by James Joyce
CHAPTER FOUR
As the lion in our teargarten remembers the nenuphars of his Nile (shall Ariuz forget Arioun or Boghas the baregams of the Marmarazalles from Marmeniere?) it may be, tots wearsense full a naggin in twentyg have sigilposted what in our brievingbust, the besieged bedreamt him stil and solely of those lililiths undeveiled which hat undone him, gone for age, and knew not the watchful treachers at his wake, and theirs to stay. Fooi, fooi, chamermissies! Zeepyzoepy, larcenlads! Zijnzijn Zijnzijn! It may be, we moest ons hasten selves te declareer it, that he reglimmed? presaw? the fields of heat and yields of wheat where corngold Ysit? shamed and shone. It may be, we habben to upseek a bitty door our good township’s courants want we knew’t, that with his deepseeing insight (had not wishing oftebeen but good time wasted), within his patriarchal shamanah, broadsteyne ‘bove citie (Twillby! Twillby!) he conscious of enemies, a kingbilly white-horsed in a Finglas mill, prayed, as he sat on anxious seat, (kunt ye neat gift mey toe bout a peer saft eyballds !) during that three and a hellof hours’ agony of silence, ex profundis malorum, and bred with unfeigned charity that his wordwounder (an engles to the teeth who, nomened Nash of Girahash, would go anyold where in the weeping world on his mottled belly (the rab, the kreepons-kneed!) for milk, music or married missusses) might, mercy to providential benevolence’s who hates prudencies’ astuteness, unfold into the first of a distinguished dynasty of his posteriors, blackfaced connemaras not of the fold but elder children of his household, his most besetting of ideas ( pace his twolve predama-nant passions) being the formation, as in more favoured climes, where the Meadow of Honey is guestfriendly and the Mountain of Joy receives, of a truly criminal stratum, Ham’s cribcracking yeggs, thereby at last eliminating from all classes and masses with directly derivative decasualisation: sigarius (sic!) vindicat urbes terrorum (sicker!): and so, to mark a bank taal she arter, the obedience of the citizens elp the ealth of the ole.
Now gode. Let us leave theories there and return to here’s here. Now hear. ’Tis gode again. The teak coffin, Pughglasspanelfitted, feets to the east, was to turn in later, and pitly patly near the porpus, materially effecting the cause. And this, liever, is the thinghowe. Any number of conservative public bodies, through a number of select and other committees having power to add to their number, before voting themselves and himself, town, port and garrison, by a fit and proper resolution, following a koorts order of the groundwet, once for all out of plotty existence, as a forescut, so you maateskippey might to you cuttinrunner on a neuw pack of klerds, made him, while his body still persisted, their present of a protem grave in Moyelta of the best Lough Neagh pattern, then as much in demand among misonesans as the Isle of Man today among limniphobes. Wacht even! It was in a fairly fishy kettlekerry, after the Fianna’s foreman had taken his handful, enriched with ancient woods and dear dutchy deep-linns mid which were an old knoll and a troutbeck, vainyvain of her osiery and a chatty sally with any Wilt or Walt who would ongle her as Izaak did to the tickle of his rod and watch her waters of her sillying waters of and there now brown peater arripple (may their quilt gild lightly over his somnolulutent form!) Whoforyou lies his last, by the wrath of Bog, like the erst curst Hun in the bed of his treubleu Donawhu.
