly’s Henry 

Flower bought. Are you not happy in your home? Flower to 

console me and a pin cuts lo. Means something, language of

flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is. Respectable girl meet 

after mass. Thanks awfully muchly. Wise Bloom eyed on the 

door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. 

Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: lovelorn. 

For some man. For Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on 

Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jaunting car. It is. Again. 

Third time. Coincidence. 

Jingling on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to 

Ormond quay. Follow. Risk it. Go quick. At four. Near now. 

Out. 

—Twopence, sir, the shopgirl dared to say. 

—Aha … I was forgetting … Excuse … 

—And four. 

At four she. Winsomely she on Bloohimwhom smiled. Bloo 

smi qui go. Ternoon. Think you’re the only pebble on the 

beach? Does that to all. 

For men. 

In drowsy silence gold bent on her page. 

From the saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a 

tuningfork the tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. 

A call again. That he now poised that it now throbbed. You 


261 

hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, softly and softlier, its buzzing 

prongs. Longer in dying call. 

Pat paid for diner’s popcorked bottle: and over tumbler, 

tray and popcorked bottle ere he went he whispered, bald 

and bothered, with Miss 

Douce. 

—The bright stars fade … 

A voiceless song sang from within, singing: 

— … the morn is breaking. 

A duodene of birdnotes chirruped bright treble answer under 

sensitive hands. Brightly the keys, all twinkling, linked, 

all harpsichording, called to a voice to sing the strain of dewy 

morn, of youth, of love’s leavetaking, life’s, love’s morn. 

—The dewdrops pearl … 

Lenehan’s lips over the counter lisped a low whistle of decoy. 

—But look this way, he said, rose of Castile. 

Jingle jaunted by the curb and stopped. 

She rose and closed her reading, rose of Castile: fretted, 

forlorn, dreamily rose. 

—Did she fall or was she pushed? he asked her.

She answered, slighting: 

—Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies. 

Like lady, ladylike. 

Blazes Boylan’s smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor 

where he strode. Yes, gold from anear by bronze from afar. 

Lenehan heard and knew and hailed him: 

—See the conquering hero comes. 

Between the car and window, warily walking, went Bloom, 

unconquered hero. See me he might. The seat he sat on: 

warm. Black wary hecat walked towards Richie Goulding’s 

legal bag, lifted aloft, saluting. 

—And I from thee … 

—I heard you were round, said Blazes Boylan. 

He touched to fair miss Kennedy a rim of his slanted straw. 

She smiled on him. But sister bronze outsmiled her, preening 

for him her richer hair, a bosom and a rose. 

Smart Boylan bespoke potions. 

—What’s your cry? Glass of bitter? Glass of bitter, please, 

and a sloegin for me. Wire in yet? 

Not yet. At four she. Who said four? 

Cowley’s red lugs and bulging apple in the door of the 


262 

sheriff’s office. 

Avoid. Goulding a chance. What is he doing in the 

Ormond? Car waiting. 

Wait. 

Hello. Where off to? Something to eat? I too was just. In 

here. What, Ormond? Best value in Dublin. Is that so? 

Diningroom. Sit tight there. See, not be seen. I think I’ll 

join you. Come on. Richie led on. Bloom followed bag. Dinner 

fit for a prince. 

Miss Douce reached high to take a flagon, stretching her 

satin arm, her bust, that all but burst, so high. 

—O! O! jerked Lenehan, gasping at each stretch. O! 

But easily she seized her prey and led it low in triumph. 

—Why don’t you grow? asked Blazes Boylan. 

Shebronze, dealing from her oblique jar thick syrupy liquor 

for his lips, looked as it flowed (flower in his coat: who 

gave him?), and syrupped with her voice: 

—Fine goods in small parcels. 

That is to say she. Neatly she poured slowsyrupy sloe. 

—Here’s fortune, Blazes said. 

He pitched a broad coin down. Coin rang.

—Hold on, said Lenehan, till I ... 

—Fortune, he wished, lifting his bubbled ale. 

—Sceptre will win in a canter, he said. 

—I plunged a bit, said Boylan winking and drinking. Not 

on my own, you know. Fancy of a friend of mine. 

Lenehan still drank and grinned at his tilted ale and at 

miss Douce’s lips that all but hummed, not shut, the 

oceansong her lips had trilled. 

Idolores. The eastern seas. 

Clock whirred. Miss Kennedy passed their way (flower, 

wonder who gave), bearing away teatray. Clock clacked. 

Miss Douce took Boylan’s coin, struck boldly the 

cashregister. It clanged. Clock clacked. Fair one of Egypt 

teased and sorted in the till and hummed and handed coins 

in change. Look to the west. A clack. For me. 

—What time is that? asked Blazes Boylan. Four? 

O’clock. 

Lenehan, small eyes ahunger on her humming, bust 

ahumming, tugged Blazes Boylan’s elbowsleeve. 

—Let’s hear the time, he said. 

The bag of Goulding, Collis, Ward led Bloom by ryebloom 


263 

flowered tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat 

attending, a table near the door. Be near. At four. Has he 

forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not come: whet appetite. I couldn’t 

do. Wait, wait. Pat, waiter, waited. 

Sparkling bronze azure eyed Blazure’s skyblue bow and eyes. 

—Go on, pressed Lenehan. There’s no-one. He never heard. 

— … to Flora’s lips did hie. 

High, a high note pealed in the treble clear. 

Bronzedouce communing with her rose that sank and rose 

sought 

Blazes Boylan’s flower and eyes. 

—Please, please. 

He pleaded over returning phrases of avowal. 

—I could not leave thee … 

—Afterwits, miss Douce promised coyly. 

—No, now, urged Lenehan. Sonnezlaloche! O do! There’s 

no-one. 

She looked. Quick. Miss Kenn out of earshot. Sudden bent. 

Two kindling faces watched her bend. 

Quavering the chords strayed from the air, found it again, 

lost chord, and lost and found it, faltering.

—Go on! Do! Sonnez! 

Bending, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed. 

Taunted them still, bending, suspending, with wilful 

eyes. 

—Sonnez! 

Smack. She set free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic 

garter smackwarm against her smackable a woman’s 

warmhosed thigh. 

—La cloche! cried gleeful Lenehan. Trained by owner. No 

sawdust there. 

She smilesmirked supercilious (wept! aren’t men?), but, 

lightward gliding, mild she smiled on Boylan. 

—You’re the essence of vulgarity, she in gliding said. 

Boylan, eyed, eyed. Tossed to fat lips his chalice, drank off 

his chalice tiny, sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops. His 

spellbound eyes went after, after her gliding head as it went 

down the bar by mirrors, gilded arch for ginger ale, hock 

and claret glasses shimmering, a spiky shell, where it concerted, 

mirrored, bronze with sunnier bronze. 

Yes, bronze from anearby. 

— … Sweetheart, goodbye! 


264 

—I’m off, said Boylan with impatience. 

He slid his chalice brisk away, grasped his change. 

—Wait a shake, begged Lenehan, drinking quickly. I 

wanted to tell you. 

Tom Rochford … 

—Come on to blazes, said Blazes Boylan, going. 

Lenehan gulped to go. 

—Got the horn or what? he said. Wait. I’m coming. 

He followed the hasty creaking shoes but stood by nimbly 

by the threshold, saluting forms, a bulky with a slender. 

—How do you do, Mr Dollard? 

—Eh? How do? How do? Ben Dollard’s vague bass answered, 

turning an instant from Father Cowley’s woe. He 

won’t give you any trouble, Bob. Alf Bergan will speak to the 

long fellow. We’ll put a barleystraw in that Judas Iscariot’s 

ear this time. 

Sighing Mr Dedalus came through the saloon, a finger 

soothing an eyelid. 

—Hoho, we will, Ben Dollard yodled jollily. Come on, 

Simon. Give us a ditty. We heard the piano. 

Bald Pat, bothered waiter, waited for drink orders. Power

for Richie. And Bloom? Let me see. Not make him walk 

twice. His corns. Four now. How warm this black is. Course 

nerves a bit. Refracts (is it?) heat. Let me see. Cider. Yes, 

bottle of cider. 

—What’s that? Mr Dedalus said. I was only vamping, man. 

—Come on, come on, Ben Dollard called. Begone dull 

care. Come, Bob. 

He ambled Dollard, bulky slops, before them (hold that 

fellow with the: hold him now) into the saloon. He plumped 

him Dollard on the stool. His gouty paws plumped chords. 

Plumped, stopped abrupt. 

Bald Pat in the doorway met tealess gold returning. Bothered, 

he wanted Power and cider. Bronze by the window, 

watched, bronze from afar. 

Jingle a tinkle jaunted. 

Bloom heard a jing, a little sound. He’s off. Light sob of 

breath Bloom sighed on the silent bluehued flowers. Jingling. 

He’s gone. Jingle. Hear. 

—Love and War, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. God be with old 

times. 

Miss Douce’s brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the 


265 

crossblind, smitten by sunlight. Gone. Pensive (who knows?), 

smitten (the smiting light), she lowered the dropblind with 

a sliding cord. She drew down pensive (why did he go so 

quick when I?) about her bronze, over the bar where bald 

stood by sister gold, inexquisite contrast, contrast inexquisite 

nonexquisite, slow cool dim seagreen sliding depth of shadow, 

eau de Nil. 

—Poor old Goodwin was the pianist that night, Father 

Cowley reminded them. There was a slight difference of 

opinion between himself and the Collard grand. 

There was. 

—A symposium all his own, Mr Dedalus said. The devil 

wouldn’t stop him. He was a crotchety old fellow in the primary 

stage of drink. 

—God, do you remember? Ben bulky Dollard said, turning 

from the punished keyboard. And by Japers I had no 

wedding garment. 

They laughed all three. He had no wed. All trio laughed. 

No wedding garment. 

—Our friend Bloom turned in handy that night, Mr 

Dedalus said. Where’s my pipe, by the way?

He wandered back to the bar to the lost chord pipe. Bald 

Pat carried two diners’ drinks, Richie and Poldy. And Father 

Cowley laughed again. 

—I saved the situation, Ben, I think. 

—You did, averred Ben Dollard. I remember those tight 

trousers too. That was a brilliant idea, Bob. 

Father Cowley blushed to his brilliant purply lobes. He 

saved the situa. Tight trou. Brilliant ide. 

—I knew he was on the rocks, he said. The wife was playing 

the piano in the coffee palace on Saturdays for a very 

trifling consideration and who was it gave me the wheeze 

she was doing the other business? Do you remember? We 

had to search all Holles street to find them till the chap in 

Keogh’s gave us the number. Remember? Ben remembered, 

his broad visage wondering. 

—By God, she had some luxurious operacloaks and things 

there. 

Mr Dedalus wandered back, pipe in hand. 

—Merrion square style. Balldresses, by God, and court 

dresses. He wouldn’t take any money either. What? Any God’s 

quantity of cocked hats and boleros and trunkhose. What? 


266 

—Ay, ay, Mr Dedalus nodded. Mrs Marion Bloom has 

left off clothes of all descriptions. 

Jingle jaunted down the quays. Blazes sprawled on bounding 

tyres. 

Liver and bacon. Steak and kidney pie. Right, sir. Right, 

Pat. 

Mrs Marion. Met him pike hoses. Smell of burn. Of Paul 

de Kock. Nice name he. 

—What’s this her name was? A buxom lassy. Marion … 

—Tweedy. 

—Yes. Is she alive? 

—And kicking. 

—She was a daughter of … 

—Daughter of the regiment. 

—Yes, begad. I remember the old drummajor. 

Mr Dedalus struck, whizzed, lit, puffed savoury puff after 

—Irish? I don’t know, faith. Is she, Simon? 

Puff after stiff, a puff, strong, savoury, crackling. 

—Buccinator muscle is … What? … Bit rusty … O, she is 

... My Irish Molly, O. 

He puffed a pungent plumy blast.

—From the rock of Gibraltar... all the way. 

They pined in depth of ocean shadow, gold by the beerpull, 

bronze by maraschino, thoughtful all two. Mina Kennedy, 4 

Lismore terrace, Drumcondra with Idolores, a queen, 

Dolores, silent. 

Pat served, uncovered dishes. Leopold cut liverslices. As 

said before he ate with relish the inner organs, nutty gizzards, 

fried cods’ roes while Richie Goulding, Collis, Ward 

ate steak and kidney, steak then kidney, bite by bite of pie he 

ate Bloom ate they ate. 

Bloom with Goulding, married in silence, ate. Dinners fit 

for princes. 

By Bachelor’s walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes Boylan, bachelor, 

in sun in heat, mare’s glossy rump atrot, with flick of 

whip, on bounding tyres: sprawled, warmseated, Boylan 

impatience, ardentbold. Horn. Have you the? Horn. Have 

you the? Haw haw horn. 

Over their voices Dollard bassooned attack, booming over 

bombarding chords: 

—When love absorbs my ardent soul … 

Roll of Bensoulbenjamin rolled to the quivery loveshivery 


267 

roofpanes. 

—War! War! cried Father Cowley. You’re the warrior. 

—So I am, Ben Warrior laughed. I was thinking of your 

landlord. Love or money. 

He stopped. He wagged huge beard, huge face over his 

blunder huge. 

—Sure, you’d burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr 

Dedalus said through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours. 

In bearded abundant laughter Dollard shook upon the keyboard. 

He would. 

—Not to mention another membrane, Father Cowley 

added. Half time, Ben. Amoroso ma non troppo. Let me there. 

Miss Kennedy served two gentlemen with tankards of cool 

stout. She passed a remark. It was indeed, first gentleman 

said, beautiful weather. They drank cool stout. Did she know 

where the lord lieutenant was going? And heard steelhoofs 

ringhoof ring. No, she couldn’t say. But it would be in the 

paper. O, she need not trouble. No trouble. She waved about 

her outspread Independent, searching, the lord lieutenant, 

her pinnacles of hair slowmoving, lord lieuten. Too much 

trouble, first gentleman said. O, not in the least. Way he

looked that. Lord lieutenant. Gold by bronze heard iron steel. 

— ……… my ardent soul 

I care not foror the morrow. 

In liver gravy Bloom mashed mashed potatoes. Love and 

War someone is. Ben Dollard’s famous. Night he ran round 

to us to borrow a dress suit for that concert. Trousers tight as 

a drum on him. Musical porkers. Molly did laugh when he 

went out. Threw herself back across the bed, screaming, kicking. 

With all his belongings on show. O saints above, I’m 

drenched! O, the women in the front row! O, I never laughed 

so many! Well, of course that’s what gives him the base 

barreltone. For instance eunuchs. Wonder who’s playing. Nice 

touch. Must be Cowley. Musical. Knows whatever note you 

play. Bad breath he has, poor chap. Stopped. 

Miss Douce, engaging, Lydia Douce, bowed to suave solicitor, 

George Lidwell, gentleman, entering. Good afternoon. 

She gave her moist (a lady’s) hand to his firm clasp. Afternoon. 

Yes, she was back. To the old dingdong again. 

—Your friends are inside, Mr Lidwell. 

George Lidwell, suave, solicited, held a lydiahand. 

Bloom ate liv as said before. Clean here at least. That chap 


268 

in the Burton, gummy with gristle. No-one here: Goulding 

and I. Clean tables, flowers, mitres of napkins. Pat to and 

fro. Bald Pat. Nothing to do. Best value in Dub. 

Piano again. Cowley it is. Way he sits in to it, like one 

together, mutual understanding. Tiresome shapers scraping 

fiddles, eye on the bowend, sawing the cello, remind you of 

toothache. Her high long snore. Night we were in the box. 

Trombone under blowing like a grampus, between the acts, 

other brass chap unscrewing, emptying spittle. Conductor’s 

legs too, bagstrousers, jiggedy jiggedy. Do right to hide them. 

Jiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty. 

Only the harp. Lovely. Gold glowering light. Girl touched 

it. Poop of a lovely. Gravy’s rather good fit for a. Golden 

ship. Erin. The harp that once or twice. Cool hands. Ben 

Howth, the rhododendrons. We are their harps. I. He. Old. 

Young. 

—Ah, I couldn’t, man, Mr Dedalus said, shy, listless. 

Strongly. 

—Go on, blast you! Ben Dollard growled. Get it out in 

bits. 

—M’appari, Simon, Father Cowley said.

Down stage he strode some paces, grave, tall in affliction, 

his long arms outheld. Hoarsely the apple of his throat 

hoarsed softly. Softly he sang to a dusty seascape there: A 

Last Farewell. A headland, a ship, a sail upon the billows. 

Farewell. A lovely girl, her veil awave upon the wind upon 

the headland, wind around her. 

Cowley sang: 

—M’appari tutt amor: 

Il mio sguardo l’incontr … 

She waved, unhearing Cowley, her veil, to one departing, 

dear one, to wind, love, speeding sail, return. 

—Go on, Simon. 

—Ah, sure, my dancing days are done, Ben ... Well ... 

Mr Dedalus laid his pipe to rest beside the tuningfork and, 

sitting, touched the obedient keys. 

—No, Simon, Father Cowley turned. Play it in the original. 

One flat. 

The keys, obedient, rose higher, told, faltered, confessed, 

confused. 


269 

Up stage strode Father Cowley. 

—Here, Simon, I’ll accompany you, he said. Get up. 

By Graham Lemon’s pineapple rock, by Elvery’s elephant 

jingly jogged. Steak, kidney, liver, mashed, at meat fit for 

princes sat princes Bloom and Goulding. Princes at meat 

they raised and drank, Power and cider. 

Most beautiful tenor air ever written, Richie said: 

Sonnambula. He heard Joe Maas sing that one night. Ah, what 

M’Guckin! Yes. In his way. Choirboy style. Maas was the boy. 

Massboy. A lyrical tenor if you like. Never forget it. Never. 

Tenderly Bloom over liverless bacon saw the tightened features 

strain. Backache he. Bright’s bright eye. Next item on 

the programme. Paying the piper. Pills, pounded bread, worth 

a guinea a box. Stave it off awhile. Sings too: Down among 

the dead men. Appropriate. Kidney pie. Sweets to the. Not 

making much hand of it. Best value in. Characteristic of him. 

Power. Particular about his drink. Flaw in the glass, fresh 

Vartry water. Fecking matches from counters to save. Then 

squander a sovereign in dribs and drabs. And when he’s 

wanted not a farthing. Screwed refusing to pay his fare. Curious 

types.

Never would Richie forget that night. As long as he lived: 

never. In the gods of the old Royal with little Peake. And 

when the first note. 

Speech paused on Richie’s lips. 

Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn 

all. 

Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want 

a good memory. 

—Which air is that? asked Leopold Bloom. 

—All is lost now. 

Richie cocked his lips apout. A low incipient note sweet 

banshee murmured: all. A thrush. A throstle. His breath, 

birdsweet, good teeth he’s proud of, fluted with plaintive woe. 

Is lost. Rich sound. Two notes in one there. Blackbird I heard 

in the hawthorn valley. Taking my motives he twined and 

turned them. All most too new call is lost in all. Echo. How 

sweet the answer. How is that done? All lost now. Mournful 

he whistled. Fall, surrender, lost. 

Bloom bent leopold ear, turning a fringe of doyley down 

under the vase. Order. Yes, I remember. Lovely air. In sleep 

she went to him. Innocence in the moon. Brave. Don’t know 


270 

their danger. Still hold her back. Call name. Touch water. 

Jingle jaunty. Too late. She longed to go. That’s why. Woman. 

As easy stop the sea. Yes: all is lost. 

—A beautiful air, said Bloom lost Leopold. I know it well. 

Never in all his life had Richie Goulding. 

He knows it well too. Or he feels. Still harping on his daughter. 

Wise child that knows her father, Dedalus said. Me? 

Bloom askance over liverless saw. Face of the all is lost. 

Rollicking Richie once. Jokes old stale now. Wagging his ear. 

Napkinring in his eye. Now begging letters he sends his son 

with. Crosseyed Walter sir I did sir. Wouldn’t trouble only I 

was expecting some money. Apologise. 

Piano again. Sounds better than last time I heard. Tuned 

probably. Stopped again. 

Dollard and Cowley still urged the lingering singer out 

with it. 

—With it, Simon. 

—It, Simon. 

—Ladies and gentlemen, I am most deeply obliged by your 

kind solicitations. 

—It, Simon.

—I have no money but if you will lend me your attention 

I shall endeavour to sing to you of a heart bowed down. 

By the sandwichbell in screening shadow Lydia, her bronze 

and rose, a lady’s grace, gave and withheld: as in cool glaucous 

eau de Nil Mina to tankards two her pinnacles of gold. 

The harping chords of prelude closed. A chord, longdrawn, 

expectant, drew a voice away. 

—When first I saw that form endearing … 

Richie turned. 

—Si Dedalus’ voice, he said. 

Braintipped, cheek touched with flame, they listened feeling 

that flow endearing flow over skin limbs human heart 

soul spine. Bloom signed to Pat, bald Pat is a waiter hard of 

hearing, to set ajar the door of the bar. The door of the bar. 

So. That will do. Pat, waiter, waited, waiting to hear, for he 

was hard of hear by the door. 

—Sorrow from me seemed to depart. 

Through the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not 

rain, not leaves in murmur, like no voice of strings or reeds 

or whatdoyoucallthem dulcimers touching their still ears with 

words, still hearts of their each his remembered lives. Good, 


271 

good to hear: sorrow from them each seemed to from both 

depart when first they heard. When first they saw, lost Richie 

Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard from a person wouldn’t expect 

it in the least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved word. 

Love that is singing: love’s old sweet song. Bloom unwound 

slowly the elastic band of his packet. Love’s old sweet sonnez 

la gold. Bloom wound a skein round four forkfingers, 

stretched it, relaxed, and wound it round his troubled double, 

fourfold, in octave, gyved them fast. 

—Full of hope and all delighted … 

Tenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw 

flower at his feet. When will we meet? My head it simply. 

Jingle all delighted. He can’t sing for tall hats. Your head it 

simply swurls. Perfumed for him. What perfume does your 

wife? I want to know. Jing. Stop. Knock. Last look at mirror 

always before she answers the door. The hall. There? How 

do you? I do well. There? What? Or? Phial of cachous, kissing 

comfits, in her satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the opulent. 

Alas the voice rose, sighing, changed: loud, full, shining, 

proud. 

—But alas, ‘twas idle dreaming …

Glorious tone he has still. Cork air softer also their brogue. 

Silly man! Could have made oceans of money. Singing wrong 

words. Wore out his wife: now sings. But hard to tell. Only 

the two themselves. If he doesn’t break down. Keep a trot for 

the avenue. His hands and feet sing too. Drink. Nerves 

overstrung. Must be abstemious to sing. Jenny Lind soup: 

stock, sage, raw eggs, half pint of cream. For creamy dreamy. 

Tenderness it welled: slow, swelling, full it throbbed. That’s 

the chat. Ha, give! Take! Throb, a throb, a pulsing proud 

erect. 

Words? Music? No: it’s what’s behind. 

Bloom looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded. 

Bloom. Flood of warm jamjam lickitup secretness flowed 

to flow in music out, in desire, dark to lick flow invading. 

Tipping her tepping her tapping her topping her. Tup. Pores 

to dilate dilating. Tup. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. 

To pour o’er sluices pouring gushes. Flood, gush, flow, 

joygush, tupthrob. Now! Language of love. 

— ray of hope is … 

Beaming. Lydia for Lidwell squeak scarcely hear so ladylike 

the muse unsqueaked a ray of hopk. 


272 

Martha it is. Coincidence. Just going to write. Lionel’s song. 

Lovely name you have. Can’t write. Accept my little pres. Play 

on her heartstrings pursestrings too. She’s a. I called you 

naughty boy. Still the name: Martha. How strange! Today. 

The voice of Lionel returned, weaker but unwearied. It 

sang again to Richie Poldy Lydia Lidwell also sang to Pat 

open mouth ear waiting to wait. How first he saw that form 

endearing, how sorrow seemed to part, how look, form, word 

charmed him Gould Lidwell, won Pat Bloom’s heart. 

Wish I could see his face, though. Explain better. Why the 

barber in Drago’s always looked my face when I spoke his 

face in the glass. Still hear it better here than in the bar though 

farther. 

—Each graceful look … 

First night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon’s in Terenure. 

Yellow, black lace she wore. Musical chairs. We two the last. 

Fate. After her. Fate. 

Round and round slow. Quick round. We two. All looked. 

Halt. Down she sat. All ousted looked. Lips laughing. Yellow 

knees. 

—Charmed my eye …

Singing. Waiting she sang. I turned her music. Full voice 

of perfume of what perfume does your lilactrees. Bosom I 

saw, both full, throat warbling. First I saw. She thanked me. 

Why did she me? Fate. Spanishy eyes. Under a peartree alone 

patio this hour in old Madrid one side in shadow Dolores 

shedolores. At me. Luring. Ah, alluring. 

—Martha! Ah, Martha! 

Quitting all languor Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passion 

dominant to love to return with deepening yet with rising 

chords of harmony. In cry of lionel loneliness that she should 

know, must martha feel. For only her he waited. Where? 

Here there try there here all try where. Somewhere. 

—Co-me, thou lost one! 

Co-ome, thou dear one! 

Alone. One love. One hope. One comfort me. Martha, 

chestnote, return! 

—Come! 

It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar 

silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don’t 

spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring 

high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the 


273 

effulgence symbolistic, high, of the etherial bosom, high, of 

the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around 

about the all, the endlessnessnessness … 

—To me! 

Siopold! 

Consumed. 

Come. Well sung. All clapped. She ought to. Come. To 

me, to him, to her, you too, me, us. 

—Bravo! Clapclap. Good man, Simon. Clappyclapclap. 

Encore! Clapclipclap clap. Sound as a bell. Bravo, Simon! 

Clapclopclap. Encore, enclap, said, cried, clapped all, Ben 

Dollard, Lydia Douce, George Lidwell, Pat, Mina Kennedy, 

two gentlemen with two tankards, Cowley, first gent with 

tank and bronze miss Douce and gold MJiss Mina. 

Blazes Boylan’s smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor, 

said before. Jingle by monuments of sir John Gray, Horatio 

onehandled Nelson, reverend father Theobald Mathew, 

jaunted, as said before just now. Atrot, in heat, heatseated. 

Cloche. Sonnez la. Cloche. Sonnez la. Slower the mare went 

up the hill by the Rotunda, Rutland square. Too slow for 

Boylan, blazes Boylan, impatience Boylan, joggled the mare.

An afterclang of Cowley’s chords closed, died on the air 

made richer. 

And Richie Goulding drank his Power and Leopold Bloom 

his cider drank, Lidwell his Guinness, second gentleman said 

they would partake of two more tankards if she did not mind. 

Miss Kennedy smirked, disserving, coral lips, at first, at second. 

She did not mind. 

—Seven days in jail, Ben Dollard said, on bread and water. 

Then you’d sing, Simon, like a garden thrush. 

Lionel Simon, singer, laughed. Father Bob Cowley played. 

Mina Kennedy served. Second gentleman paid. Tom Kernan 

strutted in. Lydia, admired, admired. But Bloom sang dumb. 

Admiring. 

Richie, admiring, descanted on that man’s glorious voice. 

He remembered one night long ago. Never forget that night. 

Si sang “Twas rank and fame: in Ned Lambert’s ’twas. Good 

God he never heard in all his life a note like that he never did 

then false one we had better part so clear so God he never 

heard since love lives not a clinking voice lives not ask Lambert 

he can tell you too. 

Goulding, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Bloom, 


274 

face of the night, Si in Ned Lambert’s, Dedalus house, sang 

“Twas rank and fame. 

He, Mr Bloom, listened while he, Richie Goulding, told 

him, Mr Bloom, of the night he, Richie, heard him, Si 

Dedalus, sing “Twas rank and fame in his, Ned Lambert’s, 

house. 

Brothers-in-law: relations. We never speak as we pass by. 

Rift in the lute I think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires 

him all the more. The night Si sang. The human voice, 

two tiny silky chords, wonderful, more than all others. 

That voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It’s in the silence 

after you feel you hear. Vibrations. Now silent air. 

Bloom ungyved his crisscrossed hands and with slack fingers 

plucked the slender catgut thong. He drew and plucked. 

It buzz, it twanged. While Goulding talked of Barraclough’s 

voice production, while Tom Kernan, harking back in a retrospective 

sort of arrangement talked to listening Father 

Cowley, who played a voluntary, who nodded as he played. 

While big Ben Dollard talked with Simon Dedalus, lighting, 

who nodded as he smoked, who smoked. 

Thou lost one. All songs on that theme. Yet more Bloom

stretched his string. Cruel it seems. Let people get fond of 

each other: lure them on. Then tear asunder. Death. Explos. 

Knock on the head. Outtohelloutofthat. Human life. 

Dignam. Ugh, that rat’s tail wriggling! Five bob I gave. Corpus 

paradisum. Corncrake croaker: belly like a poisoned pup. 

Gone. They sing. Forgotten. I too; And one day she with. 

Leave her: get tired. Suffer then. Snivel. Big spanishy eyes 

goggling at nothing. Her wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair 

un comb:’d. 

Yet too much happy bores. He stretched more, more. Are 

you not happy in your? Twang. It snapped. 

Jingle into Dorset street. 

Miss Douce withdrew her satiny arm, reproachful, pleased. 

—Don’t make half so free, said she, till we are better acquainted. 

George Lidwell told her really and truly: but she did not 

believe. 

First gentleman told Mina that was so. She asked him was 

that so. And second tankard told her so. That that was so. 

Miss Douce, miss Lydia, did not believe: miss Kennedy, 

Mina, did not believe: George Lidwell, no: miss Dou did 


275 

not: the first, the first: gent with the tank: believe, no, no: 

did not, miss Kenn: Lidlydiawell: the tank. 

Better write it here. Quills in the postoffice chewed and 

twisted. 

Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A 

pad. He went. A pad to blot. He heard, deaf Pat. 

—Yes, Mr Bloom said, teasing the curling catgut line. It 

certainly is. Few lines will do. My present. All that Italian 

florid music is. Who is this wrote? Know the name you know 

better. Take out sheet notepaper, envelope: unconcerned. It’s 

so characteristic. 

—Grandest number in the whole opera, Goulding said. 

—It is, Bloom said. 

Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two 

multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: 

chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything 

you like with figures juggling. Always find out this 

equal to that. Symmetry under a cemetery wall. He doesn’t 

see my mourning. Callous: all for his own gut. 

Musemathematics. And you think you’re listening to the etherial. 

But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times nine

minus x is thirtyfive thousand. Fall quite flat. It’s on account 

of the sounds it is. 

Instance he’s playing now. Improvising. Might be what you 

like, till you hear the words. Want to listen sharp. Hard. 

Begin all right: then hear chords a bit off: feel lost a bit. In 

and out of sacks, over barrels, through wirefences, obstacle 

race. Time makes the tune. Question of mood you’re in. Still 

always nice to hear. Except scales up and down, girls learning. 

Two together nextdoor neighbours. Ought to invent 

dummy pianos for that. Blumenlied I bought for her. The 

name. Playing it slow, a girl, night I came home, the girl. 

Door of the stables near Cecilia street. Milly no taste. Queer 

because we both, I mean. 

Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink 

pen quite flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went. 

It was the only language Mr Dedalus said to Ben. He heard 

them as a boy in Ringabella, Crosshaven, Ringabella, singing 

their barcaroles. Queenstown harbour full of Italian ships. 

Walking, you know, Ben, in the moonlight with those earthquake 

hats. Blending their voices. God, such music, Ben. 

Heard as a boy. Cross Ringabella haven mooncarole. 


276 

Sour pipe removed he held a shield of hand beside his lips 

that cooed a moonlight nightcall, clear from anear, a call 

from afar, replying. 

Down the edge of his Freeman baton ranged Bloom’s, your 

other eye, scanning for where did I see that. Callan, Coleman, 

Dignam Patrick. Heigho! Heigho! Fawcett. Aha! Just I was 

looking … 

Hope he’s not looking, cute as a rat. He held unfurled his 

Freeman. Can’t see now. Remember write Greek ees. Bloom 

dipped, Bloo mur: dear sir. Dear Henry wrote: dear Mady. 

Got your lett and flow. Hell did I put? Some pock or oth. It 

is utterl imposs. Underline imposs. To write today. 

Bore this. Bored Bloom tambourined gently with I am just 

reflecting fingers on flat pad Pat brought. 

On. Know what I mean. No, change that ee. Accep my 

poor litt pres enclos. Ask her no answ. Hold on. Five Dig. 

Two about here. Penny the gulls. Elijah is com. Seven Davy 

Byrne’s. Is eight about. Say half a crown. My poor little pres: 

p. o. two and six. Write me a long. Do you despise? Jingle, 

have you the? So excited. Why do you call me naught? You 

naughty too? O, Mairy lost the string of her. Bye for today.

Yes, yes, will tell you. Want to. To keep it up. Call me that 

other. Other world she wrote. My patience are exhaust. To 

keep it up. You must believe. Believe. The tank. It. Is. True. 

Folly am I writing? Husbands don’t. That’s marriage does, 

their wives. Because I’m away from. Suppose. But how? She 

must. Keep young. If she found out. Card in my high grade 

ha. No, not tell all. Useless pain. If they don’t see. Woman. 

Sauce for the gander. 

A hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, 

driver Barton James of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, 

on which sat a fare, a young gentleman, stylishly 

dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by George Robert 

Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and 

wearing a straw hat very dressy, bought of John Plasto of 

number one Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is the 

jingle that joggled and jingled. By Dlugacz’ porkshop bright 

tubes of Agendath trotted a gallantbuttocked mare. 

—Answering an ad? keen Richie’s eyes asked Bloom. 

—Yes, Mr Bloom said. Town traveller. Nothing doing, I 

expect. 

Bloom mur: best references. But Henry wrote: it will ex- 


277 

cite me. You know how. In haste. Henry. Greek ee. Better 

add postscript. What is he playing now? Improvising. Intermezzo. 

P. S. The rum tum tum. How will you pun? You 

punish me? Crooked skirt swinging, whack by. Tell me I want 

to. Know. O. Course if I didn’t I wouldn’t ask. La la la ree. 

Trails off there sad in minor. Why minor sad? Sign H. They 

like sad tail at end. P. P. S. La la la ree. I feel so sad today. La 

ree. So lonely. Dee. 

He blotted quick on pad of Pat. Envel. Address. Just copy 

out of paper. Murmured: Messrs Callan, Coleman and Co, 

limited. Henry wrote: 

Miss Martha Clifford 

c/o P. O. 

Dolphin’s Barn Lane 

Dublin 

Blot over the other so he can’t read. There. Right. Idea 

prize titbit. Something detective read off blottingpad. Payment 

at the rate of guinea per col. Matcham often thinks the 

laughing witch. Poor Mrs Purefoy. U. P: up.

Too poetical that about the sad. Music did that. Music 

hath charms. Shakespeare said. Quotations every day in the 

year. To be or not to be. Wisdom while you wait. 

In Gerard’s rosery of Fetter lane he walks, greyedauburn. 

One life is all. One body. Do. But do. 

Done anyhow. Postal order, stamp. Postoffice lower down. 

Walk now. Enough. Barney Kiernan’s I promised to meet 

them. Dislike that job. 

House of mourning. Walk. Pat! Doesn’t hear. Deaf beetle 

he is. 

Car near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat! Doesn’t. Settling those 

napkins. Lot of ground he must cover in the day. Paint face 

behind on him then he’d be two. Wish they’d sing more. 

Keep my mind off. 

Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter 

hard of his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. 

Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. Hee hee. A waiter 

is he. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. While you 

wait if you wait he will wait while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. 

Hoh. Wait while you wait. 

Douce now. Douce Lydia. Bronze and rose. 


278 

She had a gorgeous, simply gorgeous, time. And look at 

the lovely shell she brought. 

To the end of the bar to him she bore lightly the spiked 

and winding seahorn that he, George Lidwell, solicitor, might 

hear. 

—Listen! she bade him. 

Under Tom Kernan’s ginhot words the accompanist wove 

music slow. Authentic fact. How Walter Bapty lost his voice. 

Well, sir, the husband took him by the throat. Scoundre, said 

he, you’ll sing no more lovesongs. He did, faith, sir Tom. Bob 

Cowley wove. Tenors get wom. Cowley lay back. 

Ah, now he heard, she holding it to his ear. Hear! He heard. 

Wonderful. She held it to her own. And through the sifted 

light pale gold in contrast glided. To hear. 

Tap. 

Bloom through the bardoor saw a shell held at their ears. 

He heard more faintly that that they heard, each for herself 

alone, then each for other, hearing the plash of waves, loudly, 

a silent roar. 

Bronze by a weary gold, anear, afar, they listened. 

Her ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the

seaside. Lovely seaside girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have 

put on coldcream first make it brown. Buttered toast. O and 

that lotion mustn’t forget. Fever near her mouth. Your head 

it simply. Hair braided over: shell with seaweed. Why do 

they hide their ears with seaweed hair? And Turks the mouth, 

why? Her eyes over the sheet. Yashmak. Find the way in. A 

cave. No admittance except on business. 

The sea they think they hear. Singing. A roar. The blood it 

is. Souse in the ear sometimes. Well, it’s a sea. Corpuscle 

islands. 

Wonderful really. So distinct. Again. George Lidwell held 

its murmur, hearing: then laid it by, gently. 

—What are the wild waves saying? he asked her, smiled. 

Charming, seasmiling and unanswering Lydia on Lidwell 

smiled. 

Tap. 

By Larry O’Rourke’s, by Larry, bold Larry O’, Boylan 

swayed and Boylan turned. 

From the forsaken shell miss Mina glided to her tankards 

waiting. No, she was not so lonely archly miss Douce’s head 

let Mr Lidwell know. Walks in the moonlight by the sea. 


279 

No, not alone. With whom? She nobly answered: with a 

gentleman friend. 

Bob Cowley’s twinkling fingers in the treble played again. 

The landlord has the prior. A little time. Long John. Big 

Ben. Lightly he played a light bright tinkling measure for 

tripping ladies, arch and smiling, and for their gallants, gentlemen 

friends. One: one, one, one, one, one: two, one, three, 

four. 

Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the 

cattlemarket, cocks, hens don’t crow, snakes hissss. There’s 

music everywhere. Ruttledge’s door: ee creaking. No, that’s 

noise. Minuet of Don Giovanni he’s playing now. Court dresses 

of all descriptions in castle chambers dancing. Misery. Peasants 

outside. Green starving faces eating dockleaves. Nice that 

is. Look: look, look, look, look, look: you look at us. 

That’s joyful I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My 

joy is other joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere 

fact of music shows you are. Often thought she was in the 

dumps till she began to lilt. Then know. 

M’Coy valise. My wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like 

tearing silk. Tongue when she talks like the clapper of a bel-

lows. They can’t manage men’s intervals. Gap in their voices 

too. Fill me. I’m warm, dark, open. Molly in quis est homo: 

Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want a woman 

who can deliver the goods. 

Jog jig jogged stopped. Dandy tan shoe of dandy Boylan 

socks skyblue clocks came light to earth. 

O, look we are so! Chamber music. Could make a kind of 

pun on that. It is a kind of music I often thought when she. 

Acoustics that is. Tinkling. Empty vessels make most noise. 

Because the acoustics, the resonance changes according as 

the weight of the water is equal to the law of falling water. 

Like those rhapsodies of Liszt’s, Hungarian, gipsyeyed. Pearls. 

Drops. Rain. Diddleiddle addleaddle ooddleooddle. Hissss. 

Now. Maybe now. Before. 

One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he 

knock Paul de Kock with a loud proud knocker with a cock 

carracarracarra cock. Cockcock. 

Tap. 

—Qui sdegno, Ben, said Father Cowley. 

—No, Ben, Tom Kernan interfered. The Croppy Boy. Our 

native Doric. 


280 

—Ay do, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. Good men and true. 

—Do, do, they begged in one. 

I’ll go. Here, Pat, return. Come. He came, he came, he did 

not stay. To me. How much? 

—What key? Six sharps? 

—F sharp major, Ben Dollard said. 

Bob Cowley’s outstretched talons griped the black 

deepsounding chords. 

Must go prince Bloom told Richie prince. No, Richie said. 

Yes, must. Got money somewhere. He’s on for a razzle backache 

spree. Much? He seehears lipspeech. One and nine. Penny 

for yourself. Here. Give him twopence tip. Deaf, bothered. 

But perhaps he has wife and family waiting, waiting Patty come 

home. Hee hee hee hee. Deaf wait while they wait. 

But wait. But hear. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. 

In a cave of the dark middle earth. Embedded ore. 

Lumpmusic. 

The voice of dark age, of unlove, earth’s fatigue made grave 

approach and painful, come from afar, from hoary mountains, 

called on good men and true. The priest he sought. 

With him would he speak a word.

Tap. 

Ben Dollard’s voice. Base barreltone. Doing his level best 

to say it. Croak of vast manless moonless womoonless marsh. 

Other comedown. Big ships’ chandler’s business he did once. 

Remember: rosiny ropes, ships’ lanterns. Failed to the tune 

of ten thousand pounds. Now in the Iveagh home. Cubicle 

number so and so. Number one Bass did that for him. 

The priest’s at home. A false priest’s servant bade him welcome. 

Step in. The holy father. With bows a traitor servant. 

Curlycues of chords. 

Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to 

end their days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die. 

The voice of warning, solemn warning, told them the youth 

had entered a lonely hall, told them how solemn fell his footsteps 

there, told them the gloomy chamber, the vested priest 

sitting to shrive. 

Decent soul. Bit addled now. Thinks he’ll win in Answers, 

poets’ picture puzzle. We hand you crisp five pound note. 

Bird sitting hatching in a nest. Lay of the last minstrel he 

thought it was. See blank tee what domestic animal? Tee dash 

ar most courageous mariner. Good voice he has still. No eu- 


281 

nuch yet with all his belongings. 

Listen. Bloom listened. Richie Goulding listened. And by 

the door deaf Pat, bald Pat, tipped Pat, listened. The chords 

harped slower. 

The voice of penance and of grief came slow, embellished, 

tremulous. Ben’s contrite beard confessed. In nomine Domini, 

in God’s name he knelt. He beat his hand upon his breast, 

confessing: mea culpa. 

Latin again. That holds them like birdlime. Priest with the 

communion corpus for those women. Chap in the mortuary, 

coffin or coffey, corpusnomine. Wonder where that rat is 

by now. Scrape. 

Tap. 

They listened. Tankards and miss Kennedy. George Lidwell, 

eyelid well expressive, fullbusted satin. Kernan. Si. 

The sighing voice of sorrow sang. His sins. Since Easter 

he had cursed three times. You bitch’s bast. And once at 

masstime he had gone to play. Once by the churchyard he 

had passed and for his mother’s rest he had not prayed. A 

boy. A croppy boy. 

Bronze, listening, by the beerpull gazed far away. Soul-

fully. Doesn’t half know I’m. Molly great dab at seeing anyone 

looking. 

Bronze gazed far sideways. Mirror there. Is that best side 

of her face? They always know. Knock at the door. Last tip 

to titivate. 

Cockcarracarra. 

What do they think when they hear music? Way to catch 

rattlesnakes. Night Michael Gunn gave us the box. Tuning 

up. Shah of Persia liked that best. Remind him of home sweet 

home. Wiped his nose in curtain too. Custom his country 

perhaps. That’s music too. Not as bad as it sounds. Tootling. 

Brasses braying asses through uptrunks. Doublebasses helpless, 

gashes in their sides. Woodwinds mooing cows. 

Semigrand open crocodile music hath jaws. Woodwind like 

Goodwin’s name. 

She looked fine. Her crocus dress she wore lowcut, belongings 

on show. Clove her breath was always in theatre 

when she bent to ask a question. Told her what Spinoza says 

in that book of poor papa’s. Hypnotised, listening. Eyes like 

that. She bent. Chap in dresscircle staring down into her 

with his operaglass for all he was worth. Beauty of music you 


282 

must hear twice. Nature woman half a look. God made the 

country man the tune. Met him pike hoses. Philosophy. O 

rocks! 

All gone. All fallen. At the siege of Ross his father, at Gorey 

all his brothers fell. To Wexford, we are the boys of Wexford, 

he would. Last of his name and race. 

I too. Last of my race. Milly young student. Well, my fault 

perhaps. No son. Rudy. Too late now. Or if not? If not? If still? 

He bore no hate. 

Hate. Love. Those are names. Rudy. Soon I am old. Big 

Ben his voice unfolded. Great voice Richie Goulding said, a 

flush struggling in his pale, to Bloom soon old. But when 

was young? 

Ireland comes now. My country above the king. She listens. 

Who fears to speak of nineteen four? Time to be shoving. 

Looked enough. 

—Bless me, father, Dollard the croppy cried. Bless me and 

let me go. 

Tap. 

Bloom looked, unblessed to go. Got up to kill: on eighteen 

bob a week. Fellows shell out the dibs. Want to keep

your weathereye open. Those girls, those lovely. By the sad 

sea waves. Chorusgirl’s romance. Letters read out for breach 

of promise. From Chickabiddy’s owny Mumpsypum. Laughter 

in court. Henry. I never signed it. The lovely name you. 

Low sank the music, air and words. Then hastened. The 

false priest rustling soldier from his cassock. A yeoman captain. 

They know it all by heart. The thrill they itch for. Yeoman 

cap. 

Tap. Tap. 

Thrilled she listened, bending in sympathy to hear. 

Blank face. Virgin should say: or fingered only. Write something 

on it: page. If not what becomes of them? Decline, 

despair. Keeps them young. Even admire themselves. See. 

Play on her. Lip blow. Body of white woman, a flute alive. 

Blow gentle. Loud. Three holes, all women. Goddess I didn’t 

see. They want it. Not too much polite. That’s why he gets 

them. Gold in your pocket, brass in your face. Say something. 

Make her hear. With look to look. Songs without 

words. Molly, that hurdygurdy boy. She knew he meant the 

monkey was sick. Or because so like the Spanish. Understand 

animals too that way. Solomon did. Gift of nature. 


283 

Ventriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom. What? 

Will? You? I. Want. You. To. 

With hoarse rude fury the yeoman cursed, swelling in apoplectic 

bitch’s bastard. A good thought, boy, to come. One 

hour’s your time to live, your last. 

Tap. Tap. 

Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs 

that want to, dying to, die. For all things dying, for all things 

born. Poor Mrs Purefoy. Hope she’s over. Because their 

wombs. 

A liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of 

lashes, calmly, hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she 

not speaks. On yonder river. At each slow satiny heaving 

bosom’s wave (her heaving embon) red rose rose slowly sank 

red rose. Heartbeats: her breath: breath that is life. And all 

the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of maidenhair. 

But look. The bright stars fade. O rose! Castile. The morn. 

Ha. Lidwell. For him then not for. Infatuated. I like that? 

See her from here though. Popped corks, splashes of beerfroth, 

stacks of empties. 

On the smooth jutting beerpull laid Lydia hand, lightly,

plumply, leave it to my hands. All lost in pity for croppy. 

Fro, to: to, fro: over the polished knob (she knows his eyes, 

my eyes, her eyes) her thumb and finger passed in pity: passed, 

reposed and, gently touching, then slid so smoothly, slowly 

down, a cool firm white enamel baton protruding through 

their sliding ring. 

With a cock with a carra. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. 

I hold this house. Amen. He gnashed in fury. Traitors swing. 

The chords consented. Very sad thing. But had to be. Get 

out before the end. Thanks, that was heavenly. Where’s my 

hat. Pass by her. Can leave that Freeman. Letter I have. Suppose 

she were the? No. Walk, walk, walk. Like Cashel Boylo 

Connoro Coylo Tisdall Maurice Tisntdall Farrell. Waaaaaaalk. 

Well, I must be. Are you off? Yrfmstbyes. Blmstup. O’er 

ryehigh blue. Ow. Bloom stood up. Soap feeling rather sticky 

behind. Must have sweated: music. That lotion, remember. 

Well, so long. High grade. Card inside. Yes. 

By deaf Pat in the doorway straining ear Bloom passed. 

At Geneva barrack that young man died. At Passage was 

his body laid. Dolor! O, he dolores! The voice of the mourn- 


284 

ful chanter called to dolorous prayer. 

By rose, by satiny bosom, by the fondling hand, by slops, 

by empties, by popped corks, greeting in going, past eyes 

and maidenhair, bronze and faint gold in deepseashadow, 

went Bloom, soft Bloom, I feel so lonely Bloom. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. 

Pray for him, prayed the bass of Dollard. You who hear in 

peace. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear, good men, good people. 

He was the croppy boy. 

Scaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Bloom in 

the Ormond hallway heard the growls and roars of bravo, fat 

backslapping, their boots all treading, boots not the boots 

the boy. General chorus off for a swill to wash it down. Glad 

I avoided. 

—Come on, Ben, Simon Dedalus cried. By God, you’re as 

good as ever you were. 

—Better, said Tomgin Kernan. Most trenchant rendition 

of that ballad, upon my soul and honour It is. 

—Lablache, said Father Cowley. 

Ben Dollard bulkily cachuchad towards the bar, mightily 

praisefed and all big roseate, on heavyfooted feet, his gouty

fingers nakkering castagnettes in the air. 

Big Benaben Dollard. Big Benben. Big Benben. 

Rrr. 

And deepmoved all, Simon trumping compassion from foghorn 

nose, all laughing they brought him forth, Ben Dollard, 

in right good cheer. 

—You’re looking rubicund, George Lidwell said. 

Miss Douce composed her rose to wait. 

—Ben machree, said Mr Dedalus, clapping Ben’s fat back 

shoulderblade. Fit as a fiddle only he has a lot of adipose 

tissue concealed about his person. 

Rrrrrrrsss. 

—Fat of death, Simon, Ben Dollard growled. 

Richie rift in the lute alone sat: Goulding, Collis, Ward. 

Uncertainly he waited. Unpaid Pat too. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. 

Miss Mina Kennedy brought near her lips to ear of tankard 

one. 

—Mr Dollard, they murmured low. 

—Dollard, murmured tankard. 

Tank one believed: miss Kenn when she: that doll he was: 


285 

she doll: the tank. 

He murmured that he knew the name. The name was familiar 

to him, that is to say. That was to say he had heard the 

name of. Dollard, was it? Dollard, yes. 

Yes, her lips said more loudly, Mr Dollard. He sang that 

song lovely, murmured Mina. Mr Dollard. And The Last Rose 

of Summer was a lovely song. Mina loved that song. Tankard 

loved the song that Mina. 

’Tis the last rose of summer dollard left bloom felt wind 

wound round inside. 

Gassy thing that cider: binding too. Wait. Postoffice near 

Reuben J’s one and eightpence too. Get shut of it. Dodge 

round by Greek street. Wish I hadn’t promised to meet. Freer 

in air. Music. Gets on your nerves. Beerpull. Her hand that 

rocks the cradle rules the. Ben Howth. That rules the world. 

Far. Far. Far. Far. 


Up the quay went Lionelleopold, naughty Henry with letter 

for Mady, with sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with 

met him pike hoses went Poldy on. 

Tap blind walked tapping by the tap the curbstone tap-

ping, tap by tap. 

Cowley, he stuns himself with it: kind of drunkenness. Better 

give way only half way the way of a man with a maid. 

Instance enthusiasts. All ears. Not lose a demisemiquaver. 

Eyes shut. Head nodding in time. Dotty. You daren’t budge. 

Thinking strictly prohibited. Always talking shop. 

Fiddlefaddle about notes. 

All a kind of attempt to talk. Unpleasant when it stops 

because you never know exac. Organ in Gardiner street. Old 

Glynn fifty quid a year. Queer up there in the cockloft, alone, 

with stops and locks and keys. Seated all day at the organ. 

Maunder on for hours, talking to himself or the other fellow 

blowing the bellows. Growl angry, then shriek cursing (want 

to have wadding or something in his no don’t she cried), 

then all of a soft sudden wee little wee little pipy wind. 

Pwee! A wee little wind piped eeee. In Bloom’s little wee. 

—Was he? Mr Dedalus said, returning with fetched pipe. I 

was with him this morning at poor little Paddy Dignam’s … 

—Ay, the Lord have mercy on him. 

—By the bye there’s a tuningfork in there on the … 



286 

—The wife has a fine voice. Or had. What? Lidwell asked. 

—O, that must be the tuner, Lydia said to Simonlionel 

first I saw, forgot it when he was here. 

Blind he was she told George Lidwell second I saw. And 

played so exquisitely, treat to hear. Exquisite contrast: 

bronzelid, minagold. 

—Shout! Ben Dollard shouted, pouring. Sing out! 

—’lldo! cried Father Cowley. 

Rrrrrr. 

I feel I want … 

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap 

—Very, Mr Dedalus said, staring hard at a headless sardine. 

Under the sandwichbell lay on a bier of bread one last, one 

lonely, last sardine of summer. Bloom alone. 

—Very, he stared. The lower register, for choice. 

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. 

Bloom went by Barry’s. Wish I could. Wait. That wonderworker 

if I had. Twentyfour solicitors in that one house. 

Counted them. Litigation. Love one another. Piles of parchment. 

Messrs Pick and Pocket have power of attorney.

Goulding, Collis, Ward. 

But for example the chap that wallops the big drum. His 

vocation: Mickey Rooney’s band. Wonder how it first struck 

him. Sitting at home after pig’s cheek and cabbage nursing it 

in the armchair. Rehearsing his band part. Pom. Pompedy. 

Jolly for the wife. Asses’ skins. Welt them through life, then 

wallop after death. Pom. Wallop. Seems to be what you call 

yashmak or I mean kismet. Fate. 

Tap. Tap. A stripling, blind, with a tapping cane came 

taptaptapping by Daly’s window where a mermaid hair all 

streaming (but he couldn’t see) blew whiffs of a mermaid 

(blind couldn’t), mermaid, coolest whiff of all. 

Instruments. A blade of grass, shell of her hands, then blow. 

Even comb and tissuepaper you can knock a tune out of. 

Molly in her shift in Lombard street west, hair down. I suppose 

each kind of trade made its own, don’t you see? Hunter 

with a horn. Haw. Have you the? Cloche. Sonnez la. Shepherd 

his pipe. Pwee little wee. Policeman a whistle. Locks 

and keys! Sweep! Four o’clock’s all’s well! Sleep! All is lost 

now. Drum? Pompedy. Wait. I know. Towncrier, bumbailiff. 

Long John. Waken the dead. Pom. Dignam. Poor little 


287 

nominedomine. Pom. It is music. I mean of course it’s all 

pom pom pom very much what they call da capo. Still you 

can hear. As we march, we march along, march along. Pom. 

I must really. Fff. Now if I did that at a banquet. Just a question 

of custom shah of Persia. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear. All 

the same he must have been a bit of a natural not to see it was a 

yeoman cap. Muffled up. Wonder who was that chap at the 

grave in the brown macin. O, the whore of the lane! 

A frowsy whore with black straw sailor hat askew came 

glazily in the day along the quay towards Mr Bloom. When 

first he saw that form endearing? Yes, it is. I feel so lonely. 

Wet night in the lane. Horn. Who had the? Heehaw shesaw. 

Off her beat here. What is she? Hope she. Psst! Any chance 

of your wash. Knew Molly. Had me decked. Stout lady does 

be with you in the brown costume. Put you off your stroke, 

that. Appointment we made knowing we’d never, well hardly 

ever. Too dear too near to home sweet home. Sees me, does 

she? Looks a fright in the day. Face like dip. Damn her. O, 

well, she has to live like the rest. Look in here. 

In Lionel Marks’s antique saleshop window haughty Henry 

Lionel Leopold dear Henry Flower earnestly Mr Leopold

Bloom envisaged battered candlesticks melodeon oozing 

maggoty blowbags. Bargain: six bob. Might learn to play. 

Cheap. Let her pass. Course everything is dear if you don’t 

want it. That’s what good salesman is. Make you buy what 

he wants to sell. Chap sold me the Swedish razor he shaved 

me with. Wanted to charge me for the edge he gave it. She’s 

passing now. Six bob. 

Must be the cider or perhaps the burgund. 

Near bronze from anear near gold from afar they chinked 

their clinking glasses all, brighteyed and gallant, before bronze 

Lydia’s tempting last rose of summer, rose of Castile. First 

Lid, De, Cow, Ker, Doll, a fifth: Lidwell, Si Dedalus, Bob 

Cowley, Kernan and big Ben Dollard. 

Tap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall. 

Bloom viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks’s 

window. Robert Emmet’s last words. Seven last words. Of 

Meyerbeer that is. 

—True men like you men. 

—Ay, ay, Ben. 

—Will lift your glass with us. 

They lifted. 


288 

Tschink. Tschunk. 

Tip. An unseeing stripling stood in the door. He saw not 

bronze. He saw not gold. Nor Ben nor Bob nor Tom nor Si 

nor George nor tanks nor Richie nor Pat. Hee hee hee hee. 

He did not see. 

Seabloom, greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. When 

my country takes her place among. 

Prrprr. 

Must be the bur. 

Fff! Oo. Rrpr. 

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

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

Krandlkrankran. I’m sure it’s the burgund. Yes. One, 

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

Pprrpffrrppffff. 

Done.

I WAS JUST PASSING THE TIME OF DAY WITH OLD TROY OF THE D. 

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

bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my 

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

when who should I see dodging along Stony Batter only Joe 

Hynes. 

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

bloody chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his brush? 

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

talking to? 

—Old Troy, says I, was in the force. I’m on two minds not 

to give that fellow in charge for obstructing the thoroughfare 

with his brooms and ladders. 

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

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

beyond by the garrison church at the corner of Chicken 


289 

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

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

week said he had a farm in the county Down off a hop-ofmy-thumb 

by the name of Moses Herzog over there near 

Heytesbury street. 

—Circumcised? says Joe. 

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

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

and I can’t get a penny out of him. 

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

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

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

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

pockmarks would hold a shower of rain. Tell him, says he, I 

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

again or if he does, says he, I’ll have him summonsed up before 

the court, so I will, for trading without a licence. And he after 

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

the little jewy getting his shirt out. He drin me my teas. He 

eat me my sugars. Because he no pay me my moneys! 

For nonperishable goods bought of Moses Herzog, of 13

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

merchant, hereinafter called the vendor, and sold and delivered 

to Michael E. Geraghty, esquire, of 29 Arbour hill in 

the city of Dublin, Arran quay ward, gentleman, hereinafter 

called the purchaser, videlicet, five pounds avoirdupois of 

first choice tea at three shillings and no pence per pound 

avoirdupois and three stone avoirdupois of sugar, crushed 

crystal, at threepence per pound avoirdupois, the said purchaser 

debtor to the said vendor of one pound five shillings 

and sixpence sterling for value received which amount shall 

be paid by said purchaser to said vendor in weekly instalments 

every seven calendar days of three shillings and no pence 

sterling: and the said nonperishable goods shall not be pawned 

or pledged or sold or otherwise alienated by the said purchaser 

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

exclusive property of the said vendor to be disposed of at his 

good will and pleasure until the said amount shall have been 

duly paid by the said purchaser to the said vendor in the 

manner herein set forth as this day hereby agreed between 

the said vendor, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of 

the one part and the said purchaser, his heirs, successors, 


290 

trustees and assigns of the other part. 

—Are you a strict t.t.? says Joe. 

—Not taking anything between drinks, says I. 

—What about paying our respects to our friend? says Joe. 

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

poor man. 

—Drinking his own stuff? says Joe. 

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

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

see the citizen. 

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

wonderful, Joe? 

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

City Arms. 

—What was that, Joe? says I. 

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

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

So we went around by the Linenhall barracks and the back 

of the courthouse talking of one thing or another. Decent 

fellow Joe when he has it but sure like that he never has it. 

Jesus, I couldn’t get over that bloody foxy Geraghty, the day-

light robber. For trading without a licence, says he. 

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

There rises a watchtower beheld of men afar. There sleep the 

mighty dead as in life they slept, warriors and princes of 

high renown. A pleasant land it is in sooth of murmuring 

waters, fishful streams where sport the gurnard, the plaice, 

the roach, the halibut, the gibbed haddock, the grilse, the 

dab, the brill, the flounder, the pollock, the mixed coarse 

fish generally and other denizens of the aqueous kingdom 

too numerous to be enumerated. In the mild breezes of the 

west and of the east the lofty trees wave in different directions 

their firstclass foliage, the wafty sycamore, the 

Lebanonian cedar, the exalted planetree, the eugenic eucalyptus 

and other ornaments of the arboreal world with which 

that region is thoroughly well supplied. Lovely maidens sit 

in close proximity to the roots of the lovely trees singing the 

most lovely songs while they play with all kinds of lovely 

objects as for example golden ingots, silvery fishes, crans of 

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

seagems and playful insects. And heroes voyage from afar to 

woo them, from Eblana to Slievemargy, the peerless princes 


291 

of unfettered Munster and of Connacht the just and of 

smooth sleek Leinster and of Cruahan’s land and of Armagh 

the splendid and of the noble district of Boyle, princes, the 

sons of kings. 

And there rises a shining palace whose crystal glittering roof 

is seen by mariners who traverse the extensive sea in barks 

built expressly for that purpose, and thither come all herds 

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

takes toll of them, a chieftain descended from chieftains. 

Thither the extremely large wains bring foison of the fields, 

flaskets of cauliflowers, floats of spinach, pineapple chunks, 

Rangoon beans, strikes of tomatoes, drums of figs, drills of 

Swedes, spherical potatoes and tallies of iridescent kale, York 

and Savoy, and trays of onions, pearls of the earth, and punnets 

of mushrooms and custard marrows and fat vetches and bere 

and rape and red green yellow brown russet sweet big bitter 

ripe pomellated apples and chips of strawberries and sieves of 

gooseberries, pulpy and pelurious, and strawberries fit for 

princes and raspberries from their canes. 

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

Geraghty, you notorious bloody hill and dale robber!

And by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers 

and flushed ewes and shearling rams and lambs and 

stubble geese and medium steers and roaring mares and polled 

calves and longwoods and storesheep and Cuffe’s prime 

springers and culls and sowpigs and baconhogs and the various 

different varieties of highly distinguished swine and Angus 

heifers and polly bulllocks of immaculate pedigree together 

with prime premiated milchcows and beeves: and there is 

ever heard a trampling, cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, 

bellowing, rumbling, grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep 

and pigs and heavyhooved kine from pasturelands of Lusk 

and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of 

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

and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle 

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

with superabundance of milk and butts of butter and 

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

and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great hundreds, 

various in size, the agate with this dun. 

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

was the citizen up in the corner having a great confab with 


292 

himself and that bloody mangy mongrel, Garryowen, and 

he waiting for what the sky would drop in the way of drink. 

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

lawn and his load of papers, working for the cause. 

The bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would give 

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

would take the life of that bloody dog. I’m told for a fact he 

ate a good part of the breeches off a constabulary man in 

Santry that came round one time with a blue paper about a 

licence. 

—Stand and deliver, says he. 

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

—Pass, friends, says he. 

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

—What’s your opinion of the times? 

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

was equal to the occasion. 

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

hand down his fork. 

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

—Foreign wars is the cause of it.

And says Joe, sticking his thumb in his pocket: 

—It’s the Russians wish to tyrannise. 

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

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

—Give it a name, citizen, says Joe. 

—Wine of the country, says he. 

—What’s yours? says Joe. 

—Ditto MacAnaspey, says I. 

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

citizen? says he. 

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

to win? Eh? 

And with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff 

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

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

tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested 

stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled 

shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded 

deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced 

sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measured 

several ells and his rocklike mountainous knees were cov- 


293 

ered, as was likewise the rest of his body wherever visible, 

with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair in hue and toughness 

similar to the mountain gorse (Ulex Europeus). The 

widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny 

hue projected, were of such capaciousness that within their 

cavernous obscurity the fieldlark might easily have lodged 

her nest. The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for 

the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. 

A powerful current of warm breath issued at regular 

intervals from the profound cavity of his mouth while in 

rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations of 

his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the 

ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier 

walls of the cave to vibrate and tremble. 

He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide 

reaching to the knees in a loose kilt and this was bound about 

his middle by a girdle of plaited straw and rushes. Beneath 

this he wore trews of deerskin, roughly stitched with gut. 

His nether extremities were encased in high Balbriggan buskins 

dyed in lichen purple, the feet being shod with brogues 

of salted cowhide laced with the windpipe of the same beast.

From his girdle hung a row of seastones which jangled at 

every movement of his portentous frame and on these were 

graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of many 

Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of 

hundred battles, Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, 

the ardri Malachi, Art MacMurragh, Shane O’Neill, Father 

John Murphy, Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh 

O’Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan 

O’Growney, Michael Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy 

M’Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Thomas Conneff, 

Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, 

Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, 

S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, 

Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the 

Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castile, the Man for 

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

Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn’t, Benjamin 

Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, 

Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas 

Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo Hayes, Muhammad, the 

Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, 


294 

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 

tranquilising blows of a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out 

of paleolithic stone. 

So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing 

and begob the sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out 

a quid O, as true as I’m telling you. A goodlooking sovereign.

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

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

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

gave me the wheeze. 

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

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

the guts of the fish. 

Who comes through Michan’s land, bedight in sable 

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

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

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

the subsidised organ. The pledgebound party on the floor of 

the house. And look at this blasted rag, says he. Look at this, 

says he. The Irish Independent, if you please, founded by 

Parnell to be the workingman’s friend. 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 


295 

to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa and the late George Alfred 

Gillett, 179 Clapham road, Stockwell, Playwood and 

Ridsdale at Saint Jude’s, Kensington by the very reverend Dr 

Forrest, dean of Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall 

lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart 

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

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

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

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

12, at 35 Canning street, Liverpool, Isabella Helen. How’s 

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

Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber? 

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

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

—I will, says he, honourable person. 

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

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

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

stomach with a click. 

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

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

youth and behind him there passed an elder of noble gait 

and countenance, bearing the sacred scrolls of law and with 

him his lady wife a dame of peerless lineage, fairest of her 

race. 

Little Alf Bergan popped in round the door and hid behind 

Barney’s snug, squeezed up with the laughing. And who was 

sitting up there in the corner that I hadn’t seen snoring drunk 

blind to the world only Bob Doran. I didn’t know what was 

up and Alf kept making signs out of the door. And begob 

what was it only that bloody old pantaloon Denis Breen in his 

bathslippers with two bloody big books tucked under his oxter 

and the wife hotfoot after him, unfortunate wretched woman, 

trotting like a poodle. I thought Alf would split. 

—Look at him, says he. Breen. He’s traipsing all round 

Dublin with a postcard someone sent him with U. p: up on 

it to take a li … 

And he doubled up. 

—Take a what? says I. 

—Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds. 

—O hell! says I. 

The bloody mongrel began to growl that’d put the fear of 


296 

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 foamy ebon ale which the noble twin 

brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their 

divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. For 

they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and 

sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour 

juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not 

night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of 

the vat. 

Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the 

manner born, that nectarous beverage and you offered the 

crystal cup to him that thirsted, the soul of chivalry, in beauty 

akin to the immortals. 

But he, the young chief of the O’Bergan’s, could ill brook 

to be outdone in generous deeds but gave therefor with gracious 

gesture a testoon of costliest bronze. Thereon embossed 

in excellent smithwork was seen the image of a queen of 

regal port, scion of the house of Brunswick, Victoria her 

name, Her Most Excellent Majesty, by grace of God of the 

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the 

British dominions beyond the sea, queen, defender of the 


297 

faith, Empress of India, even she, who bore rule, a victress 

over many peoples, the wellbeloved, for they knew and loved 

her from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, the 

pale, the dark, the ruddy and the ethiop. 

—What’s that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen, 

prowling up and down outside? 

—What’s that? says Joe. 

—Here you are, says Alf, chucking out the rhino. Talking 

about hanging, I’ll show you something you never saw. 

Hangmen’s letters. Look at here. 

So he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes out 

of his pocket. 

—Are you codding? says I. 

—Honest injun, says Alf. Read them. 

So Joe took up the letters. 

—Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. 

So I saw there was going to be a bit of a dust Bob’s a queer 

chap when the porter’s up in him so says I just to make talk: 

—How’s Willy Murray those times, Alf? 

—I don’t know, says Alf I saw him just now in Capel street 

with Paddy Dignam. Only I was running after that …

—You what? says Joe, throwing down the letters. With 

who? 

—With Dignam, says Alf. 

—Is it Paddy? says Joe. 

—Yes, says Alf. Why? 

—Don’t you know he’s dead? says Joe. 

—Paddy Dignam dead! says Alf. 

—Ay, says Joe. 

—Sure I’m after seeing him not five minutes ago, says Alf, 

as plain as a pikestaff. 

—Who’s dead? says Bob Doran. 

—You saw his ghost then, says Joe, God between us and 

harm. 

—What? says Alf. Good Christ, only five … What? … 

And Willy Murray with him, the two of them there near 

whatdoyoucallhim’s … What? Dignam dead? 

—What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who’s talking 

about... ? 

—Dead! says Alf. He’s no more dead than you are. 

—Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying 

him this morning anyhow. 


298 

—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 heavenworld he stated that he was now 

on the path of pr l ya or return but was still submitted to 

trial at the hands of certain bloodthirsty entities on the lower 

astral levels. In reply to a question as to his first sensations in 

the great divide beyond he stated that previously he had seen 

as in a glass darkly but that those who had passed over had 

summit possibilities of atmic development opened up to

them. Interrogated as to whether life there resembled our 

experience in the flesh he stated that he had heard from more 

favoured beings now in the spirit that their abodes were 

equipped with every modern home comfort such as talafana, 

alavatar, hatakalda, wataklasat and that the highest adepts 

were steeped in waves of volupcy of the very purest nature. 

Having requested a quart of buttermilk this was 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 look- 


299 

ing 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 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 


300 

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 terms is five ginnees. 

H. Rumbold, 

Master Barber. 

—And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the 

citizen. 

—And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here, says 

he, take them to hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello, Bloom, says 

he, what will you have? 

So they started arguing about the point, Bloom saying he 

wouldn’t and he couldn’t and excuse him no offence and all 

to that and then he said well he’d just take a cigar. Gob, he’s 

a prudent member and no mistake. 

—Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe. 

And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a mourn- 


301 

ing 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. 


—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 tradition of medical science, be calculated to 

inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic 

stimulus of the nerve centres of the genital apparatus, 


302 

thereby causing the elastic pores of the corpora cavernosa to 

rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate 

the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known 

as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which 

has been denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and 

outwards philoprogenitive erection in articulo ticulo mortis 

per diminutionem capitis. 

So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of 

the word and he starts gassing out of him about the invincibles 

and the old guard and the men of sixtyseven and who fears 

to speak of ninetyeight and Joe with him about all the fellows 

that were hanged, drawn and transported for the cause 

by drumhead courtmartial and a new Ireland and new this, 

that and the other. Talking about new Ireland he ought to go 

and get a new dog so he ought. Mangy ravenous brute sniffing 

and sneezing all round the place and scratching his scabs. 

And round he goes to Bob Doran that was standing Alf a 

half one sucking up for what he could get. So of course Bob 

Doran starts doing the bloody fool with him: 

—Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old doggy! 

Give the paw here! Give us the paw!

Arrah, bloody end to the paw he’d paw and Alf trying to 

keep him from tumbling off the bloody stool atop of the 

bloody old dog and he talking all kinds of drivel about training 

by kindness and thoroughbred dog and intelligent dog: 

give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping a few bits of 

old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacobs’ tin he told Terry to 

bring. Gob, he golloped it down like old boots and his tongue 

hanging out of him a yard long for more. Near ate the tin 

and all, hungry bloody mongrel. 

And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about the 

point, the brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond on Arbour 

Hill and Robert Emmet and die for your country, the Tommy 

Moore touch about Sara Curran and she’s far from the land. 

And Bloom, of course, with his knockmedown cigar putting 

on swank with his lardy face. Phenomenon! The fat heap he 

married is a nice old phenomenon with a back on her like a 

ballalley. Time they were stopping up in the City Arms pisser 

Burke told me there was an old one there with a cracked 

loodheramaun of a nephew and Bloom trying to get the soft 

side of her doing the mollycoddle playing bezique to come 

in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not eating meat 


303 

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

elfries far and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly 

while all around the gloomy precincts rolled the ominous 

warning of a hundred muffled drums punctuated by the 

hollow booming of pieces of ordnance. The deafening claps 

of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up 

the ghastly scene testified that the artillery of heaven had 

lent its supernatural pomp to the already gruesome spectacle. 

A torrential rain poured down from the floodgates of 

the angry heavens upon the bared heads of the assembled 

multitude which numbered at the lowest computation five 

hundred thousand persons. A posse of Dublin Metropolitan 

police superintended by the Chief Commissioner in person 

maintained order in the vast throng for whom the York street 

brass and reed band whiled away the intervening time by 

admirably rendering on their blackdraped instruments the 

matchless melody endeared to us from the cradle by Speranza’s 

plaintive muse. Special quick excursion trains and upholstered 

charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our 

country cousins of whom there were large contingents. Considerable 

amusement was caused by the favourite Dublin 

streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The Night be- 


304 

fore 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 grandstand while the picturesque foreign delegation 

known as the Friends of the Emerald Isle was accommodated 

on a tribune directly opposite. The delegation, 

present in full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci 

Beninobenone (the semiparalysed doyen of the party who 

had to be assisted to his seat by the aid of a powerful steam 

crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul Petitepatant, the Grandjoker 

Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold

Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha 

Viraga Kisaszony Putrapesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count 

Athanatos Karamelopulos, Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat 

Lokum Effendi, Senor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y 

Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria, Hokopoko 

Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer 

Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond 

Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch, Borus Hupinkoff, Herr 

Hurhausdirektorpresident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli, 

Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocentgeneralhistoryspecialprofessordoctor 

Kriegfried 

Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without exception expressed 

themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous terms 

concerning the nameless barbarity which they had been called 

upon to witness. An animated altercation (in which all took 

part) ensued among the F. O. T. E. I. as to whether the eighth 

or the ninth of March was the correct date of the birth of 

Ireland’s patron saint. In the course of the argument cannonballs, 

scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, 

meatchoppers, umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, 

lumps of pig iron were resorted to and blows were freely 


305 

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 worldrenowned 

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 supplica- 


306 

tion. Hand by the block stood the grim figure of the executioner, 

his visage being concealed in a tengallon pot with 

two circular perforated apertures through which his eyes glowered 

furiously. As he awaited the fatal signal he tested the 

edge of his horrible weapon by honing it upon his brawny 

forearm or decapitated in rapid succession a flock of sheep 

which had been provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary 

office. On a handsome mahogany table near him were 

neatly arranged the quartering knife, the various finely tempered 

disembowelling appliances (specially supplied by the 

worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round and Sons, 

Sheffield), a terra cotta saucepan for the reception of the 

duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc when 

successfully extracted and two commodious milkjugs destined 

to receive the most precious blood of the most precious 

victim. The housesteward of the amalgamated cats’ and 

dogs’ home was in attendance to convey these vessels when 

replenished to that beneficent institution. Quite an excellent 

repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried steak and 

onions, done to a nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and 

invigorating tea had been considerately provided by the au-

thorities for the consumption of the central figure of the 

tragedy who was in capital spirits when prepared for death 

and evinced the keenest interest in the proceedings from 

beginning to end but he, with an abnegation rare in these 

our times, rose nobly to the occasion and expressed the dying 

wish (immediately acceded to) that the meal should be 

divided in aliquot parts among the members of the sick and 

indigent roomkeepers’ association as a token of his regard 

and esteem. The nec and non plus ultra of emotion were 

reached when the blushing bride elect burst her way through 

the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself upon 

the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched 

into eternity for her sake. The hero folded her willowy form 

in a loving embrace murmuring fondly Sheila, my own. Encouraged 

by this use of her christian name she kissed passionately 

all the various suitable areas of his person which 

the decencies of prison garb permitted her ardour to reach. 

She swore to him as they mingled the salt streams of their 

tears that she would ever cherish his memory, that she would 

never forget her hero boy who went to his death with a song 

on his lips as if he were but going to a hurling match in 


307 

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 the 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 citizen begins talking about the Irish language 


308 

and the corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens 

that can’t speak their own language and Joe chipping in because 

he stuck someone for a quid and Bloom putting in his 

old goo with his twopenny stump that he cadged off of Joe 

and talking about the Gaelic league and the antitreating league 

and drink, the curse of Ireland. Antitreating is about the size 

of it. Gob, he’d let you pour all manner of drink down his 

throat till the Lord would call him before you’d ever see the 

froth of his pint. And one night I went in with a fellow into 

one of their musical evenings, song and dance about she could 

get up on a truss of hay she could my Maureen Lay and 

there was a fellow with a Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing 

out of him in Irish and a lot of colleen bawns going about 

with temperance beverages and selling medals and oranges 

and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh entertainment, 

don’t be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland free. 

And then an old fellow starts blowing into his bagpipes and 

all the gougers shuffling their feet to the tune the old cow 

died of. And one or two sky pilots having an eye around that 

there was no goings on with the females, hitting below the 

belt.

So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the tin 

was empty starts mousing around by Joe and me. I’d train 

him by kindness, so I would, if he was my dog. Give him a 

rousing fine kick now and again where it wouldn’t blind him. 

—Afraid he’ll bite you? says the citizen, jeering. 

—No, says I. But he might take my leg for a lamppost. 

So he calls the old dog over. 

—What’s on you, Garry? says he. 

Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him in 

Irish and the old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a 

duet in the opera. Such growling you never heard as they let 

off between them. Someone that has nothing better to do 

ought to write a letter pro bono publico to the papers about 

the muzzling order for a dog the like of that. Growling and 

grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is in it 

and the hydrophobia dropping out of his jaws. 

All those who are interested in the spread of human culture 

among the lower animals (and their name is legion) 

should make a point of not missing the really marvellous 

exhibition of cynanthropy given by the famous old Irish red 

setter wolfdog formerly known by the sobriquet of Garryowen 


309 

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 Donal 

MacConsidine to say nothing of a more modern lyrist at 

present very much in the public eye. We subjoin a specimen 

which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar 

whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose 

though we believe that our readers will find the topical allu-

sion 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. 


310 

—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 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. 


311 

—Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance 

which, however slight it may appear if judged by the standard 

of mere time, is founded, as I hope and believe, on a 

sentiment of mutual esteem as to request of you this favour. 

But, should I have overstepped the limits of reserve let the 

sincerity of my feelings be the excuse for my boldness. 

—No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives 

which actuate your conduct and I shall discharge the 

office you entrust to me consoled by the reflection that, 

though the errand be one of sorrow, this proof of your confidence 

sweetens in some measure the bitterness of the cup. 

—Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness 

of your heart, I feel sure, will dictate to you better than 

my inadequate words the expressions which are most suitable 

to convey an emotion whose poignancy, were I to give 

vent to my feelings, would deprive me even of speech. 

And off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed 

at five o’clock. Night he was near being lagged only Paddy 

Leonard knew the bobby, 14A. Blind to the world up in a 

shebeen in Bride street after closing time, fornicating with 

two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out of tea-

cups. And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph 

Manuo, and talking against the Catholic religion, and he 

serving mass in Adam and Eve’s when he was young with his 

eyes shut, who wrote the new testament, and the old testament, 

and hugging and smugging. And the two shawls killed 

with the laughing, picking his pockets, the bloody fool and 

he spilling the porter all over the bed and the two shawls 

screeching laughing at one another. How is your testament? 

Have you got an old testament? Only Paddy was passing there, 

I tell you what. Then see him of a Sunday with his little 

concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of 

the chapel with her patent boots on her, no less, and her 

violets, nice as pie, doing the little lady. Jack Mooney’s sister. 

And the old prostitute of a mother procuring rooms to street 

couples. Gob, Jack made him toe the line. Told him if he 

didn’t patch up the pot, Jesus, he’d kick the shite out of him. 

So Terry brought the three pints. 

—Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen. 

—Slan leat, says he. 

—Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen. 

Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler al- 


312 

ready. Want a small fortune to keep him in drinks. 

—Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty, Alf? 

says Joe. 

—Friend of yours, says Alf. 

—Nannan? says Joe. The mimber? 

—I won’t mention any names, says Alf. 

—I thought so, says Joe. I saw him up at that meeting now 

with William Field, M. P., the cattle traders. 

—Hairy Iopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano, the 

darling of all countries and the idol of his own. 

So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth 

disease and the cattle traders and taking action in the matter 

and the citizen sending them all to the rightabout and Bloom 

coming out with his sheepdip for the scab and a hoose drench 

for coughing calves and the guaranteed remedy for timber 

tongue. Because he was up one time in a knacker’s yard. 

Walking about with his book and pencil here’s my head and 

my heels are coming till Joe Cuffe gave him the order of the 

boot for giving lip to a grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your 

grandmother how to milk ducks. Pisser Burke was telling 

me in the hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears some

times with Mrs O’Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight 

inches of 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? 


313 

—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 Slauagh na h-Eireann. 

Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat.): Arising out of 

the question of my honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, 

may I ask the right honourable gentleman whether 

the government has issued orders that these animals shall be 

slaughtered though no medical evidence is forthcoming as 

to their pathological condition? 

Mr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con.): Honourable members are 

already in possession of the evidence produced before a committee 

of the whole house. I feel I cannot usefully add anything 

to that. The answer to the honourable member’s question 

is in the affirmative. 

Mr Orelli O’Reilly (Montenotte. Nat.): Have similar orders 

been issued for the slaughter of human animals who 

dare to play Irish games in the Phoenix park? 

Mr Allfours: The answer is in the negative. 

Mr Cowe Conacre: Has the right honourable gentleman’s 

famous Mitchelstown telegram inspired the policy of gentle-

men 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. Did you not know 

that? 

So off they started about Irish sports and shoneen games 

the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the 

stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once 

again and all to that. And of course Bloom had to have his 


314 

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 the noble order was in the chair and the attendance 

was of large dimensions. After an instructive discourse by 

the chairman, a magnificent oration eloquently and forcibly 

expressed, a most interesting and instructive discussion of 

the usual high standard of excellence ensued as to the desirability 

of the revivability of the ancient games and sports of 

our ancient Panceltic forefathers. The wellknown and highly 

respected worker in the cause of our old tongue, Mr Joseph 

M’Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal for the resusci-

tation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes, practised 

morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive 

the best traditions of manly strength and prowess handed 

down to us from ancient ages. L. Bloom, who met with a 

mixed reception of applause and hisses, having espoused the 

negative the vocalist chairman brought the discussion to a 

close, in response to repeated requests and hearty plaudits 

from all parts of a bumper house, by a remarkably noteworthy 

rendering of the immortal Thomas Osborne Davis’ evergreen 

verses (happily too familiar to need recalling here) A 

nation once again in the execution of which the veteran patriot 

champion may be said without fear of contradiction to 

have fairly excelled himself. The Irish Caruso-Garibaldi was 

in superlative form and his stentorian notes were heard to 

the greatest advantage in the timehonoured anthem sung as 

only our citizen can sing it. His superb highclass vocalism, 

which by its superquality greatly enhanced his already international 

reputation, was vociferously applauded by the large 

audience among which were to be noticed many prominent 

members of the clergy as well as representatives of the press 

and the bar and the other learned professions. The proceed- 


315 

ings 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 the eye. 

—Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the 

beer to run up the odds and he swatting all the time. 

—We know him, says the citizen. The traitor’s son. We 

know what put English gold in his pocket. 

—True for you, says Joe. 

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 


316 

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 


317 

the dodger’s son off Island bridge that sold the same horses 

twice over to the government to fight the Boers. Old 

Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate, Mr Boylan. 

You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan. You whatwhat? That’s 

the bucko that’ll organise her, take my tip. ‘Twixt me and 

you Caddareesh. 

Pride of Calpe’s rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of 

Tweedy. There grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and 

almond scent the air. The gardens of Alameda knew her step: 

the garths of olives knew and bowed. The chaste spouse of 

Leopold is she: Marion of the bountiful bosoms. 

And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O’Molloy’s, a 

comely hero of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his 

majesty’s counsel learned in the law, and with him the prince 

and heir of the noble line of Lambert. 

—Hello, Ned. 

—Hello, Alf. 

—Hello, Jack. 

—Hello, Joe. 

—God save you, says the citizen. 

—Save you kindly, says J. J. What’ll it be, Ned?

—Half one, says Ned. 

So J. J. ordered the drinks. 

—Were you round at the court? says Joe. 

—Yes, says J. J. He’ll square that, Ned, says he. 

—Hope so, says Ned. 

Now what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand 

jury list and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his 

name in Stubbs’s. Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs 

with a swank glass in their eye, adrinking fizz and he half 

smothered in writs and garnishee orders. Pawning his gold 

watch in Cummins of Francis street where no-one would 

know him in the private office when I was there with Pisser 

releasing his boots out of the pop. What’s your name, sir? 

Dunne, says he. Ay, and done says I. Gob, he’ll come home 

by weeping cross one of those days, I’m thinking. 

—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. 


318 

—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 explaining 

he meant on account of it being cruel for the wife 

having to go round after the old stuttering fool. Cruelty to 

animals so it is to let that bloody povertystricken Breen out 

on grass with his beard out tripping him, bringing down the 

rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after she married 

him because a cousin of his old fellow’s was pewopener to 

the pope. Picture of him on the wall with his Smashall 

Sweeney’s moustaches, the signior Brini from Summerhill, 

the eyetallyano, papal Zouave to the Holy Father, has left 

the quay and gone to Moss street. And who was he, tell us? A 

nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven shillings a week, 

and he 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 


319 

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 the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the 

court immediately, sir. No, sir, I’ll make no order for payment. 

How dare you, sir, come up before me and ask me to 


320 

make an order! A poor hardworking industrious man! I dismiss 

the case. 

And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the 

oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of 

the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, 

the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to 

pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of 

law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, 

gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a 

jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the 

claim of the first chargeant upon the property in the matter 

of the will propounded and final testamentary disposition 

IN RE the real and personal estate of the late lamented Jacob 

Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus Livingstone, an infant, of 

unsound mind, and another. And to the solemn court of 

Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he 

sat him there about the hour of five o’clock to administer the 

law of the brehons at the commission for all that and those 

parts to be holden in and for the county of the city of Dublin. 

And there sat with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve 

tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Patrick

and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the 

tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of 

Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot 

and of the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of 

the tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in 

all twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by 

Him who died on rood that they should well and truly try 

and true deliverance make in the issue joined between their 

sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar and true 

verdict give according to the evidence so help them God and 

kiss the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of 

Iar, and they swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting 

that they would do His rightwiseness. And straightway 

the minions of the law led forth from their donjon keep 

one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in 

consequence of information received. And they shackled him 

hand and foot and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise 

but preferred a charge against him for he was a malefactor. 

—Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here 

to Ireland filling the country with bugs. 

So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking 


321 

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 in. The adulteress and her 

paramour brought the Saxon robbers here. 

—Decree nisi, says J. J. 

And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in 

nothing, a spider’s web in the corner behind the barrel, and 

the citizen scowling after him and the old dog at his feet 

looking up to know who to bite and when.

—A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that’s what’s the 

cause of all our misfortunes. 

—And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the Police 

Gazette with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint. 

—Give us a squint at her, says I. 

And what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures 

Terry borrows off of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging 

your private parts. Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. 

Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty but faithless 

wife in lap of officer Taylor. Belle in her bloomers misconducting 

herself, and her fancyman feeling for her tickles 

and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter 

just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop 

with officer Taylor. 

—O jakers, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is! 

—There’s hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned 

beef off of that one, what? 

So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan with 

him with a face on him as long as a late breakfast. 

—Well, says the citizen, what’s the latest from the scene of 

action? What did those tinkers in the city hall at their caucus 


322 

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! Perfide Albion! 

He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy 

hands the medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his 

tribal slogan Lamh Dearg Abu, he drank to the undoing of 

his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes, rulers of the waves, 

who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as the deathless gods. 

—What’s up with you, says I to Lenehan. You look like a 

fellow that had lost a bob and found a tanner. 

—Gold cup, says he. 

—Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry. 


323 

—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 farfamed horses even today, the Irish hobbies, 

with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for 

the right to fish in our waters. What do the yellowjohns of 

Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our ruined hearths? 


324 

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 


325 

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 


326 

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 lot of 

Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a Sambo 

strung up in a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under 

him. Gob, they ought to drown him in the sea after and 

electrocute and crucify him to make sure of their job. 

—But what about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps 

our foes at bay? 

—I’ll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon 

earth it is. Read the revelations that’s going on in the papers 

about flogging on the training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow 

writes that calls himself Disgusted One. 

So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about 

the crew of tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn up in 

cocked hats and the parson with his protestant bible to witness 

punishment and a young lad brought out, howling for 

his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of a gun. 

—A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old 

ruffian sir John Beresford called it but the modern God’s 

Englishman calls it caning on the breech.

And says John Wyse: 

—’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 


327 

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 Francais, says Lenehan, nobbling his beer. 

—And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says 


328 

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 lordships’ 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 the laugh at Bloom and says he, 


329 

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, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts

than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf 

and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted 

on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths 

and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive 

stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments 

as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to 

their artistic fantasy long long ago in the time of the 

Barmecides. 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 


330 

today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow 

which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations 

of time. 

—Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which? 

—That’s mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead policeman. 

—And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated 

and persecuted. Also now. This very moment. This very instant. 

Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old 

cigar. 

—Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking 

what belongs to us by right. At this very moment, says 

he, putting up his fist, sold by auction in Morocco like slaves 

or cattle. 

—Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen. 

—I’m talking about injustice, says Bloom. 

—Right, says John Wyse. Stand up to it then with force 

like men. 

That’s an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed 

bullet. Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a

gun. Gob, he’d adorn a sweepingbrush, so he would, if he 

only had a nurse’s apron on him. And then he collapses all of 

a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a wet 

rag. 

—But it’s no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. 

That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And 

everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that that is 

really life. 

—What? says Alf. 

—Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must 

go now, says he to John Wyse. Just round to the court a 

moment to see if Martin is there. If he comes just say I’ll be 

back in a second. Just a moment. 

Who’s hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning. 

—A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal 

love. 

—Well, says John Wyse. Isn’t that what we’re told. Love 

your neighbour. 

—That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his 

motto. Love, moya! He’s a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet. 


331 

Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 

14A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy 

that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi 

Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves 

Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet 

loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in 

the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty 

the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. 

Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And 

this person loves that other person because everybody loves 

somebody but God loves everybody. 

—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? 


So the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers and 

he starts reading out: 

—A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester 

was presented yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of 

Abeakuta by Gold Stick in Waiting, Lord Walkup of Walkup 

on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt thanks of 

British traders for the facilities afforded them in his dominions. 

The delegation partook of luncheon at the conclusion 

of which the dusky potentate, in the course of a happy speech, 

freely translated by the British chaplain, 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 


332 

the august hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a 

lovingcup of firstshot usquebaugh to the toast Black and White 

from the skull of his immediate predecessor in the dynasty 

Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty Warts, after which he visited 

the chief factory of Cottonopolis and signed his mark in 

the visitors’ book, subsequently executing a charming old 

Abeakutic wardance, in the course of which he swallowed 

several knives and forks, amid hilarious applause from the 

girl hands. 

—Widow woman, says Ned. I wouldn’t doubt her. Wonder 

did he put that bible to the same use as I would. 

—Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in that 

fruitful land the broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly. 

—Is that by Griffith? says John Wyse. 

—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

eport by a man what’s this his name is? 

—Casement, says the citizen. He’s an Irishman. 

—Yes, that’s the man, says J. J. Raping the women and 

girls and flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all the 

red rubber they can out of them. 

