by James Joyce
Gaping Gill, swift to mate errthors, stern to checkself, diagnosing through his eustacetube that it was to make with a markedly postpuberal hyperpituitary type of Heidelbergmannleich cavern ethics, lufted his slopingforward, bad Sweatagore good murrough and dublnotch on to it as he was greedly obliged, and like a sensible ham, with infinite tact in the delicate situation seen the touchy nature of its perilous theme, thanked um for guilders received and the time of day (not a little token abock all the same that that was owl the God’s clock it was) and, upon humble duty to greet his Tyskminister and he shall gildthegap Gaper and thee his a mouldy voids, went about his business, whoever it was, saluting corpses, as a metter of corse (one could hound him out had one hart to, for the monticules of scalp and dandruff droppings blaze his trail), accompanied by his trusty snarler and his permanent reflection, verbigracious: I have met with you, bird, too late, or if not, too worm and early: and erebusqued with tag for ildiot in his secondmouth language as many of the bigtimer’s verbaten words which he could balbly call to memory that same kveldeve, ere the hour of the twattering of bards in the twitterlitter between Druidia and the Deepsleep Sea, when suppertide and souvenir to Charlatan Mall jointly kem gently and along the quiet darkenings of Grand and Royal, ff, flitmansfluh, and, kk, ’t crept i’ hedge whenas to many a softtongue’s pawkytalk mude unswer u sufter poghyyogh, Arvanda always aquiassent, while, studying castelles in the blowne and studding cowshots over the noran, he spat in careful convertedness a musaic dispensation about his hearthstone, if you pleases (Irish saliva, mawshe dho hole, but would a respectable prominently connected fellow of Iro-European ascendances with welldressed ideas who knew the correct thing such as Mr Shallwesigh or Mr Shallwelaugh expectorate after such a callous fashion, no, thank yous! when he had his belcher spuckertuck in his pucket, pthuck?), musefed with his thockits after having supped of the dish sot and pottage which he snobbishly dabbed Peach Bombay (it is rawly only Lukanpukan pilzenpie which she knows which senaffed and pibered him), a supreme of excelling peas balled under minnshogue’s milk into whitemalt winesour, a proviand the littlebilker hoarsely relished, chaff it, in the snevel season, being as fain o’t as your rat wi’ fennel; and on this celebrating occasion of the happy escape, for a crowning of pot valiance, his regional platter, benjamin of bouillis, with a spolish olive to middlepoint its zaynith, was marrying itself (porkograso!) very deluxiously with a bottle of Phenice-Bruerie ’98, followed for second nuptials by a Piessporter, Grand Cru, of both of which cherished tablelights (though humble the bounquet ’tis a leaman’s farewell) he obdurately sniffed the cobwebcrusted corks.
Our cad’s bit of strife (knee Bareniece Maxwelton) with a quick ear for spittoons (as the aftertale hath it) glaned up as usual with dumbestic husbandry (no persicks and armelians for thee, Pomeranzia!) but, slipping the clav in her claw, broke of the matter among a hundred and eleven others in her usual curtsey (how faint these first vhespers womanly are, a secret pispigliando, amad the lavurdy den of their manfolken!) the next night nudge one as was Hegesippus over o hup a’ chee, her eys dry and small and speech thicklish because he appeared a funny colour like he couldn’t stood they old hens no longer, to her particular reverend, the director, whom she had been meaning in her mind primarily to speak with (hosch, intra! jist a timblespoon!), trusting, between cuppled lips and annie laurie promises (mighshe never have Esnekerry pudden come Annanov for her pecklapitschens!), that the gossiple so delivered in his epistolear, buried teatoastally in their Irish stew, would slip no further than his jesuit’s cloth, yet (in vinars venitas! volatiles valetotum!) it was this overspoiled priest, Mr Browne, disguised as a vicentian, who, when seized of the facts, was overheard, in his secondary personality as a Nolan, and undereared, poul soul, by accident—if, that is, the incident was an accident for here the ruah of Ecclectiastes of Hippo outpuffs the writress of Havvah-ban-Annah—to pianissime a slightly varied version of Crookedrib’s confidentials (what Mère Aloyse said but for Jesuphine’s sake!), hands between hahands, in fealty sworn (my bravor best! my fraur!), and, to the strains of The Secret of Her Birth, hushly pierce the rubiend aurellam of one Philly Thurnston, a layteacher of rural science and orthophonethics of a nearstout figure and about the middle of his forties, during a priestly flutter for safe and sane bets at the hippic runfields of breezy Baldoyle on a date (W. W. goes through the card) easily capable of rememberance by all pickersup of events national and Dublin details, the doubles of Perkin and Paullock, peer and prole, when the classic Encourage Hackney Plate was captured by two noses in a stablecloth finish, ek and nek, some and none, evelo nevelo, from the cream colt Bold Boy Cromwell after a clever getaway by Captain Chaplain Blount’s roe hinny Saint Dalough (Drummer Coxon nondepict third) at breakneck odds, thanks to you, great little, bonny little, portey little Winny Widger! you’re all their nappies! who in his neverrip mud and purpular cap was surely leagues unlike any other phantomweight that ever toppit our timber maggies.