Best. This wastohavebeen underground heaven, or mole’s paradise which was probably also an inversion of a phallopharos, intended to foster wheat crops and to ginger up tourist trade (its architecht, Mgr Peurelachasse, having been obcaecated lest he should petrifake suchanevver while the contractors Messrs T. A. Birkett and L. O. Tuohalls were made invulnerably vener-able) first in the west, our misterbilder, Castlevillainous, openly damned and blasted by means of a hydromine, system, Sowan and Belting, exploded from a reinvented T.N.T. bombingpost up ahoy of eleven and thirty wingrests (circiter) to sternbooard out of his aerial thorpeto, Auton Dynamon, contacted with the ex-pectant minefield by tins of improved ammonia lashed to her shieldplated gunwale, and fused into tripupcables, slipping through tholse and playing down from the conning tower into the ground battery fuseboxes, all differing as clocks from keys since nobody appeared to have the same time of beard, some saying by their Oorlog it was Sygstryggs to nine, more holding with the Ryan vogt it was Dane to pfife. He afterwards whaan-ever his blaetther began to fail off him and his rough bark was wholly husky and, stoop by stoop, he neared it (wouldmanspare!) carefully lined the ferroconcrete result with rotproof bricks and mortar, fassed to fossed, and retired beneath the heptarchy of his towerettes, the beauchamp, byward, bull and lion, the white, the wardrobe and bloodied, so encouraging (insteppen, alls als hats beliefd!) additional useful councils public with hoofd off-dealings which were welholden of ladykants te huur out such as the Breeders’ Union, the Guild of Merchants of the Staple et, a.u.c. to present unto him with funebral pomp, over and above that, a stone slab with the usual Mac Pelah address of velediction, a very fair-worded instance of falsemeaning adamelegy: We have done ours gohellt with you, Heer Herewhippit, overgiven it, skidoo!
But t’house and allaboardshoops ! Show coffins, winding sheets, goodbuy bierchepes, cinerary urns, liealoud blasses, snuffchests, poteentubbs, lacrimal vases, hoodendoses, reekwaterbeckers, breakmiddles, zootzaks for eatlust, including upyourhealthing rookworst and meathewersoftened forkenpootsies and for that matter, javel also, any kind of inhumationary bric au brac for the adornment of his glasstone honophreum, would, met these trein of konditiens, naturally follow, halas, in the ordinary course, enabling that roundtheworlder wandelingswight, did suches pass him, to live all safeathomely the presenile days of his life of opulence, ancient ere decrepitude, late lents last lenience, till stuffering stage, whaling away the whole of the while (hypnos chilia eonion!) lethelulled between explosion and reexplosion (Donnaurwatteur! Hunderthunder!) from grosskopp to megapod, embalmed, of grand age, rich in death anticipated.
But abide Zeit’s sumonserving, rise afterfall. Blueblitzbolted from there, knowing the hingeworms of the hallmirks of habita-tionlesness, buried burrowing in Gehinnon, to proliferate through all his Unterwealth, seam by seam, sheol om sheol, and revisit our Uppercrust Sideria of Utilitarios, the divine one, the hoar-der hidden propaguting his plutorpopular progeniem of pots and pans and pokers and puns from biddenland to boughtenland, the spearway fore the spoorway.
The other spring offensive on the heights of Abraham may have come about all quite by accidence, Foughtarundser (for Breedabrooda had at length presuaded him to have himself to be as septuply buried as the murdered Cian in Finntown), had not been three monads in his watery grave (what vigilantes and ridings then and spuitwyne pledges with aardappel frittling!) when portrifaction, dreyfussed as ever, began to ramp, ramp, ramp, the boys are parching. A hoodenwinkle gave the signal and a blessing paper freed the flood. Why did the patrizien make him scares with his gruntens? Because the druiven were muskating at the door. From both Celtiberian camps (granting at the onset for the sake of argument that men on the two sides in New South Ire-land and Vetera Uladh, bluemin and pillfaces, during the ferment With the Pope or On the Pope, had, moors or letts, grant ideas, grunted) all conditions, poor cons and dives mor, each, of course, on the purely doffensive since the eternals were owlwise on their side every time, were drawn toowards their Bellona’s Black Bottom, once Woolwhite’s Waltz (Ohiboh, how becrimed, becursekissed and bedumbtoit!) some for want of proper feeding in youth, others already caught in the honourable act of slicing careers for family and carvers in conjunction; and, if emaciated nough, the person garrotted may have suggested to whomever he took the ham of, the plain being involved in darkness, low cirque waggery, nay, even the first old wugger of himself in the flesh, whiggissimus incarnadined, when falsesighted by the ifsuchhewas bully on the hill for there had circulated freely fairly among his opposition the feeling that in so hibernating Massa Ewacka, who, previous to that demidetached life, had been known of barmi-cidal days, cook said, between soups and savours, to get outside his own length of rainbow trout and taerts atta tarn as no man of woman born, nay could, like the great crest
ed brebe, devour his threescoreten of roach per lifeday, ay, and as many minnow a minute (the big mix, may Gibbet choke him !) was, like the salmon of his ladderleap all this time of totality secretly and by suckage feeding on his own misplaced fat.