—I know where he’s gone, says Lenehan, cracking his fingers. 

—Who? says I. 

—Bloom, says he. The courthouse is a blind. He had a few 

bob on Throwaway and he’s gone to gather in the shekels. 

—Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never 

backed a horse in anger in his life? 

—That’s where he’s gone, says Lenehan. I met Bantam 

Lyons going to back that horse only I put him off it and he 

told me Bloom gave him the tip. Bet you what you like he 

has a hundred shillings to five on. He’s the only man in 

Dublin has it. A dark horse. 

—He’s a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe. 

—Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out. 

—There you are, says Terry. 

Goodbye Ireland I’m going to Gort. So I just went round 

the back of the yard to pumpship and begob (hundred shil- 


333 

lings to five) while I was letting off my (Throwaway twenty 

to) letting off my load gob says I to myself I knew he was 

uneasy in his (two pints off of Joe and one in Slattery’s off) 

in his mind to get off the mark to (hundred shillings is five 

quid) and when they were in the (dark horse) pisser Burke 

was telling me card party and letting on the child was sick 

(gob, must have done about a gallon) flabbyarse of a wife 

speaking down the tube she’s better or she’s (ow!) all a plan so 

he could vamoose with the pool if he won or (Jesus, full up I 

was) trading without a licence (ow!) Ireland my nation says 

he (hoik! phthook!) never be up to those bloody (there’s the 

last of it) Jerusalem (ah!) cuckoos. 

So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John 

Wyse saying it was Bloom gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to 

Griffith to put in his paper all kinds of jerrymandering, 

packed juries and swindling the taxes off of the government 

and appointing consuls all over the world to walk about selling 

Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gob, that 

puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking 

up the show. Give us a bloody chance. God save Ireland from 

the likes of that bloody mouseabout. Mr Bloom with his

argol bargol. And his old fellow before him perpetrating 

frauds, old Methusalem Bloom, the robbing bagman, that 

poisoned himself with the prussic acid after he swamping 

the country with his baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans 

by post on easy terms. Any amount of money advanced on 

note of hand. Distance no object. No security. Gob, he’s like 

Lanty MacHale’s goat that’d go a piece of the road with every 

one. 

—Well, it’s a fact, says John Wyse. And there’s the man 

now that’ll tell you all about it, Martin Cunningham. 

Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it and 

Jack Power with him and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, 

pensioner out of the collector general’s, an orangeman 

Blackburn does have on the registration and he drawing his 

pay or Crawford gallivanting around the country at the king’s 

expense. 

Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from 

their palfreys. 

—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 


334 

open lattice. 

Mine host came forth at the summons, girding him with 

his tabard. 

—Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious 

bow. 

—Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked. Look 

to our steeds. And for ourselves give us of your best for ifaith 

we need it. 

—Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house 

has but a bare larder. I know not what to offer your lordships. 

—How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a man 

of pleasant countenance, So servest thou the king’s messengers, 

master Taptun? 

An instantaneous change overspread the landlord’s visage. 

—Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be 

the king’s messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you shall 

not want for aught. The king’s friends (God bless His Majesty!) 

shall not go afasting in my house I warrant me. 

—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. 


335 

—Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or 

what the hell is he? says Ned. Or who is he? No offence, 

Crofton. 

—Who is Junius? says J. J. 

—We don’t want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or 

presbyterian. 

—He’s a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in Hungary 

and it was he drew up all the plans according to the 

Hungarian system. We know that in the castle. 

—Isn’t he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack Power. 

—Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name was 

Virag, the father’s name that poisoned himself. He changed 

it by deedpoll, the father did. 

—That’s the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen. Island 

of saints and sages! 

—Well, they’re still waiting for their redeemer, says Martin. 

For that matter so are we. 

—Yes, says J. J., and every male that’s born they think it 

may be their Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, 

I believe, till he knows if he’s a father or a mother. 

—Expecting every moment will be his next, says Lenehan.

—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. 


336 

—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, 

Premonstratensians, Servi, Trinitarians, and the children of

Peter Nolasco: and therewith from Carmel mount the children 

of Elijah prophet led by Albert bishop and by Teresa of 

Avila, calced and other: and friars, brown and grey, sons of 

poor Francis, capuchins, cordeliers, minimes and observants 

and the daughters of Clara: and the sons of Dominic, the 

friars preachers, and the sons of Vincent: and the monks of 

S. Wolstan: and Ignatius his children: and the confraternity 

of the christian brothers led by the reverend brother Edmund 

Ignatius Rice. And after came all saints and martyrs, virgins 

and confessors: S. Cyr and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the 

Less and S. Phocas of Sinope and S. Julian Hospitator and S. 

Felix de Cantalice and S. Simon Stylites and S. Stephen 

Protomartyr and S. John of God and S. Ferreol and S. 

Leugarde and S. Theodotus and S. Vulmar and S. Richard 

and S. Vincent de Paul and S. Martin of Todi and S. Martin 

of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S. Denis and S. 

Cornelius and S. Leopold and S. Bernard and S. Terence 

and S. Edward and S. Owen Caniculus and S. Anonymous 

and S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and S. Homonymous 

and S. Paronymous and S. Synonymous and S. 

Laurence O’Toole and S. James of Dingle and Compostella 


337 

and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S. Celestine and S. 

Colman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and S. Frigidian and 

S. Senan and S. Fachtna and S. Columbanus and S. Gall 

and S. Fursey and S. Fintan and S. Fiacre and S. John 

Nepomuc and S. Thomas Aquinas and S. Ives of Brittany 

and S. Michan and S. Herman-Joseph and the three patrons 

of holy youth S. Aloysius Gonzaga and S. Stanislaus Kostka 

and S. John Berchmans and the saints Gervasius, Servasius 

and Bonifacius and S. Bride and S. Kieran and S. Canice of 

Kilkenny and S. Jarlath of Tuam and S. Finbarr and S. Pappin 

of Ballymun and Brother Aloysius Pacificus and Brother Louis 

Bellicosus and the saints Rose of Lima and of Viterbo and S. 

Martha of Bethany and S. Mary of Egypt and S. Lucy and S. 

Brigid and S. Attracta and S. Dympna and S. Ita and S. 

Marion Calpensis and the Blessed Sister Teresa of the Child 

Jesus and S. Barbara and S. Scholastica and S. Ursula with 

eleven thousand virgins. And all came with nimbi and aureoles 

and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords and 

olive crowns, in robes whereon were woven the blessed symbols 

of their efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, 

axes, trees, bridges, babes in a bathtub, shells, wallets,

shears, keys, dragons, lilies, buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, 

bellows, beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of 

vaseline, bells, crutches, forceps, stags’ horns, watertight 

boots, hawks, millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, 

aspergills, unicorns. And as they wended their way by Nelson’s 

Pillar, Henry street, Mary street, Capel street, Little Britain 

street chanting the introit in Epiphania Domini which 

beginneth Surge, illuminare and thereafter most sweetly the 

gradual omnes which saith de saba venient they did divers 

wonders such as casting out devils, raising the dead to life, 

multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the blind, discovering 

various articles which had been mislaid, interpreting and 

fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and prophesying. And last, 

beneath a canopy of cloth of gold came the reverend Father 

O’Flynn attended by Malachi and Patrick. And when the 

good fathers had reached the appointed place, the house of 

Bernard Kiernan and Co, limited, 8, 9 and 10 little Britain 

street, wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed 

for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the 

premises, the celebrant blessed the house and censed the 

mullioned windows and the groynes and the vaults and the 


338 

arrises and the capitals and the pediments and the cornices 

and the engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas and 

sprinkled the lintels thereof with blessed water and prayed 

that God might bless that house as he had blessed the house 

of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and make the angels of His 

light to inhabit therein. And entering he blessed the viands 

and the beverages and the company of all the blessed answered 

his prayers. 

—Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini. 

—Que fecit coelum et terram. 

—Dominus vobiscum. 

—Et cum spiritutuo. 

And he laid his hands upon that he blessed and gave thanks 

and he prayed and they all with him prayed: 

—Deus, cuius verbo sanctificantur omnia, benedictionem 

tuam effunde super creaturas istas: et præsta ut quisquis eis secundum 

legem et voluntatem Tuam cum gratiarum actione usus 

fuerit per invocationem sanctissimi nominis Tui corporis 

sanitatem et animæ tutelam Te auctore percipiat per Christum 

Dominum nostrum. 

—And so say all of us, says Jack.

—Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or Crawford. 

—Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And butter 

for fish. 

I was just looking around to see who the happy thought 

would strike when be damned but in he comes again letting 

on to be in a hell of a hurry. 

—I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking for 

you. I hope I’m not … 

—No, says Martin, we’re ready. 

Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with 

gold and silver. Mean bloody scut. Stand us a drink itself. 

Devil a sweet fear! There’s a jew for you! All for number one. 

Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to five. 

—Don’t tell anyone, says the citizen, 

—Beg your pardon, says he. 

—Come on boys, says Martin, seeing it was looking blue. 

Come along now. 

—Don’t tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out of 

him. It’s a secret. 

And the bloody dog woke up and let a growl. 

—Bye bye all, says Martin. 


339 

And he got them out as quick as he could, Jack Power and 

Crofton or whatever you call him and him in the middle of 

them letting on to be all at sea and up with them on the 

bloody jaunting car. 

—Off with you, says 

Martin to the jarvey. 

The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the 

golden poop the helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the 

wind and stood off forward with all sail set, the spinnaker to 

larboard. A many comely nymphs drew nigh to starboard 

and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of the noble bark, 

they linked their shining forms as doth the cunning wheelwright 

when he fashions about the heart of his wheel the 

equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to another and he 

binds them all with an outer ring and giveth speed to the 

feet of men whenas they ride to a hosting or contend for the 

smile of ladies fair. Even so did they come and set them, 

those willing nymphs, the undying sisters. And they laughed, 

sporting in a circle of their foam: and the bark clave the waves. 

But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint when I 

saw the citizen getting up to waddle to the door, puffing and

lowing with the dropsy, and he cursing the curse of 

Cromwell on him, bell, book and candle in Irish, spitting 

and spatting out of him and Joe and little Alf round him like 

a leprechaun trying to peacify him. 

—Let me alone, says he. 

And begob he got as far as the door and they holding him 

and he bawls out of him: 

—Three cheers for Israel! 

Arrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse for 

Christ’ sake and don’t be making a public exhibition of yourself. 

Jesus, there’s always some bloody clown or other kicking 

up a bloody murder about bloody nothing. Gob, it’d 

turn the porter sour in your guts, so it would. 

And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the 

door and Martin telling the jarvey to drive ahead and the 

citizen bawling and Alf and Joe at him to whisht and he on 

his high horse about the jews and the loafers calling for a 

speech and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down on the 

car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a patch over 

his eye starts singing If the man in the moon was a jew, jew, 

jew and a slut shouts out of her: 


340 

—Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister! 

And says he: 

—Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante 

and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a 

jew. Your God. 

—He had no father, says Martin. That’ll do now. Drive 

ahead. 

—Whose God? says the citizen. 

—Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. 

Christ was a jew like me. 

Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop. 

—By Jesus, says he, I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using 

the holy name. 

By Jesus, I’ll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox 

here. 

—Stop! Stop! says Joe. 

A large and appreciative gathering of friends and acquaintances 

from the metropolis and greater Dublin assembled in 

their thousands to bid farewell to Nagyasagos uram Lipoti 

Virag, late of Messrs Alexander Thom’s, printers to His Majesty, 

on the occasion of his departure for the distant clime of

Szazharminczbrojugulyas-Dugulas (Meadow of Murmuring 

Waters). The ceremony which went off with great éclat was 

characterised by the most affecting cordiality. An illuminated 

scroll of ancient Irish vellum, the work of Irish artists, was 

presented to the distinguished phenomenologist on behalf 

of a large section of the community and was accompanied 

by the gift of a silver casket, tastefully executed in the style of 

ancient Celtic ornament, a work which reflects every credit 

on the makers, Messrs Jacob agus Jacob. The departing guest 

was the recipient of a hearty ovation, many of those who 

were present being visibly moved when the select orchestra 

of Irish pipes struck up the wellknown strains of Come back 

to Erin, followed immediately by Rakoczsy’s March. Tarbarrels 

and bonfires were lighted along the coastline of the four seas 

on the summits of the Hill of Howth, Three Rock Mountain, 

Sugarloaf, Bray Head, the mountains of Mourne, the 

Galtees, the Ox and Donegal and Sperrin peaks, the Nagles 

and the Bograghs, the Connemara hills, the reeks of M 

Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bernagh and Slieve Bloom. 

Amid cheers that rent the welkin, responded to by answering 

cheers from a big muster of henchmen on the distant 


341 

Cambrian and Caledonian hills, the mastodontic pleasureship 

slowly moved away saluted by a final floral tribute from the 

representatives of the fair sex who were present in large numbers 

while, as it proceeded down the river, escorted by a flotilla 

of barges, the flags of the Ballast office and Custom House 

were dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical power 

station at the Pigeonhouse and the Poolbeg Light. 

Visszontlátásra, kedvé baráton! Visszontlátásra! Gone but not 

forgotten. 

Gob, the devil wouldn’t stop him till he got hold of the 

bloody tin anyhow and out with him and little Alf hanging 

on to his elbow and he shouting like a stuck pig, as good as 

any bloody play in the Queen’s royal theatre: 

—Where is he till I murder him? 

And Ned and J. J. paralysed with the laughing. 

—Bloody wars, says I, I’ll be in for the last gospel. 

But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag’s head 

round the other way and off with him. 

—Hold on, citizen, says Joe. Stop! 

Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly. 

Mercy of God the sun was in his eyes or he’d have left him

for dead. Gob, he near sent it into the county Longford. The 

bloody nag took fright and the old mongrel after the car like 

bloody hell and all the populace shouting and laughing and 

the old tinbox clattering along the street. 

The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. 

The observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven 

shocks, all of the fifth grade of Mercalli’s scale, and there is 

no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our island 

since the earthquake of 1534, the year of the rebellion 

of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to have been that 

part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn’s Quay ward 

and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyone 

acres, two roods and one square pole or perch. All the lordly 

residences in the vicinity of the palace of justice were demolished 

and that noble edifice itself, in which at the time of the 

catastrophe important legal debates were in progress, is literally 

a mass of ruins beneath which it is to be feared all the 

occupants have been buried alive. From the reports of eyewitnesses 

it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied 

by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. 

An article of headgear since ascertained to belong to 


342 

the much respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr George 

Fottrell and a silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved 

initials, crest, coat of arms and house number of the 

erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter sessions sir 

Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been discovered 

by search parties in remote parts of the island respectively, 

the former on the third basaltic ridge of the giant’s causeway, 

the latter embedded to the extent of one foot three inches in 

the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near the old head of Kinsale. 

Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent 

object of enormous proportions hurtling through the 

atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed 

southwest by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy 

are being hourly received from all parts of the different continents 

and the sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased 

to decree that a special missa pro defunctis shall be celebrated 

simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every cathedral 

church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the spiritual 

authority of the Holy See in suffrage of the souls of those 

faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly called away 

from our midst. The work of salvage, removal of débris, hu-

man remains etc has been entrusted to Messrs Michael Meade 

and Son, 159 Great Brunswick street, and Messrs T. and C. 

Martin, 77, 78, 79 and 80 North Wall, assisted by the men 

and officers of the Duke of Cornwall’s light infantry under 

the general supervision of H. R. H., rear admiral, the right 

honourable sir Hercules Hannibal Habeas Corpus Anderson, 

K. G., K. P., K. T., P. C., K. C. B., M. P, J. P., M. B., D. 

S. O., S. O. D., M. F. H., M. R. I. A., B. L., Mus. Doc., P. L. 

G., F. T. C. D., F. R. U. I., F. R. C. P. I. and F. R. C. S. I. 

You never saw the like of it in all your born puff. Gob, if he 

got that lottery ticket on the side of his poll he’d remember 

the gold cup, he would so, but begob the citizen would have 

been lagged for assault and battery and Joe for aiding and 

abetting. The jarvey saved his life by furious driving as sure 

as God made Moses. What? O, Jesus, he did. And he let a 

volley of oaths after him. 

—Did I kill him, says he, or what? 

And he shouting to the bloody dog: 

—After him, Garry! After him, boy! 

And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the corner 

and old sheepsface on it gesticulating and the bloody 


343 

mongrel after it with his lugs back for all he was bloody well 

worth to tear him limb from limb. Hundred to five! Jesus, 

he took the value of it out of him, I promise you. 

When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness 

and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to 

heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon 

in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, 

fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look 

upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: 

Elijah! Elijah! And He answered with a main cry: Abba! 

Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, 

amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at 

an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe’s in Little Green 

street like a shot off a shovel.

THE SUMMER EVENING HAD BEGUN TO FOLD THE WORLD IN ITS 

mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting 

and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly 

on sea and strand, on the proud promontory of dear old 

Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on the 

weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not 

least, on the quiet church whence there streamed forth at 

times upon the stillness the voice of prayer to her who is in 

her pure radiance a beacon ever to the stormtossed heart of 

man, Mary, star of the sea. 

The three girl friends were seated on the rocks, enjoying 

the evening scene and the air which was fresh but not too 

chilly. Many a time and oft were they wont to come there to 

that favourite nook to have a cosy chat beside the sparkling 

waves and discuss matters feminine, Cissy Caffrey and Edy 

Boardman with the baby in the pushcar and Tommy and 


344 

Jacky Caffrey, two little curlyheaded boys, dressed in sailor 

suits with caps to match and the name H.M.S. Belleisle 

printed on both. For Tommy and Jacky Caffrey were twins, 

scarce four years old and very noisy and spoiled twins sometimes 

but for all that darling little fellows with bright merry 

faces and endearing ways about them. They were dabbling 

in the sand with their spades and buckets, building castles as 

children do, or playing with their big coloured ball, happy as 

the day was long. And Edy Boardman was rocking the chubby 

baby to and fro in the pushcar while that young gentleman 

fairly chuckled with delight. He was but eleven months and 

nine days old and, though still a tiny toddler, was just beginning 

to lisp his first babyish words. Cissy Caffrey bent over 

to him to tease his fat little plucks and the dainty dimple in 

his chin. 

—Now, baby, Cissy Caffrey said. Say out big, big. I want a 

drink of water. 

And baby prattled after her: 

—A jink a jink a jawbo. 

Cissy Caffrey cuddled the wee chap for she was awfully 

fond of children, so patient with little sufferers and Tommy

Caffrey could never be got to take his castor oil unless it was 

Cissy Caffrey that held his nose and promised him the scatty 

heel of the loaf or brown bread with golden syrup on. What 

a persuasive power that girl had! But to be sure baby 

Boardman was as good as gold, a perfect little dote in his 

new fancy bib. None of your spoilt beauties, Flora MacFlimsy 

sort, was Cissy Caffrey. A truerhearted lass never drew the 

breath of life, always with a laugh in her gipsylike eyes and a 

frolicsome word on her cherryripe red lips, a girl lovable in 

the extreme. And Edy Boardman laughed too at the quaint 

language of little brother. 

But just then there was a slight altercation between Master 

Tommy and Master Jacky. Boys will be boys and our two 

twins were no exception to this golden rule. The apple of 

discord was a certain castle of sand which Master Jacky had 

built and Master Tommy would have it right go wrong that 

it was to be architecturally improved by a frontdoor like the 

Martello tower had. But if Master Tommy was headstrong 

Master Jacky was selfwilled too and, true to the maxim that 

every little Irishman’s house is his castle, he fell upon his 

hated rival and to such purpose that the wouldbe assailant 


345 

came to grief and (alas to relate!) the coveted castle too. Needless 

to say the cries of discomfited Master Tommy drew the 

attention of the girl friends. 

—Come here, Tommy, his sister called imperatively. At 

once! And you, Jacky, for shame to throw poor Tommy in 

the dirty sand. Wait till I catch you for that. 

His eyes misty with unshed tears Master Tommy came at 

her call for their big sister’s word was law with the twins. 

And in a sad plight he was too after his misadventure. His 

little man-o’-war top and unmentionables were full of sand 

but Cissy was a past mistress in the art of smoothing over 

life’s tiny troubles and very quickly not one speck of sand 

was to be seen on his smart little suit. Still the blue eyes were 

glistening with hot tears that would well up so she kissed 

away the hurtness and shook her hand at Master Jacky the 

culprit and said if she was near him she wouldn’t be far from 

him, her eyes dancing in admonition. 

—Nasty bold Jacky! she cried. 

She put an arm round the little mariner and coaxed winningly: 

—What’s your name? Butter and cream?

—Tell us who is your sweetheart, spoke Edy Boardman. Is 

Cissy your sweetheart? 

—Nao, tearful Tommy said. 

—Is Edy Boardman your sweetheart? Cissy queried. 

—Nao, Tommy said. 

—I know, Edy Boardman said none too amiably with an 

arch glance from her shortsighted eyes. I know who is 

Tommy’s sweetheart. Gerty is Tommy’s sweetheart. 

—Nao, Tommy said on the verge of tears. 

Cissy’s quick motherwit guessed what was amiss and she 

whispered to Edy Boardman to take him there behind the 

pushcar where the gentleman couldn’t see and to mind he 

didn’t wet his new tan shoes. 

But who was Gerty? 

Gerty MacDowell who was seated near her companions, 

lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance was, in 

very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as 

one could wish to see. She was pronounced beautiful by all 

who knew her though, as folks often said, she was more a 

Giltrap than a MacDowell. Her figure was slight and graceful, 

inclining even to fragility but those iron jelloids she had 


346 

been taking of late had done her a world of good much better 

than the Widow Welch’s female pills and she was much 

better of those discharges she used to get and that tired feeling. 

The waxen pallor of her face was almost spiritual in its 

ivorylike purity though her rosebud mouth was a genuine 

Cupid’s bow, Greekly perfect. Her hands were of finely veined 

alabaster with tapering fingers and as white as lemonjuice 

and queen of ointments could make them though it was not 

true that she used to wear kid gloves in bed or take a milk 

footbath either. Bertha Supple told that once to Edy 

Boardman, a deliberate lie, when she was black out at daggers 

drawn with Gerty (the girl chums had of course their 

little tiffs from time to time like the rest of mortals) and she 

told her not to let on whatever she did that it was her that 

told her or she’d never speak to her again. No. Honour where 

honour is due. There was an innate refinement, a languid 

queenly hauteur about Gerty which was unmistakably evidenced 

in her delicate hands and higharched instep. Had 

kind fate but willed her to be born a gentlewoman of high 

degree in her own right and had she only received the benefit 

of a good education Gerty MacDowell might easily have

held her own beside any lady in the land and have seen herself 

exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow and patrician 

suitors at her feet vying with one another to pay their 

devoirs to her. Mayhap it was this, the love that might have 

been, that lent to her softlyfeatured face at whiles a look, 

tense with suppressed meaning, that imparted a strange yearning 

tendency to the beautiful eyes, a charm few could resist. 

Why have women such eyes of witchery? Gerty’s were of the 

bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and dark expressive 

brows. Time was when those brows were not so silkily 

seductive. It was Madame Vera Verity, directress of the 

Woman Beautiful page of the Princess Novelette, who had 

first advised her to try eyebrowleine which gave that haunting 

expression to the eyes, so becoming in leaders of fashion, 

and she had never regretted it. Then there was blushing scientifically 

cured and how to be tall increase your height and 

you have a beautiful face but your nose? That would suit 

Mrs Dignam because she had a button one. But Gerty’s 

crowning glory was her wealth of wonderful hair. It was dark 

brown with a natural wave in it. She had cut it that very 

morning on account of the new moon and it nestled about 


347 

her pretty head in a profusion of luxuriant clusters and pared 

her nails too, Thursday for wealth. And just now at Edy’s 

words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest rosebloom, 

crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet girlish 

shyness that of a surety God’s fair land of Ireland did not 

hold her equal. 

For an instant she was silent with rather sad downcast eyes. 

She was about to retort but something checked the words on 

her tongue. Inclination prompted her to speak out: dignity 

told her to be silent. The pretty lips pouted awhile but then 

she glanced up and broke out into a joyous little laugh which 

had in it all the freshness of a young May morning. She knew 

right well, no-one better, what made squinty Edy say that 

because of him cooling in his attentions when it was simply 

a lovers’ quarrel. As per usual somebody’s nose was out of 

joint about the boy that had the bicycle off the London bridge 

road always riding up and down in front of her window. 

Only now his father kept him in in the evenings studying 

hard to get an exhibition in the intermediate that was on 

and he was going to go to Trinity college to study for a doctor 

when he left the high school like his brother W. E. Wylie

who was racing in the bicycle races in Trinity college university. 

Little recked he perhaps for what she felt, that dull aching 

void in her heart sometimes, piercing to the core. Yet he 

was young and perchance he might learn to love her in time. 

They were protestants in his family and of course Gerty knew 

Who came first and after Him the Blessed Virgin and then 

Saint Joseph. But he was undeniably handsome with an exquisite 

nose and he was what he looked, every inch a gentleman, 

the shape of his head too at the back without his cap 

on that she would know anywhere something off the common 

and the way he turned the bicycle at the lamp with his 

hands off the bars and also the nice perfume of those good 

cigarettes and besides they were both of a size too he and she 

and that was why Edy Boardman thought she was so frightfully 

clever because he didn’t go and ride up and down in 

front of her bit of a garden. 

Gerty was dressed simply but with the instinctive taste of a 

votary of Dame Fashion for she felt that there was just a 

might that he might be out. A neat blouse of electric blue 

selftinted by dolly dyes (because it was expected in the Lady’s 

Pictorial that electric blue would be worn) with a smart vee 


348 

opening down to the division and kerchief pocket (in which 

she always kept a piece of cottonwool scented with her 

favourite perfume because the handkerchief spoiled the sit) 

and a navy threequarter skirt cut to the stride showed off her 

slim graceful figure to perfection. She wore a coquettish little 

love of a hat of wideleaved nigger straw contrast trimmed 

with an underbrim of eggblue chenille and at the side a butterfly 

bow of silk to tone. All Tuesday week afternoon she 

was hunting to match that chenille but at last she found 

what she wanted at Clery’s summer sales, the very it, slightly 

shopsoiled but you would never notice, seven fingers two 

and a penny. She did it up all by herself and what joy was 

hers when she tried it on then, smiling at the lovely reflection 

which the mirror gave back to her! And when she put it 

on the waterjug to keep the shape she knew that that would 

take the shine out of some people she knew. Her shoes were 

the newest thing in footwear (Edy Boardman prided herself 

that she was very petite but she never had a foot like Gerty 

MacDowell, a five, and never would ash, oak or elm) with 

patent toecaps and just one smart buckle over her higharched 

instep. Her wellturned ankle displayed its perfect propor-

tions beneath her skirt and just the proper amount and no 

more of her shapely limbs encased in finespun hose with 

highspliced heels and wide garter tops. As for undies they 

were Gerty’s chief care and who that knows the fluttering 

hopes and fears of sweet seventeen (though Gerty would never 

see seventeen again) can find it in his heart to blame her? 

She had four dinky sets with awfully pretty stitchery, three 

garments and nighties extra, and each set slotted with different 

coloured ribbons, rosepink, pale blue, mauve and 

peagreen, and she aired them herself and blued them when 

they came home from the wash and ironed them and she 

had a brickbat to keep the iron on because she wouldn’t trust 

those washerwomen as far as she’d see them scorching the 

things. She was wearing the blue for luck, hoping against 

hope, her own colour and lucky too for a bride to have a bit 

of blue somewhere on her because the green she wore that 

day week brought grief because his father brought him in to 

study for the intermediate exhibition and because she thought 

perhaps he might be out because when she was dressing that 

morning she nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside out 

and that was for luck and lovers’ meeting if you put those 


349 

things on inside out or if they got untied that he was thinking 

about you so long as it wasn’t of a Friday. 

And yet and yet! That strained look on her face! A gnawing 

sorrow is there all the time. Her very soul is in her eyes 

and she would give worlds to be in the privacy of her own 

familiar chamber where, giving way to tears, she could have 

a good cry and relieve her pentup feelingsthough not too 

much because she knew how to cry nicely before the mirror. 

You are lovely, Gerty, it said. The paly light of evening falls 

upon a face infinitely sad and wistful. Gerty MacDowell 

yearns in vain. Yes, she had known from the very first that 

her daydream of a marriage has been arranged and the 

weddingbells ringing for Mrs Reggy Wylie T. C. D. (because 

the one who married the elder brother would be Mrs Wylie) 

and in the fashionable intelligence Mrs Gertrude Wylie was 

wearing a sumptuous confection of grey trimmed with expensive 

blue fox was not to be. He was too young to understand. 

He would not believe in love, a woman’s birthright. 

The night of the party long ago in Stoer’s (he was still in 

short trousers) when they were alone and he stole an arm 

round her waist she went white to the very lips. He called

her little one in a strangely husky voice and snatched a half 

kiss (the first!) but it was only the end of her nose and then 

he hastened from the room with a remark about refreshments. 

Impetuous fellow! Strength of character had never 

been Reggy Wylie’s strong point and he who would woo and 

win Gerty MacDowell must be a man among men. But waiting, 

always waiting to be asked and it was leap year too and 

would soon be over. No prince charming is her beau ideal to 

lay a rare and wondrous love at her feet but rather a manly 

man with a strong quiet face who had not found his ideal, 

perhaps his hair slightly flecked with grey, and who would 

understand, take her in his sheltering arms, strain her to him 

in all the strength of his deep passionate nature and comfort 

her with a long long kiss. It would be like heaven. For such a 

one she yearns this balmy summer eve. With all the heart of 

her she longs to be his only, his affianced bride for riches for 

poor, in sickness in health, till death us two part, from this 

to this day forward. 

And while Edy Boardman was with little Tommy behind 

the pushcar she was just thinking would the day ever come 

when she could call herself his little wife to be. Then they 


350 

could talk about her till they went blue in the face, Bertha 

Supple too, and Edy, little spitfire, because she would be 

twentytwo in November. She would care for him with creature 

comforts too for Gerty was womanly wise and knew 

that a mere man liked that feeling of hominess. Her 

griddlecakes done to a goldenbrown hue and queen Ann’s 

pudding of delightful creaminess had won golden opinions 

from all because she had a lucky hand also for lighting a fire, 

dredge in the fine selfraising flour and always stir in the same 

direction, then cream the milk and sugar and whisk well the 

white of eggs though she didn’t like the eating part when 

there were any people that made her shy and often she wondered 

why you couldn’t eat something poetical like violets or 

roses and they would have a beautifully appointed 

drawingroom with pictures and engravings and the photograph 

of grandpapa Giltrap’s lovely dog Garryowen that almost 

talked it was so human and chintz covers for the chairs 

and that silver toastrack in Clery’s summer jumble sales like 

they have in rich houses. He would be tall with broad shoulders 

(she had always admired tall men for a husband) with 

glistening white teeth under his carefully trimmed sweeping

moustache and they would go on the continent for their 

honeymoon (three wonderful weeks!) and then, when they 

settled down in a nice snug and cosy little homely house, 

every morning they would both have brekky, simple but perfectly 

served, for their own two selves and before he went 

out to business he would give his dear little wifey a good 

hearty hug and gaze for a moment deep down into her eyes. 

Edy Boardman asked Tommy Caffrey was he done and he 

said yes so then she buttoned up his little knickerbockers for 

him and told him to run off and play with Jacky and to be 

good now and not to fight. But Tommy said he wanted the 

ball and Edy told him no that baby was playing with the ball 

and if he took it there’d be wigs on the green but Tommy 

said it was his ball and he wanted his ball and he pranced on 

the ground, if you please. The temper of him! O, he was a 

man already was little Tommy Caffrey since he was out of 

pinnies. Edy told him no, no and to be off now with him 

and she told Cissy Caffrey not to give in to him. 

—You’re not my sister, naughty Tommy said. It’s my ball. 

But Cissy Caffrey told baby Boardman to look up, look 

up high at her finger and she snatched the ball quickly and 


351 

threw it along the sand and Tommy after it in full career, 

having won the day. 

—Anything for a quiet life, laughed Ciss. 

And she tickled tiny tot’s two cheeks to make him forget 

and played here’s the lord mayor, here’s his two horses, here’s 

his gingerbread carriage and here he walks in, chinchopper, 

chinchopper, chinchopper chin. But Edy got as cross as two 

sticks about him getting his own way like that from everyone 

always petting him. 

—I’d like to give him something, she said, so I would, 

where I won’t say. 

—On the beeoteetom, laughed Cissy merrily. 

Gerty MacDowell bent down her head and crimsoned at 

the idea of Cissy saying an unladylike thing like that out 

loud she’d be ashamed of her life to say, flushing a deep rosy 

red, and Edy Boardman said she was sure the gentleman 

opposite heard what she said. But not a pin cared Ciss. 

—Let him! she said with a pert toss of her head and a 

piquant tilt of her nose. Give it to him too on the same place 

as quick as I’d look at him. 

Madcap Ciss with her golliwog curls. You had to laugh at

her sometimes. For instance when she asked you would you 

have some more Chinese tea and jaspberry ram and when 

she drew the jugs too and the men’s faces on her nails with 

red ink make you split your sides or when she wanted to go 

where you know she said she wanted to run and pay a visit 

to the Miss White. That was just like Cissycums. O, and will 

you ever forget her the evening she dressed up in her father’s 

suit and hat and the burned cork moustache and walked 

down Tritonville road, smoking a cigarette. There was none 

to come up to her for fun. But she was sincerity itself, one of 

the bravest and truest hearts heaven ever made, not one of 

your twofaced things, too sweet to be wholesome. 

And then there came out upon the air the sound of voices 

and the pealing anthem of the organ. It was the men’s temperance 

retreat conducted by the missioner, the reverend John 

Hughes S. J., rosary, sermon and benediction of the Most 

Blessed Sacrament. They were there gathered together without 

distinction of social class (and a most edifying spectacle 

it was to see) in that simple fane beside the waves, after the 

storms of this weary world, kneeling before the feet of the 

immaculate, reciting the litany of Our Lady of Loreto, be- 


352 

seeching her to intercede for them, the old familiar words, 

holy Mary, holy virgin of virgins. How sad to poor Gerty’s 

ears! Had her father only avoided the clutches of the demon 

drink, by taking the pledge or those powders the drink habit 

cured in Pearson’s Weekly, she might now be rolling in her 

carriage, second to none. Over and over had she told herself 

that as she mused by the dying embers in a brown study 

without the lamp because she hated two lights or oftentimes 

gazing out of the window dreamily by the hour at the rain 

falling on the rusty bucket, thinking. But that vile decoction 

which has ruined so many hearths and homes had cist its 

shadow over her childhood days. Nay, she had even witnessed 

in the home circle deeds of violence caused by intemperance 

and had seen her own father, a prey to the fumes of intoxication, 

forget himself completely for if there was one thing of 

all things that Gerty knew it was that the man who lifts his 

hand to a woman save in the way of kindness, deserves to be 

branded as the lowest of the low. 

And still the voices sang in supplication to the Virgin most 

powerful, Virgin most merciful. And Gerty, rapt in thought, 

scarce saw or heard her companions or the twins at their

oyish gambols or the gentleman off Sandymount green that 

Cissy Caffrey called the man that was so like himself passing 

along the strand taking a short walk. You never saw him any 

way screwed but still and for all that she would not like him 

for a father because he was too old or something or on account 

of his face (it was a palpable case of Doctor Fell) or his 

carbuncly nose with the pimples on it and his sandy moustache 

a bit white under his nose. Poor father! With all his 

faults she loved him still when he sang Tell me, Mary, how to 

woo thee or My ove and cottage near Rochelle and they had 

stewed cockles and lettuce with Lazenby’s salad dressing for 

supper and when he sang The moon hath raised with Mr 

Dignam that died suddenly and was buried, God have mercy 

on him, from a stroke. Her mother’s birthday that was and 

Charley was home on his holidays and Tom and Mr Dignam 

and Mrs and Patsy and Freddy Dignam and they were to 

have had a group taken. No-one would have thought the 

end was so near. Now he was laid to rest. And her mother 

said to him to let that be a warning to him for the rest of his 

days and he couldn’t even go to the funeral on account of the 

gout and she had to go into town to bring him the letters 


353 

and samples from his office about Catesby’s cork lino, artistic, 

standard designs, fit for a palace, gives tiptop wear and 

always bright and cheery in the home. 

A sterling good daughter was Gerty just like a second 

mother in the house, a ministering angel too with a little 

heart worth its weight in gold. And when her mother had 

those raging splitting headaches who was it rubbed the menthol 

cone on her forehead but Gerty though she didn’t like 

her mother’s taking pinches of snuff and that was the only 

single thing they ever had words about, taking snuff. Everyone 

thought the world of her for her gentle ways. It was 

Gerty who turned off the gas at the main every night and it 

was Gerty who tacked up on the wall of that place where she 

never forgot every fortnight the chlorate of lime Mr Tunney 

the grocer’s christmas almanac, the picture of halcyon days 

where a young gentleman in the costume they used to wear 

then with a threecornered hat was offering a bunch of flowers 

to his ladylove with oldtime chivalry through her lattice 

window. You could see there was a story behind it. The colours 

were done something lovely. She was in a soft clinging white 

in a studied attitude and the gentleman was in chocolate

and he looked a thorough aristocrat. She often looked at 

them dreamily when she went there for a certain purpose 

and felt her own arms that were white and soft just like hers 

with the sleeves back and thought about those times because 

she had found out in Walker’s pronouncing dictionary that 

belonged to grandpapa Giltrap about the halcyon days what 

they meant. 

The twins were now playing in the most approved brotherly 

fashion till at last Master Jacky who was really as bold as 

brass there was no getting behind that deliberately kicked 

the ball as hard as ever he could down towards the seaweedy 

rocks. Needless to say poor Tommy was not slow to voice his 

dismay but luckily the gentleman in black who was sitting 

there by himself came gallantly to the rescue and intercepted 

the ball. Our two champions claimed their plaything with 

lusty cries and to avoid trouble Cissy Caffrey called to the 

gentleman to throw it to her please. The gentleman aimed 

the ball once or twice and then threw it up the strand towards 

Cissy Caffrey but it rolled down the slope and stopped 

right under Gerty’s skirt near the little pool by the rock. The 

twins clamoured again for it and Cissy told her to kick it 


354 

away and let them fight for it so Gerty drew back her foot 

but she wished their stupid ball hadn’t come rolling down to 

her and she gave a kick but she missed and Edy and Cissy 

laughed. 

—If you fail try again, Edy Boardman said. 

Gerty smiled assent and bit her lip. A delicate pink crept 

into her pretty cheek but she was determined to let them see 

so she just lifted her skirt a little but just enough and took 

good aim and gave the ball a jolly good kick and it went ever 

so far and the two twins after it down towards the shingle. 

Pure jealousy of course it was nothing else to draw attention 

on account of the gentleman opposite looking. She felt the 

warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell, 

surging and flaming into her cheeks. Till then they had only 

exchanged glances of the most casual but now under the 

brim of her new hat she ventured a look at him and the face 

that met her gaze there in the twilight, wan and strangely 

drawn, seemed to her the saddest she had ever seen. 

Through the open window of the church the fragrant incense 

was wafted and with it the fragrant names of her who 

was conceived without stain of original sin, spiritual vessel,

pray for us, honourable vessel, pray for us, vessel of singular 

devotion, pray for us, mystical rose. And careworn hearts 

were there and toilers for their daily bread and many who 

had erred and wandered, their eyes wet with contrition but 

for all that bright with hope for the reverend father Father 

Hughes had told them what the great saint Bernard said in 

his famous prayer of Mary, the most pious Virgin’s intercessory 

power that it was not recorded in any age that those 

who implored her powerful protection were ever abandoned 

by her. 

The twins were now playing again right merrily for the 

troubles of childhood are but as fleeting summer showers. 

Cissy Caffrey played with baby Boardman till he crowed with 

glee, clapping baby hands in air. Peep she cried behind the 

hood of the pushcar and Edy asked where was Cissy gone 

and then Cissy popped up her head and cried ah! and, my 

word, didn’t the little chap enjoy that! And then she told 

him to say papa. 

—Say papa, baby. Say pa pa pa pa pa pa pa. 

And baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent 

for eleven months everyone said and big for his age and 


355 

the picture of health, a perfect little bunch of love, and he 

would certainly turn out to be something great, they said. 

—Haja ja ja haja. 

Cissy wiped his little mouth with the dribbling bib and 

wanted him to sit up properly and say pa pa pa but when she 

undid the strap she cried out, holy saint Denis, that he was 

possing wet and to double the half blanket the other way 

under him. Of course his infant majesty was most obstreperous 

at such toilet formalities and he let everyone know it: 

—Habaa baaaahabaaa baaaa. 

And two great big lovely big tears coursing down his cheeks. 

It was all no use soothering him with no, nono, baby, no and 

telling him about the geegee and where was the puffpuff but 

Ciss, always readywitted, gave him in his mouth the teat of 

the suckingbottle and the young heathen was quickly appeased. 

Gerty wished to goodness they would take their squalling 

baby home out of that and not get on her nerves, no hour to 

be out, and the little brats of twins. She gazed out towards 

the distant sea. It was like the paintings that man used to do 

on the pavement with all the coloured chalks and such a pity

too leaving them there to be all blotted out, the evening and 

the clouds coming out and the Bailey light on Howth and to 

hear the music like that and the perfume of those incense 

they burned in the church like a kind of waft. And while she 

gazed her heart went pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking 

at, and there was meaning in his look. His eyes burned into 

her as though they would search her through and through, 

read her very soul. Wonderful eyes they were, superbly expressive, 

but could you trust them? People were so queer. 

She could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale intellectual 

face that he was a foreigner, the image of the photo she 

had of Martin Harvey, the matinee idol, only for the moustache 

which she preferred because she wasn’t stagestruck like 

Winny Rippingham that wanted they two to always dress 

the same on account of a play but she could not see whether 

he had an aquiline nose or a slightly retroussé from where he 

was sitting. He was in deep mourning, she could see that, 

and the story of a haunting sorrow was written on his face. 

She would have given worlds to know what it was. He was 

looking up so intently, so still, and he saw her kick the ball 

and perhaps he could see the bright steel buckles of her shoes 


356 

if she swung them like that thoughtfully with the toes down. 

She was glad that something told her to put on the transparent 

stockings thinking Reggy Wylie might be out but that 

was far away. Here was that of which she had so often 

dreamed. It was he who mattered and there was joy on her 

face because she wanted him because she felt instinctively 

that he was like no-one else. The very heart of the girlwoman 

went out to him, her dreamhusband, because she knew on 

the instant it was him. If he had suffered, more sinned against 

than sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, 

a wicked man, she cared not. Even if he was a protestant or 

methodist she could convert him easily if he truly loved her. 

There were wounds that wanted healing with heartbalm. She 

was a womanly woman not like other flighty girls unfeminine 

he had known, those cyclists showing off what they 

hadn’t got and she just yearned to know all, to forgive all if 

she could make him fall in love with her, make him forget 

the memory of the past. Then mayhap he would embrace 

her gently, like a real man, crushing her soft body to him, 

and love her, his ownest girlie, for herself alone.

Refuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. Ora pro 

nobis. Well has it been said that whosoever prays to her with 

faith and constancy can never be lost or cast away: and fitly 

is she too a haven of refuge for the afflicted because of the 

seven dolours which transpierced her own heart. Gerty could 

picture the whole scene in the church, the stained glass windows 

lighted up, the candles, the flowers and the blue banners 

of the blessed Virgin’s sodality and Father Conroy was 

helping Canon O’Hanlon at the altar, carrying things in and 

out with his eyes cast down. He looked almost a saint and 

his confessionbox was so quiet and clean and dark and his 

hands were just like white wax and if ever she became a Dominican 

nun in their white habit perhaps he might come to 

the convent for the novena of Saint Dominic. He told her 

that time when she told him about that in confession, 

crimsoning up to the roots of her hair for fear he could see, 

not to be troubled because that was only the voice of nature 

and we were all subject to nature’s laws, he said, in this life 

and that that was no sin because that came from the nature 

of woman instituted by God, he said, and that Our Blessed 

Lady herself said to the archangel Gabriel be it done unto 


357 

me according to Thy Word. He was so kind and holy and 

often and often she thought and thought could she work a 

ruched teacosy with embroidered floral design for him as a 

present or a clock but they had a clock she noticed on the 

mantelpiece white and gold with a canarybird that came out 

of a little house to tell the time the day she went there about 

the flowers for the forty hours’ adoration because it was hard 

to know what sort of a present to give or perhaps an album 

of illuminated views of Dublin or some place. 

The exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again 

and Jacky threw the ball out towards the sea and they both 

ran after it. Little monkeys common as ditchwater. Someone 

ought to take them and give them a good hiding for 

themselves to keep them in their places, the both of them. 

And Cissy and Edy shouted after them to come back because 

they were afraid the tide might come in on them and 

be drowned. 

—Jacky! Tommy! 

Not they! What a great notion they had! So Cissy said it 

was the very last time she’d ever bring them out. She jumped 

up and called them and she ran down the slope past him,

tossing her hair behind her which had a good enough colour 

if there had been more of it but with all the thingamerry she 

was always rubbing into it she couldn’t get it to grow long 

because it wasn’t natural so she could just go and throw her 

hat at it. She ran with long gandery strides it was a wonder 

she didn’t rip up her skirt at the side that was too tight on 

her because there was a lot of the tomboy about Cissy Caffrey 

and she was a forward piece whenever she thought she had a 

good opportunity to show and just because she was a good 

runner she ran like that so that he could see all the end of her 

petticoat running and her skinny shanks up as far as possible. 

It would have served her just right if she had tripped 

up over something accidentally on purpose with her high 

crooked French heels on her to make her look tall and got a 

fine tumble. Tableau! That would have been a very charming 

expose for a gentleman like that to witness. 

Queen of angels, queen of patriarchs, queen of prophets, 

of all saints, they prayed, queen of the most holy rosary and 

then Father Conroy handed the thurible to Canon O’Hanlon 

and he put in the incense and censed the Blessed Sacrament 

and Cissy Caffrey caught the two twins and she was itching 


358 

to give them a ringing good clip on the ear but she didn’t 

because she thought he might be watching but she never 

made a bigger mistake in all her life because Gerty could see 

without looking that he never took his eyes off of her and 

then Canon O’Hanlon handed the thurible back to Father 

Conroy and knelt down looking up at the Blessed Sacrament 

and the choir began to sing the Tantum ergo and she 

just swung her foot in and out in time as the music rose and 

fell to the Tantumer gosa cramen tum. Three and eleven she 

paid for those stockings in Sparrow’s of George’s street on 

the Tuesday, no the Monday before Easter and there wasn’t a 

brack on them and that was what he was looking at, transparent, 

and not at her insignificant ones that had neither 

shape nor form (the cheek of her!) because he had eyes in his 

head to see the difference for himself. 

Cissy came up along the strand with the two twins and 

their ball with her hat anyhow on her to one side after her 

run and she did look a streel tugging the two kids along with 

the flimsy blouse she bought only a fortnight before like a 

rag on her back and a bit of her petticoat hanging like a 

caricature. Gerty just took off her hat for a moment to settle

her hair and a prettier, a daintier head of nutbrown tresses 

was never seen on a girl’s shoulders—a radiant little vision, 

in sooth, almost maddening in its sweetness. You would have 

to travel many a long mile before you found a head of hair 

the like of that. She could almost see the swift answering 

flash of admiration in his eyes that set her tingling in every 

nerve. She put on her hat so that she could see from underneath 

the brim and swung her buckled shoe faster for her 

breath caught as she caught the expression in his eyes. He 

was eying her as a snake eyes its prey. Her woman’s instinct 

told her that she had raised the devil in him and at the thought 

a burning scarlet swept from throat to brow till the lovely 

colour of her face became a glorious rose. 

Edy Boardman was noticing it too because she was squinting 

at Gerty, half smiling, with her specs like an old maid, 

pretending to nurse the baby. Irritable little gnat she was and 

always would be and that was why no-one could get on with 

her poking her nose into what was no concern of hers. And 

she said to Gerty: 

—A penny for your thoughts. 

—What? replied Gerty with a smile reinforced by the whit- 


359 

est of teeth. I was only wondering was it late. 

Because she wished to goodness they’d take the snottynosed 

twins and their babby home to the mischief out of that so 

that was why she just gave a gentle hint about its being late. 

And when Cissy came up Edy asked her the time and Miss 

Cissy, as glib as you like, said it was half past kissing time, 

time to kiss again. But Edy wanted to know because they 

were told to be in early. 

—Wait, said Cissy, I’ll run ask my uncle Peter over there 

what’s the time by his conundrum. 

So over she went and when he saw her coming she could 

see him take his hand out of his pocket, getting nervous, and 

beginning to play with his watchchain, looking up at the 

church. Passionate nature though he was Gerty could see 

that he had enormous control over himself. One moment he 

had been there, fascinated by a loveliness that made him gaze, 

and the next moment it was the quiet gravefaced gentleman, 

selfcontrol expressed in every line of his distinguishedlooking 

figure. 

Cissy said to excuse her would he mind please telling her 

what was the right time and Gerty could see him taking out

his watch, listening to it and looking up and clearing his 

throat and he said he was very sorry his watch was stopped 

but he thought it must be after eight because the sun was set. 

His voice had a cultured ring in it and though he spoke in 

measured accents there was a suspicion of a quiver in the 

mellow tones. Cissy said thanks and came back with her 

tongue out and said uncle said his waterworks were out of 

order. 

Then they sang the second verse of the Tantum ergo and 

Canon O’Hanlon got up again and censed the Blessed Sacrament 

and knelt down and he told Father Conroy that one 

of the candles was just going to set fire to the flowers and 

Father Conroy got up and settled it all right and she could 

see the gentleman winding his watch and listening to the 

works and she swung her leg more in and out in time. It was 

getting darker but he could see and he was looking all the 

time that he was winding the watch or whatever he was doing 

to it and then he put it back and put his hands back into 

his pockets. She felt a kind of a sensation rushing all over her 

and she knew by the feel of her scalp and that irritation against 

her stays that that thing must be coming on because the last 


360 

time too was when she clipped her hair on account of the 

moon. His dark eyes fixed themselves on her again drinking 

in her every contour, literally worshipping at her shrine. If 

ever there was undisguised admiration in a man’s passionate 

gaze it was there plain to be seen on that man’s face. It is for 

you, Gertrude MacDowell, and you know it. 

Edy began to get ready to go and it was high time for her 

and Gerty noticed that that little hint she gave had had the 

desired effect because it was a long way along the strand to 

where there was the place to push up the pushcar and Cissy 

took off the twins’ caps and tidied their hair to make herself 

attractive of course and Canon O’Hanlon stood up with his 

cope poking up at his neck and Father Conroy handed him 

the card to read off and he read out Panem de coelo præstitisti 

eis and Edy and Cissy were talking about the time all the 

time and asking her but Gerty could pay them back in their 

own coin and she just answered with scathing politeness when 

Edy asked her was she heartbroken about her best boy throwing 

her over. Gerty winced sharply. A brief cold blaze shone 

from her eyes that spoke volumes of scorn immeasurable. It 

hurt—O yes, it cut deep because Edy had her own quiet

way of saying things like that she knew would wound like 

the confounded little cat she was. Gerty’s lips parted swiftly 

to frame the word but she fought back the sob that rose to 

her throat, so slim, so flawless, so beautifully moulded it 

seemed one an artist might have dreamed of. She had loved 

him better than he knew. Lighthearted deceiver and fickle 

like all his sex he would never understand what he had meant 

to her and for an instant there was in the blue eyes a quick 

stinging of tears. Their eyes were probing her mercilessly but 

with a brave effort she sparkled back in sympathy as she 

glanced at her new conquest for them to see. 

—O, responded Gerty, quick as lightning, laughing, and 

the proud head flashed up. I can throw my cap at who I like 

because it’s leap year. 

Her words rang out crystalclear, more musical than the 

cooing of the ringdove, but they cut the silence icily. There 

was that in her young voice that told that she was not a one 

to be lightly trifled with. As for Mr Reggy with his swank 

and his bit of money she could just chuck him aside as if he 

was so much filth and never again would she cast as much as 

a second thought on him and tear his silly postcard into a 


361 

dozen pieces. And if ever after he dared to presume she could 

give him one look of measured scorn that would make him 

shrivel up on the spot. Miss puny little Edy’s countenance 

fell to no slight extent and Gerty could see by her looking as 

black as thunder that she was simply in a towering rage 

though she hid it, the little kinnatt, because that shaft had 

struck home for her petty jealousy and they both knew that 

she was something aloof, apart, in another sphere, that she 

was not of them and never would be and there was somebody 

else too that knew it and saw it so they could put that 

in their pipe and smoke it. 

Edy straightened up baby Boardman to get ready to go 

and Cissy tucked in the ball and the spades and buckets and 

it was high time too because the sandman was on his way for 

Master Boardman junior. And Cissy told him too that billy 

winks was coming and that baby was to go deedaw and baby 

looked just too ducky, laughing up out of his gleeful eyes, 

and Cissy poked him like that out of fun in his wee fat tummy 

and baby, without as much as by your leave, sent up his compliments 

to all and sundry on to his brandnew dribbling 

bib.

—O my! Puddeny pie! protested Ciss. He has his bib destroyed. 

The slight contretemps claimed her attention but in two 

twos she set that little matter to rights. 

Gerty stifled a smothered exclamation and gave a nervous 

cough and Edy asked what and she was just going to tell her 

to catch it while it was flying but she was ever ladylike in her 

deportment so she simply passed it off with consummate 

tact by saying that that was the benediction because just then 

the bell rang out from the steeple over the quiet seashore 

because Canon O’Hanlon was up on the altar with the veil 

that Father Conroy put round his shoulders giving the benediction 

with the Blessed Sacrament in his hands. 

How moving the scene there in the gathering twilight, the 

last glimpse of Erin, the touching chime of those evening 

bells and at the same time a bat flew forth from the ivied 

belfry through the dusk, hither, thither, with a tiny lost cry. 

And she could see far away the lights of the lighthouses so 

picturesque she would have loved to do with a box of paints 

because it was easier than to make a man and soon the 

lamplighter would be going his rounds past the presbyterian 


362 

church grounds and along by shady Tritonville avenue where 

the couples walked and lighting the lamp near her window 

where Reggy Wylie used to turn his freewheel like she read 

in that book The Lamplighter by Miss Cummins, author of 

Mabel Vaughan and other tales. For Gerty had her dreams 

that no-one knew of. She loved to read poetry and when she 

got a keepsake from Bertha Supple of that lovely confession 

album with the coralpink cover to write her thoughts in she 

laid it in the drawer of her toilettable which, though it did 

not err on the side of luxury, was scrupulously neat and clean. 

It was there she kept her girlish treasure trove, the tortoiseshell 

combs, her child of Mary badge, the whiterose scent, the 

eyebrowleine, her alabaster pouncetbox and the ribbons to 

change when her things came home from the wash and there 

were some beautiful thoughts written in it in violet ink that 

she bought in Hely’s of Dame Street for she felt that she too 

could write poetry if she could only express herself like that 

poem that appealed to her so deeply that she had copied out 

of the newspaper she found one evening round the potherbs. 

Art thou real, my ideal? it was called by Louis J Walsh, 

Magherafelt, and after there was something about twilight,

wilt thou ever? and ofttimes the beauty of poetry, so sad in its 

transient loveliness, had misted her eyes with silent tears for 

she felt that the years were slipping by for her, one by one, 

and but for that one shortcoming she knew she need fear no 

competition and that was an accident coming down Dalkey 

hill and she always tried to conceal it. But it must end, she 

felt. If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there would be no 

holding back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths. She would 

make the great sacrifice. Her every effort would be to share 

his thoughts. Dearer than the whole world would she be to 

him and gild his days with happiness. There was the 

allimportant question and she was dying to know was he a 

married man or a widower who had lost his wife or some 

tragedy like the nobleman with the foreign name from the 

land of song had to have her put into a madhouse, cruel only 

to be kind. But even if—what then? Would it make a very 

great difference? From everything in the least indelicate her 

finebred nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort 

of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk 

beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse 

men with no respect for a girl’s honour, degrading the sex 


363 

and being taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. 

They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister 

without all that other in spite of the conventions of Society 

with a big ess. Perhaps it was an old flame he was in mourning 

for from the days beyond recall. She thought she understood. 

She would try to understand him because men were 

so different. The old love was waiting, waiting with little 

white hands stretched out, with blue appealing eyes. Heart 

of mine! She would follow, her dream of love, the dictates of 

her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in 

all the world for her for love was the master guide. Nothing 

else mattered. Come what might she would be wild, 

untrammelled, free. 

Canon O’Hanlon put the Blessed Sacrament back into the 

tabernacle and genuflected and the choir sang Laudate 

Dominum omnes gentes and then he locked the tabernacle 

door because the benediction was over and Father Conroy 

handed him his hat to put on and crosscat Edy asked wasn’t 

she coming but Jacky Caffrey called out: 

—O, look, Cissy! 

And they all looked was it sheet lightning but Tommy saw

it too over the trees beside the church, blue and then green 

and purple. 

—It’s fireworks, Cissy Caffrey said. 

And they all ran down the strand to see over the houses 

and the church, helterskelter, Edy with the pushcar with baby 

Boardman in it and Cissy holding Tommy and Jacky by the 

hand so they wouldn’t fall running. 

—Come on, Gerty, Cissy called. It’s the bazaar fireworks. 

But Gerty was adamant. She had no intention of being at 

their beck and call. If they could run like rossies she could sit 

so she said she could see from where she was. The eyes that 

were fastened upon her set her pulses tingling. She looked at 

him a moment, meeting his glance, and a light broke in upon 

her. Whitehot passion was in that face, passion silent as the 

grave, and it had made her his. At last they were left alone 

without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew he 

could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a 

man of inflexible honour to his fingertips. His hands and 

face were working and a tremour went over her. She leaned 

back far to look up where the fireworks were and she caught 

her knee in her hands so as not to fall back looking up and 


364 

there was no-one to see only him and her when she revealed 

all her graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, supply soft 

and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting 

of his heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew too about 

the passion of men like that, hotblooded, because Bertha 

Supple told her once in dead secret and made her swear she’d 

never about the gentleman lodger that was staying with them 

out of the Congested Districts Board that had pictures cut 

out of papers of those skirtdancers and highkickers and she 

said he used to do something not very nice that you could 

imagine sometimes in the bed. But this was altogether different 

from a thing like that because there was all the difference 

because she could almost feel him draw her face to his 

and the first quick hot touch of his handsome lips. Besides 

there was absolution so long as you didn’t do the other thing 

before being married and there ought to be women priests 

that would understand without your telling out and Cissy 

Caffrey too sometimes had that dreamy kind of dreamy look 

in her eyes so that she too, my dear, and Winny Rippingham 

so mad about actors’ photographs and besides it was on account 

of that other thing coming on the way it did.

And Jacky Caffrey shouted to look, there was another and 

she leaned back and the garters were blue to match on account 

of the transparent and they all saw it and they all 

shouted to look, look, there it was and she leaned back ever 

so far to see the fireworks and something queer was flying 

through the air, a soft thing, to and fro, dark. And she saw a 

long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in 

the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it 

went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and 

more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and 

her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from 

straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook 

knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those 

other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of 

being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and 

then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she 

was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back that 

he had a full view high up above her knee where no-one ever 

not even on the swing or wading and she wasn’t ashamed 

and he wasn’t either to look in that immodest way like that 

because he couldn’t resist the sight of the wondrous reveal- 


365 

ment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest 

before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, 

looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held 

out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips 

laid on her white brow, the cry of a young girl’s love, a little 

strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through 

the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind blank 

and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of 

O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of 

it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! 

they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so 

lovely, O, soft, sweet, soft! 

Then all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent. 

Ah! She glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic 

little glance of piteous protest, of shy reproach under 

which he coloured like a girl He was leaning back against the 

rock behind. Leopold Bloom (for it is he) stands silent, with 

bowed head before those young guileless eyes. What a brute 

he had been! At it again? A fair unsullied soul had called to 

him and, wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter 

cad he had been! He of all men! But there was an infinite

store of mercy in those eyes, for him too a word of pardon 

even though he had erred and sinned and wandered. Should 

a girl tell? No, a thousand times no. That was their secret, 

only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none 

to know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly through 

the evening to and fro and little bats don’t tell. 

Cissy Caffrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football 

field to show what a great person she was: and then she cried: 

—Gerty! Gerty! We’re going. Come on. We can see from 

farther up. 

Gerty had an idea, one of love’s little ruses. She slipped a 

hand into her kerchief pocket and took out the wadding and 

waved in reply of course without letting him and then slipped 

it back. Wonder if he’s too far to. She rose. Was it goodbye? 

No. She had to go but they would meet again, there, and she 

would dream of that till then, tomorrow, of her dream of 

yester eve. She drew herself up to her full height. Their souls 

met in a last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her 

heart, full of a strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet 

flowerlike face. She half smiled at him wanly, a sweet forgiving 

smile, a smile that verged on tears, and then they parted. 


366 

Slowly, without looking back she went down the uneven 

strand to Cissy, to Edy to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little 

baby Boardman. It was darker now and there were stones 

and bits of wood on the strand and slippy seaweed. She 

walked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but 

with care and very slowly because—because Gerty 

MacDowell was … 

Tight boots? No. She’s lame! O! 

Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That’s 

why she’s left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought 

something was wrong by the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A 

defect is ten times worse in a woman. But makes them polite. 

Glad I didn’t know it when she was on show. Hot little 

devil all the same. I wouldn’t mind. Curiosity like a nun or a 

negress or a girl with glasses. That squinty one is delicate. 

Near her monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish. I have 

such a bad headache today. Where did I put the letter? Yes, 

all right. All kinds of crazy longings. Licking pennies. Girl in 

Tranquilla convent that nun told me liked to smell rock oil. 

Virgins go mad in the end I suppose. Sister? How many 

women in Dublin have it today? Martha, she. Something in

the air. That’s the moon. But then why don’t all women 

menstruate at the same time with the same moon, I mean? 

Depends on the time they were born I suppose. Or all start 

scratch then get out of step. Sometimes Molly and Milly 

together. Anyhow I got the best of that. Damned glad I didn’t 

do it in the bath this morning over her silly I will punish you 

letter. Made up for that tramdriver this morning. That gouger 

M’Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife engagement 

in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for 

small mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they 

want it themselves. Their natural craving. Shoals of them 

every evening poured out of offices. Reserve better. Don’t 

want it they throw it at you. Catch em alive, O. Pity they 

can’t see themselves. A dream of wellfilled hose. Where was 

that? Ah, yes. Mutoscope pictures in Capel street: for men 

only. Peeping Tom. Willy’s hat and what the girls did with it. 

Do they snapshot those girls or is it all a fake? Lingerie does 

it. Felt for the curves inside her deshabille. Excites them also 

when they’re. I’m all clean come and dirty me. And they like 

dressing one another for the sacrifice. Milly delighted with 

Molly’s new blouse. At first. Put them all on to take them all 


367 

off. Molly. Why I bought her the violet garters. Us too: the 

tie he wore, his lovely socks and turnedup trousers. He wore 

a pair of gaiters the night that first we met. His lovely shirt 

was shining beneath his what? of jet. Say a woman loses a 

charm with every pin she takes out. Pinned together. O, 

Mairy lost the pin of her. Dressed up to the nines for somebody. 

Fashion part of their charm. Just changes when you’re 

on the track of the secret. Except the east: Mary, Martha: 

now as then. No reasonable offer refused. She wasn’t in a 

hurry either. Always off to a fellow when they are. They never 

forget an appointment. Out on spec probably. They believe 

in chance because like themselves. And the others inclined 

to give her an odd dig. Girl friends at school, arms round 

each other’s necks or with ten fingers locked, kissing and 

whispering secrets about nothing in the convent garden. Nuns 

with whitewashed faces, cool coifs and their rosaries going 

up and down, vindictive too for what they can’t get. Barbed 

wire. Be sure now and write to me. And I’ll write to you. 

Now won’t you? Molly and Josie Powell. Till Mr Right comes 

along, then meet once in a blue moon. Tableau! O, look who 

it is for the love of God! How are you at all? What have you

een doing with yourself? Kiss and delighted to, kiss, to see 

you. Picking holes in each other’s appearance. You’re looking 

splendid. Sister souls. Showing their teeth at one another. 

How many have you left? Wouldn’t lend each other a pinch 

of salt. 

Ah! 

Devils they are when that’s coming on them. Dark devilish 

appearance. Molly often told me feel things a ton weight. 

Scratch the sole of my foot. O that way! O, that’s exquisite! 

Feel it myself too. Good to rest once in a way. Wonder if it’s 

bad to go with them then. Safe in one way. Turns milk, makes 

fiddlestrings snap. Something about withering plants I read 

in a garden. Besides they say if the flower withers she wears 

she’s a flirt. All are. Daresay she felt 1. When you feel like 

that you often meet what you feel. Liked me or what? Dress 

they look at. Always know a fellow courting: collars and cuffs. 

Well cocks and lions do the same and stags. Same time might 

prefer a tie undone or something. Trousers? Suppose I when 

I was? No. Gently does it. Dislike rough and tumble. Kiss in 

the dark and never tell. Saw something in me. Wonder what. 

Sooner have me as I am than some poet chap with bearsgrease 


368 

plastery hair, lovelock over his dexter optic. To aid gentleman 

in literary. Ought to attend to my appearance my age. 

Didn’t let her see me in profile. Still, you never know. Pretty 

girls and ugly men marrying. Beauty and the beast. Besides I 

can’t be so if Molly. Took off her hat to show her hair. Wide 

brim. Bought to hide her face, meeting someone might know 

her, bend down or carry a bunch of flowers to smell. Hair 

strong in rut. Ten bob I got for Molly’s combings when we 

were on the rocks in Holles street. Why not? Suppose he 

gave her money. Why not? All a prejudice. She’s worth ten, 

fifteen, more, a pound. What? I think so. All that for nothing. 

Bold hand: Mrs Marion. Did I forget to write address 

on that letter like the postcard I sent to Flynn? And the day 

I went to Drimmie’s without a necktie. Wrangle with Molly 

it was put me off. No, I remember. Richie Goulding: he’s 

another. Weighs on his mind. Funny my watch stopped at 

half past four. Dust. Shark liver oil they use to clean. Could 

do it myself. Save. Was that just when he, she? 

O, he did. Into her. She did. Done. 

Ah! 

Mr Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O

Lord, that little limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy. 

Aftereffect not pleasant. Still you have to get rid of it someway. 

They don’t care. Complimented perhaps. Go home to 

nicey bread and milky and say night prayers with the kiddies. 

Well, aren’t they? See her as she is spoil all. Must have the 

stage setting, the rouge, costume, position, music. The name 

too. Amours of actresses. Nell Gwynn, Mrs Bracegirdle, Maud 

Branscombe. Curtain up. Moonlight silver effulgence. 

Maiden discovered with pensive bosom. Little sweetheart 

come and kiss me. Still, I feel. The strength it gives a man. 

That’s the secret of it. Good job I let off there behind the 

wall coming out of Dignam’s. Cider that was. Otherwise I 

couldn’t have. Makes you want to sing after. Lacaus esant 

taratara. Suppose I spoke to her. What about? Bad plan however 

if you don’t know how to end the conversation. Ask 

them a question they ask you another. Good idea if you’re 

stuck. Gain time. But then you’re in a cart. Wonderful of 

course if you say: good evening, and you see she’s on for it: 

good evening. O but the dark evening in the Appian way I 

nearly spoke to Mrs Clinch O thinking she was. Whew! Girl 

in Meath street that night. All the dirty things I made her 


369 

say. All wrong of course. My arks she called it. It’s so hard to 

find one who. Aho! If you don’t answer when they solicit 

must be horrible for them till they harden. And kissed my 

hand when I gave her the extra two shillings. Parrots. Press 

the button and the bird will squeak. Wish she hadn’t called 

me sir. O, her mouth in the dark! And you a married man 

with a single girl! That’s what they enjoy. Taking a man from 

another woman. Or even hear of it. Different with me. Glad 

to get away from other chap’s wife. Eating off his cold plate. 

Chap in the Burton today spitting back gumchewed gristle. 

French letter still in my pocketbook. Cause of half the trouble. 

But might happen sometime, I don’t think. Come in, all is 

prepared. I dreamt. What? Worst is beginning. How they 

change the venue when it’s not what they like. Ask you do 

you like mushrooms because she once knew a gentleman 

who. Or ask you what someone was going to say when he 

changed his mind and stopped. Yet if I went the whole hog, 

say: I want to, something like that. Because I did. She too. 

Offend her. Then make it up. Pretend to want something 

awfully, then cry off for her sake. Flatters them. She must 

have been thinking of someone else all the time. What harm?

Must since she came to the use of reason, he, he and he. First 

kiss does the trick. The propitious moment. Something inside 

them goes pop. Mushy like, tell by their eye, on the sly. 

First thoughts are best. Remember that till their dying day. 

Molly, lieutenant Mulvey that kissed her under the Moorish 

wall beside the gardens. Fifteen she told me. But her breasts 

were developed. Fell asleep then. After Glencree dinner that 

was when we drove home. Featherbed mountain. Gnashing 

her teeth in sleep. Lord mayor had his eye on her too. Val 

Dillon. Apoplectic. 

There she is with them down there for the fireworks. My 

fireworks. Up like a rocket, down like a stick. And the children, 

twins they must be, waiting for something to happen. 

Want to be grownups. Dressing in mother’s clothes. Time 

enough, understand all the ways of the world. And the dark 

one with the mop head and the nigger mouth. I knew she 

could whistle. Mouth made for that. Like Molly. Why that 

highclass whore in Jammet’s wore her veil only to her nose. 

Would you mind, please, telling me the right time? I’ll tell 

you the right time up a dark lane. Say prunes and prisms 

forty times every morning, cure for fat lips. Caressing the 


370 

little boy too. Onlookers see most of the game. Of course 

they understand birds, animals, babies. In their line. 

Didn’t look back when she was going down the strand. 

Wouldn’t give that satisfaction. Those girls, those girls, those 

lovely seaside girls. Fine eyes she had, clear. It’s the white of 

the eye brings that out not so much the pupil. Did she know 

what I? Course. Like a cat sitting beyond a dog’s jump. 

Women never meet one like that Wilkins in the high school 

drawing a picture of Venus with all his belongings on show. 

Call that innocence? Poor idiot! His wife has her work cut 

out for her. Never see them sit on a bench marked Wet Paint. 

Eyes all over them. Look under the bed for what’s not there. 

Longing to get the fright of their lives. Sharp as needles they 

are. When I said to Molly the man at the corner of Cuffe 

street was goodlooking, thought she might like, twigged at 

once he had a false arm. Had, too. Where do they get that? 

Typist going up Roger Greene’s stairs two at a time to show 

her understandings. Handed down from father to, mother 

to daughter, I mean. Bred in the bone. Milly for example 

drying her handkerchief on the mirror to save the ironing. 

Best place for an ad to catch a woman’s eye on a mirror. And

when I sent her for Molly’s Paisley shawl to Prescott’s by the 

way that ad I must, carrying home the change in her stocking! 

Clever little minx. I never told her. Neat way she carries 

parcels too. Attract men, small thing like that. Holding up 

her hand, shaking it, to let the blood flow back when it was 

red. Who did you learn that from? Nobody. Something the 

nurse taught me. O, don’t they know! Three years old she 

was in front of Molly’s dressingtable, just before we left 

Lombard street west. Me have a nice pace. Mullingar. Who 

knows? Ways of the world. Young student. Straight on her 

pins anyway not like the other. Still she was game. Lord, I 

am wet. Devil you are. Swell of her calf. Transparent stockings, 

stretched to breaking point. Not like that frump today. 

A. E. Rumpled stockings. Or the one in Grafton street. White. 

Wow! Beef to the heel. 

A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. 

Zrads and zrads, zrads, zrads. And Cissy and Tommy 

and Jacky ran out to see and Edy after with the pushcar and 

then Gerty beyond the curve of the rocks. Will she? Watch! 

Watch! See! Looked round. She smelt an onion. Darling, I 

saw, your. I saw all. 


371 

Lord! 

Did me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan’s, 

Dignam’s. For this relief much thanks. In Hamlet, that is. 

Lord! It was all things combined. Excitement. When she 

leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of my tongue. Your head 

it simply swirls. He’s right. Might have made a worse fool of 

myself however. Instead of talking about nothing. Then I 

will tell you all. Still it was a kind of language between us. It 

couldn’t be? No, Gerty they called her. Might be false name 

however like my name and the address Dolphin’s barn a blind. 

Her maiden name was Jemina Brown 

And she lived with her mother in Irishtown. 

Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the 

same brush. Wiping pens in their stockings. But the ball 

rolled down to her as if it understood. Every bullet has its 

billet. Course I never could throw anything straight at school. 

Crooked as a ram’s horn. Sad however because it lasts only a 

few years till they settle down to potwalloping and papa’s 

pants will soon fit Willy and fuller’s earth for the baby when

they hold him out to do ah ah. No soft job. Saves them. 

Keeps them out of harm’s way. Nature. Washing child, washing 

corpse. Dignam. Children’s hands always round them. 

Cocoanut skulls, monkeys, not even closed at first, sour milk 

in their swaddles and tainted curds. Oughtn’t to have given 

that child an empty teat to suck. Fill it up with wind. Mrs 

Beaufoy, Purefoy. Must call to the hospital. Wonder is nurse 

Callan there still. She used to look over some nights when 

Molly was in the Coffee Palace. That young doctor O’Hare 

I noticed her brushing his coat. And Mrs Breen and Mrs 

Dignam once like that too, marriageable. Worst of all at night 

Mrs Duggan told me in the City Arms. Husband rolling in 

drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat. Have that in your 

nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in the morning: 

was I drunk last night? Bad policy however to fault the 

husband. Chickens come home to roost. They stick by one 

another like glue. Maybe the women’s fault also. That’s where 

Molly can knock spots off them. It’s the blood of the south. 

Moorish. Also the form, the figure. Hands felt for the opulent. 

Just compare for instance those others. Wife locked up 

at home, skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to introduce 


372 

my. Then they trot you out some kind of a nondescript, 

wouldn’t know what to call her. Always see a fellow’s weak 

point in his wife. Still there’s destiny in it, falling in love. 

Have their own secrets between them. Chaps that would go 

to the dogs if some woman didn’t take them in hand. Then 

little chits of girls, height of a shilling in coppers, with little 

hubbies. As God made them he matched them. Sometimes 

children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes one. Or 

old rich chap of seventy and blushing bride. Marry in May 

and repent in December. This wet is very unpleasant. Stuck. 

Well the foreskin is not back. Better detach. 

Ow! 

Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. 

Long and the short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange 

about my watch. Wristwatches are always going wrong. 

Wonder is there any magnetic influence between the person 

because that was about the time he. Yes, I suppose, at once. 

Cat’s away, the mice will play. I remember looking in Pill 

lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism. 

Earth for instance pulling this and being pulled. That 

causes movement. And time, well that’s the time the move-

ment takes. Then if one thing stopped the whole ghesabo 

would stop bit by bit. Because it’s all arranged. Magnetic 

needle tells you what’s going on in the sun, the stars. Little 

piece of steel iron. When you hold out the fork. Come. Come. 

Tip. Woman and man that is. Fork and steel. Molly, he. Dress 

up and look and suggest and let you see and see more and 

defy you if you’re a man to see that and, like a sneeze coming, 

legs, look, look and if you have any guts in you. Tip. 

Have to let fly. 

Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on 

before third person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. 

Molly, her underjaw stuck out, head back, about the 

farmer in the ridingboots and spurs at the horse show. And 

when the painters were in Lombard street west. Fine voice 

that fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell that I did. Like 

flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the turpentine probably 

in the paint. Make their own use of everything. Same 

time doing it scraped her slipper on the floor so they wouldn’t 

hear. But lots of them can’t kick the beam, I think. Keep that 

thing up for hours. Kind of a general all round over me and 

half down my back. 


373 

Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That’s her perfume. Why she waved 

her hand. I leave you this to think of me when I’m far away 

on the pillow. What is it? Heliotrope? No. Hyacinth? Hm. 

Roses, I think. She’d like scent of that kind. Sweet and cheap: 

soon sour. Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her, with a little 

jessamine mixed. Her high notes and her low notes. At the 

dance night she met him, dance of the hours. Heat brought 

it out. She was wearing her black and it had the perfume of 

the time before. Good conductor, is it? Or bad? Light too. 

Suppose there’s some connection. For instance if you go into 

a cellar where it’s dark. Mysterious thing too. Why did I 

smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself, slow 

but sure. Suppose it’s ever so many millions of tiny grains 

blown across. Yes, it is. Because those spice islands, Cinghalese 

this morning, smell them leagues off. Tell you what it is. It’s 

like a fine fine veil or web they have all over the skin, fine 

like what do you call it gossamer, and they’re always spinning 

it out of them, fine as anything, like rainbow colours 

without knowing it. Clings to everything she takes off. Vamp 

of her stockings. Warm shoe. Stays. Drawers: little kick, taking 

them off. Byby till next time. Also the cat likes to sniff in

her shift on the bed. Know her smell in a thousand. Bathwater 

too. Reminds me of strawberries and cream. Wonder where 

it is really. There or the armpits or under the neck. Because 

you get it out of all holes and corners. Hyacinth perfume 

made of oil of ether or something. Muskrat. Bag under their 

tails. One grain pour off odour for years. Dogs at each other 

behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm. 

Hm. Very well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, 

look at it that way. We’re the same. Some women, instance, 

warn you off when they have their period. Come near. Then 

get a hogo you could hang your hat on. Like what? Potted 

herrings gone stale or. Boof! Please keep off the grass. 

Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary 

gloves long John had on his desk the other day. Breath? What 

you eat and drink gives that. No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be 

connected with that because priests that are supposed to be 

are different. Women buzz round it like flies round treacle. 

Railed off the altar get on to it at any cost. The tree of forbidden 

priest. O, father, will you? Let me be the first to. That 

diffuses itself all through the body, permeates. Source of life. 

And it’s extremely curious the smell. Celery sauce. Let me. 


374 

Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening 

of his waistcoat. Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah no, that’s 

the soap. 

O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my 

mind. Never went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying 

bottles like that hag this morning. Hynes might have paid 

me that three shillings. I could mention Meagher’s just to remind 

him. Still if he works that paragraph. Two and nine. Bad 

opinion of me he’ll have. Call tomorrow. How much do I owe 

you? Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him 

giving credit another time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs 

do. Fellows run up a bill on the slate and then slinking around 

the back streets into somewhere else. 

Here’s this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the 

bay. Just went as far as turn back. Always at home at 

dinnertime. Looks mangled out: had a good tuck in. Enjoying 

nature now. Grace after meals. After supper walk a mile. 

Sure he has a small bank balance somewhere, government 

sit. Walk after him now make him awkward like those newsboys 

me today. Still you learn something. See ourselves as 

others see us. So long as women don’t mock what matter?

That’s the way to find out. Ask yourself who is he now. The 

mystery man on the beach, prize titbit story by Mr Leopold 

Bloom. Payment at the rate of one guinea per column. And 

that fellow today at the graveside in the brown macintosh. 

Corns on his kismet however. Healthy perhaps absorb all 

the. Whistle brings rain they say. Must be some somewhere. 

Salt in the Ormond damp. The body feels the atmosphere. 

Old Betty’s joints are on the rack. Mother Shipton’s prophecy 

that is about ships around they fly in the twinkling. No. 

Signs of rain it is. The royal reader. And distant hills seem 

coming nigh. 

Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has 

to change or they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace 

Darling. People afraid of the dark. Also glowworms, cyclists: 

lightingup time. Jewels diamonds flash better. Women. Light 

is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt you. Better now of 

course than long ago. Country roads. Run you through the 

small guts for nothing. Still two types there are you bob 

against. Scowl or smile. Pardon! Not at all. Best time to spray 

plants too in the shade after the sun. Some light still. Red 

rays are longest. Roygbiv Vance taught us: red, orange, yel- 


375 

low, green, blue, indigo, violet. A star I see. Venus? Can’t tell 

yet. Two. When three it’s night. Were those nightclouds there 

all the time? Looks like a phantom ship. No. Wait. Trees are 

they? An optical illusion. Mirage. Land of the setting sun 

this. Homerule sun setting in the southeast. My native land, 

goodnight. 

Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings 

on white fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big 

strong fight his way up through. Might get piles myself. Sticks 

too like a summer cold, sore on the mouth. Cut with grass 

or paper worst. Friction of the position. Like to be that rock 

she sat on. O sweet little, you don’t know how nice you 

looked. I begin to like them at that age. Green apples. Grab 

at all that offer. Suppose it’s the only time we cross legs, seated. 

Also the library today: those girl graduates. Happy chairs 

under them. But it’s the evening influence. They feel all that. 

Open like flowers, know their hours, sunflowers, Jerusalem 

artichokes, in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under the 

lamps. Nightstock in Mat Dillon’s garden where I kissed her 

shoulder. Wish I had a full length oilpainting of her then. 

June that was too I wooed. The year returns. History repeats

itself. Ye crags and peaks I’m with you once again. Life, love, 

voyage round your own little world. And now? Sad about 

her lame of course but must be on your guard not to feel too 

much pity. They take advantage. 

All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where 

we. The rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the 

plums, and I the plumstones. Where I come in. All that old 

hill has seen. Names change: that’s all. Lovers: yum yum. 

Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the 

manhood out of me, little wretch. She kissed me. Never again. 

My youth. Only once it comes. Or hers. Take the train there 

tomorrow. No. Returning not the same. Like kids your second 

visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing new under 

the sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin’s Barn. Are you not happy in 

your? Naughty darling. At Dolphin’s barn charades in Luke 

Doyle’s house. Mat Dillon and his bevy of daughters: Tiny, 

Atty, Floey, Maimy, Louy, Hetty. Molly too. Eightyseven that 

was. Year before we. And the old major, partial to his drop of 

spirits. Curious she an only child, I an only child. So it returns. 

Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest 

way round is the shortest way home. And just when he and 


376 

she. Circus horse walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. 

Rip: tear in Henny Doyle’s overcoat. Van: breadvan delivering. 

Winkle: cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van 

Winkle coming back. She leaned on the sideboard watching. 

Moorish eyes. Twenty years asleep in Sleepy Hollow. All 

changed. Forgotten. The young are old. His gun rusty from 

the dew. 

Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. 

Thinks I’m a tree, so blind. Have birds no smell? 

Metempsychosis. They believed you could be changed into 

a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes. Funny 

little beggar. Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very 

likely. Hanging by his heels in the odour of sanctity. Bell 

scared him out, I suppose. Mass seems to be over. Could 

hear them all at it. Pray for us. And pray for us. And pray for 

us. Good idea the repetition. Same thing with ads. Buy from 

us. And buy from us. Yes, there’s the light in the priest’s house. 

Their frugal meal. Remember about the mistake in the valuation 

when I was in Thom’s. Twentyeight it is. Two houses 

they have. Gabriel Conroy’s brother is curate. Ba. Again. 

Wonder why they come out at night like mice. They’re a

mixed breed. Birds are like hopping mice. What frightens 

them, light or noise? Better sit still. All instinct like the bird 

in drouth got water out of the end of a jar by throwing in 

pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with tiny hands. 

Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey 

white. Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for 

example like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob 

yellowish. Wants to stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, 

that cat this morning on the staircase. Colour of brown 

turf. Say you never see them with three colours. Not true. 

That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the City Arms with the 

letter em on her forehead. Body fifty different colours. Howth 

a while ago amethyst. Glass flashing. That’s how that wise 

man what’s his name with the burning glass. Then the heather 

goes on fire. It can’t be tourists’ matches. What? Perhaps the 

sticks dry rub together in the wind and light. Or broken 

bottles in the furze act as a burning glass in the sun. 

Archimedes. I have it! My memory’s not so bad. 

Ba. Who knows what they’re always flying for. Insects? That 

bee last week got into the room playing with his shadow on 

the ceiling. Might be the one bit me, come back to see. Birds 


377 

too. Never find out. Or what they say. Like our small talk. 

And says she and says he. Nerve they have to fly over the 

ocean and back. Lots must be killed in storms, telegraph 

wires. Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of oceangoing 

steamers floundering along in the dark, lowing out like 

seacows. Faugh a ballagh! Out of that, bloody curse to you! 

Others in vessels, bit of a handkerchief sail, pitched about 

like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do blow. Married 

too. Sometimes away for years at the ends of the earth 

somewhere. No ends really because it’s round. Wife in every 

port they say. She has a good job if she minds it till Johnny 

comes marching home again. If ever he does. Smelling the 

tail end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do. The 

anchor’s weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on 

him for luck. Well. And the tephilim no what’s this they call 

it poor papa’s father had on his door to touch. That brought 

us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage. 

Something in all those superstitions because when you go 

out never know what dangers. Hanging on to a plank or 

astride of a beam for grim life, lifebelt round him, gulping 

salt water, and that’s the last of his nibs till the sharks catch

hold of him. Do fish ever get seasick? 

Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth 

sea, placid, crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones’ locker, 

moon looking down so peaceful. Not my fault, old 

cockalorum. 

A last lonely candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar 

in search of funds for Mercer’s hospital and broke, drooping, 

and shed a cluster of violet but one white stars. They 

floated, fell: they faded. The shepherd’s hour: the hour of 

folding: hour of tryst. From house to house, giving his 

everwelcome double knock, went the nine o’clock postman, 

the glowworm’s lamp at his belt gleaming here and there 

through the laurel hedges. And among the five young trees a 

hoisted lintstock lit the lamp at Leahy’s terrace. By screens of 

lighted windows, by equal gardens a shrill voice went crying, 

wailing: Evening Telegraph, stop press edition! Result of the Gold 

Cup Race! and from the door of Dignam’s house a boy ran 

out and called. Twittering the bat flew here, flew there. Far 

out over the sands the coming surf crept, grey. Howth settled 

for slumber, tired of long days, of yumyum rhododendrons 

(he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze lift, ruffle his fell 


378 

of ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep and 

slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on Kish 

bank the anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom. 

Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same 

spot. Irish Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards 

too. Rocket and breeches buoy and lifeboat. Day we went 

out for the pleasure cruise in the Erin’s King, throwing them 

the sack of old papers. Bears in the zoo. Filthy trip. Drunkards 

out to shake up their livers. Puking overboard to feed 

the herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in their 

faces. Milly, no sign of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing. 

Don’t know what death is at that age. And then their stomachs 

clean. But being lost they fear. When we hid behind the 

tree at Crumlin. I didn’t want to. Mamma! Mamma! Babes 

in the wood. Frightening them with masks too. Throwing 

them up in the air to catch them. I’ll murder you. Is it only 

half fun? Or children playing battle. Whole earnest. How 

can people aim guns at each other. Sometimes they go off. 

Poor kids! Only troubles wildfire and nettlerash. Calomel 

purge I got her for that. After getting better asleep with Molly. 

Very same teeth she has. What do they love? Another them-

selves? But the morning she chased her with the umbrella. 

Perhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking. Little 

hand it was: now big. Dearest Papli. All that the hand says 

when you touch. Loved to count my waistcoat buttons. Her 

first stays I remember. Made me laugh to see. Little paps to 

begin with. Left one is more sensitive, I think. Mine too. 

Nearer the heart? Padding themselves out if fat is in fashion. 

Her growing pains at night, calling, wakening me. Frightened 

she was when her nature came on her first. Poor child! 

Strange moment for the mother too. Brings back her girlhood. 

Gibraltar. Looking from Buena Vista. O’Hara’s tower. 

The seabirds screaming. Old Barbary ape that gobbled all 

his family. Sundown, gunfire for the men to cross the lines. 

Looking out over the sea she told me. Evening like this, but 

clear, no clouds. I always thought I’d marry a lord or a rich 

gentleman coming with a private yacht. Buenas noches, 

señorita. El hombre ama la muchacha hermosa.. Why me? 

Because you were so foreign from the others. 

Better not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather 

makes you dull. Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go 

home. Too late for Leah, Lily of Killarney. No. Might be still 


379 

up. Call to the hospital to see. Hope she’s over. Long day I’ve 

had. Martha, the bath, funeral, house of Keyes, museum with 

those goddesses, Dedalus’ song. Then that bawler in Barney 

Kiernan’s. Got my own back there. Drunken ranters what I 

said about his God made him wince. Mistake to hit back. 

Or? No. Ought to go home and laugh at themselves. Always 

want to be swilling in company. Afraid to be alone like a 

child of two. Suppose he hit me. Look at it other way round. 

Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers 

for Israel. Three cheers for the sister-in-law he hawked about, 

three fangs in her mouth. Same style of beauty. Particularly 

nice old party for a cup of tea. The sister of the wife of the 

wild man of Borneo has just come to town. Imagine that in 

the early morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as 

Morris said when he kissed the cow. But Dignam’s put the 

boots on it. Houses of mourning so depressing because you 

never know. Anyhow she wants the money. Must call to those 

Scottish Widows as I promised. Strange name. Takes it for 

granted we’re going to pop off first. That widow on Monday 

was it outside Cramer’s that looked at me. Buried the poor 

husband but progressing favourably on the premium. Her

widow’s mite. Well? What do you expect her to do? Must 

wheedle her way along. Widower I hate to see. Looks so 

forlorn. Poor man O’Connor wife and five children poisoned 

by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless. Some good matronly 

woman in a porkpie hat to mother him. Take him in tow, 

platter face and a large apron. Ladies’ grey flannelette 

bloomers, three shillings a pair, astonishing bargain. Plain 

and loved, loved for ever, they say. Ugly: no woman thinks 

she is. Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we die. See 

him sometimes walking about trying to find out who played 

the trick. U. p: up. Fate that is. He, not me. Also a shop 

often noticed. Curse seems to dog it. Dreamt last night? Wait. 

Something confused. She had red slippers on. Turkish. Wore 

the breeches. Suppose she does? Would I like her in pyjamas? 

Damned hard to answer. Nannetti’s gone. Mailboat. Near 

Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes’s. Work Hynes 

and Crawford. Petticoats for Molly. She has something to 

put in them. What’s that? Might be money. 

Mr Bloom stooped and turned over a piece of paper on 

the strand. He brought it near his eyes and peered. Letter? 

No. Can’t read. Better go. Better. I’m tired to move. Page of 


380 

an old copybook. All those holes and pebbles. Who could 

count them? Never know what you find. Bottle with story of 

a treasure in it, thrown from a wreck. Parcels post. Children 

always want to throw things in the sea. Trust? Bread cast on 

the waters. What’s this? Bit of stick. 

O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will 

she come here tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. 

Must come back. Murderers do. Will I? 

Mr Bloom with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his 

foot. Write a message for her. Might remain. What? 

I. 

Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed 

away. Tide comes here. Saw a pool near her foot. Bend, see 

my face there, dark mirror, breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks 

with lines and scars and letters. O, those transparent! Besides 

they don’t know. What is the meaning of that other 

world. I called you naughty boy because I do not like. 

AM. A. 

No room. Let it go. 

Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless 

thing sand. Nothing grows in it. All fades. No fear of big

vessels coming up here. Except Guinness’s barges. Round 

the Kish in eighty days. Done half by design. 

He flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, 

stuck. Now if you were trying to do that for a week on end 

you couldn’t. Chance. We’ll never meet again. But it was 

lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made me feel so young. 

