by James Joyce
— Arra irrara hirrara man, weren’t they arriving in clansdes-tinies for the Imbandiment of Ad Regias Agni Dapes, fogabawlers and panhibernskers, after the crack and the lean years, scalpjaggers and houthhunters, like the messicals of the great god, a scarlet trainful, the Twoedged Petrard, totalling, leggats and prelaps, in their aggregate ages two and thirty plus undecimmed centries of them with insiders, extraomnes and tuttifrutties allcunct, from Rathgar, Rathanga, Rountown and Rush, from America Avenue and Asia Place and the Affrian Way and Europa Parade and be-sogar the wallies of Noo Soch Wilds and from Vico, Mespil Rock and Sorrento, for the lure of his weal and the fear of his oppidumic, to his salon de espera in the keel of his kraal, like lodes of ores flocking fast to Mount Maximagnetic, afeerd he was a gunner but affaird to stay away, Merrionites, Dumstdumb-drummers, Luccanicans, Ashtoumers, Batterysby Parkes and Krumlin Boyards, Phillipsburgs, Cabraists and Finglossies, Ballymunites, Raheniacs and the bettlers of Clontarf, for to contemplate in manifest and pay their firstrate duties before the both of him, twelve stone a side, with their Thieve le Rou‚ ! and their Shvr yr Thrst! and their Uisgye ad Inferos ! and their Usque ad Ebbraios! at and in the licensed boosiness primises of his del-hightful bazar and reunited magazine hall, by the magazine wall, Hosty’s and Co, Exports, for his five hundredth and sixtysixth borthday, the grand old Magennis Mor, Persee and Rahli, taker of the tributes, their Rinseky Poppakork and Piowtor the Grape, holding Dunker’s durbar, boot kings and indiarubber umpires and shawhs from paisley and muftis in muslim and sultana reiseines and jordan almonders and a row of jam sahibs and a odd principeza in her pettedcoat and the queen of knight’s clubs and the claddagh ringleaders and the two salaames and the Halfa Ham and the Hanzas Khan with two fat Maharashers and the German selver geyser and he polished up, protemptible, tintanam-bulating to himsilf so silfrich, and there was J. B. Dunlop, the best tyrent of ourish times, and a swanks of French wine stuarts and Tudor keepsakes and the Cesarevitch for the current coun-ter Leodegarius Sant Legerleger riding lapsaddlelonglegs up the oakses staircase on muleback like Amaxodias Isteroprotos, hind-quarters to the fore and kick to the lift, and he handygrabbed on to his trulley natural anthem: Horsibus, keep your tailyup, and as much as the halle of the vacant fhroneroom, Oldloafs Buttery, could safely accomodate of the houses of Orange and Betters M.P, permeated by Druids D.P, Brehons B.P, and Flawhoolags F.P, and Agiapommenites A.P, and Antepum-melites P.P, and Ulster Kong and Munster’s Herald with Athclee Ensigning and Athlone Poursuivant and his Imperial Catchering, his fain awan, and his gemmynosed sanctsons in epheud and ordilawn and his diamondskulled granddaucher, Adamantaya Liubokovskva, all murdering Irish, amok and amak, out of their boom companions in paunchjab and dogril and pammel and gougerotty, after plenty of his fresh stout and his good balls of malt, not to forget his oels a’mona nor his beers o’ryely, sopped down by his pani’s annagolorum, (at Kennedy’s kiln she kned her dough, back of her bake for me, buns!) social-izing and communicanting in the deification of his members, for to nobble or salvage their herobit of him, the poohpooher old bolssloose, with his arthurious clayroses, Dodderick Ogonoch Wrack, busted to the wurld at large, on the table round, with the floodlight switched back, as true as the Vernons have Brian’s sword, and a dozen and one by one tilly tallows round in ring-campf, circumassembled by his daughters in the foregiftness of his sons, lying high as he lay in all dimensions, in court dress and ludmers chain, with a hogo, fluorescent of his swathings, round him, like the cummulium of scents in an italian warehouse, erica’s clustered on his hayir, the spectrem of his prisent mocking the candiedights of his dadtid, bagpuddingpodded to the deafspot, bewept of his chilidrin and serafim, poors and personalities, ven-turous, drones and dominators, ancients and auldancients, with his buttend up, expositoed for sale after referee’s inspection, bulgy and blowrious, bunged to ignorious, healed cured and embalsemate, pending a rouseruction of his bogey, most highly astounded, as it turned up, after his life overlasting, at thus being reduced to nothing.