Ladies did not disdain those pagan ironed times of the firs; city (called after the ugliest Danadune) when a frond was a friend inneed to carry, as earwigs do their dead, their soil to the earth-ball where indeeth we shall calm decline, our legacy unknown. Venuses were gigglibly temptatrix, vulcans guffawably eruptious and the whole wives’ world frockful of fickles. Fact, any human inyon you liked any erenoon or efter would take her bare godkin out, or an even pair of hem, (lugod ! lugodoo !) and prettily pray with him (or with em even) everyhe to her taste, long for luck, tapette and tape petter and take pettest of all. (Tip!) Wells she’d woo and wills she’s win but how the deer knowed where she’d marry! Arbour, bucketroom, caravan, ditch? Coach, carriage, wheelbarrow, dungcart?
Kate Strong, a widow (Tiptip!) — she pulls a lane picture for us, in a dreariodreama setting, glowing and very vidual, of old dumplan as she nosed it, a homelike cottage of elvanstone with droppings of biddies, stinkend pusshies, moggies’ duggies, rotten witchawubbles, festering rubbages and beggars’ bullets, if not worse, sending salmofarious germs in gleefully through the smithereen panes — Widow Strong, then, as her weaker had turned him to the wall (Tiptiptip!), did most all the scavenging from good King Hamlaugh’s gulden dayne though her lean besom cleaned but sparingly and her bare statement reads that, there being no macadamised sidetracks on those old nekropolitan nights in, barring a footbatter, Bryant’s Causeway, bordered with speedwell, white clover and sorrel a wood knows, which left off, being beaten, where the plaintiff was struck, she left down, as scavengers, who will be scavengers must, her filthdump near the Serpentine in Phornix Park (at her time called Finewell’s Keepsacre but later tautaubapptossed Pat’s Purge), that dangerfield circling butcherswood where fireworker oh flaherty engaged a nutter of castlemallards and ah for archer stunned’s turk, all over which fossil footprints, bootmarks, fingersigns, elbowdints, breechbowls, a. s. o. were all succes-sively traced of a most envolving description. What subtler timeplace of the weald than such wolfsbelly castrament to will hide a leabhar from Thursmen’s brandihands or a loveletter, lostfully hers, that would be lust on Ma, than then when ructions ended, than here where race began: and by four hands of fore-thought the first babe of reconcilement is laid in its last cradle of hume sweet hume. Give over it! And no more of it! So pass the pick for child sake! O men!
For hear Allhighest sprack for krischnians as for propagana fidies and his nuptial eagles sharped their beaks of prey: and every morphyl man of us, pome by pome, falls back into this terrine: as it was let it be, says he! And it is as though where Agni araflammed and Mithra monished and Shiva slew as maya-mutras the obluvial waters of our noarchic memory withdrew, windingly goharksome, to some hastyswasty timberman torch-priest, flamenfan, the ward of the wind that lightened the fire that lay in the wood that Jove bolt, at his rude word. Posidonius O’Fluctuary! Lave that bloody stone as it is! What are you doing your dirty minx and his big treeblock way up your path? Slip around, you, by the rare of the ministers’! And, you, take that barrel back where you got it, Mac Shane’s, and go the way your old one went, Hatchettsbury Road! And gish! how they gushed away, the pennyfares, a whole school for scamper, with their sashes flying sish behind them, all the little pirlypettes! Issy-la-Chapelle! Any lucans, please?