Short snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool 

boat long gone.. Not even the smoke. And she can do the 

other. Did too. And Belfast. I won’t go. Race there, race back 

to Ennis. Let him. Just close my eyes a moment. Won’t sleep, 

though. Half dream. It never comes the same. Bat again. No 

harm in him. Just a few. 

O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle 

made me do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she 

him half past the bed met him pike hoses frillies for Raoul 

de perfume your wife black hair heave under embon señorita 

young eyes Mulvey plump bubs me breadvan Winkle red 

slippers she rusty sleep wander years of dreams return tail 

end Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers 

return next in her next her next. 

A bat flew. Here. There. Here. Far in the grey a bell chimed. 


381 

Mr Bloom with open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, 

leaned, breathed. Just for a few 

Cuckoo 

Cuckoo 

Cuckoo. 

The clock on the mantelpiece in the priest’s house cooed 

where Canon O’Hanlon and Father Conroy and the reverend 

John Hughes S. J. were taking tea and sodabread and 

butter and fried mutton chops with catsup and talking about 

Cuckoo 

Cuckoo 

Cuckoo. 

Because it was a little canarybird that came out of its little 

house to tell the time that Gerty MacDowell noticed the 

time she was there because she was as quick as anything about 

a thing like that, was Gerty MacDowell, and she noticed at 

once that that foreign gentleman that was sitting on the rocks

looking was 

Cuckoo 

Cuckoo 

Cuckoo. 


382 

DESHIL HOLLES EAMUS. DESHIL HOLLES EAMUS. DESHIL HOLLES 

Eamus. 

Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and 

wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening 

and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, 

Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. 

Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa 

boyaboy hoopsa! 

Universally that person’s acumen is esteemed very little perceptive 

concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most 

profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied 

who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite 

and certainly by reason of that in them high mind’s ornament 

deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by 

general consent they affirm that other circumstances being 

equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation

more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far 

forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for 

that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it 

be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain 

sign of omnipotent nature’s incorrupted benefaction. For who 

is there who anything of some significance has apprehended 

but is conscious that that exterior splendour may be the surface 

of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on the contrary 

anyone so is there unilluminated as not to perceive that 

as no nature’s boon can contend against the bounty of increase 

so it behoves every most just citizen to become the 

exhortator and admonisher of his semblables and to tremble 

lest what had in the past been by the nation excellently commenced 

might be in the future not with similar excellence 

accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have gradually traduced 

the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to 

that thither of profundity that that one was audacious excessively 

who would have the hardihood to rise affirming that 

no more odious offence can for anyone be than to oblivious 

neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and 

promise which on all mortals with prophecy of abundance 


383 

or with diminution’s menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating 

function ever irrevocably enjoined? 

It is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians 

relate, among the Celts, who nothing that was not in 

its nature admirable admired, the art of medicine shall have 

been highly honoured. Not to speak of hostels, leperyards, 

sweating chambers, plaguegraves, their greatest doctors, the 

O’Shiels, the O’Hickeys, the O’Lees, have sedulously set 

down the divers methods by which the sick and the relapsed 

found again health whether the malady had been the trembling 

withering or loose boyconnell flux. Certainly in every 

public work which in it anything of gravity contains preparation 

should be with importance commensurate and therefore 

a plan was by them adopted (whether by having 

preconsidered or as the maturation of experience it is difficult 

in being said which the discrepant opinions of subsequent 

inquirers are not up to the present congrued to render 

manifest) whereby maternity was so far from all accident 

possibility removed that whatever care the patient in that all 

hardest of woman hour chiefly required and not solely for 

the copiously opulent but also for her who not being suffi-

ciently moneyed scarcely and often not even scarcely could 

subsist valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was 

provided. 

To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway 

able to be molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except 

with proliferent mothers prosperity at all not to can be 

and as they had received eternity gods mortals generation to 

befit them her beholding, when the case was so hoving itself, 

parturient in vehicle thereward carrying desire immense 

among all one another was impelling on of her to be received 

into that domicile. O thing of prudent nation not 

merely in being seen but also even in being related worthy of 

being praised that they her by anticipation went seeing 

mother, that she by them suddenly to be about to be cherished 

had been begun she felt! 

Before born bliss babe had. Within womb won he worship. 

Whatever in that one case done commodiously done 

was. A couch by midwives attended with wholesome food 

reposeful, cleanest swaddles as though forthbringing were 

now done and by wise foresight set: but to this no less of 

what drugs there is need and surgical implements which are 


384 

pertaining to her case not omitting aspect of all very distracting 

spectacles in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb 

offered together with images, divine and human, the cogitation 

of which by sejunct females is to tumescence conducive 

or eases issue in the high sunbright wellbuilt fair home of 

mothers when, ostensibly far gone and reproductitive, it is 

come by her thereto to lie in, her term up. 

Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night’s 

oncoming. Of Israel’s folk was that man that on earth wandering 

far had fared. Stark ruth of man his errand that him 

lone led till that house. 

Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he 

there teeming mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and 

bring forth bairns hale so God’s angel to Mary quoth. Watchers 

tway there walk, white sisters in ward sleepless. Smarts 

they still, sickness soothing: in twelve moons thrice an hundred. 

Truest bedthanes they twain are, for Horne holding 

wariest ward. 

In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man 

mildhearted eft rising with swire ywimpled to him her gate 

wide undid. Lo, levin leaping lightens in eyeblink Ireland’s

westward welkin. Full she drad that God the Wreaker all 

mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ’s 

rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would 

rathe infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting 

worthful went in Horne’s house. 

Loth to irk in Horne’s hall hat holding the seeker stood. 

On her stow he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome 

daughter that then over land and seafloor nine years had 

long outwandered. Once her in townhithe meeting he to 

her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now he craved with 

good ground of her allowed that that of him swiftseen face, 

hers, so young then had looked. Light swift her eyes kindled, 

bloom of blushes his word winning. 

As her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she 

feared. Glad after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked 

if O’Hare Doctor tidings sent from far coast and she with 

grameful sigh him answered that O’Hare Doctor in heaven 

was. Sad was the man that word to hear that him so heavied 

in bowels ruthful. All she there told him, ruing death for 

friend so young, algate sore unwilling God’s rightwiseness to 

withsay. She said that he had a fair sweet death through God 


385 

His goodness with masspriest to be shriven, holy housel and 

sick men’s oil to his limbs. The man then right earnest asked 

the nun of which death the dead man was died and the nun 

answered him and said that he was died in Mona Island 

through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and 

she prayed to God the Allruthful to have his dear soul in his 

undeathliness. He heard her sad words, in held hat sad staring. 

So stood they there both awhile in wanhope sorrowing 

one with other. 

Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death 

and the dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman 

for as he came naked forth from his mother’s womb so naked 

shall he wend him at the last for to go as he came. 

The man that was come in to the house then spoke to the 

nursingwoman and he asked her how it fared with the woman 

that lay there in childbed. The nursingwoman answered him 

and said that that woman was in throes now full three days 

and that it would be a hard birth unneth to bear but that 

now in a little it would be. She said thereto that she had seen 

many births of women but never was none so hard as was 

that woman’s birth. Then she set it all forth to him for be-

cause she knew the man that time was had lived nigh that 

house. The man hearkened to her words for he felt with 

wonder women’s woe in the travail that they have of motherhood 

and he wondered to look on her face that was a fair 

face for any man to see but yet was she left after long years a 

handmaid. Nine twelve bloodflows chiding her childless. 

And whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened 

and there nighed them a mickle noise as of many that sat 

there at meat. And there came against the place as they stood 

a young learningknight yclept Dixon. And the traveller 

Leopold was couth to him sithen it had happed that they 

had had ado each with other in the house of misericord where 

this learningknight lay by cause the traveller Leopold came 

there to be healed for he was sore wounded in his breast by a 

spear wherewith a horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten 

him for which he did do make a salve of volatile salt and 

chrism as much as he might suffice. And he said now that he 

should go in to that castle for to make merry with them that 

were there. And the traveller Leopold said that he should go 

otherwhither for he was a man of cautels and a subtile. Also 

the lady was of his avis and repreved the learningknight 


386 

though she trowed well that the traveller had said thing that 

was false for his subtility. But the learningknight would not 

hear say nay nor do her mandement ne have him in aught 

contrarious to his list and he said how it was a marvellous 

castle. And the traveller Leopold went into the castle for to 

rest him for a space being sore of limb after many marches 

environing in divers lands and sometime venery. 

And in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood 

of Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that 

country but they durst not move more for enchantment. 

And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are 

made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white 

flames that they fix then in the horns of buffalos and stags 

that there abound marvellously. And there were vessels that 

are wrought by magic of Mahound out of seasand and the 

air by a warlock with his breath that he blases in to them like 

to bubbles. And full fair cheer and rich was on the board 

that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. And there was a 

vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay 

strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie 

that this be possible thing without they see it natheless they

are so. And these fishes lie in an oily water brought there 

from Portugal land because of the fatness that therein is like 

to the juices of the olivepress. And also it was a marvel to see 

in that castle how by magic they make a compost out of 

fecund wheatkidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of certain 

angry spirits that they do in to it swells up wondrously like 

to a vast mountain. And they teach the serpents there to 

entwine themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and 

of the scales of these serpents they brew out a brewage like to 

mead. 

And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a 

draught and halp thereto the while all they that were there 

drank every each. And childe Leopold did up his beaver for 

to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat in amity for he 

never drank no manner of mead which he then put by and 

anon full privily he voided the more part in his neighbour 

glass and his neighbour nist not of this wile. And he sat down 

in that castle with them for to rest him there awhile. Thanked 

be Almighty God. 

This meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and 

begged them at the reverence of Jesu our alther liege Lord to 


387 

leave their wassailing for there was above one quick with 

child, a gentle dame, whose time hied fast. Sir Leopold heard 

on the upfloor cry on high and he wondered what cry that it 

was whether of child or woman and I marvel, said he, that it 

be not come or now. Meseems it dureth overlong. And he 

was ware and saw a franklin that hight Lenehan on that side 

the table that was older than any of the tother and for that 

they both were knights virtuous in the one emprise and eke 

by cause that he was elder he spoke to him full gently. But, 

said he, or it be long too she will bring forth by God His 

bounty and have joy of her childing for she hath waited 

marvellous long. And the franklin that had drunken said, 

Expecting each moment to be her next. Also he took the cup 

that stood tofore him for him needed never none asking nor 

desiring of him to drink and, Now drink, said he, fully delectably, 

and he quaffed as far as he might to their both’s 

health for he was a passing good man of his lustiness. And 

sir Leopold that was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars’ 

hall and that was the meekest man and the kindest that 

ever laid husbandly hand under hen and that was the very 

truest knight of the world one that ever did minion service

to lady gentle pledged him courtly in the cup. Woman’s woe 

with wonder pondering. 

Now let us speak of that fellowship that was there to the 

intent to be drunken an they might. There was a sort of 

scholars along either side the board, that is to wit, Dixon 

yclept junior of saint Mary Merciable’s with other his fellows 

Lynch and Madden, scholars of medicine, and the franklin 

that hight Lenehan and one from Alba Longa, one Crotthers, 

and young Stephen that had mien of a frere that was at head 

of the board and Costello that men clepen Punch Costello 

all long of a mastery of him erewhile gested (and of all them, 

reserved young Stephen, he was the most drunken that demanded 

still of more mead) and beside the meek sir Leopold. 

But on young Malachi they waited for that he promised to 

have come and such as intended to no goodness said how he 

had broke his avow. And sir Leopold sat with them for he 

bore fast friendship to sir Simon and to this his son young 

Stephen and for that his languor becalmed him there after 

longest wanderings insomuch as they feasted him for that 

time in the honourablest manner. Ruth red him, love led on 

with will to wander, loth to leave. 


388 

For they were right witty scholars. And he heard their 

aresouns each gen other as touching birth and righteousness, 

young Madden maintaining that put such case it were 

hard the wife to die (for so it had fallen out a matter of some 

year agone with a woman of Eblana in Horne’s house that 

now was trespassed out of this world and the self night next 

before her death all leeches and pothecaries had taken counsel 

of her case). And they said farther she should live because 

in the beginning, they said, the woman should bring forth 

in pain and wherefore they that were of this imagination 

affirmed how young Madden had said truth for he had conscience 

to let her die. And not few and of these was young 

Lynch were in doubt that the world was now right evil governed 

as it was never other howbeit the mean people believed 

it otherwise but the law nor his judges did provide no 

remedy. A redress God grant. This was scant said but all cried 

with one acclaim nay, by our Virgin Mother, the wife should 

live and the babe to die. In colour whereof they waxed hot 

upon that head what with argument and what for their drinking 

but the franklin Lenehan was prompt each when to pour 

them ale so that at the least way mirth might not lack. Then

young Madden showed all the whole affair and said how 

that she was dead and how for holy religion sake by rede of 

palmer and bedesman and for a vow he had made to Saint 

Ultan of Arbraccan her goodman husband would not let her 

death whereby they were all wondrous grieved. To whom 

young Stephen had these words following: Murmur, sirs, is 

eke oft among lay folk. Both babe and parent now glorify 

their Maker, the one in limbo gloom, the other in purgefire. 

But, gramercy, what of those Godpossibled souls that we 

nightly impossibilise, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost, 

Very God, Lord and Giver of Life? For, sirs, he said, our lust 

is brief. We are means to those small creatures within us and 

nature has other ends than we. Then said Dixon junior to 

Punch Costello wist he what ends. But he had overmuch 

drunken and the best word he could have of him was that he 

would ever dishonest a woman whoso she were or wife or 

maid or leman if it so fortuned him to be delivered of his 

spleen of lustihead. Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang 

young Malachi’s praise of that beast the unicorn how once 

in the millennium he cometh by his horn, the other all this 

while, pricked forward with their jibes wherewith they did 


389 

malice him, witnessing all and several by saint Foutinus his 

engines that he was able to do any manner of thing that lay 

in man to do. Thereat laughed they all right jocundly only 

young Stephen and sir Leopold which never durst laugh too 

open by reason of a strange humour which he would not 

bewray and also for that he rued for her that bare whoso she 

might be or wheresoever. Then spake young Stephen orgulous 

of mother Church that would cast him out of her bosom, of 

law of canons, of Lilith, patron of abortions, of bigness 

wrought by wind of seeds of brightness or by potency of 

vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius saith, by the influence 

of the occident or by the reek of moonflower or an she 

lie with a woman which her man has but lain with, effectu 

secuto, or peradventure in her bath according to the opinions 

of Averroes and Moses Maimonides. He said also how at the 

end of the second month a human soul was infused and how 

in all our holy mother foldeth ever souls for God’s greater 

glory whereas that earthly mother which was but a dam to 

bear beastly should die by canon for so saith he that holdeth 

the fisherman’s seal, even that blessed Peter on which rock 

was holy church for all ages founded. All they bachelors then

asked of sir Leopold would he in like case so jeopard her 

person as risk life to save life. A wariness of mind he would 

answer as fitted all and, laying hand to jaw, he said dissembling, 

as his wont was, that as it was informed him, who had 

ever loved the art of physic as might a layman, and agreeing 

also with his experience of so seldomseen an accident it was 

good for that mother Church belike at one blow had birth 

and death pence and in such sort deliverly he scaped their 

questions. That is truth, pardy, said Dixon, and, or I err, a 

pregnant word. Which hearing young Stephen was a marvellous 

glad man and he averred that he who stealeth from 

the poor lendeth to the Lord for he was of a wild manner 

when he was drunken and that he was now in that taking it 

appeared eftsoons. 

But sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word by cause 

he still had pity of the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women 

in their labour and as he was minded of his good lady Marion 

that had borne him an only manchild which on his eleventh 

day on live had died and no man of art could save so dark is 

destiny. And she was wondrous stricken of heart for that evil 

hap and for his burial did him on a fair corselet of lamb’s 


390 

wool, the flower of the flock, lest he might perish utterly and 

lie akeled (for it was then about the midst of the winter) and 

now Sir Leopold that had of his body no manchild for an 

heir looked upon him his friend’s son and was shut up in 

sorrow for his forepassed happiness and as sad as he was that 

him failed a son of such gentle courage (for all accounted 

him of real parts) so grieved he also in no less measure for 

young Stephen for that he lived riotously with those wastrels 

and murdered his goods with whores. 

About that present time young Stephen filled all cups that 

stood empty so as there remained but little mo if the 

prudenter had not shadowed their approach from him that 

still plied it very busily who, praying for the intentions of 

the sovereign pontiff, he gave them for a pledge the vicar of 

Christ which also as he said is vicar of Bray. Now drink we, 

quod he, of this mazer and quaff ye this mead which is not 

indeed parcel of my body but my soul’s bodiment. Leave ye 

fraction of bread to them that live by bread alone. Be not 

afeard neither for any want for this will comfort more than 

the other will dismay. See ye here. And he showed them glistering 

coins of the tribute and goldsmith notes the worth of

two pound nineteen shilling that he had, he said, for a song 

which he writ. They all admired to see the foresaid riches in 

such dearth of money as was herebefore. His words were 

then these as followeth: Know all men, he said, time’s ruins 

build eternity’s mansions. What means this? Desire’s wind 

blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush 

to be a rose upon the rood of time. Mark me now. In woman’s 

womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all 

flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. 

This is the postcreation. Omnis caro ad te veniet. No question 

but her name is puissant who aventried the dear corse 

of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our mighty mother and 

mother most venerable and Bernardus saith aptly that She 

hath an omnipotentiam deiparae supplicem, that is to wit, an 

almightiness of petition because she is the second Eve and 

she won us, saith Augustine too, whereas that other, our grandam, 

which we are linked up with by successive anastomosis 

of navelcords sold us all, seed, breed and generation, for a 

penny pippin. But here is the matter now. Or she knew him, 

that second I say, and was but creature of her creature, vergine 

madre, figlia di tuo figlio, or she knew him not and then 


391 

stands she in the one denial or ignorancy with Peter Piscator 

who lives in the house that Jack built and with Joseph the 

joiner patron of the happy demise of all unhappy marriages, 

parce que M. Léo Taxil nous a dit que pui l’avait mise dans cete 

fichue position c’était le sacré pigeon, ventre de Dieu! Entweder 

transubstantiality oder consubstantiality but in no case 

subsubstantiality. And all cried out upon it for a very scurvy 

word. A pregnancy without joy, he said, a birth without pangs, 

a body without blemish, a belly without bigness. Let the 

lewd with faith and fervour worship. With will will we withstand, 

withsay. 

Hereupon Punch Costello dinged with his fist upon the 

board and would sing a bawdy catch Staboo Stabella about a 

wench that was put in pod of a jolly swashbuckler in Almany 

which he did straightways now attack: The first three months 

she was not well, Staboo, when here nurse Quigley from the 

door angerly bid them hist ye should shame you nor was it 

not meet as she remembered them being her mind was to 

have all orderly against lord Andrew came for because she 

was jealous that no gasteful turmoil might shorten the honour 

of her guard. It was an ancient and a sad matron of a sedate

look and christian walking, in habit dun beseeming her megrims 

and wrinkled visage, nor did her hortative want of it 

effect for incontinently Punch Costello was of them all 

embraided and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness 

some and shaked him with menace of blandishments others 

whiles they all chode with him, a murrain seize the dolt, 

what a devil he would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got 

in peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, thou spawn of a 

rebel, thou dykedropt, thou abortion thou, to shut up his 

drunken drool out of that like a curse of God ape, the good 

sir Leopold that had for his cognisance the flower of quiet, 

margerain gentle, advising also the time’s occasion as most 

sacred and most worthy to be most sacred. In Horne’s house 

rest should reign. 

To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon 

of Mary in Eccles, goodly grinning, asked young Stephen 

what was the reason why he had not cided to take friar’s 

vows and he answered him obedience in the womb, chastity 

in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his days. Master 

Lenehan at this made return that he had heard of those nefarious 

deeds and how, as he heard hereof counted, he had 


392 

besmirched the lily virtue of a confiding female which was 

corruption of minors and they all intershowed it too, waxing 

merry and toasting to his fathership. But he said very 

entirely it was clean contrary to their suppose for he was the 

eternal son and ever virgin. Thereat mirth grew in them the 

more and they rehearsed to him his curious rite of wedlock 

for the disrobing and deflowering of spouses, as the priests 

use in Madagascar island, she to be in guise of white and 

saffron, her groom in white and grain, with burning of nard 

and tapers, on a bridebed while clerks sung kyries and the 

anthem Ut novetur sexus omnis corporis mysterium till she was 

there unmaided. He gave them then a much admirable hymen 

minim by those delicate poets Master John Fletcher 

and Master Francis Beaumont that is in their Maid’s Tragedy 

that was writ for a like twining of lovers: To bed, to bed was 

the burden of it to be played with accompanable concent 

upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most 

mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous 

flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the 

quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. Well met 

they were, said Master Dixon, joyed, but, harkee, young sir,

etter were they named Beau Mount and Lecher for, by my 

troth, of such a mingling much might come. Young Stephen 

said indeed to his best remembrance they had but the one 

doxy between them and she of the stews to make shift with 

in delights amorous for life ran very high in those days and 

the custom of the country approved with it. Greater love 

than this, he said, no man hath that a man lay down his wife 

for his friend. Go thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to 

that effect, saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of 

French letters to the university of Oxtail nor breathed there 

ever that man to whom mankind was more beholden. Bring 

a stranger within thy tower it will go hard but thou wilt have 

the secondbest bed. Orate, fratres, pro memetipso. And all the 

people shall say, Amen. Remember, Erin, thy generations 

and thy days of old, how thou settedst little by me and by 

my word and broughtedst in a stranger to my gates to commit 

fornication in my sight and to wax fat and kick like 

Jeshurum. Therefore hast thou sinned against my light and 

hast made me, thy lord, to be the slave of servants. Return, 

return, Clan Milly: forget me not, O Milesian. Why hast 

thou done this abomination before me that thou didst spurn 


393 

me for a merchant of jalaps and didst deny me to the Roman 

and to the Indian of dark speech with whom thy daughters 

did lie luxuriously? Look forth now, my people, upon the 

land of behest, even from Horeb and from Nebo and from 

Pisgah and from the Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing 

with milk and money. But thou hast suckled me with a bitter 

milk: my moon and my sun thou hast quenched for ever. 

And thou hast left me alone for ever in the dark ways of my 

bitterness: and with a kiss of ashes hast thou kissed my mouth. 

This tenebrosity of the interior, he proceeded to say, hath 

not been illumined by the wit of the septuagint nor so much 

as mentioned for the Orient from on high Which brake hell’s 

gates visited a darkness that was foraneous. Assuefaction 

minorates atrocities (as Tully saith of his darling Stoics) and 

Hamlet his father showeth the prince no blister of combustion. 

The adiaphane in the noon of life is an Egypt’s plague 

which in the nights of prenativity and postmortemity is their 

most proper ubi and quomodo. And as the ends and ultimates 

of all things accord in some mean and measure with 

their inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance 

which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing

y a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation 

towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it 

with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: 

we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over 

us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among 

bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a 

mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of 

the hillcat and the ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity 

of his tumulus nor to what processes we shall thereby be 

ushered nor whether to Tophet or to Edenville in the like 

way is all hidden when we would backward see from what 

region of remoteness the whatness of our whoness hath 

fetched his whenceness. 

Thereto Punch Costello roared out mainly Etienne chanson 

but he loudly bid them, lo, wisdom hath built herself a 

house, this vast majestic longstablished vault, the crystal palace 

of the Creator, all in applepie order, a penny for him 

who finds the pea. 

Behold the mansion reared by dedal Jack 

See the malt stored in many a refluent sack, 

In the proud cirque of Jackjohn’s bivouac. 


394 

A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. 

Loud on left Thor thundered: in anger awful the 

hammerhurler. Came now the storm that hist his heart. And 

Master Lynch bade him have a care to flout and witwanton 

as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry. 

And he that had erst challenged to be so doughty waxed wan 

as they might all mark and shrank together and his pitch 

that was before so haught uplift was now of a sudden quite 

plucked down and his heart shook within the cage of his 

breast as he tasted the rumour of that storm. Then did some 

mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard again to 

his yale which Master Lenehan vowed he would do after and 

he was indeed but a word and a blow on any the least colour. 

But the braggart boaster cried that an old Nobodaddy was in 

his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he would not lag 

behind his lead. But this was only to dye his desperation as 

cowed he crouched in Horne’s hall. He drank indeed at one 

draught to pluck up a heart of any grace for it thundered 

long rumblingly over all the heavens so that Master Madden, 

being godly certain whiles, knocked him on his ribs

upon that crack of doom and Master Bloom, at the braggart’s 

side, spoke to him calming words to slumber his great fear, 

advertising how it was no other thing but a hubbub noise 

that he heard, the discharge of fluid from the thunderhead, 

look you, having taken place, and all of the order of a natural 

phenomenon. 

But was young Boasthard’s fear vanquished by Calmer’s 

words? No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness 

which could not by words be done away. And was he 

then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other? He 

was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But 

could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his 

youth the bottle Holiness that then he lived withal? Indeed 

no for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard he then 

in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer 

said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why, he could not 

but hear unless he had plugged him up the tube Understanding 

(which he had not done). For through that tube he saw 

that he was in the land of Phenomenon where he must for a 

certain one day die as he was like the rest too a passing show. 

And would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away? 


395 

By no means would he though he must nor would he make 

more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon 

has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then 

wotted he nought of that other land which is called Believeon-Me, 

that is the land of promise which behoves to the 

king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death 

and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall 

come as many as believe on it? Yes, Pious had told him of 

that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the 

reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of 

an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird-in-the- 

Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path 

by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, 

turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she 

lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which 

is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal 

Concupiscence. 

This was it what all that company that sat there at commons 

in Manse of Mothers the most lusted after and if they 

met with this whore Bird-in-the-Hand (which was within 

all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil) they would

strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For 

regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but 

notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first, 

Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest 

grot and in it were four pillows on which were four 

tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and 

Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, 

for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not 

for them for Preservative had given them a stout shield of 

oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither 

from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this 

same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in 

their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr 

Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young 

Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched 

company, were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the 

god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently 

lift his arm up and spill their souls for their abuses and their 

spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth 

to bring brenningly biddeth. 

So Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Dignam laid in clay of 


396 

an apoplexy and after hard drought, please God, rained, a 

bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with 

turf saying the seed won’t sprout, fields athirst, very 

sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too. Hard 

to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without 

sprinkle this long while back as no man remembered to be 

without. The rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs 

and on the hills nought but dry flag and faggots that would 

catch at first fire. All the world saying, for aught they knew, 

the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the land 

so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and 

by, as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in 

the west, biggish swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased 

and the weatherwise poring up at them and some 

sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the clock, one 

great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes all 

scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the 

men making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, 

womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the 

pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke’s lawn, thence 

through Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water

flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair or coach 

or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first. Over 

against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon’s door (that is to 

sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the college lands) Mal. 

Mulligan a gentleman’s gentleman that had but come from 

Mr Moore’s the writer’s (that was a papish but is now, folk 

say, a good Williamite) chanced against Alec. Bannon in a 

cut bob (which are now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green) 

that was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage 

where his coz and Mal M’s brother will stay a month yet till 

Saint Swithin and asks what in the earth he does there, he 

bound home and he to Andrew Horne’s being stayed for to 

crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish 

heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel, and all this 

while poured with rain and so both together on to Horne’s. 

There Leop. Bloom of Crawford’s journal sitting snug with 

a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon jun., scholar 

of my lady of Mercy’s, Vin. Lynch, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden, 

T. Lenehan, very sad about a racer he fancied and 

Stephen D. Leop. Bloom there for a languor he had but was 

now better, be having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his 


397 

dame Mrs Moll with red slippers on in a pair of Turkey trunks 

which is thought by those in ken to be for a change and 

Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading her belly, 

and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term, 

the midwives sore put to it and can’t deliver, she queasy for a 

bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and 

her breath very heavy more than good and should be a 

bullyboy from the knocks, they say, but God give her soon 

issue. ’Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear, and Lady day bit off 

her last chick’s nails that was then a twelvemonth and with 

other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand 

in the king’s bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but 

takes the sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a 

pair of his boys off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound 

with a heavybraked reel or in a punt he has trailing for flounder 

and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear. In sum an 

infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much 

increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and water 

fire shall come for a prognostication of Malachi’s almanac 

(and I hear that Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of 

the same gist out of the Hindustanish for his farmer’s ga-

zette) to have three things in all but this a mere fetch without 

bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet sometimes 

they are found in the right guess with their queerities 

no telling how. 

With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say 

how the letter was in that night’s gazette and he made a show 

to find it about him (for he swore with an oath that he had 

been at pains about it) but on Stephen’s persuasion he gave 

over the search and was bidden to sit near by which he did 

mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman that went 

for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of 

women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the 

truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered 

about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, 

ostlers, bookies, Paul’s men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, 

ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a 

chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad 

day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much 

loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a boilingcook’s and if 

he had but gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a 

platter of tripes with a bare tester in his purse he could al- 


398 

ways bring himself off with his tongue, some randy quip he 

had from a punk or whatnot that every mother’s son of them 

would burst their sides. The other, Costello that is, hearing 

this talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he says, 

Frank (that was his name), ’tis all about Kerry cows that are 

to be butchered along of the plague. But they can go hang, 

says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it. 

There’s as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very 

friendly he offered to take of some salty sprats that stood by 

which he had eyed wishly in the meantime and found the 

place which was indeed the chief design of his embassy as he 

was sharpset. Mort aux vaches, says Frank then in the French 

language that had been indentured to a brandyshipper that 

has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a 

gentleman too. From a child this Frank had been a donought 

that his father, a headborough, who could ill keep him to 

school to learn his letters and the use of the globes, matriculated 

at the university to study the mechanics but he took 

the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was more familiar 

with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his 

volumes. One time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or

a welsher, then nought would keep him from the bearpit 

and the cocking main, then he was for the ocean sea or to 

hoof it on the roads with the romany folk, kidnapping a 

squire’s heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids’ linen 

or choking chicken behind a hedge. He had been off as many 

times as a cat has lives and back again with naked pockets as 

many more to his father the headborough who shed a pint 

of tears as often as he saw him. What, says Mr Leopold with 

his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift of it, will 

they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this day morning 

going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe ’tis 

so bad, says he. And he had experience of the like brood 

beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wool, having 

been some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a 

worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock and 

meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low’s yard in Prussia 

street. I question with you there, says he. More like ’tis the 

hoose or the timber tongue. Mr Stephen, a little moved but 

very handsomely told him no such matter and that he had 

dispatches from the emperor’s chief tailtickler thanking him 

for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, 


399 

the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or 

two of physic to take the bull by the horns. Come, come, 

says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. He’ll find himself on the 

horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull that’s Irish, says 

he. Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr Stephen, and 

he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an English 

chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same 

bull that was sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest 

cattlebreeder of them all, with an emerald ring in his 

nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent cross the table, and a 

bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper and a portlier 

bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns galore, 

a coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming 

out of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving 

doughballs and rollingpins, followed after him hanging 

his bulliness in daisychains. What for that, says Mr Dixon, 

but before he came over farmer Nicholas that was a eunuch 

had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who were 

no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all 

my cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer’s 

blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly.

But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr 

Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of 

the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day 

affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper 

in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the 

nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping 

young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another 

then put in his word: And they dressed him, says he, in a 

point shift and petticoat with a tippet and girdle and ruffles 

on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all 

over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every 

turn of the road with a gold manger in each full of the best 

hay in the market so that he could doss and dung to his 

heart’s content. By this time the father of the faithful (for so 

they called him) was grown so heavy that he could scarce 

walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and 

damsels brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as 

soon as his belly was full he would rear up on his hind uarters 

to show their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of 

him in bulls’ language and they all after him. Ay, says another, 

and so pampered was he that he would suffer nought 


400 

to grow in all the land but green grass for himself (for that 

was the only colour to his mind) and there was a board put 

up on a hillock in the middle of the island with a printed 

notice, saying: By the Lord Harry, Green is the grass that 

grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got 

scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of 

Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as 

much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he’d 

run amok over half the countryside rooting up with his horns 

whatever was planted and all by lord Harry’s orders. There 

was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and 

the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in 

the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in 

his house and I’ll meddle in his matters, says he. I’ll make 

that animal smell hell, says he, with the help of that good 

pizzle my father left me. But one evening, says Mr Dixon, 

when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to 

dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself 

but the first rule of the course was that the others were to 

row with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful 

likeness to a bull and on picking up a blackthumbed chap-

ook that he kept in the pantry he found sure enough that 

he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion 

bull of the Romans, Bos Bovum, which is good bog Latin for 

boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry 

put his head into a cow’s drinkingtrough in the presence of 

all his courtiers and pulling it out again told them all his new 

name. Then, with the water running off him, he got into an 

old smock and skirt that had belonged to his grandmother 

and bought a grammar of the bulls’ language to study but he 

could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun 

which he copied out big and got off by heart and if 

ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk 

to write it upon what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a 

teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he 

and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse 

and a shirt. They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was 

that the men of the island seeing no help was toward, as the 

ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, 

loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, 

set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved 

to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head between 


401 

wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up 

the jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, 

pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover the 

main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, 

of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty: 

—Pope Peter’s but a pissabed. 

A man’s a man for a’ that. 

Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared 

in the doorway as the students were finishing their 

apologue accompanied with a friend whom he had just 

rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon, 

who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a 

colour or a cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr 

Mulligan was civil enough to express some relish of it all the 

more as it jumped with a project of his own for the cure of 

the very evil that had been touched on. Whereat he handed 

round to the company a set of pasteboard cards which he 

had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell’s bearing a legend 

printed in fair italics: Mr Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and

Incubator. Lambay Island. His project, as he went on to expound, 

was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures 

such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and 

sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the 

noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. 

Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I 

make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, 

both. ’Tis as cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted 

of the invitation and, expatiating upon his design, told his 

hearers that he had been led into this thought by a consideration 

of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the 

prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to 

conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well 

as whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital 

or from proclivities acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he 

said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: 

and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, 

a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau 

under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly 

bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin 

when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrific- 


402 

ing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty 

fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made 

his heart weep. To curb this inconvenient (which he concluded 

due to a suppression of latent heat), having advised 

with certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this 

matter, he had resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the 

freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot de 

Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour with 

our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a national 

fertilising farm to be named Omphalos with an obelisk hewn 

and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful 

yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what 

grade of life soever who should there direct to him with the 

desire of fulfilling the functions of her natural. Money was 

no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for his pains. 

The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of 

fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were 

warm persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their 

man. For his nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself 

exclusively upon a diet of savoury tubercles and fish and 

coneys there, the flesh of these latter prolific rodents being

highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled and stewed 

with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies. 

After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of 

asseveration Mr Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a 

kerchief with which he had shielded it. They both, it seems, 

had been overtaken by the rain and for all their mending 

their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr 

Mulligan’s smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now 

somewhat piebald. His project meanwhile was very 

favourably entertained by his auditors and won hearty eulogies 

from all though Mr Dixon of Mary’s excepted to it, asking 

with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to 

Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made court to the scholarly 

by an apt quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt 

upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support 

of his contention: Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, 

O quirites, ut matresfamiliarum nostræ lascivas cujuslibet 

semiviri libici titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis 

erectionibus centurionum romanorum magnopere anteponunt, 

while for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies 

of the animal kingdom more suitable to their stomach, 


403 

the buck and doe of the forest glade, the farmyard drake and 

duck. 

Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed 

a proper man of person, this talkative now applied himself 

to his dress with animadversions of some heat upon the 

sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while the company lavished 

their encomiums upon the project he had advanced. 

The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a 

passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it 

his nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, 

asked for whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the 

stranger, he made him a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you 

in need of any professional assistance we could give? Who, 

upon his offer, thanked him very heartily, though preserving 

his proper distance, and replied that he was come there about 

a lady, now an inmate of Horne’s house, that was in an interesting 

condition, poor body, from woman’s woe (and here 

he fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet 

taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of 

Mr Mulligan himself whether his incipient ventripotence, 

upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic gesta-

tion in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as 

with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in 

the stomach. For answer Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter 

at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, 

exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan 

(the most excellent creature of her sex though ’tis pity she’s a 

trollop): There’s a belly that never bore a bastard. This was 

so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and 

threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of 

delight. The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry 

but for some larum in the antechamber. 

Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, 

a little fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in 

the liveliest fashion with the young gentleman and, interrupting 

the narrative at a salient point, having desired his 

visavis with a polite beck to have the obligingness to pass 

him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a questioning 

poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding 

had not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an 

equivalent but contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator 

as plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat 


404 

him with a cup of it. Mais bien sur, noble stranger, said he 

cheerily, et mille compliments. That you may and very opportunely. 

There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity. 

But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my 

wallet and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would 

accept of them and find it in my heart to kneel down upon 

the ground and give thanks to the powers above for the happiness 

vouchsafed me by the Giver of good things. With 

these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a complacent 

draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening 

his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, 

that very picture which he had cherished ever since her hand 

had wrote therein. Gazing upon those features with a world 

of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld 

her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her 

dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday 

as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting 

a tenderness, ‘pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, 

had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself 

wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field 

for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in all my life. God,

I thank thee, as the Author of my days! Thrice happy will he 

be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A 

sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having 

replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed 

again. Beneficent Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, 

how great and universal must be that sweetest of Thy 

tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the 

simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the heyday 

of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. 

But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and 

imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed 

in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered 

me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. 

Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither 

of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping 

hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand 

thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur 

Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of 

the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! 

cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, 

that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half 


405 

bottle avec lui in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my 

authority that in Cape Horn, ventre biche, they have a rain 

that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching 

of that violence, he tells me, sans blague, has sent more 

than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another 

world. Pooh! A livre! cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things 

are dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a 

fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of 

any wit would wear one. My dear Kitty told me today that 

she would dance in a deluge before ever she would starve in 

such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing 

piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none 

to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by 

the divine blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has 

become a household word that il y a deux choses for which 

the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a 

breach of the proprieties, is the fittest, nay, the only garment. 

The first, said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as 

I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently tipped 

with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is a 

bath … But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short

a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of 

our store of knowledge. 

Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang 

and, while all were conjecturing what might be the cause, 

Miss Callan entered and, having spoken a few words in a 

low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a profound bow 

to the company. The presence even for a moment among a 

party of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality 

of modesty and not less severe than beautiful refrained the 

humourous sallies even of the most licentious but her departure 

was the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry. Strike me 

silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled. A monstrous 

fine bit of cowflesh! I’ll be sworn she has rendezvoused 

you. What, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad’s bud, 

immensely so, said Mr Lynch. The bedside manner it is that 

they use in the Mater hospice. Demme, does not Doctor 

O’Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin. As I look to 

be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been wardmaid 

there any time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, 

cried the young blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish 

simper and with immodest squirmings of his body, 


406 

how you do tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me, I’m all of 

a wibbly wobbly. Why, you’re as bad as dear little Father 

Cantekissem, that you are! May this pot of four half choke 

me, cried Costello, if she aint in the family way. I knows a 

lady what’s got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. 

The young surgeon, however, rose and begged the company 

to excuse his retreat as the nurse had just then informed him 

that he was needed in the ward. Merciful providence had 

been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady 

who was enceinte which she had borne with a laudable fortitude 

and she had given birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, 

said he, with those who, without wit to enliven or 

learning to instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, 

saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest power 

for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if 

need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence 

of her noble exercitations which, so far from being a 

byword, should be a glorious incentive in the human breast. 

I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an one, the 

amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and 

the astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most mo-

mentous that can befall a puny child of clay? Perish the 

thought! I shudder to think of the future of a race where the 

seeds of such malice have been sown and where no right 

reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of Horne. 

Having delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those 

present on the by and repaired to the door. A murmur of 

approval arose from all and some were for ejecting the low 

soaker without more ado, a design which would have been 

effected nor would he have received more than his bare deserts 

had he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a 

horrid imprecation (for he swore a round hand) that he was 

as good a son of the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my 

vitals, said he, them was always the sentiments of honest 

Frank Costello which I was bred up most particular to honour 

thy father and thy mother that had the best hand to a rolypoly 

or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I always looks back 

on with a loving heart. 

To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been 

conscious of some impudent mocks which he however had 

borne with as being the fruits of that age upon which it is 

commonly charged that it knows not pity. The young sparks, 


407 

it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown children: 

the words of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly 

understood and not often nice: their testiness and outrageous 

mots were such that his intellects resiled from: nor 

were they scrupulously sensible of the proprieties though their 

fund of strong animal spirits spoke in their behalf. But the 

word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome language for him 

for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a cropeared 

creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born out of wedlock and 

thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into the world, 

which the dint of the surgeon’s pliers in his skull lent indeed 

a colour to, so as to put him in thought of that missing link 

of creation’s chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. 

It was now for more than the middle span of our allotted 

years that he had passed through the thousand vicissitudes 

of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy and self a 

man of rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart to repress all 

motions of a rising choler and, by intercepting them with 

the readiest precaution, foster within his breast that plenitude 

of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judgers 

scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To those who

create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a habit 

of mind which he never did hold with) to them he would 

concede neither to bear the name nor to herit the tradition 

of a proper breeding: while for such that, having lost all forbearance, 

can lose no more, there remained the sharp antidote 

of experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate 

and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel with 

mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of 

dotards or the gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste 

fancy of the Holy Writer expresses it) for eating of the tree 

forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity upon 

any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when she was 

about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the 

sister’s words he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he 

was, however, it must be owned, not a little alleviated by the 

intelligence that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal of 

such duress now testified once more to the mercy as well as 

to the bounty of the Supreme Being. 

Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying 

that, to express his notion of the thing, his opinion (who 

ought not perchance to express one) was that one must have 


408 

a cold constitution and a frigid genius not to be rejoiced by 

this freshest news of the fruition of her confinement since 

she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The 

dressy young blade said it was her husband’s that put her in 

that expectation or at least it ought to be unless she were 

another Ephesian matron. I must acquaint you, said Mr 

Crotthers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a resonant 

comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round 

again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring 

through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my 

life, as he calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness for 

that the event would burst anon. ‘Slife, I’ll be round with 

you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of the old bucko 

that could still knock another child out of her. All fell to 

praising of it, each after his own fashion, though the same 

young blade held with his former view that another than her 

conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a 

linkboy (virtuous) or an itinerant vendor of articles needed 

in every household. Singular, communed the guest with himself, 

the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis 

possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dis-

secting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that 

the mere acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform 

in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary 

practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent 

have esteemed the noblest. But, he further added, it is 

mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress 

them for I have more than once observed that birds of 

a feather laugh together. 

But with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his 

patron, has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious 

prince has admitted to civic rights, constituted himself the 

lord paramount of our internal polity? Where is now that 

gratitude which loyalty should have counselled? During the 

recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage 

with his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that 

moment to discharge his piece against the empire of which 

he is a tenant at will while he trembled for the security of his 

four per cents? Has he forgotten this as he forgets all benefits 

received? Or is it that from being a deluder of others he has 

become at last his own dupe as he is, if report belie him not, 

his own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from candour to vio- 


409 

late the bedchamber of a respectable lady, the daughter of a 

gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections upon 

her virtue but if he challenges attention there (as it was indeed 

highly his interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy 

woman, she has been too long and too persistently 

denied her legitimate prerogative to listen to his objurgations 

with any other feeling than the derision of the desperate. 

He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his 

piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to 

attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn from 

the lowest strata of society! Nay, had the hussy’s scouringbrush 

not been her tutelary angel, it had gone with her as hard as 

with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question of the grazing lands 

his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe’s hearing 

brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort 

couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. 

It ill becomes him to preach that gospel. Has he not 

nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the want of the 

ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature 

and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense 

his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious

taste to restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates 

let his practice consist better with the doctrines that 

now engross him. His marital breast is the repository of secrets 

which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The lewd suggestions 

of some faded beauty may console him for a consort 

neglected and debauched but this new exponent of morals 

and healer of ills is at his best an exotic tree which, when rooted 

in its native orient, throve and flourished and was abundant 

in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots 

have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes 

away from it is stagnant, acid and inoperative. 

The news was imparted with a circumspection recalling 

the ceremonial usage of the Sublime Porte by the second 

female infirmarian to the junior medical officer in residence, 

who in his turn announced to the delegation that an heir 

had been born, When he had betaken himself to the women’s 

apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth 

in the presence of the secretary of state for domestic 

affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous 

exhaustion and approbation the delegates, chafing 

under the length and solemnity of their vigil and hoping 


410 

that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the 

simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered 

the easier, broke out at once into a strife of tongues. In vain 

the voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring 

to urge, to mollify, to refrain. The moment was too propitious 

for the display of that discursiveness which seemed the 

only bond of union among tempers so divergent. Every phase 

of the situation was successively eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance 

of uterine brothers, the Caesarean section, 

posthumity with respect to the father and, that rarer form, 

with respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as the 

Childs Murder and rendered memorable by the impassioned 

plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of 

the wrongfully accused, the rights of primogeniture and king’s 

bounty touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, 

simulated or dissimulated, the acardiac fœtus in fœtu 

and aprosopia due to a congestion, the agnathia of certain 

chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan) in 

consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along 

the medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what 

the other spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep,

the prolongation of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by 

reason of pressure on the vein, the premature relentment of 

the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in the actual case) with 

consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial insemination 

by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent 

upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration 

of the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent 

rape, that distressing manner of delivery called by the 

Brandenburghers Sturzgeburt, the recorded instances of 

multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births conceived 

during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents— 

in a word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has 

classified in his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations. 

The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic 

medicine were examined with as much animation as the most 

popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as the forbidding 

to a gravid woman to step over a countrystile lest, by 

her movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature 

and the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently 

and ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against 

that part of her person which long usage has consecrated as 


411 

the seat of castigation. The abnormalities of harelip, 

breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro’s inkle, strawberry 

mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a primafacie 

and natural hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded 

(the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not forgotten) or 

doghaired infants occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic 

memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and worthy 

of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, 

envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic development 

at some stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish delegate 

sustained against both these views, with such heat as 

almost carried conviction, the theory of copulation between 

women and the males of brutes, his authority being his own 

avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur 

which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down 

to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression 

made by his words was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced 

as easily as it had been evoked by an allocution from 

Mr Candidate Mulligan in that vein of pleasantry which none 

better than he knew how to affect, postulating as the 

supremest object of desire a nice clean old man. Contempo-

aneously, a heated argument having arisen between Mr 

Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the 

juridical and theological dilemma created in the event of one 

Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual 

consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Bloom for instant 

submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus. Hitherto silent, 

whether the better to show by preternatural gravity that 

curious dignity of the garb with which he was invested or in 

obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly and, as 

some thought, perfunctorily the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding 

man to put asunder what God has joined. 

But Malachias’ tale began to freeze them with horror. He 

conjured up the scene before them. The secret panel beside 

the chimney slid back and in the recess appeared … Haines! 

Which of us did not feel his flesh creep! He had a portfolio 

full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial 

marked Poison. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on 

all faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin. I anticipated 

some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, 

for which, it seems, history is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am 

the murderer of Samuel Childs. And how I am punished! 


412 

The inferno has no terrors for me. This is the appearance is 

on me. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he 

muttered thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with 

my share of songs and himself after me the like of a soulth or 

a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland’s, is in this life. It is what 

I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions, rookshooting, 

the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised 

the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre stalks 

me. Dope is my only hope ... Ah! Destruction! The black 

panther! With a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid 

back. An instant later his head appeared in the door opposite 

and said: Meet me at Westland Row station at ten past 

eleven. He was gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of the dissipated 

host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: 

The vendetta of Mananaun! The sage repeated: Lex talionis. 

The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring 

the immense debtorship for a thing done. Malachias, 

overcome by emotion, ceased. The mystery was unveiled. 

Haines was the third brother. His real name was Childs. The 

black panther was himself the ghost of his own father. He 

drank drugs to obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The

lonely house by the graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will 

live there. The spider pitches her web in the solitude. The 

nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on it. It is 

haunted. Murderer’s ground. 

What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue 

of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, 

to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, 

so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is 

Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of 

reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a 

modest substance in the funds. A score of years are blown 

away. He is young Leopold. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, 

a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he 

beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously 

manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old 

house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel 

on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten 

loaf, a mother’s thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so 

gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already 

on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, 

equipped with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not 


413 

for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas! a thing 

now of the past!) and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this 

or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips 

or for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but the 

heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile, 

but, more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address, 

brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of 

the firm, seated with Jacob’s pipe after like labours in the 

paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is 

aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some 

paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, 

the mirror is breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, 

shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the mist. Now 

he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. 

Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks 

of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores 

there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, 

yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her 

luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch 

as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie! 

Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember

the night: first night, the bridenight. They are entwined in 

nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an 

instant (Fiat!) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to 

heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath ’twas done but—hold! 

Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away through 

the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. 

She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Leopold. 

Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion 

of thy strength was taken from thee—and in vain. No son of 

thy loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, 

what Leopold was for Rudolph. 

The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that 

is the infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted 

over regions of cycles of generations that have lived. A region 

where grey twilight ever descends, never falls on wide 

sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial 

dew of stars. She follows her mother with ungainly 

steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight phantoms are they, 

yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely 

haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive 

skull. They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a 


414 

waste land, a home of screechowls and the sandblind upupa. 

Netaim, the golden, is no more. And on the highway of the 

clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts 

of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and 

goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are 

scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, 

mammoth and mastodon, they come trooping to the sunken 

sea, Lacus Mortis. Ominous revengeful zodiacal host! They 

moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, 

the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the 

giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and 

pachyderm, all their moving moaning multitude, murderers 

of the sun. 

Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and 

with horrible gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. 

And the equine portent grows again, magnified in the deserted 

heavens, nay to heaven’s own magnitude, till it looms, 

vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder of 

metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of 

the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou lost 

one, Millicent, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene

does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the 

penultimate antelucan hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, 

coifed with a veil of what do you call it gossamer. It floats, it 

flows about her starborn flesh and loose it streams, emerald, 

sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents of the 

cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling, 

writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a myriad 

metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and 

triangled sign upon the forehead of Taurus. 

Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they 

had been at school together in Conmee’s time. He asked 

about Glaucon, Alcibiades, Pisistratus. Where were they now? 

Neither knew. You have spoken of the past and its phantoms, 

Stephen said. Why think of them? If I call them into 

life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop 

to my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, 

bullockbefriending bard, am lord and giver of their life. He 

encircled his gadding hair with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling 

at Vincent. That answer and those leaves, Vincent said 

to him, will adorn you more fitly when something more, 

and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your 


415 

genius father. All who wish you well hope this for you. All 

desire to see you bring forth the work you meditate, to acclaim 

you Stephaneforos. I heartily wish you may not fail 

them. O no, Vincent Lenehan said, laying a hand on the 

shoulder near him. Have no fear. He could not leave his 

mother an orphan. The young man’s face grew dark. All could 

see how hard it was for him to be reminded of his promise 

and of his recent loss. He would have withdrawn from the 

feast had not the noise of voices allayed the smart. Madden 

had lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim of the rider’s 

name: Lenehan as much more. He told them of the race. 

The flag fell and, huuh! off, scamper, the mare ran out freshly 

with O. Madden up. She was leading the field. All hearts 

were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain herself. She 

waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the 

straight on the run home when all were in close order the 

dark horse Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her. 

All was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her eyes were sad anemones. 

Juno, she cried, I am undone. But her lover consoled 

her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which lay 

some oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one

only. A whacking fine whip, said Lenehan, is W. Lane. Four 

winners yesterday and three today. What rider is like him? 

Mount him on the camel or the boisterous buffalo the victory 

in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it as was the 

ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said 

with a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by 

this hand, shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen 

of them. Do you remember her, Vincent? I wish you could 

have seen my queen today, Vincent said. How young she 

was and radiant (Lalage were scarce fair beside her) in her 

yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the right 

name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom: the 

air drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating 

by us. In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked 

on a stone a batch of those buns with Corinth fruit in them 

that Periplipomenes sells in his booth near the bridge. But 

she had nought for her teeth but the arm with which I held 

her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I pressed 

too close. A week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but 

today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking 

then. Her posies tool Mad romp that she is, she had 


416 

pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in your ear, my 

friend, you will not think who met us as we left the field. 

Conmee himself! He was walking by the hedge, reading, I 

think a brevier book with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it 

from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet creature 

turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to reprove a 

slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there 

for the very trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she 

glanced at her lovely echo in that little mirror she carries. 

But he had been kind. In going by he had blessed us. The 

gods too are ever kind, Lenehan said. If I had poor luck with 

Bass’s mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more 

propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi 

saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to 

the scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid 

silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be 

awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely 

regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of 

the gods. Do you not think it, Stephen? Theosophos told 

me so, Stephen answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian 

priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The

lords of the moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload 

from planet Alpha of the lunar chain would not assume 

the etheric doubles and these were therefore incarnated by 

the rubycoloured egos from the second constellation. 

However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise 

about him being in some description of a doldrums or 

other or mesmerised which was. entirely due to a misconception 

of the shallowest character, was not the case at all. 

The individual whose visual organs while the above was going 

on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms 

of animation was as astute if not astuter than any man 

living and anybody that conjectured the contrary would have 

found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop. During 

the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring 

hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled by 

Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to 

be situated amongst a lot of others right opposite to where 

he was and which was certainly calculated to attract anyone’s 

remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was simply 

and solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best 

known to himself, which put quite an altogether different 


417 

complexion on the proceedings, after the moment before’s 

observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting 

two or three private transactions of his own which the other 

two were as mutually innocent of as the babe unborn. Eventually, 

however, both their eyes met and as soon as it began 

to dawn on him that the other was endeavouring to help 

himself to the thing he involuntarily determined to help him 

himself and so he accordingly took hold of the neck of the 

mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid sought 

after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it 

out with, also at the same time, however, a considerable degree 

of attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer 

that was in it about the place. 

The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an 

epitome of the course of life. Neither place nor council was 

lacking in dignity. The debaters were the keenest in the land, 

the theme they were engaged on the loftiest and most vital. 

The high hall of Horne’s house had never beheld an assembly 

so representative and so varied nor had the old rafters of 

that establishment ever listened to a language so 

encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers

was there at the foot of the table in his striking Highland 

garb, his face glowing from the briny airs of the Mull of 

Galloway. There too, opposite to him, was Lynch whose countenance 

bore already the stigmata of early depravity and premature 

wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place assigned 

to Costello, the eccentric, while at his side was seated in stolid 

repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the resident 

indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of 

it the figure of Bannon in explorer’s kit of tweed shorts and 

salted cowhide brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose 

elegance and townbred manners of Malachi Roland St 

John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board was the young 

poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and 

metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of 

Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated 

the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, 

and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of 

travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible 

dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no 

lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the 

image of that voluptuous loveliness which the inspired pen- 


418 

cil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come. 

It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the 

perverted transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus’ (Div. 

Scep.) contentions would appear to prove him pretty badly 

addicted runs directly counter to accepted scientific methods. 

Science, it cannot be too often repeated, deals with tangible 

phenomena. The man of science like the man in the 

street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked 

and explain them as best he can. There may be, it is true, 

some questions which science cannot answer—at present— 

such as the first problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. 

Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex. Must we 

accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right 

ovary (the postmenstrual period, assert others) is responsible 

for the birth of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa 

or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as 

most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper, 

Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and 

Valenti, a mixture of both? This would be tantamount to a 

cooperation (one of nature’s favourite devices) between the 

nisus formativus of the nemasperm on the one hand and on

the other a happily chosen position, succubitus felix of the 

passive element. The other problem raised by the same inquirer 

is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. It is interesting 

because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the 

same way but we all die in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan 

(Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary conditions in which 

our greylunged citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary complaints 

etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk in dust. These 

factors, he alleged, and the revolting spectacles offered by 

our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of 

all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed 

scorbutic cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, 

paranoic bachelors and unfructified duennas—these, he said, 

were accountable for any and every fallingoff in the calibre 

of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied, would soon be generally 

adopted and all the graces of life, genuinely good music, 

agreeable literature, light philosophy, instructive pictures, 

plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as Venus 

and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, 

all these little attentions would enable ladies who were 

in a particular condition to pass the intervening months in a 


419 

most enjoyable manner. Mr J. Crotthers (Disc. Bacc.) attributes 

some of these demises to abdominal trauma in the 

case of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the 

workshop and to marital discipline in the home but by far 

the vast majority to neglect, private or official, culminating 

in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal 

abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although 

the former (we are thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only 

too true the case he cites of nurses forgetting to count the 

sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too rare to be normative. 

In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder is that so 

many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do, all 

things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings 

which often baulk nature in her intentions. An ingenious 

suggestion is that thrown out by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) 

that both natality and mortality, as well as all other phenomena 

of evolution, tidal movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, 

diseases in general, everything, in fine, in nature’s 

vast workshop from the extinction of some remote sun to 

the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which beautify 

our public parks is subject to a law of numeration as yet

unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a 

child of normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy 

child and properly looked after succumbs unaccountably in 

early childhood (though other children of the same marriage 

do not) must certainly, in the poet’s words, give us pause. 

Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and cogent 

reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such 

deaths are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms 

in which morbous germs have taken up their residence 

(modern science has conclusively shown that only the plasmic 

substance can be said to be immortal) tend to disappear 

at an increasingly earlier stage of development, an arrangement 

which, though productive of pain to some of our feelings 

(notably the maternal), is nevertheless, some of us think, 

in the long run beneficial to the race in general in securing 

thereby the survival of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus’ (Div. Scep.) 

remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an omnivorous 

being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently 

pass through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect 

imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous 

females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional 


420 

gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic 

nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent 

collation of staggering bob, reveals as nought else could and 

in a very unsavoury light the tendency above alluded to. For 

the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately acquainted 

with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this 

morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all 

his overweening bumptiousness in things scientific can 

scarcely distinguish an acid from an alkali prides himself on 

being, it should perhaps be stated that staggering bob in the 

vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed victuallers signifies 

the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from 

its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr L. Bloom 

(Pubb. Canv.) which took place in the commons’ hall of the 

National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, of 

which, as is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Midw., F. K. 

Q. C. P. I.) is the able and popular master, he is reported by 

eyewitnesses as having stated that once a woman has let the 

cat into the bag (an esthete’s allusion, presumably, to one of 

the most complicated and marvellous of all nature’s processes—the 

act of sexual congress) she must let it out again

or give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk of 

her own, was the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor, none 

the less effective for the moderate and measured tone in which 

it was delivered. 

Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had 

brought about a happy accouchement. It had been a weary 

weary while both for patient and doctor. All that surgical 

skill could do was done and the brave woman had manfully 

helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she 

was very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have 

gone before, are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon 

the touching scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines 

there with the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger 

for baby fingers (a pretty sight it is to see), in the first bloom 

of her new motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving 

to One above, the Universal Husband. And as her 

loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one blessing 

more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy, 

to lay in his arms that mite of God’s clay, the fruit of their 

lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) 

and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of 


421 

years a grave dignity has come to the conscientious second 

accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O 

Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never 

be again, that faroff time of the roses! With the old shake of 

her pretty head she recalls those days. God! How beautiful 

now across the mist of years! But their children are grouped 

in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, 

Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy 

(Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling 

little Bobsy (called after our famous hero of the South African 

war, lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar) and now 

this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever there was 

one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be christened 

Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of 

Mr Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer’s office, Dublin 

Castle. And so time wags on: but father Cronion has dealt 

lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that bosom, dear 

gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, 

the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for 

you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light whereby 

you read in the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and

so with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will 

call in His own good time. You too have fought the good 

fight and played loyally your man’s part. Sir, to you my hand. 

Well done, thou good and faithful servant! 

There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) 

evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest 

places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may 

suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they 

had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not 

or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them 

forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the 

most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while 

timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver 

tranquility of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when 

he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the 

vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for 

vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the 

piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful. 

The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow 

recession of that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by 

habit or some studied trick, upon words so embittered as to 


422 

accuse in their speaker an unhealthiness, a flair, for the cruder 

things of life. A scene disengages itself in the observer’s 

memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so natural a 

homeliness as if those days were really present there (as some 

thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of 

lawn one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of 

lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators 

of the game but with much real interest in the pellets 

as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, 

one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about 

that grey urn where the water moves at times in thoughtful 

irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, 

Tiny and their darker friend with I know not what of arresting 

in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely 

brace of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign 

warmth of the skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. 

A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey (blossomtime but there 

will be cheer in the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls 

are gathered and hutched) is standing on the urn secured by 

that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a little just as this 

young man does now with a perhaps too conscious enjoy-

ment of the danger but must needs glance at whiles towards 

where his mother watches from the piazzetta giving upon 

the flowerclose with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach 

(alles vergangliche in her glad look. 

Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. 

Enter that antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled 

and note their faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of 

rash or violent. Quietude of custody, rather, befitting their 

station in that house, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of 

angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long ago. But as 

before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant 

excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, 

compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending 

above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth 

of shrub and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres 

and with the reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst 

pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the transformation, 

violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of 

the word. 

Burke’s! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a 

tag and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, 


423 

pilldoctor, punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing 

at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, 

Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty 

youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback 

in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming 

downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound 

if a milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open? 

Ha! They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute’s race, all 

bravely legging it, Burke’s of Denzille and Holles their ulterior 

goal. Dixon follows giving them sharp language but raps 

out an oath, he too, and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought 

to send a kind word to happy mother and nurseling up there. 

Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she too not other now? 

Ward of watching in Horne’s house has told its tale in that 

washedout pallor. Then all being gone, a glance of motherwit 

helping, he whispers close in going: Madam, when comes 

the storkbird for thee? 

The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, 

life essence celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under 

starshiny coelum. God’s air, the Allfather’s air, scintillant 

circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By

heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed 

and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor 

barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous 

chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven 

preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy 

modicum of man’s work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour 

like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts 

go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping 

under thy load, bemoiled with butcher’s bills at home and 

ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every 

newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. 

See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there 

with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all 

their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead 

gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked 

kreutzer. Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod’s 

slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, 

forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, 

raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged 

glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, 

floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious at- 


424 

tacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes 

and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive 

music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was 

not as with many that will and would and wait and never— 

do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge 

to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? 

Deine Kuh Trübsal melkest Du. Nun trinst Du die süsse Milch 

des Euters. See! it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, 

man, an udderful! Mother’s milk, Purefoy, the milk of human 

kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant 

in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will 

quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk 

of Canaan’s land. Thy cow’s dug was tough, what? Ay, but 

her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but 

thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! Per deam 

Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum! 

All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. 

Bonafides. Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered 

naggin. Like ole Billyo. Any brollies or gumboots in the 

fambly? Where the Henry Nevil’s sawbones and ole clo? Sorra 

one o’ me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward to the ribbon

counter. Where’s Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the drunken 

minister coming out of the maternity hospal! Benedicat vos 

omnipotens Deus, Pater et Filius. A make, mister. The Denzille 

lane boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out 

of the bleeding limelight. Yous join uz, dear sir? No hentrusion 

in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee dis bunch. En avant, 

mes enfants! Fire away number one on the gun. Burke’s! 

Burke’s! Thence they advanced five parasangs. Slattery’s 

mounted foot. Where’s that bleeding awfur? Parson Steve, 

apostates’ creed! No, no, Mulligan! Abaft there! Shove ahead. 

Keep a watch on the clock. Chuckingout time. Mullee! What’s 

on you? Ma mère m’a mariée. British Beatitudes! Ratamplan 

Digidi Boum Boum. Ayes have it. To be printed and bound 

at the Druiddrum press by two designing females. Calf covers 

of pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful 

book come out of Ireland my time. So;emtoi,! Get a spurt 

on. Tention. Proceed to nearest canteen and there annex liquor 

stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are 

(atitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs 

battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold 

high. Beer, beef, trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. 


425 

Trample the trampellers. Thunderation! Keep the durned 

millingtary step. We fall. Bishops boosebox. Halt! Heave to. 

Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You 

hurt? Most amazingly sorry! 

Query. Who’s astanding this here do? Proud possessor of 

damnall. Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. 

Not a red at me this week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers 

for the Übermensch. Dittoh. Five number ones. You, sir? 

Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby’s caudle. Stimulate the 

caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go again 

when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? Caramba! Have an 

eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular’s got my timepiece. 

Ten to. Obligated awful. Don’t mention it. Got a pectoral 

trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee 

whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up 

near the Mater. Buckled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I 

do. Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. 

Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine, not much. Pull down 

the blind, love. Two Ardilauns. Same here. Look slippery. If 

you fall don’t wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine! Got a 

prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests

and her anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your 

starving eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O 

gluepot. Sir? Spud again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you’ll 

scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear thee beest a gert 

vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your corporosity 

sagaciating O K? How’s the squaws and papooses? 

Womanbody after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. 

Password. There’s hair. Ours the white death and the ruddy 

birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss! Mummer’s wire. 

Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified, orchidised, polycimical 

jesuit! Aunty mine’s writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen 

lead astray goodygood Malachi. 

Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. 

Here, Jock braw Hielentman’s your barleybree. Lang may 

your lum reek and your kailpot boil! My tipple. Merci. Here’s 

to us. How’s that? Leg before wicket. Don’t stain my 

brandnew sitinems. Give’s a shake of peppe, you there. Catch 

aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. 

Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. Les petites 

femmes. Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I 

was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wame. On the road to 


426 

Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. 

What do you want for ninepence? Machree, macruiskeen. 

Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all together. Ex! 

Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. 

Stunned like, seeing as how no shiners is acoming. 

Underconstumble? He’ve got the chink ad lib. Seed near free 

poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come right in on 

your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two 

bar and a wing. You larn that go off of they there Frenchy 

bilks? Won’t wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly. 

Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, 

Chawley. We are nae fou. We’re nae tha fou. Au reservoir, 

mossoo. Tanks you. 

’Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, 

shir. Bantam, two days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. 

Garn! Have a glint, do. Gum, I’m jiggered. And been to barber 

he have. Too full for words. With a railway bloke. How 

come you so? Opera he’d like? Rose of Castile. Rows of cast. 

Police! Some H O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam’s flow- 

2 

ers. Gemini. He’s going to holler. The colleen bawn. My colleen 

bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a

firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead 

cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Stephen Hand as give me the 

jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big 

bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare 

on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. 

Gospeltrue. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. 

Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the 

game. Madden back Madden’s a maddening back. O lust 

our refuge and our strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off 

to mammy. Stand by. Hide my blushes someone. All in if he 

spots me. Come ahome, our Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo. 

Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Cornfide. Wha gev ye 

thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her spouse. 

No fake, old man Leo. S’elp me, honest injun. Shiver my 

timbers if I had. There’s a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no 

me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get 

misha mishinnah. Through yerd our lord, Amen. 

You move a motion? Steve boy, you’re going it some. More 

bluggy drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander 

permit one stooder of most extreme poverty and one largesize 

grandacious thirst to terminate one expensive inaugurated 


427 

libation? Give’s a breather. Landlord, landlord, have you good 

wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree. Cut and come 

again. Right. Boniface! Absinthe the lot. Nos omnes biberimus 

viridum toxicum diabolus capiat posterioria nostria. 

Closingtime, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I 

hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo’s papli, by all 

that’s gorgeous. Play low, pardner. Slide. Bonsoir la compagnie. 

And snares of the poxfiend. Where’s the buck and Namby 

Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e’en gang yer 

gates. Checkmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil yu help 

yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear 

tu lay crown of his hed 2 night. Crickey, I’m about sprung. 

Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the bestest puttiest 

longbreak yet. Item, curate, couple of cookies for this child. 

Cot’s plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pite of sheeses? 

Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed 

spirits. Time, gents! Who wander through the world. 

Health all! A la vôtre! 

Golly, whatten tunket’s yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty 

Rhodes. Peep at his wearables. By mighty! What’s he got? 

Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by James. Wants it real bad. D’ye

ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond? Rawthere! 

Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis. Trumpery 

insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a 

prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a 

maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost 

love. Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn 

in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies. Pardon? Seen him 

today at a runefal? Chum o’ yourn passed in his checks? 

Ludamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou’ll no be telling me thot, 

Pold veg! Did ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney 

was took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was 

verra best. I never see the like since I was born. Tiens tiens, 

but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes. O, get, rev on a gradient 

one in nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one 

Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, 

inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor 

any Rooshian. Time all. There’s eleven of them. Get ye gone. 

Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent 

One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve. 

Your attention! We’re nae tha fou. The Leith police 

dismisseth us. The least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap 


428 

puking. Unwell in his abominable regions. Yooka. Night. 

Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook. 

Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. 

There she goes. Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut 

up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not come? Run, skelter, race. 

Pflaaaap! 

Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o’ me. Denzille lane this way. 

Change here for Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek 

the kips where shady Mary is. Righto, any old time. 

Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. You coming long? Whisper, 

who the sooty hell’s the johnny in the black duds? Hush! 

Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand 

when he shall come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! Ut 

implerentur scripturae. Strike up a ballad. Then outspake 

medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy. Christicle, who’s 

this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall? Elijah 

is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you 

winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, 

you dog-gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, 

peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess 

baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy!

Alexander J Christ Dowie, that’s my name, that’s yanked to 

glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok. 

The Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that 

He’s on the square and a corking fine business proposition. 

He’s the grandest thing yet and don’t you forget it. Shout 

salvation in King Jesus. You’ll need to rise precious early you 

sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. 

Pflaaaap! Not half. He’s got a coughmixture with a punch in 

it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on. 


429 

THE MABBOT STREET ENTRACE OF NIGHTTOWN, BEFORE WHICH 

stretches an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks, red 

and green will-o’-the wisps and danger signals. Rows of grimy 

houses with gaping doors. Rare lamps with faint rainbow fins. 

Round rabaiotti’s halted ice gondola stunted men and women 

squabble. They grab wafers between which are wedged lumps of 

coral and copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly. Children. The 

swancomb of the gondola, highreared, forges on through the murk, 

white and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer. 

THE CALLS 

Wait, my love, and I’ll be with you. 

THE ANSWERS 

Round behind the stable. 

(A deafmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapless mouth drib-

ling, jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus dance. A chain of children’s 

hands imprisons him.) 

Kithogue! Salute! 

THE CHILDREN 

THE IDIOT 

(Lifts a palsied left arm and gurgles) Grhahute! 

THE CHILDREN 

Where’s the great light? 

THE IDIOT 

(Gobbing) Ghaghahest. 

(They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a 

rope slung between two railings, counting. A form sprawled 

against a dustbin and muffled by its arm and hat snores, groans, 

grinding growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome 

totting among a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack of rags 

and bones. A crone standing by with a smoky oillamp rams her 


430 

last bottle in the maw of his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs 

askew his peaked cap and hobbles off mutely. The crone makes 

back for her lair, swaying her lamp. A bandy child, asquat on 

the doorstep with a paper shuttlecock, crawls sidling after her in 

spurts, clutches her skirt, scrambles up. A drunken navvy grips 

with both hands the railings of an area, lurching heavily. At a 

comer two night watch in shouldercapes, their hands upon their 

staffholsters, loom tall. A plate crashes: a woman screams: a child 

wails. Oaths of a man roar, mutter, cease, figures wander, lurk 

peer from warrens. In a room lit by a candle stuck in a bottleneck 

a slut combs out the tatts from the hair of a scrofulous 

child. Cissy caffrey’s voice, still young, sings shrill from a lane.) 

CISSY CAFFREY 

I gave it to Molly 

Because she was jolly, 

The leg of the duck, 

The leg of the duck. 

(Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their 

oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutface and burst to-

gether from their muths a volleyed fart. Laughter of men from 

the lane. A hoarse virago retorts.) 

THE VIRAGO 

Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl. 

CISSY CAFFREY 

More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. (She sings) 

I gave it to Nelly 

To stick in her belly, 

The leg of the duck, 


(Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, 

their tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets of caps on 

their blond cropped polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass 

through the crowd close to the redcoats.) 

PRIVATE COMPTON 

(Jerks his finger) Way for the parson. 


431 

PRIVATE CARR 

(Turns and calls) What ho, parson! 

CISSY CAFFREY 

(Her voice soaring higher) 

She has it, she got it,, 

Wherever she put it, 


(Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with 

joy the introit for paschal time. Lynch, his jockeycap low on his 

brow, attends him, a sneer of discontent wrinkling his face.) 

STEPHEN 

Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia. 

(The famished snaggletusks of an elderly bawd protrude from a 

doorway.) 

THE BAWD 

(Her voice whispering huskily) Sst! Come here till I tell you.

Maidenhead inside. Sst! 

STEPHEN 

(Altius aliquantulum) Et omnes ad quos pervenit aqua ista. 

THE BAWD 

(Spits in their trail her jet of venom) Trinity medicals. Fallopian 

tube. All prick and no pence. 

(Edy Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws 

her shawl across her nostrils.) 

EDY BOARDMAN 

(Bickering) And says the one: I seen you up Faithful place 

with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his 

cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That’s not for you to say, 

says I. You never seen me in the mantrap with a married 

highlander, says I. The likes of her! Stag that one is! Stubborn 

as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one 

time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant. 


432 

STEPHEN 

(Triumphaliter) Salvi facti sunt. 

(He flourishes his ashplant, shivering the lamp image, shattering 

light over the world. A liver and white spaniel on the prowl 

slinks after him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.) 

So that? 

LYNCH 

STEPHEN 

(Looks behind) So that gesture, not music not odour, would 

be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible 

not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm. 

LYNCH 

Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh 

street! 

STEPHEN 

We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. 

Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted

y a light of love. 

Ba! 

LYNCH 

STEPHEN 

Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a 

jug? This movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or 

wine in Omar. Hold my stick. 

LYNCH 

Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going? 

STEPHEN 

Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, 

ad deam qui laetificatiuventutem meam. 

(Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slowly holds out his 

hands, his head going back till both hands are a span from his 

breast, down turned, in planes intersecting, the fingers about to 

part, the left being higher.) 


433 

LYNCH 

Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse. 

Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk. 

(The pass. Tommy Caffrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping, 

climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down. Jacky 

Caffrey clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. 

The twins scuttle off in the dark. The navvy, swaying, swaying, 

presses a forefinger against a wing of his nose and ejects from the 

farther nostril a long liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he 

staggers away through the crowd with his flaring cresset. 

Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspools, 

middens arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the 

south beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy, staggering 

forward, cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the 

tramsiding on the farther side under the railway bridge Bloom 

appears, flushed, panting, cramming bread and chocolate into 

a side pocket. From Gillen’s Hairdresser’s window a composite 

portrait shows him gallant Nelson’s image. A concave mirror at 

the side presents to him lovelorn longlost lububru booloohoom. 

Grave Gladstone sees him level, Bloom for Bloom. He passes,

struck by the stare of truculent Wellington, but in the convex 

mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes and fatchuck cheekchops 

of Jollypoldy the rixdix doldy. 

At Antonio Pabaiotti’s door Bloom halts, sweated under the 

bright arclamp. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and 

hurries on.) 

BLOOM 

Fish and taters. N. g. Ah! 

(He disappears into Olhausen’s, the porkbutcher’s, under the 

downcoming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from 

under the shutter, puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each 

hand he holds a parcel, one containing a lukewarm pig’s crubeen, 

the other a cold sheep’s trotter, sprinkled with wholepper. He 

gasps, standing upright. Then bending to one side he presses a 

parcel against his ribs and groans.) 

BLOOM 

Stitch in my side. Why did I run? 


434 

(He takes breath with care and goes forward slowly towards the 

lampset siding. The glow leaps again.) 

BLOOM 

What is that? A flasher? Searchlight. 

(He stands at Cormack’s Corner, watching) 

BLOOM 

Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course. 

South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar’s 

bush. We’re safe. (He hums cheerfully) London’s burning, 

London’s burning! On fire, on fire! (He catches sight of the 

navvy lurching through the crowd at the farther side of Talbot 

Street) I’ll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here. 

(He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.) 

THE URCHINS 

Mind out, mister! (Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns 

aswing, swim by him, grazing him, their bells rattling)

Haltyaltyaltyall. 

THE BELLS 

BLOOM 

(Halts erect, stung by a spasm) Ow! 

(He looks round, darts forward suddenly. Through rising fog a 

dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down 

upon him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on 

the wire. The motorman bangs his footgong.) 

THE GONG 

Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo. 

(The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman’s 

whitegloved hand, blunders stifflegged out of the track. The 

motorman, thrown forward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells 

as he slides past over chains and keys.) 

THE MOTORMAN 

Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick? 


435 

BLOOM 

(Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes 

a mudflake from his cheek with a parcelled hand.) No thoroughfare. 

Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must take 

up Sandow’s exercises again. On the hands down. Insure 

against street accident too. The Providential. (He feels trouser 

pocket) Poor mamma’s panacea. Heel easily catch in track or 

bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled 

off my shoe at Leonard’s corner. Third time is the charm. 

Shoe trick. Insolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension 

makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this 

morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. 

Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken 

in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous 

I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of 

the beast. (He closes his eyes an instant) Bit light in the head. 

Monthly or effect of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling. 

Too much for me now. Ow! 

(A sinister figure leans on plaited legs against O’Beirne’s wall, a 

visage unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a

wideleaved sombrero the figure regards him with evil eye.) 

BLOOM 

Buensas noches, Señorita Blanca. Que calle es esta? 

THE FIGURE 

(Impassive, raises a signal arm) Password. Sraid mabbot. 

BLOOM 

Haha. Merci. Esperanto. Slan leath. (He mutters) Gaelic league 

spy, sent by that fireeater. 

(He steps forward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He 

steps left, ragsackman left.) 

BLOOM 

I beg. (He swerves, sidles, stepaside, slips past and on.) 

BLOOM 

Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted 

by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public 


436 

boon? I who lost my way and contributed to the columns of 

the Irish cyclist the letter headed In darkest stepaside. Keep, 

keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones at midnight. A fence 

more likely. First place murderer makes for. Wash off his sins 

of the world. 

(Jacky Caffrey, hunted by Tommy Caffrey, runs full tilt against 

Bloom.) 

O 

BLOOM 

(Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish 

there, there. Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch fobpocket, 

bookpocket, pursepoket, sweets of sin, potato soap.) 

BLOOM 

Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves’ dodge. Collide. Then 

snatch your purse.

(The retriever approaches sniffing, nose to the ground. A sprawled 

form sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the 

long caftan of an elder in Zion and a smokingcap with magenta 

tassels. Horned spectacles hang down at the wings of the nose. 

Yellow poison streaks are on the drawn face.) 

RUDOLPH 

Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with 

drunken goy ever. So you catch no money. 

BLOOM 

(Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestfallen, 

feels warm and cold feetmeat) Ja, ich weiss, papachi. 

RUDOLPH 

What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (With 

feeble vulture talons he feels the silent face of Bloom) Are you 

not my son Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Are you not 

my dear son Leopold who left the house of his father and left 

the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob? 


437 

BLOOM 

(With precaution) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that’s 

left of him. 

RUDOLPH 

(Severely) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after 

spend your good money. What you call them running chaps? 

BLOOM 

(In youth’s smart blue oxford suit with white vestslips, 

narrowshouldered, in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent’s sterling 

silver waterbury keyless watch and double curb albert with seal 

attached, one side of him coated with stiffening mud) Harriers, 

father. Only that once. 

RUDOLPH 

Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. 

They make you kaputt, Leopoldleben. You watch them chaps. 

BLOOM 

(Weakly) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.

RUDOLPH 

(With contempt) Goim nachez! Nice spectacles for your poor 

mother! 

Mamma! 

BLOOM 

ELLEN BLOOM 

(In pantomime dame’s stringed mobcap, widow Twankey’s crinoline 

and bustle, blouse with mutonleg sleeves buttoned behind, 

grey mittens and cameo brooch, her plaited hair in a crispine net, 

appears over the staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her 

hand, and cries out in shrill alarm) O blessed Redeemer, what 

have they done to him! My smelling salts! (She hauls up a reef 

of skirt and ransacks the pouch of her striped blay petticoat. A 

phial, an agnus dei, a shrivelled potato and a celluloid doll fall 

out) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all at all? 

(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels 

in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.) 


438 

(Sharply) Poldy! 

A VOICE 

BLOOM 

Who? (He ducks and wards off a blow clumsily) At your service. 

(He looks up. Beside her mirage of datepalms a handsome woman 

in Turkish costume stands before him. Opulent curves fill out 

her scarlet trousers and jacket, slashed with gold. A wide yellow 

cummerbund girdles her. A white yashmak, violet in the night, 

covers her face, leaving free only her large dark eyes and raven 

hair.) 

Molly! 

BLOOM 

MARION 

Welly? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you 

speak to me. (Satirically) Has poor little hubby cold feet 

waiting so long?

BLOOM 

(Shifts from foot to foot) No, no. Not the least little bit. 

(He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions, 

hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuse, 

desire, spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet 

are jewelled toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender 

fetterchain. Beside her a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, 

waits. A silk ladder of innumerable rungs climbs to his 

bobbing howdah. He ambles near with disgruntled hindquarters. 

Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her goldcurb wristbangles 

angriling, scolding him in Moorish.) 

MARION 

Nebrakada! Femininum! 

(The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango 

fruit, offers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then 

droops his head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to 

kneel. Bloom stoops his back for leapfrog.) 


439 

BLOOM 

I can give you … I mean as your business menagerer … Mrs 

Marion … if you … 

MARION 

So you notice some change? (Her hands passing slowly over 

her trinketed stomacher, a slow friendly mockery in her eyes) O 

Poldy, Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see 

life. See the wide world. 

BLOOM 

I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower 

water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the 

morning. (He pats divers pockets) This moving kidney. Ah! 

(He points to the south, then to the east. A cake of new clean 

lemon soap arises, diffusing light and perfume.) 

THE SOAP 

We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I. 

He brightens the earth. I polish the sky.

(The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of 

the soapsun.) 

SWENY 

Three and a penny, please. 

BLOOM 

Yes. For my wife. Mrs Marion. Special recipe. 

(Softly) Poldy! 

Yes, ma’am? 

MARION 

BLOOM 

MARION 

Ti trema un poco il cuore? 

(In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon, 

humming the duet from Don Giovanni.) 


440 

BLOOM 

Are you sure about that voglio? I mean the pronunciati … 

(He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd 

seizes his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.) 

THE BAWD 

Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. 

Fifteen. There’s no-one in it only her old father that’s dead 

drunk. 

(She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled, 

Bridie Kelly stands.) 

BRIDIE 

Hatch street. Any good in your mind? 

(With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough 

pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, 

plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)

THE BAWD 

(Her wolfeyes shining) He’s getting his pleasure. You won’t get 

a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don’t be all night 

before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch. 

(Leering, Gerty MacDowell limps forward. She draws from behind, 

ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.) 

GERTY 

With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (She murmurs) 

You did that. I hate you. 

BLOOM 

I? When? You’re dreaming. I never saw you. 

THE BAWD 

Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman 

false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your 

mother take the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you. 


441 

GERTY 

(To Bloom) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer. 

(She paws his sleeve, slobbering) Dirty married man! I love 

you for doing that to me. 

(She glides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man’s frieze overcoat 

with loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish 

eyes wideopen, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.) 

Mr … 

MRS BREEN 

BLOOM 

(Coughs gravely) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by 

letter dated the sixteenth instant … 

MRS BREEN 

Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you 

nicely! Scamp!

BLOOM 

(Hurriedly) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think 

of me? Don’t give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? 

It’s ages since I. You’re looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable 

weather we are having this time of year. Black refracts 

heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter. Rescue 

of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary … 

MRS BREEN 

(Holds up a finger) Now, don’t tell a big fib! I know somebody 

won’t like that. O just wait till I see Molly! (Slily) Account 

for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you! 

BLOOM 

(Looks behind) She often said she’d like to visit. Slumming. 

The exotic, you see. Negro servants in livery too if she had 

money. Othello black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones 

and cornerman at the Livermore christies. Bohee brothers. 

Sweep for that matter. 

(Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in white duck suits, scar- 


442 

let socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in 

their buttonholes, leap out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler 

smaller negroid hands jingle the twingtwang wires. Flashing 

white kaffir eyes and tusks they rattle through a breakdown in 

clumsy clogs, twinging, singing, back to back, toe heel, heel toe, 

with smackfatclacking nigger lips.) 

TOM AND SAM 

There’s someone in the house with Dina 

There’s someone in the house, I know, 

There’s someone in the house with Dina 

Playing on the old banjo. 

(They whisk black masks from raw babby faces: Then, chuckling, 

chortling, trumming, twanging, they diddle diddle 

cakewalk dance away.) 

BLOOM 

(With a sour tenderish smile) A little frivol, shall we, if you are 

so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just 

for a fraction of a second?

MRS BREEN 

(Screams gaily) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself! 

BLOOM 

For old sake’ sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage 

mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I 

had a soft corner for you. (Gloomily) ’Twas I sent you that 

valentine of the dear gazelle. 

MRS BREEN 

Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (She 

puts out her hand inquisitively) What are you hiding behind 

your back? Tell us, there’s a dear. 

BLOOM 

(Seizes her wrist with his free hand) Josie Powell that was, 

prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, 

harking back in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas 

night, Georgina Simpson’s housewarming while they 

were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold 

and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuffbox? 


443 

MRS BREEN 

You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation 

and you looked the part. You were always a favourite 

with the ladies. 

BLOOM 

(Squire of Dames, in dinner jacket with wateredsilk facings, 

blue Masonic badge in his buttonhole, black bow and motherof-pearl 

studs, a prismatic champagne glass tilted in his hand) 

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ireland, home and beauty. 

MRS BREEN 

The dear dead days beyond recall. Love’s old sweet song. 

BLOOM 

(Meaningfully dropping his voice) I confess I’m teapot with 

curiosity to find out whether some person’s something is a 

little teapot at present. 

MRS BREEN 

(Gushingly) Tremendously teapot! London’s teapot and I’m sim-

ply teapot all over me! (She rubs sides with him) After the parlour 

mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the 

staircase ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company. 

BLOOM 

(Wearing a purple napoleon hat with an amber halfmoon, his 

fingers and thumb passing slowly down to her soft moist meaty 

palm which she surrenders gently) The witching hour of night. 

I took the splinter out of this hand, carefully, slowly. (Tenderly, 

as he slips on her finger a ruby ring) La ci darem la mano. 

MRS BREEN 

(Iin a onepiece evening frock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel 

sylph’s diadem on her brow with her dancecard fallen beside 

her moonblue satin slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing 

quickly) Voglio e non. You’re hot! You’re scalding! The left hand 

nearest the heart. 

BLOOM 

When you made your present choice they said it was beauty 

and the beast. I can never forgive you for that. (His clenched 


444 

fist at his brow) Think what it means. All you meant to me 

then. (Hoarsely) Woman, it’s breaking me! 

(Denis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely’s sandwhichboards, 

shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust 

out, muttering to right and left. Little Alf Bergan, cloaked in 

the pall of the ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled 

in laughter.) 

ALF BERGAN 

(Points jeering at the sandwichboards) U. p: Up. 

MRS BREEN 

(To Bloom) High jinks below stairs. (She gives him the glad eye) 

Why didn’t you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to. 

BLOOM 

(Shocked) Molly’s best friend! Could you? 

MRS BREEN 

(Her pulpy tongue between her lips, offers a pigeon kiss) Hnhn.

The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there? 

BLOOM 

(Offhandedly) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without 

potted meat is incomplete. I was at Leah. Mrs Bandmann 

Palmer. Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately 

threw away the programme. Rattling good place round there 

for pigs’ feet. Feel. 

(Richie Goulding, three ladies’ hats pinned on his head, appears 

weighted to one side by the black legal bag of Collis and Ward 

on which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. 

He opens it and shows it full of polonies, kippered herrings, 

Findon haddies and tightpacked pills.) 

Best value in Dub. 

RICHIE 

(Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, folding his 

napkin, waiting to wait.) 


445 

PAT 

(Advances with a tilted dish of spillspilling gravy) Steak and 

kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait. 

RICHIE 

Goodgod. Inev erate inall … 

(With hanging head he marches doggedly forward. The navvy, 

lurching by, gores him with his flaming pronghorn.) 

RICHIE 

(With a cry of pain, his hand to his back) Ah! Bright’s! Lights! 

BLOOM 

(Points to the navvy) A spy. Don’t attract attention. I hate 

stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave 

predicament. 

MRS BREEN 

Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock 

and bull story.

BLOOM 

I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. 

But you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular 

reason. 

MRS BREEN 

(All agog) O, not for worlds. 

Let’s walk on. Shall us? 

Let’s. 

BLOOM 

MRS BREEN 

(The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs 

Breen. The terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.) 

Jewman’s melt! 

THE BAWD 


446 

BLOOM 

(In an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, 

tony buff shirt, shepherd’s plaid Saint Andrew’s Cross scarftie, 

white spats, fawn dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, 

fieldglasses in bandolier and a grey billycock hat) Do you remember 

a long long time, years and years ago, just after Milly, 

Marionette we called her, was weaned when we all went together 

to Fairyhouse races, was it? 

MRS BREEN 

(In smart saxe tailormade, whitevelours hat and spider veil) 

Leopardstown. 

BLOOM 

I mean, Leopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a 

three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by 

Foxrock in that old fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette 

you were in your heyday then and you had on that new hat 

of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes 

advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen 

and eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I’ll

lay you what you like she did it on purpose … 

MRS BREEN 

She did, of course, the cat! Don’t tell me! Nice adviser! 

BLOOM 

Because it didn’t suit you one quarter as well as the other 

ducky little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it 

that I admired on you and you honestly looked just too fetching 

in it though it was a pity to kill it, you cruel naughty 

creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a fullstop. 

MRS BREEN 

(Squeezes his arm, simpers) Naughty cruel I was! 

BLOOM 

(Low, secretly, ever more rapidly) And Molly was eating a sandwich 

of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher’s lunch basket. 

Frankly, though she had her advisers or admirers, I never 

cared much for her style. She was … 


447 

Too … 

MRS BREEN 

BLOOM 

Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot 

O’Reilly were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse 

and Marcus Tertius Moses, the tea merchant, drove past us 

in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was her name, and 

the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever 

heard or read or knew or came across … 

MRS BREEN 

(Eagerly) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. 

(She fades from his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks 

on towards Hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent 

forward, her feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a 

bunch of loiterers listen to a tale which their brokensnouted gaffer 

rasps out with raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop 

wrestling, growling, in maimed sodden playfight.)

THE GAFFER 

(Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout) And when Cairns 

came down from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was 

he after doing it into only into the bucket of porter that was 

there waiting on the shavings for Derwan’s plasterers. 

THE LOITERERS 

(Guffaw with cleft palates) O jays! 

(Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime of 

their lodges they frisk limblessly about him.) 

BLOOM 

Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. 

Broad daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman. 

THE LOITERERS 

Jays, that’s a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men’s porter. 

(Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled, 

call from lanes, doors, corners.) 


448 

THE WHORES 

Are you going far, queer fellow? 

How’s your middle leg? 

Got a match on you? 

Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you. 

(He plodges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond. 