— Bappy-go-gully and gaff for us all! And all his morties calisenic, tripping a trepas, neniatwantyng: Mulo Mulelo! Homo Humilo! Dauncy a deady O! Dood dood dood! O Bawse! O Boese! O Muerther! O Mord! Mahmato! Moutmaro! O Smir-tsch ! O Smertz ! Woh Hillill ! Woe Hallall ! Thou Thuoni I Thou Thaunaton! Umartir! Udamnor! Tschitt! Mergue! Eulumu! Huam Khuam! Malawinga! Malawunga! Ser Oh Ser! See ah See! Hamovs! Hemoves! Mamor! Rockquiem eternuel give donal aye in dolmeny ! Bat luck’s perpepperpot loosen his eyis ! (Psich !).
— But there’s leps of flam in Funnycoon’s Wick. The keyn has passed. Lung lift the keying!
— God save you king! Muster of the Hidden Life!
— God serf yous kingly, adipose rex ! I had four in the morning and a couple of the lunch and three later on, but your saouls to the dhaoul, do ye. Finnk. Fime. Fudd?
— Impassable tissue of improbable liyers! D’yu mean to sett there where y’are now, coddlin your supernumerary leg, wi’that bizar tongue in yur tolkshap, and your hindies and shindies, like a muck in a market, Sorley boy, repeating yurself, and tell me that?
— I mean to sit here on this altknoll where you are now, Surly guy, replete in myself, as long as I live, in my homespins, like a sleepingtop, with all that’s buried ofsins insince insensed insidesofme. If I can’t upset this pound of pressed ollaves I can sit up zounds of sounds upon him.
— Oliver! He may be an earthpresence. Was that a groan or did I hear the Dingle bagpipes Wasting war and? Watch!
— Tris tris a ni ma mea.! Prisoner of Love! Bleating Hart! Lowlaid Herd! Aubain Hand! Wonted Foot! Usque! Usque! Usque! Lignum in . . .
— Rawth of Gar and Donnerbruck Fire? Is the strays world moving mound or what static babel is this, tell us?
— Whoishe whoishe whoishe whoishe linking in? Whoishe whoishe whoishe?
— The snare drum! Lay yer lug till the groun. The dead giant manalive! They’re playing thimbles and bodkins. Clan of the Gael! Hop! Whu’s within?
— Dovegall and finshark, they are ring to the rescune !
— Zinzin. Zinzin.
— Crum abu! Cromwell to victory!
— We’ll gore them and gash them and gun them and gloat on them.
— Zinzin.
— O, widows and orphans, it’s the yeomen! Redshanks for ever! Up Lancs!
— The cry of the roedeer it is! The white hind. Their slots, linklink, the hound hunthorning ! Send us and peace ! Title ! Title !
— Christ in our irish times! Christ on the airs independence! Christ hold the freedman’s chareman! Christ light the dully expressed!
— Slog slagt and sluaghter! Rape the daughter! Choke the pope!
— Aure ! Cloudy father ! Unsure ! Nongood !
— Zinzin. — Sold! I am sold! Brinabride! My ersther! My sidster! Brinabride, goodbye! Brinabride! I sold!
— Pipette dear! Us! Us! Me! Me!
— Fort! Fort! Bayroyt! March!
— Me! I’m true. True! Isolde. Pipette. My precious!
— Zinzin.
— Brinabride, bet my price ! Brinabride !
— My price, my precious?
— Zin.
— Brinabride, my price! When you sell get my price!
— Zin.
— Pipette ! Pipette, my priceless one !
— O ! Mother of my tears ! Believe for me ! Fold thy son !
— Zinzin. Zinzin.
— Now we’re gettin it. Tune in and pick up the forain counties ! Hello !
— Zinzin.
— Hello! Tittit! Tell your title?
— Abride !
— Hellohello! Ballymacarett! Am I thru’ Iss? Miss? True?
— Tit! What is the ti . . ?
SILENCE.
Act drop. Stand by! Blinders! Curtain up. Juice, please! Foots!
— Hello! Are you Cigar shank and Wheat?
— I gotye. Gobble Ann’s Carrot Cans.
— Parfey. Now, after that justajiff siesta, just permit me a moment. Challenger’s Deep is childspla
y to this but, by our soundings in the swish channels, land is due. A truce to demobbed swarwords. Clear the line, priority call! Sybil! Better that or this? Sybil Head this end ! Better that way? Follow the baby spot. Yes. Very good now. We are again in the magnetic field. Do you remember on a particular lukesummer night, following a crying fair day? Moisten your lips for a lightning strike and begin again. Mind the flickers and dimmers! Better?
— Well. The isles is Thymes. The ales is Penzance. Vehement Genral. Delhi expulsed.