Yes, the viability of vicinals if invisible is invincible. And we are not trespassing on his corns either. Look at all the plotsch! Fluminian! If this was Hannibal’s walk it was Hercules’ work. And a hungried thousand of the unemancipated slaved the way. The mausoleum lies behind us (O Adgigasta, multipopulipater!) and there are milestones in their cheadmilias faultering along the tramestrack by Brahm and Anton Hermes! Per omnibus secular seekalarum. Amain. But the past has made us this present of a rhedarhoad. So more boher O’Connell! Though rainy-hidden, you’re rhinohide. And if he’s not a Romeo you may scallop your hat. Wereupunder in the fane of Saint Fiacre ! Halte !
It was hard by the howe’s there, plainly on this disoluded and a buchan cold spot, rupestric then, resurfaced that now is, that Luttrell sold if Lautrill bought, in the saddle of the Brennan’s (now Malpasplace?) pass, versts and versts from true civilisation, not where his dreams top their traums halt (Beneathere! Bena-there!) but where livland yontide meared with the wilde, saltlea with flood, that the attackler, a cropatkin, though under medium and between colours with truly native pluck, engaged the Adver-sary who had more in his eye than was less to his leg but whom for plunder sake, he mistook in the heavy rain to be Oglethorpe or some other ginkus, Parr aparrently, to whom the headandheel-less chickenestegg bore some Michelangiolesque resemblance, making use of sacrilegious languages to the defect that he would challenge their hemosphores to exterminate them but he would cannonise the b — y b — r’s life out of him and lay him out contritely as smart as the b — r had his b — y nightprayers said, three patrecknocksters and a couplet of hellmuirries (tout est sacr‚ pour un sacreur, femme … barbe ou homme-nourrice) at the same time, so as to plugg well let the blubbywail ghoats out of him, catching holst of an oblong bar he had and with which he usually broke furnitures he rose the stick at him. The boarder incident prerepeated itself. The pair (whethertheywere Nippo-luono engaging Wei–Ling-Taou or de Razzkias trying to recon — noistre the general Boukeleff, man may not say), struggled apairently for some considerable time, (the cradle rocking equally to one and oppositely from the other on its law of capture and recapture), under the All In rules around the booksafe, fighting like purple top and tipperuhry Swede, (Secremented Servious of the Divine Zeal !) and in the course of their tussle the toller man, who had opened his bully bowl to beg, said to the miner who was carrying the worm (a handy term for the portable distillery which consisted of three vats, two jars and several bottles though we purposely say nothing of the stiff, both parties having an interest in the spirits): Let me go, Pautheen! I hardly knew ye. Later on, after the solstitial pause for refleshmeant, the same man (or a different and younger him of the same ham) asked in the vermicular with a very oggly chew-chin-grin: Was six vic-tolios fifteen pigeon takee offa you, tell he me, stlongfella, by picky-pocky ten to foul months behindaside? There were some further collidabanter and severe tries to convert for the best part of an hour and now a woden affair in the shape of a webley (we at once recognise our old friend Ned of so many illortemporate letters) fell from the intruser who, as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that christchurch organ, (did the imnage of Girl Cloud Pensive flout above them light young charm, in ribbons and pigtail?) whereupon became friendly and, saying not his shirt to tear, to know wanted, joking and knob-kerries, all aside laying, if his change companion who stuck still to the in vention of his strongbox, with a tenacity corrobberating their mutual tenitorial rights, happened to have the loots change of a tenpound crickler about him at the moment, addling that hap so, he would pay him back the six vics odd, do you see, out of that for what was taken on the man of samples last Yuni or Yuly, do you follow me, Capn? To this the other, Billi with the Boule, who had mummed and mauled up to that (for he was hesitency carried to excelcism) rather amusedly replied: Woowoo would you be grossly surprised, Hill, to learn