From a bulge of window curtains a gramaphone rears a 

battered brazen trunk. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles 

with the navvy and the two redcoats.) 

THE NAVVY 

(Belching) Where’s the bloody house? 

THE SHEBEENKEEPER 

Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman. 

THE NAVVY 

(Gripping the two redcoats, staggers forward with them) Come 

on, you British army!

PRIVATE CARR 

(Behind his back) He aint half balmy. 


(Laughs) What ho! 

PRIVATE CARR 

(To the navvy) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr. 

Just Carr. 

(Shouts) 

THE NAVVY 

We are the boys. Of Wexford. 


Say! What price the sergeantmajor? 

PRIVATE CARR 

Bennett? He’s my pal. I love old Bennett. 


449 

(Shouts) 

THE NAVVY 

The galling chain. 

And free our native land. 

(He staggers forward, dragging them with him. Bloom stops, at 

fault. The dog approaches, his tongue outlolling, panting) 

BLOOM 

Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where 

they are gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice 

mixup. Scene at Westland row. Then jump in first class with 

third ticket. Then too far. Train with engine behind. Might 

have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or collision. 

Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following 

him for? Still, he’s the best of that lot. If I hadn’t 

heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn’t have gone and 

wouldn’t have met. Kismet. He’ll lose that cash. Relieving 

office here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. What do ye 

lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life too with 

that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for pres-

ence of mind. Can’t always save you, though. If I had passed 

Truelock’s window that day two minutes later would have 

been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only went through 

my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds. What 

was he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper. 

(He gazes ahead, reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend 

Wet Dream and a phallic design.) Odd! Molly drawing on the 

frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. What’s that like? (Gaudy 

dollwomen loll in the lighted doorways, in window embrasures, 

smoking birdseye cigarettes. The odour of the sicksweet weed floats 

towards him in slow round ovalling wreaths.) 

THE WREATHS 

Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin. 

BLOOM 

My spine’s a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and 

get all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and 

eightpence too much. (The retriever drives a cold snivelling 

muzzle against his hand, wagging his tail.) Strange how they 


450 

take to me. Even that brute today. Better speak to him first. 

Like women they like rencontres. Stinks like a polecat. Chacun 

son goût. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain in his movements. 

Good fellow! Fido! Good fellow! Garryowen! (The 

wolfdog sprawls on his back, wriggling obscenely with begging 

paws, his long black tongue lolling out.) Influence of his surroundings. 

Give and have done with it. Provided nobody. 

(Calling encouraging words he shambles back with a furtive 

poacher’s tread, dogged by the setter into a dark stalestunk corner. 

He unrolls one parcel and goes to dump the crubeen softly 

but holds back and feels the trotter.) Sizeable for threepence. 

But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort. 

Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six. 

(With regret he lets the unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The 

mastiff mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himself with growling 

greed, crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, 

silent, vigilant. They murmer together.) 

THE WATCH 

Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.

(Each lays hand on Bloom’s shoulder.) 

FIRST WATCH 

Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance. 

BLOOM 

(Stammers) I am doing good to others. 

(A covey of gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily from liffey slime 

with banbury cakes in their beaks.) 

THE GULLS 

Kaw kave kankury kake. 

BLOOM 

The friend of man. Trained by kindness. 

(He points. Bob Doran, toppling from a high barstool, sways 

over the munching spaniel.) 


451 

BOB DORAN 

Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw. 

(The bulldog growls, his scruff standing, a gobbet of pig’s knuckle 

between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles. 

Bob Doran fills silently into an area.) 

SECOND WATCH 

Prevention of cruelty to animals. 

BLOOM 

(Enthusiastically) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on 

Harold’s cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness 

scab. Bad French I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and 

the last tram. All tales of circus life are highly demoralising. 

(Signor Maffei, passionpale, in liontamer’s costume with diamond 

studs in his shirtfront, steps forward, holding a circus 

paperhoop, a curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which 

he covers the gorging boarhound.)

SIGNOR MAFFEI 

(With a sinister smile) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated 

greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with 

my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly 

with a knotted thong. Block tackle and a strangling pulley 

will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even 

Leo Ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and 

some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz 

of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. (He glares) I possess the 

Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it with these 

breastsparklers. (With a bewitching smile) I now introduce 

Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring. 

FIRST WATCH 

Come. Name and address. 

BLOOM 

I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (He takes off his 

high grade hat, saluting) Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. 

You have heard of von Blum Pasha. Umpteen millions. 

Donnerwetter! Owns half Austria. Egypt. Cousin. 


452 

Proof. 

FIRST WATCH 

(A card falls from inside the leatherhead band of Bloom’s hat.) 

BLOOM 

(In red fez, Cadi’s dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a 

false badge of The Legion of Honour, picks up the card hastily and 

offers it) Allow me. My club is the Junior Army and Navy. 

Solicitors: Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor’s Walk. 

FIRST WATCH 

(Reads) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching 

and besetting. 

SECOND WATCH 

An alibi. You are cautioned. 

BLOOM 

(Produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow flower) This 

is the flower in question. It was given me by a man I don’t

know his name. (Plausibly) You know that old joke, rose of 

Castile. Bloom. The change of name. Virag. (He murmurs 

privately and confidentially) We are engaged you see, sergeant. 

Lady in the case. Love entanglement. (He shoulders the second 

watch gently) Dash it all. It’s a way we gallants have in 

the navy. Uniform that does it. (He turns gravely to the first 

watch) Still, of course, you do get your Waterloo sometimes. 

Drop in some evening and have a glass of old Burgundy. (To 

the second watch gaily) I’ll introduce you, inspector. She’s 

game. Do it in the shake of a lamb’s tail. 

(A dark mercurialised face appears, leading a veiled figure.) 

THE DARK MERCURY 

The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the 

army. 

MARTHA 

(Thickveiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy of the 

Irish Times in her hand, in tone of reproach, pointing) Henry! 

Leopold! Lionel, thou lost one! Clear my name. 


453 

FIRST WATCH 

(Sternly) Come to the station. 

BLOOM 

(Scared, hats himself, steps back, then, plucking at his heart 

and lifting his right forearm on the square, he gives the sign and 

dueguard of fellowcraft) No, no, worshipful master, light of 

love. Mistaken identity. The Lyons mail. Lesurques and 

Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We medical 

men. By striking him dead with a hatchet. I am wrongfully 

accused. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully 

condemned. 

MARTHA 

(Sobbing behind her veil) Breach of promise. My real name is 

Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I’ll tell 

my brother, the Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt. 

BLOOM 

(Behind his hands) She’s drunk. The woman is inebriated. 

(He murmurs vaguely the pass of Ephraim) Shitbroleeth.

SECOND WATCH 

(Tears in his eyes, to Bloom) You ought to be thoroughly well 

ashamed of yourself. 

BLOOM 

Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare’s nest. I 

am a man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I 

am a respectable married man, without a stain on my character. 

I live in Eccles street. My wife, I am the daughter of a 

most distinguished commander, a gallant upstanding gentleman, 

what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one 

of Britain’s fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got 

his majority for the heroic defence of Rorke’s Drift. 

Regiment. 

FIRST WATCH 

BLOOM 

(Turns to the gallery) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the 

earth, known the world over. I think I see some old comrades 

in arms up there among you. The R. D. F., with our 


454 

own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the pluckiest 

lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in the service 

of our sovereign. 

A VOICE 

Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain? 

BLOOM 

(His hand on the shoulder of the first watch) My old dad too 

was a J. P. I’m as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought 

with the colours for king and country in the absentminded 

war under general Gough in the park and was disabled at 

Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches. 

I did all a white man could. (With quiet feeling) Jim Bludso. 

Hold her nozzle again the bank. 

Profession or trade. 

FIRST WATCH 

BLOOM 

Well, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. In fact

we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which 

I am the inventor, something that is an entirely new departure. 

I am connected with the British and Irish press. If you 

ring up … 

(Myles Crawford strides out jerkily, a quill between his teeth. 

His scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He 

dangles a hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with 

the other hand a telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.) 

MYLES CRAWFORD 

(His cock’s wattles wagging) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. 

Hello. Freeman’s Urinal and Weekly Arsewipe here. Paralyse 

Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom? 

(Mr Philip Beaufoy, palefaced, stands in the witnessbox, in accurate 

morning dress, outbreat pocket with peak of handkerchief 

showing, creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He 

carries a large porfolio labelled Matcham’s Masterstrokes.) 


455 

BEAUFOY 

(Drawls) No, you aren’t. Not by a long shot if I know it. I 

don’t see it that’s all. No born gentleman, no-one with the 

most rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop 

to such particularly loathsome conduct. One of those, my 

lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. 

It’s perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness 

he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really gorgeous 

stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath 

suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, 

with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household 

word throughout the kingdom. 

BLOOM 

(Murmurs with hangdog meekness glum) That bit about the 

laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may … 

BEAUFOY 

(His lip upcurled, smiles superciliously on the court) You funny 

ass, you! You’re too beastly awfully weird for words! I don’t 

think you need over excessively disincommodate yourself in

that regard. My literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. 

I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses’ 

fees, shan’t we? We are considerably out of pocket 

over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, 

who has not even been to a university. 

BLOOM 

(Indistinctly) University of life. Bad art. 

BEAUFOY 

(Shouts) It’s a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness 

of the man! (He extends his portfolio) We have here damning 

evidence, the corpus delicti, my lord, a specimen of my 

maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the beast. 

A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY: 

Moses, Moses, king of the jews, 

Wiped his arse in the Daily News. 

(Bravely) Overdrawn. 

BLOOM 


456 

BEAUFOY 

You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you 

rotter! (To the court) Why, look at the man’s private life! Leading 

a quadruple existence! Street angel and house devil. Not 

fit to be mentioned in mixed society! The archconspirator of 

the age! 

BLOOM 

(To the court) And he, a bachelor, how … 

FIRST WATCH 

The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll. 

THE CRIER 

Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid! 

(Mary Driscoll, a slipshod servant girl, approaches. She has a 

bucket on the crook of her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.) 

SECOND WATCH 

Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?

MARY DRISCOLL 

(Indignantly) I’m not a bad one. I bear a respectable character 

and was four months in my last place. I was in a situation, 

six pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out and 

I had to leave owing to his carryings on. 

FIRST WATCH 

What do you tax him with? 

MARY DRISCOLL 

He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself 

as poor as I am. 

BLOOM 

(In housejacket of ripplecloth, flannel trousers, heelless slippers, 

unshaven, his hair rumpled: softly) I treated you white. I gave 

you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station. 

Incautiously I took your part when you were accused 

of pilfering. There’s a medium in all things. Play cricket. 


457 

MARY DRISCOLL 

(Excitedly) As God is looking down on me this night if ever 

I laid a hand to them oysters! 

FIRST WATCH 

The offence complained of? Did something happen? 

MARY DRISCOLL 

He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your honour, when 

the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a 

safety pin. He held me and I was discoloured in four places as a 

result. And he interfered twict with my clothing. 

She counterassaulted. 

BLOOM 

MARY DRISCOLL 

(Scornfully) I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I 

had. I remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he remarked: 

keep it quiet.

(General laughter.) 

GEORGE FOTTRELL 

(Clerk of the crown and peace, resonantly) Order in court! The 

accused will now make a bogus statement. 

(Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily, 

begins a long unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel 

had to say in his stirring address to the grand jury. He was down 

and out but, though branded as a black sheep, if he might say 

so, he meant to reform, to retrieve the memory of the past in a 

purely sisterly way and return to nature as a purely domestic 

animal. A sevenmonth’s child, he had been carefully brought up 

and nurtured by an aged bedridden parent. There might have 

been lapses of an erring father but he wanted to turn over a new 

leaf and now, when at long last in sight of the whipping post, to 

lead a homely life in the evening of his days, permeated by the 

affectionate surroundings of the heaving bosom of the family. 

An acclimatised Britisher, he had seen that summer eve from 

the footplate of an engine cab of the Loop line railway company 

while the rain refrained from falling glimpses, as it were, through 


458 

the windows of loveful households in Dublin city and urban 

district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the better land with 

Dockrell’s wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent 

Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred Infant, yourthful 

scholars grappling with their pensums or model young ladies 

playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the 

family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the boreens 

and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what times 

the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with four acting 

stops and twelvefold bellows, a sacrifice, greatest bargain 

ever.) 

(Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain 

that they cannot hear.) 

LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND 

(Without looking up from their notebooks) Loosen his boots. 

PROFESSOR MACHUGH 

(From the presstable, coughs and calls) Cough it up, man. Get 

it out in bits.

(The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. Bloom 

himself. Bowel trouble. In Beaver street gripe, yes. Quite bad. A 

plasterer’s bucket. By walking stifflegged. Suffered untold misery. 

Deadly agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. Yes, some 

spinach. Crucial moment. He did not look in the bucket nobody. 

Rather a mess. Not completely. A Titbits back number.) 

(Uproar and catcalls. Bloom in a torn frockcoat stained with 

whitewash, dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip of 

stickingplaster across his nose, talks inaudibly.) 

J. J. O’MOLLOY 

(In barrister’s grey wig and stuffgown, speaking with a voice of 

pained protest) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense 

of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a 

beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of 

justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who 

started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an 

honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a 

momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, 

such familiarities as the alleged guilty occurrence being 


459 

quite permitted in my client’s native place, the land of the 

Pharaoh. Prima facie, I put it to you that there was no attempt 

at carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the 

offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, 

was not repeated. I would deal in especial with atavism. 

There have been cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in 

my client’s family. If the accused could speak he could a tale 

unfold—one of the strangest that have ever been narrated 

between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical 

wreck from cobbler’s weak chest. His submission is that 

he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. 

Not all there, in fact. 

BLOOM 

(Barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar’s vest and trousers, apologetic 

toes turned in, opens his tiny mole’s eyes and looks about 

him dazedly, passing a slow hand across his forehead. Then he 

hitches his belt sailor fashion and with a shrug of oriental obeisance 

salutes the court, pointing one thumb heavenward.) Him 

makee velly muchee fine night. (He begins to lilt simply)

(He is howled down.) 

Li li poo lil chile 

Blingee pigfoot evly night 

Payee two shilly … 


(Hotly to the populace) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I 

will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this 

fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic 

code has superseded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it 

emphatically, without wishing for one moment to defeat the 

ends of justice, accused was not accessory before the act and 

prosecutrix has not been tampered with. The young person 

was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter. 

(Bloom takes J. J. O’Molloy’s hand and raises it to his lips.) 

I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the 

hidden hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute 

Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be 

the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly 

which injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a 


460 

girl who took the wrong turning when some dastard, responsible 

for her condition, had worked his own sweet will on 

her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man 

I know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging 

of his extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway 

Asia Minor, slides of which will now be shown. (To 

Bloom) I suggest that you will do the handsome thing. 

A penny in the pound. 

BLOOM 

(The image of the lake of Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping 

in silver haze is projected on the wall. Moses Dlugacz, 

ferreteyed albino, in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, 

holding in each hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.) 

DLUGACZ 

(Hoarsely) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, W.13. 

(J. J. O’Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lepel of his 

coat with solemnity. His face lengthens, grows pale and bearded,

with sunken eyes, the blotches of phthisis and hectic cheekbones 

of John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchief to his mouth and 

scrutinises the galloping tide of rosepink blood.) 

J.J.O’MOLLOY 

(Almost voicelessly) Excuse me. I am suffering from a severe 

chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen 

words. (He assumes the avine head, foxy moustache and 

proboscidal eloquence of Seymour Bushe.) When the angel’s 

book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive bosom 

has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring 

deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred 

benefit of the doubt. (A paper with something written on it is 

handed into court.) 

BLOOM 

(In court dress) Can give best references. Messrs Callan, 

Coleman. Mr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr 

V. B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the 

charmed circle of the highest … Queens of Dublin society. 

(Carelessly) I was just chatting this afternoon at the viceregal 


461 

lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer 

royal at the levee. Sir Bob, I said … 

MRS YELVERTON BARRY 

(In lowcorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, 

wearing a sabletrimmed brickquilted dolman, a comb of brilliants 

and panache of osprey in her hair) Arrest him, constable. 

He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when 

my husband was in the North Riding of Tipperary on the 

Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that he 

had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of 

the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I 

deeply inflamed him, he said. He made improper overtures 

to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on the 

following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me 

through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, 

entitled The Girl with the Three pairs of Stays. 

MRS BELLINGHAM 

(In cap and seal cony mantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out 

of her brougham and scans through tortoisehell quizzing-glasses

which she takes from inside her huge opossum muff) Also to 

me. Yes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Because 

he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker’s 

one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree 

when even the grid of the wastepipe and the ballstop in my 

bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom 

of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in my honour. 

I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the information 

that it was ablossom of the homegrown potato 

plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm. 


Shame on him! 

(A crowd of sluts and ragamuffins surges forward) 

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS 

(Screaming) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers 

for Ikey Mo! 


462 

SECOND WATCH 

(Produces handcuffs) Here are the darbies. 


He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments 

as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my 

frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same breath he 

expressed himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins 

and of his fortunate proximity to my person, when 

standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial 

bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, 

a buck’s head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my 

nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up 

to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures 

in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. 

He urged me (stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge 

me) to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the 

earliest possible opportunity. 

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS 

(In Amazon costume, hard hat, jackboots cockspurred, vermil-

ion waistcoat, fawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, 

long train held up and hunting crop with which she strikes her 

welt constantly) Also me. Because he saw me on the polo 

ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus 

the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I 

watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win 

the final chukkar on his darling cob centaur. This plebeian 

Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent 

me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are 

sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I 

have it still. It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and 

lovely (his wife, as he solemnly assured me, taken by him 

from nature), practising illicit intercourse with a muscular 

torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to do likewise, 

to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored 

me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to 

chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, 

to give him a most vicious horsewhipping. 

Me too. 



463 

Me too. 


(Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters 

received from Bloom.) 


(Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm of fury) I will, 

by the God above me. I’ll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as 

long as I can stand over him. I’ll flay him alive. 

BLOOM 

(His eyes closing, quails expectantly) Here? (He squirms) Again! 

(He pants cringing) I love the danger. 


Very much so! I’ll make it hot for you. I’ll make you dance 

Jack Latten for that. 


Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!


Disgraceful! There’s no excuse for him! A married man! 

BLOOM 

All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm 

tingling glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate 

the circulation. 


(Laughs derisively) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the 

living God, you’ll get the surprise of your life now, believe 

me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. 

You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury. 


(Shakes her muff and quizzing-glasses vindictively) Make him 

smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel 

within an inch of his life. The cat-o’-nine-tails. Geld him. 

Vivisect him. 


464 

BLOOM 

(Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands: with hangdog mien) 

O cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. 

Kismet. Let me off this once. (He offers the other cheek) 


(Severely) Don’t do so on any account, Mrs Talboys! He should 

be soundly trounced! 


(Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently) I’ll do no such thing. Pigdog 

and always was ever since he was pupped! To dare address me! 

I’ll flog him black and blue in the public streets. I’ll dig my 

spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. (She 

swishes her huntingcrop savagely in the air) Take down his trousers 

without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready? 

BLOOM 

(Trembling, beginning to obey) The weather has been so warm. 

(Davy Stephens, ringletted, passes with a bevy of barefoot newsboys.)

DAVY STEPHENS 

Messenger of the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint 

Patrick’s Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of 

all the cuckolds in Dublin. 

(The very reverend Canon O’Hanlon in cloth of gold cope elevates 

and exposes a marble timepiece. Before him Father Conroy 

and the reverend John Hughes S.J. bend low.) 

(Unportalling) 

THE TIMEPIECE 

Cuckoo. 

Cuckoo. 

Cuckoo. 

(The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.) 

THE QUOITS 

Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag. 


465 

(A panel of fog rolls back rapidly, revealing rappidly in the jurybox 

the faces of Martin Cunningham, foreman, silkhatted, Jack 

Power, Simon Dedalus, Tom Kernan, Ned Lambert, John Henry 

Menton, Myles Crawford, Lenehan, Paddy Leonard, Nosey 

Flynn, M’Coy and the featureless face of a nameless one.) 

THE NAMELESS ONE 

Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her. 

THE JURORS 

(All their heads turned to his voice) Really? 

THE NAMELESS ONE 

(Snarls) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five. 

THE JURORS 

(All their heads lowared in assent) Most of us thought as much. 

FIRST WATCH 

He is a marked man. Another girl’s plait cut. Wanted: Jack 

the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.

SECOND WATCH 

(Awed, whispers) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist. 

THE CRIER 

(Loudly) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a 

wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold 

and a public nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas 

at this commission of assizes the most honourable ... 

(His honour, Sir Frederick Falkiner, Recorder of Dublin, in 

judicial garb of grey stone rises from the bench, stonebearded. he 

bears in his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his forehead arise 

starkly the mosaic ramshorns.) 

THE RECORDER 

I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of 

this odious pest. Scandalous! (He dons the black cap) Let him 

be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands 

and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His 

Majesty’s pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he 

is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord 


466 

have mercy on your soul. Remove him. (A black skullcap descends 

upon his head.) 

(The subsheriff Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent 

Henry Clay.) 

LONG JOHN FANNING 

(Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance) Who’ll hang Judas 

Iscariot? 

(H. Rumbold, master barber , in a bloodcoloured jerkin and 

tanner’s apron, a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block. 

A life preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his 

belt. He rubs grimly his brappling hands, knobbed with knuckled 

usters.) 

RUMBOLD 

(To the recorder with sinister familiarity) Hanging Harry, your 

Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or 

nothing.

(The bells of George’s Church toll slowly, loud dark iron.) 


THE BELLS 

BLOOM 

(Desperately) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence. 

Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. (Breathlessly) 

Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. (Overcome with 

emotion) I left the precincts. (He turns to a figure in the crowd, 

appealing) Hynes, may I speak to you? You know me. That three 

shillings you can keep. If you want a little more … 

HYNES 

(Coldly) You are a perfect stranger. 

SECOND WATCH 

(Points to the corner) The bomb is here. 

FIRST WATCH 

Infernal machine with a time fuse. 


467 

BLOOM 

No, no. Pig’s feet. I was at a funeral. 

FIRST WATCH 

(Draws his truncheon) Liar! 

(The beagle lifts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face of 

Paddy Dignam. He has gnawed all. He exhales a putrid 

carcasefed breath. He grows to human size and shape. His dachshund 

coat becomes a brown mortuary habit. His green eye flashes 

bloodshot. Half of one ear, all the nose and both thumbs are 

ghouleaten.) 

PADDY DIGNAM 

(In a hollow voice) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor 

Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the 

disease from natural causes. 

(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays 

lugubriously.)

(In triumph) You hear? 

BLOOM 

PADDY DIGNAM 

Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam’s spirit. List, list, O list! 

BLOOM 

The voice is the voice of Esau. 

SECOND WATCH 

(Blesses himself) How is that possible? 

FIRST WATCH 

It is not in the penny catechism. 

PADDY DIGNAM 

By metempsychosis. Spooks. 

O rocks. 

A VOICE 


468 

PADDY DIGNAM 

(Earnestly) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, 

solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 

Bachelor’s Walk. Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart 

hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut 

up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry. 

(He looks round him) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. 

That buttermilk didn’t agree with me. 

(The portly figure of John O’Connell, caretaker, stands forth, 

holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father 

Coffey, Chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and 

bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff twisted poppies.) 

FATHER COFFEY 

(Yawns, then chants with a hoarse croak) Namine. Jacobs. 

Vobiscuits. Amen. 

JOHN O’CONNELL 

(Foghorns stormily through his megaphone) Dignam, Patrick 

T, deceased.

PADDY DIGNAM 

(With pricked up ears, winces) Overtones. (He wriggles forward 

and places an ear to the ground) My master’s voice! 

JOHN O’CONNELL 

Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand. Field 

seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one. 

(Paddy Dignam listens with visible effort, thinking, his tail 

stiffpointed, his ears cocked.) 

PADDY DIGNAM 

Pray for the repose of his soul. 

(He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing 

its tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather 

rat on gungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam’s 

voice, muffled, is heard baying under ground: Dignam’s dead 

and gone below. Tom Rochford, Robinred breasted, in cap and 

breeches, jumps from his two columned machine.) 


469 

TOM ROCHFORD 

(A hand to his breastbone, bows) Reuben J. A florin I find 

him. (He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare) My turn now 

on. Follow me up to Carlow. 

(He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed 

in the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble, eyes of nought. 

All recedes. Bloom plodges forward again through the sump. 

Kisses chirp amid the rifts of fog a piano sounds. He stands before 

a lighted house, listening. The kisses, winging from their 

bowers fly about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.) 

THE KISSES 

(Warbling) Leo! (Twittering) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo! 

(Cooing) Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! (Warbling) 

Big comebig! Pirouette! Leopopold! (Twittering) Leeolee! 

(Warbling) O Leo! 

(They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks, 

silvery sequins.)

BLOOM 

A man’s touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here. 

(Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with 

three bronze buckles, a slim black vervet fillet round her throat, 

nods, trips down the steps and accosts him.) 

ZOE 

Are you looking for someone? He’s inside with his friend. 

Is this Mrs Mack’s? 

BLOOM 

ZOE 

No, eightyone. Mrs Cohen’s. You might go farther and fare 

worse. Mother Slipperslapper. (Familiarly) She’s on the job 

herself tonight with the vet her tipster that gives her all the 

winners and pays for her son in Oxford. Working overtime 

but her luck’s turned today. (Suspiciously) You’re not his father, 

are you? 


470 

Not I! 

BLOOM 

ZOE 

You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight? 

(His skin, alert, feels her fingertips approach. A hand glides over 

his left thigh.) 

How’s the nuts? 

ZOE 

BLOOM 

Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose. 

One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says. 

ZOE 

(In sudden alarm) You’ve a hard chancre. 

Not likely. 

BLOOM

I feel it. 

ZOE 

(Her hand slides into his left trouser pocket and brings out a 

hard black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with 

dumb moist lips.) 

A talisman. Heirloom. 

BLOOM 

ZOE 

For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh? 

(She puts the potato greedily into a pocket then links his arm, 

Cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly, 

note by note, Oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny 

crystal of her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile softens.) 

ZOE 

You’ll know me the next time. 


471 

BLOOM 

(Forlornly) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to … 

(Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. 

Round their shores file shadows black of cedargroves. Aroma 

rises, a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the Orient, a sky of 

sapphire, Cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the 

womancity nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs 

among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmer of scarlet 

winegrapes. A wine of shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring.) 

ZOE 

(Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously 

smeared with salve of swinefat and rosewater) Schorach ani 

wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim. 

BLOOM 

(Fascinated) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.

ZOE 

And you know what thought did? 

(She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth, sending on 

him a cloying breath of stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose 

a sepulchre of the gold of kings and their mouldering bones.) 

BLOOM 

(Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat 

awkward hand) Are you a Dublin girl? 

ZOE 

(Catches a stray hair deftly and twists it to her coil) No bloody 

fear. I’m English. Have you a swaggerroot? 

BLOOM 

(As before) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish 

device. (Lewdly) The mouth can be better engaged than 

with a cylinder of rank weed. 


472 

ZOE 

Go on. Make a stump speech out of it. 

BLOOM 

(In workman’s corduroy overalls, black gansy with red floating 

tie and apache cap) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Ralegh 

brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the 

one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner 

of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will understanding, all. That 

is to say he brought the poison a hundred years before another 

person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide. 

Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life! 

(Midnight chimes from distant steeples.) 

THE CHIMES 

Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin! 

BLOOM 

(In alderman’s gown and chain) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns 

Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a

tramline, I say, from the cattlemarket to the river. That’s the 

music of the future. That’s my programme. Cui bono? But 

our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom ship of 

finance … 

AN ELECTOR 

Three times three for our future chief magistrate! 

(The aurora borealis of the torchlight procession leaps.) 

Hooray! 

THE TORCHBEARERS 

(Several wellknown burgesses, city magnates and freemen of the 

city shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy 

Harrington, late thrice Lord Mayor of Dublin, inposing in 

mayoral scarlet, gold chain and white silk tie, confers with councillor 

Lorcan Sherlock, locum tenens. They nod vigorously in 

agreement.) 


473 

LATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON 

(In scarlet robe with mace, gold mayoral chain and large white 

silk scarf) That alderman sir Leo Bloom’s speech be printed 

at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which he 

was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and 

that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off 

Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Bloom. 

COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK 

Carried unanimously. 

BLOOM 

(Impassionedly) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen 

as they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what 

reck they? Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. 

Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured 

monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins 

produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted 

labour. The poor man starves while they are grassing 

their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and 

phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But

their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev … 

(Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches 

spring up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mile Failte and 

Mah Ttob Melek Israel spans the street. All the windows are 

thronged with sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments 

of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the King’s own Scottish 

Borderers, the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers 

standing to attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from high school 

are perched on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, 

gutters, chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and 

cheering. The pillar of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band 

is heard in the distance playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach 

with imperial eagles hoisted, trailing banners and waving 

oriental palms. The chryselelphantine papal standard rises 

high, surrounded by pennons of the civic flag. The van of the 

procession appears headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal, 

in a chessboard tabard, the Athlone Poursuivant and Ulster 

King of Arms. They are followed by the Right Honourable 

Joseph Hutchinson, Lord Mayor of Dublin, his lordship the lord 

mayor of Cork, their worships the mayors of Limerick, Galway, 


474 

Sligo and Waterford, twentyeight Irish representative peers, 

sirdars, grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth of estate, the 

Dublin Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter of the saints of 

finance in their plutocratic order of precedence, the bishop of 

Down and Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, 

archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the 

most reverend Dr William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, 

primate of all Ireland, the chief rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, 

the heads of the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian 

chapels and the honorary secretary of the society of friends. After 

them march the guilds and trades and trainbands with flying 

colours: coopers, bird fanciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers, 

law scriveners, masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, 

chimneysweeps, lard refiners, tabinet and poplin weavers, farriers, 

Italian warehousemen, church decorators, bootjack manufacturers, 

undertakers, silk mercers, lapidaries, salesmasters, 

corkcutters, assessors of fire losses, dyers and cleaners, export bottlers, 

fellmongers, ticketwriters, heraldic seal engravers, horse 

repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and archery outfitters, 

riddlemakers, egg and potato factors, hosiers and glovers, plumbing 

contractors. After them march gentlemen of the bedchamber,

Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the master of horse, the 

lord great chamberlain, the earl marshal, the high constable 

carrying the sword of state, saint Stephen’s iron crown, the chalice 

and bible. Four buglers on foot blow a sennet. Beefeaters 

reply, winding clarions of welcome. Under an arch of triumph 

Bloom appears, bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle trimmed 

with ermine, bearing Saint Edward’s staff the orb and sceptre 

with the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite horse 

with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden 

headstall. Wild excitement. The ladies from their balconies throw 

down rosepetals. The air is perfumed with essences. The men 

cheer. Bloom’s boys run amid the bystanders with branches of 

hawthorn and wrenbushes.) 

BLOOM’S BOYS 

The wren, the wren, 

The king of all birds, 

Saint Stephen’s his day 

Was caught in the furze. 


475 

A BLACKSMITH 

(Murmurs) For the honour of God! And is that Bloom? He 

scarcely looks thirtyone. 

A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER 

That’s the famous Bloom now, the world’s greatest reformer. 

Hats off! 

(All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.) 

A MILLIONAIRESS 

(Richly) Isn’t he simply wonderful? 

A NOBLEWOMAN 

(Nobly) All that man has seen! 

A FEMINIST 

(Masculinely) And done! 

A BELLHANGER 

A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.

(Bloom’s weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.) 

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR 

I here present your undoubted emperor-president and kingchairman, 

the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler 

of this realm. God save Leopold the First! 

ALL 

God save Leopold the First! 

BLOOM 

(In dalmatic and purple mantle, to the bishop of Down and 

Connor, with dignity) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir. 

WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 

(In purple stock and shovel hat) Will you to your power cause 

law and mercy to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland 

and territories thereunto belonging? 

BLOOM 

(Placing his right hand on his testicles, swears) So may the Cre- 


476 

ator deal with me. All this I promise to do. 

MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH 

(Pours a cruse of hairoil over Bloom’s head) Gaudium magnum 

annuntio vobis. Habemus carneficem. Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, 

David, George, be thou anointed! 

(Bloom assumes a mantle of cloth of gold and puts on a ruby 

ring. He ascends and stands on the stone of destiny. The representative 

peers put on at the same time their twentyeight crowns. 

Joybells ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick’s, George’s and gay 

Malahide. Mirus bazaar fireworks go up from all sides with 

symbolic phallopyrotechnic designs. The peers do homage, one 

by one, approaching and genuflecting.) 

THE PEERS 

I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship. 

(Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-I- 

Noor diamond. His palfrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless

intercontinental and interplanetary transmitters are set up for 

reception of message.) 

BLOOM 

My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula 

Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have 

this day repudiated our former spouse and have bestowed 

our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the splendour of 

night. 

(The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in 

the Black Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver 

crescent on her head, descends from a Sedan chair, borne by 

two giants. An outburst of cheering.) 

JOHN HOWARD PARNELL 

(Rraises the royal standard) Illustrious Bloom! Successor to 

my famous brother! 

BLOOM 

(Embraces John Howard Parnell) We thank you from our heart, 


477 

John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised 

land of our common ancestors. 

(The freedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter. 

The keys of Dublin, crossed on a crimson cushion, are given 

to him. He shows all that he is wearing green socks.) 

TOM KERNAN 

You deserve it, your honour. 

BLOOM 

On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy 

at Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played 

on his lines with telling effect. Half a league onward! They 

charge! All is lost now! Do we yield? No! We drive them headlong! 

Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our light horse 

swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry 

bonafide sabaoth, sabred the Saracen gunners to a man. 

THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS 

Hear! Hear!

JOHN WYSE NOLAN 

There’s the man that got away James Stephens. 

Bravo! 

A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY 

AN OLD RESIDENT 

You’re a credit to your country, sir, that’s what you are. 

AN APPLEWOMAN 

He’s a man like Ireland wants. 

BLOOM 

My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, 

tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a 

Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is 

to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the 

future. 

(Thirtytwo workmen, wearing rosettes, from all the counties of 

Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the 


478 

new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice with crystal roof, built in 

the shape of a huge pork kidney, containing forty thousand rooms. 

In the course of its extension several buildings and monuments are 

demolished. Government offices are temporarily transferred to railway 

sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The inhabitants 

are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red with the 

letters: L. B. Several paupers fall from a ladder. A part of the walls 

of Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.) 

THE SIGHTSEERS 

(Dying) Morituri te salutant. (They die.) 

(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor. 

He points an elongated finger at Bloom.) 

THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH 

Don’t you believe a word he says. That man is Leopold 

M’Intosh, the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins. 

BLOOM 

Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M’Intosh!

(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom 

with his sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths 

of many powerful enemies, graziers, members of parliament, 

members of standing committees, are reported. Bloom’s bodyguard 

distribute Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves 

and fishes, temperance badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, free 

cowbones for soup, rubber preservatives in sealed envelopes tied 

with gold thread, butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in 

the form of cocked hats, readymade suits, porringers of toad in 

the hole, bottles of Jeyes’ Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days’ indulgences, 

spurious coins, dairyfed pork sausages, theatre passes, season 

tickets available for all tramlines, coupons of the royal and 

privileged Hungarian lottery, penny dinner counters, cheap reprints 

of the World’s Twelve Worst Books: Froggy and Fritz (politic), 

Care of the Baby (infantilic), 50 Meals for 7/6 (culinic), 

Was Jesus a Sun Myth? (historic), Expel that Pain (medic), 

Infant’s Compendium of the Universe (cosmic), Let’s All Chortle 

(hilaric), Canvasser’s Vade Mecum (journalic), Love-letters of 

Mother Assistant (erotic), Who’s Who in Space (astric), Songs 

that Reached Our Heart (melodic), Pennywise’s Way to Wealth 

(parsimonic). A general rush and scramble. Women press for- 


479 

ward to touch the hem of Bloom’s robe. The Lady Gwendolen 

Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses 

him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium flashlight 

photograph is taken. Baves and sucklings are held up.) 

THE WOMEN 

Little father! Little father! 

THE BABES AND SUCKLINGS 

Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home, 

Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone. 

(Bloom, bending down, pokes baby Boardman gently in the stomach.) 

BABY BOARDMAN 

(Hiccups, curdled milk flowing from his mouth) Hajajaja. 

BLOOM 

(Shaking hands with a blind stripling) My more than Brother! 

(Placing his arms round the shoulders of an old couple) Dear

old friends! (He plays pussy fourcorners with ragged boys and 

girls) Peep! Bopeep! (He wheels twins in a perambulator) 

Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? (He performs juggler’s tricks, 

draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet silk 

handkerchiefs from his mouth) Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. 

(He consoles a widow) Absence makes the heart grow younger. 

(He dances the Highland fling with grotesque antics) Leg it, ye 

devils! (He kisses the bedsores of a palsied veteran) Honourable 

wounds! (He trips up a fit policeman) U. p: up. U. p: up. (He 

whispers in the ear of a blushing waitress and laughs kindly) 

Ah, naughty, naughty! (He eats a raw turnip offered him by 

Maurice Butterly, farmer) Fine! Splendid! (He refuses to accept 

three shillings offered him by Joseph Hynes, journalist) My dear 

fellow, not at all! (He gives his coat to a beggar) Please accept. 

(He takes part in a stomach race with elderly male and female 

cripples) Come on, boys! Wriggle it, girls! 

THE CITIZEN 

(Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffler) 

May the good God bless him! 


480 

(The ram’s horns sound for silence. The standard of Zion is 

hoisted.) 

BLOOM 

(Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls a paper and 

reads solemnly) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim 

Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar 

Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith. 

(An official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town 

clerk.) 

JIMMY HENRY 

The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic 

Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical 

and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems. 

All cordially invited. Given at this our loyal city of Dublin in 

the year I of the Paradisiacal Era. 

PADDY LEONARD 

What am I to do about my rates and taxes?

Pay them, my friend. 

Thank you. 

BLOOM 

PADDY LEONARD 

NOSEY FLYNN 

Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance? 

BLOOM 

(Obdurately) Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are 

bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the 

sum of five pounds. 


A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O’Brien! 

NOSEY FLYNN 

Where do I draw the five pounds? 


481 

PISSER BURKE 

For bladder trouble? 

BLOOM 

Acid. nit. hydrochlor. dil., 20 minims 

Tinct. nuxvom., 5 minims 

Extr. taraxel. liq., 30 minims. 

Aq. dis. ter in die. 

CHRIS CALLINAN 

What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran? 

BLOOM 

Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II. 

JOE HYNES 

Why aren’t you in uniform? 

BLOOM 

When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform

of the Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours? 

Pansies? 

BEN DOLLARD 

BLOOM 

Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens. 

When twins arrive? 

BEN DOLLARD 

BLOOM 

Father (pater, dad) starts thinking. 

LARRY O’ROURKE 

An eightday licence for my new premises. You remember 

me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I’m sending 

around a dozen of stout for the missus. 

BLOOM 

(Coldly) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts 


482 

no presents. 

CROFTON 

This is indeed a festivity. 

BLOOM 

(Solemnly) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament. 

ALEXANDER KEYES 

When will we have our own house of keys? 

BLOOM 

I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten 

commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, 

moslem and gentile. Three acres and a cow for all children of 

nature. Saloon motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour 

for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric 

dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy 

must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with 

masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language 

with universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of

arspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free rent, 

free love and a free lay church in a free lay state. 

O’MADDEN BURKE 

Free fox in a free henroost. 

DAVY BYRNE 

(Yawning) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach! 

BLOOM 

Mixed races and mixed marriage. 

LENEHAN 

What about mixed bathing? 

(Bloom explains to those near him his schemes for social regeneration. 

All agree with him. The keeper of the Kildare Street 

Museum appears, dragging a lorry on which are the shaking 

statues of several naked goddesses, Venus Callipyge, Venus 

Pandemos, Venus Metempsychosis, and plaster figures, also naked, 

representing the new nine muses, Commerce, Operatic 


483 

Music, Amor, Publicity, Manufacture, Liberty of Speech, Plural 

Voting, Gastronomy, Private Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, 

Painless Obstetrics and Astronomy for the People.) 

FATHER FARLEY 

He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking 

to overthrow our holy faith. 

MRS RIORDAN 

(Tears up her will) I’m disappointed in you! You bad man! 

MOTHER GROGAN 

(Removes her boot to throw it at Bloom) You beast! You abominable 

person! 

NOSEY FLYNN 

Give us a tune, Bloom. One of the old sweet songs. 

BLOOM 

(WIith rollicking humour)

I vowed that I never would leave her, 

She turned out a cruel deceiver. 

With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. 

HOPPY HOLOHAN 

Good old Bloom! There’s nobody like him after all. 

Stage Irishman! 

PADDY LEONARD 

BLOOM 

What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows 

of Casteele. (Laughter.) 

LENEHAN 

Plagiarist! Down with Bloom! 

THE VEILED SIBYL 

(Enthusiastically) I’m a Bloomite and I glory in it. I believe 

in him in spite of all. I’d give my life for him, the funniest 

man on earth. 


484 

BLOOM 

(Winks at the bystanders) I bet she’s a bonny lassie. 

THEODORE PUREFOY 

(In fishing cap and oilskin jacket) He employs a mechanical 

device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature. 

THE VEILED SIBYL 

(Stabs herself) My hero god! (She dies.) 

(Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit 

suicide by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, 

arsenic, opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves 

under steamrollers, from the top of Nelson’s Pillar, into the great 

vat of Guinness’s brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing 

their heads in gasovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, 

leaping from windows of different storeys.) 

ALEXANDER J DOWIE 

(Violently) Fellowchristians and antiBloomites, the man called 

Bloom is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men.

A fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat 

of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling 

the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. 

This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull 

mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet 

Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake 

faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban! 

THE MOB 

Lynch him! Roast him! He’s as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox! 

(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers 

from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no 

commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable 

cabbage, stale bread, sheep’s tails, odd pieces of fat.) 

BLOOM 

(Excitedly) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke 

again. By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It 

was my brother Henry. He is my double. He lives in number 

2 Dolphin’s Barn. Slander, the viper, has wrongfully accused 


485 

me. Fellowcountrymen, sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall. 

I call on my old friend, Dr Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, 

to give medical testimony on my behalf. 

DR MULLIGAN 

(In motor jerkin, green motorgoggles on his brow) Dr Bloom is 

bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr 

Eustace’s private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out 

of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of 

unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered 

among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of 

chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is 

prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, 

a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence 

of a family complex he has temporarily lost his 

memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than 

sinning. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after 

application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral 

and pubic hairs, I declare him to be virgo intacta. 

(Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)

DR MADDEN 

Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations 

I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved 

in spirits of wine in the national teratological museum. 

DR CROTTHERS 

I have examined the patient’s urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation 

is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent. 

DR PUNCH COSTELLO 

The fetor judaicus is most perceptible. 

DR DIXON 

(Reads a bill of health) Professor Bloom is a finished example 

of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and 

lovable. Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. 

He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not 

feebleminded in the medical sense. He has written a really 

beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of 

the Reformed Priests’ Protection Society which clears up everything. 

He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm 


486 

that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan 

food, cold dried grocer’s peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure 

Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself 

every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass 

misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states 

that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency 

in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have 

ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby. 

(General commotion and compassion. Women faint. A wealthy 

American makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver 

coins, blank cheques, banknotes, jewels, treasury bonds, maturing 

bills of exchange, I. O. U’s, wedding rings, watchchains, 

lockets, necklaces and bracelets are rapidly collected.) 

BLOOM 

O, I so want to be a mother. 

MRS THORNTON 

(In nursetender’s gown) Embrace me tight, dear. You’ll be soon 

over it. Tight, dear.

(Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and 

white children. They appear on a red carpeted staircase adorned 

with expensive plants. All the octuplets are handsome, with valuable 

metallic faces, wellmade, respectably dressed and well conducted, 

speaking five modern languages fluently and interested 

in various arts and sciences. Each has his name printed in legible 

letters on his shirtfront: Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, 

Maindoree, Silversmile, Silberselber, Vifagent, Panargyros. They 

are immediately appointed to positions of high public trust in 

several different countries as managing directors of banks, traffic 

managers of railways, chairmen of limited liability companies, 

vicechairmen of hotel syndicates.) 

A VOICE 

Bloom, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David? 

BLOOM 

(Darkly) You have said it. 

BROTHER BUZZ 

Then perform a miracle like Father Charles. 


487 

BANTAM LYONS 

Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger. 

(Bloom walks on a net, covers his left eye with his left ear, passes 

through several walls, climbs Nelson’s Pillar, hangs from the top 

ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (shells included), 

heals several sufferers from king’s evil, contracts his face so as to 

resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord 

Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses 

Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip Van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean 

Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, 

Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in different 

directions, bids the tide turn back, eclipses the sun by 

extending his little finger.) 

BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO 

(Iin papal zouave’s uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, armplates, 

thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and brown paper 

mitre) Leopoldi autem generatio. Moses begat Noah and Noah 

begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O’Halloran and O’Halloran 

begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and

Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le 

Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay 

begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz 

begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat 

Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat 

Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and 

Ichabudonosor begat O’Donnell Magnus and O’Donnell 

Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat ben Maimun 

and ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat 

Benamor and Benamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith 

begat Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone 

and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat 

Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and Virag begat 

Bloom et vocabitur nomen eius Emmanuel. 

A DEADHAND 

(Writes on the wall) Bloom is a cod. 

CRAB 

(In bushranger’s kit) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind 

Kilbarrack? 


488 

A FEMALE INFANT 

(Shakes a rattle) And under Ballybough bridge? 

A HOLLYBUSH 

And in the devil’s glen? 

BLOOM 

(Blushes furiously all over from frons to nates, three tears filling 

from his left eye) Spare my past. 

THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS 

(In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook fair shillelaghs) 

Sjambok him! 

(Bloom with asses’ ears seats himself in the pillory with crossed 

arms, his feet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar 

teco. Artane orphans, joining hands, caper round him. Girls of 

the Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite 

direction.)

THE ARTANE ORPHANS 

You hig, you hog, you dirty dog! 

You think the ladies love you! 

THE PRISON GATE GIRLS 

If you see Kay 

Tell him he may 

See you in tea 

Tell him from me. 

HORNBLOWER 

(In ephod and huntingcap, announces) And he shall carry the 

sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, 

and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him 

and defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from 

Mizraim, the land of Ham. 

(All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many 

bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile 


489 

him. Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing 

long earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.) 

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON 

Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah! Abulafia! Recant! 

(George R Mesias, Bloom’s tailor, appears, a tailor’s goose under 

his arm, presenting a bill) 

MESIAS 

To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings. 

BLOOM 

(Rubs his hands cheerfully) Just like old times. Poor Bloom! 

(Reuben J Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing 

on his shoulders the drowned corpse of his son, approaches the 

pillory.)

REUBEN J 

(Whispers hoarsely) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the 

flatties. Nip the first rattler. 

Pflaap! 

THE FIRE BRIGADE 

BROTHER BUZZ 

(Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery of painted 

flames and high pointed hat. He places a bag of gunpowder 

round his neck and hands him over to the civil power, saying) 

Forgive him his trespasses. 

(Lieutenant Myers of the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request 

sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.) 

Thank heaven! 

THE CITIZEN 

BLOOM 

(In a seamless garment marked I. H. S. stands upright amid 


490 

phoenix flames) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin. 

(He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces of burning. The daughters 

of Erin, in black garments, with large prayerbooks and long 

lighted candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.) 

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN 

Kidney of Bloom, pray for us 

Flower of the Bath, pray for us 

Mentor of Menton, pray for us 

Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us 

Charitable Mason, pray for us 

Wandering Soap, pray for us 

Sweets of Sin, pray for us 

Music without Words, pray for us 

Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us 

Friend of all Frillies, pray for us 

Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us 

Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.

(A choir of six hundred voices, conducted by Vincent O’Brien, 

sings the chorus from Handel’s Messiah Alleluia for the Lord 

God Omnipotent reigneth, accompanied on the organ by Joseph 

Glynn. Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.) 

ZOE 

Talk away till you’re black in the face. 

BLOOM 

(In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an 

emigrant’s red handkerchief bundle in his hand, leading a black 

bogoak pig by a sugaun, with a smile in his eye) Let me be 

going now, woman of the house, for by all the goats in 

Connemara I’m after having the father and mother of a bating. 

(With a tear in his eye) All insanity. Patriotism, sorrow 

for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not to be. 

Life’s dream is o’er. End it peacefully. They can live on. (He 

gazes far away mournfully) I am ruined. A few pastilles of 

aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. 

(He breathes softly) No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell. 


491 

ZOE 

(Stiffly, her finger in her neckfillet) Honest? Till the next time. 

(She sneers) Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or 

came too quick with your best girl. O, I can read your 

thoughts! 

BLOOM 

(Bitterly) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle. 

I’m sick of it. Let everything rip. 

ZOE 

(In sudden sulks) I hate a rotter that’s insincere. Give a bleeding 

whore a chance. 

BLOOM 

(Repentantly) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil. 

Where are you from? London? 

ZOE 

(Glibly) Hog’s Norton where the pigs plays the organs. I’m 

Yorkshire born. (She holds his hand which is feeling for her

nipple) I say, Tommy Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. 

Have you cash for a short time? Ten shillings? 

BLOOM 

(Smiles, nods slowly) More, houri, more. 

ZOE 

And more’s mother? (She pats him offhandedly with velvet 

paws) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new 

pianola? Come and I’ll peel off. 

BLOOM 

(Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment 

of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled 

pears) Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. 

The greeneyed monster. (Earnestly) You know how difficult 

it is. I needn’t tell you. 

ZOE 

(Flattered) What the eye can’t see the heart can’t grieve for. 

(She pats him) Come. 


492 

BLOOM 

Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle. 

Babby! 

ZOE 

BLOOM 

(In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair, 

fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with 

a chubby finger, his moist tongue lolling and lisping) One two 

tlee: tlee tlwo tlone. 

THE BUCKLES 

Love me. Love me not. Love me. 

ZOE: Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures 

his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of 

secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard. 

(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards 

the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice

of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds 

lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.) 

THE MALE BRUTES 

(Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox, 

faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro) Good! 

(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are 

seated. They examine him curiously from under their pencilled 

brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.) 

ZOE 

(Her lucky hand instantly saving him) Hoopsa! Don’t fall upstairs. 

BLOOM 

The just man falls seven times. (He stands aside at the threshold) 

After you is good manners. 

ZOE 

Ladies first, gentlemen after. 


493 

(She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding 

out her hands, draws him over. He hops. On the antlered rack of 

the hall hang a man’s hat and waterproof. Bloom uncovers himself 

but, seeing them, frowns, then smiles, preoccupied. A door 

on the return landing is flung open. A man in purple shirt and 

grey trousers, brownsocked, passes with an ape’s gait, his bald 

head and goatee beard upheld, hugging a full waterjugjar, his 

twotailed black braces dangling at heels. Averting his face quickly 

Bloom bends to examine on the halltable the spaniel eyes of a 

running fox: then, his lifted head sniffing, follows Zoe into the 

musicroom. A shade of mauve tissuepaper dims the light of the 

chandelier. Round and round a moth flies, colliding, escaping. 

The floor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic of jade and azure 

and cinnabar rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped over it in all 

senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe, feet locked, a morris 

of shuffling feet without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage 

higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapestried with a paper of 

yewfronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen of 

peacock feathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug of 

matted hair, his cap back to the front. With a wand he beats 

time slowly. Kitty Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy cos-

tume, doeskin gloves rolled back from a coral wristlet, a chain 

purse in her hand, sits perched on the edge of the table swinging 

her leg and glancing at herself in the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. 

A tag of her corsetlace hangs slightly below her jacket. 

Lynch indicates mockingly the couple at the piano.) 

KITTY 

(Coughs behind her hand) She’s a bit imbecillic. (She signs 

with a waggling forefinger) Blemblem. (Lynch lifts up her skirt 

and white petticoat with his wand. She settles them down 

quickly.) Respect yourself. (She hiccups, then bends quickly 

her sailor hat under which her hair glows, red with henna) O, 

excuse! 

ZOE 

More limelight, Charley. (She goes to the chandelier and turns 

the gas full cock.) 

KITTY 

(Peers at the gasjet) What ails it tonight? 


494 

LYNCH 

(Deeply) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins. 

Clap on the back for Zoe. 

ZOE 

(The wand in Lynch’s hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands 

at the pianola on which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two 

fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry 

Talbot, a blond feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown 

of mildewed strawberry, lolls spreadeagle in the sofa corner, her 

limp forearm pendent over the bolster, listening. A heavy style 

droops over her sleepy eyelid.) 

KITTY 

(Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot) O, excuse! 

ZOE 

(Promptly) Your boy’s thinking of you. Tie a knot on your 

shift.

(Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoils, slides, glides 

over her shoulder, back, arm, chair to the ground. Lynch lifts 

the curled caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neck, nestling. 

Stephen glances behind at the squatted figure with its cap 

back to the front.) 

STEPHEN 

As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto 

Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet’s rest. It may 

be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate Cæla enarrant 

gloriam Domini. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart 

as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as 

priests haihooping round David’s that is Circe’s or what am I 

saying Ceres’ altar and David’s tip from the stable to his chief 

bassoonist about the alrightness of his almightiness. Mais, nom 

de nom, that is another pair of trousers. Jetez la gourme. Faut 

que jeunesse se passe. (He stops, points at Lynch’s cap, smiles, laughs) 

Which side is your knowledge bump? 

THE CAP 

(With saturnine spleen) Bah! It is because it is. Woman’s rea- 


495 

son. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest 

form of life. Bah! 

STEPHEN 

You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes. 

How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? 

Whetstone! 

Bah! 

THE CAP 

STEPHEN 

Here’s another for you. (He frowns) The reason is because 

the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest 

possible interval which … 

THE CAP 

Which? Finish. You can’t. 

STEPHEN 

(With an effort) Interval which. Is the greatest possible el-

lipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. 

Which. 

Which? 

THE CAP 

(Outside the gramophone begins to blare The Holy City.) 

STEPHEN 

(Abruptly) What went forth to the ends of the world to 

traverse not itself, God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial 

traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself becomes that 

self. Wait a moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow’s noise 

in the street. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned 

to become. Ecco! 

LYNCH 

(With a mocking whinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe 

Higgins) What a learned speech, eh? 


496 

ZOE 

(Briskly) God help your head, he knows more than you have 

forgotten. 

(With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.) 

FLORRY 

They say the last day is coming this summer. 

No! 

KITTY 

ZOE 

(Explodes in laughter) Great unjust God! 

FLORRY 

(Offended) Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, 

my foot’s tickling. 

(Ragged barefoot newsboys, jogging a wagtail kite, patter past, 

yelling.)

THE NEWSBOYS 

Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent 

in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist. 

(Stephen turns and sees Bloom.) 

STEPHEN 

A time, times and half a time. 

(Reuben J. Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open 

on his spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim’s 

wallet from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured 

bills. Aloft over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the 

hook of which the sodden huddled mass of his only son, saved 

from Liffey waters, hangs from the slack of its breeches. A hobgoblin 

in the image of Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, 

hydrocephalic, prognathic with receding forehead and Ally Sloper 

nose, tumbles in somersaults through the gathering darkness.) 

What? 

ALL 


497 

THE HOBGOBLIN 

(His jaws chattering, capers to and fro, goggling his eyes, squeaking, 

kangaroohopping with outstretched clutching arms, then 

all at once thrusts his lipless face through the fork of his thighs) Il 

vient! C’est moi! L’homme qui rit! L’homme primigène! (He whirls 

round and round with dervish howls) Sieurs et dames, faites vos 

jeux! (He crouches juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly from his 

hands.) Les jeux sont faits! (The planets rush together, uttering 

crepitant cracks) Rien n’va plus! (The planets, buoyant balloons, 

sail swollen up and away. He springs off into vacuum.) 

FLORRY 

(Sinking into torpor, crossing herself secretly) The end of the 

world! 

(A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity 

occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the 

gramophone blares over coughs and feetshuffling.) 

THE GRAMOPHONE 

Jerusalem!

Open your gates and sing 

Hosanna … 

(A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star falls from it, 

proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming 

of Elijah. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith 

to nadir the End of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie’s 

kilts, busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head 

over heels, in the form of the Three Legs of Man.) 

THE END OF THE WORLD 

(With a Scotch accent) Wha’ll dance the keel row, the keel 

row, the keel row? 

(Over the passing drift and choking breathcoughs, Elijah’s voice, 

harsh as a corncrake’s, jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn 

surplice with funnel sleeves he is seen, vergerfaced, above a rostrum 

abouth which the banner of old glory is draped. He thumps 

the parapet.) 


498 

ELIJAH 

No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole 

Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with 

your mouths shut. Say, I am operating all this trunk line. 

Boys, do it now. God’s time is 12.25. Tell mother you’ll be 

there. Rush your order and you play a slick ace. Join on right 

here. Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop run. 

Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the 

second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? Florry 

Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ, Kitty 

Christ, Lynch Christ, it’s up to you to sense that cosmic force. 

Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of 

the angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the 

higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, 

an Ingersoll. Are you all in this vibration? I say you are. You 

once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven 

becomes a back number. You got me? It’s a lifebrightener, 

sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It’s the whole pie with jam 

in. It’s just the cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, 

supersumptuous. It restores. It vibrates. I know and I am 

some vibrator. Joking apart and, getting down to bedrock,

A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you 

got that? O. K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? 

That’s it. You call me up by sunphone any old time. 

Bumboosers, save your stamps. (He shouts) Now then our 

glory song. All join heartily in the singing. Encore! (He sings) 

Jeru … 

THE GRAMOPHONE 

(Drowning his voice) Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh … (The 

disc rasps gratingly against the needle.) 

THE THREE WHORES 

(Covering their ears, squawk) Ahhkkk! 

ELIJAH 

(In rolled up shirtsleeves, black in the face, shouts at the top of 

his voice, his arms uplifted) Big Brother up there, Mr President, 

you hear what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, 

I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. I certainly 

am thinking now Miss Higgins and Miss Ricketts got 

religion way inside them. Certainly seems to me I don’t never 


499 

see no wusser scared female than the way you been, Miss 

Florry, just now as I done seed you. Mr President, you come 

long and help me save our sisters dear. (He winks at his audience) 

Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he aint 

saying nothing. 

KITTY-KATE 

I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I 

did on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and 

enrolled in the brown scapular. My mother’s sister married a 

Montmorency. It was a working plumber was my ruination 

when I was pure. 

ZOE-FANNY 

I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it. 

FLORRY-TERESA 

It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of 

Hennessy’s three star. I was guilty with Whelan when he 

slipped into the bed.

STEPHEN 

In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without 

end. Blessed be the eight beatitudes. 

(The Beatitudes, Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Lenehan, 

Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch in white surgical students’ gowns, 

four abreast, goosestepping, tramp fast past in noisy marching.) 

THE BEATITUDES 

(Incoherently) Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum 

buggerum bishop. 

LYSTER 

(In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed hat, says discreetly) 

He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek 

thou the light. 

(He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser’s attire, shinily laundered, 

his locks in curlpapers. He leads John Eglinton who wears 

a mandarin’s kimono of Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and a 

high pagoda hat.) 


500 

BEST 

(Smiling, lifts the hat and displays a shaven poll from the crown 

of which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot) I 

was just beautifying him, don’t you know. A thing of beauty, 

don’t you know, Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says. 

JOHN EGLINTON 

(Produces a greencapped dark lantern and flashes it towards a 

corner; with carping accent) Esthetics and cosmetics are for 

the boudoir. I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man. 

Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them. 

(In the cone of the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave, 

holyeyed, the bearded figure of Mananaan MacLir broods, chin 

on knees. He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows from his druid 

mouth. About his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted 

with weeds and shells. His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His 

left hand grasps a huge crayfish by its two talons.) 

MANANAUN MACLIR 

(With a voice of waves) Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor! Ma!

White yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes 

Trismegistos. (With a voice of whistling seawind) Punarjanam 

patsypunjaub! I won’t have my leg pulled. It has been said by 

one: beware the left, the cult of Shakti. (With a cry of 

stormbirds) Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father! (He smites with 

his bicycle pump the crayfish in his left hand. On its cooperative 

dial glow the twelve signs of the zodiac. He wails with the vehemence 

of the ocean.) Aum! Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of 

the homestead! I am the dreamery creamery butter. 

(A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light wanes 

to mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.) 

Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii! 

THE GASJET 

(Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her leg, adjusts the 

mantle.) 

ZOE 

Who has a fag as I’m here? 


501 

LYNCH 

(Tossing a cigarette on to the table) Here. 

ZOE 

(Her head perched aside in mock pride) Is that the way to 

hand the pot to a lady? (She stretches up to light the cigarette 

over the flame, twirling it slowly, showing the brown tufts of her 

armpits. Lynch with his poker lifts boldly a side of her slip. Bare 

from her garters up her flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie’s 

green. She puffs calmly at her cigarette.) Can you see the 

beautyspot of my behind? 

I’m not looking 

LYNCH 

ZOE 

(Makes sheep’s eyes) No? You wouldn’t do a less thing. Would 

you suck a lemon? 

(Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at 

Bloom, then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of

the poker. Blue fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, 

smiling desirously, twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her 

middle finger with her spittle and, gazing in the mirror, smooths 

both eyebrows. Lipoti Virag, basilicogrammate, chutes rapidly 

down through the chimneyflue and struts two steps to the left on 

gawky pink stilts. He is sausaged into several overcoats and wears 

a brown macintosh under which he holds a roll of parchment. 

In his left eye flashes the monocle of Cashel Boyle O’Connor 

Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell. On his head is perched an Egyptian 

pshent. Two quills project over his ears.) 

VIRAG 

(Heels together, bows) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely. 

(He coughs thoughtfully, drily) Promiscuous nakedness is much 

in evidence hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed 

the fact that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments 

of which you are a particular devotee. The injection mark on 

the thigh I hope you perceived? Good. 

Granpapachi. But … 

BLOOM 


502 

VIRAG 

Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and 

coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal 

elixir of gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly 

staysed by her sit, I should opine. Backbone in front, so to 

say. Correct me but I always understood that the act so performed 

by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed 

to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a word. 

Hippogriff. Am I right? 

She is rather lean. 

BLOOM 

VIRAG 

(Not unpleasantly) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier 

pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised 

to suggest bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some 

monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. Meretricious 

finery to deceive the eye. Observe the attention to details 

of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you 

can wear today. Parallax! (With a nervous twitch of his head)

Did you hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax! 

BLOOM 

(An elbow resting in hand, a forefinger against his cheek) She 

seems sad. 

VIRAG 

(Cynically, his weasel teeth bared yellow, draws down his left eye 

with a finger and barks hoarsely) Hoax! Beware of the flapper 

and bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor’s 

button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. 

Columble her. Chameleon. (More genially) Well then, permit 

me to draw your attention to item number three. There 

is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe the mass of 

oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she 

bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep 

in keel. 

BLOOM 

(Regretfully) When you come out without your gun. 


503 

VIRAG 

We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay 

your money, take your choice. How happy could you be with 

either … 

With …? 

BLOOM 

VIRAG 

(His tongue upcurling) Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She 

is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously 

mammal in weight of bosom you remark that she has in 

front well to the fore two protuberances of very respectable 

dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while 

on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, 

suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, 

which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such 

fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When 

coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of 

new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped 

down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief

existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. 

That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker 

after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. (His throat twitches) 

Slapbang! There he goes again. 

The stye I dislike. 

BLOOM 

VIRAG 

(Arches his eyebrows) Contact with a goldring, they say. 

Argumentum ad feminam, as we said in old Rome and ancient 

Greece in the consulship of Diplodocus and 

Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve’s sovereign remedy. Not for 

sale. Hire only. Huguenot. (He twitches) It is a funny sound. 

(He coughs encouragingly) But possibly it is only a wart. I 

presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught 

you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg. 

BLOOM 

(Reflecting) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This 

searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a 


504 

chapter of accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, 

you said … 

VIRAG 

(Severely, his nose hardhumped, his side eye winking) Stop twirling 

your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have 

forgotten. Exercise your mnemotechnic. La causa e santa. 

Tara. Tara. (Aside) He will surely remember. 

BLOOM 

Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over 

parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch 

of a deadhand cures. Mnemo? 

VIRAG 

(Exicitedly) I say so. I say so. E’en so. Technic. (He taps his 

parchmentroll energetically) This book tells you how to act 

with all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated 

fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. 

Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. 

They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the

denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the 

Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or 

dislike women in male habiliments? (With a dry snigger) You 

intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious 

problem and the summer months of 1886 to square 

the circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime 

to the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or 

stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, 

those complicated combinations, camiknickers? (He crows 

derisively) Keekeereekee! 

(Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores then gazes at the 

veiled mauve light, hearing the everflying moth.) 

BLOOM 

I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. 

Hence this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is 

today. What now is will then morrow as now was be past 

yester. 


505 

VIRAG 

(Prompts in a pig’s whisper) Insects of the day spend their 

brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the 

inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified 

pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! (His yellow 

parrotbeak gabbles nasally) They had a proverb in the 

Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred 

and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract 

friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice 

malt vinegar. Bear’s buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At 

another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. 

(He coughs and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtfully 

with a scooping hand) You shall find that these night 

insects follow the light. An illusion for remember their complex 

unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the seventeenth 

book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love 

Passion which Doctor L.B. says is the book sensation of the 

year. Some, to example, there are again whose movements 

are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun. Nightbird 

nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! (he blows into 

Bloom’s ear) Buzz!

BLOOM 

Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed 

self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I … 

VIRAG 

(His face impassive, laughs in a rich feminine key) Splendid! 

Spanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. (He 

gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles) Bubbly jock! Bubbly 

jock! Where are we? Open Sesame! Cometh forth! (He unrolls 

his parchment rapidly and reads, his glowworm’s nose running 

backwards over the letters which he claws) Stay, good 

friend. I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters will shortly 

be upon us. I’m the best o’cook. Those succulent bivalves 

may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged 

through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases 

of nervous debility or viragitis. Though they stink yet they 

sting. (He wags his head with cackling raillery) Jocular. With 

my eyeglass in my ocular. (He sneezes) Amen! 

BLOOM 

(Absently) Ocularly woman’s bivalve case is worse. Always 


506 

open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping 

things. Yet Eve and the serpent contradicts. Not a historical 

fact. Obvious analogy to my idea. Serpents too are 

gluttons for woman’s milk. Wind their way through miles of 

omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those 

bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in 

Elephantuliasis. 

VIRAG 

(His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly 

closed, psalms in outlandish monotone) That the cows with 

their those distended udders that they have been the the 

known … 

BLOOM 

I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (He repeats) 

Spontaneously to seek out the saurian’s lair in order to 

entrust their teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. (Profoundly) 

Instinct rules the world. In life. In death.

VIRAG 

(Head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers 

at the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and 

cries) Who’s moth moth? Who’s dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that 

you? O dear, he is Gerald. O, I much fear he shall be most 

badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment 

so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? 

(He mews) Puss puss puss puss! (He sighs, draws back and 

stares sideways down the dropping underjaw) Well, well. He 

doth rest anon. (He snaps his jaws suddenly on the air.) 

THE MOTH 

I’m a tiny tiny thing 

Ever flying in the spring 

Round and round a ringaring. 

Long ago I was a king 

Now I do this kind of thing 

On the wing, on the wing! 

Bing! 


507 

(He rushes against the mauve shade, flapping noisily) Pretty 

pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats. 

(From left upper entrance with two gliding steps Henry Flower 

comes forward to left front centre. He wears a dark mantle and 

drooping plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid 

dulcimer and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob’s pipe, its clay bowl 

fashioned as a female head. He wears dark velvet hose and 

silverbuckled pumps. He has the romantic Saviour’s face with 

flowing locks, thin beard and moustache. His spindlelegs and 

sparrow feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He 

settles down his goffered ruffs and moistens his lips with a passage 

of his amorous tongue.) 

HENRY 

(In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar) There 

is a flower that bloometh. 

(Virag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom 

regards Zoe’s neck. Henry gallant turns with pendant dewlap to 

the piano.)

STEPHEN 

(To himself) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my 

belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and 

go to my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. 

Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this 

morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our ages. 

Will write fully tomorrow. I’m partially drunk, by the way. 

(He touches the keys again) Minor chord comes now. Yes. Not 

much however. 

(Almidano Artifoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous 

moustachework.) 

ARTIFONI 

Ci rifletta. Lei rovina tutto. 

FLORRY 

Sing us something. Love’s old sweet song. 

STEPHEN 

No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you 


508 

the letter about the lute? 

FLORRY 

(Smirking) The bird that can sing and won’t sing. 

(The Siamese twins, Philip Drunk and Philip Sober, two Oxford 

dons with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. 

Both are masked with Matthew Arnold’s face.) 

PHILIP SOBER 

Take a fool’s advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend 

of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you 

got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. 

Mooney’s en ville, Mooney’s sur mer, the Moira, Larchet’s, 

Holles street hospital, Burke’s. Eh? I am watching you. 

PHILIP DRUNK 

(Impatiently) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I 

could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. 

Who was it told me his name? (His lawnmower begins 

to purr) Aha, yes. Zoe mou sas agapo. Have a notion I was

here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere. 

Mac Somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, 

hold on, Swinburne, was it, no? 

And the song? 

FLORRY 

STEPHEN 

Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. 

FLORRY 

Are you out of Maynooth? You’re like someone I knew once. 

STEPHEN 

Out of it now. (To himself) Clever. 

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER 

(Their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon of grasshalms) 

Clever ever. Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the 

book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever 

outofitnow. Keep in condition. Do like us. 


509 

ZOE 

There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of 

business with his coat buttoned up. You needn’t try to hide, 

I says to him. I know you’ve a Roman collar. 

VIRAG 

Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (Harshly, 

his pupils waxing) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under 

the sun. I am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of 

Monks and Maidens. Why I left the church of Rome. Read 

the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose. 

Flipperty Jippert. (He wriggles) Woman, undoing with sweet 

pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man’s 

lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of 

jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with 

featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, 

the stiff one. (He cries) Coactus volui. Then giddy woman 

will run about. Strong man grapses woman’s wrist. Woman 

squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman’s 

fat yadgana. (He chases his tail) Piffpaff! Popo! (He stops, 

sneezes) Pchp! (He worries his butt) Prrrrrht!

LYNCH 

I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for 

shooting a bishop. 

ZOE 

(Spouts walrus smoke through her nostrils) He couldn’t get a 

connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush. 

Poor man! 

BLOOM 

ZOE 

(Lightly) Only for what happened him. 

How? 

BLOOM 

VIRAG 

(A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage, 

cranes his scraggy neckforward. He lifts a mooncalf nozzle and 

howls.) Verfluchte goim! He had a father, forty fathers. He 


510 

never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He was Judas 

Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the pope’s bastard. (He leans out 

on tortured forepaws, elbows ben rigid, his eye agonising in his 

flat skullneck and yelps over the mute world) A son of a whore. 

Apocalypse. 

KITTY 

And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got 

from Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him 

that couldn’t swallow and was smothered with the convulsions 

in the mattress and we all subscribed for the funeral. 

PHILIP DRUNK 

(Gravely) Quivous a mis dans cette fichue position, Philippe? 

PHILIP SOBER 

(Gaily) C’était le sacré pigeon, Philippe. 

(Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna 

hair. And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never 

seen on a whore’s shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it off.)

LYNCH 

(Laughs) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated 

anthropoid apes. 

FLORRY 

(Nods) Locomotor ataxy. 

(Gaily) O, my dictionary. 

Three wise virgins. 

ZOE 

LYNCH 

VIRAG 

(Agueshaken, profuse yellow spawn foaming over his bony epileptic 

lips) She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, 

the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. 

(He sticks out a flickering phosphorescent scorpion tongue, his 

hand on his fork) Messiah! He burst her tympanum. (With 

gibbering baboon’s crise he jerks his hips in the cynical spasm) 

Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk! 


511 

(Ben Jumbo Dollard, rubicund, musclebound, hairynostrilled, 

hugebearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, fatpapped, 

stands forth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair 

of black bathing bagslops.) 

BEN DOLLARD 

(Nakkering castanet bones in his huge padded paws, yodels jovially 

in base barreltone) When love absorbs my ardent soul. 

(The virgins Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley burst through 

the ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.) 

THE VIRGINS 

(Gushingly) Big Ben! Ben my Chree! 

A VOICE 

Hold that fellow with the bad breeches. 

BEN DOLLARD 

(Smites his thigh in abundant laughter) Hold him now.

HENRY 

(Caressing on his breast a severed female head, murmurs) Thine 

heart, mine love. (He plucks his lutestrings) When first I saw … 

VIRAG 

(Sloughing his skins, his multitudinous plumage moulting) Rats! 

(He yawns, showing a coalblack throat, and closes his jaws by 

an upward push of his parchmentroll) After having said which 

I took my departure. Farewell. Fare thee well. Dreck! 

(Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a 

pocketcomb and gives a cow’s lick to his hair. Steered by his 

rapier, he glides to the door, his wild harp slung behind him. 

Virag reaches the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, 

and deftly claps sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting 

it with his head.) 

THE FLYBILL 

K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks. 


512 

All is lost now. 

HENRY 

(Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.) 

Quack! 

(Exeunt severally.) 

VIRAG’S HEAD 

STEPHEN 

(Over his shoulder to Zoe) You would have preferred the fighting 

parson who founded the protestant error. But beware 

Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last end of Arius 

Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet. 

LYNCH 

All one and the same God to her. 

STEPHEN 

(Devoutly) And sovereign Lord of all things.

FLORRY 

(To Stephen) I’m sure you’re a spoiled priest. Or a monk. 

He is. A cardinal’s son. 

LYNCH 

STEPHEN 

Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw. 

(His Eminence Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate of 

all Ireland, appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals 

and socks. Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal 

sins, uphold his train, peeping under it. He wears a battered 

silk hat sideways on his head. His thumbs are stuck in his armpits 

and his palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary of 

corks ending on his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his 

thumbs, He invokes grace from on high with large wave gestures 

and proclaims with bloated pomp:) 


513 

THE CARDINAL 

Conservio lies captured 

He lies in the lowest dungeon 

With manacles and chains around his limbs 

Weighing upwards of three tons. 

(He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left 

cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks 

to and fro, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking 

humour:) 

O, the poor little fellow 

Hihihihihis legs they were yellow 

He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake 

But some bloody savage 

To graize his white cabbage 

He murdered Nell Flaherty’s duckloving drake. 

(A multitude of midges swarms over his robe. He scratches him-

self with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims:) 

I’m suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, 

thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. 

If they were they’d walk me off the face of the bloody 

globe. 

(His head aslant he blesses curtly with fore and middle fingers, 

imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshuffles off comically, swaying 

his hat from side to side, shrinking quickly to the size of his 

trainbearers. The dwarf acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, 

ogling, easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow 

from afar, merciful male, melodious:) 

Shall carry my heart to thee, 

Shall carry my heart to thee, 

And the breath of the balmy night 

Shall carry my heart to thee! 

(The trick doorhandle turns.) 


514 

Theeee! 

The devil is in that door. 

THE DOORHANDLE 

ZOE 

(A male form passes down the creaking staircase and is heard 

taking the waterproof and hat fromt he rack. Bloom starts forward 

involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes 

the chocolate from his pocket and offers it nervously to Zoe.) 

ZOE 

(Sniffs his hair briskly) Hmmm! Thank your mother for the 

rabbits. I’m very fond of what I like. 

BLOOM 

(Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep, 

pricks his ears) If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the 

double event?

ZOE 

(Tears open the silverfoil) Fingers was made before forks. (She 

breaks off and nibbles a piece, gives a piece to Kitty Ricketts and 

then turns kittenishly to Lynch) No objection to French lozenges? 

(He nods. She taunts him.) Have it now or wait till you 

get it? (He opens his mouth, his head cocked. She whirls the 

prize in left circle. His head follows. She whirls it back in right 

circle. He eys her.) Catch! 

(She tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it 

through with a crack.) 

KITTY 

(Chewing) The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have 

lovely ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was 

there with his lady. The gas we had on the Toft’s hobbyhorses. 

I’m giddy still. 

BLOOM 

(In Svengalis fur overcoat, with folded arms and Napoleonic 

forelock, frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle 


515 

glance towards the door. Then rigid with left foot advanced he 

makes a swift pass with impelling fingers and gives the sign of 

past master, drawing his right arm downwards from his left 

shoulder.) Go, go, go, I conjure you, whoever you are! 

(A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist 

outside. Bloom’s features relax. He places a hand in his waistcoat, 

posing calmly. Zoe offers him chocolate.) 

(Solemnly) Thanks. 

Do as you’re bid. Here! 

BLOOM 

ZOE 

(A firm heelclacking tread is heard on the stairs.) 

BLOOM 

(Takes the chocolate) Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But 

I bought it. Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses 

memory. Red influences lupus. Colours affect women’s

characters, any they have. This black makes me sad. Eat and 

be merry for tomorrow. (He eats) Influence taste too, mauve. 

But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest. Must 

come. Better late than never. Try truffles at Andrews. 

(The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress, enters. 

She is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, fringed round the 

hem with tasselled selvedge, and colls herself flirting a black horn 

fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen. On her left hand are wedding 

and keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a 

sprouting moustache. Her olive face is heavy, slightly sweated 

and fullnosed with orangetainted nostrils. She has large pendant 

beryl eardrops.) 

BELLA 

My word! I’m all of a mucksweat. 

(She glances round her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom 

with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her 

heated faceneck and embonpoint. Her falcon eyes glitter.) 


516 

THE FAN 

(Flirting quickly, then slowly) Married, I see. 

BLOOM 

Yes. Partly, I have mislaid … 

THE FAN 

(Half opening, then closing) And the missus is master. Petticoat 

government. 

BLOOM 

(Looks down with a sheepish grin) That is so. 

THE FAN 

(Folding together, rests against her left eardrop) Have you forgotten 

me? 

Yes. Yo. 

BLOOM

THE FAN 

(Folded akimbo against her waist) Is me her was you dreamed 

before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them 

and the same now we? 

(Bella approaches, gently tapping with the fan.) 

BLOOM 

(Wincing) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which 

women love. 

THE FAN 

(Tapping) We have met. You are mine. It is fate. 

BLOOM 

(Cowed) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your 

domination. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I 

stand, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra 

regulation fee before the too late box of the general postoffice 

of human life. The door and window open at a right angle 

cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the 


517 

law of falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica 

in my left glutear muscle. It runs in our family. Poor 

dear papa, a widower, was a regular barometer from it. He 

believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his winter 

waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the 

Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. 

A dog’s spittle as you probably … (He winces) Ah! 

RICHIE GOULDING 

(Bagweighted, passes the door) Mocking is catch. Best value in 

Dub. Fit for a prince’s. Liver and kidney. 

THE FAN 

(Tapping) All things end. Be mine. Now, 

BLOOM 

(Undecided) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman. 

Rain, exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo 

at my time of life. Every phenomenon has a natural 

cause.

THE FAN 

(Points downwards slowly) You may. 

BLOOM 

(Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace) We 

are observed. 

THE FAN 

(Points downwards quickly) You must. 

BLOOM 

(With desire, with reluctance) I can make a true black knot. 

Learned when I served my time and worked the mail order 

line for Kellett’s. Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot. 

Let me. In courtesy. I knelt once before today. Ah! 

(Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts the 

edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, 

silksocked. Bloom, Stifflegged, aging, bends over her hoof and 

with gentle fingers draws out and in her laces.) 


518 

BLOOM 

(Murmurs lovingly) To be a shoefitter in Manfield’s was my love’s 

young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace 

up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, 

so incredibly impossibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their 

wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose 

and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris. 

THE HOOF 

Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight. 

(Crosslacing) Too tight? 

BLOOM 

THE HOOF 

If you bungle, Handy Andy, I’ll kick your football for you. 

BLOOM 

Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar 

dance. Bad luck. Hook in wrong tache of her … person you 

mentioned. That night she met … Now!

(He knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom 

raises his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. 

His eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens.) 

BLOOM 

(Mumbles) Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen, 

… 

BELLO 

(With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice) Hound of 

dishonour! 

(Infatuated) Empress! 

BLOOM 

BELLO 

(His heavy cheekchops sagging) Adorer of the adulterous rump! 

(Plaintively) Hugeness! 

BLOOM 


519 

Dungdevourer! 

BELLO 

BLOOM 

(With sinews semiflexed) Magmagnificence! 

BELLO 

Down! (He taps her on the shoulder with his fan) Incline feet 

forward! Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are 

falling. On the hands down! 

BLOOM 

(Her eyes upturned in the sign of admiration, closing, yaps) 

Truffles! 

(With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all fours, grunting, 

snuffling, rooting at his feet: then lies, shamming dead, with 

eyes shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the 

attitude of most excellent master.)

BELLO 

(With bobbed hair, purple gills, fit moustache rings round his 

shaven mouth, in mountaineer’s puttees, green silverbuttoned 

coat, sport skirt and alpine hat with moorcock’s feather, his 

hands stuck deep in his breeches pockets, places his heel on her 

neck and grinds it in) Footstool! Feel my entire weight. Bow, 

bondslave, before the throne of your despot’s glorious heels 

so glistening in their proud erectness. 

BLOOM 

(Enthralled, bleats) I promise never to disobey. 

BELLO 

(Laughs loudly) Holy smoke! You little know what’s in store 

for you. I’m the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! 

I’ll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old 

son. Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation 

of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume. 

(Bloom creeps under the sofa and peers out through the fringe.) 


520 

ZOE 

(Widening her slip to screen her) She’s not here. 

BLOOM 

(Closing her eyes) She’s not here. 

FLORRY 

(Hiding her with her gown) She didn’t mean it, Mr Bello. 

She’ll be good, sir. 

KITTY 

Don’t be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won’t, ma’amsir. 

BELLO 

(Coaxingly) Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling, 

just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart 

talk, sweety. (Bloom puts out her timid) There’s a good girly 

now. (Bello grabs her hair violently and drags her forward) I 

only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe 

spot. How’s that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin 

to get ready.

BLOOM 

(Fainting) Don’t tear my … 

BELLO 

(Savagely) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging 

hook, the knout I’ll make you kiss while the flutes play 

like the Nubian slave of old. You’re in for it this time! I’ll 

make you remember me for the balance of your natural life. 

(His forehead veins swollen, his face congested) I shall sit on 

your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping 

good breakfast of Matterson’s fat hamrashers and a bottle of 

Guinness’s porter. (He belches) And suck my thumping good 

Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed Victualler’s 

Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and 

skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp 

crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking 

pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. 

(He twists her arm. Bloom squeals, turning turtle.) 

BLOOM 

Don’t be cruel, nurse! Don’t! 


521 

(Twisting) Another! 

BELLO 

BLOOM 

(Screams) O, it’s hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like 

mad! 

BELLO 

(Shouts) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That’s the 

best bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don’t keep me 

waiting, damn you! (He slaps her face.) 

BLOOM 

(Whimpers) You’re after hitting me. I’ll tell … 

BELLO 

Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him. 

Yes. Walk on him! I will. 

ZOE

I will. Don’t be greedy. 

FLORRY 

KITTY 

No, me. Lend him to me. 

(The brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, greybearded, in a greasy 

bib, men’s grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a 

rollingpin stuck with row pastry in her bare red arm and hand, 

appears at the door.) 

MRS KEOGH 

(Ferociously) Can I help? (They hold and pinion Bloom.) 

BELLO 

(Squats with a grunt on Bloom’s upturned face, puffing 

cigarsmoke, nursing a fat leg) I see Keating Clay is elected 

vicechairman of the Richmond asylum and by the by 

Guinness’s preference shares are at sixteen three quaffers. 

Curse me for a fool that didn’t buy that lot Craig and Gardner 

told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that 


522 

Goddamned outsider throwaway at twenty to one. (He 

quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom’s ear) Where’s that 

Goddamned cursed ashtray? 

BLOOM 

(Goaded, buttocksmothered) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one! 

BELLO 

Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never 

prayed before. (He thrusts out a figged fist and foul cigar) Here, 

kiss that. Both. Kiss. (He throws a leg astride and, pressing 

with horseman’s knees, calls in a hard voice) Gee up! A cockhorse 

to Banbury cross. I’ll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (He 

bends sideways and squeezes his mount’s testicles roughly, shouting) 

Ho! Off we pop! I’ll nurse you in proper fashion. (He 

horserides cockhorse, leaping in the saddle) The lady goes a 

pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the 

gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop. 

FLORRY 

(Pulls at Bello) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked

efore you. 

ZOE 

(Pulling at Florry) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him 

yet, suckeress? 

(Stifling) Can’t. 

BLOOM 

BELLO 

Well, I’m not. Wait. (He holds in his breath) Curse it. Here. 

This bung’s about burst. (He uncorks himself behind: then, 

contorting his features, farts loudly) Take that! (He recorks himself) 

Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters. 

BLOOM 

(A sweat breaking out over him) Not man. (He sniffs) Woman. 

BELLO 

(Stands up) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed 

for has come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and 


523 

mine in earnest, a thing under the yoke. Now for your punishment 

frock. You will shed your male garments, you understand, 

Ruby Cohen? and don the shot silk luxuriously 

rustling over head and shoulders. And quickly too! 

BLOOM 

(Shrinks) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tiptouch 

it with my nails? 

BELLO 

(Points to his whores) As they are now so will you be, wigged, 

singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven 

armpits. Tape measurements will be taken next your skin. 

You will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft 

dove coutille with whalebone busk to the diamondtrimmed 

pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper 

than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty 

two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of 

course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for 

Alice and nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. 

Martha and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such deli-

cate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your 

bare knees will remind you … 

BLOOM 

(A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and 

large male hands and nose, leering mouth) I tried her things 

on only twice, a small prank, in Holles street. When we were 

hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. My own 

shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift. 

BELLO 

(Jeers) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed 

off coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind 

closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat’s udders 

in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho! ho! I have to laugh! 

That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunkleg 

naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs 

Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh? 

BLOOM 

Miriam. Black. Demimondaine. 


524 

BELLO 

(Guffaws) Christ Almighty it’s too tickling, this! You were a 

nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs 

and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade 

about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip 

Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo, the robust 

tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon 

Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity 

wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland 

and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. (He guffaws 

again) Christ, wouldn’t it make a Siamese cat laugh? 

BLOOM 

(Her hands and features working) It was Gerald converted me 

to be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the 

High School play vice versa . It was dear Gerald. He got that 

kink, fascinated by sister’s stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky 

greasepaint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of the beautiful. 

BELLO 

(With wicked glee) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you

took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy 

flounces, on the smoothworn throne. 

BLOOM 

Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (Earnestly) 

And really it’s better the position … because often I 

used to wet … 

BELLO 

(Sternly) No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the 

corner for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn’t I? Do it 

standing, sir! I’ll teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I 

catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the Dorans 

you’ll find I’m a martinet. The sins of your past are rising 

against you. Many. Hundreds. 

THE SINS OF THE PAST 

(In a medley of voices) He went through a form of clandestine 

marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black 

church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to 

Miss Dunn at an address in D’Olier street while he presented 


525 

himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox. By word 

and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit 

fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached 

to empty premises. In five public conveniences he 

wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all 

strongmembered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol 

works did he not pass night after night by loving courting 

couples to see if and what and how much he could see? 

Did he not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous 

fragment of wellused toilet paper presented to him by 

a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a postal order? 

BELLO 

(Whistles loudly) Say! What was the most revolting piece of 

obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. 

Puke it out! Be candid for once. 

(Mute inhuman faces throng forward, leering, vanishing, gibbering, 

booloohoom. Poldy Kock, bootlaces a penny Cassidy’s hag, 

blind stripling, Larry Rhinoceros, the girl, the woman, the whore, 

the other, the …)

BLOOM 

Don’t ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only 

thought the half of the … I swear on my sacred oath … 

BELLO 

(Peremptorily) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. 

Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good 

ghoststory or a line of poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? 

How? What time? With how many? I give you just three 

seconds. One! Two! Thr … 

BLOOM 

(Docile, gurgles) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant 

BELLO 

(Imperiously) O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak 

when you’re spoken to. 

BLOOM 

(Bows) Master! Mistress! Mantamer! 


526 

(He lifts his arms. His bangle bracelets fill.) 

BELLO 

(Satirically) By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes 

also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our 

latrines with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your 

tail. Won’t that be nice? (He places a ruby ring on her finger) 

And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank you, 

mistress. 

Thank you, mistress. 

BLOOM 

BELLO 

You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots 

in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh’s the cook’s, 

a sandy one. Ay, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or 

lap it up like champagne. Drink me piping hot. Hop! You 

will dance attendance or I’ll lecture you on your misdeeds, 

Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with 

the hairbrush. You’ll be taught the error of your ways. At

night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear 

fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having 

delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old 

laid down their lives. (He chuckles) My boys will be no end 

charmed to see you so ladylike, the colonel, above all, when 

they come here the night before the wedding to fondle my 

new attraction in gilded heels. First I’ll have a go at you myself. 

A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh 

(I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out 

of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a 

maid of all work at a short knock. Swell the bust. Smile. 

Droop shoulders. What offers? (He points) For that lot. 

Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. (He 

bares his arm and plunges it elbowdeep in Bloom’s vulva) There’s 

fine depth for you! What, boys? That give you a hardon? (He 

shoves his arm in a bidder’s face) Here wet the deck and wipe 

it round! 

A florin. 

A BIDDER 


527 

(Dillon’s lacquey rings his handbell.) 

Barang! 

THE LACQUEY 

A VOICE 

One and eightpence too much. 

CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH 

Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean. 

BELLO 

(Gives a rap with his gavel) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and 

cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine 

his points. Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, 

this tender flesh. If I had only my gold piercer here! And quite 

easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, 

due to lay within the hour. His sire’s milk record was a thousand 

gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa my jewel! 

Beg up! Whoa! (He brands his initial C on Bloom’s croup) So! 

Warranted Cohen! What advance on two bob, gentlemen?

A DARKVISAGED MAN 

(Iin disguised accent) Hoondert punt sterlink. 

VOICES 

(Subdued) For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid. 

BELLO 

(Gaily) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short 

skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, 

is a potent weapon and transparent stockings, 

emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing up beyond 

the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the blasé man 

about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch 

Louis Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, 

the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your 

powers of fascination to bear on them. Pander to their 

Gomorrahan vices. 

BLOOM 

(Bends his blushing face into his armpit and simpers with forefinger 

in mouth) O, I know what you’re hinting at now! 


528 

BELLO 

What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (He 

stoops and, peering, pokes with his fan rudely under the fat suet 

folds of Bloom’s haunches) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we 

here? Where’s your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on 

you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing. It’s as limp as a boy of six’s 

doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. 

(Loudly) Can you do a man’s job? 

Eccles street … 

BLOOM 

BELLO 

(Sarcastically) I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world but 

there’s a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are 

turned, my gay young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown 

outdoor man. Well for you, you muff, if you had that weapon 

with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. He shot his bolt, 

I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly, bubs 

to breast! He’s no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking 

out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months,

my lad! Holy ginger, it’s kicking and coughing up and down 

in her guts already! That makes you wild, don’t it? Touches 

the spot? (He spits in contempt) Spittoon! 