— Still calling of somewhave from its specific? Not more? Lesscontinuous. There were fires on every bald hill in holy Ireland that night. Better so?
— You may say they were, son of a cove!
— Were they bonfires? That clear?
— No other name would at all befit them unless that. Bona-fieries! With their blue beards streaming to the heavens.
— Was it a high white night now?
— Whitest night mortal ever saw.
— Was our lord of the heights nigh our lady of the valley?
— He was hosting himself up and flosting himself around and ghosting himself to merry her murmur like an andeanupper balkan.
— Lewd’s carol! Was there rain by any chance, mistandew?
— Plenty. If you wend farranoch.
— There fell some fall of littlewinter snow, holy-as-ivory, I gather, jesse?
— By snaachtha clocka. The nicest at all. In hilly-and-even zimalayars.
— Did it not blow some gales, westnass or ostscent, rather strongly to less, allin humours out of turn, jusse as they rose and sprungen?
— Out of all jokes it did. Pipep! Icecold. Brr na brr, ny prr! Lieto galumphantes ! — Stll cllng! Nmr! Peace, Pacific! Do you happen to recollect whether Muna, that highlucky-nackt, was shining at all?
— Sure she was, my midday darling ! And not one but a pair of pritty geallachers.
— Quando? Quonda? Go datey!
— Latearly! Latearly! Latearly! Latearly!
— That was latterlig certainly. And was there frostwork about and thick weather and hice, soon calid, soon frozen, cold on warm but moistly dry, and a boatshaped blanket of bruma air-sighs and hellstohns and flammballs and vodashouts and every — thing to please everybody?
— Hail many fell of greats! Horey morey smother of fog! There was, so plays your ahrtides. Absolutely boiled. Obsoletely cowled. Julie and Lulie at their parkiest.
— The amenities, the amenities of the amenities with all their amenities. And the firmness of the formous of the famous of the fumous of the first fog in Maidanvale?
— Catchecatche and couchamed!
— From Miss Somer’s nice dream back to Winthrop’s delugium stramens. One expects that kind of rimey feeling in the sire season?
— One certainly does. Desire, for hire, would tire a shire, phone, phunkel, or wire. And mares.
— Of whitecaps any?
— Foamflakes flockfuyant from Foxrock to Finglas.
— A lambskip for the marines! Paronama! The entire hori- zon cloth! All effects in their joints caused ways. Raindrum, windmachine, snowbox. But thundersheet?
— No here. Under the blunkets.
— This common or garden is now in stilller realithy the starey sphere of an oleotorium for broken pottery and ancient vegetables?
— Simply awful the dirt. An evernasty ashtray.
— I see. Now do you know the wellknown kikkinmidden where the illassorted first couple first met with each other? The place where Ealdermann Fanagan? The time when Junkermenn Funagin?
— Deed then I do, W.K.
— In Fingal too they met at Littlepeace aneath the bidetree, Yellowhouse of Snugsborough, Westreeve–Astagob and Sluts-end with Stockins of Winning’s Folly Merryfalls, all of a two, skidoo and skephumble?
— Godamedy, you’re a delville of a tolkar!
— Is it a place fairly exspoused to the four last winds?
— Well, I faithly sincerely believe so indeed if all what I hope to charity is half true.
— This stow on the wolds, is it Woful Dane Bottom?
— It is woful in need whatever about anything or allselse under the grianblachk sun of gan greyne Eireann.
— A tricolour ribbon that spells a caution. The old flag, the cold flag.
— The flagstone. By tombs, deep and heavy. To the unaveiling memory of. Peacer the grave.
— And what sigeth Woodin Warneung thereof?
— Trickspissers vill be pairsecluded.
— There used to be a tree stuck up? An overlisting eshtree?
— There used, sure enough. Beside the Annar. At the ford of Slivenamond. Oakley Ashe’s elm. With a snoodrift from one beerchen bough. And the grawndest crowndest consecrated may-pole in all the reignladen history of Wilds. Browne’s Thesaurus Plantarum from Nolan’s, The Prittlewell Press, has nothing alike it. For we are fed of its forest, clad in its wood, burqued by its bark and our lecture is its leave. The cran, the cran, the king of all crans . Squiremade and damesman of plantagenets, high and holy.
— Now, no hiding your wren under a bushle! What was it doing there, for instance?
— Standing foreninst us.
— In Summerian sunshine?
— And in Cimmerian shudders.
— You saw it visibly from your hidingplace?
— No. From my invisibly lyingplace.
— And you then took down in stereo what took place being tunc committed?