that, as it so happens, I honestly have not such a thing as the loo, as the least chance of a tinpanned crackler anywhere about me at the present moho-moment but I believe I can see my way, as you suggest, it being Yuletide or Yuddanfest and as it’s mad nuts, son, for you when it’s hatter’s hares, mon, for me, to advance you something like four and sevenpence between hopping ard trapping which you might just as well have, boy baches, to buy J. J. and S. with. There was a minute silence before memory’s fire’s rekindling and then. Heart alive ! Which at very first wind of gay gay and whisk-wigs wick’s ears pricked up, the starving gunman, strike him pink, became strangely calm and forthright sware by all his lards pors
enal that the thorntree of sheol might ramify up his Sheo-fon to the lux apointlex but he would go good to him suntime marx my word fort, for a chip off the old Flint, (in the Nichtian glossery which purveys aprioric roots for aposteriorious tongues this is nat language at any sinse of the world and one might as fairly go and kish his sprogues as fail to certify whether the wartrophy eluded at some lives earlier was that somethink like a jug, to what, a coctable) and remarxing in languidoily, seemingly much more highly pleased than tongue could tell at this opening of a lifetime and the foretaste of the Dun Bank pearlmothers and the boy to wash down which he would feed to himself in the Ruadh Cow at Tallaght and then into the Good Woman at Ringsend and after her inat Conway’s Inn at Blackrock and, first to fall, cursed be all, where appetite would keenest be, atte, funeral fare or fun fain real, Adam and Eve’s in Quantity Street by the grace of gamy queen Tailte, her will and testament: You stunning little southdowner! I’d know you anywhere, Declaney, let me truthfully tell you in or out of the lexinction of life and who the hell else, be your blanche patch on the boney part! Goalball I’ve struck this daylit dielate night of nights, by golly! My hat, you have some bully German grit, sundowner! He spud in his faust (axin); he toped the raw best (pardun); he poked his pick (a tip is a tap): and he tucked his friend’s leave.And, with French hen or the portlifowlium of hastes and leisures, about to continue that, the queer mixture exchanged the pax in embrace or poghue puxy as practised between brothers of the same breast, hillelulia, killelulia, allenalaw, and, having ratified before the god of the day their torgantruce which belittlers have schmall-kalled the treatyng to cognac, turning his fez menialstrait in the direction of Moscas, he first got rid of a few mitsmillers and hurooshoos and levanted off with tubular jurbulance at a bull’s run over the assback bridge, spitting his teeths on rooths, with the seven and four in danegeld and their humoral hurlbat or other uncertain weapon of lignum vitae, but so evermore rhumanasant of a toboggan poop, picked up to keep some crowplucking ap-pointment with some rival rialtos anywheres between Pearidge and the Littlehorn while this poor delaney, who they left along with the confederate fender behind and who albeit ballsbluffed, bore up wonderfully wunder all of it with a whole number of plumsized contusiums, plus alasalah bruised coccyx, all over him, reported the occurance in the best way he could, to the flabber-gaze of the whole lab, giving the Paddybanners the military salute as for his exilicy’s the O’Daffy, in justifiable hope that, in nobiloroman review of the hugely sitisfactuary conclusium of their negotiations and the jugglemonkysh agripment dein-derivative, some lotion or fomentation of poppyheads would be jennerously exhibited to the parts, at the nearest watchhouse in Vicar Lane, the white ground of his face all covered with digon-ally redcrossed nonfatal mammalian blood as proofpositive of the seriousness of his character and that he was bleeding in self defience (stanch it!) from the nostrils, lips, pavilion and palate, while some of his hitter’s hairs had been pulled off his knut’s head by Colt though otherwise his allround health appeared to be middling along as it proved most fortunate that not one of the two hundred and six bones and five hundred and one muscles in his corso was a whit the whorse for her whacking. Herwho?