BLOOM 

I was indecently treated, I … Inform the police. Hundred 

pounds. Unmentionable. I … 

BELLO 

Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not 

your drizzle. 

BLOOM 

To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll … We … 

Still … 

BELLO 

(Ruthlessly) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman’s 

will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night 

of twenty years. Return and see. 


529 

(Old Sleepy Hollow calls over the wold.) 

SLEEPY HOLLOW 

Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle! 

BLOOM 

(In tattered mocassins with a rusty fowlingpiece, tiptoeing, 

fingertipping, his haggard bony bearded face peering through 

the diamond panes, cries out) I see her! It’s she! The first night 

at Mat Dillon’s! But that dress, the green! And her hair is 

dyed gold and he ... 

BELLO 

(Laughs mockingly) That’s your daughter, you owl, with a 

Mullingar student. 

(Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue 

scarf in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of 

her lover and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)

MILLY 

My! It’s Papli! But, O Papli, how old you’ve grown! 

BELLO 

Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never 

wrote, aunt Hegarty’s armchair, our classic reprints of old 

masters. A man and his menfriends are living there in clover. 

The Cuckoos’ Rest! Why not? How many women had you, 

eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them 

by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute? Blameless 

dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for 

the goose, my gander O. 

They … I … 

BLOOM 

BELLO 

(Cuttingly) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet 

you bought at Wren’s auction. In their horseplay with 

Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will 

deface the little statue you carried home in the rain for art 


530 

for art’ sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom 

drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy 

to make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling 

brass fender from Hampton Leedom’s. 

BLOOM 

Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will 

return. I will prove … 

Swear! 

A VOICE 

(Bloom clenches his fists and crawls forward, a bowie knife between 

his teeth.) 

BELLO 

As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made 

your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph 

is written. You are down and out and don’t you forget it, old 

bean.

BLOOM 

Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody …? (He bites his 

thumb.) 

BELLO 

Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency 

or grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that’ll send 

you skipping to hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any 

coin you have! If you have none see you damn well get it, 

steal it, rob it! We’ll bury you in our shrubbery jakes where 

you’ll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Cohen, my 

stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and 

sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or eleven 

husbands, whatever the buggers’ names were, suffocated in 

the one cesspool. (He explodes in a loud phlegmy laugh) We’ll 

manure you, Mr Flower! (He pipes scoffingly) Byby, Poldy! 

Byby, Papli! 

BLOOM 

(Clasps his head) My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I 

have suff … 


531 

(He weeps tearlessly.) 

BELLO 

(Sneers) Crybabby! Crocodile tears! 

(Bloom, broken, closely veiled for the sacrifice, sobs, his face to 

the earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshawled figures of the 

circumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. 

M. Shulomowitz, Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris 

Rosenberg, M. Moisel, J. Citron, Minnie Watchman, P. 

Mastiansky, the Reverend Leopold Abramovitz, Chazen. With 

swaying arms they wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.) 

THE CIRCUMCISED 

(In dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no 

flowers) Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu Adonai Echad. 

VOICES 

(Sighing) So he’s gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never 

heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There’s the widow. 

That so? Ah, yes.

(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The 

pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe 

a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, 

descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews 

stands over Bloom.) 

THE YEWS 

(Their leaves whispering) Sister. Our sister. Ssh! 

THE NYMPH 

(Softly) Mortal! (Kindly) Nay, dost not weepest! 

BLOOM 

(Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, 

with dignity) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force 

of habit. 

THE NYMPH 

Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster 

picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys 

in fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and 


532 

Karini, musical act, the hit of the century. I was hidden in 

cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded by 

the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, 

ads for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary 

articles and why wear a truss with testimonial from 

ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married. 

BLOOM 

(Lifts a turtle head towards her lap) We have met before. On 

another star. 

THE NYMPH 

(Sadly) Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the aristocracy. 

Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. 

Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann’s wonderful 

chest exuber. My bust developed four inches in three 

weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo. 

You mean Photo Bits? 

BLOOM

THE NYMPH 

I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me 

above your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you 

kissed me in four places. And with loving pencil you shaded 

my eyes, my bosom and my shame. 

BLOOM 

(Humbly kisses her long hair) Your classic curves, beautiful 

immortal, I was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of 

beauty, almost to pray. 

THE NYMPH 

During dark nights I heard your praise. 

BLOOM 

(Quickly) Yes, yes. You mean that I … Sleep reveals the worst 

side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell 

out of bed or rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure 

snoring. For the rest there is that English invention, pamphlet 

of which I received some days ago, incorrectly addressed. 

It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent. (He sighs) 


533 

’Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage. 

THE NYMPH 

(Her fingers in her ears) And words. They are not in my dictionary. 

You understood them? 

Ssh! 

BLOOM 

THE YEWS 

THE NYMPH 

(Covers her face with her hands) What have I not seen in that 

chamber? What must my eyes look down on? 

BLOOM 

(Apologetically) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up 

with care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea 

long ago.

THE NYMPH 

(Bends her head) Worse, worse! 

BLOOM 

(Reflects precautiously) That antiquated commode. It wasn’t 

her weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on 

nine pounds after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. 

Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only 

one handle. 

(The sound of a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.) 

THE WATERFALL 

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca 

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca. 

THE YEWS 

(Mingling their boughs) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister. 

We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on 

languorous summer days. 


534 

JOHN WYSE NOLAN 

(In the background, in Irish National Forester’s uniform, doffs 

his plumed hat) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees 

of Ireland! 

THE YEWS 

(Murmuring) Who came to Poulaphouca with the High 

School excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to 

seek our shade? 

BLOOM 

(Scared) High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession 

of faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram. 

Sham! 

THE ECHO 

BLOOM 

(Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile 

grey and black striped suit, too small for him, white tennis 

shoes, bordered stockings with turnover tops and a red schoolcap

with badge) I was in my teens, a growing boy. A little then 

sufficed, a jolting car, the mingling odours of the ladies’ cloakroom 

and lavatory, the throng penned tight on the old Royal 

stairs (for they love crushes, instinct of the herd, and the 

dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a pricelist of 

their hosiery. And then the heat. There were sunspots that 

summer. End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days. 

(Halcyon Days, high school boys in blue and white football jerseys 

and shorts, Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham 

Chatterton, Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, 

Master Percy Apjohn, stand in a clearing of the trees and shout 

to Master Leopold Bloom.) 

THE HALCYON DAYS 

Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! (The cheer) 

BLOOM 

(Hobbledehow, warmgloved, mammamufflered, starred with 

spent snowballs, struggles to rise) Again! I feel sixteen! What a 

lark! Let’s ring all the bells in Montague street. (He cheers 


535 

feebly) Hurray for the High School! 

Fool! 

THE ECHO 

THE YEWS 

(Rustling) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (Whispered kisses 

are heard in all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from 

the boles and among the leaves and break, blossoming into 

bloom.) Who profaned our silent shade? 

THE NYMPH 

(Coyly, through parting fingers) There? In the open air? 

THE YEWS 

(Sweeping downward) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward. 

THE WATERFALL 

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca 

Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.

THE NYMPH 

(With wide fingers) O, infamy! 

BLOOM 

I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of 

the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing 

time. Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty 

Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at her night toilette through 

illclosed curtains with poor papa’s operaglasses: The wanton 

ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt 

me with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their crooked 

tree and I … A saint couldn’t resist it. The demon possessed 

me. Besides, who saw? 

(Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calf, thrusts a ruminating head 

with humid nostrils through the foliage.) 

STAGGERING BOB 

(Large teardrops rolling from his prominent eyes, snivels) Me. 

Me see. 


536 

BLOOM 

Simply satisfying a need I … (With pathos) No girl would 

when I went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn’t play … 

(High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes, 

plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.) 

THE NANNYGOAT 

(Bleats) Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny! 

BLOOM 

(Hatless, flushed, covered with burrs of thistledown and gorsepine) 

Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (He gazes intently 

downwards on the water) Thirtytwo head over heels per 

second. Press nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end 

of government printer’s clerk. (Through silversilent summer air 

the dummy of Bloom, rolled in a mummy, rolls roteatingly from 

the Lion’s Head cliff into the purple waiting waters.) 

THE DUMMYMUMMY 

Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg!

(Far out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin’s 

King sails, sending a broadening plume of coalsmoke from her 

funnel towards the land.) 

COUNCILLOR NANNETII 

(Alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellowkitfaced, his hand in his 

waistcoat opening, declaims) When my country takes her place 

among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let 

my epitaph be written. I have … 

Done. Prff! 

BLOOM 

THE NYMPH 

(Loftily) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a 

place and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. 

We eat electric light. (She arches her body in lascivious crispation, 

placing her forefinger in her mouth) Spoke to me. Heard 

from behind. How then could you …? 


537 

BLOOM 

(Pawing the heather abjectly) O, I have been a perfect pig. 

Enemas too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia 

to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. 

With Hamilton Long’s syringe, the ladies’ friend. 

THE NYMPH 

In my presence. The powderpuff. (She blushes and makes a 

knee) And the rest! 

BLOOM 

(Dejected) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living 

altar where the back changes name. (With sudden fervour) 

For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand 

that rules …? 

(Figures wind serpenting in slow woodland pattern around the 

treestems, cooeeing) 

THE VOICE OF KITTY 

(In the thicket) Show us one of them cushions.

Here. 

THE VOICE OF FLORRY 

(A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.) 

THE VOICE OF LYNCH 

(In the thicket) Whew! Piping hot! 

THE VOICE OF ZOE 

(From the thicket) Came from a hot place. 

THE VOICE OF VIRAG 

(A bird chief, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply with 

his assagai, striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast 

and acorns) Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull! 

BLOOM 

It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even 

to sit where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated 

thighs, as though to grant the last favours, most especially 

with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans. So wom- 


538 

anly, full. It fills me full. 

Ssh! Sister, speak! 

THE WATERFALL 

Phillaphulla Poulaphouca 

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca. 

THE YEWS 

THE NYMPH 

(Eyeless, in nun’s white habit, coif and hugewinged wimple, 

softly, with remote eyes) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. 

Mount Carmel. The apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No 

more desire. (She reclines her head, sighing) Only the ethereal. 

Where dreamy creamy gull waves o’er the waters dull. 

(Bloom half rises. His back trouserbutton snaps.) 

Bip! 

THE BUTTON

(Two sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by , shawled, yelling 

flatly.) 

THE SLUTS 

O, Leopold lost the pin of his drawers 

He didn’t know what to do, 

To keep it up, 


BLOOM 

(Coldly) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there 

were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and 

novices? Shy but willing like an ass pissing. 

THE YEWS 

(Their silverfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms aging 

and swaying) Deciduously! 

THE NYMPH 

(Her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit) Sacri- 


539 

lege! To attempt my virtue! (A large moist stain appears on her 

robe) Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment 

of a pure woman. (She clutches again her robe) Wait. 

Satan, you’ll sing no more lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. 

Amen. (She draws a poniard and, clad in the sheathmail of an 

elected knight of nine, strikes at his loins) Nekum! 

BLOOM 

(Starts up, seizes her hand) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o’ nine lives! 

Fair play, madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, 

is it? What do you lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not 

thick enough? (He clutches her veil) A holy abbot you want 

or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless statue of the 

watercarrier, or good mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard? 

THE NYMPH 

(With a cry flees from him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a 

cloud of stench escaping from the cracks) Poli …! 

BLOOM 

(Calls after her) As if you didn’t get it on the double your-

selves. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried 

it. Your strength our weakness. What’s our studfee? What 

will you pay on the nail? You fee mendancers on the Riviera, 

I read. (The fleeing nymph raises a keen) Eh? I have sixteen 

years of black slave labour behind me. And would a jury give 

me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Fool someone else, 

not me. (He sniffs) Rut. Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease. 

(The figure of Bella Cohen stands before him.) 

BELLA 

You’ll know me the next time. 

BLOOM 

(Composed, regards her) Passee. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long 

in the tooth and superfluous hair. A raw onion the last thing 

at night would benefit your complexion. And take some 

double chin drill. Your eyes are as vapid as the glasseyes of 

your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your other 

features, that’s all. I’m not a triple screw propeller. 


540 

BELLA 

(Contemptuously) You’re not game, in fact. (Her sowcunt barks) 

Fbhracht! 

BLOOM 

(Contemptuously) Clean your nailless middle finger first, your 

bully’s cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a 

handful of hay and wipe yourself. 

BELLA 

I know you, canvasser! Dead cod! 

BLOOM 

I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor! 

BELLA 

(Turns to the piano) Which of you was playing the dead march 

from Saul? 

ZOE 

Me. Mind your cornflowers. (She darts to the piano and bangs

chords on it with crossed arms) The cat’s ramble through the 

slag. (She glances back) Eh? Who’s making love to my sweeties? 

(She darts back to the table) What’s yours is mine and 

what’s mine is my own. 

(Kitty, disconcerted, coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom 

approaches Zoe.) 

BLOOM 

(Gently) Give me back that potato, will you? 

ZOE 

Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing. 

BLOOM 

(With feeling) It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor mamma. 

ZOE 

Give a thing and take it back 

God’ll ask you where is that 


541 

You’ll say you don’t know 

God’ll send you down below. 

BLOOM 

There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it. 

STEPHEN 

To have or not to have that is the question. 

ZOE 

Here. (She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh, 

and unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking) Those that 

hides knows where to find. 

BELLA 

(Frowns) Here. This isn’t a musical peepshow. And don’t you 

smash that piano. Who’s paying here? 

(She goes to the pianola. Stephen funbles in his pocket and, taking 

out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)

STEPHEN 

(With exaggerated politeness) This silken purse I made out of 

the sow’s ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow 

me. (He indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom) We are all in the 

same sweepstake, Kinch and Lynch. Dans ce bordel où tenons 

nostre état. 

LYNCH 

(Calls from the hearth) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me. 

STEPHEN 

(Hands Bella a coin) Gold. She has it. 

BELLA 

(Looks at the money, then at Stephen, then at Zoe, Florry and 

Kitty) Do you want three girls? It’s ten shillings here. 

STEPHEN 

(Delightedly) A hundred thousand apologies. (He fumbles 

again and takes out and hands her two crowns) Permit, brevi 

manu, my sight is somewhat troubled. 


542 

(Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks 

to himself in monosyllables. Zoe bends over the table. Kitty leans 

over Zoe’s neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty’s 

waist, adds his head to the group.) 

FLORRY 

(Strives heavily to rise) Ow! My foot’s asleep. (She limps over 

to the table. Bloom approaches.) 

BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM 

(Chattering and squabbling) The gentleman … ten shillings 

… paying for the three … allow me a moment … this gentleman 

pays separate … who’s touching it? … ow! … mind who 

you’re pinching … are you staying the night or a short time?… 

who did?… you’re a liar, excuse me … the gentleman paid 

down like a gentleman … drink … it’s long after eleven. 

STEPHEN 

(At the pianola, making a gesture of abhorrence) No bottles! 

What, eleven? A riddle!

ZOE 

(Lifting up her pettigown and folding a half sovereign into the 

top of her stocking) Hard earned on the flat of my back. 

LYNCH 

(Lifting Kitty from the table) Come! 

KITTY 

Wait. (She clutches the two crowns) 

And me? 

FLORRY 

LYNCH 

Hoopla! (He lifts her, carries her and bumps her down on the 

sofa.) 

STEPHEN 

The fox crew, the cocks flew, 

The bells in heaven 


543 

Were striking eleven. 

’Tis time for her poor soul 

To get out of heaven. 

BLOOM 

(Quietly lays a half sovereign on the table between Bella and 

Florry) So. Allow me. (He takes up the pound note) Three 

times ten. We’re square. 

BELLA 

(Admiringly) You’re such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss 

you. 

ZOE 

(Points) Him? Deep as a drawwell. (Lynch bends Kitty back 

over the sofa and kisses her. Bloom goes with the pound not to 

Stephen.) 

This is yours. 

BLOOM

STEPHEN 

How is that? Les distrait or absentminded beggar. (He fumbles 

again in his pocket and draws out a handful of coins. An object 

falls.) That fell. 

BLOOM 

(Stooping, picks up and hands a box of matches) This. 

Lucifer. Thanks. 

STEPHEN 

BLOOM 

(Quietly) You had better hand over that cash to me to take 

care of. Why pay more? 

STEPHEN 

(Hands him all his coins) Be just before you are generous. 

BLOOM 

I will but is it wise? (He counts) One, seven, eleven, and five. 

Six. Eleven. I don’t answer for what you may have lost. 


544 

STEPHEN 

Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next 

Lessing says. Thirsty fox. (He laughs loudly) Burying his grandmother. 

Probably he killed her. 

BLOOM 

That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say. 

STEPHEN 

Doesn’t matter a rambling damn. 

No, but … 

BLOOM 

STEPHEN 

(Comes to the table) Cigarette, please. (Lynch tosses a cigarette 

from the sofa to the table) And so Georgina Johnson is dead 

and married. (A cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at 

it) Wonder. Parlour magic. Married. Hm. (He strikes a match 

and proceeds to light the cigarette with enigmatic melacholy)

LYNCH 

(Wwatching him) You would have a better chance of lighting 

it if you held the match nearer. 

STEPHEN 

(Brings the match near his eye) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. 

Broke them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye 

sees all flat. (He draws the match away. It goes out.) Brain 

thinks. Near: far. Ineluctable modality of the visible. (He 

frowns mysteriously) Hm. Sphinx. The beast that has twobacks 

at midnight. Married. 

ZOE 

It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away 

with him. 

FLORRY 

(Nods) Mr Lambe from London. 

STEPHEN 

Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world. 


545 

LYNCH 

(Embracing Kitty on the sofa, chants deeply) Dona nobis pacem. 

(The cigarette slips from Stephen’s fingers. Blomm picks it up 

and throws it in the grate.) 

BLOOM 

Don’t smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (To Zoe) 

You have nothing? 

Is he hungry? 

ZOE 

STEPHEN 

(Extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air of the 

bloodoath in the Dusk of the Gods) 

Hangende Hunger, 

Fragende Frau, 

Macht uns alle kaputt.

ZOE 

(Tragically) Hamlet, I am thy father’s gimlet! (She takes his 

hand) Blue eyes beauty I’ll read your hand. (She points to his 

forehead) No wit, no wrinkles. (She Ccounts) Two, three, Mars, 

that’s courage. (Stephen shakes his head) No kid. 

LYNCH 

Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver 

and shake. (To Zoe) Who taught you palmistry? 

ZOE 

(Turns) Ask my ballocks that I haven’t got. (To Stephen) I see 

it in your face. The eye, like that. (She frowns with lowered 

head) 

LYNCH 

(Laughing, slaps Kitty behind twice) Like that. Pandybat. 

(Twice loudly a pandybat cracks, the coffin of the pianola flies 

open, the bald little round jack-in-the-box head of Father Dolan 

springs up.) 


546 

FATHER DOLAN 

Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little 

schemer. See it in your eye. 

(Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head of Don John 

Conmee rises from the pianola coffin.) 

DON JOHN CONMEE 

Now, Father Dolan! Now. I’m sure that Stephen is a very 

good little boy! 

ZOE 

(Examining Stephen’s palm) Woman’s hand. 

STEPHEN 

(Murmurs) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could 

read His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on 

the haddock. 

ZOE 

What day were you born?

Thursday. Today. 

STEPHEN 

ZOE 

Thursday’s child has far to go. (She traces lines on his hand) 

Line of fate. Influential friends. 

(Pointing) Imagination. 

FLORRY 

ZOE 

Mount of the moon. You’ll meet with a … (She peers at his 

hands abruptly) I won’t tell you what’s not good for you. Or 

do you want to know? 

BLOOM 

(Detaches her fingers and offers his palm) More harm than 

good. Here. Read mine. 

BELLA 

Show. (She turns up Bloom’s hand) I thought so. Knobby 


547 

knuckles for the women. 

ZOE 

(Peering at Bloom’s palm) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea 

and marry money. 

Wrong. 

BLOOM 

ZOE 

(Quickly) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. 

That wrong? 

(Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises, 

stretches her wings and clucks.) 

BLACK LIZ 

Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook. 

(She sidles from her newlaid egg and waddles off.)

BLOOM 

(Points to his hand) That weal there is an accident. Fell and 

cut it twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen. 

ZOE 

I see, says the blind man. Tell us news. 

STEPHEN 

See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years 

ago he was twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo 

tumbled. Twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. 

(He winces) Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a 

dentist. Money? 

(Zoe whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand 

and writes idly on the table in backhand, pencilling slow curves.) 

What? 

FLORRY 

(A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyfour, with a 


548 

gallantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue, 

Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl 

swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behind on 

the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina 

Kennedy gaze.) 

THE BOOTS 

(Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling wormfingers) 

Haw haw have you the horn? 

(Bronze by gold they whisper.) 

(To Florry) Whisper. 

(They whisper again.) 

ZOE 

(Over the well of the car blazes Boylan leans, his boater straw 

set sideways, a red flower in his mouth. Lenehan in yachtsman’s 

cap and white shoes officiously detaches a long hair from Blazes 

Boylan’s coat shoulder.)

LENEHAN 

Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs 

off a few quims? 

BOYLAN 

(Seated, smiles) Plucking a turkey. 

A good night’s work. 

LENEHAN 

BOYLAN 

(Holding up four thick bluntungulated fingers, winks) Blazes 

Kate! Up to sample or your money back. (He holds out a 

firefinger) Smell that. 

LENEHAN 

(Smells gleefully) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah! 

ZOE AND FLORRY 

(Laugh together) Ha ha ha ha. 


549 

BOYLAN 

(Jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear) Hello, 

Bloom! Mrs Bloom dressed yet? 

BLOOM 

(In flunkey’s prune plush coat and kneebreeches, buff stockings 

and powdered wig) I’m afraid not, sir. The last articles … 

BOYLAN 

(Tosses him sixpence) Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash. 

(He hangs his hat smartly on a peg of Bloom’s antlered head) 

Show me in. I have a little private business with your wife, 

you understand? 

BLOOM 

Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir. 

MARION 

He ought to feel himself highly honoured. (She plops splashing 

out of the water) Raoul darling, come and dry me. I’m in 

my pelt. Only my new hat and a carriage sponge.

BOYLAN 

(A merry twinkle in his eye) Topping! 

What? What is it? 

(Zoe whispers to her.) 

BELLA 

MARION 

Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I’ll 

write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded 

woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make 

him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt. 

BOYLAN 

(Clasps himself) Here, I can’t hold this little lot much longer. 

(he strides off on stiff cavalry legs) 

BELLA 

(Laughing) Ho ho ho ho. 


550 

BOYLAN 

(To Bloom, over his shoulder) You can apply your eye to the 

keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a 

few times. 

BLOOM 

Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to 

witness the deed and take a snapshot? (He holds out an ointment 

jar) Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower …? Lukewarm water …? 

KITTY 

(From the sofa) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What. 

(Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, 

liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.) 

MINA KENNEDY 

(Her eyes up turned) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums 

and lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her! 

Stuck together! Covered with kisses!

LYDIA DOUCE 

(Her mouth opening) Yumyum. O, he’s carrying her round 

the room doing it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in 

Paris and New York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and 

cream. 

(Laughing) Hee hee hee. 

KITTY 

BOYLAN’S VOICE 

(Sweetly, hoarsely, in the pit of his stomach) Ah! Gooblazqruk 

brukarchkrasht! 

MARION’S VOICE 

(Hoarsely, sweetly, rising to her throat) O! 

Weeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck? 

BLOOM 

(His eyes wildly dilated, clasps himself) Show! Hide! Show! 

Plough her! More! Shoot! 


551 

BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY 

Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee! 

LYNCH 

(Points) The mirror up to nature. (He laughs) Hu hu hu hu hu! 

(Stephen and Bloom gase in the mirror. The face of William 

Shakespeare, beardless, appears there, rigid in facial paralysis, 

crowned by the reflection of the reindeer antlered hatrack in the 

hall.) 

SHAKESPEARE 

(In dignified ventriloquy) ’Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the 

vacant mind. (To Bloom) Thou thoughtest as how thou 

wastest invisible. Gaze. (He crows with a black capon’s laugh) 

Iagogo! How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. 

Iagogogo! 

BLOOM 

(Smiles yellowly at the three whores) When will I hear the joke?

ZOE 

Before you’re twice married and once a widower. 

BLOOM 

Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements 

were taken next the skin after his death … 

(Mrs Dignam, widow woman, her snubnose and cheeks flushed 

with death talk, tears and Tunney’s tawny sherry, hurries by in 

her weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks, 

lips and nose, a pen chivvying her brood of cygnets. Beneath her 

skirt appear her late husband’s everyday trousers and turned up 

boots, large eights. She holds a Scottish widows insurance policy 

and a large marqueeumbrella under which her brood run with 

her, Patsy hopping on one shod foot, his collar loose, a hank of 

porksteaks dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy with crying cod’s 

mouth, Alice struggling with the baby. She cuffs them on, her 

streamers flaunting aloft.) 

FREDDY 

Ah, ma, you’re dragging me along! 


552 

SUSY 

Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over! 

SHAKESPEARE 

(With paralytic rage) Weda seca whokilla farst. 

(The face of Martin Cunningham, bearded, refeatures 

Shakespeare’s beardless face. The marqueeumbrella sways drunkenly, 

the children run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs 

Cunningham in merry widow hat and kimono gown. She glides 

sidling and bowing, twirling japanesily.) 

(Sings) 

MRS CUNNINGHAM 

And they call me the jewel of Asia! 

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM 

(Gazes on her, impassive) Immense! Most bloody awful 

demirep!

STEPHEN 

Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. 

Remember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather 

made the first confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel 

Steevens nor the suine scions of the house of Lambert. And 

Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was open. 

BELLA 

None of that here. Come to the wrong shop. 

LYNCH 

Let him alone. He’s back from Paris. 

ZOE 

(Runs to Stephen and links him) O go on! Give us some 

parleyvoo. 

(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace wehre 

he stands with shrugged shoulders, finny hands outspread, a 

painted smile on his face.) 


553 

LYNCH 

(Pommelling on the sofa) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm. 

STEPHEN 

(Gabbles with marionette jerks) Thousand places of entertainment 

to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves 

and other things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable 

house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful 

dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and 

walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors 

foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much smart 

they are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Misters 

very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show 

with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every 

night. Perfectly shocking terrific of religion’s things mockery 

seen in universal world. All chic womans which arrive 

full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire 

man debauch nun very fresh young with dessous troublants. 

(He clacks his tongue loudly) Ho,la la! Ce pif qu’il a!

Vive le vampire! 

Bravo! Parleyvoo! 

LYNCH 

THE WHORES 

STEPHEN 

(Grimacing with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself) 

Great success of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and 

holy apostles big damn ruffians. Demimondaines nicely handsome 

sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed. Or do 

you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude 

of old mans? (He points about him with grotesque gestures 

which Lynch and the whores reply to) Caoutchouc statue 

woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities 

very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter, gentleman, to see in 

mirror every positions trapezes all that machine there besides 

also if desire act awfully bestial butcher’s boy pollutes 

in warm veal liver or omlet on the belly pièce de Shakespeare. 


554 

BELLA 

(Clapping her belly sinks back on the sofa, with a shout of laughter) 

An omelette on the … Ho! ho! ho! ho! … omelette on the … 

STEPHEN 

(Mincingly) I love you, sir darling. Speak you englishman 

tongue for double entente cordiale. O yes, mon loup. How 

much cost? Waterloo. Watercloset. (He ceases suddenly and 

holds up a forefinger.) 

(Laughing) Omelette … 

BELLA 

THE WHORES 

(Laughing) Encore! Encore! 

STEPHEN 

Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon. 

ZOE 

Go abroad and love a foreign lady.

LYNCH 

Across the world for a wife. 

FLORRY 

Dreams goes by contraries. 

STEPHEN 

(Extends his arms) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine 

avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where’s 

the red carpet spread? 

BLOOM 

(Approaching Stephen) Look … 

STEPHEN 

No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World 

without end. (He cries) Pater! Free! 

I say, look … 

BLOOM 


555 

STEPHEN 

Break my spirit, will he? O merde alors! (He cries, his vulture 

talons sharpened) Hola! Hillyho! 

(Simon Dedalus’ voice halloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but 

ready.) 

SIMON 

That’s all right. (He swoops uncertainly through the air, wheeling, 

uttering cries of heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard 

wings) Ho, boy! Are you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable 

with those halfcastes. Wouldn’t let them within the bawl of 

an ass. Head up! Keep our flag flying! An eagle gules volant 

in a field argent displayed. Ulster king at arms! Haihoop! 

(He makes the beagle’s call, giving tongue) Bulbul! 

Burblblburblbl! Hai, boy! 

(The fronds and spaces file rapidly across the country. A stout 

fox, drawn from covert, brush pointed, having buried his grandmother, 

runs swift for the open, brighteyed, seeking badger earth, 

under the leaves. The pack of staghounds follows, nose to the

ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbling to be 

blooded. Ward Union huntsmen and huntswomen live with 

them, hot for a kill. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile 

Stone follow the footpeople with knotty sticks, hayforks, 

salmongaffs, lassos, flockmasters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with 

tomtoms, toreadors with bullswords, greynegroes with torches. 

The crowd bawls of dicers, crown and anchor players, 

thimbleriggers, broadsmen. Crows and touts, hoarse bookies in 

high wizard hats clamour deafeningly.) 

THE CROWD 

Card of the races. Racing card! 

Ten to one the field! 

Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the clay! 

Ten to one bar one! Ten to one bar one! 

Try your luck on Spinning Jenny! 

Ten to one bar one! 

Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey! 

I’ll give ten to one! 

Ten to one bar one! 


556 

(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the 

winningpost, his mane moonfoaming, his eyeballs stars. The field 

follows, a bunch of bucking mounts. Skeleton horses: Sceptre, 

Maximum the Second, Zinfandel, the Duke of Westminster’s 

Shotover, Repulse, the Duke of Beaufort’s Ceylon, prix de Paris. 

Dwarfs ride them, rusty armoured, leaping, leaping in their 

saddles. Last in a drizzle of rain on a brokenwinded isabelle 

nag, Cock of the North, the favourite, Honey Cap, green jacket, 

orange sleeves, Garrett Deasy up, gripping the reins, a hockeystick 

at the ready. His nag on spavined whitegaitered feet jogs along 

the rocky road.) 

THE ORANGE LODGES 

(Jeering) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You’ll be home 

the night! 

GARRETT DEASY 

(Bolt upright, his nailscraped face plastered with postagestamps, 

brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of 

the chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop)

Per vias rectas! 

(A yoke of buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag a 

torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, 

onions, turnips, potatoes.) 

THE GREEN LODGES 

Soft day, sir John! Soft day, your honour! 

(Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Caffrey pass beneath 

the windows, singing in discord.) 

STEPHEN 

Hark! Our friend noise in the street. 

(Holds up her hand) Stop! 

ZOE 


557 

PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND CISSY 

CAFFREY 

Yet I’ve a sort a 

Yorkshire relish for … 

ZOE 

That’s me. (She claps her hands) Dance! Dance! (She runs to 

the pianola) Who has twopence? 

Who’ll …? 

BLOOM 

LYNCH 

(Handing her coins) Here. 

STEPHEN 

(Cracking his fingers impatiently) Quick! Quick! Where’s my 

augur’s rod? (He runs to the piano and takes his ashplant, beating 

his foot in tripudium)

ZOE 

(Turns the drumhandle) There. 

(She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold, pink and violet lights 

start forth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz. Professor 

Goodwin, in a bowknotted periwig, in court dress, wearing 

a stained inverness cape, bent in two from incredible age, totters 

across the room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the pianostool 

and lifts and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard, nodding 

with damsel’s grace, his bowknot bobbing) 

ZOE 

(Twirls round herself, heeltapping) Dance. Anybody here for 

there? Who’ll dance? Clear the table. 

(The pianola with changing lights plays in waltz time My Girl’s 

a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant on the table and 

seizes Zoe round the waist. Florry and Bella push the table towards 

the fireplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with exaggerated grace, 

begins to waltz her round the room. Bloom stands aside. Her 

sleeve falling from gracing arms reveals a white fleshflower of 


558 

vaccination. Between the curtains Professor Maginni inserts a 

leg on the toepoint of which spins a silk hat. With a deft kick he 

sends it spinning to his crown and jauntyhatted skates in. He 

wears a slate frockcoat with claret silk lapels, a gorget of cream 

tulle, a green lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with white kerchief, 

tight lavender trousers, patent pumps and canary gloves. In his 

buttonhole is an immense dahlia. He twirls in reversed directions 

a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places 

a hand lightly on his breastbone, bows, and fondles his flower 

and buttons.) 

MAGINNI 

The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection 

with Madam Legget Byrne’s or Levenston’s. Fancy dress balls 

arranged. Deportment. The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch 

me! My terpsichorean abilities. (He minuets forward three paces 

on tripping bee’s feet) Tout le monde en avant! Révérence! Tout 

le monde en place! 

(The prelude ceases. Professor Goodwin, beating vague arms 

shrivels, sinks, his live cape falling about the stool. The air in

firmer waltz time sounds. Stephen and Zoe circle freely. The 

lights change, glow, fade gold rosy violet.) 

THE PIANOLA 

Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, 

Sweethearts they’d left behind … 

(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired, 

slimsandalled, in girlish blue, waspwaisted, with innocent hands. 

Nimbly they dance, twirling their skipping ropes. The hours of 

noon follow in amber gold. Laughing, linked, high haircombs 

flashing, they catch the sun in mocking mirrors, lifting their 

arms.) 

MAGINNI 

(Clipclaps glovesilent hands) Carré! Avant deux! Breathe evenly! 

Balance! 

(The morning and noon hours waltz in their places, turning, 

advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing vis à vis. 


559 

Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, with hands 

descending to, touching, rising from their shoulders.) 

You may touch my. 

May I touch your? 

O, but lightly! 

O, so lightly! 

HOURS 

CAVALIERS 

HOURS 

CAVALIERS 

THE PIANOLA 

My little shy little lass has a waist. 

(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight 

hours advance from long landshadows, dispersed, lagging,

languideyed, their cheeks delicate with cipria and false faint 

bloom. They are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter 

in the land breeze.) 

MAGINNI 

Avant! huit! Traversé! Salut! Cours de mains! Croisé! 

(The night hours, one by one, steal to the last place. Morning, 

noon and twilight hours retreat before them. They are masked, 

with a daggered hair and bracelets of dull bells. Weary they 

curchycurchy under veils.) 


THE BRACELETS 

ZOE 

(Twirling, her hand to her brow) O! 

MAGINNI 

Les tiroirs! Chaîne de dames! La corbeille! Dos à dos! 


560 

(Arabesquing wearily they weave a pattern on the floor, weaving, 

unweaving, curtseying, twirling, simply swirling.) 

I’m giddy! 

ZOE 

(She frees herself, droops on a chair. Stephen seizes Florry and 

turns with her.) 

MAGINNI 

Boulanère! Les ronds! Les ponts! Chevaux de bois! Escargots! 

(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands the night hours 

link each with arching arms in a mosaic of movements. Stephen 

and Florry turn cumbrously.) 

MAGINNI 

Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit 

bouquet à votre dame! Remerciez!

THE PIANOLA 

Best, best of all, 

Baraabum! 

KITTY 

(Jumps up) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the 

Mirus bazaar! 

(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes Kitty. 

A screaming Bittern’s harsh high whistle shrieks. 

groangrousegurgling Toft’s cumersome whirligig turns slowly the 

room right roundabout the room.) 

THE PIANOLA 

My girl’s a Yorkshire girl. 

ZOE 

Yorkshire through and through. 


561 

Come on all! 

(She seizes Florry and waltzes her.) 

Pas seul! 

STEPHEN 

(He wheels Kitty into Lynch’s arms, snatches up his ashplant 

from the table and takes the floor. All wheel whirl waltz twirl. 

Bloombella Kittylynch Florryzoe jujuby women. Stephen with 

hat ashplant frogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicking mouth 

shut hand clasp part under thigh, with clang tinkle boomhamer 

tallyho hornblower blue green yellow flashes. Toft’s cumbersome 

turns with hobbyhorse riders from gilded snakes dangled, bowels 

fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.) 

THE PIANOLA 

Though she’s a factory lass 

And wears no fancy clothes.

(Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they 

scootlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!) 

TUTTI 

Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore! 

SIMON 

Think of your mother’s people! 

Dance of death. 

STEPHEN 

(Bang fresh barang of lacquey’s bell, horse, nag, steer, piglings, 

Conmee on Christass, lame crutch and leg sailor in cockboat 

armfolded ropepulling hitching stamp hornpipe through and 

through, Baraabum! On nags, hogs, bellhorses, Gadarene swine, 

Corny in coffin. Steel shark stone onehandled Nelson, two trickies 

Frauenzimmer plumstained from pram falling bawling. Gum, 

he’s a champion. Fuseblue peer from barrel rev. evensong Love 

on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Dilly with 

snowcake no fancy clothes. Then in last switchback lumbering 


562 

up and down bump mashtub sort of viceroy and reine relish for 

tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!) 

(The couples fall aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls back. 

Eyes closed he totters. Red rails fly spacewards. Stars all around suns 

turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on walls. He stops dead.) 

Ho! 

STEPHEN 

(Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor, in 

leper grey with a wreath of faded orangeblossoms and a torn 

bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with gravemould. 

Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow 

eyesockets on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering 

silent word. A choir of virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.) 

THE CHOIR 

Liliata rutilantium te confessorum … 

Iubilantium te virginum …

(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester’s 

dress of puce and yellow and clown’s cap with curling bell, stands 

gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.) 

BUCK MULLIGAN 

She’s beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted 

mother. (He upturns his eyes) Mercurial Malachi! 

THE MOTHER 

(With the subtle smile of death’s madness) I was once the beautiful 

May Goulding. I am dead. 

STEPHEN 

(Horrorstruck) Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman’s 

trick is this? 

BUCK MULLIGAN 

(Shakes his curling capbell) The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody 

killed her bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten 

butter fall from his eyes on to the scone) Our great sweet mother! 

Epi oinopa ponton. 


563 

THE MOTHER 

(Comes nearer, breathing upon him softly her breath of wetted 

ashes) All must go through it, Stephen. More women than 

men in the world. You too. Time will come. 

STEPHEN 

(Choking with fright, remorse and horror) They say I killed 

you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not 

I. Destiny. 

THE MOTHER 

(A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth) You sang 

that song to me. LOVE’S BITTER MYSTERY. 

STEPHEN 

(Eagerly) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The 

word known to all men. 

THE MOTHER 

Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey 

with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad

among the strangers? Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the 

suffering souls in the Ursuline manual and forty days’ indulgence. 

Repent, Stephen. 

The ghoul! Hyena! 

STEPHEN 

THE MOTHER 

I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that 

boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years 

I loved you, O, my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my 

womb. 

ZOE 

(Fanning herself with the grate fan) I’m melting! 

FLORRY 

(Points to Stephen) Look! He’s white. 

BLOOM 

(Goes to the window to open it more) Giddy. 


564 

THE MOTHER 

(With smouldering eyes) Repent! O, the fire of hell! 

STEPHEN 

(Panting) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! 

Raw head and bloody bones. 

THE MOTHER 

(Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath) 

Beware! (She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly 

towards Stephen’s breast with outstretched finger) Beware God’s 

hand! (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning 

claws in Stephen’s heart.) 

STEPHEN 

(Strangled with rage) Shite! (His features grow drawn grey and 

old.) 

(At the window) What? 

BLOOM

STEPHEN 

Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me 

all or not at all. Non serviam! 

FLORRY 

Give him some cold water. Wait. (She rushes out.) 

THE MOTHER 

(Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately) O Sacred Heart 

of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine 

Sacred Heart! 

STEPHEN 

No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I’ll bring 

you all to heel! 

THE MOTHER 

(In the agony of her deathrattle) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord, 

for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring 

with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. 


565 

Nothing! 

STEPHEN 

(He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the 

chandelier. Time’s livid final flame leaps and, in the following 

darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.) 

Pwfungg! 

Stop! 

THE GASJET 

BLOOM 

LYNCH 

(Rushes forward and seizes Stephen’s hand) Here! Hold on! 

Don’t run amok! 

Police! 

BELLA 

(Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown

ack stark, beats the ground and flies from the room, past the 

whores at the door.) 

(Screams) After him! 

BELLA 

(The two whores rush to the halldoor. Lynch and Kitty and Zoe 

stampede from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows, 

returns.) 

THE WHORES 

(Jammed in the doorway, pointing) Down there. 

ZOE 

(Pointing) There. There’s something up. 

BELLA 

Who pays for the lamp? (She seizes Bloom’s coattail) Here, 

you were with him. The lamp’s broken. 


566 

BLOOM 

(Rushes to the hall, rushes back) What lamp, woman? 

He tore his coat. 

A WHORE 

BELLA 

(Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points) Who’s to pay 

for that? Ten shillings. You’re a witness. 

BLOOM 

(Snatches up Stephen’s ashplant) Me? Ten shillings? Haven’t 

you lifted enough off him? Didn’t he …? 

BELLA 

(Loudly) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn’t a brothel. A 

ten shilling house. 

BLOOM 

(His head under the lamp, pulls chain. Pulling, the gasjet lights 

up a crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only

the chimney’s broken. Here is all he … 

BELLA 

(Shrinks back and screams) Jesus! Don’t! 

BLOOM 

(Warding off a blow) To show you how he hit the paper. There’s 

not sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings! 

FLORRY 

(With a glass of water, enters) Where is he? 

BELLA 

Do you want me to call the police? 

BLOOM 

O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he’s a Trinity student. 

Patrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the 

rent. (He makes a masonic sign) Know what I mean? Nephew 

of the vice-chancellor. You don’t want a scandal. 


567 

BELLA 

(Angrily) Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the 

boatraces and paying nothing. Are you my commander here 

or? Where is he? I’ll charge him! Disgrace him, I will! (She 

shouts) Zoe! Zoe! 

BLOOM 

(Urgently) And if it were your own son in Oxford? (Warningly) 

I know. 

BELLA 

(Almost speechless) Who are. Incog! 

ZOE 

(In the doorway) There’s a row on. 

BLOOM 

What? Where? (He throws a shilling on the table and starts) 

That’s for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air. 

(He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry fol-

lows, spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep all 

the whores clustered talk voluably, pointing to the right where 

the fog has cleared off. From the left arrives a jingling hackney 

car. It slows to in front of the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives 

Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car 

with two silent lechers. He averts his face. Bella from within the 

hall urges on her whores. They blow ickylickystickyyumyum kisses. 

Corny Kelleher replies with a ghastly lewd smile. The silent lechers 

turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty still point right. Bloom, 

parting them swiftly, draws his caliph’s hood and poncho and 

hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun al 

Raschid he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the 

railings with fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, 

torn envelopes drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. 

A pack of bloodhounds, Led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing 

a dog whip in tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, 

follow from far, picking up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, 

at fault, breaking away, throwing their tongues, biting his 

heels, leaping at his tail. He walks, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs 

laid back. He is pelted with gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, 

eggs, potatoes, dead codfish, woman’s slipperslappers. After him 


568 

freshfound the hue and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow 

my leader: 65 C, 66 C, night watch, John Henry Menton, 

Wisdom Hely, V. B. Dillon, Councillor Nannetti, Alexander 

Keyes, Larry O’Rourke, Joe Cuffe, Mrs O’Dowd, Pisser Burke, 

The Nameless One, Mrs Riordan, The Citizen, Garryowen, 

Whowdoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellowthatsolike, 

Sawhimbefore, Chapwith, Chris Callinan, sir Charles Cameron, 

Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell D’Arcy, Joe Hynes, Red 

Murray, editor Brayden, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, John 

Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly, Mrs 

Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the Westland 

Row postmistress, C. P. M’Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy Holohan, 

man in the street, other man in the street, Footballboots, pugnosed 

driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen M’Guinness, 

Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry on corns, Superintendent 

Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the Collector- 

General’s, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with tweezers, Mrs 

Bob Doran, Mrs Kennefick, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John Wyse Nolan, 

handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehindinClonskeatram, 

the bookseller of Sweets Of Sin, Miss Dubedatandshedidbebad, 

Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck, the man-

aging clerk of Drimmie’s, Wetherup, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, 

Citron, Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E 

Geraghty, Inspector Troy, Mrs Galbraith, the constable off Eccles 

Street corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the mystery man 

on the beach, a retriever, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her 

lovers.) 

THE HUE AND CRY 

(Helterskelterpelterwelter) He’s Bloom! Stop Bloom! 

Stopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner! 

(At the corner of Beaver STREET beneath the scaffolding Bloom 

panting stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot 

not knowing a jot what hi! Hi! Row and wrangle round the 

who what brawlaltogether.) 

STEPHEN 

(With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slowly) You are 

my guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and 

seventh of Edward. History to blame. Fabled by mothers of 

memory. 


569 

PRIVATE CARR 

(To Cissy Caffrey) Was he insulting you? 

STEPHEN 

Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. 

Ungenitive. 

VOICES 

No, he didn’t. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs 

Cohen’s. What’s up? Soldier and civilian. 

CISSY CAFFREY 

I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do— 

you know, and the young man run up behind me. But I’m 

faithful to the man that’s treating me though I’m only a shilling 

whore. 

STEPHEN 

(Cactches sight of Lynch’s and Kitty’s heads) Hail, Sisyphus. 

(He points to himself and the others) Poetic. Uropoetic.

Shes faithfultheman. 

VOICES 

CISSY CAFFREY 

Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend. 


He doesn’t half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, 

Harry. 

PRIVATE CARR 

(To Cissy) Was he insulting you while me and him was having 

a piss? 

LORD TENNYSON 

(Gentleman poet in Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, 

bareheaded, flowingbearded) Theirs not to reason why. 

Biff him, Harry. 



570 

STEPHEN 

(To Private Compton) I don’t know your name but you are 

quite right. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten 

men in their shirts. Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole. 

CISSY CAFFREY 

(To the crowd) No, I was with the privates. 

STEPHEN 

(Amiably) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion 

every lady for example … 

PRIVATE CARR 

(His cap awry, advances to Stephen) Say, how would it be, 

governor, if I was to bash in your jaw? 

STEPHEN 

(Looks up to the sky) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of 

selfpretence. Personally, I detest action. (He waves his hand) 

Hand hurts me slightly. Enfin ce sont vos oignons. (To Cissy 

Caffrey) Some trouble is on here. What is it precisely?

DOLLY GRAY 

(From her balcony waves her handkerchief, giving the sign of 

the heroine of Jericho) Rahab. Cook’s son, goodbye. Safe home 

to Dolly. Dream of the girl you left behind and she will dream 

of you. 

(The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.) 

BLOOM 

(Elbowing through the crowd, plucks Stephen’s sleeve vigorously) 

Come now, professor, that carman is waiting. 

STEPHEN 

(Turns) Eh? (He disengages himself) Why should I not speak 

to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this 

oblate orange? (He points his finger) I’m not afraid of what I 

can talk to if I see his eye. Retaining the perpendicular. 

(He staggers a pace back.) 


571 

BLOOM 

(Propping him) Retain your own. 

STEPHEN 

(Laughs emptily) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have 

forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. 

Struggle for life is the law of existence but but human 

philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of England, have 

invented arbitration. (He taps his brow) But in here it is I 

must kill the priest and the king. 

BIDDY THE CLAP 

Did you hear what the professor said? He’s a professor out of 

the college. 

I did. I heard that. 

CUNTY KATE 


He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.

CUNTY KATE 

Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy. 

PRIVATE CARR 

(Pulls himself free and comes forward) What’s that you’re saying 

about my king? 

(Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wears a white 

jersey on which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched with 

the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of 

Denmark, Skinner’s and Probyn’s horse, Lincoln’s Inn bencher 

and ancient and honourable artillery company of Massachusetts. 

He sucks a red jujube. He is robed as a grand elect perfect 

and sublime mason with trowel and apron, marked made in 

Germany. In his left hand he holds a plasterer’s bucket on which 

is printed Défense d’uriner. A roar of welcome greets him.) 

EDWARD THE SEVENTH 

(Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly) Peace, perfect peace. For 

identification, bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. (He turns 


572 

to his subjects) We have come here to witness a clean straight 

fight and we heartily wish both men the best of good luck. 

Mahak makar a bak. 

(He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephe, 

Bloom and Lynch. General applause. Edward the Seventh lifts 

his bucket graciously in acknowledgment.) 

PRIVATE CARR 

(To Stephen) Say it again. 

STEPHEN 

(Nervous, friendly, pulls himself up) I understand your point 

of view though I have no king myself for the moment. This 

is the age of patent medicines. A discussion is difficult down 

here. But this is the point. You die for your country. Suppose. 

(He places his arm on Private Carr’s sleeve) Not that I 

wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to 

the present it has done so. I didn’t want it to die. Damn 

death. Long live life!


(Levitates over heaps of slain, in the garb and with the halo of 

Joking Jesus, a white jujube in his phosphorescent face) 

My methods are new and are causing surprise. 

To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes. 

STEPHEN 

Kings and unicorns! (He falls back a pace) Come somewhere 

and we’ll … What was that girl saying? … 


Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry. 

BLOOM 

(To the privates, softly) He doesn’t know what he’s saying. 

Taken a little more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed 

monster. I know him. He’s a gentleman, a poet. It’s all right. 

STEPHEN 

(Nods, smiling and laughing) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and 


573 

judge of impostors. 

PRIVATE CARR 

I don’t give a bugger who he is. 


We don’t give a bugger who he is. 

STEPHEN 

I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull. 

(Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peepo’-day 

boy’s hat signs to Stephen.) 

KEVIN EGAN 

H’lo! Bonjour! The vielle ogresse with the dents jaunes. 

(Patrice Egan peeps from behind, his rabbitface nibbling a quince leaf.) 

Socialiste! 

PATRICE

DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE 

HENNESSY 

(In medieval hauberk, two wild geese volant on his helm, with 

noble indignation points a mailed hand against the privates) 

Werf those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of 

johnyellows todos covered of gravy! 

BLOOM 

(To Stephen) Come home. You’ll get into trouble. 

STEPHEN 

(Swaying) I don’t avoid it. He provokes my intelligence. 


One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage. 

THE VIRAGO 

Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone. 

THE BAWD 

The red’s as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! 


574 

Up King Edward! 

A ROUGH 

(Laughs) Ay! Hands up to De Wet. 

THE CITIZEN 

(With a huge emerald muffler and shillelagh, calls) 

May the God above 

Send down a dove 

With teeth as sharp as razors 

To slit the throats 

Of the English dogs 

That hanged our Irish leaders. 

THE CROPPY BOY 

(The ropenoose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with 

both hands) 

I bear no hate to a living thing, 

But I love my country beyond the king.

RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER 

(Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with 

gladstone bag which he opens) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased 

by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin 

dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a 

sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female’s throat being cut 

from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body 

of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows. 

(He jerks the rope. The assistants leap at the victim’s legs and 

drag him downward, grunting the croppy boy’s tongue protrudes 

violently.) 

THE CROPPY BOY 

Horhot ho hray hor hother’s hest. 

(He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends gouts of 

sperm spouting through his deathclothes on to the cobblestones. Mrs 

Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable Mrs Mervyn 

Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop it up.) 


575 

RUMBOLD 

I’m near it myself. (He undoes the noose) Rope which hanged 

the awful rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal 

Highness. (He plunges his head into the gaping belly of the 

hanged and draws out his head again clotted with coiled and 

smoking entrails) My painful duty has now been done. God 

save the king! 


(Dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket, and sings with soft 

contentment) 

On coronation day, on coronation day, 

O, won’t we have a merry time, 

Drinking whisky, beer and wine! 

PRIVATE CARR 

Here. What are you saying about my king? 

STEPHEN 

(Throws up his hands) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing.

He wants my money and my life, though want must be his 

master, for some brutish empire of his. Money I haven’t. (He 

searches his pockets vaguely) Gave it to someone. 

PRIVATE CARR 

Who wants your bleeding money? 

STEPHEN 

(Tries to move off) Will someone tell me where I am least 

likely to meet these necessary evils? Ça se voit aussi à Paris. 

Not that I … But, by Saint Patrick …! 

(The women’s heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaf 

hat appears seated on a toadstool, The deathflower of the potato 

blight on her breast.) 

STEPHEN 

Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow 

that eats her farrow! 


576 

OLD GUMMY GRANNY 

(Rocking to and fro) Ireland’s sweetheart, the king of Spain’s 

daughter, alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to 

them! (She keens with banshee woe) Ochone! Ochone! Silk of 

the kine! (She wails) You met with poor old Ireland and how 

does she stand? 

STEPHEN 

How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where’s the third person 

of the Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion 

Crow. 

CISSY CAFFREY 

(Shrill) Stop them from fighting! 

Our men retreated. 

A ROUGH 

PRIVATE CARR 

(Tugging at his belt) I’ll wring the neck of any fucker says a 

word against my fucking king.

BLOOM 

(Terrified) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding. 

Erin go bragh! 

THE CITIZEN 

(Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals, 

decorations, trophies of war, wounds. Both salute with fierce 

hostility.) 


Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He’s a proboer. 

Did I? When? 

STEPHEN 

BLOOM 

(To the redcoats) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish 

missile troops. Isn’t that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. 

Honoured by our monarch. 


577 

THE NAVVY 

(Staggering past) O, yes! O God, yes! O, make the kwawr a 

krowawr! O! Bo! 

(Caxqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of 

gutted spearpoints. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the 

terrible, in bearskin cap with hackle plume and accoutrements, 

with epaulettes, gilt chevrons and sabretaches, his breast bright 

with medals, toes the line. He gives the pilgrim warrior’s sign of 

the knights templars.) 

MAJOR TWEEDY 

(Growls gruffly) Rorke’s Drift! Up, guards, and at them! Mahar 

shalal hashbaz. 

I’ll do him in. 

PRIVATE CARR 


(Waves the crowd back) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding 

butcher’s shop of the bugger.

(Massed bands blare Garryowen and God save the king.) 

CISSY CAFFREY 

They’re going to fight. For me! 

CUNTY KATE 

The brave and the fair. 


Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best. 

CUNTY KATE 

(Blushing deeply) Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry 

saint George for me! 

STEPHEN 

The harlot’s cry from street to street 

Shall weave Old Ireland’s windingsheet. 


578 

PRIVATE CARR 

(Loosening his belt, shouts) I’ll wring the neck of any fucking 

bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king. 

BLOOM 

(Shakes Cissy Caffrey’s shoulders) Speak, you! Are you struck 

dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. 

Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver! 

CISSY CAFFREY 

(Alarmed, seizes Private Carr’s sleeve) Amn’t I with you? Amn’t 

I your girl? Cissy’s your girl. (She cries) Police! 

STEPHEN 

(Ecstatically, to Cissy Caffrey) 

Police! 

White thy fambles, red thy gan 

And thy quarrons dainty is. 

VOICES

DISTANT VOICES 

Dublin’s burning! Dublin’s burning! On fire, on fire! 

(Brimstone fires spring up. Dense clouds roll past. Heavy gatling 

guns boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs. Artillery. 

Hoarse commands. Bells clang. Backers shout. Drunkards 

bawl. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour. Shrieks 

of dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain. Birds of 

prey, winging from the sea, rising from marshlands, swooping 

from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures, goshawks, 

climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse, 

sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. The midnight sun is 

darkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin from Prospect 

and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black 

goatfell cloaks arise and appear to many. A chasm apens with a 

noiseless yawn. Tom Rochford, winner, in athlete’s singlet and 

breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap 

and leaps into the void. He is followed by a race of runners and 

leapers. In wild attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies 

plunge. Factory lasses with fancy clothes toss red hot Yorkshire 

baraabombs. Society ladies lift their skirts above their heads to 


579 

protect themselves. Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride 

through the air on broomsticks. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It 

rains dragons’ teeth. Armed heroes spring up from furrows. They 

exchange in amity the pass of knights of the red cross and fight 

duels with cavalry sabres: Wolfe Tone against Henry Grattan, 

Smith O’Brien against Daniel O’Connell, Michael Davitt 

against Isaac Butt, Justin M’Carthy against Parnell, Arthur 

Griffith against John Redmond, John O’Leary against Lear 

O’Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against Lord Gerald 

Fitzedward, The O’Donoghue of the Glens against The Glens of 

the O’Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth, rises 

the fieldalter of Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from its gospel 

and epistle horns. From the high barbacans of the tower two 

shafts of light fall on the smokepalled altarstone. On the altarstone 

Mrs Mina Purefoy, goddess of unreason, lies, naked, fettered, a 

chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father Malachi O’Flynn in 

a lace petticoat and reversed chasuble, his two left feet back to 

the front, celebrates camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C 

Haines Love M. A. in a plain cassock and mortarboard, his 

head and collar back to the front, holds over the celebrant’s head 

an open umbrella.)

FATHER MALACHI O’FLYNN 

Introib ad altare diaboli. 

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE 

To the devil which hath made glad my young days. 

FATHER MALACHI O’FLYNN 

(Takes from the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host) Corpus 

meum. 

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE 

(Raises high behind the celebrant’s petticoat, revealing his grey 

bare hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck) My body. 

THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED 

Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella! 

(From on high the voice of ADONAI Calls.) 

Dooooooooooog! 

ADONAI 


580 

THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED 

Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth! 

(From on high the voice of ADONAI calls.) 

Goooooooooood! 

ADONAI 

(In strident discord peasants and townsmen of Orange and Green 

factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.) 

PRIVATE CARR 

(With ferocious articulation) I’ll do him in, so help me fucking 

Christ! I’ll wring the bastard fucker’s bleeding blasted fucking 

windpipe! 

OLD GUMMY GRANNY 

(Thrusts a dagger towards Stephen’s hand) Remove him, 

acushla. At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will 

be free. (She prays) O good God, take him!

(The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, barks noisily.) 

BLOOM 

(Runs to Lynch) Can’t you get him away? 

LYNCH 

He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! (To Bloom) 

Get him away, you. He won’t listen to me. 

(He drags Kitty away.) 

STEPHEN 

(Points) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit. 

BLOOM 

(Runs to Stephen) Come along with me now before worse 

happens. Here’s your stick. 

STEPHEN 

Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason. 


581 

CISSY CAFFREY 

(Pulling Private Carr) Come on, you’re boosed. He insulted 

me but I forgive him. (Shouting in his ear) I forgive him for 

insulting me. 

BLOOM 

(Over Stephen’s shoulder) Yes, go. You see he’s incapable. 

PRIVATE CARR 

(Breaks loose) I’ll insult him. 

(He rushes towards Stephen, fist outstretched, and strikes him in 

the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls, stunned. He lies prone, 

his face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and 

picks it up.) 

MAJOR TWEEDY 

(Loudly) Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute! 

THE RETRIEVER 

(Barking furiously) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.

THE CROWD 

Let him up! Don’t strike him when he’s down! Air! Who? 

The soldier hit him. He’s a professor. Is he hurted? Don’t 

manhandle him! He’s fainted! 

A HAG 

What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he 

under the influence. Let them go and fight the Boers! 

THE BAWD 

Listen to who’s talking! Hasn’t the soldier a right to go with 

his girl? He gave him the coward’s blow. 

(They grab at each other’s hair, claw at each other and spit) 

THE RETRIEVER 

(Barking) Wow wow wow. 

BLOOM 

(Shoves them back, loudly) Get back, stand back! 


582 


(Tugging his comrade) Here. Bugger off, Harry. Here’s the 

cops! 

(Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.) 

What’s wrong here? 

FIRST WATCH 


We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And assaulted 

my chum. (The retriever barks) Who owns the bleeding tyke? 

CISSY CAFFREY 

(With expectation) Is he bleeding! 

A MAN 

(Rising from his knees) No. Gone off. He’ll come to all right. 

BLOOM 

(Glances sharply at the man) Leave him to me. I can easily …

SECOND WATCH 

Who are you? Do you know him? 

PRIVATE CARR 

(Lurches towards the watch) He insulted my lady friend. 

BLOOM 

(Angrily) You hit him without provocation. I’m a witness. 

Constable, take his regimental number. 

SECOND WATCH 

I don’t want your instructions in the discharge of my duty. 


(Pulling his comrade) Here, bugger off Harry. Or Bennett’ll 

shove you in the lockup. 

PRIVATE CARR 

(Staggering as he is pulled away) God fuck old Bennett. He’s a 

whitearsed bugger. I don’t give a shit for him. 


583 

FIRST WATCH 

(Takes out his notebook) What’s his name? 

BLOOM 

(Peering over the crowd) I just see a car there. If you give me a 

hand a second, sergeant … 

Name and address. 

FIRST WATCH 

(Corny Kelleher, weepers round his hat, a death wreath in his 

hand, appears among the bystanders.) 

BLOOM 

(Quickly) O, the very man! (He whispers) Simon Dedalus’ 

son. A bit sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers 

back. 

SECOND WATCH 

Night, Mr Kelleher.

CORNY KELLEHER 

(To the watch, with drawling eye) That’s all right. I know him. 

Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. (He laughs) 

Twenty to one. Do you follow me? 

FIRST WATCH 

(Turns to the crowd) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move 

on out of that. 

(The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.) 


Leave it to me, sergeant. That’ll be all right. (He laughs, shaking 

his head) We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse. 

What? Eh, what? 

FIRST WATCH 

(Laughs) I suppose so. 


(Nudges the second watch) Come and wipe your name off the 


584 

slate. (He lilts, wagging his head) With my tooraloom tooraloom 

tooraloom tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me? 

SECOND WATCH 

(Genially) Ah, sure we were too. 


(Winking) Boys will be boys. I’ve a car round there. 

SECOND WATCH 

All right, Mr Kelleher. Good night. 

I’ll see to that. 


BLOOM 

(Shakes hands with both of the watch in turn) Thank you very 

much, gentlemen. Thank you. (He mumbles confidentially) 

We don’t want any scandal, you understand. Father is a 

wellknown highly respected citizen. Just a little wild oats, 

you understand.

FIRST WATCH 

O. I understand, sir. 

SECOND WATCH 

That’s all right, sir. 

FIRST WATCH 

It was only in case of corporal injuries I’d have to report it at 

the station. 

BLOOM 

(Nods rapidly) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden 

duty. 

It’s our duty. 

SECOND WATCH 


Good night, men. 


585 

THE WATCH 

(Saluting together) Night, gentlemen. (They move off with slow 

heavy tread) 

BLOOM 

(Blows) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car? … 


(Laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to the car 

brought up against the scaffolding) Two commercials that were 

standing fizz in Jammet’s. Like princes, faith. One of them 

lost two quid on the race. Drowning his grief. And were on 

for a go with the jolly girls. So I landed them up on Behan’s 

car and down to nighttown. 

BLOOM 

I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to … 


(Laughs) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots. No, 

by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself.

(He laughs again and leers with lacklustre eye) Thanks be to 

God we have it in the house, what, eh, do you follow me? 

Hah, hah, hah! 

BLOOM 

(Tries to laugh) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just visiting 

an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don’t know him 

(poor fellow, he’s laid up for the past week) and we had a 

liquor together and I was just making my way home … 

(The horse neighs.) 

THE HORSE 

Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome! 


Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left 

the two commercials in Mrs Cohen’s and I told him to pull 

up and got off to see. (He laughs) Sober hearsedrivers a speciality. 

Will I give him a lift home? Where does he hang out? 

Somewhere in Cabra, what? 


586 

BLOOM 

No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop. 

(Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher, asquint, 

drawls at the horse. Bloom, in gloom, looms down.) 


(Scratches his nape) Sandycove! (He bends down and calls to 

Stephen) Eh! (He calls again) Eh! He’s covered with shavings 

anyhow. Take care they didn’t lift anything off him. 

BLOOM 

No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick. 


Ah, well, he’ll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I’ll shove 

along. (He laughs) I’ve a rendezvous in the morning. Burying 

the dead. Safe home! 

THE HORSE 

(Neighs) Hohohohohome.

BLOOM 

Good night. I’ll just wait and take him along in a few … 

(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The 

horse harness jingles.) 


(From the car, standing) Night. 

Night. 

BLOOM 

(The jarvey chucks the reins and raises his whip encouragingly. 

The car and horse back slowly, awkwardly, and turn. Corny 

Kelleher on the sideseat sways his head to and fro in sign of 

mirth at Bloom’s plight. The jarvey joins in the mute pantomimic 

merriment nodding from the farther seat. Bloom shakes 

his head in mute mirthful reply. With thumb and palm Corny 

Kelleher reassures that the two bobbies will allow the sleep to 

continue for what else is to be done. With a slow nod Bloom 

conveys his gratitude as that is exactly what Stephen needs. The 


587 

car jingles tooraloom round the corner of the tooraloom lane. 

Corny Kelleher again reassuralooms with his hand. Bloom with 

his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher that he is reassuraloomtay. 

The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness grow fainter with their 

tooralooloo looloo lay. Bloom, holding in his hand Stephen’s hat, 

festooned with shavings, and ashplant, stands irresolute. Then 

he bends to him and shakes him by the shoulder.) 

BLOOM 

Eh! Ho! (There is no answer; he bends again) Mr Dedalus! 

(There is no answer) The name if you call. Somnambulist. 

(He bends again and hesitating, brings his muth near the face 

of the prostrate form) Stephen! (There is no answer. He calls 

again.) Stephen! 

STEPHEN 

(Groans) Who? Black panther. Vampire. (He sighs and stretches 

himself, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels) 

Who … drive … Fergus now 

And pierce … wood’s woven shade? …

(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.) 

BLOOM 

Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (He bends again and undoes the 

buttons of Stephen’s waistcoat) To breathe. (He brushes the 

woodshavings from Stephen’s clothes with light hand and fingers) 

One pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. (He listens) What? 

(Murmurs) 

STEPHEN 

… shadows … the woods 

… white breast … dim sea. 

(He stretches out his arms, sighs again and curls his body. Bloom, 

holding the hat and ashplant, stands erect. A dog barks in the 

distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. 

He looks down on Stephen’s face and form.) 

BLOOM 

(Communes with the night) Face reminds me of his poor mother. 


588 

In the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I 

caught. A girl. Some girl. Best thing could happen him. (He 

murmurs) … swear that I will always hail, ever conceal, never 

reveal, any part or parts, art or arts … (He murmurs) … in the 

rough sands of the sea … a cabletow’s length from the shore 

… where the tide ebbs … and flows … 

(Silent, thoughtful, alert he stands on guard, his fingers at his 

lips in the attitude of secret master. Against the dark wall a 

figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven, a changeling, kidnapped, 

dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little 

bronze helmet, holding a book in his hand. He reads from right 

to left inaudibly, smiling, kissing the page.) 

BLOOM 

(Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly) Rudy! 

RUDY 

(Gazes, unseeing, into Bloom’s eyes and goes on reading, kissing, 

smiling. He has a delicate mauve face. On his suit he has diamond 

and ruby buttons. In his free left hand he holds a slim

ivory cane with a violet bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of 

his waistcoat pocket.) 


589 

— III — 

PREPARATORY TO ANYTHING else Mr Bloom brushed off the 

greater bulk of the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and 

ashplant and bucked him up generally in orthodox Samaritan 

fashion which he very badly needed. His (Stephen’s) mind 

was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit 

unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to 

drink Mr Bloom in view of the hour it was and there being 

no pump of Vartry water available for their ablutions let alone 

drinking purposes hit upon an expedient by suggesting, off 

the reel, the propriety of the cabman’s shelter, as it was called, 

hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt bridge where they might 

hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or 

a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce 

he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly 

devolved upon him to take some measures on the subject he 

pondered suitable ways and means during which Stephen 

repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was rather pale 

in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to 

get a conveyance of some description which would answer

in their then condition, both of them being e.d.ed, particularly 

Stephen, always assuming that there was such a thing 

to be found. Accordingly after a few such preliminaries as 

brushing, in spite of his having forgotten to take up his rather 

soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in 

the shaving line, they both walked together along Beaver 

street or, more properly, lane as far as the farrier’s and the 

distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner 

of Montgomery street where they made tracks to the left 

from thence debouching into Amiens street round by the 

corner of Dan Bergin’s. But as he confidently anticipated 

there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire anywhere to be 

seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows 

inside on the spree, outside the North Star hotel and 

there was no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch 

when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a professional whistler, 

endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle, 

holding his arms arched over his head, twice. 

This was a quandary but, bringing common sense to bear 

on it, evidently there was nothing for it but put a good face 

on the matter and foot it which they accordingly did. So, 


590 

bevelling around by Mullett’s and the Signal House which 

they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the direction 

of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Bloom being 

handicapped by the circumstance that one of the back buttons 

of his trousers had, to vary the timehonoured adage, 

gone the way of all buttons though, entering thoroughly into 

the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the mischance. 

So as neither of them were particularly pressed for 

time, as it happened, and the temperature refreshing since it 

cleared up after the recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they 

dandered along past by where the empty vehicle was waiting 

without a fare or a jarvey. As it so happened a Dublin United 

Tramways Company’s sandstrewer happened to be returning 

and the elder man recounted to his companion a propos 

of the incident his own truly miraculous escape of some little 

while back. They passed the main entrance of the Great 

Northern railway station, the starting point for Belfast, where 

of course all traffic was suspended at that late hour and passing 

the backdoor of the morgue (a not very enticing locality, 

not to say gruesome to a degree, more especially at night) 

ultimately gained the Dock Tavern and in due course turned

into Store street, famous for its C division police station. 

Between this point and the high at present unlit warehouses 

of Beresford place Stephen thought to think of Ibsen, associated 

with Baird’s the stonecutter’s in his mind somehow in 

Talbot place, first turning on the right, while the other who 

was acting as his fidus Achates inhaled with internal satisfaction 

the smell of James Rourke’s city bakery, situated quite 

close to where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of 

our daily bread, of all commodities of the public the primary 

and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn 

your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread, at Rourke’s the 

baker’s it is said. 

En route to his taciturn and, not to put too fine a point on 

it, not yet perfectly sober companion Mr Bloom who at all 

events was in complete possession of his faculties, never more 

so, in fact disgustingly sober, spoke a word of caution re the 

dangers of nighttown, women of ill fame and swell mobsmen, 

which, barely permissible once in a while though not as a 

habitual practice, was of the nature of a regular deathtrap for 

young fellows of his age particularly if they had acquired 

drinking habits under the influence of liquor unless you knew 


591 

a little jiujitsu for every contingency as even a fellow on the 

broad of his back could administer a nasty kick if you didn’t 

look out. Highly providential was the appearance on the scene 

of Corny Kelleher when Stephen was blissfully unconscious 

but for that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour 

the finis might have been that he might have been a candidate 

for the accident ward or, failing that, the bridewell and 

an appearance in the court next day before Mr Tobias or, he 

being the solicitor rather, old Wall, he meant to say, or 

Mahony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when it got 

bruited about. The reason he mentioned the fact was that a 

lot of those policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were 

admittedly unscrupulous in the service of the Crown and, as 

Mr Bloom put it, recalling a case or two in the A division in 

Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole through a ten 

gallon pot. Never on the spot when wanted but in quiet parts 

of the city, Pembroke road for example, the guardians of the 

law were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they 

were paid to protect the upper classes. Another thing he commented 

on was equipping soldiers with firearms or sidearms 

of any description liable to go off at any time which was

tantamount to inciting them against civilians should by any 

chance they fall out over anything. You frittered away your 

time, he very sensibly maintained, and health and also character 

besides which, the squandermania of the thing, fast 

women of the demimonde ran away with a lot of l.s.d. into 

the bargain and the greatest danger of all was who you got 

drunk with though, touching the much vexed question of 

stimulants, he relished a glass of choice old wine in season as 

both nourishing and bloodmaking and possessing aperient 

virtues (notably a good burgundy which he was a staunch 

believer in) still never beyond a certain point where he invariably 

drew the line as it simply led to trouble all round to 

say nothing of your being at the tender mercy of others practically. 

Most of all he commented adversely on the desertion 

of Stephen by all his pubhunting confrères but one, a most 

glaring piece of ratting on the part of his brother medicos 

under all the circs. 

—And that one was Judas, Stephen said, who up to then 

had said nothing whatsoever of any kind. 

Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline 

across the back of the Customhouse and passed under the 


592 

Loop Line bridge where a brazier of coke burning in front of 

a sentrybox or something like one attracted their rather lagging 

footsteps. Stephen of his own accord stopped for no 

special reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and 

by the light emanating from the brazier he could just make 

out the darker figure of the corporation watchman inside 

the gloom of the sentrybox. He began to remember that this 

had happened or had been mentioned as having happened 

before but it cost him no small effort before he remembered 

that he recognised in the sentry a quondam friend of his 

father’s, Gumley. To avoid a meeting he drew nearer to the 

pillars of the railway bridge. 

—Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said. 

A figure of middle height on the prowl evidently under 

the arches saluted again, calling: 

—Night! 

Stephen of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return 

the compliment. Mr Bloom actuated by motives of inherent 

delicacy inasmuch as he always believed in minding 

his own business moved off but nevertheless remained on 

the qui vive with just a shade of anxiety though not funkyish

in the least. Though unusual in the Dublin area he knew 

that it was not by any means unknown for desperadoes who 

had next to nothing to live on to be abroad waylaying and 

generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians by placing a pistol 

at their head in some secluded spot outside the city proper, 

famished loiterers of the Thames embankment category they 

might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to 

decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop 

at a moment’s notice, your money or your life, leaving you 

there to point a moral, gagged and garrotted. 

Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close 

quarters, though he was not in an over sober state himself 

recognised Corley’s breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord 

John Corley some called him and his genealogy came about 

in this wise. He was the eldest son of inspector Corley of the 

G division, lately deceased, who had married a certain 

Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grandfather 

Patrick Michael Corley of New Ross had married the 

widow of a publican there whose maiden name had been 

Katherine (also) Talbot. Rumour had it (though not proved) 

that she descended from the house of the lords Talbot de 


593 

Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine 

residence of its kind and well worth seeing, her mother or 

aunt or some relative, a woman, as the tale went, of extreme 

beauty, had enjoyed the distinction of being in service in the 

washkitchen. This therefore was the reason why the still comparatively 

young though dissolute man who now addressed 

Stephen was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as 

Lord John Corley. 

Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful 

ditty to tell. Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night’s 

lodgings. His friends had all deserted him. Furthermore he 

had a row with Lenehan and called him to Stephen a mean 

bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of other 

uncalledfor expressions. He was out of a job and implored of 

Stephen to tell him where on God’s earth he could get something, 

anything at all, to do. No, it was the daughter of the 

mother in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of 

the house or else they were connected through the mother 

in some way, both occurrences happening at the same time 

if the whole thing wasn’t a complete fabrication from start to 

finish. Anyhow he was all in.

—I wouldn’t ask you only, pursued he, on my solemn oath 

and God knows I’m on the rocks. 

—There’ll be a job tomorrow or next day, Stephen told 

him, in a boys’ school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr 

Garrett Deasy. Try it. You may mention my name. 

—Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn’t teach in a school, 

man. I was never one of your bright ones, he added with a 

half laugh. I got stuck twice in the junior at the christian 

brothers. 

—I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him. 

Corley at the first go-off was inclined to suspect it was 

something to do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for 

bringing in a bloody tart off the street. There was a dosshouse 

in Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney’s, but it was only a tanner 

touch and full of undesirables but M’Conachie told him 

you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in 

Winetavern street (which was distantly suggestive to the person 

addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too 

though he hadn’t said a word about it. 

Though this sort of thing went on every other night or 

very near it still Stephen’s feelings got the better of him in a 


594 

sense though he knew that Corley’s brandnew rigmarole on 

a par with the others was hardly deserving of much credence. 

However haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere disco etcetera 

as the Latin poet remarks especially as luck would have it 

he got paid his screw after every middle of the month on the 

sixteenth which was the date of the month as a matter of fact 

though a good bit of the wherewithal was demolished. But 

the cream of the joke was nothing would get it out of Corley’s 

head that he was living in affluence and hadn’t a thing to do 

but hand out the needful. Whereas. He put his hand in a 

pocket anyhow not with the idea of finding any food there 

but thinking he might lend him anything up to a bob or so 

in lieu so that he might endeavour at all events and get sufficient 

to eat but the result was in the negative for, to his chagrin, 

he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were 

all the result of his investigation. He tried his hardest to recollect 

for the moment whether he had lost as well he might have 

or left because in that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, 

very much the reverse in fact. He was altogether too fagged 

out to institute a thorough search though he tried to recollect. 

About biscuits he dimly remembered. Who now exactly gave

them he wondered or where was or did he buy. However in 

another pocket he came across what he surmised in the dark 

were pennies, erroneously however, as it turned out. 

—Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him. 

And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen 

anyhow lent him one of them. 

—Thanks, Corley answered, you’re a gentleman. I’ll pay 

you back one time. Who’s that with you? I saw him a few 

times in the Bleeding Horse in Camden street with Boylan, 

the billsticker. You might put in a good word for us to get 

me taken on there. I’d carry a sandwichboard only the girl in 

the office told me they’re full up for the next three weeks, 

man. God, you’ve to book ahead, man, you’d think it was for 

the Carl Rosa. I don’t give a shite anyway so long as I get a 

job, even as a crossing sweeper. 

Subsequently being not quite so down in the mouth after 

the two and six he got he informed Stephen about a fellow 

by the name of Bags Comisky that he said Stephen knew 

well out of Fullam’s, the shipchandler’s, bookkeeper there 

that used to be often round in Nagle’s back with O’Mara 

and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow 


595 

he was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a 

drunk and disorderly and refusing to go with the constable. 

Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the 

vicinity of the cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front 

of the corporation watchman’s sentrybox who evidently a 

glutton for work, it struck him, was having a quiet forty 

winks for all intents and purposes on his own private account 

while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same 

time now and then at Stephen’s anything but immaculately 

attired interlocutor as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere 

or other though where he was not in a position to 

truthfully state nor had he the remotest idea when. Being a 

levelheaded individual who could give points to not a few in 

point of shrewd observation he also remarked on his very 

dilapidated hat and slouchy wearing apparel generally testifying 

to a chronic impecuniosity. Palpably he was one of his 

hangerson but for the matter of that it was merely a question 

of one preying on his nextdoor neighbour all round, in every 

deep, so to put it, a deeper depth and for the matter of that 

if the man in the street chanced to be in the dock himself 

penal servitude with or without the option of a fine would

e a very rara avis altogether. In any case he had a consummate 

amount of cool assurance intercepting people at that 

hour of the night or morning. Pretty thick that was certainly. 

The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom 

who, with his practised eye, was not without perceiving that 

he had succumbed to the blandiloquence of the other parasite. 

Alluding to the encounter he said, laughingly, Stephen, 

that is: 

—He is down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask 

somebody named Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a 

sandwichman. 

At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little 

interest, Mr Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half 

a second or so in the direction of a bucketdredger, rejoicing 

in the farfamed name of Eblana, moored alongside Customhouse 

quay and quite possibly out of repair, whereupon he 

observed evasively: 

—Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now 

you mention it his face was familiar to me. But, leaving that 

for the moment, how much did you part with, he queried, if 

I am not too inquisitive? 


596 

—Half a crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it 

to sleep somewhere. 

—Needs! Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least 

surprise at the intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion 

and I guarantee he invariably does. Everyone according to 

his needs or everyone according to his deeds. But, talking 

about things in general, where, added he with a smile, will 

you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is out of the question. 

And even supposing you did you won’t get in after what 

occurred at Westland Row station. Simply fag out there for 

nothing. I don’t mean to presume to dictate to you in the 

slightest degree but why did you leave your father’s house? 

—To seek misfortune, was Stephen’s answer. 

—I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr 

Bloom diplomatically returned, today in fact, or to be strictly 

accurate, on yesterday. Where does he live at present? I gathered 

in the course of conversation that he had moved. 

—I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered 

unconcernedly. Why? 

—A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in 

more respects than one and a born raconteur if ever there was

one. He takes great pride, quite legitimate, out of you. You 

could go back perhaps, he hasarded, still thinking of the very 

unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it was 

perfectly evident that the other two, Mulligan, that is, and 

that English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred 

their third companion, were patently trying as if the whole 

bally station belonged to them to give Stephen the slip in the 

confusion, which they did. 

There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion however, 

such as it was, Stephen’s mind’s eye being too busily 

engaged in repicturing his family hearth the last time he saw 

it with his sister Dilly sitting by the ingle, her hair hanging 

down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell cocoa that was 

in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he could 

drink it with the oatmealwater for milk after the Friday herrings 

they had eaten at two a penny with an egg apiece for 

Maggy, Boody and Katey, the cat meanwhile under the 

mangle devouring a mess of eggshells and charred fish heads 

and bones on a square of brown paper, in accordance with 

the third precept of the church to fast and abstain on the 

days commanded, it being quarter tense or if not, ember 


597 

days or something like that. 

—No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn’t personally 

repose much trust in that boon companion of yours who 

contributes the humorous element, Dr Mulligan, as a guide, 

philosopher and friend if I were in your shoes. He knows 

which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability 

he never realised what it is to be without regular meals. Of 

course you didn’t notice as much as I did. But it wouldn’t 

occasion me the least surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco 

or some narcotic was put in your drink for some ulterior 

object. 

He understood however from all he heard that Dr Mulligan 

was a versatile allround man, by no means confined to medicine 

only, who was rapidly coming to the fore in his line 

and, if the report was verified, bade fair to enjoy a flourishing 

practice in the not too distant future as a tony medical 

practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services in addition 

to which professional status his rescue of that man from 

certain drowning by artificial respiration and what they call 

first aid at Skerries, or Malahide was it?, was, he was bound 

to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed which he could not

too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at a loss to 

fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except 

he put it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and 

simple. 

—Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what 

they call picking your brains, he ventured to throw o.ut. 

The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented 

by friendliness which he gave at Stephen’s at present 

morose expression of features did not throw a flood of light, 

none at all in fact on the problem as to whether he had let 

himself be badly bamboozled to judge by two or three 

lowspirited remarks he let drop or the other way about saw 

through the affair and for some reason or other best known 

to himself allowed matters to more or less. Grinding poverty 

did have that effect and he more than conjectured that, high 

educational abilities though he possessed, he experienced no 

little difficulty in making both ends meet. 

Adjacent to the men’s public urinal they perceived an 

icecream car round which a group of presumably Italians in 

heated altercation were getting rid of voluble expressions in 

their vivacious language in a particularly animated way, there 


598 

being some little differences between the parties. 

—Puttana madonna, che ci dia i Quattrini! Ho ragione? Culo 

rotto! 

—Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano più … 

—Dice lui, pero! 

—Mezzo. 

—Farabutto! Mortacci sui! 

—Ma ascolta! Cinque la testa più … 

Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman’s shelter, an 

unpretentious wooden structure, where, prior to then, he 

had rarely if ever been before, the former having previously 

whispered to the latter a few hints anent the keeper of it said 

to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat Fitzharris, the invincible, 

though he could not vouch for the actual facts which 

quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few 

moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a 

discreet corner only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly 

miscellaneous collection of waifs and strays and other 

nondescript specimens of the genus homo already there engaged 

in eating and drinking diversified by conversation for 

whom they seemingly formed an object of marked curiosity.

—Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to 

plausibly suggest to break the ice, it occurs to me you ought 

to sample something in the shape of solid food, say, a roll of 

some description. 

Accordingly his first act was with characteristic sangfroid 

to order these commodities quietly. The hoi polloi of jarvies 

or stevedores or whatever they were after a cursory examination 

turned their eyes apparently dissatisfied, away though 

one redbearded bibulous individual portion of whose hair 

was greyish, a sailor probably, still stared for some appreciable 

time before transferring his rapt attention to the floor. 

Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he 

having just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute, 

though, to be sure, rather in a quandary over voglio, 

remarked to his protégé in an audible tone of voice a propos 

of the battle royal in the street which was still raging fast and 

furious: 

—A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why 

do you not write your poetry in that language? Bella Poetria! 

It is so melodious and full. Belladonna voglio. 

Stephen, who was trying his dead best to yawn if he could, 


599 

suffering from lassitude generally, replied: 

—To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling 

over money. 

—Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined 

pensively, at the inward reflection of there being more languages 

to start with than were absolutely necessary, it may 

be only the southern glamour that surrounds it. 

The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this tête-à-tête 

put a boiling swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled 

coffee on the table and a rather antediluvian specimen of a 

bun, or so it seemed. After which he beat a retreat to his 

counter, Mr Bloom determining to have a good square look 

at him later on so as not to appear to. For which reason he 

encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes while he did 

the honours by surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was 

temporarily supposed to be called coffee gradually nearer him. 

—Sounds are impostures, Stephen said after a pause of 

some little time, like names. Cicero, Podmore. Napoleon, 

Mr Goodbody. Jesus, Mr Doyle. Shakespeares were as common 

as Murphies. What’s in a name? 

—Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Of

course. Our name was changed too, he added, pushing the 

socalled roll across. 

The redbearded sailor who had his weather eye on the newcomers 

boarded Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention 

in particular, squarely by asking: 

—And what might your name be? 

Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion’s 

boot but Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure 

from an unexpected quarter, answered: 

—Dedalus. 

The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy 

eyes, rather bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably 

good old Hollands and water. 

—You know Simon Dedalus? he asked at length. 

—I’ve heard of him, Stephen said. 

Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others 

evidently eavesdropping too. 

—He’s Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much 

the same way and nodding. All Irish. 

—All too Irish, Stephen rejoined. 

As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the 


600 

whole business and he was just asking himself what possible 

connection when the sailor of his own accord turned to the 

other occupants of the shelter with the remark: 

—I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards 

over his shoulder. The lefthand dead shot. 

Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer 

and his gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did 

his best to explain. 

—Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the 

bottles. Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims. 

He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. 

Then he screwed his features up someway sideways 

and glared out into the night with an unprepossessing cast 

of countenance. 

—Pom! he then shouted once. 

The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, 

there being still a further egg. 

—Pom! he shouted twice. 

Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, 

adding bloodthirstily:

—Buffalo Bill shoots to kill, 

Never missed nor he never will. 

A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agreeableness’ sake just 

felt like asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition 

like the Bisley. 

—Beg pardon, the sailor said. 

—Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth. 

—Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under 

the magic influence of diamond cut diamond, it might 

be a matter of ten years. He toured the wide world with 

Hengler’s Royal Circus. I seen him do that in Stockholm. 

—Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen 

unobtrusively. 

—Murphy’s my name, the sailor continued. D. B. Murphy 

of Carrigaloe. Know where that is? 

—Queenstown harbour, Stephen replied. 

—That’s right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort 

Carlisle. That’s where I hails from. I belongs there. That’s 

where I hails from. My little woman’s down there. She’s wait- 


601 

ing for me, I know. For England, home and beauty. She’s my 

own true wife I haven’t seen for seven years now, sailing about. 

Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene, 

the homecoming to the mariner’s roadside shieling after having 

diddled Davy Jones, a rainy night with a blind moon. 

Across the world for a wife. Quite a number of stories there 

were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden 

and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember 

Caoc O’Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation 

piece by the way of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect 

poetry in its own small way. Never about the runaway wife 

coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The 

face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he finally 

did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon 

him anent his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little 

expected me but I’ve come to stay and make a fresh start. 

There she sits, a grasswidow, at the selfsame fireside. Believes 

me dead, rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits 

uncle Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican 

of the Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak 

and onions. No chair for father. Broo! The wind! Her

andnew arrival is on her knee, post mortem child. With a 

high ro! and a randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy, O! 

Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I remain with much 

love your brokenhearted husband D B Murphy. 

The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, 

turned to one of the jarvies with the request: 

—You don’t happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw 

about you? 

The jarvey addressed as it happened had not but the keeper 

took a die of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail 

and the desired object was passed from hand to hand. 

—Thank you, the sailor said. 

He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing and with 

some slow stammers, proceeded: 

—We come up this morning eleven o’clock. The 

threemaster Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped 

to get over. Paid off this afternoon. There’s my discharge. 

See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S. 

In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an 

inside pocket and handed to his neighbour a not very 

cleanlooking folded document. 


602 

—You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper 

remarked, leaning on the counter. 

—Why, the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, I’ve 

circumnavigated a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red 

Sea. I was in China and North America and South America. 

We was chased by pirates one voyage. I seen icebergs plenty, 

growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the 

Dardanelles under Captain Dalton, the best bloody man that 

ever scuttled a ship. I seen Russia. Gospodi pomilooy. That’s 

how the Russians prays. 

—You seen queer sights, don’t be talking, put in a jarvey. 

—Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug. 

I seen queer things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile 

bite the fluke of an anchor same as I chew that quid. 

He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it 

between his teeth, bit ferociously: 

—Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that 

eats corpses and the livers of horses. Look here. Here they 

are. A friend of mine sent me. 

He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket 

which seemed to be in its way a species of repository and

pushed it along the table. The printed matter on it stated: 

Choza de Indios. Beni, Bolivia. 

All focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, a group 

of savage women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, 

suckling, frowning, sleeping amid a swarm of infants (there 

must have been quite a score of them) outside some primitive 

shanties of osier. 

—Chews coca all day, the communicative tarpaulin added. 

Stomachs like breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they 

can’t bear no more children. 

See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead 

horse’s liver raw. 

His postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the 

greenhorns for several minutes if not more. 

—Know how to keep them off? he inquired generally. 

Nobody volunteering a statement he winked, saying: 

—Glass. That boggles ‘em. Glass. 

Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously 

turned over the card to peruse the partially obliterated address 

and postmark. It ran as follows: Tarjeta Postal, Señor A. 

Boudin, Galeria Becche, Santiago, Chile. There was no mes- 


603 

sage evidently, as he took particular notice. Though not an 

implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the eggsniping 

transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the 

Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in Maritana 

on which occasion the former’s ball passed through the latter’s 

hat) having detected a discrepancy between his name (assuming 

he was the person he represented himself to be and 

not sailing under false colours after having boxed the compass 

on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the fictitious addressee 

of the missive which made him nourish some suspicions of 

our friend’s bona fides nevertheless it reminded him in a way 

of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some 

Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via long sea 

not to say that he had ever travelled extensively to any great 

extent but he was at heart a born adventurer though by a 

trick of fate he had consistently remained a landlubber except 

you call going to Holyhead which was his longest. Martin 

Cunningham frequently said he would work a pass 

through Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally 

cropped up with the net result that the scheme fell through. 

But even suppose it did come to planking down the needful

and breaking Boyd’s heart it was not so dear, purse permitting, 

a few guineas at the outside considering the fare to 

Mullingar where he figured on going was five and six, there 

and back. The trip would benefit health on account of the 

bracing ozone and be in every way thoroughly pleasurable, 

especially for a chap whose liver was out of order, seeing the 

different places along the route, Plymouth, Falmouth, 

Southampton and so on culminating in an instructive tour 

of the sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our 

modern Babylon where doubtless he would see the greatest 

improvement, tower, abbey, wealth of Park lane to renew 

acquaintance with. Another thing just struck him as a by no 

means bad notion was he might have a gaze around on the 

spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a concert 

tour of summer music embracing the most prominent 

pleasure resorts, Margate with mixed bathing and firstrate 

hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so 

on, beautiful Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar 

bijou spots, which might prove highly remunerative. Not, 

of course, with a hole and corner scratch company or local 

ladies on the job, witness Mrs C. P. M’Coy type lend me 


604 

your valise and I’ll post you the ticket. No, something top 

notch, an all star Irish caste, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera 

company with his own legal consort as leading lady as a sort 

of counterblast to the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners, 

perfectly simple matter and he was quite sanguine of success, 

providing puffs in the local papers could be managed 

by some fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable 

wires and thus combine business with pleasure. 