— I then tuk my takenplace lying down, I thunk I told you. Solve it!
— Remounting aliftle towards the ouragan of spaces. Just how grand in cardinal rounders is this preeminent giant, sir Arber? Your bard’s highview, avis on valley ! I would like to hear you burble to us in strict conclave, purpurando, and without too much italiote interfairance, what you know ? in petto about our sovereign beingstalk, Tonans Tomazeus. O dite!
— Corcor Andy, Udi, Udite! Your Ominence, Your Immi-nence and delicted fraternitrees! There’s tuodore queensmaids and Idahore shopgirls and they woody babies growing upon her and bird flamingans sweenyswinging fuglewards on the tipmast and Orania epples playing hopptociel bommptaterre and Ty-burn fenians snoring in his quickenbole and crossbones strewing its holy floor and culprines of Erasmus Smith’s burstall boys with their underhand leadpencils climbing to her crotch for the origin of spices and charlotte darlings with silk blue askmes chattering in dissent to them, gibbonses and gobbenses, guelfing and ghiberring proferring praydews to their anatolies and blighting findblasts on their catastripes and the killmaimthem pen — sioners chucking overthrown milestones up to her to fall her cranberries and her pommes annettes for their unnatural refection and handpainted hoydens plucking husbands of him and cock robins muchmore hatching most out of his missado eggdrazzles for him, the sun and moon pegging honeysuckle and white heather down and timtits tapping resin there and tomahawks watching tar elsewhere, creatures of the wold approaching him, hollow mid ivy, for to claw and rub, hermits of the desert barking their infernal shins over her triliteral roots and his acorns and pinecorns shooting wide all sides out of him, plantitude outsends of plenty to thousands, after the truants of the utmost-fear and her downslyder in that snakedst-tu-naughsy whimmering woman’t seeleib such a fashionaping sathinous dress out of that exquisitive creation and her leaves, my darling dearest, sinsin-sinning since the night of time and each and all of their branches meeting and shaking twisty hands all over again in their new world through the germination of its gemination from Ond’s outset till Odd’s end. And encircle him circuly. Evovae!
— Is it so exaltated, eximious, extraoldandairy and excels-siorising?
— Amengst menlike trees walking or trees like angels weeping nobirdy aviar soar anywing to eagle it! But rocked of agues, cliffed for aye !
— Telleth that eke the treeth?
— Mushe, mushe of a mixness.
— A shrub of libertine, indeed! But that steyne of law indead what stiles its neming?
— Tod, tod, too hard parted!
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— I’ve got that now, Dr Melamanessy. Finight mens mid-infinite true. The form masculine. The gender feminine. I see. Now, are you derevatov of it yourself in any way? The true tree I mean? Let’s hear what science has to say, pundit-the-next-best-king. Splanck!
— Upfellbowm.
— It reminds of the weeping of the daughters?
— And remounts to the sense arrest.
— The wittold, the frausch and the dibble! How this loose-affair brimsts of fussforus! And was this treemanangel on his soredbohmend because Knockout, the knickknaver, knacked him in the knechtschaft?
— Well, he was ever himself for the presention of crudities to animals for he had put his own nickelname on every toad, duck and herring before the climber clomb aloft, doing the midhill of the park, flattering his bitter hoolft with her conconundrums. He would let us have the three barrels. Such was a bitte too thikke for the Muster of the hoose so as he called down on the Grand Precurser who coiled him a crawler of the dupest dye and thundered at him to flatch down off that erection and be aslimed of himself for the bellance of hissch leif.
— Oh Finlay’s coldpalled!
— Ahday’s begatem !
— Were you there, eh Hehr? Were you there when they lagged um through the coombe?
— Wo wo! Who who! Psalmtimes it grauws on me to ramble, ramble, ramble.
— Woe! Woe! So that was kow he became the foerst of our treefellers?
— Yesche and, in the absence of any soberiquiet, the fanest of our truefalluses. Bapsbaps Bomslinger!
— How near do you feel to this capocapo promontory, sir?
— There do be days of dry coldness between us when he does be like a lidging house far far astray and there do be nights of wet windwhistling when he does be making me onions woup all kinds of ways.
— Now you are mehrer the murk, Lansdowne Road. She’s threwed her pippin’s thereabouts and they’ve cropped up tooth oneydge with hates to leaven this socried isle. Now, thornyborn, follow the spotlight, please!Concerning a boy. Are you acquainted with a pagany, vicariously known as Toucher ‘Thom’ who is. I suggest Finoglam as his habitat. Consider yourself on the stand now and watch your words, take my advice. Let your motto be: Inter nubila numbum.