But who? That was the rub. 

Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great 

field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new 

routes to keep pace with the times apropos of the Fishguard- 

Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was once more on the 

tapis in the circumlocution departments with the usual quantity 

of red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and 

dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there certainly 

was for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of 

the public at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson 

and Co. 

It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of 

it and no small blame to our vaunted society that the man in

the street, when the system really needed toning up, for the 

matter of a couple of paltry pounds was debarred from seeing 

more of the world they lived in instead of being always 

and ever cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me 

for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more 

humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of venue 

after the grind of city life in the summertime for choice when 

dame Nature is at her spectacular best constituting nothing 

short of a new lease of life. There were equally excellent opportunities 

for vacationists in the home island, delightful 

sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of attractions 

as well as a bracing tonic for the system in and around 

Dublin and its picturesque environs even, Poulaphouca to 

which there was a steamtram, but also farther away from the 

madding crowd in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of 

Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen so long 

as it didn’t come down, and in the wilds of Donegal where if 

report spoke true the coup d’œil was exceedingly grand though 

the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that the 

influx of visitors was not as yet all that it might be considering 

the signal benefits to be derived from it while Howth 


605 

with its historic associations and otherwise, Silken Thomas, 

Grace O’Malley, George IV, rhododendrons several hundred 

feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt with all sorts and 

conditions of men especially in the spring when young men’s 

fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off the 

cliffs by design or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their 

left leg, it being only about three quarters of an hour’s run 

from the pillar. Because of course uptodate tourist travelling 

was as yet merely in its infancy, so to speak, and the accommodation 

left much to be desired. Interesting to fathom it 

seemed to him from a motive of curiosity, pure and simple, 

was whether it was the traffic that created the route or 

viceversa or the two sides in fact. He turned back the other 

side of the card, picture, and passed it along to Stephen. 

—I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, 

that had little pills like putty and he put them in the water 

and they opened and every pill was something different. One 

was a ship, another was a house, another was a flower. Cooks 

rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the chinks does. 

Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces 

the globetrotter went on, adhering to his adventures.

—And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. 

Knife in his back. Knife like that. 

Whilst speaking he produced a dangerouslooking claspknife 

quite in keeping with his character and held it in the striking 

position. 

—In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two 

smugglers. Fellow hid behind a door, come up behind him. 

Like that. Prepare to meet your God, says he. Chuk! It went 

into his back up to the butt. 

His heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of defied their 

further questions even should they by any chance want to. 

—That’s a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his 

formidable stiletto. 

After which harrowing dénouement sufficient to appal the 

stoutest he snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in 

question away as before in his chamber of horrors, otherwise 

pocket. 

—They’re great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently 

quite in the dark said for the benefit of them all. That 

was why they thought the park murders of the invincibles 

was done by foreigners on account of them using knives. 


606 

At this remark passed obviously in the spirit of where ignorance 

is bliss Mr B. and Stephen, each in his own particular 

way, both instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious 

silence of the strictly entre nous variety however, towards 

where Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper, not turning a hair, was 

drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable 

face which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself, 

beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn’t 

understand one jot of what was going on. Funny, very! 

There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was 

reading in fits and starts a stained by coffee evening journal, 

another the card with the natives choza de, another the 

seaman’s discharge. Mr Bloom, so far as he was personally 

concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly 

recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well 

as yesterday, roughly some score of years previously in the 

days of the land troubles, when it took the civilised world by 

storm, figuratively speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone 

to be correct, when he was just turned fifteen. 

—Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers. 

The request being complied with he clawed them up with

a scrape. 

—Have you seen the rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired. 

The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read 

as yes, ay or no. 

—Ah, you’ve touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa 

point, thinking he had, in the hope that the rover might 

possibly by some reminiscences but he failed to do so, simply 

letting spirt a jet of spew into the sawdust, and shook his 

head with a sort of lazy scorn. 

—What year would that be about? Mr B interrogated. Can 

you recall the boats? 

Our soi-disant sailor munched heavily awhile hungrily before 

answering: 

—I’m tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats 

and ships. Salt junk all the time. 

Tired seemingly, he ceased. His questioner perceiving that 

he was not likely to get a great deal of change out of such a 

wily old customer, fell to woolgathering on the enormous 

dimensions of the water about the globe, suffice it to say 

that, as a casual glance at the map revealed, it covered fully 

three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly what it 


607 

meant to rule the waves. On more than one occasion, a dozen 

at the lowest, near the North Bull at Dollymount he had 

remarked a superannuated old salt, evidently derelict, seated 

habitually near the not particularly redolent sea on the wall, 

staring quite obliviously at it and it at him, dreaming of fresh 

woods and pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And 

it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried to find out 

the secret for himself, floundering up and down the antipodes 

and all that sort of thing and over and under, well, not 

exactly under, tempting the fates. And the odds were twenty 

to nil there was really no secret about it at all. Nevertheless, 

without going into the minutiae of the business, the eloquent 

fact remained that the sea was there in all its glory and 

in the natural course of things somebody or other had to sail 

on it and fly in the face of providence though it merely went 

to show how people usually contrived to load that sort of 

onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery 

and insurance which were run on identically the same lines 

so that for that very reason if no other lifeboat Sunday was a 

highly laudable institution to which the public at large, no 

matter where living inland or seaside, as the case might be,

having it brought home to them like that should extend its 

gratitude also to the harbourmasters and coastguard service 

who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid the 

elements whatever the season when duty called Ireland expects 

that every man and so on and sometimes had a terrible 

time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, 

Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment, rounding 

which he once with his daughter had experienced some remarkably 

choppy, not to say stormy, weather. 

—There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old 

seadog, himself a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up 

a soft job as gentleman’s valet at six quid a month. Them are 

his trousers I’ve on me and he gave me an oilskin and that 

jackknife. I’m game for that job, shaving and brushup. I hate 

roaming about. There’s my son now, Danny, run off to sea 

and his mother got him took in a draper’s in Cork where he 

could be drawing easy money. 

—What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, 

seen from the side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry 

Campbell, the townclerk, away from the carking cares of 

office, unwashed of course and in a seedy getup and a strong 


608 

suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage. 

—Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, 

my son, Danny? He’d be about eighteen now, way I figure it. 

The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean 

anyhow shirt with his two hands and scratched away 

at his chest on which was to be seen an image tattooed in 

blue Chinese ink intended to represent an anchor. 

—There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked, 

sure as nuts. I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It’s 

them black lads I objects to. I hate those buggers. Suck your 

blood dry, they does. 

Seeing they were all looking at his chest he accommodatingly 

dragged his shirt more open so that on top of the 

timehonoured symbol of the mariner’s hope and rest they 

had a full view of the figure 16 and a young man’s sideface 

looking frowningly rather. 

—Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when 

we were Iying becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under 

Captain Dalton. Fellow, the name of Antonio, done that. 

There he is himself, a Greek. 

—Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.

That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting 

round the. Someway in his. Squeezing or. 

—See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing 

the mate. And there he is now, he added, the same fellow, 

pulling the skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, 

and he laughing at a yarn. 

And in point of fact the young man named Antonio’s livid 

face did actually look like forced smiling and the curious 

effect excited the unreserved admiration of everybody including 

Skin-the-Goat, who this time stretched over. 

—Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly 

chest. He’s gone too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay. 

He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal 

expression of before. 

—Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said. 

—And what’s the number for? loafer number two queried. 

—Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor. 

—Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily 

this time with some sort of a half smile for a brief duration 

only in the direction of the questioner about the number. 

Ate. A Greek he was. 


609 

And then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering 

his alleged end: 

—As bad as old Antonio, 

For he left me on my ownio. 

The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black 

straw hat peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably 

reconnoitring on her own with the object of bringing 

more grist to her mill. Mr Bloom, scarcely knowing which 

way to look, turned away on the moment flusterfied but 

outwardly calm, and, picking up from the table the pink 

sheet of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if such he 

was, had laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink of 

the paper though why pink. His reason for so doing was he 

recognised on the moment round the door the same face he 

had caught a fleeting glimpse of that afternoon on Ormond 

quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the lane who 

knew the lady in the brown costume does be with you (Mrs 

B.) and begged the chance of his washing. Also why washing 

which seemed rather vague than not, your washing. Still

candour compelled him to admit he had washed his wife’s 

undergarments when soiled in Holles street and women 

would and did too a man’s similar garments initialled with 

Bewley and Draper’s marking ink (hers were, that is) if they 

really loved him, that is to say, love me, love my dirty shirt. 

Still just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the female’s 

room more than her company so it came as a genuine relief 

when the keeper made her a rude sign to take herself off. 

Round the side of the Evening Telegraph he just caught a 

fleeting glimpse of her face round the side of the door with a 

kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was not exactly 

all there, viewing with evident amusement the group 

of gazers round skipper Murphy’s nautical chest and then 

there was no more of her. 

—The gunboat, the keeper said. 

—It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically 

I am speaking, how a wretched creature like that from the 

Lock hospital reeking with disease can be barefaced enough 

to solicit or how any man in his sober senses, if he values his 

health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of course I suppose 

some man is ultimately responsible for her condition. 


610 

Still no matter what the cause is from … 

Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, 

merely remarking: 

—In this country people sell much more than she ever 

had and do a roaring trade. Fear not them that sell the body 

but have not power to buy the soul. She is a bad merchant. 

She buys dear and sells cheap. 

The elder man, though not by any manner of means an 

old maid or a prude, said it was nothing short of a crying 

scandal that ought to be put a stop to instanter to say that 

women of that stamp (quite apart from any oldmaidish 

squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil, w ere not 

licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a 

thing, he could truthfully state, he, as a paterfamilias, was a 

stalwart advocate of from the very first start. Whoever embarked 

on a policy of the sort, he said, and ventilated the 

matter thoroughly would confer a lasting boon on everybody 

concerned. 

—You as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body 

and soul, believe in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, 

the brainpower as such, as distinct from any outside

object, the table, let us say, that cup. I believe in that myself 

because it has been explained by competent men as the convolutions 

of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have 

such inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you? 

Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort 

of memory to try and concentrate and remember before he 

could say: 

—They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance 

and therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, I 

understand, but for the possibility of its annihilation by its 

First Cause Who, from all I can hear, is quite capable of 

adding that to the number of His other practical jokes, 

corruptio per se and corruptio per accidens both being excluded 

by court etiquette. 

Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of 

this though the mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his 

sublunary depth still he felt bound to enter a demurrer on 

the head of simple, promptly rejoining: 

—Simple? I shouldn’t think that is the proper word. Of 

course, I grant you, to concede a point, you do knock across 

a simple soul once in a blue moon. But what I am anxious to 


611 

arrive at is it is one thing for instance to invent those rays 

Rontgen did or the telescope like Edison, though I believe it 

was before his time Galileo was the man, I mean, and the 

same applies to the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural 

phenomenon such as electricity but it’s a horse of quite 

another colour to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural 

God. 

—O that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively 

by several of the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, 

apart from circumstantial evidence. 

On this knotty point however the views of the pair, poles 

apart as they were both in schooling and everything else with 

the marked difference in their respective ages, clashed. 

—Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, 

sticking to his original point with a smile of unbelief. I’m 

not so sure about that. That’s a matter for everyman’s opinion 

and, without dragging in the sectarian side of the business, 

I beg to differ with you in toto there. My belief is, to tell 

you the candid truth, that those bits were genuine forgeries 

all of them put in by monks most probably or it’s the big 

question of our national poet over again, who precisely wrote

them like Hamlet and Bacon, as, you who know your 

Shakespeare infinitely better than I, of course I needn’t tell 

you. Can’t you drink that coffee, by the way? Let me stir it. 

And take a piece of that bun. It’s like one of our skipper’s 

bricks disguised. Still no-one can give what he hasn’t got. Try 

a bit. 

—Couldn’t, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs 

for the moment refusing to dictate further. 

Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom 

thought well to stir or try to the clotted sugar from the bottom 

and reflected with something approaching acrimony on 

the Coffee Palace and its temperance (and lucrative) work. 

To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or nay 

did a world of good, shelters such as the present one they 

were in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, 

dramatic evenings and useful lectures (admittance free) by 

qualified men for the lower orders. On the other hand he 

had a distinct and painful recollection they paid his wife, 

Madam Marion Tweedy who had been prominently associated 

with it at one time, a very modest remuneration indeed 

for her pianoplaying. The idea, he was strongly inclined to 


612 

believe, was to do good and net a profit, there being no competition 

to speak of. Sulphate of copper poison SO or some- 

4 

thing in some dried peas he remembered reading of in a cheap 

eatinghouse somewhere but he couldn’t remember when it 

was or where. Anyhow inspection, medical inspection, of all 

eatables seemed to him more than ever necessary which possibly 

accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble’s Vi-Cocoa on 

account of the medical analysis involved. 

—Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee 

after being stirred. 

Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the 

heavy mug from the brown puddle it clopped out of when 

taken up by the handle and took a sip of the offending beverage. 

—Still it’s solid food, his good genius urged, I’m a stickler 

for solid food, his one and only reason being not 

gormandising in the least but regular meals as the sine qua 

non for any kind of proper work, mental or manual. You 

ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different man. 

—Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But O, oblige me by 

taking away that knife. I can’t look at the point of it. It re-

minds me of Roman history. 

Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the 

incriminated article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with 

nothing particularly Roman or antique about it to the lay 

eye, observing that the point was the least conspicuous point 

about it. 

—Our mutual friend’s stories are like himself, Mr Bloom 

apropos of knives remarked to his confidante sotto voce. Do 

you think they are genuine? He could spin those yarns for 

hours on end all night long and lie like old boots. Look at 

him. 

Yet still though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air 

life was full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible 

nature and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that 

it was not an entire fabrication though at first blush there 

was not much inherent probability in all the spoof he got off 

his chest being strictly accurate gospel. 

He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in 

front of him and Sherlockholmesing him up ever since he 

clapped eyes on him. Though a wellpreserved man of no 

little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, there was some- 


613 

thing spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a jail delivery 

and it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate 

such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and 

treadmill fraternity. He might even have done for his man 

supposing it was his own case he told, as people often did 

about others, namely, that he killed him himself and had 

served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to 

say nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation to the 

dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the 

pen of our national poet) who expiated his crimes in the 

melodramatic manner above described. On the other hand 

he might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness because 

meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like those 

jarvies waiting news from abroad would tempt any ancient 

mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about 

the schooner Hesperus and etcetera. And when all was said 

and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn’t probably 

hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other 

fellows coined about him. 

—Mind you, I’m not saying that it’s all a pure invention, 

he resumed. Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often,

met with. Giants, though that is rather a far cry, you see 

once in a way, Marcella the midget queen. In those waxworks 

in Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs, as they are 

called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn’t straighten their legs 

if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he proceeded, 

indicating on his companion the brief outline of the 

sinews or whatever you like to call them behind the right 

knee, were utterly powerless from sitting that way so long 

cramped up, being adored as gods. There’s an example again 

of simple souls. 

However reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures 

(who reminded him a bit of Ludwig, alias Ledwidge, 

when he occupied the boards of the Gaiety when Michael 

Gunn was identified with the management in the Flying 

Dutchman, a stupendous success, and his host of admirers 

came in large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him 

though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse, on the 

stage usually fell a bit flat as also did trains) there was nothing 

intrinsically incompatible about it, he conceded. On the 

contrary that stab in the back touch was quite in keeping 

with those italianos though candidly he was none the less 


614 

free to admit those icecreamers and friers in the fish way not 

to mention the chip potato variety and so forth over in little 

Italy there near the Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking 

fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless 

necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at 

night so as to have a good old succulent tuckin with garlic de 

rigueur off him or her next day on the quiet and, he added, 

on the cheap. 

—Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments 

like that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to 

taking the law into their own hands and give you your quietus 

doublequick with those poignards they carry in the abdomen. 

It comes from the great heat, climate generally. My 

wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half that is. Point of fact she 

could actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted, having 

been born in (technically) Spain, i.e. Gibraltar. She has 

the Spanish type. Quite dark, regular brunette, black. I for 

one certainly believe climate accounts for character. That’s 

why I asked you if you wrote your poetry in Italian. 

—The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, 

were very passionate about ten shillings. Roberto ruba roba sua.

—Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed. 

—Then, Stephen said staring and rambling on to himself 

or some unknown listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity 

of Dante and the isosceles triangle miss Portinari he fell 

in love with and Leonardo and san Tommaso Mastino. 

—It’s in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are 

washed in the blood of the sun. Coincidence I just happened 

to be in the Kildare street museum today, shortly prior to 

our meeting if I can so call it, and I was just looking at those 

antique statues there. The splendid proportions of hips, bosom. 

You simply don’t knock against those kind of women 

here. An exception here and there. Handsome yes, pretty in 

a way you find but what I’m talking about is the female form. 

Besides they have so little taste in dress, most of them, which 

greatly enhances a woman’s natural beauty, no matter what 

you say. Rumpled stockings, it may be, possibly is, a foible 

of mine but still it’s a thing I simply hate to see. 

Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round 

and then the others got on to talking about accidents at sea, 

ships lost in a fog, goo collisions with icebergs, all that sort of 

thing. Shipahoy of course had his own say to say. He had 


615 

doubled the cape a few odd times and weathered a monsoon, 

a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all those perils 

of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him or 

words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him. 

So then after that they drifted on to the wreck off Daunt’s 

rock, wreck of that illfated Norwegian barque nobody could 

think of her name for the moment till the jarvey who had 

really quite a look of Henry Campbell remembered it Palme 

on Booterstown strand. That was the talk of the town that 

year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of original verse 

of distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish Times), breakers 

running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore in 

commotion petrified with horror. Then someone said something 

about the case of the S. S. Lady Cairns of Swansea run 

into by the Mona which was on an opposite tack in rather 

muggyish weather and lost with all hands on deck. No aid 

was given. Her master, the Mona’s, said he was afraid his 

collision bulkhead would give way. She had no water, it appears, 

in her hold. 

At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary 

for him to unfurl a reef the sailor vacated his seat.

—Let me cross your bows mate, he said to his neighbour 

who was just gently dropping off into a peaceful doze. 

He made tracks heavily, slowly with a dumpy sort of a gait 

to the door, stepped heavily down the one step there was out 

of the shelter and bore due left. While he was in the act of 

getting his bearings Mr Bloom who noticed when he stood 

up that he had two flasks of presumably ship’s rum sticking 

one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his 

burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it or 

unscrew and, applying its nozzle to his lips, take a good old 

delectable swig out of it with a gurgling noise. The irrepressible 

Bloom, who also had a shrewd suspicion that the old 

stager went out on a manoeuvre after the counterattraction 

in the shape of a female who however had disappeared to all 

intents and purposes, could by straining just perceive him, 

when duly refreshed by his rum puncheon exploit, gaping 

up at the piers and girders of the Loop line rather out of his 

depth as of course it was all radically altered since his last 

visit and greatly improved. Some person or persons invisible 

directed him to the male urinal erected by the cleansing committee 

all over the place for the purpose but after a brief 


616 

space of time during which silence reigned supreme the sailor, 

evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, 

the noise of his bilgewater some little time subsequently 

splashing on the ground where it apparently awoke a horse 

of the cabrank. A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold 

after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly disturbed in his 

sentrybox by the brazier of live coke the watcher of the corporation 

stones who, though now broken down and fast 

breaking up, was none other in stern reality than the Gumley 

aforesaid, now practically on the parish rates, given the temporary 

job by Pat Tobin in all human probability from dictates 

of humanity knowing him before shifted about and 

shuffled in his box before composing his limbs again in to 

the arms of Morpheus, a truly amazing piece of hard lines in 

its most virulent form on a fellow most respectably connected 

and familiarised with decent home comforts all his life who 

came in for a cool 100 pounds a year at one time which of 

course the doublebarrelled ass proceeded to make general 

ducks and drakes of. And there he was at the end of his tether 

after having often painted the town tolerably pink without a 

beggarly stiver. He drank needless to be told and it pointed

only once more a moral when he might quite easily be in a 

large way of business if—a big if, however—he had contrived 

to cure himself of his particular partiality. 

All meantime were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish 

shipping, coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part 

and parcel of the same thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was 

put off the ways at Alexandra basin, the only launch that 

year. Right enough the harbours were there only no ships 

ever called. 

There were wrecks and wreckers, the keeper said, who was 

evidently au fait. 

What he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang 

against the only rock in Galway bay when the Galway harbour 

scheme was mooted by a Mr Worthington or some name 

like that, eh? Ask the then captain, he advised them, how 

much palmoil the British government gave him for that day’s 

work, Captain John Lever of the Lever Line. 

—Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor, now returning 

after his private potation and the rest of his exertions. 

That worthy picking up the scent of the fagend of the song 

or words growled in wouldbe music but with great vim some 


617 

kind of chanty or other in seconds or thirds. Mr Bloom’s 

sharp ears heard him then expectorate the plug probably 

(which it was), so that he must have lodged it for the time 

being in his fist while he did the drinking and making water 

jobs and found it a bit sour after the liquid fire in question. 

Anyhow in he rolled after his successful libation-cum-potation, 

introducing an atmosphere of drink into the soirée, 

boisterously trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook: 

—The biscuits was as hard as brass 

And the beef as salt as Lot’s wife’s arse. 

O, Johnny Lever! 

Johnny Lever, O! 

After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived 

on the scene and regaining his seat he sank rather than 

sat heavily on the form provided. Skin-the-Goat, assuming 

he was he, evidently with an axe to grind, was airing his 

grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural resources 

of Ireland or something of that sort which he described 

in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar

none on the face of God’s earth, far and away superior to 

England, with coal in large quantities, six million pounds 

worth of pork exported every year, ten millions between 

butter and eggs and all the riches drained out of it by England 

levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the 

nose always and gobbling up the best meat in the market 

and a lot more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation 

accordingly became general and all agreed that that 

was a fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish soil, he 

stated, and there was that colonel Everard down there in 

Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere 

the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated 

crescendo with no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising 

all the conversation, was in store for mighty England, despite 

her power of pelf on account of her crimes. There would 

be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and 

the Japs were going to have their little lookin, he affirmed. 

The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England 

was toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, 

her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about 

the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his 


618 

auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their attention 

by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice 

to every Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and 

work for Ireland and live for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, 

could not spare a single one of her sons. 

Silence all round marked the termination of his finale. The 

impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed. 

—Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond 

palpably a bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism. 

To which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the 

keeper concurred but nevertheless held to his main view. 

—Who’s the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran 

irately interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? 

And the best admirals and generals we’ve got? Tell me that. 

—The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, 

facial blemishes apart. 

—That’s right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish 

catholic peasant. He’s the backbone of our empire. You know 

Jem Mullins? 

While allowing him his individual opinions as everyman 

the keeper added he cared nothing for any empire, ours or

his, and considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served 

it. Then they began to have a few irascible words when it 

waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners 

who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as 

they didn’t indulge in recriminations and come to blows. 

From inside information extending over a series of years 

Mr Bloom was rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion 

as egregious balderdash for, pending that consummation devoutly 

to be or not to be wished for, he was fully cognisant 

of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless 

they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather 

concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a 

par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred 

million years the coal seam of the sister island would be 

played out and if, as time went on, that turned out to be 

how the cat jumped all he could personally say on the matter 

was that as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to 

the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advisable in the 

interim to try to make the most of both countries even though 

poles apart. Another little interesting point, the amours of 

whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, re- 


619 

minded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England 

as against her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene 

between the pair of them, the licensee of the place rumoured 

to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible, and the 

other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on 

all fours with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was 

prearranged as the lookeron, a student of the human soul if 

anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the 

lessee or keeper, who probably wasn’t the other person at all, 

he (B.) couldn’t help feeling and most properly it was better 

to give people like that the goby unless you were a blithering 

idiot altogether and refuse to have anything to do with them 

as a golden rule in private life and their felonsetting, there 

always being the offchance of a Dannyman coming forward 

and turning queen’s evidence or king’s now like Denis or 

Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from 

that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on 

principle. Yet, though such criminal propensities had never 

been an inmate of his bosom in any shape or form, he certainly 

did feel and no denying it (while inwardly remaining 

what he was) a certain kind of admiration for a man who

had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage 

of his political convictions (though, personally, he would 

never be a party to any such thing), off the same bat as those 

love vendettas of the south, have her or swing for her, when 

the husband frequently, after some words passed between 

the two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal 

(he having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on 

his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial liaison 

by plunging his knife into her, until it just struck him that 

Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, merely drove the car for the 

actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was 

reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in 

point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin 

on. In any case that was very ancient history by now and as 

for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently 

outlived his welcome. He ought to have either died 

naturally or on the scaffold high. Like actresses, always farewell 

positively last performance then come up smiling again. 

Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no 

economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the 

bone for the shadow. So similarly he had a very shrewd sus- 


620 

picion that Mr Johnny Lever got rid of some l s d. in the 

course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial 

atmosphere of the Old Ireland tavern, come back to Erin 

and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so long 

before the same identical lingo as he told Stephen how he 

simply but effectually silenced the offender. 

—He took umbrage at something or other, that 

muchinjured but on the whole eventempered person declared, 

I let slip. He called me a jew and in a heated fashion offensively. 

So I without deviating from plain facts in the least 

told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his 

family like me though in reality I’m not. That was one for 

him. A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn’t a word to 

say for himself as everyone saw. Am I not right? 

He turned a long you are wrong gaze on Stephen of timorous 

dark pride at the soft impeachment with a glance also 

of entreaty for he seemed to glean in a kind of a way that it 

wasn’t all exactly. 

—Ex quibus, Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, 

their two or four eyes conversing, Christus or Bloom his name 

is or after all any other, secundum carnem.

—Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look 

at both sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard 

and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement 

all round there certainly is though every country, they 

say, our own distressful included, has the government it deserves. 

But with a little goodwill all round. It’s all very fine to 

boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality. I 

resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never 

reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come 

on the due instalments plan. It’s a patent absurdity on the face 

of it to hate people because they live round the corner and 

speak another vernacular, in the next house so to speak. 

—Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes’ war, 

Stephen assented, between Skinner’s alley and Ormond market. 

Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the 

remark, that was overwhelmingly right. And the whole world 

was full of that sort of thing. 

—You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A 

hocuspocus of conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn’t 

remotely … 


621 

All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring 

up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or 

gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio 

of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the 

money question which was at the back of everything greed 

and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop. 

—They accuse, remarked he audibly. 

He turned away from the others who probably and spoke 

nearer to, so as the others in case they. 

—Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen’s ear, are 

accused of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely 

say. History, would you be surprised to learn, proves up to 

the hilt Spain decayed when the inquisition hounded the 

jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly 

able ruffian who in other respects has much to 

answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued 

with the proper spirit. They are practical and are proved to 

be so. I don’t want to indulge in any because you know the 

standard works on the subject and then orthodox as you are. 

But in the economic, not touching religion, domain the priest 

spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared

with goahead America. Turks. It’s in the dogma. Because if 

they didn’t believe they’d go straight to heaven when they 

die they’d try to live better, at least so I think. That’s the 

juggle on which the p.p’s raise the wind on false pretences. 

I’m, he resumed with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as 

that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to 

see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes pro rata 

having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion 

either, something in the neighbourhood of 300 pounds 

per annum. That’s the vital issue at stake and it’s feasible and 

would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man 

and man. At least that’s my idea for what it’s worth. I call 

that patriotism. Ubi patria, as we learned a smattering of in 

our classical days in Alma Mater, vita bene. Where you can 

live well, the sense is, if you work. 

Over his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening 

to this synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing 

in particular. He could hear, of course, all kinds of words 

changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend in the morning 

burrowing quickly into all colours of different sorts of 

the same sand where they had a home somewhere beneath 


622 

or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said 

or didn’t say the words the voice he heard said, if you work. 

—Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work. 

The eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, 

the person who owned them pro tem. observed or rather his 

voice speaking did, all must work, have to, together. 

—I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in 

the widest possible sense. Also literary labour not merely for 

the kudos of the thing. Writing for the newspapers which is 

the readiest channel nowadays. That’s work too. Important 

work. After all, from the little I know of you, after all the 

money expended on your education you are entitled to recoup 

yourself and command your price. You have every bit 

as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy 

as the peasant has. What? You both belong to Ireland, 

the brain and the brawn. Each is equally important. 

—You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, 

that I may be 1160 important because I belong to the 

faubourg Saint Patrice called Ireland for short. 

—I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated. 

—But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must

e important because it belongs to me. 

—What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he 

was perhaps under some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, 

I didn’t catch the latter portion. What was it you …? 

Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside 

his mug of coffee or whatever you like to call it none too 

politely, adding: 1170 

—We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject. 

At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the subject, 

looked down but in a quandary, as he couldn’t tell exactly 

what construction to put on belongs to which sounded 

rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was clearer than 

the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his recent orgy 

spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way foreign 

to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B 

attached the utmost importance had not been all that was 

needful or he hadn’t been familiarised with the right sort of 

people. With a touch of fear for the young man beside him 

whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some consternation 

remembering he had just come back from Paris, the 

eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and 


623 

sister, failing to throw much light on the subject, however, 

he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that promised 

so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay and 

nobody to blame but themselves. For instance there was the 

case of O’Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy faddist, respectably 

connected though of inadequate means, with his mad 

vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and making 

himself a nuisance to everybody all round he was in the 

habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown 

paper (a fact). And then the usual denouement after the fun 

had gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot 

water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a 

strong hint to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle 

Yard, so as not to be made amenable under section two of 

the criminal law amendment act, certain names of those subpoenaed 

being handed in but not divulged for reasons which 

will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting 

two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly turned 

a deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and 

the tattoo which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts 

even in the house of lords because early in life the

occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members 

of the upper ten and other high personages simply following 

in the footsteps of the head of the state, he reflected 

about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running 

counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of 

years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by 

nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was 

terribly down on though not for the reason they thought 

they were probably whatever it was except women chiefly 

who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being 

largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who 

like distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored 

man must, trying to make the gap wider between them by 

innuendo and give more of a genuine filip to acts of impropriety 

between the two, she unbuttoned his and then he 

untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal 

islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental. 

However, reverting to the original, there were on 

the other hand others who had forced their way to the top 

from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer 

force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir. 


624 

For which and further reasons he felt it was his interest 

and duty even to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion 

though why he could not exactly tell being as it was 

already several shillings to the bad having in fact let himself 

in for it. Still to cultivate the acquaintance of someone of no 

uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection 

would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation, as 

such, was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the 

mind. Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, 

dance, row, old salt of the here today and gone tomorrow 

type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of events, all 

went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in 

especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz. coalminers, 

divers, scavengers etc., were very much under the microscope 

lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he 

might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr 

Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing suppose he were to 

pen something out of the common groove (as he fully intended 

doing) at the rate of one guinea per column. My Experiences, 

let us say, In a Cabman’s Shelter. 

The pink edition extra sporting of the Telegraph tell a

graphic lie lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as 

he was just puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country 

belonging to him and the preceding rebus the vessel came 

from Bridgwater and the postcard was addressed A. Boudin 

find the captain’s age, his eyes went aimlessly over the respective 

captions which came under his special province the 

allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a 

bit of a start but it turned out to be only something about 

somebody named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or something 

like that. Great battle, Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish, 200 

pounds damages. Gordon Bennett. Emigration Swindle. 

Letter from His Grace. William. Ascot meeting, the Gold 

Cup. Victory of outsider Throwaway recalls Derby of ’92 

when Capt. Marshall’s dark horse Sir Hugo captured the blue 

ribband at long odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. 

Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr Patrick Dignam. 

So to change the subject he read about Dignam R. I. P. 

which, he reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. Or a 

change of address anyway. 

—This morning (Hynes put it in of course) the remains of 

the late Mr Patrick Dignam were removed from his residence, 


625 

no 9 Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount, for interment in 

Glasnevin. The deceased gentleman was a most popular and 

genial personality in city life and his demise after a brief illness 

came as a great shock to citizens of all classes by whom he is 

deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the 

deceased were present, were carried out (certainly Hynes wrote 

it with a nudge from Corny) by Messrs H. J. O’Neill & Son, 

164 North Strand Road. The mourners included: Patk. Dignam 

(son), Bernard Corrigan (brother-in-law), John Henry Menton, 

solr, Martin Cunningham, John Power, eatondph 1/8 ador 

dorador douradora (must be where he called Monks the 

dayfather about Keyes’s ad) Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus, 

Stephen Dedalus B. ,4., Edw. J. Lambert, Cornelius T. Kelleher, 

Joseph M’C Hynes, L. Boom, CP M’Coy,—M’Intosh and several 

others. 

Nettled not a little by L. Boom (as it incorrectly stated) and 

the line of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously 

by C. P. M’Coy and Stephen Dedalus B. A. who were conspicuous, 

needless to say, by their total absence (to say nothing 

of M’Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out to his companion 

B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness,

not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints. 

—Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as 

his bottom jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and 

put thy foot in it. 

—It is. Really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he 

alluded to the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth 

with which there could be no possible connection) overjoyed 

to set his mind at rest and a bit flabbergasted at Myles 

Crawford’s after all managing to. There. 

While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give 

him for the nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few 

odd leisure moments in fits and starts with the account of 

the third event at Ascot on page three, his side. Value 1000 

sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. For entire colts and 

fillies. Mr F. Alexander’s Throwaway, b. h. by Rightaway, 5 

yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (W. Lane) 1, lord Howard de Walden’s Zinfandel 

(M. Cannon) z, Mr W. Bass’s Sceptre 3. Betting 5 to 4 on 

Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway (off). Sceptre a shade heavier, 

5 to 4 on Zinfandel, 20 to 1 Throwaway (off). Throwaway 

and Zinfandel stood close order. It was anybody’s race then 


626 

the rank outsider drew to the fore, got long lead, beating 

lord Howard de Walden’s chestnut colt and Mr W. Bass’s bay 

filly Sceptre on a 2 1/2 mile course. Winner trained by Braime 

so that Lenehan’s version of the business was all pure buncombe. 

Secured the verdict cleverly by a length. 1000 sovs 

with 3000 in specie. Also ran: J de Bremond’s (French horse 

Bantam Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in yet but 

expected any minute) Maximum II. Different ways of bringing 

off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though that halfbaked 

Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get left. Of 

course gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing 

though as the event turned out the poor fool hadn’t much 

reason to congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. 

Guesswork it reduced itself to eventually. 

—There was every indication they would arrive at that, 

he, Bloom, said. 

—Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said. 

One morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, 

and read: Return of Parnell. He bet them what they 

liked. A Dublin fusilier was in that shelter one night and 

said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was killed him. He

ought to have done away with himself or lain low for a time 

after committee room no 15 until he was his old self again 

with no-one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to 

a man have gone down on their marrowbones to him to 

come back when he had recovered his senses. Dead he wasn’t. 

Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over 

was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer 

general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth 

and so on. 

All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised 

at their memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a 

case of tarbarrels and not singly but in their thousands and 

then complete oblivion because it was twenty odd years. 

Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow of truth 

in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly 

inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled 

them in his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute 

pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements 

were nearing completion or whether it transpired he 

owed his death to his having neglected to change his boots 

and clothes-after a wetting when a cold resulted and failing 


627 

to consult a specialist he being confined to his room till he 

eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight 

was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to 

find the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody 

being acquainted with his movements even before there was 

absolutely no clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly 

of the Alice, where art thou order even prior to his starting 

to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart so the 

remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within 

the bounds of possibility. Naturally then it would prey on 

his mind as a born leader of men which undoubtedly he was 

and a commanding figure, a sixfooter or at any rate five feet 

ten or eleven in his stockinged feet, whereas Messrs So and 

So who, though they weren’t even a patch on the former 

man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were very 

few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol 

with feet of clay, and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen 

rounding on him with mutual mudslinging. And the 

identical same with murderers. You had to come back. That 

haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the understudy in 

the title role how to. He saw him once on the auspicious

occasion when they broke up the type in the insuppressible or 

was it united Ireland, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, 

in point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked 

off and he said thank you, excited as he undoubtedly was 

under his frigid exterior notwithstanding the little misadventure 

mentioned between the cup and the lip: what’s bred 

in the bone. Still as regards return. You were a lucky dog if 

they didn’t set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then 

a lot of shillyshally usually followed, Tom for and Dick and 

Harry against. And then, number one, you came up against 

the man in possession and had to produce your credentials 

like the claimant in the Tichborne case, Roger Charles 

Tichborne, Bella was the boat’s name to the best of his recollection 

he, the heir, went down in as the evidence went to 

show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, lord 

Bellew was it, as he might very easily have picked up the 

details from some pal on board ship and then, when got up 

to tally with the description given, introduce himself with: 

excuse me, my name is so and so or some such commonplace 

remark. A more prudent course, as Bloom said to the not 

over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under 


628 

discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of 

the land first. 

—That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen 

proprietor commented. She put the first nail in his coffin. 

—Fine lump of a woman all the same, the soi-disant 

townclerk Henry Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She 

loosened many a man’s thighs. I seen her picture in a barber’s. 

The husband was a captain or an officer. 

—Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a 

cottonball one. 

This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned 

a fair amount of laughter among his entourage. As 

regards Bloom he, without the faintest suspicion of a smile, 

merely gazed in the direction of the door and reflected upon 

the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest 

at the time when the facts, to make matters worse, were made 

public with the usual affectionate letters that passed between 

them full of sweet nothings. First it was strictly Platonic till 

nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them 

till bit by bit matters came to a climax and the matter became 

the talk of the town till the staggering blow came as a

welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed, however, who 

were resolved upon encompassing his downfall though the 

thing was public property all along though not to anything 

like the sensational extent that it subsequently blossomed 

into. Since their names were coupled, though, since he was 

her declared favourite, where was the particular necessity to 

proclaim it to the rank and file from the housetops, the fact, 

namely, that he had shared her bedroom which came out in 

the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the packed 

court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses 

swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular 

date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment 

with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having 

gained admittance in the same fashion, a fact the weeklies, 

addicted to the lubric a little, simply coined shoals of money 

out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it was simply 

a case of the husband not being up to the scratch, with nothing 

in common between them beyond the name, and then a 

real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, 

falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home 

ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one’s smiles. The 


629 

eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped 

up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another 

chap in the case, exist between married folk? Poser. Though 

it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he regarded her with 

affection, carried away by a wave of folly. A magnificent specimen 

of manhood he was truly augmented obviously by gifts 

of a high order, as compared with the other military supernumerary 

that is (who was just the usual everyday farewell, 

my gallant captain kind of an individual in the light dragoons, 

the l8th hussars to be accurate) and inflammable 

doubtless (the fallen leader, that is, not the other) in his own 

peculiar way which she of course, woman, quickly perceived 

as highly likely to carve his way to fame which he almost bid 

fair to do till the priests and ministers of the gospel as a whole, 

his erstwhile staunch adherents, and his beloved evicted tenants 

for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts 

of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a 

way that exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually 

cooked his matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals 

of fire on his head much in the same way as the fabled ass’s 

kick. Looking back now in a retrospective kind of arrange-

ment all seemed a kind of dream. And then coming back 

was the worst thing you ever did because it went without 

saying you would feel out of place as things always moved 

with the times. Why, as he reflected, Irishtown strand, a locality 

he had not been in for quite a number of years looked 

different somehow since, as it happened, he went to reside 

on the north side. North or south, however, it was just the 

wellknown case of hot passion, pure and simple, upsetting 

the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the very 

thing he was saying as she also was Spanish or half so, types 

that wouldn’t do things by halves, passionate abandon of the 

south, casting every shred of decency to the winds. 

—Just bears out what I was saying, he, with glowing bosom 

said to Stephen, about blood and the sun. And, if I 

don’t greatly mistake she was Spanish too. 

—The king of Spain’s daughter, Stephen answered, adding 

something or other rather muddled about farewell and 

adieu to you Spanish onions and the first land called the 

Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and so many. 

—Was she? Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not astonished 

by any means, I never heard that rumour before. 


630 

Possible, especially there, it was as she lived there. So, Spain. 

Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket Sweets of, which 

reminded him by the by of that Capel street library book 

out of date, he took out his pocketbook and, turning over 

the various contents it contained rapidly finally he. 

—Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting 

a faded photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish 

type? 

Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo 

showing a large sized lady with her fleshy charms on evidence 

in an open fashion as she was in the full bloom of 

womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously low for the 

occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than 

vision of breasts, her full lips parted and some perfect teeth, 

standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on the rest of 

which was In old Madrid, a ballad, pretty in its way, which 

was then all the vogue. Her (the lady’s) eyes, dark, large, 

looked at Stephen, about to smile about something to be 

admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin’s premier 

photographic artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution.

—Mrs Bloom, my wife the prima donna Madam Marion 

Tweedy, Bloom indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about 

ninety six. Very like her then. 

Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the 

lady now his 1440 legal wife who, he intimated, was the 

accomplished daughter of Major Brian Tweedy and displayed 

at an early age remarkable proficiency as a singer having even 

made her bow to the public when her years numbered barely 

sweet sixteen. As for the face it was a speaking likeness in 

expression but it did not do justice to her figure which came 

in for a lot of notice usually and which did not come out to 

the best advantage in that getup. She could without difficulty, 

he said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on 

certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt, being a bit of an 

artist in his spare time, on the female form in general developmentally 

because, as it so happened, no later than that 

afternoon he had seen those Grecian statues, 1450 perfectly 

developed as works of art, in the National Museum. Marble 

could give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry, all 

the rest. Yes, Puritanism, it does though Saint Joseph’s sovereign 

thievery alors (Bandez!) Figne toi trop. Whereas no photo 


631 

could because it simply wasn’t art in a word. 

The spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow 

Jack Tar’s good example and leave the likeness there for 

a very few minutes to speak for itself on the plea he so that 

the other could drink in the beauty for himself, her stage 

presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the camera 

could not at all do justice to. But it was scarcely professional 

etiquette so. Though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night 

now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for sunshine 

after storm. And he did feel a kind of need there and 

then to follow suit like a kind of inward voice and satisfy a 

possible need by moving a motion. Nevertheless he sat tight 

just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent 

curves, none the worse for wear however, and looked away 

thoughtfully with the intention of not further increasing the 

other’s possible embarrassment while gauging her symmetry 

of heaving embonpoint. In fact the slight soiling was only an 

added charm like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as 

new, much better in fact with the starch out. Suppose she 

was gone when he? I looked for the lamp which she told me 

came into his mind but merely as a passing fancy of his be-

cause he then recollected the morning littered bed etcetera 

and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses (sic) in it 

which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside 

the domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray. 

The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated, 

distingué and impulsive into the bargain, far and away 

the pick of the bunch though you wouldn’t think he had it 

in him yet you would. Besides he said the picture was handsome 

which, say what you like, it was though at the moment 

she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of 

makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a 

lifelong slur with the usual splash page of gutterpress about 

the same old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with 

professional golfer or the newest stage favourite instead of 

being honest and aboveboard about the whole business. How 

they were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up between 

the two so that their names were coupled in the public 

eye was told in court with letters containing the habitual 

mushy and compromising expressions leaving no loophole 

to show that they openly cohabited two or three times a week 

at some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the thing 


632 

ran its normal course, became in due course intimate. Then 

the decree nisi and the King’s proctor tries to show cause 

why and, he failing to quash it, nisi was made absolute. But 

as for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely 

were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they 

very largely did till the matter was put in the hands of a 

solicitor who filed a petition for the party wronged in due 

course. He, B, enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin’s 

uncrowned king in the flesh when the thing occurred on the 

historic fracas when the fallen leader’s, who notoriously stuck 

to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mantle 

of adultery, (leader’s) trusty henchmen to the number of ten 

or a dozen or possibly even more than that penetrated into 

the printing works of the Insurppressible or no it was United 

Ireland (a by no means by the by appropriate appellative) 

and broke up the typecases with hammers or something like 

that all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the 

facile pens of the O’Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging 

occupation reflecting on the erstwhile tribune’s private 

morals. Though palpably a radically altered man he was still 

a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as usual with

that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the 

shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture 

that their idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a pedestal 

which she, however, was the first to perceive. As those 

were particularly hot times in the general hullaballoo Bloom 

sustained a minor injury from a nasty prod of some chap’s 

elbow in the crowd that of course congregated lodging some 

place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a grave 

character. His hat (Parnell’s) a silk one was inadvertently 

knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the 

man who picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence 

meaning to return it to him (and return it to him 

he did with the utmost celerity) who panting and hatless 

and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the 

time all the same being a gentleman born with a stake in the 

country he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more for 

the kudos of the thing than anything else, what’s bred in the 

bone instilled into him in infancy at his mother’s knee in the 

shape of knowing what good form was came out at once 

because he turned round to the donor and thanked him with 

perfect aplomb, saying: Thank you, sir, though in a very dif- 


633 

ferent tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession 

whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the 

course of the day, history repeating itself with a difference, 

after the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him 

alone in his glory after the grim task of having committed 

his remains to the grave. 

On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was 

the blatant jokes of the cabman and so on who passed it all 

off as a jest, laughing 1530 immoderately, pretending to 

understand everything, the why and the wherefore, and in 

reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case for the 

two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate 

husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous 

letter from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come 

across them at the crucial moment in a loving position locked 

in one another’s arms, drawing attention to their illicit proceedings 

and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring 

fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and master upon 

her knees and promising to sever the connection and not 

receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband 

would overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones with

tears in her eyes though possibly with her tongue in her fair 

cheek at the same time as quite possibly there were several 

others. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed and 

didn’t make the smallest bones about saying so either that 

man or men in the plural were always hanging around on 

the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best 

wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the 

sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to 

be tired of wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite 

debauchery to press their attentions on her with improper 

intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on another, 

the cause of many liaisons between still attractive married 

women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, 

no doubt as several famous cases of feminine infatuation 

proved up to the hilt. 

It was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with an 

allowance of brains as his neighbour obviously was, should 

waste his valuable time with profligate women who might 

present him with a nice dose to last him his lifetime. In the 

nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto himself 

a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the 


634 

interim ladies’ society was a conditio sine qua non though he 

had the gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the 

smallest to pump Stephen about Miss Ferguson (who was 

very possibly the particular lodestar who brought him down 

to Irishtown so early in the morning), as to whether he would 

find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship 

idea and the company of smirking misses without a penny 

to their names bi or triweekly with the orthodox preliminary 

canter of complimentplaying and walking out leading up to 

fond lovers’ ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him 

house and homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than 

any stepmother, was really too bad at his age. The queer suddenly 

things he popped out with attracted the elder man 

who was several years the other’s senior or like his father but 

something substantial he certainly ought to eat even were it 

only an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment 

or, failing that, the homely Humpty Dumpty boiled. 

—At what o’clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim 

form and tired though unwrinkled face. 

—Some time yesterday, Stephen said. 

—Yesterday! exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was

already tomorrow Friday. Ah, you mean it’s after twelve! 

—The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on 

himself. 

Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected. 

Though they didn’t see eye to eye in everything a 

certain analogy there somehow was as if both their minds 

were travelling, so to speak, in the one train of thought. At 

his age when dabbling in politics roughly some score of years 

previously when he had been a quasi aspirant to parliamentary 

honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected 

in retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) 

he had a sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For 

instance when the evicted tenants question, then at its first 

inception, bulked largely in people’s mind though, it goes 

without saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his 

faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which wouldn’t exactly 

hold water, he at the outset in principle at all events 

was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession as voicing 

the trend of modern opinion (a partiality, however, which, 

realising his mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of) 

and even was twitted with going a step farther than Michael 


635 

Davitt in the striking views he at one time inculcated as a 

backtothelander, which was one reason he strongly resented 

the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion by our 

friend at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan’s so 

that he, though often considerably misunderstood and the 

least pugnacious of mortals, be it repeated, departed from 

his customary habit to give him (metaphorically) one in the 

gizzard though, so far as politics themselves were concerned, 

he was only too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting 

from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity and 

the misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone conclusion 

on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a 

word. 

Anyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on 

for one, as it was, it was high time to be retiring for the 

night. The crux was it was a bit risky to bring him home as 

eventualities might possibly ensue (somebody having a temper 

of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash altogether as 

on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed 

unknown) with a lame paw (not that the cases were either 

identical or the reverse though he had hurt his hand too) to

Ontario Terrace as he very distinctly remembered, having 

been there, so to speak. On the other hand it was altogether 

far and away too late for the Sandymount or Sandycove suggestion 

so that he was in some perplexity as to which of the 

two alternatives. Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved 

him to avail himself to the full of the opportunity, all 

things considered. His initial impression was he was a shade 

standoffish or not over effusive but it grew on him someway. 

For one thing he mightn’t what you call jump at the idea, if 

approached, and what mostly worried him was he didn’t know 

how to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he did 

entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very great personal 

pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in 

his way or some wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he 

wound up by concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound 

precedent, a cup of Epps’s cocoa and a shakedown for the 

night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled into 

a pillow at least he would be in safe hands and as warm as a 

toast on a trivet he failed to perceive any very vast amount of 

harm in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort 

was kicked up. A move had to be made because that merry 


636 

old soul, the grasswidower in question who appeared to be 

glued to the spot, didn’t appear in any particular hurry to 

wend his way home to his dearly beloved Queenstown and 

it was highly likely some sponger’s bawdyhouse of retired 

beauties where age was no bar off Sheriff street lower would 

be the best clue to that equivocal character’s whereabouts for 

a few days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the 

mermaids’) with sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on 

the tropical calculated to freeze the marrow of anybody’s 

bones and mauling their largesized charms betweenwhiles 

with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of large 

potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself 

for as to who he in reality was let x equal my right name and 

address, as Mr Algebra remarks passim. At the same time he 

inwardly chuckled over his gentle repartee to the blood and 

ouns champion about his god being a jew. People could put 

up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them 

was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point too of 

tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they 

appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or 

somewhereabouts in the county Sligo.

—I propose, our hero eventually suggested after mature 

reflection while prudently pocketing her photo, as it’s rather 

stuffy here you just come home with me and talk things 

over. My diggings are quite close in the vicinity. You can’t 

drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I’ll just pay this 

lot. 

The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being 

plain sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing 

the photo, to the keeper of the shanty who didn’t seem to. 

—Yes, that’s the best, he assured Stephen to whom for the 

matter of that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all 

more or less. 

All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B’s) 

busy brain, education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, 

prize titbits, up to date billing, concert tours in English 

watering resorts packed with hydros and seaside theatres, 

turning money away, duets in Italian with the accent 

perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other things, no 

necessity, of course, to tell the world and his wife from the 

housetops about it, and a slice of luck. An opening was all 

was wanted. Because he more than suspected he had his 


637 

father’s voice to bank his hopes on which it was quite on the 

cards he had so it would be just as well, by the way no harm, 

to trail the conversation in the direction of that particular 

red herring just to. 

The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that 

the former viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers’ 

association dinner in London somewhere. Silence 

with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announcement. 

Then the old specimen in the corner who appeared to 

have some spark of vitality left read out that sir Anthony 

MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary’s lodge 

or words to that effect. To which absorbing piece of intelligence 

echo answered why. 

—Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient 

mariner put in, manifesting some natural impatience. 

—And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed. 

The sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish 

goggles which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both 

ears. 

—Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like 

the townclerk queried.

—Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who 

seemingly was a bit of a literary cove in his own small way, 

staring out of seagreen portholes as you might well describe 

them as, I uses goggles reading. Sand in the Red Sea done 

that. One time I could read a book in the dark, manner of 

speaking. The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment was my favourite 

and Red as a Rose is She. 

Hereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord 

only knows what, found drowned or the exploits of King 

Willow, Iremonger having made a hundred and something 

second wicket not out for Notts, during which time (completely 

regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied 

loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which 

manifestly pinched him as he muttered against whoever it 

was sold it, all of them who were sufficiently awake enough 

to be picked out by their facial expressions, that is to say, 

either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial remark. 

To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, 

was the first to rise from his seat so as not to outstay their 

welcome having first and foremost, being as good as his word 

that he would foot the bill for the occasion, taken the wise 


638 

precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine host as a parting 

shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were not 

looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, 

making a grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited 

unobtrusively in four coppers, literally the last of the 

Mohicans), he having previously spotted on the printed 

pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him in unmistakable 

figures, coffee 2d, confectionery do, and honestly well 

worth twice the money once in a way, as Wetherup used to 

remark. 

—Come, he counselled to close the séance. 

Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they 

left the shelter or shanty together and the élite society of 

oilskin and company whom nothing short of an earthquake 

would move out of their dolce far niente. Stephen, who confessed 

to still feeling poorly and fagged out, paused at the, 

for a moment … the door … 

—One thing I never understood, he said to be original on 

the spur of the moment. Why they put tables upside down 

at night, I mean chairs upside down, on the tables in cafes. 

To which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom replied with-

out a moment’s hesitation, saying straight off: 

—To sweep the floor in the morning. 

So saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly 

at the same time apologetic to get on his companion’s right, 

a habit of his, by the bye, his right side being, in classical 

idiom, his tender Achilles. The night air was certainly now a 

treat to breathe though Stephen was a bit weak on his pins. 

—It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also 

the walk, in a moment. The only thing is to walk then you’ll 

feel a different man. Come. It’s not far. Lean on me. 

Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen’s right and 

led him on accordingly. 

—Yes, Stephen said uncertainly because he thought he felt 

a strange kind of flesh of a different man approach him, 

sinewless and wobbly and all that. 

Anyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc. 

where the municipal supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to 

all intents and purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as 

the adage has it, dreaming of fresh fields and pastures new. 

And apropos of coffin of stones the analogy was not at all bad 

as it was in fact a stoning to death on the part of seventytwo 


639 

out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the time of 

the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the 

selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings. 

So they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art 

for which Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest 

love, as they made tracks arm in arm across Beresford place. 

Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand in its way, was 

a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to follow at the first gooff 

but the music of Mercadante’s Hugoenots, Meyerbeer’s 

Seven Last Words on the Cross and Mozart’s Twelfth Mass, he 

simply revelled in, the Gloria in that being, to his mind, the 

acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything 

else into a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the sacred 

music of the catholic church to anything the opposite 

shop could offer in that line such as those Moody and Sankey 

hymns or Bid me to live and I will live thy protestant to be. He 

also yielded to none in his admiration of Rossini’s Stabat 

Mater, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers, in 

which his wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable 

sensation, he might safely say, greatly adding to her 

other laureis and putting the others totally in the shade, in

the jesuit fathers’ church in upper Gardiner street, the sacred 

edifice being thronged to the doors to hear her with virtuosos, 

or virtuosi rather. There was the unanimous opinion that 

there was none to come up to her and suffice it to say in a 

place of worship for music of a sacred character there was a 

generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole though 

favouring preferably light opera of the Don Giovanni description 

and Martha, a gem in its line, he had a penchant, though 

with only a surface knowledge, for the severe classical school 

such as Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for 

granted he knew all about the old favourites, he mentioned 

par excellence Lionel’s air in Martha, M’appari, which, curiously 

enough, he had heard or overheard, to be more accurate, 

on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from 

the lips of Stephen’s respected father, sung to perfection, a 

study of the number, in fact, which made all the others take 

a back seat. Stephen, in reply to a politely put query, said he 

didn’t sing it but launched out into praises of Shakespeare’s 

songs, at least of in or about that period, the lutenist Dowland 

who lived in Fetter lane near Gerard the herbalist, who anno 

ludendo hausi, Doulandus,, an instrument he was contem- 


640 

plating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom B. 

did not quite recall though the name certainly sounded familiar, 

for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their 

dux and comes conceits and Byrd (William) who played the 

virginals, he said, in the Queen’s chapel or anywhere else he 

found them and one Tomkins who made toys or airs and 

John Bull. 

On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still 

speaking beyond the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, 

paced on the paven ground, brushing a long swathe of mire 

up so that with the noise Bloom was not perfectly certain 

whether he had caught aright the allusion to sixtyfive guineas 

and John Bull. He inquired if it was John Bull the political 

celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical 

names, as a striking coincidence. 

By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving, 

Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, 

plucked the other’s sleeve gently, jocosely remarking: 

—Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller. 

They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a 

horse not worth anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in

evidence in the dark quite near so that it seemed new, a different 

grouping of bones and even flesh because palpably it 

was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a taildangler, 

a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while the 

lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. 

But such a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn’t a lump of 

sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared 

for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a 

big nervous foolish noodly kind of a horse, without a second 

care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that 

mongrel in Barney Kiernan’s, of the same size, would be a 

holy horror to face. But it was no animal’s fault in particular 

if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the desert, 

distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of 

them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art 

of man barring the bees. Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator 

tickle the small of his back and he sees the joke, chalk 

a circle for a rooster, tiger my eagle eye. These timely reflections 

anent the brutes of the field occupied his mind somewhat 

distracted from Stephen’s words while the ship of the 

street was manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the highly 


641 

interesting old. 

—What’s this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, 

plunging in medias res, would have the greatest of pleasure in 

making your acquaintance as she is passionately attached to 

music of any kind. 

He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of 

Stephen, image of his mother, which was not quite the same 

as the usual handsome blackguard type they unquestionably 

had an insatiable hankering after as he was perhaps not that 

way built. 

Still, supposing he had his father’s gift as he more than 

suspected, it opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady 

Fingall’s Irish industries, concert on the preceding Monday, 

and aristocracy in general. 

Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air Youth 

here has End by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of 

Amsterdam where the frows come from. Even more he liked 

an old German song of Johannes Jeep about the clear sea and 

the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which boggled 

Bloom a bit:

Von der Sirenen Listigkeit 

Tun die Poeten dichten. 

These opening bars he sang and translated extempore. 

Bloom, nodding, said he perfectly understood and begged 

him to go on by all means which he did. 

A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest 

of boons, which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he 

got out, could easily, if properly handled by some recognised 

authority on voice production such as Barraclough and being 

able to read music into the bargain, command its own 

price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for its 

fortunate possessor in the near future an entrée into fashionable 

houses in the best residential quarters of financial magnates 

in a large way of business and titled people where with 

his university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its way) and 

gentlemanly bearing to all the more influence the good impression 

he would infallibly score a distinct success, being 

blessed with brains which also could be utilised for the purpose 

and other requisites, if his clothes were properly attended 

to so as to the better worm his way into their good graces as 


642 

he, a youthful tyro in—society’s sartorial niceties, hardly 

understood how a little thing like that could militate against 

you. It was in fact only a matter of months and he could 

easily foresee him participating in their musical and artistic 

conversaziones during the festivities of the Christmas season, 

for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair 

sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases 

of which, as he happened to know, were on record—in fact, 

without giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, 

if he cared to, could easily have. Added to which of course 

would be the pecuniary emolument by no means to be 

sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he 

parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily 

embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any 

lengthy space of time. But a step in the required direction it 

was beyond yea or nay and both monetarily and mentally it 

contained no reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it 

often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a cheque 

at a muchneeded moment when every little helped. Besides, 

though taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original 

music like that, different from the conventional rut, would

apidly have a great vogue as it would be a decided novelty 

for Dublin’s musical world after the usual hackneyed run of 

catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public by Ivan St 

Austell and Hilton St Just and their genus omne. Yes, beyond 

a shadow of a doubt he could with all the cards in his hand 

and he had a capital opening to make a name for himself 

and win a high place in the city’s esteem where he could 

command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand 

concert for the patrons of the King street house, given a 

backerup, if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so 

to speak, a big IF, however, with some impetus of the goahead 

sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often 

tripped -up a too much feted prince of good fellows. And it 

need not detract from the other by one iota as, being his 

own master, he would have heaps of time to practise literature 

in his spare moments when desirous of so doing without 

its clashing with his vocal career or containing anything 

derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter for himself alone. 

In fact, he had the ball at his feet and that was the very reason 

why the other, possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for 

smelling a rat of any sort, hung on to him at all. 


643 

The horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity 

he purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying 

into his private affairs on the fools step in where angels principle, 

advising him to sever his connection with a certain 

budding practitioner who, he noticed, was prone to disparage 

and even to a slight extent with some hilarious pretext 

when not present, deprecate him, or whatever you like to 

call it which in Bloom’s humble opinion threw a nasty sidelight 

on that side of a person’s character, no pun intended. 

The horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, 

halted and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his 

quota by letting fall on the floor which the brush would 

soon brush up and polish, three smoking globes of turds. 

Slowly three times, one after another, from a full crupper he 

mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she) had 

ended, patient in his scythed car. 

Side by side Bloom, profiting by the contretemps, with 

Stephen passed through the gap of the chains, divided by 

the upright, and, stepping over a strand of mire, went across 

towards Gardiner street lower, Stephen singing more boldly, 

but not loudly, the end of the ballad.

Und alle Schiffe brücken. 

The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but 

merely watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked 

car, both black, one full, one lean, walk towards the railway 

bridge, to be married by Father Maher. As they walked they 

at times stopped and walked again continuing their tête-àtête 

(which, of course, he was utterly out of) about sirens 

enemies of man’s reason, mingled with a number of other 

topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the 

kind while the man in the sweeper car or you might as well 

call it in the sleeper car who in any case couldn’t possibly 

hear because they were too far simply sat in his seat near the 

end of lower Gardiner street and looked after their lowbacked 

car. 


644 

WHAT PARALLEL COURSES DID BLOOM AND STEPHEN FOLLOW 

returning? 

Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford 

place they followed in the order named Lower and Middle 

Gardiner streets and Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced 

pace, each bearing left, Gardiner’s place by an inadvertence 

as far as the farther corner of Temple street: then, at reduced 

pace with interruptions of halt, bearing right, Temple street, 

north, as far as Hardwicke place. Approaching, disparate, at 

relaxed walking pace they crossed both the circus before 

George’s church diametrically, the chord in any circle being 

less than the arc which it subtends. 

Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary? 

Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, 

woman, prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the

light of arc and glowlamps on the growth of adjoining 

paraheliotropic trees, exposed corporation emergency 

dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church, ecclesiastical celibacy, 

the Irish nation, jesuit education, careers, the study of 

medicine, the past day, the maleficent influence of the 

presabbath, Stephen’s collapse. 

Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between 

their respective like and unlike reactions to experience? 

Both were sensitive to artistic impressions, musical in preference 

to plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to 

an insular manner of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place 

of residence. Both indurated by early domestic training and 

an inherited tenacity of heterodox resistance professed their 

disbelief in many orthodox religious, national, social and 

ethical doctrines. Both admitted the alternately stimulating 

and obtunding influence of heterosexual magnetism. 

Were their views on some points divergent? 

Stephen dissented openly from Bloom’s views on the importance 

of dietary and civic selfhelp while Bloom dissented 

tacitly from Stephen’s views on the eternal affirmation of the 


645 

spirit of man in literature. Bloom assented covertly to 

Stephen’s rectification of the anachronism involved in assigning 

the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to 

christianity from druidism by Patrick son of Calpornus, son 

of Potitus, son of Odyssus, sent by pope Celestine I in the 

year 432 in the reign of Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts 

in the reign of Cormac MacArt (died 266 A.D.), suffocated 

by imperfect deglutition of aliment at Sletty and interred at 

Rossnaree. The collapse which Bloom ascribed to gastric inanition 

and certain chemical compounds of varying degrees 

of adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by mental 

exertion and the velocity of rapid circular motion in a 

relaxing atmosphere, Stephen attributed to the reapparition 

of a matutinal cloud (perceived by both from two different 

points of observation Sandycove and Dublin) at first no bigger 

than a woman’s hand. 

Was there one point on which their views were equal and 

negative? 

The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of 

adjoining paraheliotropic trees.

Had Bloom discussed similar subjects during nocturnal 

perambulations in the past? 

In 1884 with Owen Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull at night 

on public thoroughfares between Longwood avenue and 

Leonard’s corner and Leonard’s corner and Synge street and 

Synge street and Bloomfield avenue. 

In 1885 with Percy Apjohn in the evenings, reclined against 

the wall between Gibraltar villa and Bloomfield house in 

Crumlin, barony of Uppercross. In 1886 occasionally with 

casual acquaintances and prospective purchasers on doorsteps, 

in front parlours, in third class railway carriages of suburban 

lines. In 1888 frequently with major Brian Tweedy 

and his daughter Miss Marion Tweedy, together and separately 

on the lounge in Matthew Dillon’s house in 

Roundtown. Once in 1892 and once in 1893 with Julius 

(Juda) Mastiansky, on both occasions in the parlour of his 

(Bloom’s) house in Lombard street, west. 

What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 

1884, 1885, 1886, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1904 did Bloom make 


646 

before their arrival at their destination? 

He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of 

individual development and experience was regressively accompanied 

by a restriction of the converse domain of 

interindividual relations. 

As in what ways? 

From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as 

one received: existence with existence he was with any as any 

with any: from existence to nonexistence gone he would be 

by all as none perceived. 

What act did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination? 

At the housesteps of the 4th Of the equidifferent uneven 

numbers, number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically 

into the back pocket of his trousers to obtain his 

latchkey. 

Was it there? 

It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which

he had worn on the day but one preceding. 

Why was he doubly irritated? 

Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that 

he had reminded himself twice not to forget. 

What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly 

(respectively) and inadvertently, keyless couple? 

To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock. 

Bloom’s decision? 

A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed 

over the area railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped 

two points at the lower union of rails and stiles, lowered his 

body gradually by its length of five feet nine inches and a 

half to within two feet ten inches of the area pavement and 

allowed his body to move freely in space by separating himself 

from the railings and crouching in preparation for the 

impact of the fall. 

Did he fall? 


647 

By his body’s known weight of eleven stone and four pounds 

in avoirdupois measure, as certified by the graduated machine 

for periodical selfweighing in the premises of Francis 

Froedman, pharmaceutical chemist of 19 Frederick street, 

north, on the last feast of the Ascension, to wit, the twelfth 

day of May of the bissextile year one thousand nine hundred 

and four of the christian era (jewish era five thousand six 

hundred and sixtyfour, mohammadan era one thousand three 

hundred and twentytwo), golden number 5, epact 13, solar 

cycle 9, dominical letters C B, Roman indiction 2, Julian 

period 6617, MCMIV. 

Did he rise uninjured by concussion? 

Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though 

concussed by the impact, raised the latch of the area door by 

the exertion of force at its freely moving flange and by leverage 

of the first kind applied at its fulcrum, gained retarded 

access to the kitchen through the subadjacent scullery, ignited 

a lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal 

gas by turningon the ventcock, lit a high flame which, by 

regulating, he reduced to quiescent candescence and lit fi-

nally a portable candle. 

What discrete succession of images did Stephen meanwhile 

perceive? 

Reclined against the area railings he perceived through the 

transparent kitchen panes a man regulating a gasflame of 14 C 

P, a man lighting a candle, a man removing in turn each of his 

two boots, a man leaving the kitchen holding a candle of 1 C P. 

Did the man reappear elsewhere? 

After a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was 

discernible through the semitransparent semicircular glass 

fanlight over the halldoor. The halldoor turned gradually on 

its hinges. In the open space of the doorway the man reappeared 

without his hat, with his candle. 

Did Stephen obey his sign? 

Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door 

and followed softly along the hallway the man’s back and 

listed feet and lighted candle past a lighted crevice of doorway 

on the left and carefully down a turning staircase of 


648 

more than five steps into the kitchen of Bloom’s house. 

What did Bloom do? 

He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath 

upon its flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, 

one for Stephen with its back to the area window, the 

other for himself when necessary, knelt on one knee, composed 

in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped sticks and 

various coloured papers and irregular polygons of best Abram 

coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs 

Flower and M’Donald of 14 D’Olier street, kindled it at 

three projecting points of paper with one ignited lucifer 

match, thereby releasing the potential energy contained in 

the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to 

enter into free union with the oxygen of the air. 

Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think? 

Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one 

knee or on two, had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael 

in the infirmary of the college of the Society of Jesus at 

Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the county of Kildare: of his

father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room of his first 

residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of 

his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying 

sister Miss Julia Morkan at 15 Usher’s Island: of his aunt 

Sara, wife of Richie (Richard) Goulding, in the kitchen of 

their lodgings at 62 Clanbrassil street: of his mother Mary, 

wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of number twelve 

North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of Saint 

Francis Xavier 1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in 

the physics’ theatre of university College, 16 Stephen’s Green, 

north: of his sister Dilly (Delia) in his father’s house in Cabra. 

What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a 

yard from the fire towards the opposite wall? 

Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear 

rope, stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess 

beside the chimney pier, from which hung four smallsized 

square handkerchiefs folded unattached consecutively in 

adjacent rectangles and one pair of ladies’ grey hose with 

Lisle suspender tops and feet in their habitual position 

clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer ex- 


649 

tremities and the third at their point of junction. 

What did Bloom see on the range? 

On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on 

the left (larger) hob a black iron kettle. 

What did Bloom do at the range? 

He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried 

the iron kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by 

turning the faucet to let it flow. 

Did it flow? 

Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a 

cubic capacity of 2400 million gallons, percolating through 

a subterranean aqueduct of filter mains of single and double 

pipeage constructed at an initial plant cost of 5 pounds per 

linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen of the 

Downs and Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, 

a distance of 22 statute miles, and thence, through a system 

of relieving tanks, by a gradient of 250 feet to the city boundary 

at Eustace bridge, upper Leeson street, though from pro-

longed summer drouth and daily supply of 12 1/2 million 

gallons the water had fallen below the sill of the overflow 

weir for which reason the borough surveyor and waterworks 

engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C. E., on the instructions of 

the waterworks committee had prohibited the use of municipal 

water for purposes other than those of consumption 

(envisaging the possibility of recourse being had to the 

impotable water of the Grand and Royal canals as in 1893) 

particularly as the South Dublin Guardians, notwithstanding 

their ration of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied 

through a 6 inch meter, had been convicted of a wastage of 

20,000 gallons per night by a reading of their meter on the 

affirmation of the law agent of the corporation, Mr Ignatius 

Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the detriment of another 

section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers, solvent, sound. 

What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, 

watercarrier, returning to the range, admire? 

Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to 

its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of 

Mercator’s projection: its unplumbed profundity in the 


650 

Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the 

restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn 

all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the 

variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: 

its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence 

after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar 

icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: 

its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of 

the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square 

leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of 

Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: 

its luteofulvous bed: its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution 

all soluble substances including millions of tons of the 

most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, 

its persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas 

and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: 

its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability 

in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in 

the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications 

in continental lakecontained streams and confluent 

oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic

currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its 

violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, 

torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, 

waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, 

inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial 

ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and latent humidity, 

revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and 

exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown 

gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of 

its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one 

constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy 

in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness 

in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its 

properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing 

vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its 

metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: 

its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs 

and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls 

and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and 

tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, 

icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, 


651 

turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, 

scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, 

floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from 

harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its 

submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, 

if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its 

ubiquity as constituting 90 percent of the human body: the 

noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential 

fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon. 

Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, 

why did he return to the stillflowing tap? 

To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet 

of Barrington’s lemonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered, 

(bought thirteen hours previously for fourpence and 

still unpaid for), in fresh cold neverchanging everchanging 

water and dry them, face and hands, in a long redbordered 

holland cloth passed over a wooden revolving roller. 

What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom’s offer? 

That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by im-

mersion or total by submersion in cold water, (his last bath 

having taken place in the month of October of the preceding 

year), disliking the aqueous substances of glass and crystal, 

distrusting aquacities of thought and language. 

What impeded Bloom from giving Stephen counsels of 

hygiene and prophylactic to which should be added suggestions 

concerning a preliminary wetting of the head and contraction 

of the muscles with rapid splashing of the face and 

neck and thoracic and epigastric region in case of sea or river 

bathing, the parts of the human anatomy most sensitive to 

cold being the nape, stomach and thenar or sole of foot? 

The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality 

of genius. 

What additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress? 

Dietary: concerning the respective percentage of protein 

and caloric energy in bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence 

of the former in the lastnamed and the abundance of the 

latter in the firstnamed. 


652 

Which seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities 

of his guest? 

Confidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of 

abandonment and recuperation. 

What concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel 

of liquid by the agency of fire? 

The phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant 

updraught of ventilation between the kitchen and the 

chimneyflue, ignition was communicated from the faggots 

of precombustible fuel to polyhedral masses of bituminous 

coal, containing in compressed mineral form the foliated 

fossilised decidua of primeval forests which had in turn derived 

their vegetative existence from the sun, primal source 

of heat (radiant), transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous 

diathermanous ether. Heat (convected), a mode of 

motion developed by such combustion, was constantly and 

increasingly conveyed from the source of calorification to 

the liquid contained in the vessel, being radiated through 

the uneven unpolished dark surface of the metal iron, in 

part reflected, in part absorbed, in part transmitted, gradu-

ally raising the temperature of the water from normal to boiling 

point, a rise in temperature expressible as the result of an 

expenditure of 72 thermal units needed to raise 1 pound of 

water from 50 degrees to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. 

What announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature? 

A double falciform ejection of water vapour from under 

the kettlelid at both sides simultaneously. 

For what personal purpose could Bloom have applied the 

water so boiled? 

To shave himself. 

What advantages attended shaving by night? 

A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to 

remain from shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer 

skin if unexpectedly encountering female acquaintances in 

remote places at incustomary hours: quiet reflections upon 

the course of the day: a cleaner sensation when awaking after 

a fresher sleep since matutinal noises, premonitions and 


653 

perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a postman’s double knock, 

a paper read, reread while lathering, relathering the same 

spot, a shock, a shoot, with thought of aught he sought 

though fraught with nought might cause a faster rate of shaving 

and a nick on which incision plaster with precision cut 

and humected and applied adhered: which was to be done. 

Why did absence of light disturb him less than presence of 

noise? 

Because of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full 

masculine feminine passive active hand. 

What quality did it (his hand) possess but with what counteracting 

influence? 

The operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to 

shed human blood even when the end justified the means, 

preferring, in their natural order, heliotherapy, 

psychophysicotherapeutics, osteopathic surgery. 

What lay under exposure on the lower, middle and upper 

shelves of the kitchen dresser, opened by Bloom?

On the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal 

breakfast saucers on which rested inverted breakfast 

cups, a moustachecup, uninverted, and saucer of Crown 

Derby, four white goldrimmed eggcups, an open shammy 

purse displaying coins, mostly copper, and a phial of aromatic 

(violet) comfits. On the middle shelf a chipped eggcup 

containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four conglomerated 

black olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of Plumtree’s 

potted meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and 

containing one Jersey pear, a halfempty bottle of William 

Gilbey and Co’s white invalid port, half disrobed of its swathe 

of coralpink tissue paper, a packet of Epps’s soluble cocoa, 

five ounces of Anne Lynch’s choice tea at 2/- per lb in a 

crinkled leadpaper bag, a cylindrical canister containing the 

best crystallised lump sugar, two onions, one, the larger, Spanish, 

entire, the other, smaller, Irish, bisected with augmented 

surface and more redolent, a jar of Irish Model Dairy’s cream, 

a jug of brown crockery containing a naggin and a quarter of 

soured adulterated milk, converted by heat into water, acidulous 

serum and semisolidified curds, which added to the 

quantity subtracted for Mr Bloom’s and Mrs Fleming’s break- 


654 

fasts, made one imperial pint, the total quantity originally 

delivered, two cloves, a halfpenny and a small dish containing 

a slice of fresh ribsteak. On the upper shelf a battery of 

jamjars (empty) of various sizes and proveniences. 

What attracted his attention lying on the apron of the 

dresser? 

Four polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting 

tickets, numbered 8 87, 8 86. 

What reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow? 

Reminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction, 

preindicative of the result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, 

the official and definitive result of which he had read in the 

Evening Telegraph, late pink edition, in the cabman’s shelter, 

at Butt bridge. 

Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or 

projected, been received by him? 

In Bernard Kiernan’s licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 little 

Britain street: in David Byrne’s licensed premises, 14 Duke

street: in O’Connell street lower, outside Graham Lemon’s 

when a dark man had placed in his hand a throwaway (subsequently 

thrown away), advertising Elijah, restorer of the church 

in Zion: in Lincoln place outside the premises of F. W. Sweny 

and Co (Limited), dispensing chemists, when, when Frederick 

M. (Bantam) Lyons had rapidly and successively requested, 

perused and restituted the copy of the current issue of the 

Freeman’s Journal and National Press which he had been about 

to throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded 

towards the oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, 

11 Leinster street, with the light of inspiration shining in his 

countenance and bearing in his arms the secret of the race, 

graven in the language of prediction. 

What qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations? 

The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of 

any event followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic 

report followed the electrical discharge and of 

counterestimating against an actual loss by failure to interpret 

the total sum of possible losses proceeding originally 

from a successful interpretation. 


655 

His mood? 

He had not risked, he did not expect, he had not been 

disappointed, he was satisfied. 

What satisfied him? 

To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive 

gain to others. Light to the gentiles. 

How did Bloom prepare a collation for a gentile? 

He poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in 

all, of Epps’s soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the 

directions for use printed on the label, to each adding after 

sufficient time for infusion the prescribed ingredients for 

diffusion in the manner and in the quantity prescribed. 

What supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the 

host show his guest? 

Relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache 

cup of imitation Crown Derby presented to him by his only 

daughter, Millicent (Milly), he substituted a cup identical

with that of his guest and served extraordinarily to his guest 

and, in reduced measure, to himself the viscous cream ordinarily 

reserved for the breakfast of his wife Marion (Molly). 

Was the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these 

marks of hospitality? 

His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely, 

and he accepted them seriously as they drank in jocoserious 

silence Epps’s massproduct, the creature cocoa. 

Were there marks of hospitality which he contemplated 

but suppressed, reserving them for another and for himself 

on future occasions to complete the act begun? 

The reparation of a fissure of the length of 1 1/2 inches in 

the right side of his guest’s jacket. A gift to his guest of one of 

the four lady’s handkerchiefs, if and when ascertained to be 

in a presentable condition. 

Who drank more quickly? 

Bloom, having the advantage of ten seconds at the initiation 

and taking, from the concave surface of a spoon along 


656 

the handle of which a steady flow of heat was conducted, 

three sips to his opponent’s one, six to two, nine to three. 

What cerebration accompanied his frequentative act? 

Concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent 

companion was engaged in mental composition he reflected 

on the pleasures derived from literature of instruction rather 

than of amusement as he himself had applied to the works 

of William Shakespeare more than once for the solution of 

difficult problems in imaginary or real life. 

Had he found their solution? 

In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical 

passages, aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction 

from the text, the answers not bearing in all points. 

What lines concluded his first piece of original verse written 

by him, potential poet, at the age of 11 in 1877 on the 

occasion of the offering of three prizes of 10/-, 5/- and 2/6 

respectively for competition by the Shamrock, a weekly newspaper?

An ambition to squint 

At my verses in print 

Makes me hope that for these you’ll find room. 

If you so condescend 

Then please place at the end 

The name of yours truly, L. Bloom. 

Did he find four separating forces between his temporary 

guest and him? 

Name, age, race, creed. 

What anagrams had he made on his name in youth? 

Leopold Bloom 

Ellpodbomool 

Molldopeloob 

Bollopedoom 

Old Ollebo, M. P. 

What acrostic upon the abbreviation of his first name had 


657 

he (kinetic poet) sent to Miss Marion (Molly) Tweedy on 

the 14 February 1888? 

Poets oft have sung in rhyme 

Of music sweet their praise divine. 

Let them hymn it nine times nine. 

Dearer far than song or wine. 

You are mine. The world is mine. 

What had prevented him from completing a topical song 

(music by R. G. Johnston) on the events of the past, or fixtures 

for the actual, years, entitled If Brian Boru could but 

come back and see old Dublin now, commissioned by Michael 

Gunn, lessee of the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South 

King street, and to be introduced into the sixth scene, the 

valley of diamonds, of the second edition (30 January 1893) 

of the grand annual Christmas pantomime Sinbad the Sailor 

(produced by R Shelton 26 December 1892, written by 

Greenleaf Whittier, scenery by George A. Jackson and Cecil 

Hicks, costumes by Mrs and Miss Whelan under the personal 

supervision of Mrs Michael Gunn, ballets by Jessie Noir,

harlequinade by Thomas Otto) and sung by Nelly Bouverist, 

principal girl? 

Firstly, oscillation between events of imperial and of local 

interest, the anticipated diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria 

(born 1820, acceded 1837) and the posticipated opening of 

the new municipal fish market: secondly, apprehension of 

opposition from extreme circles on the questions of the respective 

visits of Their Royal Highnesses the duke and duchess 

of York (real) and of His Majesty King Brian Boru (imaginary): 

thirdly, a conflict between professional etiquette and 

professional emulation concerning the recent erections of the 

Grand Lyric Hall on Burgh Quay and the Theatre Royal in 

Hawkins street: fourthly, distraction resultant from compassion 

for Nelly Bouverist’s non-intellectual, non-political, nontopical 

expression of countenance and concupiscence caused 

by Nelly Bouverist’s revelations of white articles of non-intellectual, 

non-political, non-topical underclothing while she 

(Nelly Bouverist) was in the articles: fifthly, the difficulties 

of the selection of appropriate music and humorous allusions 

from Everybody’s Book of Jokes (1000 pages and a laugh 

in every one): sixthly, the rhymes, homophonous and ca- 


658 

cophonous, associated with the names of the new lord mayor, 

Daniel Tallon, the new high sheriff, Thomas Pile and the 

new solicitorgeneral, Dunbar Plunket Barton. 

What relation existed between their ages? 

16 years before in 1888 when Bloom was of Stephen’s 

present age Stephen was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when 

Stephen would be of Bloom’s present age Bloom would be 

54. In 1936 when Bloom would be 70 and Stephen 54 their 

ages initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 

1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing 

according as arbitrary future years were added, for if the 

proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving 

that to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 

22 Bloom would be 374 and in 1920 when Stephen would 

be 38, as Bloom then was, Bloom would be 646 while in 

1952 when Stephen would have attained the maximum 

postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1190 years alive having 

been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 

years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 

969 years, while, if Stephen would continue to live until he

would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Bloomwould 

have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having 

been obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C. 

What events might nullify these calculations? 

The cessation of existence of both or either, the inauguration 

of a new era or calendar, the annihilation of the world 

and consequent extermination of the human species, inevitable 

but impredictable. 

How many previous encounters proved their preexisting 

acquaintance? 

Two. The first in the lilacgarden of Matthew Dillon’s house, 

Medina Villa, Kimmage road, Roundtown, in 1887, in the 

company of Stephen’s mother, Stephen being then of the age 

of 5 and reluctant to give his hand in salutation. The second 

in the coffeeroom of Breslin’s hotel on a rainy Sunday in the 

January of 1892, in the company of Stephen’s father and 

Stephen’s granduncle, Stephen being then 5 years older. 

Did Bloom accept the invitation to dinner given then by 


659 

the son and afterwards seconded by the father? 

Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative 

gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of 

regret, he declined. 

Did their conversation on the subject of these reminiscences 

reveal a third connecting link between them? 

Mrs Riordan (Dante), a widow of independent means, had 

resided in the house of Stephen’s parents from 1 September 

1888 to 29 December 1891 and had also resided during the 

years 1892, 1893 and 1894 in the City Arms Hotel owned 

by Elizabeth O’Dowd of 54 Prussia street where, during parts 

of the years 1893 and 1894, she had been a constant informant 

of Bloom who resided also in the same hotel, being at 

that time a clerk in the employment of Joseph Cuffe of 5 

Smithfield for the superintendence of sales in the adjacent 

Dublin Cattle market on the North Circular road. 

Had he performed any special corporal work of mercy for 

her? 

He had sometimes propelled her on warm summer eve-

nings, an infirm widow of independent, if limited, means, 

in her convalescent bathchair with slow revolutions of its 

wheels as far as the corner of the North Circular road opposite 

Mr Gavin Low’s place of business where she had remained 

for a certain time scanning through his onelensed binocular 

fieldglasses unrecognisable citizens on tramcars, roadster bicycles 

equipped with inflated pneumatic tyres, hackney carriages, 

tandems, private and hired landaus, dogcarts, 

ponytraps and brakes passing from the city to the Phoenix 

Park and vice versa. 

Why could he then support that his vigil with the greater 

equanimity? 

Because in middle youth he had often sat observing through 

a rondel of bossed glass of a multicoloured pane the spectacle 

offered with continual changes of the thoroughfare without, 

pedestrians, quadrupeds, velocipedes, vehicles, passing 

slowly, quickly, evenly, round and round and round the rim 

of a round and round precipitous globe. 

What distinct different memories had each of her now eight 


660 

years deceased? 

The older, her bezique cards and counters, her Skye terrier, 

her suppositious wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and 

incipient catarrhal deafness: the younger, her lamp of colza 

oil before the statue of the Immaculate Conception, her green 

and maroon brushes for Charles Stewart Parnell and for 

Michael Davitt, her tissue papers. 

Were there no means still remaining to him to achieve the 

rejuvenation which these reminiscences divulged to a younger 

companion rendered the more desirable? 

The indoor exercises, formerly intermittently practised, subsequently 

abandoned, prescribed in Eugen Sandow’s Physical 

Strength and How To Obtain It which, designed particularly 

for commercial men engaged in sedentary occupations, 

were to be made with mental concentration in front of a 

mirror so as to bring into play the various families of muscles 

and produce successively a pleasant rigidity, a more pleasant 

relaxation and the most pleasant repristination of juvenile 

agility.

Had any special agility been his in earlier youth? 

Though ringweight lifting had been beyond his strength 

and the full circle gyration beyond his courage yet as a High 

school scholar he had excelled in his stable and protracted 

execution of the half lever movement on the parallel bars in 

consequence of his abnormally developed abdominal muscles. 

Did either openly allude to their racial difference? 

Neither. 

What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were 

Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom and 

about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom’s thoughts about 

Stephen? 

He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he 

knew that he knew that he knew that he was not. 

What, the enclosures of reticence removed, were their respective 

parentages? 

Bloom, only born male transubstantial heir of Rudolf Virag 

(subsequently Rudolph Bloom) of Szombathely, Vienna, 


661 

Budapest, Milan, London and Dublin and of Ellen Higgins, 

second daughter of Julius Higgins (born Karoly) and Fanny 

Higgins (born Hegarty). Stephen, eldest surviving male consubstantial 

heir of Simon Dedalus of Cork and Dublin and 

of Mary, daughter of Richard and Christina Goulding (born 

Grier). 

Had Bloom and Stephen been baptised, and where and by 

whom, cleric or layman? 

Bloom (three times), by the reverend Mr Gilmer Johnston 

M. A., alone, in the protestant church of Saint Nicholas 

Without, Coombe, by James O’Connor, Philip Gilligan and 

James Fitzpatrick, together, under a pump in the village of 

Swords, and by the reverend Charles Malone C. C., in the 

church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar. Stephen (once) by the 

reverend Charles Malone C. C., alone, in the church of the 

Three Patrons, Rathgar. 

Did they find their educational careers similar? 

Substituting Stephen for Bloom Stoom would have passed 

successively through a dame’s school and the high school.

Substituting Bloom for Stephen Blephen would have passed 

successively through the preparatory, junior, middle and senior 

grades of the intermediate and through the matriculation, 

first arts, second arts and arts degree courses of the royal 

university. 

Why did Bloom refrain from stating that he had frequented 

the university of life? 

Because of his fluctuating incertitude as to whether this 

observation had or had not been already made by him to 

Stephen or by Stephen to him. 

What two temperaments did they individually represent? 

The scientific. The artistic. 

What proofs did Bloom adduce to prove that his tendency 

was towards applied, rather than towards pure, science? 

Certain possible inventions of which he had cogitated when 

reclining in a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated 

by his appreciation of the importance of inventions 

now common but once revolutionary, for example, the aero- 


662 

nautic parachute, the reflecting telescope, the spiral corkscrew, 

the safety pin, the mineral water siphon, the canal 

lock with winch and sluice, the suction pump. 

Were these inventions principally intended for an improved 

scheme of kindergarten? 

Yes, rendering obsolete popguns, elastic airbladders, games 

of hazard, catapults. They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes 

exhibiting the twelve constellations of the zodiac from 

Aries to Pisces, miniature mechanical orreries, arithmetical 

gelatine lozenges, geometrical to correspond with zoological 

biscuits, globemap playing balls, historically costumed dolls. 

What also stimulated him in his cogitations? 

The financial success achieved by Ephraim Marks and 

Charles A. James, the former by his 1d bazaar at 42 George’s 

street, south, the latter at his 6-1/2d shop and world’s fancy 

fair and waxwork exhibition at 30 Henry street, admission 

2d, children 1d: and the infinite possibilities hitherto 

unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed 

in triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum vis-

ibility (divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered) 

and of magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary 

attention, to interest, to convince, to decide. 

Such as? 

K. II. Kino’s 11/- Trousers. 

House of Keys. Alexander J. Keyes. 

Such as not? 

Look at this long candle. Calculate when it burns out and 

you receive gratis 1 pair of our special non-compo boots, 

guaranteed 1 candle power. Address: Barclay and Cook, 18 

Talbot street. 

Bacilikil (Insect Powder). 

Veribest (Boot Blacking). 

Uwantit (Combined pocket twoblade penknife with corkscrew, 

nailfile and pipecleaner). 

Such as never? 

What is home without Plumtree’s Potted Meat? 

Incomplete. 


663 

With it an abode of bliss. 

Manufactured by George Plumtree, 23 Merchants’ quay, 

Dublin, put up in 4 oz pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph 

P. Nannetti, M. P., Rotunda Ward, 19 Hardwicke street, 

under the obituary notices and anniversaries of deceases. The 

name on the label is Plumtree. A plumtree in a meatpot, 

registered trade mark. Beware of imitations. Peatmot. 

Trumplee. Moutpat. Plamtroo. 

Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce 

that originality, though producing its own reward, does 

not invariably conduce to success? 

His own ideated and rejected project of an illuminated 

showcart, drawn by a beast of burden, in which two smartly 

dressed girls were to be seated engaged in writing. 

What suggested scene was then constructed by Stephen? 

Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire 

lit. In dark corner young man seated. Young woman enters. 

Restless. Solitary. She sits. She goes to window. She stands. 

She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On solitary hotel paper she

writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs. 

She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He seizes 

solitary paper. He holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads. 

Solitary. 

What? 

In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen’s Hotel, Queen’s 

Hotel, Queen’s Hotel. Queen’s Ho... 

What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom? 

The Queen’s Hotel, Ennis, county Clare, where Rudolph 

Bloom (Rudolf Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 

1886, at some hour unstated, in consequence of an overdose 

of monkshood (aconite) selfadministered in the form of a 

neuralgic liniment composed of 2 parts of aconite liniment 

to I of chloroform liniment (purchased by him at 10.20 a.m. 

on the morning of 27 June 1886 at the medical hall of Francis 

Dennehy, 17 Church street, Ennis) after having, though not 

in consequence of having, purchased at 3.15 p.m. on the 

afternoon of 27 June 1886 a new boater straw hat, extra 

smart (after having, though not in consequence of having, 


664 

purchased at the hour and in the place aforesaid, the toxin 

aforesaid), at the general drapery store of James Cullen, 4 

Main street, Ennis. 

Did he attribute this homonymity to information or coincidence 

or intuition? 

Coincidence. 

Did he depict the scene verbally for his guest to see? 

He preferred himself to see another’s face and listen to 

another’s words by which potential narration was realised 

and kinetic temperament relieved. 

Did he see only a second coincidence in the second scene 

narrated to him, described by the narrator as A Pisgah Sight 

of Palestine or The Parable of the Plums? 

It, with the preceding scene and with others unnarrated 

but existent by implication, to which add essays on various 

subjects or moral apothegms (e.g. My Favourite Hero or Procrastination 

is the Theif of Time) composed during schoolyears, 

seemed to him to contain in itself and in conjunction with

the personal equation certain possibilities of financial, social, 

personal and sexual success, whether specially collected and 

selected as model pedagogic themes (of cent per cent merit) 

for the use of preparatory and junior grade students or contributed 

in printed form, following the precedent of Philip 

Beaufoy or Doctor Dick or Heblon’s Studies in Blue, to a publication 

of certified circulation and solvency or employed verbally 

as intellectual stimulation for sympathetic auditors, tacitly 

appreciative of successful narrative and confidently 

augurative of successful achievement, during the increasingly 

longer nights gradually following the summer solstice on the 

day but three following, videlicet, Tuesday, 21 June (S. Aloysius 

Gonzaga), sunrise 3.33 a.m., sunset 8.29 p.m. 

Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, 

any other frequently engaged his mind? 

What to do with our wives. 

What had been his hypothetical singular solutions? 

Parlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spilikins, 

cup and ball, nap, spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my 


665 

neighbour, draughts, chess or backgammon): embroidery, 

darning or knitting for the policeaided clothing society: 

musical duets, mandoline and guitar, piano and flute, guitar 

and piano: legal scrivenery or envelope addressing: biweekly 

visits to variety entertainments: commercial activity as pleasantly 

commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress proprietress 

in a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the clandestine 

satisfaction of erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state 

inspected and medically controlled: social visits, at regular 

infrequent prevented intervals and with regular frequent preventive 

superintendence, to and from female acquaintances 

of recognised respectability in the vicinity: courses of evening 

instruction specially designed to render liberal instruction 

agreeable. 

What instances of deficient mental development in his wife 

inclined him in favour of the lastmentioned (ninth) solution? 

In disoccupied moments she had more than once covered 

a sheet of paper with signs and hieroglyphics which she stated 

were Greek and Irish and Hebrew characters. She had inter-

ogated constantly at varying intervals as to the correct 

method of writing the capital initial of the name of a city in 

Canada, Quebec. She understood little of political complications, 

internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating 

the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital 

aid. After completion of laconic epistolary compositions 

she abandoned the implement of calligraphy in the encaustic 

pigment, exposed to the corrosive action of copperas, green 

vitriol and nutgall. Unusual polysyllables of foreign origin 

she interpreted phonetically or by false analogy or by both: 

metempsychosis (met him pike hoses), alias (a mendacious 

person mentioned in sacred scripture). 

What compensated in the false balance of her intelligence 

for these and such deficiencies of judgment regarding persons, 

places and things? 

The false apparent parallelism of all perpendicular arms of 

all balances, proved true by construction. The counterbalance 

of her proficiency of judgment regarding one person, 

proved true by experiment. 


666 

How had he attempted to remedy this state of comparative 

ignorance? 

Variously. By leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book 

open at a certain page: by assuming in her, when alluding 

explanatorily, latent knowledge: by open ridicule in her presence 

of some absent other’s ignorant lapse. 

With what success had he attempted direct instruction? 

She followed not all, a part of the whole, gave attention 

with interest comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, 

with greater difficulty remembered, forgot with ease, with 

misgiving reremembered, rerepeated with error. 

What system had proved more effective? 

Indirect suggestion implicating selfinterest. 

Example? 

She disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella, 

she disliked new hat with rain, he liked woman with 

new hat, he bought new hat with rain, she carried umbrella 

with new hat.

Accepting the analogy implied in his guest’s parable which 

examples of postexilic eminence did he adduce? 

Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses 

Maimonides, author of More Nebukim (Guide of the Perplexed) 

and Moses Mendelssohn of such eminence that from 

Moses (of Egypt) to Moses (Mendelssohn) there arose none 

like Moses (Maimonides). 

What statement was made, under correction, by Bloom 

concerning a fourth seeker of pure truth, by name Aristotle, 

mentioned, with permission, by Stephen? 

That the seeker mentioned had been a pupil of a rabbinical 

philosopher, name uncertain. 

Were other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and 

children of a selected or rejected race mentioned? 

Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (composer), Baruch Spinoza 

(philosopher), Mendoza (pugilist), Ferdinand Lassalle (reformer, 

duellist). 


667 

What fragments of verse from the ancient Hebrew and 

ancient Irish languages were cited with modulations of voice 

and translation of texts by guest to host and by host to guest? 

By Stephen: suil, suil, suil arun, suil go siocair agus suil go 

cuin (walk, walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with 

care). 

By Bloom: Kifeloch, harimon rakatejch m’baad l’zamatejch 

(thy temple amid thy hair is as a slice of pomegranate). 

How was a glyphic comparison of the phonic symbols of 

both languages made in substantiation of the oral comparison? 

By juxtaposition. On the penultimate blank page of a book 

of inferior literary style, entituled Sweets of Sin (produced by 

Bloom and so manipulated that its front cover carne in contact 

with the surface of the table) with a pencil (supplied by 

Stephen) Stephen wrote the Irish characters for gee, eh, dee, 

em, simple and modified, and Bloom in turn wrote the Hebrew 

characters ghimel, aleph, daleth and (in the absence of 

mem) a substituted qoph, explaining their arithmetical values 

as ordinal and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1, 4, and 100.

Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, 

the extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical? 

Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of 

accidence and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary. 

What points of contact existed between these languages 

and between the peoples who spoke them? 

The presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, 

epenthetic and servile letters in both languages: their antiquity, 

both having been taught on the plain of Shinar 242 years 

after the deluge in the seminary instituted by Fenius Farsaigh, 

descendant of Noah, progenitor of Israel, and ascendant of 

Heber and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland: their archaeological, 

genealogical, hagiographical, exegetical, homiletic, 

toponomastic, historical and religious literatures comprising 

the works of rabbis and culdees, Torah, Talmud (Mischna and 

Ghemara), Massor, Pentateuch, Book of the Dun Cow, Book 

of Ballymote, Garland of Howth, Book of Kells: their dispersal, 

persecution, survival and revival: the isolation of their 

synagogical and ecclesiastical rites in ghetto (S. Mary’s Abbey) 


668 

and masshouse (Adam and Eve’s tavern): the proscription of 

their national costumes in penal laws and jewish dress acts: 

the restoration in Chanah David of Zion and the possibility 

of Irish political autonomy or devolution. 

What anthem did Bloom chant partially in anticipation of 

that multiple, ethnically irreducible consummation? 

Kolod balejwaw pnimah 

Nefesch, jehudi, homijah. 

Why was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first 

distich? 

In consequence of defective mnemotechnic. 

How did the chanter compensate for this deficiency? 

By a periphrastic version of the general text. 

In what common study did their mutual reflections merge? 

The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian 

epigraphic hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets

and the anticipation of modern stenography and telegraphic 

code in the cuneiform inscriptions (Semitic) and the virgular 

quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic). 

Did the guest comply with his host’s request? 

Doubly, by appending his signature in Irish and Roman 

characters. 

What was Stephen’s auditive sensation? 

He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody 

the accumulation of the past. 

What was Bloom’s visual sensation? 

He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination 

of a future. 

What were Stephen’s and Bloom’s quasisimultaneous volitional 

quasisensations of concealed identities? 

Visually, Stephen’s: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted 

by Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and 

Epiphanius Monachus as leucodermic, sesquipedalian with 


669 

winedark hair. 

Auditively, Bloom’s: The traditional accent of the ecstasy 

of catastrophe. 

What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the 

past and with what exemplars? 

In the church, Roman, Anglican or Nonconformist: exemplars, 

the very reverend John Conmee S. J., the reverend 

T. Salmon, D. D., provost of Trinity college, Dr Alexander 

J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish: exemplars, Seymour 

Bushe, K. C., Rufus Isaacs, K. C. On the stage modern or 

Shakespearean: exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian 

Osmond Tearle (died 1901), exponent of Shakespeare. 

Did the host encourage his guest to chant in a modulated 

voice a strange legend on an allied theme? 

Reassuringly, their place, where none could hear them talk, 

being secluded, reassured, the decocted beverages, allowing 

for subsolid residual sediment of a mechanical mixture, water 

plus sugar plus cream plus cocoa, having been consumed.

Recite the first (major) part of this chanted legend. 

Little Harry Hughes and his schoolfellows all 

Went out for to play ball. 

And the very first ball little Harry Hughes played 

He drove it o’er the jew’s garden wall. 

And the very second ball little Harry Hughes played 

He broke the jew’s windows all. 

How did the son of Rudolph receive this first part? 

With unmixed feeling. Smiling, a jew he heard with pleasure 

and saw the unbroken kitchen window. 

Recite the second part (minor) of the legend. 

Then out there came the jew’s daughter 

And she all dressed in green. 

“Come back, come back, you pretty little boy, 

And play your ball again.” 

“I can’t come back and I won’t come back 


670 

Without my schoolfellows all. 

For if my master he did hear 

He’d make it a sorry ball.” 

She took him by the lilywhite hand 

And led him along the hall 

Until she led him to a room 

Where none could hear him call. 

She took a penknife out of her pocket 

And cut off his little head. 

And now he’ll play his ball no more 

For he lies among the dead. 

How did the father of Millicent receive this second part? 

With mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with 

wonder a jew’s daughter, all dressed in green. 

Condense Stephen’s commentary. 

One of all, the least of all, is the victim predestined. Once 

by inadvertence twice by design he challenges his destiny. It

comes when he is abandoned and challenges him reluctant 

and, as an apparition of hope and youth, holds him unresisting. 

It leads him to a strange habitation, to a secret infidel 

apartment, and there, implacable, immolates him, consenting. 

Why was the host (victim predestined) sad? 

He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed 

not by him should by him not be told. 

Why was the host (reluctant, unresisting) still? 

In accordance with the law of the conservation of energy. 

Why was the host (secret infidel) silent? 

He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual 

murder: the incitations of the hierarchy, the superstition of 

the populace, the propagation of rumour in continued fraction 

of veridicity, the envy of opulence, the influence of retaliation, 

the sporadic reappearance of atavistic delinquency, 

the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism, hypnotic suggestion 

and somnambulism. 


671 

From which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders 

was he not totally immune? 

From hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not 

recognised his sleeping apartment: more than once, waking, 

he had been for an indefinite time incapable of moving or 

uttering sounds. From somnambulism: once, sleeping, his 

body had risen, crouched and crawled in the direction of a 

heatless fire and, having attained its destination, there, curled, 

unheated, in night attire had lain, sleeping. 

Had this latter or any cognate phenomenon declared itself 

in any member of his family? 

Twice, in Holles street and in Ontario terrace, his daughter 

Millicent (Milly) at the ages of 6 and 8 years had uttered 

in sleep an exclamation of terror and had replied to the interrogations 

of two figures in night attire with a vacant mute 

expression. 

What other infantile memories had he of her? 

15 June 1889. A querulous newborn female infant crying to

cause and lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks 

she shook with shocks her moneybox: counted his three free 

moneypenny buttons, one, tloo, tlee: a doll, a boy, a sailor she 

cast away: blond, born of two dark, she had blond ancestry, 

remote, a violation, Herr Hauptmann Hainau, Austrian army, 

proximate, a hallucination, lieutenant Mulvey, British navy. 

What endemic characteristics were present? 

Conversely the nasal and frontal formation was derived in 

a direct line of lineage which, though interrupted, would 

continue at distant intervals to more distant intervals to its 

most distant intervals. 

What memories had he of her adolescence? 

She relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess. On 

the duke’s lawn, entreated by an English visitor, she declined 

to permit him to make and take away her photographic image 

(objection not stated). On the South Circular road in 

the company of Elsa Potter, followed by an individual of 

sinister aspect, she went half way down Stamer street and 

turned abruptly back (reason of change not stated). On the 


672 

vigil of the 15th anniversary of her birth she wrote a letter 

from Mullingar, county Westmeath, making a brief allusion 

to a local student (faculty and year not stated). 

Did that first division, portending a second division, afflict 

him? 

Less than he had imagined, more than he had hoped. 

What second departure was contemporaneously perceived 

by him similarly, if differently? 

A temporary departure of his cat. 

Why similarly, why differently? 

Similarly, because actuated by a secret purpose the quest 

of a new male (Mullingar student) or of a healing herb (valerian). 

Differently, because of different possible returns to the 

inhabitants or to the habitation. 

In other respects were their differences similar? 

In passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in 

unexpectedness.

As? 

Inasmuch as leaning she sustained her blond hair for him 

to ribbon it for her (cf neckarching cat). Moreover, on the 

free surface of the lake in Stephen’s green amid inverted reflections 

of trees her uncommented spit, describing concentric 

circles of waterrings, indicated by the constancy of its 

permanence the locus of a somnolent prostrate fish (cf 

mousewatching cat). Again, in order to remember the date, 

combatants, issue and consequences of a famous military 

engagement she pulled a plait of her hair (cf earwashing cat). 

Furthermore, silly Milly, she dreamed of having had an unspoken 

unremembered conversation with a horse whose name 

had been Joseph to whom (which) she had offered a 

tumblerful of lemonade which it (he) had appeared to have 

accepted (cf hearthdreaming cat). Hence, in passivity, in 

economy, in the instinct of tradition, in unexpectedness, their 

differences were similar. 

In what way had he utilised gifts 1) an owl, 2) a clock, given 

as matrimonial auguries, to interest and to instruct her? 


673 

As object lessons to explain: 1) the nature and habits of 

oviparous animals, the possibility of aerial flight, certain abnormalities 

of vision, the secular process of imbalsamation: 

2) the principle of the pendulum, exemplified in bob, 

wheelgear and regulator, the translation in terms of human 

or social regulation of the various positions of clockwise 

moveable indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude of 

the recurrence per hour of an instant in each hour when the 

longer and the shorter indicator were at the same angle of 

inclination, videlicet, 5 5/11 minutes past each hour per hour 

in arithmetical progression. 

In what manners did she reciprocate? 

She remembered: on the 27th anniversary of his birth she 

presented to him a breakfast moustachecup of imitation 

Crown Derby porcelain ware. She provided: at quarter day 

or thereabouts if or when purchases had been made by him 

not for her she showed herself attentive to his necessities, 

anticipating his desires. She admired: a natural phenomenon 

having been explained by him to her she expressed the immediate 

desire to possess without gradual acquisition a frac-

tion of his science, the moiety, the quarter, a thousandth 

part. 

What proposal did Bloom, diambulist, father of Milly, somnambulist, 

make to Stephen, noctambulist? 

To pass in repose the hours intervening between Thursday 

(proper) and Friday (normal) on an extemporised cubicle in the 

apartment immediately above the kitchen and immediately adjacent 

to the sleeping apartment of his host and hostess. 

What various advantages would or might have resulted from 

a prolongation of such an extemporisation? 

For the guest: security of domicile and seclusion of study. 

For the host: rejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction. 

For the hostess: disintegration of obsession, acquisition 

of correct Italian pronunciation. 

Why might these several provisional contingencies between 

a guest and a hostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded 

by a permanent eventuality of reconciliatory union between 

a schoolfellow and a jew’s daughter? 


674 

Because the way to daughter led through mother, the way 

to mother through daughter. 

To what inconsequent polysyllabic question of his host did 

the guest return a monosyllabic negative answer? 

If he had known the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally 

killed at Sydney Parade railway station, 14 October 1903. 

What inchoate corollary statement was consequently suppressed 

by the host? 

A statement explanatory of his absence on the occasion of 

the interment of Mrs Mary Dedalus (born Goulding), 26 

June 1903, vigil of the anniversary of the decease of Rudolph 

Bloom (born Virag). 

Was the proposal of asylum accepted? 

Promptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully it was 

declined. 

What exchange of money took place between host and 

guest?

The former returned to the latter, without interest, a sum 

of money (1-7-0), one pound seven shillings sterling, advanced 

by the latter to the former. 

What counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, 

modified, declined, restated in other terms, reaccepted, 

ratified, reconfirmed? 

To inaugurate a prearranged course of Italian instruction, 

place the residence of the instructed. To inaugurate a course 

of vocal instruction, place the residence of the instructress. 

To inaugurate a series of static semistatic and peripatetic intellectual 

dialogues, places the residence of both speakers (if 

both speakers were resident in the same place), the Ship hotel 

and tavern, 6 Lower Abbey street (W. and E. Connery, 

proprietors), the National Library of Ireland, 10 Kildare 

street, the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles 

street, a public garden, the vicinity of a place of worship, a 

conjunction of two or more public thoroughfares, the point 

of bisection of a right line drawn between their residences (if 

both speakers were resident in different places). 


675 

What rendered problematic for Bloom the realisation of 

these mutually selfexcluding propositions? 

The irreparability of the past: once at a performance of 

Albert Hengler’s circus in the Rotunda, Rutland square, 

Dublin, an intuitive particoloured clown in quest of paternity 

had penetrated from the ring to a place in the auditorium 

where Bloom, solitary, was seated and had publicly 

declared to an exhilarated audience that he (Bloom) was his 

(the clown’s) papa. The imprevidibility of the future: once in 

the summer of 1898 he (Bloom) had marked a florin (2/-) 

with three notches on the milled edge and tendered it m 

payment of an account due to and received by J. and T. Davy, 

family grocers, 1 Charlemont Mall, Grand Canal, for circulation 

on the waters of civic finance, for possible, circuitous 

or direct, return. 

Was the clown Bloom’s son? 

No. 

Had Bloom’s coin returned? 

Never.

Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him? 

Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he 

desired to amend many social conditions, the product of inequality 

and avarice and international animosity. 

He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible, 

eliminating these conditions? 

There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, 

as distinct from human law, as integral parts of the human 

whole: the necessity of destruction to procure alimentary 

sustenance: the painful character of the ultimate functions 

of separate existence, the agonies of birth and death: 

the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particularly) 

human females extending from the age of puberty to the 

menopause: inevitable accidents at sea, in mines and factories: 

certain very painful maladies and their resultant surgical 

operations, innate lunacy and congenital criminality, decimating 

epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make terror 

the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the 

epicentres of which are located in densely populated regions: 


676 

the fact of vital growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis, 

from infancy through maturity to decay. 

Why did he desist from speculation? 

Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute 

other more acceptable phenomena in the place of the 

less acceptable phenomena to be removed. 

Did Stephen participate in his dejection? 

He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal 

proceeding syllogistically from the known to the unknown 

and a conscious rational reagent between a micro and a macrocosm 

ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the 

void. 

Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom? 

Not verbally. Substantially. 

What comforted his misapprehension? 

That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically 

from the unknown to the known through the in-

certitude of the void. 

In what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony 

was the exodus from the house of bondage to the wilderness 

of inhabitation effected? 

Lighted Candle in Stick borne by 

BLOOM. 

Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by 

STEPHEN. 

With what intonation secreto of what commemorative 

psalm? 

The 113th, modus peregrinus: In exitu Israël de Egypto: domus 

Jacob de populo barbaro. 

What did each do at the door of egress? 

Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the 

hat on his head. 

For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress? 


677 

For a cat. 

What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, 

then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity 

by a passage from the rere of the house into the penumbra 

of the garden? 

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit. 

With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration 

to his companion of various constellations? 

Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon 

invisible in incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the 

infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible 

by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end 

of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the 

surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in 

Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant 

and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: 

of Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with 

belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our 

solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of na-

scent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging 

towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or 

parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving 

wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote 

futures in comparison with which the years, threescore 

and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal 

brevity. 

Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly 

less vast? 

Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications 

of the earth: of the myriad minute entomological 

organic existences concealed in cavities of the earth, beneath 

removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs, 

bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable trillions of 

billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by 

cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the 

universe of human serum constellated with red and white 

bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with 

other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible 

component bodies of which each was again divisible in divi- 


678 

sions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors 

ever diminishing without actual division till, if the 

progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never 

reached. 

Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise 

result? 

Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with 

the problem of the quadrature of the circle he had learned of 

.the existence of a number computed to a relative degree of 

accuracy to be of such magnitude and of so many places, 

e.g., the 9th power of the 9th power of 9, that, the result 

having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes of 1000 

pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper 

would have to be requisitioned in order to contain the complete 

tale of its printed integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, 

tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, 

tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, the nucleus 

of the nebula of every digit of every series containing succinctly 

the potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic 

elaboration of any power of any of its powers.

Did he find the problems of the inhabitability of the planets 

and their satellites by a race, given in species, and of the 

possible social and moral redemption of said race by a redeemer, 

easier of solution? 

Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human 

organism, normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric 

pressure of 19 tons, when elevated to a considerable altitude 

in the terrestrial atmosphere suffered with arithmetical progression 

of intensity, according as the line of demarcation 

between troposphere and stratosphere was approximated from 

nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo, when 

proposing this problem for solution, he had conjectured as a 

working hypothesis which could not be proved impossible 

that a more adaptable and differently anatomically constructed 

race of beings might subsist otherwise under Martian, 

Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian, Neptunian or 

Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions, though an 

apogean humanity of beings created in varying forms with 

finite differences resulting similar to the whole and to one 

another would probably there as here remain inalterably and 


679 

inalienably attached to vanities, to vanities of vanities and to 

all that is vanity. 

And the problem of possible redemption? 

The minor was proved by the major. 

Which various features of the constellations were in turn 

considered? 

The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality 

(white, yellow, crimson, vermilion, cinnabar): their degrees 

of brilliancy: their magnitudes revealed up to and including 

the 7th: their positions: the waggoner’s star: 

Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular cinctures 

of Saturn: the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: 

the interdependent gyrations of double suns: the independent 

synchronous discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, 

Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel, Galle: the systematisations attempted 

by Bode and Kepler of cubes of distances and squares 

of times of revolution: the almost infinite compressibility of 

hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive and reentrant 

orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin

of meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period 

of the birth of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence 

of meteoric showers about the period of the feast of 

S. Lawrence (martyr, lo August): the monthly recurrence 

known as the new moon with the old moon in her arms: the 

posited influence of celestial on human bodies: the appearance 

of a star (1st magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating 

by night and day (a new luminous sun generated by 

the collision and amalgamation in incandescence of two 

nonluminous exsuns) about the period of the birth of William 

Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent neversetting 

constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude) of 

similar origin but of lesser brilliancy which had appeared in 

and disappeared from the constellation of the Corona 

Septentrionalis about the period of the birth of Leopold 

Bloom and of other stars of (presumably) similar origin which 

had (effectively or presumably) appeared in and disappeared 

from the constellation of Andromeda about the period of 

the birth of Stephen Dedalus, and in and from the constellation 

of Auriga some years after the birth and death of Rudolph 

Bloom, junior, and in and from other constellations some 


680 

years before or after the birth or death of other persons: the 

attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion 

to emersion, abatement of wind, transit of shadow, 

taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence of nocturnal or 

crepuscular animals, persistence of infernal light, obscurity 

of terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings. 

His (Bloom’s) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter 

and allowing for possible error? 

That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a 

heavenbeast, not a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there 

being no known method from the known to the unknown: 

an infinity renderable equally finite by the suppositious apposition 

of one or more bodies equally of the same and of 

different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms 

immobilised in space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly 

had ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators 

had entered actual present existence. 

Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle?

Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of 

poets in the delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the 

abasement of rejection invoking ardent sympathetic constellations 

or the frigidity of the satellite of their planet. 

Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of 

astrological influences upon sublunary disasters? 

It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and 

the nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as 

attributable to verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: 

the lake of dreams, the sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the 

ocean of fecundity. 

What special affinities appeared to him to exist between 

the moon and woman? 

Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive 

tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her 

satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy 

under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, 

waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: 

her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: 


681 

her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to 

enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, 

to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability 

of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable 

resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of 

calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: 

the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: 

her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible. 

What visible luminous sign attracted Bloom’s, who attracted 

Stephen’s, gaze? 

In the second storey (rere) of his (Bloom’s) house the light 

of a paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen 

of roller blind supplied by Frank O’Hara, window blind, 

curtain pole and revolving shutter manufacturer, 16 Aungier 

street. 

How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive 

person, his wife Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a visible 

splendid sign, a lamp?

With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: 

with subdued affection and admiration: with description: 

with impediment: with suggestion. 

Both then were silent? 

Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of 

the reciprocal flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces. 

Were they indefinitely inactive? 

At Stephen’s suggestion, at Bloom’s instigation both, first 

Stephen, then Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, 

their organs of micturition reciprocally rendered 

invisible by manual circumposition, their gazes, first Bloom’s, 

then Stephen’s, elevated to the projected luminous and 

semiluminous shadow. 

Similarly? 

The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, 

urinations were dissimilar: Bloom’s longer, less irruent, in 

the incomplete form of the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical 

letter, who in his ultimate year at High School (1880) 


682 

had been capable of attaining the point of greatest altitude 

against the whole concurrent strength of the institution, 210 

scholars: Stephen’s higher, more sibilant, who in the ultimate 

hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic 

consumption an insistent vesical pressure. 

What different problems presented themselves to each concerning 

the invisible audible collateral organ of the other? 

To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, 

reactivity, dimension, sanitariness, pilosity. To Stephen: 

the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised 

(I January, holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain 

from unnecessary servile work) and the problem as to whether 

the divine prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy Roman 

catholic apostolic church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving 

of simple hyperduly or of the fourth degree of latria accorded 

to the abscission of such divine excrescences as hair 

and toenails. 

What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed? 

A star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the

firmament from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith beyond 

the stargroup of the Tress of Berenice towards the zodiacal 

sign of Leo. 

How did the centripetal remainer afford egress to the centrifugal 

departer? 

By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the 

hole of an unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the 

bow of the key and turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing 

a bolt from its staple, pulling inward spasmodically 

an obsolescent unhinged door and revealing an aperture for 

free egress and free ingress. 

How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation? 

Standing perpendicular at the same door and on different 

sides of its base, the lines of their valedictory arms, meeting 

at any point and forming any angle less than the sum of two 

right angles. 

What sound accompanied the union of their tangent, the disunion 

of their (respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands? 


683 

The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime 

of the bells in the church of Saint George. 

What echoes of that sound were by both and each heard? 

By Stephen: 

By Bloom: 

Liliata rutilantium. Turma circumdet. 

Iubilantium te virginum. Chorus excipiat. 

Heigho, heigho, 

Heigho, heigho. 

Where were the several members of the company which 

with Bloom that day at the bidding of that peal had travelled 

from Sandymount in the south to Glasnevin in the north? 

Martin Cunningham (in bed), Jack Power (in bed), Simon 

Dedalus (in bed), Ned Lambert (in bed), Tom Kernan (in 

bed), Joe Hynes (in bed), John Henry Menton (in bed), Bernard 

Corrigan (in bed), Patsy Dignam (in bed), Paddy

Dignam (in the grave). 

Alone, what did Bloom hear? 

The double reverberation of retreating feet on the 

heavenborn earth, the double vibration of a jew’s harp in the 

resonant lane. 

Alone, what did Bloom feel? 

The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below 

freezing point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade 

or Reaumur: the incipient intimations of proximate dawn. 

Of what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and 

lonechill remind him? 

Of companions now in various manners in different places 

defunct: Percy Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), 

Philip Gilligan (phthisis, Jervis Street hospital), Matthew F. 

Kane (accidental drowning, Dublin Bay), Philip Moisel 

(pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael Hart (phthisis, Mater 

Misericordiae hospital), Patrick Dignam (apoplexy, 

Sandymount). 


684 

What prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain? 

The disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of daybreak, 

the apparition of a new solar disk. 

Had he ever been a spectator of those phenomena? 

Once, in 1887, after a protracted performance of charades 

in the house of Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with 

patience the apparition of the diurnal phenomenon, seated 

on a wall, his gaze turned in the direction of Mizrach, the east. 

He remembered the initial paraphenomena? 

More active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical 

clocks at various points, avine music, the isolated tread of an 

early wayfarer, the visible diffusion of the light of an invisible 

luminous body, the first golden limb of the resurgent 

sun perceptible low on the horizon. 

Did he remain? 

With deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the gar-

den, reentering the passage, reclosing the door. With brief 

suspiration he reassumed the candle, reascended the stairs, 

reapproached the door of the front room, hallfloor, and reentered. 

What suddenly arrested his ingress? 

The right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium 

came into contact with a solid timber angle where, an 

infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later, a painful 

sensation was located in consequence of antecedent sensations 

transmitted and registered. 

Describe the alterations effected in the disposition of the 

articles of furniture. 

A sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated 

from opposite the door to the ingleside near the compactly 

furled Union Jack (an alteration which he had frequently 

intended to execute): the blue and white checker inlaid 

majolicatopped table had been placed opposite the door in 

the place vacated by the prune plush sofa: the walnut sideboard 

(a projecting angle of which had momentarily arrested 


685 

his ingress) had been moved from its position beside the door 

to a more advantageous but more perilous position in front 

of the door: two chairs had been moved from right and left 

of the ingleside to the position originally occupied by the 

blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped table. 

Describe them. 

One: a squat stuffed easychair, with stout arms extended 

and back slanted to the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had 

then upturned an irregular fringe of a rectangular rug and 

now displayed on its amply upholstered seat a centralised 

diffusing and diminishing discolouration. The other: a slender 

splayfoot chair of glossy cane curves, placed directly opposite 

the former, its frame from top to seat and from seat to 

base being varnished dark brown, its seat being a bright circle 

of white plaited rush. 

What significances attached to these two chairs? 

Significances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of 

circumstantial evidence, of testimonial supermanence.

What occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboard? 

A vertical piano (Cadby) with exposed keyboard, its closed 

coffin supporting a pair of long yellow ladies’ gloves and an 

emerald ashtray containing four consumed matches, a partly 

consumed cigarette and two discoloured ends of cigarettes, 

its musicrest supporting the music in the key of G natural 

for voice and piano of Love’s Old Sweet Song (words by G. 

Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Molloy, sung by Madam 

Antoinette Sterling) open at the last page with the final indications 

ad libitum, forte, pedal, animato, sustained pedal, 

ritirando, close. 

With what sensations did Bloom contemplate in rotation 

these objects? 

With strain, elevating a candlestick: with pain, feeling on 

his right temple a contused tumescence: with attention, focussing 

his gaze on a large dull passive and a slender bright 

active: with solicitation, bending and downturning the upturned 

rugfringe: with amusement, remembering Dr Malachi 

Mulligan’s scheme of colour containing the gradation of 


686 

green: with pleasure, repeating the words and antecedent act 

and perceiving through various channels of internal sensibility 

the consequent and concomitant tepid pleasant diffusion 

of gradual discolouration. 

His next proceeding? 

From an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted 

a black diminutive cone, one inch in height, placed it on its 

circular base on a small tin plate, placed his candlestick on 

the right corner of the mantelpiece, produced from his waistcoat 

a folded page of prospectus (illustrated) entitled 

Agendath Netaim, unfolded the same, examined it superficially, 

rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the 

candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone 

till the latter reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder 

in the basin of the candlestick disposing its unconsumed 

part in such a manner as to facilitate total combustion. 

What followed this operation? 

The truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano 

emitted a vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aro-

matic oriental incense. 

What homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood 

on the mantelpiece? 

A timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the 

hour of 4.46 a.m. on the 21 March 1896, matrimonial gift 

of Matthew Dillon: a dwarf tree of glacial arborescence under 

a transparent bellshade, matrimonial gift of Luke and 

Caroline Doyle: an embalmed owl, matrimonial gift of Alderman 

John Hooper. 

What interchanges of looks took place between these three 

objects and Bloom? 

In the mirror of the giltbordered pierglass the undecorated 

back of the dwarf tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed 

owl. Before the mirror the matrimonial gift of Alderman 

John Hooper with a clear melancholy wise bright 

motionless compassionate gaze regarded Bloom while Bloom 

with obscure tranquil profound motionless compassionated 

gaze regarded the matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline 

Doyle. 


687 

What composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then 

attracted his attention? 

The image of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) 

man. 

Why solitary (ipsorelative)? 

Brothers and sisters had he none. 

Yet that man’s father was his grandfather’s son. 

Why mutable (aliorelative)? 

From infancy to maturity he had resembled his maternal 

procreatrix. From maturity to senility he would increasingly 

resemble his paternal procreator. 

What final visual impression was communicated to him 

by the mirror? 

The optical reflection of several inverted volumes improperly 

arranged and not in the order of their common letters 

with scintillating titles on the two bookshelves opposite.

Catalogue these books. 

Thom’s Dublin Postg Office Directory, 1886. 

Denis Florence M’Carthy’s Poetical Works (copper 

beechleaf bookmark at p. 5). 

Shakespeare’s Works (dark crimson morocco, 

goldtooled). 

The Useful Ready Reckoner (brown cloth). 

The Secret History of the Court of Charles II (red 

cloth, tooled binding). 

The Child’s Guide (blue cloth). 

The Beauties of Killarney (wrappers). 

When We Were Boys by William O’Brien M. P. 

(green cloth, slightly faded, envelope bookmark 

at p. 217). 

Thoughts from Spinoza (maroon leather). 

The Story of the Heavens by Sir Robert Ball (blue 

cloth). 

Ellis’s Theree Trips to Madagascar (brown cloth, 

title obliterated). 

The Stark-Munro Letters by A. Conan Doyle, 

property of the City of Dublin Public Library, 

106 Capel street, lent 21 May (Whitsun Eve) 

1904, due 4 June 1904, 13 days overdue (black 


688 

cloth binding, bearing white letternumber 

ticket). 

Voyages in China by “Viator” (recovered with 

brown paper, red ink title). 

Philosophy of the Talmud (sewn pamphlet). 

Lockhart’s Life of Napoleon (cover wanting, 

marginal annotations, minimising victories, 

aggrandising defeats of the protagonist). 

Soll und Haben by Gustav Freytag (black boards, 

Gothic characters, cigarette coupon bookmark 

at p. 24). 

Hozier’s History of the Russo-Turkish War (brown 

cloth, a volumes, with gummed label, Garrison 

Library, Governor’s Parade, Gibraltar, on 

verso of cover). 

Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland by William 

Allingham (second edition, green cloth, gilt 

trefoil design, previous owner’s name on recto 

of flyleaf erased). 

A Handbook of Astronomy (cover, brown leather, 

detached, S plates, antique letterpress long 

primer, author’s footnotes nonpareil, marginal 

clues brevier, captions small pica). 

The Hidden Life of Christ (black boards). 

In the Track of the Sun (yellow cloth, titlepage

missing, recurrent title intestation). 

Physical Strength and How To Obtain It by Eugen 

Sandow (red cloth). 

Short but Yet Plain Elements of Geometry written 

in French by F. Ignat. Pardies and rendered 

into English by John Harris D. D. London, 

printed for R. Knaplock at the Bifhop’s Head, 

MDCCXI, with dedicatory epiftle to his 

worthy friend Charles Cox, efquire, Member 

of Parliament for the burgh of Southwark and 

having ink calligraphed statement on the 

flyleaf certifying that the book was the property 

of Michael Gallagher, dated this 10th day 

of May 1822 and requefting the perfon who 

should find it, if the book should be loft or go 

aftray, to reftore it to Michael Gallagher, 

carpenter, Dufery Gate, Ennifcorthy, county 

Wicklow, the fineft place in the world. 

What reflections occupied his mind during the process of 

reversion of the inverted volumes? 

The necessity of order, a place for everything and everything 

in its place: the deficient appreciation of literature possessed 

by females: the incongruity of an apple incuneated in 


689 

a tumbler and of an umbrella inclined in a closestool: the 

insecurity of hiding any secret document behind, beneath or 

between the pages of a book. 

Which volume was the largest in bulk? 

Hozier’s History of the Russo-Turkish War. 

What among other data did the second volume of the work 

in question contain? 

The name of a decisive battle (forgotten), frequently remembered 

by a decisive officer, major Brian Cooper Tweedy 

(remembered). 

Why, firstly and secondly, did he not consult the work in 

question? 

Firstly, in order to exercise mnemotechnic: secondly, because 

after an interval of amnesia, when, seated at the central 

table, about to consult the work in question, he remembered 

by mnemotechnic the name of the military engagement, 

Plevna.

What caused him consolation in his sitting posture? 

The candour, nudity, pose, tranquility, youth, grace, sex, 

counsel of a statue erect in the centre of the table, an image 

of Narcissus purchased by auction from P. A. Wren, 9 

Bachelor’s Walk. 

What caused him irritation in his sitting posture? 

Inhibitory pressure of collar (size 17) and waistcoat (5 buttons), 

two articles of clothing superfluous in the costume of 

mature males and inelastic to alterations of mass by expansion. 

How was the irritation allayed? 

He removed his collar, with contained black necktie and 

collapsible stud, from his neck to a position on the left of the 

table. He unbuttoned successively in reversed direction waistcoat, 

trousers, shirt and vest along the medial line of irregular 

incrispated black hairs extending in triangular convergence 

from the pelvic basin over the circumference of the 

abdomen and umbilicular fossicle along the medial line of 

nodes to the intersection of the sixth pectoral vertebrae, 


690 

thence produced both ways at right angles and terminating 

in circles described about two equidistant points, right and 

left, on the summits of the mammary prominences. He 

unbraced successively each of six minus one braced trouser 

buttons, arranged in pairs, of which one incomplete. 

What involuntary actions followed? 

He compressed between 2 fingers the flesh circumjacent 

to a cicatrice in the left infracostal region below the diaphragm 

resulting from a sting inflicted 2 weeks and 3 days previously 

(23 May 1904) by a bee. He scratched imprecisely with 

his right hand, though insensible of prurition, various points 

and surfaces of his partly exposed, wholly abluted skin. He 

inserted his left hand into the left lower pocket of his waistcoat 

and extracted and replaced a silver coin (I shilling), placed 

there (presumably) on the occasion (17 October 1903) of 

the interment of Mrs Emily Sinico, Sydney Parade. 

Compile the budget for 16 June 1904.

Debit 

£. s. d. 

1 Pork Kidney 0. 0. 3 

1 Copy Freeman’s Journal 0. 0. 1 

1 Bath and gratification 0. 1. 6 

Tramfare 0. 0. 1 

1 In Memoriam Patrick 

Dignam 0. 5. 0 

2 Banbury cakes 0. 0. 1 

1 Lunch 0. 0. 7 

1 Renewal fee for book 0. 1. 0 

1 Packet notepaper and 

envelopes 0. 0. 2 

1 Dinner and gratification 0. 2. 0 

1 Postal order and stamp 0. 2. 8 

Tramfare 0. 0. 1 

1 Pig’s Foot 0. 0. 4 

1 Sheep’s Trotter 0. 0. 3 

1 Cake Fry’s plain chocolate 

0. 0. 1 

1 Square soda bread 0. 0. 4 

1 Coffee and bun 0. 0. 4 

Loan (Stephen Dedalus) 

refunded 1. 7. 0 

BALANCE 0. 17. 5 

£.2.19. 3 


691 

Credits 

£. s. d. 

Cash in hand 0. 4. 9 

Commission recd. 

Freeman’s Journal 1. 7. 6 

Loan (Stephen Dedalus) 1. 7. 0 

£. 2.19. 3

Did the process of divestiture continue? 

Sensible of a benignant persistent ache in his footsoles he 

extended his foot to one side and observed the creases, protuberances 

and salient points caused by foot pressure in the 

course of walking repeatedly in several different directions, 

then, inclined, he disnoded the laceknots, unhooked and 

loosened the laces, took off each of his two boots for the 

second time, detached the partially moistened right sock 

through the fore part of which the nail of his great toe had 

again effracted, raised his right foot and, having unhooked a 

purple elastic sock suspender, took off his right sock, placed 

his unclothed right foot on the margin of the seat of his 

chair, picked at and gently lacerated the protruding part of 

the great toenail, raised the part lacerated to his nostrils and 

inhaled the odour of the quick, then, with satisfaction, threw 

away the lacerated ungual fragment. 

Why with satisfaction? 

Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours 

inhaled of other ungual fragments, picked and lacerated by 

Master Bloom, pupil of Mrs Ellis’s juvenile school, patiently 


692 

each night in the act of brief genuflection and nocturnal 

prayer and ambitious meditation. 

In what ultimate ambition had all concurrent and consecutive 

ambitions now coalesced? 

Not to inherit by right of primogeniture, gavelkind or borough 

English, or possess in perpetuity an extensive demesne 

of a sufficient number of acres, roods and perches, statute 

land measure (valuation 42 pounds), of grazing turbary surrounding 

a baronial hall with gatelodge and carriage drive 

nor, on the other hand, a terracehouse or semidetached villa, 

described as Rus in Urbe or Qui si Sana, but to purchase by 

private treaty in fee simple a thatched bungalowshaped 2 

storey dwellinghouse of southerly aspect, surmounted by vane 

and lightning conductor, connected with the earth, with 

porch covered by parasitic plants (ivy or Virginia creeper), 

halldoor, olive green, with smart carriage finish and neat 

doorbrasses, stucco front with gilt tracery at eaves and gable, 

rising, if possible, upon a gentle eminence with agreeable 

prospect from balcony with stone pillar parapet over unoccupied 

and unoccupyable interjacent pastures and standing

in 5 or 6 acres of its own ground, at such a distance from the 

nearest public thoroughfare as to render its houselights visible 

at night above and through a quickset hornbeam hedge 

of topiary cutting, situate at a given point not less than 1 

statute mile from the periphery of the metropolis, within a 

time limit of not more than 15 minutes from tram or train 

line (e.g., Dundrum, south, or Sutton, north, both localities 

equally reported by trial to resemble the terrestrial poles in 

being favourable climates for phthisical subjects), the premises 

to be held under feefarm grant, lease 999 years, the 

messuage to consist of 1 drawingroom with baywindow (2 

lancets), thermometer affixed, 1 sittingroom, 4 bedrooms, 2 

servants’ rooms, tiled kitchen with close range and scullery, 

lounge hall fitted with linen wallpresses, fumed oak sectional 

bookcase containing the Encyclopaedia Britannica and New 

Century Dictionary, transverse obsolete medieval and oriental 

weapons, dinner gong, alabaster lamp, bowl pendant, 

vulcanite automatic telephone receiver with adjacent directory, 

handtufted Axminster carpet with cream ground and 

trellis border, loo table with pillar and claw legs, hearth with 

massive firebrasses and ormolu mantel chronometer clock, 


693 

guaranteed timekeeper with cathedral chime, barometer with 

hygrographic chart, comfortable lounge settees and corner 

fitments, upholstered in ruby plush with good springing and 

sunk centre, three banner Japanese screen and cuspidors (club 

style, rich winecoloured leather, gloss renewable with a minimum 

of labour by use of linseed oil and vinegar) and 

pyramidically prismatic central chandelier lustre, bentwood 

perch with fingertame parrot (expurgated language), embossed 

mural paper at 10/- per dozen with transverse swags 

of carmine floral design and top crown frieze, staircase, three 

continuous flights at successive right angles, of varnished 

cleargrained oak, treads and risers, newel, balusters and handrail, 

with steppedup panel dado, dressed with camphorated 

wax: bathroom, hot and cold supply, reclining and shower: 

water closet on mezzanine provided with opaque singlepane 

oblong window, tipup seat, bracket lamp, brass tierod and 

brace, armrests, footstool and artistic oleograph on inner face 

of door: ditto, plain: servants’ apartments with separate sanitary 

and hygienic necessaries for cook, general and 

betweenmaid (salary, rising by biennial unearned increments 

of 2 pounds, with comprehensive fidelity insurance, annual

onus (1 pound) and retiring allowance (based on the 65 

system) after 30 years’ service), pantry, buttery, larder, refrigerator, 

outoffices, coal and wood cellarage with winebin (still 

and sparkling vintages) for distinguished guests, if entertained 

to dinner (evening dress), carbon monoxide gas supply 

throughout. 

What additional attractions might the grounds contain? 

As addenda, a tennis and fives court, a shrubbery, a glass 

summerhouse with tropical palms, equipped in the best botanical 

manner, a rockery with waterspray, a beehive arranged 

on humane principles, oval flowerbeds in rectangular 

grassplots set with eccentric ellipses of scarlet and chrome 

tulips, blue scillas, crocuses, polyanthus, sweet William, sweet 

pea, lily of the valley (bulbs obtainable from sir James W. 

Mackey (Limited) wholesale and retail seed and bulb merchants 

and nurserymen, agents for chemical manures, 23 

Sackville street, upper), an orchard, kitchen garden and vinery 

protected against illegal trespassers by glasstopped mural 

enclosures, a lumbershed with padlock for various inventoried 

implements. 


694 

As? 

Eeltraps, lobsterpots, fishingrods, hatchet, steelyard, grindstone, 

clodcrusher, swatheturner, carriagesack, telescope ladder, 

10 tooth rake, washing clogs, haytedder, tumbling rake, 

billhook, paintpot, brush, hoe and so on. 

What improvements might be subsequently introduced? 

A rabbitry and fowlrun, a dovecote, a botanical conservatory, 

2 hammocks (lady’s and gentleman’s), a sundial shaded 

and sheltered by laburnum or lilac trees, an exotically harmonically 

accorded Japanese tinkle gatebell affixed to left lateral 

gatepost, a capacious waterbutt, a lawnmower with side 

delivery and grassbox, a lawnsprinkler with hydraulic hose. 

What facilities of transit were desirable? 

When citybound frequent connection by train or tram from 

their respective intermediate station or terminal. When 

countrybound velocipedes, a chainless freewheel roadster 

cycle with side basketcar attached, or draught conveyance, a 

donkey with wicker trap or smart phaeton with good work-

ing solidungular cob (roan gelding, 14 h). 

What might be the name of this erigible or erected residence? 

Bloom Cottage. Saint Leopold’s. Flowerville. 

Could Bloom of 7 Eccles street foresee Bloom of 

Flowerville? 

In loose allwool garments with Harris tweed cap, price 8/ 

6, and useful garden boots with elastic gussets and 

wateringcan, planting aligned young firtrees, syringing, pruning, 

staking, sowing hayseed, trundling a weedladen wheelbarrow 

without excessive fatigue at sunset amid the scent of 

newmown hay, ameliorating the soil, multiplying wisdom, 

achieving longevity. 

What syllabus of intellectual pursuits was simultaneously 

possible? 

Snapshot photography, comparative study of religions, folklore 

relative to various amatory and superstitious practices, 

contemplation of the celestial constellations. 


695 

What lighter recreations? 

Outdoor: garden and fieldwork, cycling on level 

macadamised causeways ascents of moderately high hills, 

natation in secluded fresh water and unmolested river boating 

in secure wherry or light curricle with kedge anchor on 

reaches free from weirs and rapids (period of estivation), 

vespertinal perambulation or equestrian circumprocession 

with inspection of sterile landscape and contrastingly agreeable 

cottagers’ fires of smoking peat turves (period of hibernation). 

Indoor: discussion in tepid security of unsolved historical 

and criminal problems: lecture of unexpurgated exotic 

erotic masterpieces: house carpentry with toolbox containing 

hammer, awl nails, screws, tintacks, gimlet, tweezers, 

bullnose plane and turnscrew. 

Might he become a gentleman farmer of field produce and 

live stock? 

Not impossibly, with 1 or 2 stripper cows, 1 pike of upland 

hay and requisite farming implements, e.g., an end-toend 

churn, a turnip pulper etc.

What would be his civic functions and social status among 

the county families and landed gentry? 

Arranged successively in ascending powers of hierarchical 

order, that of gardener, groundsman, cultivator, breeder, and 

at the zenith of his career, resident magistrate or justice of 

the peace with a family crest and coat of arms and appropriate 

classical motto (Semper paratus), duly recorded in the 

court directory (Bloom, Leopold P., M. P., P. C., K. P., L. L. 

D. honoris causa, Bloomville, Dundrum) and mentioned in 

court and fashionable intelligence (Mr and Mrs Leopold 

Bloom have left Kingstown for England). 

What course of action did he outline for himself in such 

capacity? 

A course that lay between undue clemency and excessive 

rigour: the dispensation in a heterogeneous society of arbitrary 

classes, incessantly rearranged in terms of greater and 

lesser social inequality, of unbiassed homogeneous indisputable 

justice, tempered with mitigants of the widest possible 

latitude but exactable to the uttermost farthing with confis- 


696 

cation of estate, real and personal, to the crown. Loyal to the 

highest constituted power in the land, actuated by an innate 

love of rectitude his aims would be the strict maintenance of 

public order, the repression of many abuses though not of all 

simultaneously (every measure of reform or retrenchment 

being a preliminary solution to be contained by fluxion in 

the final solution), the upholding of the letter of the law 

(common, statute and law merchant) against all traversers in 

covin and trespassers acting in contravention of bylaws and 

regulations, all resuscitators (by trespass and petty larceny of 

kindlings) of venville rights, obsolete by desuetude, all orotund 

instigators of international persecution, all perpetuators 

of international animosities, all menial molestors of domestic 

conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of domestic connubiality. 

Prove that he had loved rectitude from his earliest youth. 

To Master Percy Apjohn at High School in 1880 he had 

divulged his disbelief in the tenets of the Irish (protestant) 

church (to which his father Rudolf Virag (later Rudolph 

Bloom) had been converted from the Israelitic faith and com-

munion in 1865 by the Society for promoting Christianity 

among the jews) subsequently abjured by him in favour of 

Roman catholicism at the epoch of and with a view to his 

matrimony in 1888. To Daniel Magrane and Francis Wade 

in 1882 during a juvenile friendship (terminated by the premature 

emigration of the former) he had advocated during 

nocturnal perambulations the political theory of colonial (e.g. 

Canadian) expansion and the evolutionary theories of Charles 

Darwin, expounded in The Descent of Man and The Origin 

of Species. In 1885 he had publicly expressed his adherence 

to the collective and national economic programme advocated 

by James Fintan Lalor, John Fisher Murray, John 

Mitchel, J. F. X. O’Brien and others, the agrarian policy of 

Michael Davitt, the constitutional agitation of Charles 

Stewart Parnell (M. P. for Cork City), the programme of 

peace, retrenchment and reform of William Ewart Gladstone 

(M. P. for Midlothian, N. B.) and, in support of his political 

convictions, had climbed up into a secure position amid the 

ramifications of a tree on Northumberland road to see the 

entrance (2 February 1888) into the capital of a demonstrative 

torchlight procession of 20,000 torchbearers, divided 


697 

into 120 trade corporations, bearing 2000 torches in escort 

of the marquess of Ripon and (honest) John Morley. 

How much and how did he propose to pay for this country 

residence? 

As per prospectus of the Industrious Foreign Acclimatised 

Nationalised Friendly Stateaided Building Society (incorporated 

1874), a maximum of 60 pounds per annum, being 1/ 

6 of an assured income, derived from giltedged securities, 

representing at 5 percent simple interest on capital of 1200 

pounds (estimate of price at 20 years’ purchase), of which 

to be paid on acquisition and the balance in the form of 

annual rent, viz. 800 pounds plus 2 1/2 percent interest on 

the same, repayable quarterly in equal annual instalments 

until extinction by amortisation of loan advanced for purchase 

within a period of 20 years, amounting to an annual 

rental of 64 pounds, headrent included, the titledeeds to remain 

in possession of the lender or lenders with a saving 

clause envisaging forced sale, foreclosure and mutual compensation 

in the event of protracted failure to pay the terms 

assigned, otherwise the messuage to become the absolute

property of the tenant occupier upon expiry of the period of 

years stipulated. 

What rapid but insecure means to opulence might facilitate 

immediate purchase? 

A private wireless telegraph which would transmit by dot 

and dash system the result of a national equine handicap 

(flat or steeplechase) of I or more miles and furlongs won by 

an outsider at odds of 50 to 1 at 3 hr 8 m p.m. at Ascot 

(Greenwich time), the message being received and available 

for betting purposes in Dublin at 2.59 p.m. (Dunsink time). 

The unexpected discovery of an object of great monetary 

value (precious stone, valuable adhesive or impressed postage 

stamps (7 schilling, mauve, imperforate, Hamburg, 1866: 

4 pence, rose, blue paper, perforate, Great Britain, 1855: 1 

franc, stone, official, rouletted, diagonal surcharge, Luxemburg, 

1878), antique dynastical ring, unique relic) in unusual 

repositories or by unusual means: from the air (dropped 

by an eagle in flight), by fire (amid the carbonised remains 

of an incendiated edifice), in the sea (amid flotsam, jetsam, 

lagan and derelict), on earth (in the gizzard of a comestible 


698 

fowl). A Spanish prisoner’s donation of a distant treasure of 

valuables or specie or bullion lodged with a solvent banking 

corporation loo years previously at 5 percent compound interest 

of the collective worth of 5,000,000 pounds stg (five 

million pounds sterling). A contract with an inconsiderate 

contractee for the delivery of 32 consignments of some given 

commodity in consideration of cash payment on delivery 

per delivery at the initial rate of 1/4d to be increased constantly 

in the geometrical progression of 2 (1/4d, 1/2d, 1d, 

2d, 4d, 8d, 1s 4d, 2s 8d to 32 terms). A prepared scheme 

based on a study of the laws of probability to break the bank 

at Monte Carlo. A solution of the secular problem of the 

quadrature of the circle, government premium 1,000,000 

pounds sterling. 

Was vast wealth acquirable through industrial channels? 

The reclamation of dunams of waste arenary soil, proposed 

in the prospectus of Agendath Netaim, Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, 

W. 15, by the cultivation of orange plantations and 

melonfields and reafforestation. The utilisation of waste paper, 

fells of sewer rodents, human excrement possessing

chemical properties, in view of the vast production of the 

first, vast number of the second and immense quantity of 

the third, every normal human being of average vitality and 

appetite producing annually, cancelling byproducts of water, 

a sum total of 80 lbs. (mixed animal and vegetable diet), 

to be multiplied by 4,386,035, the total population of Ireland 

according to census returns of 1901. 

Were there schemes of wider scope? 

A scheme to be formulated and submitted for approval to 

the harbour commissioners for the exploitation of white coal 

(hydraulic power), obtained by hydroelectric plant at peak 

of tide at Dublin bar or at head of water at Poulaphouca or 

Powerscourt or catchment basins of main streams for the 

economic production of 500,000 W. H. P. of electricity. A 

scheme to enclose the peninsular delta of the North Bull at 

Dollymount and erect on the space of the foreland, used for 

golf links and rifle ranges, an asphalted esplanade with casinos, 

booths, shooting galleries, hotels, boardinghouses, 

readingrooms, establishments for mixed bathing. A scheme 

for the use of dogvans and goatvans for the delivery of early 


699 

morning milk. A scheme for the development of Irish tourist 

traffic in and around Dublin by means of petrolpropelled 

riverboats, plying in the fluvial fairway between Island bridge 

and Ringsend, charabancs, narrow gauge local railways, and 

pleasure steamers for coastwise navigation (10/- per person 

per day, guide (trilingual) included). A scheme for the 

repristination of passenger and goods traffics over Irish waterways, 

when freed from weedbeds. A scheme to connect 

by tramline the Cattle Market (North Circular road and 

Prussia street) with the quays (Sheriff street, lower, and East 

Wall), parallel with the Link line railway laid (in conjunction 

with the Great Southern and Western railway line) between 

the cattle park, Liffey junction, and terminus of Midland 

Great Western Railway 43 to 45 North Wall, in proximity 

to the terminal stations or Dublin branches of Great 

Central Railway, Midland Railway of England, City of 

Dublin Steam Packet Company, Lancashire and Yorkshire 

Railway Company, Dublin and Glasgow Steam Packet Company, 

Glasgow, Dublin and Londonderry Steam Packet Company 

(Laird line), British and Irish Steam Packet Company, 

Dublin and Morecambe Steamers, London and North West-

ern Railway Company, Dublin Port and Docks Board Landing 

Sheds and transit sheds of Palgrave, Murphy and Company, 

steamship owners, agents for steamers from Mediterranean, 

Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Holland and 

for Liverpool Underwriters’ Association, the cost of acquired 

rolling stock for animal transport and of additional mileage 

operated by the Dublin United Tramways Company, limited, 

to be covered by graziers’ fees. 

Positing what protasis would the contraction for such several 

schemes become a natural and necessary apodosis? 

Given a guarantee equal to the sum sought, the support, 

by deed of gift and transfer vouchers during donor’s lifetime 

or by bequest after donor’s painless extinction, of eminent 

financiers (Blum Pasha, Rothschild Guggenheim, Hirsch, 

Montefiore, Morgan, Rockefeller) possessing fortunes in 6 

figures, amassed during a successful life, and joining capital 

with opportunity the thing required was done. 

What eventuality would render him independent of such 

wealth? 


700 

The independent discovery of a goldseam of inexhaustible 

ore. 

For what reason did he meditate on schemes so difficult of 

realisation? 

It was one of his axioms that similar meditations or the 

automatic relation to himself of a narrative concerning himself 

or tranquil recollection of the past when practised habitually 

before retiring for the night alleviated fatigue and 

produced as a result sound repose and renovated vitality. 

His justifications? 

As a physicist he had learned that of the 70 years of complete 

human life at least 2/7, viz. 20 years are passed in sleep. 

As a philosopher he knew that at the termination of any 

allotted life only an infinitesimal part of any person’s desires 

has been realised. As a physiologist he believed in the artificial 

placation of malignant agencies chiefly operative during 

somnolence. 

What did he fear?

The committal of homicide or suicide during sleep by an 

aberration of the light of reason, the incommensurable categorical 

intelligence situated in the cerebral convolutions. 

What were habitually his final meditations? 

Of some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to 

stop in wonder, a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions 

excluded, reduced to its simplest and most efficient 

terms not exceeding the span of casual vision and congruous 

with the velocity of modern life. 

What did the first drawer unlocked contain? 

A Vere Foster’s handwriting copybook, property of Milly 

(Millicent) Bloom, certain pages of which bore diagram drawings, 

marked Papli, which showed a large globular head with 

5 hairs erect, 2 eyes in profile, the trunk full front with 3 

large buttons, 1 triangular foot: 2 fading photographs of 

queen Alexandra of England and of Maud Branscombe, actress 

and professional beauty: a Yuletide card, bearing on it a 

pictorial representation of a parasitic plant, the legend 

Mizpah, the date Xmas 1892, the name of the senders: from 


701 

Mr + Mrs M. Comerford, the versicle: May this Yuletide bring 

to thee, Joy and peace and welcome glee: a butt of red partly 

liquefied sealing wax, obtained from the stores department 

of Messrs Hely’s, Ltd., 89, 90, and 91 Dame street: a box 

containing the remainder of a gross of gilt “J” pennibs, obtained 

from same department of same firm: an old sandglass 

which rolled containing sand which rolled: a sealed prophecy 

(never unsealed) written by Leopold Bloom in 1886 concerning 

the consequences of the passing into law of William 

Ewart Gladstone’s Home Rule bill of 1886 (never passed 

into law): a bazaar ticket, no 2004, of S. Kevin’s Charity 

Fair, price 6d, 100 prizes: an infantile epistle, dated, small 

em monday, reading: capital pee Papli comma capital aitch 

How are you note of interrogation capital eye I am very well 

full stop new paragraph signature with flourishes capital em 

Milly no stop: a cameo brooch, property of Ellen Bloom 

(born Higgins), deceased: a cameo scarfpin, property of 

Rudolph Bloom (born Virag), deceased: 3 typewritten letters, 

addressee, Henry Flower, c/o. P. O. Westland Row, addresser, 

Martha Clifford, c/o. P. O. Dolphin’s Barn: the transliterated 

name and address of the addresser of the 3 letters in

eversed alphabetic boustrophedonic punctated quadrilinear 

cryptogram (vowels suppressed) N. IGS./WI. UU. OX/W. 

OKS. MH/Y. IM: a press cutting from an English weekly 

periodical Modern Society, subject corporal chastisement in 

girls’ schools: a pink ribbon which had festooned an Easter 

egg in the year 1899: two partly uncoiled rubber preservatives 

with reserve pockets, purchased by post from Box 32, 

P. O., Charing Cross, London, W. C.: 1 pack of 1 dozen 

creamlaid envelopes and feintruled notepaper, watermarked, 

now reduced by 3: some assorted Austrian-Hungarian coins: 

2 coupons of the Royal and Privileged Hungarian Lottery: a 

lowpower magnifying glass: 2 erotic photocards showing a) 

buccal coition between nude senorita (rere presentation, superior 

position) and nude torero (fore presentation, inferior 

position) b) anal violation by male religious (fully clothed, 

eyes abject) of female religious (partly clothed, eyes direct), 

purchased by post from Box 32, P. O., Charing Cross, London, 

W. C.: a press cutting of recipe for renovation of old 

tan boots: a Id adhesive stamp, lavender, of the reign of Queen 

Victoria: a chart of the measurements of Leopold Bloom 

compiled before, during and after 2 months’ consecutive use 


702 

of Sandow-Whiteley’s pulley exerciser (men’s 15/-, athlete’s 

20/-) viz. chest 28 in and 29 1/2 in, biceps 9 in and 10 in, 

forearm 8 1/2 in and 9 in, thigh 10 in and 12 in, calf 11 in 

and 12 in: 1 prospectus of The Wonderworker, the world’s 

greatest remedy for rectal complaints, direct from Wonderworker, 

Coventry House, South Place, London E C, addressed 

(erroneously) to Mrs L. Bloom with brief accompanying 

note commencing (erroneously): Dear Madam. 

Quote the textual terms in which the prospectus claimed 

advantages for this thaumaturgic remedy. 

It heals and soothes while you sleep, in case of trouble in 

breaking wind, assists nature in the most formidable way, 

insuring instant relief in discharge of gases, keeping parts 

clean and free natural action, an initial outlay of 7/6 making 

a new man of you and life worth living. Ladies find Wonderworker 

especially useful, a pleasant surprise when they note 

delightful result like a cool drink of fresh spring water on a 

sultry summer’s day. Recommend it to your lady and gentlemen 

friends, lasts a lifetime. Insert long round end. Wonderworker.

Were there testimonials? 

Numerous. From clergyman, British naval officer, 

wellknown author, city man, hospital nurse, lady, mother of 

five, absentminded beggar. 

How did absentminded beggar’s concluding testimonial 

conclude? 

What a pity the government did not supply our men with 

wonderworkers during the South African campaign! What a 

relief it would have been! 

What object did Bloom add to this collection of objects? 

A 4th typewritten letter received by Henry Flower (let H. 

F. be L. B.) from Martha Clifford (find M. C.). 

What pleasant reflection accompanied this action? 

The reflection that, apart from the letter in question, his 

magnetic face, form and address had been favourably received 

during the course of the preceding day by a wife (Mrs 

Josephine Breen, born Josie Powell), a nurse, Miss Callan 


703 

(Christian name unknown), a maid, Gertrude (Gerty, family 

name unknown). 

What possibility suggested itself? 

The possibility of exercising virile power of fascination in 

the not immediate future after an expensive repast in a private 

apartment in the company of an elegant courtesan, of 

corporal beauty, moderately mercenary, variously instructed, 

a lady by origin. 

What did the 2nd drawer contain? 

Documents: the birth certificate of Leopold Paula Bloom: 

an endowment assurance policy of 500 pounds in the Scottish 

Widows’ Assurance Society, intestated Millicent (Milly) 

Bloom, coming into force at 25 years as with profit policy of 

430 pounds, 462/10/0 and 500 pounds at 60 years or death, 

65 years or death and death, respectively, or with profit policy 

(paidup) of 299/10/0 together with cash payment of 133/ 

10/0, at option: a bank passbook issued by the Ulster Bank, 

College Green branch showing statement of a/c for halfyear 

ending 31 December 1903, balance in depositor’s favour:

18/14/6 (eighteen pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence, 

sterling), net personalty: certificate of possession of 900 

pounds, Canadian 4 percent (inscribed) government stock 

(free of stamp duty): dockets of the Catholic Cemeteries’ 

(Glasnevin) Committee, relative to a graveplot purchased: a 

local press cutting concerning change of name by deedpoll. 

Quote the textual terms of this notice. 

I, Rudolph Virag, now resident at no 52 Clanbrassil street, 

Dublin, formerly of Szombathely in the kingdom of Hungary, 

hereby give notice that I have assumed and intend henceforth 

upon all occasions and at all times to be known by the 

name of Rudolph Bloom. 

What other objects relative to Rudolph Bloom (born Virag) 

were in the 2nd drawer? 

An indistinct daguerreotype of Rudolf Virag and his father 

Leopold Virag executed in the year 1852 in the portrait 

atelier of their (respectively) 1st and 2nd cousin, Stefan Virag 

of Szesfehervar, Hungary. An ancient haggadah book in which 

a pair of hornrimmed convex spectacles inserted marked the 


704 

passage of thanksgiving in the ritual prayers for Pessach (Passover): 

a photocard of the Queen’s Hotel, Ennis, proprietor, 

Rudolph Bloom: an envelope addressed: To my Dear Son 

Leopold. 

What fractions of phrases did the lecture of those five whole 

words evoke? 

Tomorrow will be a week that I received … it is no use 

Leopold to be … with your dear mother … that is not more 

to stand … to her … all for me is out … be kind to Athos, 

Leopold … my dear son … always … of me … das Herz … 

Gott … dein … 

What reminiscences of a human subject suffering from 

progressive melancholia did these objects evoke in Bloom? 

An old man, widower, unkempt of hair, in bed, with head 

covered, sighing: an infirm dog, Athos: aconite, resorted to 

by increasing doses of grains and scruples as a palliative of 

recrudescent neuralgia: the face in death of a septuagenarian, 

suicide by poison.

Why did Bloom experience a sentiment of remorse? 

Because in immature impatience he had treated with disrespect 

certain beliefs and practices. 

As? 

The prohibition of the use of fleshmeat and milk at one 

meal: the hebdomadary symposium of incoordinately abstract, 

perfervidly concrete mercantile coexreligionist 

excompatriots: the circumcision of male infants: the supernatural 

character of Judaic scripture: the ineffability of the 

tetragrammaton: the sanctity of the sabbath. 

How did these beliefs and practices now appear to him? 

Not more rational than they had then appeared, not less 

rational than other beliefs and practices now appeared. 

What first reminiscence had he of Rudolph Bloom (deceased)? 

Rudolph Bloom (deceased) narrated to his son Leopold 

Bloom (aged 6) a retrospective arrangement of migrations 

and settlements in and between Dublin, London, Florence, 


705 

Milan, Vienna, Budapest, Szombathely with statements of 

satisfaction (his grandfather having seen Maria Theresia, 

empress of Austria, queen of Hungary), with commercial 

advice (having taken care of pence, the pounds having taken 

care of themselves). Leopold Bloom (aged 6) had accompanied 

these narrations by constant consultation of a geographical 

map of Europe (political) and by suggestions for the establishment 

of affiliated business premises in the various centres 

mentioned. 

Had time equally but differently obliterated the memory 

of these migrations in narrator and listener? 

In narrator by the access of years and in consequence of 

the use of narcotic toxin: in listener by the access of years 

and in consequence of the action of distraction upon vicarious 

experiences. 

What idiosyncracies of the narrator were concomitant products 

of amnesia? 

Occasionally he ate without having previously removed his 

hat. Occasionally he drank voraciously the juice of goose-

erry fool from an inclined plate. Occasionally he removed 

from his lips the traces of food by means of a lacerated envelope 

or other accessible fragment of paper. 

What two phenomena of senescence were more frequent? 

The myopic digital calculation of coins, eructation consequent 

upon repletion. 

What object offered partial consolation for these reminiscences? 

The endowment policy, the bank passbook, the certificate 

of the possession of scrip. 

Reduce Bloom by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune, 

from which these supports protected him, and by elimination 

of all positive values to a negligible negative irrational 

unreal quantity. 

Successively, in descending helotic order: Poverty: that of 

the outdoor hawker of imitation jewellery, the dun for the 

recovery of bad and doubtful debts, the poor rate and deputy 

cess collector. Mendicancy: that of the fraudulent bankrupt 


706 

with negligible assets paying 1s. 4d. in the pound, 

sandwichman, distributor of throwaways, nocturnal vagrant, 

insinuating sycophant, maimed sailor, blind stripling, superannuated 

bailiffs man, marfeast, lickplate, spoilsport, 

pickthank, eccentric public laughingstock seated on bench 

of public park under discarded perforated umbrella. Destitution: 

the inmate of Old Man’s House (Royal Hospital) 

Kilmainham, the inmate of Simpson’s Hospital for reduced 

but respectable men permanently disabled by gout or want 

of sight. Nadir of misery: the aged impotent disfranchised 

ratesupported moribund lunatic pauper. 

With which attendant indignities? 

The unsympathetic indifference of previously amiable females, 

the contempt of muscular males, the acceptance of 

fragments of bread, the simulated ignorance of casual acquaintances, 

the latration of illegitimate unlicensed vagabond 

dogs, the infantile discharge of decomposed vegetable missiles, 

worth little or nothing, nothing or less than nothing. 

By what could such a situation be precluded?

By decease (change of state): by departure (change of place). 

Which preferably? 

The latter, by the line of least resistance. 

What considerations rendered departure not entirely undesirable? 

Constant cohabitation impeding mutual toleration of personal 

defects. The habit of independent purchase increasingly 

cultivated. The necessity to counteract by impermanent 

sojourn the permanence of arrest. 

What considerations rendered departure not irrational? 

The parties concerned, uniting, had increased and multiplied, 

which being done, offspring produced and educed to 

maturity, the parties, if not disunited were obliged to reunite 

for increase and multiplication, which was absurd, to form 

by reunion the original couple of uniting parties, which was 

impossible. 

What considerations rendered departure desirable? 


707 

The attractive character of certain localities in Ireland and 

abroad, as represented in general geographical maps of polychrome 

design or in special ordnance survey charts by employment 

of scale numerals and hachures. 

In Ireland? 

The cliffs of Moher, the windy wilds of Connemara, lough 

Neagh with submerged petrified city, the Giant’s Causeway, 

Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle, the Golden Vale of Tipperary, 

the islands of Aran, the pastures of royal Meath, Brigid’s elm 

in Kildare, the Queen’s Island shipyard in Belfast, the Salmon 

Leap, the lakes of Killarney. 

Abroad? 

Ceylon (with spicegardens supplying tea to Thomas Kernan, 

agent for Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 2 Mincing Lane, London, 

E. C., 5 Dame street, Dublin), Jerusalem, the holy city 

(with mosque of Omar and gate of Damascus, goal of aspiration), 

the straits of Gibraltar (the unique birthplace of Marion 

Tweedy), the Parthenon (containing statues of nude Grecian 

divinities), the Wall street money market (which controlled

international finance), the Plaza de Toros at La Linea, Spain 

(where O’Hara of the Camerons had slain the bull), Niagara 

(over which no human being had passed with impunity), the 

land of the Eskimos (eaters of soap), the forbidden country of 

Thibet (from which no traveller returns), the bay of Naples 

(to see which was to die), the Dead Sea. 

Under what guidance, following what signs? 

At sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the 

point of intersection of the right line from beta to alpha in 

Ursa Maior produced and divided externally at omega and 

the hypotenuse of the rightangled triangle formed by the 

line alpha omega so produced and the line alpha delta of 

Ursa Maior. On land, meridional, a bispherical moon, revealed 

in imperfect varying phases of lunation through the 

posterior interstice of the imperfectly occluded skirt of a 

carnose negligent perambulating female, a pillar of the cloud 

by day. 

What public advertisement would divulge the occultation 

of the departed? 


708 

£5 reward, lost, stolen or strayed from his residence 7 Eccles 

street, missing gent about 40, answering to the name of 

Bloom, Leopold (Poldy), height 5 ft 9 1/2 inches, full build, 

olive complexion, may have since grown a beard, when last 

seen was wearing a black suit. Above sum will be paid for 

information leading to his discovery. 

What universal binomial denominations would be his as 

entity and nonentity? 

Assumed by any or known to none. Everyman or Noman. 

What tributes his? 

Honour and gifts of strangers, the friends of Everyman. A 

nymph immortal, beauty, the bride of Noman. 

Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear? 

Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit 

of his cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable 

suns and telescopic planets, astronomical waifs and strays, 

to the extreme boundary of space, passing from land to land, 

among peoples, amid events. Somewhere imperceptibly he

would hear and somehow reluctantly, suncompelled, obey 

the summons of recall. Whence, disappearing from the constellation 

of the Northern Crown he would somehow reappear 

reborn above delta in the constellation of Cassiopeia 

and after incalculable eons of peregrination return an estranged 

avenger, a wreaker of justice on malefactors, a dark 

crusader, a sleeper awakened, with financial resources (by 

supposition) surpassing those of Rothschild or the silver king. 

What would render such return irrational? 

An unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return 

in time through reversible space and an exodus and return in 

space through irreversible time. 

What play of forces, inducing inertia, rendered departure 

undesirable? 

The lateness of the hour, rendering procrastinatory: the 

obscurity of the night, rendering invisible: the uncertainty 

of thoroughfares, rendering perilous: the necessity for repose, 

obviating movement: the proximity of an occupied bed, obviating 

research: the anticipation of warmth (human) tem- 


709 

pered with coolness (linen), obviating desire and rendering 

desirable: the statue of Narcissus, sound without echo, desired 

desire. 

What advantages were possessed by an occupied, as distinct 

from an unoccupied bed? 

The removal of nocturnal solitude, the superior quality of 

human (mature female) to inhuman (hotwaterjar) calefaction, 

the stimulation of matutinal contact, the economy of mangling 

done on the premises in the case of trousers accurately 

folded and placed lengthwise between the spring mattress 

(striped) and the woollen mattress (biscuit section). 

What past consecutive causes, before rising 

preapprehended, of accumulated fatigue did Bloom, before 

rising, silently recapitulate? 

The preparation of breakfast (burnt offering): intestinal 

congestion and premeditative defecation (holy of holies): the 

bath (rite of John): the funeral (rite of Samuel): the advertisement 

of Alexander Keyes (Urim and Thummim): the 

unsubstantial lunch (rite of Melchisedek): the visit to mu-

seum and national library (holy place): the bookhunt along 

Bedford row, Merchants’ Arch, Wellington Quay (Simchath 

Torah): the music in the Ormond Hotel (Shira Shirim): the 

altercation with a truculent troglodyte in Bernard Kiernan’s 

premises (holocaust): a blank period of time including a 

cardrive, a visit to a house of mourning, a leavetaking (wilderness): 

the eroticism produced by feminine exhibitionism 

(rite of Onan): the prolonged delivery of Mrs Mina Purefoy 

(heave offering): the visit to the disorderly house of Mrs Bella 

Cohen, 82 Tyrone street, lower and subsequent brawl and 

chance medley in Beaver street (Armageddon)-nocturnal 

perambulation to and from the cabman’s shelter, Butt Bridge 

(atonement). 

What selfimposed enigma did Bloom about to rise in order 

to go so as to conclude lest he should not conclude involuntarily 

apprehend? 

The cause of a brief sharp unforeseen heard loud lone crack 

emitted by the insentient material of a strainveined timber 

table. 


710 

What selfinvolved enigma did Bloom risen, going, gathering 

multicoloured multiform multitudinous garments, voluntarily 

apprehending, not comprehend? 

Who was M’Intosh? 

What selfevident enigma pondered with desultory constancy 

during 30 years did Bloom now, having effected natural 

obscurity by the extinction of artificial light, silently suddenly 

comprehend? 

Where was Moses when the candle went out? 

What imperfections in a perfect day did Bloom, walking, 

charged with collected articles of recently disvested male 

wearing apparel, silently, successively, enumerate? 

A provisional failure to obtain renewal of an advertisement: 

to obtain a certain quantity of tea from Thomas Kernan 

(agent for Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 5 Dame Street, 

Dublin, and 2 Mincing Lane, London E. C.): to certify the 

presence or absence of posterior rectal orifice in the case of 

Hellenic female divinities: to obtain admission (gratuitous 

or paid) to the performance of Leah by Mrs Bandmann

Palmer at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King 

street. 

What impression of an absent face did Bloom, arrested, 

silently recall? 

The face of her father, the late Major Brian Cooper Tweedy, 

Royal Dublin Fusiliers, of Gibraltar and Rehoboth, Dolphin’s 

Barn. 

What recurrent impressions of the same were possible by 

hypothesis? 

Retreating, at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, 

Amiens street, with constant uniform acceleration, along 

parallel lines meeting at infinity, if produced: along parallel 

lines, reproduced from infinity, with constant uniform retardation, 

at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, 

Amiens street, returning. 

What miscellaneous effects of female personal wearing apparel 

were perceived by him? 

A pair of new inodorous halfsilk black ladies’ hose, a pair 


711 

of new violet garters, a pair of outsize ladies’ drawers of India 

mull, cut on generous lines, redolent of opoponax, jessamine 

and Muratti’s Turkish cigarettes and containing a long bright 

steel safety pin, folded curvilinear, a camisole of batiste with 

thin lace border, an accordion underskirt of blue silk moirette, 

all these objects being disposed irregularly on the top of a 

rectangular trunk, quadruple battened, having capped corners, 

with multicoloured labels, initialled on its fore side in 

white lettering B. C. T. (Brian Cooper Tweedy). 

What impersonal objects were perceived? 

A commode, one leg fractured, totally covered by square 

cretonne cutting, apple design, on which rested a lady’s black 

straw hat. Orangekeyed ware, bought of Henry Price, basket, 

fancy goods, chinaware and ironmongery manufacturer, 

21, 22, 23 Moore street, disposed irregularly on the washstand 

and floor and consisting of basin, soapdish and 

brushtray (on the washstand, together), pitcher and night 

article (on the floor, separate). 

Bloom’s acts?

He deposited the articles of clothing on a chair, removed 

his remaining articles of clothing, took from beneath the 

bolster at the head of the bed a folded long white nightshirt, 

inserted his head and arms into the proper apertures of the 

nightshirt, removed a pillow from the head to the foot of the 

bed, prepared the bedlinen accordingly and entered the bed. 

How? 

With circumspection, as invariably when entering an abode 

(his own or not his own): with solicitude, the snakespiral 

springs of the mattress being old, the brass quoits and pendent 

viper radii loose and tremulous under stress and strain: 

prudently, as entering a lair or ambush of lust or adders: 

lightly, the less to disturb: reverently, the bed of conception 

and of birth, of consummation of marriage and of breach of 

marriage, of sleep and of death. 

What did his limbs, when gradually extended, encounter? 

New clean bedlinen, additional odours, the presence of a 

human form, female, hers, the imprint of a human form, 

male, not his, some crumbs, some flakes of potted meat, 


712 

recooked, which he removed. 

If he had smiled why would he have smiled? 

To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be 

the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding 

series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each 

imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he 

is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating 

in and repeated to infinity. 

What preceding series? 

Assuming Mulvey to be the first term of his series, Penrose, 

Bartell d’Arcy, professor Goodwin, Julius Mastiansky, John 

Henry Menton, Father Bernard Corrigan, a farmer at the 

Royal Dublin Society’s Horse Show, Maggot O’Reilly, Matthew 

Dillon, Valentine Blake Dillon (Lord Mayor of Dublin), 

Christopher Callinan, Lenehan, an Italian organgrinder, an 

unknown gentleman in the Gaiety Theatre, Benjamin 

Dollard, Simon Dedalus, Andrew (Pisser) Burke, Joseph 

Cuffe, Wisdom Hely, Alderman John Hooper, Dr Francis 

Brady, Father Sebastian of Mount Argus, a bootblack at the

General Post Office, Hugh E. (Blazes) Boylan and so each 

and so on to no last term. 

What were his reflections concerning the last member of 

this series and late occupant of the bed? 

Reflections on his vigour (a bounder), corporal proportion 

(a billsticker), commercial ability (a bester), impressionability 

(a boaster). 

Why for the observer impressionability in addition to 

vigour, corporal proportion and commercial ability? 

Because he had observed with augmenting frequency in 

the preceding members of the same series the same 

concupiscence, inflammably transmitted, first with alarm, 

then with understanding, then with desire, finally with fatigue, 

with alternating symptoms of epicene comprehension 

and apprehension. 

With what antagonistic sentiments were his subsequent 

reflections affected? 

Envy, jealousy, abnegation, equanimity. 


713 

Envy? 

Of a bodily and mental male organism specially adapted 

for the superincumbent posture of energetic human copulation 

and energetic piston and cylinder movement necessary 

for the complete satisfaction of a constant but not acute 

concupiscence resident in a bodily and mental female organism, 

passive but not obtuse. 

Jealousy? 

Because a nature full and volatile in its free state, was alternately 

the agent and reagent of attraction. Because attraction 

between agent(s) and reagent(s) at all instants varied, 

with inverse proportion of increase and decrease, with incessant 

circular extension and radial reentrance. Because the 

controlled contemplation of the fluctuation of attraction 

produced, if desired, a fluctuation of pleasure. 

Abnegation? 

In virtue of a) acquaintance initiated in September 1903 

in the establishment of George Mesias, merchant tailor and

outfitter, 5 Eden Quay, b) hospitality extended and received 

in kind, reciprocated and reappropriated in person, c) comparative 

youth subject to impulses of ambition and magnanimity, 

colleagual altruism and amorous egoism, d) extraracial 

attraction, intraracial inhibition, supraracial prerogative, e) 

an imminent provincial musical tour, common current expenses, 

net proceeds divided. 

Equanimity? 

As as natural as any and every natural act of a nature expressed 

or understood executed in natured nature by natural 

creatures in accordance with his, her and their natured natures, 

of dissimilar similarity. As not so calamitous as a cataclysmic 

annihilation of the planet in consequence of a collision 

with a dark sun. As less reprehensible than theft, highway 

robbery, cruelty to children and animals, obtaining 

money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation 

of public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, 

mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, 

contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on 

the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of un- 


714 

natural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, 

poaching, usury, intelligence with the king’s enemies, 

impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful and 

premeditated murder. As not more abnormal than all other 

parallel processes of adaptation to altered conditions of existence, 

resulting in a reciprocal equilibrium between the 

bodily organism and its attendant circumstances, foods, beverages, 

acquired habits, indulged inclinations, significant 

disease. As more than inevitable, irreparable. 

Why more abnegation than jealousy, less envy than equanimity? 

From outrage (matrimony) to outrage (adultery) there arose 

nought but outrage (copulation) yet the matrimonial violator 

of the matrimonially violated had not been outraged by 

the adulterous violator of the adulterously violated. 

What retribution, if any? 

Assassination, never, as two wrongs did not make one right. 

Duel by combat, no. Divorce, not now. Exposure by mechanical 

artifice (automatic bed) or individual testimony

(concealed ocular witnesses), not yet. Suit for damages by 

legal influence or simulation of assault with evidence of injuries 

sustained (selfinflicted), not impossibly. Hushmoney 

by moral influence possibly. If any, positively, connivance, 

introduction of emulation (material, a prosperous rival agency 

of publicity: moral, a successful rival agent of intimacy), depreciation, 

alienation, humiliation, separation protecting the 

one separated from the other, protecting the separator from 

both. 

By what reflections did he, a conscious reactor against the 

void of incertitude, justify to himself his sentiments? 

The preordained frangibility of the hymen: the presupposed 

intangibility of the thing in itself: the incongruity and 

disproportion between the selfprolonging tension of the thing 

proposed to be done and the selfabbreviating relaxation of 

the thing done; the fallaciously inferred debility of the female: 

the muscularity of the male: the variations of ethical 

codes: the natural grammatical transition by inversion involving 

no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition 

(parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomato- 


715 

poeic transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the 

active voice into its correlative aorist preterite proposition 

(parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and 

quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past participle with 

complementary masculine agent) in the passive voice: the 

continued product of seminators by generation: the continual 

production of semen by distillation: the futility of triumph 

or protest or vindication: the inanity of extolled virtue: the 

lethargy of nescient matter: the apathy of the stars. 

In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments 

and reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge? 

Satisfaction at the ubiquity in eastern and western terrestrial 

hemispheres, in all habitable lands and islands explored 

or unexplored (the land of the midnight sun, the islands of 

the blessed, the isles of Greece, the land of promise), of adipose 

anterior and posterior female hemispheres, redolent of 

milk and honey and of excretory sanguine and seminal 

warmth, reminiscent of secular families of curves of amplitude, 

insusceptible of moods of impression or of contrarieties 

of expression, expressive of mute immutable mature animality.

The visible signs of antesatisfaction? 

An approximate erection: a solicitous adversion: a gradual 

elevation: a tentative revelation: a silent contemplation. 

Then? 

He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of 

her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their 

mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative 

melonsmellonous osculation. 

The visible signs of postsatisfaction? 

A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: 

a solicitous aversion: a proximate erection. 

What followed this silent action? 

Somnolent invocation, less somnolent recognition, incipient 

excitation, catechetical interrogation. 

With what modifications did the narrator reply to this interrogation? 


716 

Negative: he omitted to mention the clandestine correspondence 

between Martha Clifford and Henry Flower, the 

public altercation at, in and in the vicinity of the licensed 

premises of Bernard Kiernan and Co, Limited, 8, 9 and 10 

Little Britain street, the erotic provocation and response 

thereto caused by the exhibitionism of Gertrude (Gerty), 

surname unknown. Positive: he included mention of a performance 

by Mrs Bandmann Palmer of Leah at the Gaiety 

Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street, an invitation to 

supper at Wynn’s (Murphy’s) Hotel, 35, 36 and 37 Lower 

Abbey street, a volume of peccaminous pornographical tendency 

entituled Sweets of Sin, anonymous author a gentleman 

of fashion, a temporary concussion caused by a falsely 

calculated movement in the course of a postcenal gymnastic 

display, the victim (since completely recovered) being Stephen 

Dedalus, professor and author, eldest surviving son of Simon 

Dedalus, of no fixed occupation, an aeronautical feat executed 

by him (narrator) in the presence of a witness, the professor 

and author aforesaid, with promptitude of decision and gymnastic 

flexibility.

Was the narration otherwise unaltered by modifications? 

Absolutely. 

Which event or person emerged as the salient point of his 

narration? 

Stephen Dedalus, professor and author. 

What limitations of activity and inhibitions of conjugal 

rights were perceived by listener and narrator concerning 

themselves during the course of this intermittent and increasingly 

more laconic narration? 

By the listener a limitation of fertility inasmuch as marriage 

had been celebrated 1 calendar month after the 18th 

anniversary of her birth (8 September 1870), viz. 8 October, 

and consummated on the same date with female issue born 

15 June 1889, having been anticipatorily consummated on 

the lo September of the same year and complete carnal intercourse, 

with ejaculation of semen within the natural female 

organ, having last taken place 5 weeks previous, viz. 27 

November 1893, to the birth on 29 December 1893 of second 

(and only male) issue, deceased 9 January 1894, aged 


717 

11 days, there remained a period of 10 years, 5 months and 

18 days during which carnal intercourse had been incomplete, 

without ejaculation of semen within the natural female 

organ. By the narrator a limitation of activity, mental 

and corporal, inasmuch as complete mental intercourse between 

himself and the listener had not taken place since the 

consummation of puberty, indicated by catamenic hemorrhage, 

of the female issue of narrator and listener, 15 September 

1903, there remained a period of 9 months and 1 

day during which, in consequence of a preestablished natural 

comprehension in incomprehension between the consummated 

females (listener and issue), complete corporal liberty 

of action had been circumscribed. 

How? 

By various reiterated feminine interrogation concerning the 

masculine destination whither, the place where, the time at 

which, the duration for which, the object with which in the 

case of temporary absences, projected or effected. 

What moved visibly above the listener’s and the narrator’s

invisible thoughts? 

The upcast reflection of a lamp and shade, an inconstant series 

of concentric circles of varying gradations of light and shadow. 

In what directions did listener and narrator lie? 

Listener, S. E. by E.: Narrator, N. W. by W.: on the 53rd 

parallel of latitude, N., and 6th meridian of longitude, W.: 

at an angle of 45 degrees to the terrestrial equator. 

In what state of rest or motion? 

At rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion 

being each and both carried westward, forward and 

rereward respectively, by the proper perpetual motion of the 

earth through everchanging tracks of neverchanging space. 

In what posture? 

Listener: reclined semilaterally, left, left hand under head, 

right leg extended in a straight line and resting on left leg, 

flexed, in the attitude of Gea-Tellus, fulfilled, recumbent, 

big with seed. Narrator: reclined laterally, left, with right and 

left legs flexed, the index finger and thumb of the right hand 


718 

resting on the bridge of the nose, in the attitude depicted in 

a snapshot photograph made by Percy Apjohn, the childman 

weary, the manchild in the womb. 

Womb? Weary? 

He rests. He has travelled. 

With? 

Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the 

Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and 

Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer 

and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad 

the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer 

and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer. 

When? 

Going to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the 

Sailor roc’s auk’s egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of 

the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler. 

Where?

YES BECAUSE HE NEVER DID A THING LIKE THAT BEFORE AS ASK TO 

get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City 

Arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with 

a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting 

for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a 

great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for 

herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid to 

lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments 

she had too much old chat in her about politics and 

earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun 

first God help the world if all the women were her sort down 

on bathingsuits and lownecks of course nobody wanted her 

to wear them I suppose she was pious because no man would 

look at her twice I hope Ill never be like her a wonder she 

didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a welleducated 

woman certainly and her gabby talk about Mr Riordan here 


719 

and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was glad to get shut of 

her and her dog smelling my fur and always edging to get up 

under my petticoats especially then still I like that in him 

polite to old women like that and waiters and beggars too 

hes not proud out of nothing but not always if ever he got 

anything really serious the matter with him its much better 

for them to go into a hospital where everything is clean but 

I suppose Id have to dring it into him for a month yes and 

then wed have a hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have 

him staying there till they throw him out or a nun maybe 

like the smutty photo he has shes as much a nun as Im not 

yes because theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick they 

want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think it 

was O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south circular 

when he sprained his foot at the choir party at the sugarloaf 

Mountain the day I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him 

flowers the worst old ones she could find at the bottom of 

the basket anything at all to get into a mans bedroom with 

her old maids voice trying to imagine he was dying on account 

of her to never see thy face again though he looked 

more like a man with his beard a bit grown in the bed father

was the same besides I hate bandaging and dosing when he 

cut his toe with the razor paring his corns afraid hed get 

bloodpoisoning but if it was a thing I was sick then wed see 

what attention only of course the woman hides it not to give 

all the trouble they do yes he came somewhere Im sure by 

his appetite anyway love its not or hed be off his feed thinking 

of her so either it was one of those night women if it was 

down there he was really and the hotel story he made up a 

pack of lies to hide it planning it Hynes kept me who did I 

meet ah yes I met do you remember Menton and who else 

who let me see that big babbyface I saw him and he not long 

married flirting with a young girl at Pooles Myriorama and 

turned my back on him when he slinked out looking quite 

conscious what harm but he had the impudence to make up 

to me one time well done to him mouth almighty and his 

boiled eyes of all the big stupoes I ever met and thats called a 

solicitor only for I hate having a long wrangle in bed or else 

if its not that its some little bitch or other he got in with 

somewhere or picked up on the sly if they only knew him as 

well as I do yes because the day before yesterday he was scribbling 

something a letter when I came into the front room to 


720 

show him Dignams death in the paper as if something told 

me and he covered it up with the blottingpaper pretending 

to be thinking about business so very probably that was it to 

somebody who thinks she has a softy in him because all men 

get a bit like that at his age especially getting on to forty he is 

now so as to wheedle any money she can out of him no fool 

like an old fool and then the usual kissing my bottom was to 

hide it not that I care two straws now who he does it with or 

knew before that way though Id like to find out so long as I 

dont have the two of them under my nose all the time like 

that slut that Mary we had in Ontario terrace padding out 

her false bottom to excite him bad enough to get the smell of 

those painted women off him once or twice I had a suspicion 

by getting him to come near me when I found the long 

hair on his coat without that one when I went into the kitchen 

pretending he was drinking water 1 woman is not enough 

for them it was all his fault of course ruining servants then 

proposing that she could eat at our table on Christmas day if 

you please O no thank you not in my house stealing my 

potatoes and the oysters 2/6 per doz going out to see her 

aunt if you please common robbery so it was but I was sure

he had something on with that one it takes me to find out a 

thing like that he said you have no proof it was her proof O 

yes her aunt was very fond of oysters but I told her what I 

thought of her suggesting me to go out to be alone with her 

I wouldnt lower myself to spy on them the garters I found in 

her room the Friday she was out that was enough for me a 

little bit too much her face swelled up on her with temper 

when I gave her her weeks notice I saw to that better do 

without them altogether do out the rooms myself quicker 

only for the damn cooking and throwing out the dirt I gave 

it to him anyhow either she or me leaves the house I couldnt 

even touch him if I thought he was with a dirty barefaced 

liar and sloven like that one denying it up to my face and 

singing about the place in the W C too because she knew 

she was too well off yes because he couldnt possibly do without 

it that long so he must do it somewhere and the last time 

he came on my bottom when was it the night Boylan gave 

my hand a great squeeze going along by the Tolka in my 

hand there steals another I just pressed the back of his like 

that with my thumb to squeeze back singing the young May 

moon shes beaming love because he has an idea about him 


721 

and me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out and going 

to the Gaiety though Im not going to give him the satisfaction 

in any case God knows hes a change in a way not to be 

always and ever wearing the same old hat unless I paid some 

nicelooking boy to do it since I cant do it myself a young 

boy would like me Id confuse him a little alone with him if 

we were Id let him see my garters the new ones and make 

him turn red looking at him seduce him I know what boys 

feel with that down on their cheek doing that frigging drawing 

out the thing by the hour question and answer would 

you do this that and the other with the coalman yes with a 

bishop yes I would because I told him about some dean or 

bishop was sitting beside me in the jews temples gardens 

when I was knitting that woollen thing a stranger to Dublin 

what place was it and so on about the monuments and he 

tired me out with statues encouraging him making him worse 

than he is who is in your mind now tell me who are you 

thinking of who is it tell me his name who tell me who the 

german Emperor is it yes imagine Im him think of him can 

you feel him trying to make a whore of me what he never 

will he ought to give it up now at this age of his life simply

uination for any woman and no satisfaction in it pretending 

to like it till he comes and then finish it off myself anyway 

and it makes your lips pale anyhow its done now once 

and for all with all the talk of the world about it people make 

its only the first time after that its just the ordinary do it and 

think no more about it why cant you kiss a man without 

going and marrying him first you sometimes love to wildly 

when you feel that way so nice all over you you cant help 

yourself I wish some man or other would take me sometime 

when hes there and kiss me in his arms theres nothing like a 

kiss long and hot down to your soul almost paralyses you 

then I hate that confession when I used to go to Father 

Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did 

where and I said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts 

on your person my child on the leg behind high up 

was it yes rather high up was it where you sit down yes O 

Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it 

what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way he 

put it I forget no father and I always think of the real father 

what did he want to know for when I already confessed it to 

God he had a nice fat hand the palm moist always I wouldnt 


722 

mind feeling it neither would he Id say by the bullneck in 

his horsecollar I wonder did he know me in the box I could 

see his face he couldnt see mine of course hed never turn or 

let on still his eyes were red when his father died theyre lost 

for a woman of course must be terrible when a man cries let 

alone them Id like to be embraced by one in his vestments 

and the smell of incense off him like the pope besides theres 

no danger with a priest if youre married hes too careful about 

himself then give something to H H the pope for a penance 

I wonder was he satisfied with me one thing I didnt like his 

slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall 

though I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I I suppose he 

was thinking of his fathers I wonder is he awake thinking of 

me or dreaming am I in it who gave him that flower he said 

he bought he smelt of some kind of drink not whisky or 

stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they stick their 

bills up with some liqueur Id like to sip those richlooking 

green and yellow expensive drinks those stagedoor johnnies 

drink with the opera hats I tasted once with my finger dipped 

out of that American that had the squirrel talking stamps 

with father he had all he could do to keep himself from fall-

ing asleep after the last time after we took the port and potted 

meat it had a fine salty taste yes because I felt lovely and 

tired myself and fell asleep as sound as a top the moment I 

popped straight into bed till that thunder woke me up God 

be merciful to us I thought the heavens were coming down 

about us to punish us when I blessed myself and said a Hail 

Mary like those awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar as if the world 

was coming to an end and then they come and tell you theres 

no God what could you do if it was running and rushing 

about nothing only make an act of contrition the candle I lit 

that evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month of 

May see it brought its luck though hed scoff if he heard because 

he never goes to church mass or meeting he says your 

soul you have no soul inside only grey matter because he 

doesnt know what it is to have one yes when I lit the lamp 

because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that tremendous 

big red brute of a thing he has I thought the vein or 

whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst though 

his nose is not so big after I took off all my things with the 

blinds down after my hours dressing and perfuming and 

combing it like iron or some kind of a thick crowbar stand- 


723 

ing all the time he must have eaten oysters I think a few 

dozen he was in great singing voice no I never in all my life 

felt anyone had one the size of that to make you feel full up 

he must have eaten a whole sheep after whats the idea making 

us like that with a big hole in the middle of us or like a 

Stallion driving it up into you because thats all they want 

out of you with that determined vicious look in his eye I had 

to halfshut my eyes still he hasnt such a tremendous amount 

of spunk in him when I made him pull out and do it on me 

considering how big it is so much the better in case any of it 

wasnt washed out properly the last time I let him finish it in 

me nice invention they made for women for him to get all 

the pleasure but if someone gave them a touch of it themselves 

theyd know what I went through with Milly nobody 

would believe cutting her teeth too and Mina Purefoys husband 

give us a swing out of your whiskers filling her up with 

a child or twins once a year as regular as the clock always 

with a smell of children off her the one they called budgers 

or something like a nigger with a shock of hair on it Jesusjack 

the child is a black the last time I was there a squad of them 

falling over one another and bawling you couldnt hear your

ears supposed to be healthy not satisfied till they have us 

swollen out like elephants or I dont know what supposing I 

risked having another not off him though still if he was married 

Im sure hed have a fine strong child but I dont know 

Poldy has more spunk in him yes thatd be awfully jolly I 

suppose it was meeting Josie Powell and the funeral and thinking 

about me and Boylan set him off well he can think what 

he likes now if thatll do him any good I know they were 

spooning a bit when I came on the scene he was dancing and 

sitting out with her the night of Georgina Simpsons housewarming 

and then he wanted to ram it down my neck it was 

on account of not liking to see her a wallflower that was why 

we had the standup row over politics he began it not me 

when he said about Our Lord being a carpenter at last he 

made me cry of course a woman is so sensitive about everything 

I was fuming with myself after for giving in only for I 

knew he was gone on me and the first socialist he said He 

was he annoyed me so much I couldnt put him into a temper 

still he knows a lot of mixedup things especially about 

the body and the inside I often wanted to study up that myself 

what we have inside us in that family physician I could al- 


724 

ways hear his voice talking when the room was crowded and 

watch him after that I pretended I had a coolness on with 

her over him because he used to be a bit on the jealous side 

whenever he asked who are you going to and I said over to 

Floey and he made me the present of Byron’s poems and the 

three pairs of gloves so that finished that I could quite easily 

get him to make it up any time I know how Id even supposing 

he got in with her again and was going out to see her 

somewhere Id know if he refused to eat the onions I know 

plenty of ways ask him to tuck down the collar of my blouse 

or touch him with my veil and gloves on going out I kiss 

then would send them all spinning however alright well see 

then let him go to her she of course would only be too delighted 

to pretend shes mad in love with him that I wouldnt 

so much mind Id just go to her and ask her do you love him 

and look her square in the eyes she couldnt fool me but he 

might imagine he was and make a declaration to her with his 

plabbery kind of a manner like he did to me though I had 

the devils own job to get it out of him though I liked him for 

that it showed he could hold in and wasnt to be got for the 

asking he was on the pop of asking me too the night in the

kitchen I was rolling the potato cake theres something I want 

to say to you only for I put him off letting on I was in a 

temper with my hands and arms full of pasty flour in any 

case I let out too much the night before talking of dreams so 

I didnt want to let him know more than was good for him 

she used to be always embracing me Josie whenever he was 

there meaning him of course glauming me over and when I 

said I washed up and down as far as possible asking me and 

did you wash possible the women are always egging on to 

that putting it on thick when hes there they know by his sly 

eye blinking a bit putting on the indifferent when they come 

out with something the kind he is what spoils him I dont 

wonder in the least because he was very handsome at that 

time trying to look like Lord Byron I said I liked though he 

was too beautiful for a man and he was a little before we got 

engaged afterwards though she didnt like it so much the day 

I was in fits of laughing with the giggles I couldnt stop about 

all my hairpins falling out one after another with the mass of 

hair I had youre always in great humour she said yes because 

it grigged her because she knew what it meant because I used 

to tell her a good bit of what went on between us not all but 


725 

just enough to make her mouth water but that wasnt my 

fault she didnt darken the door much after we were married 

I wonder what shes got like now after living with that dotty 

husband of hers she had her face beginning to look drawn 

and run down the last time I saw her she must have been just 

after a row with him because I saw on the moment she was 

edging to draw down a conversation about husbands and 

talk about him to run him down what was it she told me O 

yes that sometimes he used to go to bed with his muddy 

boots on when the maggot takes him just imagine having to 

get into bed with a thing like that that might murder you 

any moment what a man well its not the one way everyone 

goes mad Poldy anyhow whatever he does always wipes his 

feet on the mat when he comes in wet or shine and always 

blacks his own boots too and he always takes off his hat when 

he comes up in the street like then and now hes going about 

in his slippers to look for 10000 pounds for a postcard U p 

up O sweetheart May wouldnt a thing like that simply bore 

you stiff to extinction actually too stupid even to take his 

boots off now what could you make of a man like that Id 

rather die 20 times over than marry another of their sex of

course hed never find another woman like me to put up with 

him the way I do know me come sleep with me yes and he 

knows that too at the bottom of his heart take that Mrs 

Maybrick that poisoned her husband for what I wonder in 

love with some other man yes it was found out on her wasnt 

she the downright villain to go and do a thing like that of 

course some men can be dreadfully aggravating drive you 

mad and always the worst word in the world what do they 

ask us to marry them for if were so bad as all that comes to 

yes because they cant get on without us white Arsenic she 

put in his tea off flypaper wasnt it I wonder why they call it 

that if I asked him hed say its from the Greek leave us as wise 

as we were before she must have been madly in love with the 

other fellow to run the chance of being hanged O she didnt 

care if that was her nature what could she do besides theyre 

not brutes enough to go and hang a woman surely are they 

theyre all so different Boylan talking about the shape of 

my foot he noticed at once even before he was introduced 

when I was in the D B C with Poldy laughing and trying to 

listen I was waggling my foot we both ordered 2 teas and 

plain bread and butter I saw him looking with his two old 


726 

maids of sisters when I stood up and asked the girl where it 

was what do I care with it dropping out of me and that black 

closed breeches he made me buy takes you half an hour to 

let them down wetting all myself always with some brandnew 

fad every other week such a long one I did I forgot my suede 

gloves on the seat behind that I never got after some robber 

of a woman and he wanted me to put it in the Irish times 

lost in the ladies lavatory D B C Dame street finder return to 

Mrs Marion Bloom and I saw his eyes on my feet going out 

through the turning door he was looking when I looked back 

and I went there for tea 2 days after in the hope but he wasnt 

now how did that excite him because I was crossing them 

when we were in the other room first he meant the shoes 

that are too tight to walk in my hand is nice like that if I only 

had a ring with the stone for my month a nice aquamarine 

Ill stick him for one and a gold bracelet I dont like my foot 

so much still I made him spend once with my foot the night 

after Goodwins botchup of a concert so cold and windy it 

was well we had that rum in the house to mull and the fire 

wasnt black out when he asked to take off my stockings lying 

on the hearthrug in Lombard street west and another

time it was my muddy boots hed like me to walk in all the 

horses dung I could find but of course hes not natural like 

the rest of the world that I what did he say I could give 9 

points in 10 to Katty Lanner and beat her what does that 

mean I asked him I forget what he said because the stoppress 

edition just passed and the man with the curly hair in the 

Lucan dairy thats so polite I think I saw his face before somewhere 

I noticed him when I was tasting the butter so I took 

my time Bartell dArcy too that he used to make fun of when 

he commenced kissing me on the choir stairs after I sang 

Gounods Ave Maria what are we waiting for O my heart kiss 

me straight on the brow and part which is my brown part he 

was pretty hot for all his tinny voice too my low notes he was 

always raving about if you can believe him I liked the way he 

used his mouth singing then he said wasnt it terrible to do 

that there in a place like that I dont see anything so terrible 

about it Ill tell him about that some day not now and surprise 

him ay and Ill take him there and show him the very 

place too we did it so now there you are like it or lump it he 

thinks nothing can happen without him knowing he hadnt 

an idea about my mother till we were engaged otherwise hed 


727 

never have got me so cheap as he did he was 10 times worse 

himself anyhow begging me to give him a tiny bit cut off my 

drawers that was the evening coming along Kenilworth square 

he kissed me in the eye of my glove and I had to take it off 

asking me questions is it permitted to enquire the shape of 

my bedroom so I let him keep it as if I forgot it to think of 

me when I saw him slip it into his pocket of course hes mad 

on the subject of drawers thats plain to be seen always skeezing 

at those brazenfaced things on the bicycles with their skirts 

blowing up to their navels even when Milly and I were out 

with him at the open air fete that one in the cream muslin 

standing right against the sun so he could see every atom she 

had on when he saw me from behind following in the rain I 

saw him before he saw me however standing at the corner of 

the Harolds cross road with a new raincoat on him with the 

muffler in the Zingari colours to show off his complexion 

and the brown hat looking slyboots as usual what was he 

doing there where hed no business they can go and get whatever 

they like from anything at all with a skirt on it and were 

not to ask any questions but they want to know where were 

you where are you going I could feel him coming along skulk-

ing after me his eyes on my neck he had been keeping away 

from the house he felt it was getting too warm for him so I 

halfturned and stopped then he pestered me to say yes till I 

took off my glove slowly watching him he said my openwork 

sleeves were too cold for the rain anything for an excuse 

to put his hand anear me drawers drawers the whole 

blessed time till I promised to give him the pair off my doll 

to carry about in his waistcoat pocket O Maria Santisima he 

did look a big fool dreeping in the rain splendid set of teeth 

he had made me hungry to look at them and beseeched of 

me to lift the orange petticoat I had on with the sunray pleats 

that there was nobody he said hed kneel down in the wet if I 

didnt so persevering he would too and ruin his new raincoat 

you never know what freak theyd take alone with you theyre 

so savage for it if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit 

and touched his trousers outside the way I used to Gardner 

after with my ring hand to keep him from doing worse where 

it was too public I was dying to find out was he circumcised 

he was shaking like a jelly all over they want to do everything 

too quick take all the pleasure out of it and father waiting 

all the time for his dinner he told me to say I left my 


728 

purse in the butchers and had to go back for it what a Deceiver 

then he wrote me that letter with all those words in it 

how could he have the face to any woman after his company 

manners making it so awkward after when we met asking 

me have I offended you with my eyelids down of course he 

saw I wasnt he had a few brains not like that other fool Henny 

Doyle he was always breaking or tearing something in the 

charades I hate an unlucky man and if I knew what it meant 

of course I had to say no for form sake dont understand you 

I said and wasnt it natural so it is of course it used to be 

written up with a picture of a womans on that wall in 

Gibraltar with that word I couldnt find anywhere only for 

children seeing it too young then writing every morning a 

letter sometimes twice a day I liked the way he made love 

then he knew the way to take a woman when he sent me the 

8 big poppies because mine was the 8th then I wrote the 

night he kissed my heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt describe 

it simply it makes you feel like nothing on earth but 

he never knew how to embrace well like Gardner I hope hell 

come on Monday as he said at the same time four I hate 

people who come at all hours answer the door you think its

the vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or 

the door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old 

frostyface Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard 

street and I just after dinner all flushed and tossed with boiling 

old stew dont look at me professor I had to say Im a 

fright yes but he was a real old gent in his way it was impossible 

to be more respectful nobody to say youre out you have 

to peep out through the blind like the messengerboy today I 

thought it was a putoff first him sending the port and the 

peaches first and I was just beginning to yawn with nerves 

thinking he was trying to make a fool of me when I knew his 

tattarrattat at the door he must have been a bit late because 

it was l/4 after 3 when I saw the 2 Dedalus girls coming 

from school I never know the time even that watch he gave 

me never seems to go properly Id want to get it looked after 

when I threw the penny to that lame sailor for England home 

and beauty when I was whistling there is a charming girl I 

love and I hadnt even put on my clean shift or powdered 

myself or a thing then this day week were to go to Belfast 

just as well he has to go to Ennis his fathers anniversary the 

27th it wouldnt be pleasant if he did suppose our rooms at 


729 

the hotel were beside each other and any fooling went on in 

the new bed I couldnt tell him to stop and not bother me 

with him in the next room or perhaps some protestant clergyman 

with a cough knocking on the wall then hed never 

believe the next day we didnt do something its all very well a 

husband but you cant fool a lover after me telling him we 

never did anything of course he didnt believe me no its better 

hes going where he is besides something always happens 

with him the time going to the Mallow concert at 

Maryborough ordering boiling soup for the two of us then 

the bell rang out he walks down the platform with the soup 

splashing about taking spoonfuls of it hadnt he the nerve 

and the waiter after him making a holy show of us screeching 

and confusion for the engine to start but he wouldnt pay 

till he finished it the two gentlemen in the 3rd class carriage 

said he was quite right so he was too hes so pigheaded sometimes 

when he gets a thing into his head a good job he was 

able to open the carriage door with his knife or theyd have 

taken us on to Cork I suppose that was done out of revenge 

on him O I love jaunting in a train or a car with lovely soft 

cushions I wonder will he take a 1st class for me he might

want to do it in the train by tipping the guard well O I suppose 

therell be the usual idiots of men gaping at us with their 

eyes as stupid as ever they can possibly be that was an exceptional 

man that common workman that left us alone in the 

carriage that day going to Howth Id like to find out something 

about him l or 2 tunnels perhaps then you have to 

look out of the window all the nicer then coming back suppose 

I never came back what would they say eloped with 

him that gets you on on the stage the last concert I sang at 

where its over a year ago when was it St Teresas hall Clarendon 

St little chits of missies they have now singing Kathleen 

Kearney and her like on account of father being in the army 

and my singing the absentminded beggar and wearing a 

brooch for Lord Roberts when I had the map of it all and 

Poldy not Irish enough was it him managed it this time I 

wouldnt put it past him like he got me on to sing in the 

Stabat Mater by going around saying he was putting Lead 

Kindly Light to music I put him up to that till the jesuits 

found out he was a freemason thumping the piano lead Thou 

me on copied from some old opera yes and he was going 

about with some of them Sinner Fein lately or whatever they 


730 

call themselves talking his usual trash and nonsense he says 

that little man he showed me without the neck is very intelligent 

the coming man Griffiths is he well he doesnt look it 

thats all I can say still it must have been him he knew there 

was a boycott I hate the mention of their politics after the 

war that Pretoria and Ladysmith and Bloemfontein where 

Gardner lieut Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd East Lancs Rgt of enteric 

fever he was a lovely fellow in khaki and just the right 

height over me Im sure he was brave too he said I was lovely 

the evening we kissed goodbye at the canal lock my Irish 

beauty he was pale with excitement about going away or 

wed be seen from the road he couldnt stand properly and I 

so hot as I never felt they could have made their peace in the 

beginning or old oom Paul and the rest of the other old 

Krugers go and fight it out between them instead of dragging 

on for years killing any finelooking men there were with 

their fever if he was even decently shot it wouldnt have been 

so bad I love to see a regiment pass in review the first time I 

saw the Spanish cavalry at La Roque it was lovely after looking 

across the bay from Algeciras all the lights of the rock 

like fireflies or those sham battles on the 15 acres the Black

Watch with their kilts in time at the march past the 10th 

hussars the prince of Wales own or the lancers O the lancers 

theyre grand or the Dublins that won Tugela his father made 

his money over selling the horses for the cavalry well he could 

buy me a nice present up in Belfast after what I gave him 

theyve lovely linen up there or one of those nice kimono 

things I must buy a mothball like I had before to keep in the 

drawer with them it would be exciting going round with 

him shopping buying those things in a new city better leave 

this ring behind want to keep turning and turning to get it 

over the knuckle there or they might bell it round the town 

in their papers or tell the police on me but theyd think were 

married O let them all go and smother themselves for the fat 

lot I care he has plenty of money and hes not a marrying 

man so somebody better get it out of him if I could find out 

whether he likes me I looked a bit washy of course when I 

looked close in the handglass powdering a mirror never gives 

you the expression besides scrooching down on me like that 

all the time with his big hipbones hes heavy too with his 

hairy chest for this heat always having to lie down for them 

better for him put it into me from behind the way Mrs 


731 

Mastiansky told me her husband made her like the dogs do 

it and stick out her tongue as far as ever she could and he so 

quiet and mild with his tingating cither can you ever be up 

to men the way it takes them lovely stuff in that blue suit he 

had on and stylish tie and socks with the skyblue silk things 

on them hes certainly well off I know by the cut his clothes 

have and his heavy watch but he was like a perfect devil for a 

few minutes after he came back with the stoppress tearing 

up the tickets and swearing blazes because he lost 20 quid he 

said he lost over that outsider that won and half he put on 

for me on account of Lenehans tip cursing him to the lowest 

pits that sponger he was making free with me after the 

Glencree dinner coming back that long joult over the featherbed 

mountain after the lord Mayor looking at me with his 

dirty eyes Val Dillon that big heathen I first noticed him at 

dessert when I was cracking the nuts with my teeth I wished 

I could have picked every morsel of that chicken out of my 

fingers it was so tasty and browned and as tender as anything 

only for I didnt want to eat everything on my plate 

those forks and fishslicers were hallmarked silver too I wish I 

had some I could easily have slipped a couple into my muff

when I was playing with them then always hanging out of 

them for money in a restaurant for the bit you put down 

your throat we have to be thankful for our mangy cup of tea 

itself as a great compliment to be noticed the way the world 

is divided in any case if its going to go on I want at least two 

other good chemises for one thing and but I dont know what 

kind of drawers he likes none at all I think didnt he say yes 

and half the girls in Gibraltar never wore them either naked 

as God made them that Andalusian singing her Manola she 

didnt make much secret of what she hadnt yes and the second 

pair of silkette stockings is laddered after one days wear 

I could have brought them back to Lewers this morning and 

kicked up a row and made that one change them only not to 

upset myself and run the risk of walking into him and ruining 

the whole thing and one of those kidfitting corsets Id 

want advertised cheap in the Gentlewoman with elastic gores 

on the hips he saved the one I have but thats no good what 

did they say they give a delightful figure line 11/6 obviating 

that unsightly broad appearance across the lower back to reduce 

flesh my belly is a bit too big Ill have to knock off the 

stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it the last they 


732 

sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake he makes his 

money easy Larry they call him the old mangy parcel he sent 

at Xmas a cottage cake and a bottle of hogwash he tried to 

palm off as claret that he couldnt get anyone to drink God 

spare his spit for fear hed die of the drouth or I must do a 

few breathing exercises I wonder is that antifat any good 

might overdo it the thin ones are not so much the fashion 

now garters that much I have the violet pair I wore today 

thats all he bought me out of the cheque he got on the first 

O no there was the face lotion I finished the last of yesterday 

that made my skin like new I told him over and over again 

get that made up in the same place and dont forget it God 

only knows whether he did after all I said to him Ill know by 

the bottle anyway if not I suppose Ill only have to wash in 

my piss like beeftea or chickensoup with some of that 

opoponax and violet I thought it was beginning to look coarse 

or old a bit the skin underneath is much finer where it peeled 

off there on my finger after the burn its a pity it isnt all like 

that and the four paltry handkerchiefs about 6/- in all sure 

you cant get on in this world without style all going in food 

and rent when I get it Ill lash it around I tell you in fine style

I always want to throw a handful of tea into the pot measuring 

and mincing if I buy a pair of old brogues itself do you 

like those new shoes yes how much were they Ive no clothes 

at all the brown costume and the skirt and jacket and the 

one at the cleaners 3 whats that for any woman cutting up 

this old hat and patching up the other the men wont look at 

you and women try to walk on you because they know youve 

no man then with all the things getting dearer every day for 

the 4 years more I have of life up to 35 no Im what am I at 

all Ill be 33 in September will I what O well look at that Mrs 

Galbraith shes much older than me I saw her when I was out 

last week her beautys on the wane she was a lovely woman 

magnificent head of hair on her down to her waist tossing it 

back like that like Kitty OShea in Grantham street 1st thing 

I did every morning to look across see her combing it as if 

she loved it and was full of it pity I only got to know her the 

day before we left and that Mrs Langtry the jersey lily the 

prince of Wales was in love with I suppose hes like the first 

man going the roads only for the name of a king theyre all 

made the one way only a black mans Id like to try a beauty 

up to what was she 45 there was some funny story about the 


733 

jealous old husband what was it at all and an oyster knife he 

went no he made her wear a kind of a tin thing round her 

and the prince of Wales yes he had the oyster knife cant be 

true a thing like that like some of those books he brings me 

the works of Master Francois Somebody supposed to be a 

priest about a child born out of her ear because her bumgut 

fell out a nice word for any priest to write and her a—e as if 

any fool wouldnt know what that meant I hate that pretending 

of all things with that old blackguards face on him anybody 

can see its not true and that Ruby and Fair Tyrants he 

brought me that twice I remember when I came to page 50 

the part about where she hangs him up out of a hook with a 

cord flagellate sure theres nothing for a woman in that all 

invention made up about he drinking the champagne out of 

her slipper after the ball was over like the infant Jesus in the 

crib at Inchicore in the Blessed Virgins arms sure no woman 

could have a child that big taken out of her and I thought 

first it came out of her side because how could she go to the 

chamber when she wanted to and she a rich lady of course 

she felt honoured H R H he was in Gibraltar the year I was 

born I bet he found lilies there too where he planted the tree

he planted more than that in his time he might have planted 

me too if hed come a bit sooner then I wouldnt be here as I 

am he ought to chuck that Freeman with the paltry few shillings 

he knocks out of it and go into an office or something 

where hed get regular pay or a bank where they could put 

him up on a throne to count the money all the day of course 

he prefers plottering about the house so you cant stir with 

him any side whats your programme today I wish hed even 

smoke a pipe like father to get the smell of a man or pretending 

to be mooching about for advertisements when he could 

have been in Mr Cuffes still only for what he did then sending 

me to try and patch it up I could have got him promoted 

there to be the manager he gave me a great mirada once or 

twice first he was as stiff as the mischief really and truly Mrs 

Bloom only I felt rotten simply with the old rubbishy dress 

that I lost the leads out of the tails with no cut in it but 

theyre coming into fashion again I bought it simply to please 

him I knew it was no good by the finish pity I changed my 

mind of going to Todd and Bums as I said and not Lees it 

was just like the shop itself rummage sale a lot of trash I hate 

those rich shops get on your nerves nothing kills me alto- 


734 

gether only he thinks he knows a great lot about a womans 

dress and cooking mathering everything he can scour off the 

shelves into it if I went by his advices every blessed hat I put 

on does that suit me yes take that thats alright the one like a 

weddingcake standing up miles off my head he said suited 

me or the dishcover one coming down on my backside on 

pins and needles about the shopgirl in that place in Grafton 

street I had the misfortune to bring him into and she as insolent 

as ever she could be with her smirk saying Im afraid 

were giving you too much trouble what shes there for but I 

stared it out of her yes he was awfully stiff and no wonder 

but he changed the second time he looked Poldy pigheaded 

as usual like the soup but I could see him looking very hard 

at my chest when he stood up to open the door for me it was 

nice of him to show me out in any case Im extremely sorry 

Mrs Bloom believe me without making it too marked the 

first time after him being insulted and me being supposed to 

be his wife I just half smiled I know my chest was out that 

way at the door when he said Im extremely sorry and Im 

sure you were 

yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like

that so long he made me thirsty titties he calls them I had to 

laugh yes this one anyhow stiff the nipple gets for the least 

thing Ill get him to keep that up and Ill take those eggs beaten 

up with marsala fatten them out for him what are all those 

veins and things curious the way its made 2 the same in case 

of twins theyre supposed to represent beauty placed up there 

like those statues in the museum one of them pretending to 

hide it with her hand are they so beautiful of course compared 

with what a man looks like with his two bags full and 

his other thing hanging down out of him or sticking up at 

you like a hatrack no wonder they hide it with a cabbageleaf 

that disgusting Cameron highlander behind the meat market 

or that other wretch with the red head behind the tree 

where the statue of the fish used to be when I was passing 

pretending he was pissing standing out for me to see it with 

his babyclothes up to one side the Queens own they were a 

nice lot its well the Surreys relieved them theyre always trying 

to show it to you every time nearly I passed outside the 

mens greenhouse near the Harcourt street station just to try 

some fellow or other trying to catch my eye as if it was I of 

the 7 wonders of the world O and the stink of those rotten 


735 

places the night coming home with Poldy after the 

Comerfords party oranges and lemonade to make you feel 

nice and watery I went into r of them it was so biting cold I 

couldnt keep it when was that 93 the canal was frozen yes it 

was a few months after a pity a couple of the Camerons werent 

there to see me squatting in the mens place meadero I tried 

to draw a picture of it before I tore it up like a sausage or 

something I wonder theyre not afraid going about of getting 

a kick or a bang of something there the woman is beauty of 

course thats admitted when he said I could pose for a picture 

naked to some rich fellow in Holles street when he lost the 

job in Helys and I was selling the clothes and strumming in 

the coffee palace would I be like that bath of the nymph 

with my hair down yes only shes younger or Im a little like 

that dirty bitch in that Spanish photo he has nymphs used 

they go about like that I asked him about her and that word 

met something with hoses in it and he came out with some 

jawbreakers about the incarnation he never can explain a 

thing simply the way a body can understand then he goes 

and burns the bottom out of the pan all for his Kidney this 

one not so much theres the mark of his teeth still where he

tried to bite the nipple I had to scream out arent they fearful 

trying to hurt you I had a great breast of milk with Milly 

enough for two what was the reason of that he said I could 

have got a pound a week as a wet nurse all swelled out the 

morning that delicate looking student that stopped in no 28 

with the Citrons Penrose nearly caught me washing through 

the window only for I snapped up the towel to my face that 

was his studenting hurt me they used to weaning her till he 

got doctor Brady to give me the belladonna prescription I 

had to get him to suck them they were so hard he said it was 

sweeter and thicker than cows then he wanted to milk me 

into the tea well hes beyond everything I declare somebody 

ought to put him in the budget if I only could remember the 

I half of the things and write a book out of it the works of 

Master Poldy yes and its so much smoother the skin much 

an hour he was at them Im sure by the clock like some kind 

of a big infant I had at me they want everything in their 

mouth all the pleasure those men get out of a woman I can 

feel his mouth O Lord I must stretch myself I wished he was 

here or somebody to let myself go with and come again like 

that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream it when he 


736 

made me spend the 2nd time tickling me behind with his 

finger I was coming for about 5 minutes with my legs round 

him I had to hug him after O Lord I wanted to shout out all 

sorts of things fuck or shit or anything at all only not to look 

ugly or those lines from the strain who knows the way hed 

take it you want to feel your way with a man theyre not all 

like him thank God some of them want you to be so nice 

about it I noticed the contrast he does it and doesnt talk I 

gave my eyes that look with my hair a bit loose from the 

tumbling and my tongue between my lips up to him the 

savage brute Thursday Friday one Saturday two Sunday three 

O Lord I cant wait till Monday 

frseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength 

those engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling 

all over and out of them all sides like the end of Loves 

old sweeeetsonnnng the poor men that have to be out all the 

night from their wives and families in those roasting engines 

stifling it was today Im glad I burned the half of those old 

Freemans and Photo Bits leaving things like that lying about 

hes getting very careless and threw the rest of them up in the 

W C Ill get him to cut them tomorrow for me instead of

having them there for the next year to get a few pence for 

them have him asking wheres last Januarys paper and all those 

old overcoats I bundled out of the hall making the place 

hotter than it is that rain was lovely and refreshing just after 

my beauty sleep I thought it was going to get like Gibraltar 

my goodness the heat there before the levanter came on black 

as night and the glare of the rock standing up in it like a big 

giant compared with their 3 Rock mountain they think is so 

great with the red sentries here and there the poplars and 

they all whitehot and the smell of the rainwater in those 

tanks watching the sun all the time weltering down on you 

faded all that lovely frock fathers friend Mrs Stanhope sent 

me from the B Marche paris what a shame my dearest 

Doggerina she wrote on it she was very nice whats this her 

other name was just a p c to tell you I sent the little present 

have just had a jolly warm bath and feel a very clean dog 

now enjoyed it wogger she called him wogger wd give anything 

to be back in Gib and hear you sing Waiting and in 

old Madrid Concone is the name of those exercises he bought 

me one of those new some word I couldnt make out shawls 

amusing things but tear for the least thing still there lovely I 


737 

think dont you will always think of the lovely teas we had 

together scrumptious currant scones and raspberry wafers I 

adore well now dearest Doggerina be sure and write soon 

kind she left out regards to your father also captain Grove 

with love yrs affly Hester x x x x x she didnt look a bit married 

just like a girl he was years older than her wogger he was 

awfully fond of me when he held down the wire with his 

foot for me to step over at the bullfight at La Linea when 

that matador Gomez was given the bulls ear these clothes we 

have to wear whoever invented them expecting you to walk 

up Killiney hill then for example at that picnic all staysed up 

you cant do a blessed thing in them in a crowd run or jump 

out of the way thats why I was afraid when that other ferocious 

old Bull began to charge the banderilleros with the 

sashes and the 2 things in their hats and the brutes of men 

shouting bravo toro sure the women were as bad in their 

nice white mantillas ripping all the whole insides out of those 

poor horses I never heard of such a thing in all my life yes he 

used to break his heart at me taking off the dog barking in 

bell lane poor brute and it sick what became of them ever I 

suppose theyre dead long ago the 2 of them its like all through

a mist makes you feel so old I made the scones of course I 

had everything all to myself then a girl Hester we used to 

compare our hair mine was thicker than hers she showed me 

how to settle it at the back when I put it up and whats this 

else how to make a knot on a thread with the one hand we 

were like cousins what age was I then the night of the storm 

I slept in her bed she had her arms round me then we were 

fighting in the morning with the pillow what fun he was 

watching me whenever he got an opportunity at the band 

on the Alameda esplanade when I was with father and captain 

Grove I looked up at the church first and then at the 

windows then down and our eyes met I felt something go 

through me like all needles my eyes were dancing I remember 

after when I looked at myself in the glass hardly recognised 

myself the change he was attractive to a girl in spite of his 

being a little bald intelligent looking disappointed and gay 

at the same time he was like Thomas in the shadow of 

Ashlydyat I had a splendid skin from the sun and the excitement 

like a rose I didnt get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have 

been nice on account of her but I could have stopped it in 

time she gave me the Moonstone to read that was the first I 


738 

read of Wilkie Collins East Lynne I read and the shadow of 

Ashlydyat Mrs Henry Wood Henry Dunbar by that other 

woman I lent him afterwards with Mulveys photo in it so as 

he see I wasnt without and Lord Lytton Eugene Aram Molly 

bawn she gave me by Mrs Hungerford on account of the 

name I dont like books with a Molly in them like that one 

he brought me about the one from Flanders a whore always 

shoplifting anything she could cloth and stuff and yards of it 

O this blanket is too heavy on me thats better I havent even 

one decent nightdress this thing gets all rolled under me besides 

him and his fooling thats better I used to be weltering 

then in the heat my shift drenched with the sweat stuck in 

the cheeks of my bottom on the chair when I stood up they 

were so fattish and firm when I got up on the sofa cushions 

to see with my clothes up and the bugs tons of them at night 

and the mosquito nets I couldnt read a line Lord how long 

ago it seems centuries of course they never came back and 

she didnt put her address right on it either she may have 

noticed her wogger people were always going away and we 

never I remember that day with the waves and the boats 

with their high heads rocking and the smell of ship those

Officers uniforms on shore leave made me seasick he didnt 

say anything he was very serious I had the high buttoned 

boots on and my skirt was blowing she kissed me six or seven 

times didnt I cry yes I believe I did or near it my lips were 

taittering when I said goodbye she had a Gorgeous wrap of 

some special kind of blue colour on her for the voyage made 

very peculiarly to one side like and it was extremely pretty it 

got as dull as the devil after they went I was almost planning 

to run away mad out of it somewhere were never easy where 

we are father or aunt or marriage waiting always waiting to 

guiiiide him toooo me waiting nor speeeed his flying feet 

their damn guns bursting and booming all over the shop 

especially the Queens birthday and throwing everything 

down in all directions if you didnt open the windows when 

general Ulysses Grant whoever he was or did supposed to be 

some great fellow landed off the ship and old Sprague the 

consul that was there from before the flood dressed up poor 

man and he in mourning for the son then the same old bugles 

for reveille in the morning and drums rolling and the unfortunate 

poor devils of soldiers walking about with messtins 

smelling the place more than the old longbearded jews in 


739 

their jellibees and levites assembly and sound clear and gunfire 

for the men to cross the lines and the warden marching 

with his keys to lock the gates and the bagpipes and only 

captain Groves and father talking about Rorkes drift and 

Plevna and sir Garnet Wolseley and Gordon at Khartoum 

lighting their pipes for them everytime they went out drunken 

old devil with his grog on the windowsill catch him leaving 

any of it picking his nose trying to think of some other dirty 

story to tell up in a corner but he never forgot himself when 

I was there sending me out of the room on some blind excuse 

paying his compliments the Bushmills whisky talking 

of course but hed do the same to the next woman that came 

along I suppose he died of galloping drink ages ago the days 

like years not a letter from a living soul except the odd few I 

posted to myself with bits of paper in them so bored sometimes 

I could fight with my nails listening to that old Arab 

with the one eye and his heass of an instrument singing his 

heah heah aheah all my compriments on your hotchapotch 

of your heass as bad as now with the hands hanging off me 

looking out of the window if there was a nice fellow even in 

the opposite house that medical in Holles street the nurse

was after when I put on my gloves and hat at the window to 

show I was going out not a notion what I meant arent they 

thick never understand what you say even youd want to print 

it up on a big poster for them not even if you shake hands 

twice with the left he didnt recognise me either when I half 

frowned at him outside Westland row chapel where does their 

great intelligence come in Id like to know grey matter they 

have it all in their tail if you ask me those country gougers 

up in the City Arms intelligence they had a damn sight less 

than the bulls and cows they were selling the meat and the 

coalmans bell that noisy bugger trying to swindle me with 

the wrong bill he took out of his hat what a pair of paws and 

pots and pans and kettles to mend any broken bottles for a 

poor man today and no visitors or post ever except his cheques 

or some advertisement like that wonderworker they sent him 

addressed dear Madam only his letter and the card from Milly 

this morning see she wrote a letter to him who did I get the 

last letter from O Mrs Dwenn now what possessed her to 

write from Canada after so many years to know the recipe I 

had for pisto madrileno Floey Dillon since she wrote to say 

she was married to a very rich architect if Im to believe all I 


740 

hear with a villa and eight rooms her father was an awfully 

nice man he was near seventy always goodhumoured well 

now Miss Tweedy or Miss Gillespie theres the piannyer that 

was a solid silver coffee service he had too on the mahogany 

sideboard then dying so far away I hate people that have 

always their poor story to tell everybody has their own 

troubles that poor Nancy Blake died a month ago of acute 

neumonia well I didnt know her so well as all that she was 

Floeys friend more than mine poor Nancy its a bother having 

to answer he always tells me the wrong things and no 

stops to say like making a speech your sad bereavement 

symphathy I always make that mistake and newphew with 2 

double yous in I hope hell write me a longer letter the next 

time if its a thing he really likes me O thanks be to the great 

God I got somebody to give me what I badly wanted to put 

some heart up into me youve no chances at all in this place 

like you used long ago I wish somebody would write me a 

loveletter his wasnt much and I told him he could write what 

he liked yours ever Hugh Boylan in old Madrid stuff silly 

women believe love is sighing I am dying still if he wrote it I 

suppose thered be some truth in it true or no it fills up your

whole day and life always something to think about every 

moment and see it all round you like a new world I could 

write the answer in bed to let him imagine me short just a 

few words not those long crossed letters Atty Dillon used to 

write to the fellow that was something in the four courts 

that jilted her after out of the ladies letterwriter when I told 

her to say a few simple words he could twist how he liked 

not acting with precipat precip itancy with equal candour 

the greatest earthly happiness answer to a gentlemans proposal 

affirmatively my goodness theres nothing else its all 

very fine for them but as for being a woman as soon as youre 

old they might as well throw you out in the bottom of the 

ashpit. 

Mulveys was the first when I was in bed that morning and 

Mrs Rubio brought it in with the coffee she stood there standing 

when I asked her to hand me and I pointing at them I 

couldnt think of the word a hairpin to open it with ah 

horquilla disobliging old thing and it staring her in the face 

with her switch of false hair on her and vain about her appearance 

ugly as she was near 80 or a 100 her face a mass of 

wrinkles with all her religion domineering because she never 


741 

could get over the Atlantic fleet coming in half the ships of 

the world and the Union Jack flying with all her carabineros 

because 4 drunken English sailors took all the rock from 

them and because I didnt run into mass often enough in 

Santa Maria to please her with her shawl up on her except 

when there was a marriage on with all her miracles of the 

saints and her black blessed virgin with the silver dress and 

the sun dancing 3 times on Easter Sunday morning and when 

the priest was going by with the bell bringing the vatican to 

the dying blessing herself for his Majestad an admirer he 

signed it I near jumped out of my skin I wanted to pick him 

up when I saw him following me along the Calle Real in the 

shop window then he tipped me just in passing but I never 

thought hed write making an appointment I had it inside 

my petticoat bodice all day reading it up in every hole and 

corner while father was up at the drill instructing to find out 

by the handwriting or the language of stamps singing I remember 

shall I wear a white rose and I wanted to put on the 

old stupid clock to near the time he was the first man kissed 

me under the Moorish wall my sweetheart when a boy it 

never entered my head what kissing meant till he put his

tongue in my mouth his mouth was sweetlike young I put 

my knee up to him a few times to learn the way what did I 

tell him I was engaged for for fun to the son of a Spanish 

nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora and he believed 

me that I was to be married to him in 3 years time theres 

many a true word spoken in jest there is a flower that 

bloometh a few things I told him true about myself just for 

him to be imagining the Spanish girls he didnt like I suppose 

one of them wouldnt have him I got him excited he 

crushed all the flowers on my bosom he brought me he 

couldnt count the pesetas and the perragordas till I taught 

him Cappoquin he came from he said on the black water 

but it was too short then the day before he left May yes it 

was May when the infant king of Spain was born Im always 

like that in the spring Id like a new fellow every year up on 

the tiptop under the rockgun near OHaras tower I told him 

it was struck by lightning and all about the old Barbary apes 

they sent to Clapham without a tail careering all over the 

show on each others back Mrs Rubio said she was a regular 

old rock scorpion robbing the chickens out of Inces farm 

and throw stones at you if you went anear he was looking at 


742 

me I had that white blouse on open in the front to encourage 

him as much as I could without too openly they were 

just beginning to be plump I said I was tired we lay over the 

firtree cove a wild place I suppose it must be the highest rock 

in existence the galleries and casemates and those frightful 

rocks and Saint Michaels cave with the icicles or whatever 

they call them hanging down and ladders all the mud 

plotching my boots Im sure thats the way down the monkeys 

go under the sea to Africa when they die the ships out 

far like chips that was the Malta boat passing yes the sea and 

the sky you could do what you liked lie there for ever he 

caressed them outside they love doing that its the roundness 

there I was leaning over him with my white ricestraw hat to 

take the newness out of it the left side of my face the best my 

blouse open for his last day transparent kind of shirt he had 

I could see his chest pink he wanted to touch mine with his 

for a moment but I wouldnt lee him he was awfully put out 

first for fear you never know consumption or leave me with 

a child embarazada that old servant Ines told me that one 

drop even if it got into you at all after I tried with the Banana 

but I was afraid it might break and get lost up in me

somewhere because they once took something down out of 

a woman that was up there for years covered with limesalts 

theyre all mad to get in there where they come out of youd 

think they could never go far enough up and then theyre 

done with you in a way till the next time yes because theres 

a wonderful feeling there so tender all the time how did we 

finish it off yes O yes I pulled him off into my handkerchief 

pretending not to be excited but I opened my legs I wouldnt 

let him touch me inside my petticoat because I had a skirt 

opening up the side I tormented the life out of him first 

tickling him I loved rousing that dog in the hotel rrrsssstt 

awokwokawok his eyes shut and a bird flying below us he 

was shy all the same I liked him like that moaning I made 

him blush a little when I got over him that way when I unbuttoned 

him and took his out and drew back the skin it 

had a kind of eye in it theyre all Buttons men down the 

middle on the wrong side of them Molly darling he called 

me what was his name Jack Joe Harry Mulvey was it yes I 

think a lieutenant he was rather fair he had a laughing kind 

of a voice so I went round to the whatyoucallit everything 

was whatyoucallit moustache had he he said hed come back 


743 

Lord its just like yesterday to me and if I was married hed do 

it to me and I promised him yes faithfully Id let him block 

me now flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a captain or 

admiral its nearly 20 years if I said firtree cove he would if he 

came up behind me and put his hands over my eyes to guess 

who I might recognise him hes young still about 40 perhaps 

hes married some girl on the black water and is quite changed 

they all do they havent half the character a woman has she 

little knows what I did with her beloved husband before he 

ever dreamt of her in broad daylight too in the sight of the 

whole world you might say they could have put an article 

about it in the Chronicle I was a bit wild after when I blew 

out the old bag the biscuits were in from Benady Bros and 

exploded it Lord what a bang all the woodcocks and pigeons 

screaming coming back the same way that we went over 

middle hill round by the old guardhouse and the jews 

burialplace pretending to read out the Hebrew on them I 

wanted to fire his pistol he said he hadnt one he didnt know 

what to make of me with his peak cap on that he always 

wore crooked as often as I settled it straight H M S Calypso 

swinging my hat that old Bishop that spoke off the altar his

long preach about womans higher functions about girls now 

riding the bicycle and wearing peak caps and the new woman 

bloomers God send him sense and me more money I suppose 

theyre called after him I never thought that would be 

my name Bloom when I used to write it in print to see how 

it looked on a visiting card or practising for the butcher and 

oblige M Bloom youre looking blooming Josie used to say 

after I married him well its better than Breen or Briggs does 

brig or those awful names with bottom in them Mrs 

Ramsbottom or some other kind of a bottom Mulvey I 

wouldnt go mad about either or suppose I divorced him Mrs 

Boylan my mother whoever she was might have given me a 

nicer name the Lord knows after the lovely one she had Lunita 

Laredo the fun we had running along Williss road to Europa 

point twisting in and out all round the other side of Jersey 

they were shaking and dancing about in my blouse like Millys 

little ones now when she runs up the stairs I loved looking 

down at them I was jumping up at the pepper trees and the 

white poplars pulling the leaves off and throwing them at 

him he went to India he was to write the voyages those men 

have to make to the ends of the world and back its the least 


744 

they might get a squeeze or two at a woman while they can 

going out to be drowned or blown up somewhere I went up 

Windmill hill to the flats that Sunday morning with captain 

Rubios that was dead spyglass like the sentry had he said hed 

have one or two from on board I wore that frock from the B 

Marche paris and the coral necklace the straits shining I could 

see over to Morocco almost the bay of Tangier white and the 

Atlas mountain with snow on it and the straits like a river so 

clear Harry Molly darling I was thinking of him on the sea 

all the time after at mass when my petticoat began to slip 

down at the elevation weeks and weeks I kept the handkerchief 

under my pillow for the smell of him there was no 

decent perfume to be got in that Gibraltar only that cheap 

peau despagne that faded and left a stink on you more than 

anything else I wanted to give him a memento he gave me 

that clumsy Claddagh ring for luck that I gave Gardner going 

to south Africa where those Boers killed him with their 

war and fever but they were well beaten all the same as if it 

brought its bad luck with it like an opal or pearl still it must 

have been pure 18 carrot gold because it was very heavy but 

what could you get in a place like that the sandfrog shower

from Africa and that derelict ship that came up to the harbour 

Marie the Marie whatyoucallit no he hadnt a moustache that 

was Gardner yes I can see his face cleanshaven 

Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that train again weeping tone 

once in the dear deaead days beyondre call close my eyes 

breath my lips forward kiss sad look eyes open piano ere oer 

the world the mists began I hate that istsbeg comes loves 

sweet sooooooooooong Ill let that out full when I get in front 

of the footlights again Kathleen Kearney and her lot of squealers 

Miss This Miss That Miss Theother lot of sparrowfarts 

skitting around talking about politics they know as much 

about as my backside anything in the world to make themselves 

someway interesting Irish homemade beauties soldiers 

daughter am I ay and whose are you bootmakers and 

publicans I beg your pardon coach I thought you were a 

wheelbarrow theyd die down dead off their feet if ever they 

got a chance of walking down the Alameda on an officers 

arm like me on the bandnight my eyes flash my bust that 

they havent passion God help their poor head I knew more 

about men and life when I was I S than theyll all know at 50 

they dont know how to sing a song like that Gardner said no 


745 

man could look at my mouth and teeth smiling like that and 

not think of it I was afraid he mightnt like my accent first he 

so English all father left me in spite of his stamps Ive my 

mothers eyes and figure anyhow he always said theyre so 

snotty about themselves some of those cads he wasnt a bit 

like that he was dead gone on my lips let them get a husband 

first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter like mine or see 

if they can excite a swell with money that can pick and choose 

whoever he wants like Boylan to do it 4 or 5 times locked in 

each others arms or the voice either I could have been a prima 

donna only I married him comes looooves old deep down 

chin back not too much make it double My Ladys Bower is 

too long for an encore about the moated grange at twilight 

and vaunted rooms yes Ill sing Winds that blow from the 

south that he gave after the choirstairs performance Ill change 

that lace on my black dress to show off my bubs and Ill yes 

by God Ill get that big fan mended make them burst with 

envy my hole is itching me always when I think of him I feel 

I want to I feel some wind in me better go easy not wake him 

have him at it again slobbering after washing every bit of 

myself back belly and sides if we had even a bath itself or my

own room anyway I wish hed sleep in some bed by himself 

with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart God 

or do the least thing better yes hold them like that a bit on 

my side piano quietly sweeeee theres that train far away pianissimo 

eeeee one more song 

that was a relief wherever you be let your wind go free who 

knows if that pork chop I took with my cup of tea after was 

quite good with the heat I couldnt smell anything off it Im 

sure that queerlooking man in the porkbutchers is a great 

rogue I hope that lamp is not smoking fill my nose up with 

smuts better than having him leaving the gas on all night I 

couldnt rest easy in my bed in Gibraltar even getting up to 

see why am I so damned nervous about that though I like it 

in the winter its more company O Lord it was rotten cold 

too that winter when I was only about ten was I yes I had the 

big doll with all the funny clothes dressing her up and undressing 

that icy wind skeeting across from those mountains 

the something Nevada sierra nevada standing at the fire with 

the little bit of a short shift I had up to heat myself I loved 

dancing about in it then make a race back into bed Im sure 

that fellow opposite used to be there the whole time watch- 


746 

ing with the lights out in the summer and I in my skin hopping 

around I used to love myself then stripped at the washstand 

dabbing and creaming only when it came to the chamber 

performance I put out the light too so then there were 2 

of us goodbye to my sleep for this night anyhow I hope hes 

not going to get in with those medicals leading him astray to 

imagine hes young again coming in at 4 in the morning it 

must be if not more still he had the manners not to wake me 

what do they find to gabber about all night squandering 

money and getting drunker and drunker couldnt they drink 

water then he starts giving us his orders for eggs and tea and 

Findon haddy and hot buttered toast I suppose well have 

him sitting up like the king of the country pumping the 

wrong end of the spoon up and down in his egg wherever he 

learned that from and I love to hear him falling up the stairs 

of a morning with the cups rattling on the tray and then 

play with the cat she rubs up against you for her own sake I 

wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a woman always licking 

and lecking but I hate their claws I wonder do they see anything 

that we cant staring like that when she sits at the top of 

the stairs so long and listening as I wait always what a robber

too that lovely fresh place I bought I think Ill get a bit of fish 

tomorrow or today is it Friday yes I will with some 

blancmange with black currant jam like long ago not those 

2 lb pots of mixed plum and apple from the London and 

Newcastle Williams and Woods goes twice as far only for the 

bones I hate those eels cod yes Ill get a nice piece of cod Im 

always getting enough for 3 forgetting anyway Im sick of 

that everlasting butchers meat from Buckleys loin chops and 

leg beef and rib steak and scrag of mutton and calfs pluck 

the very name is enough or a picnic suppose we all gave 5/each 

and or let him pay it and invite some other woman for 

him who Mrs Fleming and drove out to the furry glen or the 

strawberry beds wed have him examining all the horses toenails 

first like he does with the letters no not with Boylan 

there yes with some cold veal and ham mixed sandwiches 

there are little houses down at the bottom of the banks there 

on purpose but its as hot as blazes he says not a bank holiday 

anyhow I hate those ruck of Mary Ann coalboxes out for the 

day Whit Monday is a cursed day too no wonder that bee bit 

him better the seaside but Id never again in this life get into 

a boat with him after him at Bray telling the boatman he 


747 

knew how to row if anyone asked could he ride the steeplechase 

for the gold cup hed say yes then it came on to get 

rough the old thing crookeding about and the weight all 

down my side telling me pull the right reins now pull the left 

and the tide all swamping in floods in through the bottom 

and his oar slipping out of the stirrup its a mercy we werent 

all drowned he can swim of course me no theres no danger 

whatsoever keep yourself calm in his flannel trousers Id like 

to have tattered them down off him before all the people 

and give him what that one calls flagellate till he was black 

and blue do him all the good in the world only for that 

longnosed chap I dont know who he is with that other beauty 

Burke out of the City Arms hotel was there spying around as 

usual on the slip always where he wasnt wanted if there was 

a row on youd vomit a better face there was no love lost 

between us thats 1 consolation I wonder what kind is that 

book he brought me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion 

some other Mr de Kock I suppose the people gave him that 

nickname going about with his tube from one woman to 

another I couldnt even change my new white shoes all ruined 

with the saltwater and the hat I had with that feather all

lowy and tossed on me how annoying and provoking because 

the smell of the sea excited me of course the sardines 

and the bream in Catalan bay round the back of the rock 

they were fine all silver in the fishermens baskets old Luigi 

near a hundred they said came from Genoa and the tall old 

chap with the earrings I dont like a man you have to climb 

up to to get at I suppose theyre all dead and rotten long ago 

besides I dont like being alone in this big barracks of a place 

at night I suppose Ill have to put up with it I never brought 

a bit of salt in even when we moved in the confusion musical 

academy he was going to make on the first floor drawingroom 

with a brassplate or Blooms private hotel he suggested go 

and ruin himself altogether the way his father did down in 

Ennis like all the things he told father he was going to do 

and me but I saw through him telling me all the lovely places 

we could go for the honeymoon Venice by moonlight with 

the gondolas and the lake of Como he had a picture cut out 

of some paper of and mandolines and lanterns O how nice I 

said whatever I liked he was going to do immediately if not 

sooner will you be my man will you carry my can he ought 

to get a leather medal with a putty rim for all the plans he 


748 

invents then leaving us here all day youd never know what 

old beggar at the door for a crust with his long story might 

be a tramp and put his foot in the way to prevent me shutting 

it like that picture of that hardened criminal he was 

called in Lloyds Weekly news 20 years in jail then he comes 

out and murders an old woman for her money imagine his 

poor wife or mother or whoever she is such a face youd run 

miles away from I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the doors 

and windows to make sure but its worse again being locked 

up like in a prison or a madhouse they ought to be all shot or 

the cat of nine tails a big brute like that that would attack a 

poor old woman to murder her in her bed Id cut them off 

him so I would not that hed be much use still better than 

nothing the night I was sure I heard burglars in the kitchen 

and he went down in his shirt with a candle and a poker as if 

he was looking for a mouse as white as a sheet frightened out 

of his wits making as much noise as he possibly could for the 

burglars benefit there isnt much to steal indeed the Lord 

knows still its the feeling especially now with Milly away 

such an idea for him to send the girl down there to learn to 

take photographs on account of his grandfather instead of

sending her to Skerrys academy where shed have to learn 

not like me getting all is at school only hed do a thing like 

that all the same on account of me and Boylan thats why he 

did it Im certain the way he plots and plans everything out I 

couldnt turn round with her in the place lately unless I bolted 

the door first gave me the fidgets coming in without knocking 

first when I put the chair against the door just as I was 

washing myself there below with the glove get on your nerves 

then doing the loglady all day put her in a glasscase with two 

at a time to look at her if he knew she broke off the hand off 

that little gimcrack statue with her roughness and carelessness 

before she left that I got that little Italian boy to mend 

so that you cant see the join for 2 shillings wouldnt even 

teem the potatoes for you of course shes right not to ruin her 

hands I noticed he was always talking to her lately at the 

table explaining things in the paper and she pretending to 

understand sly of course that comes from his side of the house 

he cant say I pretend things can he Im too honest as a matter 

of fact and helping her into her coat but if there was anything 

wrong with her its me shed tell not him I suppose he 

thinks Im finished out and laid on the shelf well Im not no 


749 

nor anything like it well see well see now shes well on for 

flirting too with Tom Devans two sons imitating me whistling 

with those romps of Murray girls calling for her can 

Milly come out please shes in great demand to pick what 

they can out of her round in Nelson street riding Harry 

Devans bicycle at night its as well he sent her where she is 

she was just getting out of bounds wanting to go on the 

skatingrink and smoking their cigarettes through their nose 

I smelt it off her dress when I was biting off the thread of the 

button I sewed on to the bottom of her jacket she couldnt 

hide much from me I tell you only I oughtnt to have stitched 

it and it on her it brings a parting and the last plumpudding 

too split in 2 halves see it comes out no matter what they say 

her tongue is a bit too long for my taste your blouse is open 

too low she says to me the pan calling the kettle blackbottom 

and I had to tell her not to cock her legs up like that on show 

on the windowsill before all the people passing they all look 

at her like me when I was her age of course any old rag looks 

well on you then a great touchmenot too in her own way at 

the Only Way in the Theatre royal take your foot away out 

of that I hate people touching me afraid of her life Id crush

her skirt with the pleats a lot of that touching must go on in 

theatres in the crush in the dark theyre always trying to wiggle 

up to you that fellow in the pit at the Gaiety for Beerbohm 

Tree in Trilby the last time Ill ever go there to be squashed 

like that for any Trilby or her barebum every two minutes 

tipping me there and looking away hes a bit daft I think I 

saw him after trying to get near two stylishdressed ladies outside 

Switzers window at the same little game I recognised 

him on the moment the face and everything but he didnt 

remember me yes and she didnt even want me to kiss her at 

the Broadstone going away well I hope shell get someone to 

dance attendance on her the way I did when she was down 

with the mumps and her glands swollen wheres this and 

wheres that of course she cant feel anything deep yet I never 

came properly till I was what 22 or so it went into the wrong 

place always only the usual girls nonsense and giggling that 

Conny Connolly writing to her in white ink on black paper 

sealed with sealingwax though she clapped when the curtain 

came down because he looked so handsome then we had 

Martin Harvey for breakfast dinner and supper I thought to 

myself afterwards it must be real love if a man gives up his 


750 

life for her that way for nothing I suppose there are a few 

men like that left its hard to believe in it though unless it 

really happened to me the majority of them with not a particle 

of love in their natures to find two people like that nowadays 

full up of each other that would feel the same way as 

you do theyre usually a bit foolish in the head his father 

must have been a bit queer to go and poison himself after 

her still poor old man I suppose he felt lost shes always making 

love to my things too the few old rags I have wanting to 

put her hair up at I S my powder too only ruin her skin on 

her shes time enough for that all her life after of course shes 

restless knowing shes pretty with her lips so red a pity they 

wont stay that way I was too but theres no use going to the 

fair with the thing answering me like a fishwoman when I 

asked to go for a half a stone of potatoes the day we met Mrs 

Joe Gallaher at the trottingmatches and she pretended not 

to see us in her trap with Friery the solicitor we werent grand 

enough till I gave her 2 damn fine cracks across the ear for 

herself take that now for answering me like that and that for 

your impudence she had me that exasperated of course contradicting 

I was badtempered too because how was it there

was a weed in the tea or I didnt sleep the night before cheese 

I ate was it and I told her over and over again not to leave 

knives crossed like that because she has nobody to command 

her as she said herself well if he doesnt correct her faith I will 

that was the last time she turned on the teartap I was just 

like that myself they darent order me about the place its his 

fault of course having the two of us slaving here instead of 

getting in a woman long ago am I ever going to have a proper 

servant again of course then shed see him coming Id have to 

let her know or shed revenge it arent they a nuisance that old 

Mrs Fleming you have to be walking round after her putting 

the things into her hands sneezing and farting into the pots 

well of course shes old she cant help it a good job I found 

that rotten old smelly dishcloth that got lost behind the 

dresser I knew there was something and opened the area 

window to let out the smell bringing in his friends to entertain 

them like the night he walked home with a dog if you 

please that might have been mad especially Simon Dedalus 

son his father such a criticiser with his glasses up with his tall 

hat on him at the cricket match and a great big hole in his 

sock one thing laughing at the other and his son that got all 


751 

those prizes for whatever he won them in the intermediate 

imagine climbing over the railings if anybody saw him that 

knew us I wonder he didnt tear a big hole in his grand funeral 

trousers as if the one nature gave wasnt enough for 

anybody hawking him down into the dirty old kitchen now 

is he right in his head I ask pity it wasnt washing day my old 

pair of drawers might have been hanging up too on the line 

on exhibition for all hed ever care with the ironmould mark 

the stupid old bundle burned on them he might think was 

something else and she never even rendered down the fat I 

told her and now shes going such as she was on account of 

her paralysed husband getting worse theres always something 

wrong with them disease or they have to go under an operation 

or if its not that its drink and he beats her Ill have to 

hunt around again for someone every day I get up theres 

some new thing on sweet God sweet God well when Im 

stretched out dead in my grave I suppose Ill have some peace 

I want to get up a minute if Im let wait O Jesus wait yes that 

thing has come on me yes now wouldnt that afflict you of 

course all the poking and rooting and ploughing he had up 

in me now what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday wouldnt

that pester the soul out of a body unless he likes it some men 

do God knows theres always something wrong with us 5 

days every 3 or 4 weeks usual monthly auction isnt it simply 

sickening that night it came on me like that the one and 

only time we were in a box that Michael Gunn gave him to 

see Mrs Kendal and her husband at the Gaiety something he 

did about insurance for him in Drimmies I was fit to be tied 

though I wouldnt give in with that gentleman of fashion 

staring down at me with his glasses and him the other side of 

me talking about Spinoza and his soul thats dead I suppose 

millions of years ago I smiled the best I could all in a swamp 

leaning forward as if I was interested having to sit it out then 

to the last tag I wont forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry 

supposed to be a fast play about adultery that idiot in the 

gallery hissing the woman adulteress he shouted I suppose 

he went and had a woman in the next lane running round 

all the back ways after to make up for it I wish he had what 

I had then hed boo I bet the cat itself is better off than us 

have we too much blood up in us or what O patience above 

its pouring out of me like the sea anyhow he didnt make me 

pregnant as big as he is I dont want to ruin the clean sheets I 


752 

just put on I suppose the clean linen I wore brought it on 

too damn it damn it and they always want to see a stain on 

the bed to know youre a virgin for them all thats troubling 

them theyre such fools too you could be a widow or divorced 

40 times over a daub of red ink would do or blackberry juice 

no thats too purply O Jamesy let me up out of this pooh 

sweets of sin whoever suggested that business for women 

what between clothes and cooking and children this damned 

old bed too jingling like the dickens I suppose they could 

hear us away over the other side of the park till I suggested to 

put the quilt on the floor with the pillow under my bottom 

I wonder is it nicer in the day I think it is easy I think Ill cut 

all this hair off me there scalding me I might look like a 

young girl wouldnt he get the great suckin the next time he 

turned up my clothes on me Id give anything to see his face 

wheres the chamber gone easy Ive a holy horror of its breaking 

under me after that old commode I wonder was I too 

heavy sitting on his knee I made him sit on the easychair 

purposely when I took off only my blouse and skirt first in 

the other room he was so busy where he oughtnt to be he 

never felt me I hope my breath was sweet after those kissing

comfits easy God I remember one time I could scout it out 

straight whistling like a man almost easy O Lord how noisy 

I hope theyre bubbles on it for a wad of money from some 

fellow Ill have to perfume it in the morning dont forget I bet 

he never saw a better pair of thighs than that look how white 

they are the smoothest place is right there between this bit 

here how soft like a peach easy God I wouldnt mind being a 

man and get up on a lovely woman O Lord what a row youre 

making like the jersey lily easy easy O how the waters come 

down at Lahore 

who knows is there anything the matter with my insides 

or have I something growing in me getting that thing like 

that every week when was it last I Whit Monday yes its only 

about 3 weeks I ought to go to the doctor only it would be 

like before I married him when I had that white thing coming 

from me and Floey made me go to that dry old stick Dr 

Collins for womens diseases on Pembroke road your vagina 

he called it I suppose thats how he got all the gilt mirrors 

and carpets getting round those rich ones off Stephens green 

running up to him for every little fiddlefaddle her vagina 

and her cochinchina theyve money of course so theyre all 


753 

right I wouldnt marry him not if he was the last man in the 

world besides theres something queer about their children 

always smelling around those filthy bitches all sides asking 

me if what I did had an offensive odour what did he want 

me to do but the one thing gold maybe what a question if I 

smathered it all over his wrinkly old face for him with all my 

compriments I suppose hed know then and could you pass 

it easily pass what I thought he was talking about the rock of 

Gibraltar the way he put it thats a very nice invention too by 

the way only I like letting myself down after in the hole as 

far as I can squeeze and pull the chain then to flush it nice 

cool pins and needles still theres something in it I suppose I 

always used to know by Millys when she was a child whether 

she had worms or not still all the same paying him for that 

how much is that doctor one guinea please and asking me 

had I frequent omissions where do those old fellows get all 

the words they have omissions with his shortsighted eyes on 

me cocked sideways I wouldnt trust him too far to give me 

chloroform or God knows what else still I liked him when 

he sat down to write the thing out frowning so severe his 

nose intelligent like that you be damned you lying strap O

anything no matter who except an idiot he was clever enough 

to spot that of course that was all thinking of him and his 

mad crazy letters my Precious one everything connected with 

your glorious Body everything underlined that comes from 

it is a thing of beauty and of joy for ever something he got 

out of some nonsensical book that he had me always at myself 

4 and 5 times a day sometimes and I said I hadnt are you 

sure O yes I said I am quite sure in a way that shut him up I 

knew what was coming next only natural weakness it was he 

excited me I dont know how the first night ever we met 

when I was living in Rehoboth terrace we stood staring at 

one another for about 10 minutes as if we met somewhere I 

suppose on account of my being jewess looking after my 

mother he used to amuse me the things he said with the half 

sloothering smile on him and all the Doyles said he was going 

to stand for a member of Parliament O wasnt I the born 

fool to believe all his blather about home rule and the land 

league sending me that long strool of a song out of the Huguenots 

to sing in French to be more classy O beau pays de 

la Touraine that I never even sang once explaining and 

rigmaroling about religion and persecution he wont let you 


754 

enjoy anything naturally then might he as a great favour the 

very 1st opportunity he got a chance in Brighton square running 

into my bedroom pretending the ink got on his hands 

to wash it off with the Albion milk and sulphur soap I used 

to use and the gelatine still round it O I laughed myself sick 

at him that day I better not make an alnight sitting on this 

affair they ought to make chambers a natural size so that a 

woman could sit on it properly he kneels down to do it I 

suppose there isnt in all creation another man with the habits 

he has look at the way hes sleeping at the foot of the bed 

how can he without a hard bolster its well he doesnt kick or 

he might knock out all my teeth breathing with his hand on 

his nose like that Indian god he took me to show one wet 

Sunday in the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a pinafore 

lying on his side on his hand with his ten toes sticking 

out that he said was a bigger religion than the jews and Our 

Lords both put together all over Asia imitating him as hes 

always imitating everybody I suppose he used to sleep at the 

foot of the bed too with his big square feet up in his wifes 

mouth damn this stinking thing anyway wheres this those 

napkins are ah yes I know I hope the old press doesnt creak

ah I knew it would hes sleeping hard had a good time somewhere 

still she must have given him great value for his money 

of course he has to pay for it from her O this nuisance of a 

thing I hope theyll have something better for us in the other 

world tying ourselves up God help us thats all right for tonight 

now the lumpy old jingly bed always reminds me of 

old Cohen I suppose he scratched himself in it often enough 

and he thinks father bought it from Lord Napier that I used 

to admire when I was a little girl because I told him easy 

piano O I like my bed God here we are as bad as ever after 

16 years how many houses were we in at all Raymond terrace 

and Ontario terrace and Lombard street and Holles street 

and he goes about whistling every time were on the run again 

his huguenots or the frogs march pretending to help the men 

with our 4 sticks of furniture and then the City Arms hotel 

worse and worse says Warden Daly that charming place on 

the landing always somebody inside praying then leaving all 

their stinks after them always know who was in there last 

every time were just getting on right something happens or 

he puts his big foot in it Thoms and Helys and Mr Cuffes 

and Drimmies either hes going to be run into prison over his 


755 

old lottery tickets that was to be all our salvations or he goes 

and gives impudence well have him coming home with the 

sack soon out of the Freeman too like the rest on account of 

those Sinner Fein or the freemasons then well see if the little 

man he showed me dribbling along in the wet all by himself 

round by Coadys lane will give him much consolation that 

he says is so capable and sincerely Irish he is indeed judging 

by the sincerity of the trousers I saw on him wait theres 

Georges church bells wait 3 quarters the hour l wait 2 oclock 

well thats a nice hour of the night for him to be coming 

home at to anybody climbing down into the area if anybody 

saw him Ill knock him off that little habit tomorrow first Ill 

look at his shirt to see or Ill see if he has that French letter 

still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I dont know deceitful 

men all their 20 pockets arent enough for their lies 

then why should we tell them even if its the truth they dont 

believe you then tucked up in bed like those babies in the 

Aristocrats Masterpiece he brought me another time as if we 

hadnt enough of that in real life without some old Aristocrat 

or whatever his name is disgusting you more with those rotten 

pictures children with two heads and no legs thats the

kind of villainy theyre always dreaming about with not another 

thing in their empty heads they ought to get slow poison 

the half of them then tea and toast for him buttered on 

both sides and newlaid eggs I suppose Im nothing any more 

when I wouldnt let him lick me in Holles street one night 

man man tyrant as ever for the one thing he slept on the 

floor half the night naked the way the jews used when somebody 

dies belonged to them and wouldnt eat any breakfast 

or speak a word wanting to be petted so I thought I stood 

out enough for one time and let him he does it all wrong too 

thinking only of his own pleasure his tongue is too flat or I 

dont know what he forgets that wethen I dont Ill make him 

do it again if he doesnt mind himself and lock him down to 

sleep in the coalcellar with the blackbeetles I wonder was it 

her Josie off her head with my castoffs hes such a born liar 

too no hed never have the courage with a married woman 

thats why he wants me and Boylan though as for her Denis 

as she calls him that forlornlooking spectacle you couldnt 

call him a husband yes its some little bitch hes got in with 

even when I was with him with Milly at the College races 

that Hornblower with the childs bonnet on the top of his 


756 

nob let us into by the back way he was throwing his sheeps 

eyes at those two doing skirt duty up and down I tried to 

wink at him first no use of course and thats the way his money 

goes this is the fruits of Mr Paddy Dignam yes they were all 

in great style at the grand funeral in the paper Boylan brought 

in if they saw a real officers funeral thatd be something reversed 

arms muffled drums the poor horse walking behind 

in black L Boom and Tom Kernan that drunken little barrelly 

man that bit his tongue off falling down the mens W C drunk 

in some place or other and Martin Cunningham and the 

two Dedaluses and Fanny MCoys husband white head of 

cabbage skinny thing with a turn in her eye trying to sing 

my songs shed want to be born all over again and her old 

green dress with the lowneck as she cant attract them any 

other way like dabbling on a rainy day I see it all now plainly 

and they call that friendship killing and then burying one 

another and they all with their wives and families at home 

more especially Jack Power keeping that barmaid he does of 

course his wife is always sick or going to be sick or just getting 

better of it and hes a goodlooking man still though hes 

getting a bit grey over the ears theyre a nice lot all of them

well theyre not going to get my husband again into their 

clutches if I can help it making fun of him then behind his 

back I know well when he goes on with his idiotics because 

he has sense enough not to squander every penny piece he 

earns down their gullets and looks after his wife and family 

goodfornothings poor Paddy Dignam all the same Im sorry 

in a way for him what are his wife and 5 children going to do 

unless he was insured comical little teetotum always stuck 

up in some pub corner and her or her son waiting Bill Bailey 

wont you please come home her widows weeds wont improve 

her appearance theyre awfully becoming though if 

youre goodlooking what men wasnt he yes he was at the 

Glencree dinner and Ben Dollard base barreltone the night 

he borrowed the swallowtail to sing out of in Holles street 

squeezed and squashed into them and grinning all over his 

big Dolly face like a wellwhipped childs botty didnt he look 

a balmy ballocks sure enough that must have been a spectacle 

on the stage imagine paying 5/- in the preserved seats 

for that to see him trotting off in his trowlers and Simon 

Dedalus too he was always turning up half screwed singing 

the second verse first the old love is the new was one of his so 


757 

sweetly sang the maiden on the hawthorn bough he was always 

on for flirtyfying too when I sang Maritana with him 

at Freddy Mayers private opera he had a delicious glorious 

voice Phoebe dearest goodbye sweetheart sweetheart he always 

sang it not like Bartell Darcy sweet tart goodbye of 

course he had the gift of the voice so there was no art in it all 

over you like a warm showerbath O Maritana wildwood 

flower we sang splendidly though it was a bit too high for 

my register even transposed and he was married at the time 

to May Goulding but then hed say or do something to knock 

the good out of it hes a widower now I wonder what sort is 

his son he says hes an author and going to be a university 

professor of Italian and Im to take lessons what is he driving 

at now showing him my photo its not good of me I ought to 

have got it taken in drapery that never looks out of fashion 

still I look young in it I wonder he didnt make him a present 

of it altogether and me too after all why not I saw him driving 

down to the Kingsbridge station with his father and 

mother I was in mourning thats 11 years ago now yes hed be 

11 though what was the good in going into mourning for 

what was neither one thing nor the other the first cry was

enough for me I heard the deathwatch too ticking in the 

wall of course he insisted hed go into mourning for the cat I 

suppose hes a man now by this time he was an innocent boy 

then and a darling little fellow in his lord Fauntleroy suit 

and curly hair like a prince on the stage when I saw him at 

Mat Dillons he liked me too I remember they all do wait by 

God yes wait yes hold on he was on the cards this morning 

when I laid out the deck union with a young stranger neither 

dark nor fair you met before I thought it meant him but 

hes no chicken nor a stranger either besides my face was 

turned the other way what was the 7th card after that the 10 

of spades for a journey by land then there was a letter on its 

way and scandals too the 3 queens and the 8 of diamonds 

for a rise in society yes wait it all came out and 2 red 8s for 

new garments look at that and didnt I dream something too 

yes there was something about poetry in it I hope he hasnt 

long greasy hair hanging into his eyes or standing up like a 

red Indian what do they go about like that for only getting 

themselves and their poetry laughed at I always liked poetry 

when I was a girl first I thought he was a poet like lord Byron 

and not an ounce of it in his composition I thought he was 


758 

quite different I wonder is he too young hes about wait 88 I 

was married 88 Milly is 15 yesterday 89 what age was he 

then at Dillons 5 or 6 about 88 I suppose hes 20 or more Im 

not too old for him if hes 23 or 24 I hope hes not that stuckup 

university student sort no otherwise he wouldnt go sitting 

down in the old kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa and 

talking of course he pretended to understand it all probably 

he told him he was out of Trinity college hes very young to 

be a professor I hope hes not a professor like Goodwin was 

he was a potent professor of John Jameson they all write 

about some woman in their poetry well I suppose he wont 

find many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar 

where poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon shining 

so beautifully coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the 

lighthouse at Europa point the guitar that fellow played was 

so expressive will I ever go back there again all new faces two 

glancing eyes a lattice hid Ill sing that for him theyre my 

eyes if hes anything of a poet two eyes as darkly bright as 

loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves young 

star itll be a change the Lord knows to have an intelligent 

person to talk to about yourself not always listening to him

and Billy Prescotts ad and Keyess ad and Tom the Devils ad 

then if anything goes wrong in their business we have to 

suffer Im sure hes very distinguished Id like to meet a man 

like that God not those other ruck besides hes young those 

fine young men I could see down in Margate strand 

bathingplace from the side of the rock standing up in the 

sun naked like a God or something and then plunging into 

the sea with them why arent all men like that thered be some 

consolation for a woman like that lovely little statue he bought 

I could look at him all day long curly head and his shoulders 

his finger up for you to listen theres real beauty and poetry 

for you I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over also his 

lovely young cock there so simple I wouldnt mind taking 

him in my mouth if nobody was looking as if it was asking 

you to suck it so clean and white he looks with his boyish 

face I would too in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went 

down what its only like gruel or the dew theres no danger 

besides hed be so clean compared with those pigs of men I 

suppose never dream of washing it from I years end to the 

other the most of them only thats what gives the women the 

moustaches Im sure itll be grand if I can only get in with a 


759 

handsome young poet at my age Ill throw them the 1st thing 

in the morning till I see if the wishcard comes out or Ill try 

pairing the lady herself and see if he comes out Ill read and 

study all I can find or learn a bit off by heart if I knew who 

he likes so he wont think me stupid if he thinks all women 

are the same and I can teach him the other part Ill make him 

feel all over him till he half faints under me then hell write 

about me lover and mistress publicly too with our 2 photographs 

in all the papers when he becomes famous O but 

then what am I going to do about him though 

no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement 

nor no nothing in his nature slapping us behind like 

that on my bottom because I didnt call him Hugh the ignoramus 

that doesnt know poetry from a cabbage thats what 

you get for not keeping them in their proper place pulling 

off his shoes and trousers there on the chair before me so 

barefaced without even asking permission and standing out 

that vulgar way in the half of a shirt they wear to be admired 

like a priest or a butcher or those old hypocrites in the time 

of Julius Caesar of course hes right enough in his way to pass 

the time as a joke sure you might as well be in bed with what

with a lion God Im sure hed have something better to say 

for himself an old Lion would O well I suppose its because 

they were so plump and tempting in my short petticoat he 

couldnt resist they excite myself sometimes its well for men 

all the amount of pleasure they get off a womans body were 

so round and white for them always I wished I was one myself 

for a change just to try with that thing they have swelling 

up on you so hard and at the same time so soft when you 

touch it my uncle John has a thing long I heard those 

cornerboys saying passing the comer of Marrowbone lane 

my aunt Mary has a thing hairy because it was dark and they 

knew a girl was passing it didnt make me blush why should 

it either its only nature and he puts his thing long into my 

aunt Marys hairy etcetera and turns out to be you put the 

handle in a sweepingbrush men again all over they can pick 

and choose what they please a married woman or a fast widow 

or a girl for their different tastes like those houses round 

behind Irish street no but were to be always chained up theyre 

not going to be chaining me up no damn fear once I start I 

tell you for their stupid husbands jealousy why cant we all 

remain friends over it instead of quarrelling her husband 


760 

found it out what they did together well naturally and if he 

did can he undo it hes coronado anyway whatever he does 

and then he going to the other mad extreme about the wife 

in Fair Tyrants of course the man never even casts a 2nd 

thought on the husband or wife either its the woman he 

wants and he gets her what else were we given all those desires 

for Id like to know I cant help it if Im young still can I 

its a wonder Im not an old shrivelled hag before my time 

living with him so cold never embracing me except sometimes 

when hes asleep the wrong end of me not knowing I 

suppose who he has any man thatd kiss a womans bottom Id 

throw my hat at him after that hed kiss anything unnatural 

where we havent I atom of any kind of expression in us all of 

us the same 2 lumps of lard before ever Id do that to a man 

pfooh the dirty brutes the mere thought is enough I kiss the 

feet of you senorita theres some sense in that didnt he kiss 

our halldoor yes he did what a madman nobody understands 

his cracked ideas but me still of course a woman wants to be 

embraced 20 times a day almost to make her look young no 

matter by who so long as to be in love or loved by somebody 

if the fellow you want isnt there sometimes by the Lord God

I was thinking would I go around by the quays there some 

dark evening where nobodyd know me and pick up a sailor 

off the sea thatd be hot on for it and not care a pin whose I 

was only do it off up in a gate somewhere or one of those 

wildlooking gipsies in Rathfarnham had their camp pitched 

near the Bloomfield laundry to try and steal our things if 

they could I only sent mine there a few times for the name 

model laundry sending me back over and over some old ones 

odd stockings that blackguardlooking fellow with the fine 

eyes peeling a switch attack me in the dark and ride me up 

against the wall without a word or a murderer anybody what 

they do themselves the fine gentlemen in their silk hats that 

K C lives up somewhere this way coming out of Hardwicke 

lane the night he gave us the fish supper on account of winning 

over the boxing match of course it was for me he gave it 

I knew him by his gaiters and the walk and when I turned 

round a minute after just to see there was a woman after 

coming out of it too some filthy prostitute then he goes home 

to his wife after that only I suppose the half of those sailors 

are rotten again with disease O move over your big carcass 

out of that for the love of Mike listen to him the winds that 


761 

waft my sighs to thee so well he may sleep and sigh the great 

Suggester Don Poldo de la Flora if he knew how he came 

out on the cards this morning hed have something to sigh 

for a dark man in some perplexity between 2 7s too in prison 

for Lord knows what he does that I dont know and Im to be 

slooching around down in the kitchen to get his lordship his 

breakfast while hes rolled up like a mummy will I indeed did 

you ever see me running Id just like to see myself at it show 

them attention and they treat you like dirt I dont care what 

anybody says itd be much better for the world to be governed 

by the women in it you wouldnt see women going 

and killing one another and slaughtering when do you ever 

see women rolling around drunk like they do or gambling 

every penny they have and losing it on horses yes because a 

woman whatever she does she knows where to stop sure they 

wouldnt be in the world at all only for us they dont know 

what it is to be a woman and a mother how could they where 

would they all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look 

after them what I never had thats why I suppose hes running 

wild now out at night away from his books and studies and 

not living at home on account of the usual rowy house I

suppose well its a poor case that those that have a fine son 

like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not able to 

make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was 

watching the two dogs up in her behind in the middle of the 

naked street that disheartened me altogether I suppose I 

oughtnt to have buried him in that little woolly jacket I knitted 

crying as I was but give it to some poor child but I knew 

well Id never have another our 1st death too it was we were 

never the same since O Im not going to think myself into 

the glooms about that any more I wonder why he wouldnt 

stay the night I felt all the time it was somebody strange he 

brought in instead of roving around the city meeting God 

knows who nightwalkers and pickpockets his poor mother 

wouldnt like that if she was alive ruining himself for life perhaps 

still its a lovely hour so silent I used to love coming 

home after dances the air of the night they have friends they 

can talk to weve none either he wants what he wont get or its 

some woman ready to stick her knife in you I hate that in 

women no wonder they treat us the way they do we are a 

dreadful lot of bitches I suppose its all the troubles we have 

makes us so snappy Im not like that he could easy have slept 


762 

in there on the sofa in the other room I suppose he was as 

shy as a boy he being so young hardly 20 of me in the next 

room hed have heard me on the chamber arrah what harm 

Dedalus I wonder its like those names in Gibraltar Delapaz 

Delagracia they had the devils queer names there father 

Vilaplana of Santa Maria that gave me the rosary Rosales y 

OReilly in the Calle las Siete Revueltas and Pisimbo and 

Mrs Opisso in Governor street O what a name Id go and 

drown myself in the first river if I had a name like her O my 

and all the bits of streets Paradise ramp and Bedlam ramp 

and Rodgers ramp and Crutchetts ramp and the devils gap 

steps well small blame to me if I am a harumscarum I know 

I am a bit I declare to God I dont feel a day older than then 

I wonder could I get my tongue round any of the Spanish 

como esta usted muy bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten 

it all I thought I had only for the grammar a noun is 

the name of any person place or thing pity I never tried to 

read that novel cantankerous Mrs Rubio lent me by Valera 

with the questions in it all upside down the two ways I always 

knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the Spanish 

and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant

what a pity he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead 

tired and wanted a good sleep badly I could have brought 

him in his breakfast in bed with a bit of toast so long as I 

didnt do it on the knife for bad luck or if the woman was 

going her rounds with the watercress and something nice 

and tasty there are a few olives in the kitchen he might like I 

never could bear the look of them in Abrines I could do the 

criada the room looks all right since I changed it the other 

way you see something was telling me all the time Id have to 

introduce myself not knowing me from Adam very funny 

wouldnt it Im his wife or pretend we were in Spain with him 

half awake without a Gods notion where he is dos huevos 

estrellados senor Lord the cracked things come into my head 

sometimes itd be great fun supposing he stayed with us why 

not theres the room upstairs empty and Millys bed in the 

back room he could do his writing and studies at the table in 

there for all the scribbling he does at it and if he wants to 

read in bed in the morning like me as hes making the breakfast 

for I he can make it for 2 Im sure Im not going to take in 

lodgers off the street for him if he takes a gesabo of a house 

like this Id love to have a long talk with an intelligent 


763 

welleducated person Id have to get a nice pair of red slippers 

like those Turks with the fez used to sell or yellow and a nice 

semitransparent morning gown that I badly want or a 

peachblossom dressing jacket like the one long ago in 

Walpoles only 8/6 or 18/6 Ill just give him one more chance 

Ill get up early in the morning Im sick of Cohens old bed in 

any case I might go over to the markets to see all the vegetables 

and cabbages and tomatoes and carrots and all kinds 

of splendid fruits all coming in lovely and fresh who knows 

whod be the 1st man Id meet theyre out looking for it in the 

morning Mamy Dillon used to say they are and the night 

too that was her massgoing Id love a big juicy pear now to 

melt in your mouth like when I used to be in the longing 

way then Ill throw him up his eggs and tea in the 

moustachecup she gave him to make his mouth bigger I suppose 

hed like my nice cream too I know what Ill do Ill go 

about rather gay not too much singing a bit now and then 

mi fa pieta Masetto then Ill start dressing myself to go out 

presto non son piu forte Ill put on my best shift and drawers 

let him have a good eyeful out of that to make his micky 

stand for him Ill let him know if thats what he wanted that

his wife is I s l o fucked yes and damn well fucked too up to 

my neck nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handrunning theres 

the mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt bother to 

even iron it out that ought to satisfy him if you dont believe 

me feel my belly unless I made him stand there and put him 

into me Ive a mind to tell him every scrap and make him do 

it out in front of me serve him right its all his own fault if I 

am an adulteress as the thing in the gallery said O much 

about it if thats all the harm ever we did in this vale of tears 

God knows its not much doesnt everybody only they hide it 

I suppose thats what a woman is supposed to be there for or 

He wouldnt have made us the way He did so attractive to 

men then if he wants to kiss my bottom Ill drag open my 

drawers and bulge it right out in his face as large as life he 

can stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes there my 

brown part then Ill tell him I want LI or perhaps 30/- Ill tell 

him I want to buy underclothes then if he gives me that well 

he wont be too bad I dont want to soak it all out of him like 

other women do I could often have written out a fine cheque 

for myself and write his name on it for a couple of pounds a 

few times he forgot to lock it up besides he wont spend it Ill 


764 

let him do it off on me behind provided he doesnt smear all 

my good drawers O I suppose that cant be helped Ill do the 

indifferent l or 2 questions Ill know by the answers when hes 

like that he cant keep a thing back I know every turn in him 

Ill tighten my bottom well and let out a few smutty words 

smellrump or lick my shit or the first mad thing comes into 

my head then Ill suggest about yes O wait now sonny my 

turn is coming Ill be quite gay and friendly over it O but I 

was forgetting this bloody pest of a thing pfooh you wouldnt 

know which to laugh or cry were such a mixture of plum 

and apple no Ill have to wear the old things so much the 

better itll be more pointed hell never know whether he did it 

or not there thats good enough for you any old thing at all 

then Ill wipe him off me just like a business his omission 

then Ill go out Ill have him eying up at the ceiling where is 

she gone now make him want me thats the only way a quarter 

after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting 

up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day 

well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody 

coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for 

his night office or the alarmclock next door at cockshout

clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 

2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the 

stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the 

apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it 

twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get up 

early Ill go to Lambes there beside Findlaters and get them 

to send us some flowers to put about the place in case he 

brings him home tomorrow today I mean no no Fridays an 

unlucky day first I want to do the place up someway the 

dust grows in it I think while Im asleep then we can have 

music and cigarettes I can accompany him first I must clean 

the keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I wear a 

white rose or those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of 

a rich big shop at 7 1/2d a lb or the other ones with the 

cherries in them and the pinky sugar 11d a couple of lbs of 

those a nice plant for the middle of the table Id get that 

cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them not long ago I love 

flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses 

God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains 

then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful 

country with the fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of 


765 

things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your 

heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of 

shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the 

ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying 

theres no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all 

their learning why dont they go and create something I often 

asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go 

and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling 

for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre 

afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I 

know them well who was the first person in the universe 

before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they 

dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well 

try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for 

you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons 

on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw 

hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him 

the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like 

now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost 

my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so 

we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing

he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that 

was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt 

what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him 

and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he 

asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked 

out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things 

he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and 

father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds 

fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on 

the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with 

the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and 

the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs 

and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews 

and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the 

ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking 

outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping 

half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the 

shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls 

and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome 

Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to 

sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old 


766 

windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her 

lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night 

and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras 

the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that 

awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes 

like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the 

Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the 

pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and 

the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a 

girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the 

rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear 

a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and 

I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him 

with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I 

yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms 

around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel 

my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad 

and yes I said yes I will Yes. 

Trieste-Zurich-Paris 1914-1921

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Ulysses by James Joyce - Penn State University

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