’Twas two pisonouse Timcoves (the wetter is pest, the renns are overt and come and the voax of the turfur is hurled on our lande) of the name of Treacle Tom, as was just out of pop following the theft of a leg of Kehoe, Donnelly and Pakenham’s Finnish pork, and his own blood and milk brother Frisky Shorty (he was, to be exquisitely punctilious about them, both shorty and frisky), a tipster come off the hulks, both of them awful poor, what was out on the bumaround for an oofbird game for a jimmy o’goblin or a small thick un as chanced, while the Seaforths was making the colleenbawl, to ear wick their own hears the passon in the motor clobber make use of his law language (Edzo, Edzo on) touchin the case of Mr Adams what was in all the sundays about it which he was rubbing noses with and having a gurgle off his own along of the butty bloke in the specs.
This Treacle Tom, to whom reference has been made, had been absent from his usual wild and woolly haunts in the land of counties capalleens for some time previous to that (he was, in fact, in the habit of frequenting common lodginghouses where he slept in a nude state, hailfellow with meth, in strange men’s cots) but on racenight, blotto after divers tots of hell fire, red biddy, bull dog, blue ruin and creeping jenny, Englandine’s choicest herbage, supplied by the Duck and Doggies, the Galopping Primrose, Brigid Brewster’s, the Cock, the Postboy’s Horn, the Little Old Man’s and, all swell that aimswell, the Cup and the Stirrup, he sought his wellwarmed leababobed in a housingroom Abide With Oneanother at Block W.W. (why didn’t he back it?), Pump Court, The Liberties, and, what with moltapuke on voltapuke, resnored alcoh alcoho alcoherently to the burden of I come, my horse delayed, nom num, the substance of the tale of the evangelical bussybozzy and the rusinurbean (the “girls” he would keep calling them for the collarette and skirt, the sunbonnet and carnation) in parts (it seemed he was before the eyots of martas or otherwales the thirds of fossilyears, he having beham with katya when lavinias had her mens lease to sea in a pumpship doodly show whereat he was looking for fight niggers with whilde roarses) oft in the chilly night (the metagonistic! the epickthalamorous!) during uneasy slumber in their hearings of a small and stonybroke cashdraper’s ex-executive, Peter Cloran (discharged), O’Mara, an ex-private secretary of no fixed abode (locally known as Mildew Lisa) who had passed several nights, funnish enough, in a doorway under the blankets of homelessness on the bunk of icelond, pillowed upon the stone of destiny colder than man’s knee or woman’s breast, and Hosty (no slouch of a name), an illstarred beachbusker who, sans rootie and sans scrapie, suspicioning as how he was setting on a twoodstool on the verge of selfabyss, most starved, with melancoholia over everything in general (night birman, you served him with natigal’s nano!), had been towhead tossing on his shakedown, devising ways and manners of means of what he loved to ifidalicence somehow or other in the nation getting a hold of some chap’s parabellum in the hope of taking a wing sociable and lighting upon a sidewheel dive somewhere off the Dullkey Downlairy and Bleakrooky tramaline where he could throw true and go and blow the sibicidal napper off himself for two bits to boldywell bald
itude in the peace and quitybus of a one sure shot bottle, he after having being trying all he knew with the lady’s help of Madam Grisstle for upwards of eighteen colanders to get out of Sir Patrick Dun’s, through Sir Humphrey Jervis’s and into the Saint Kevin’s bed in the Adelaida’s hosspittles (from these incurable welleslays among those uncarable wellasdays through Sant Iago by his cocklehat good Lazar deliver us!) without after having been able to jerrywangle it anysides. Lisa O’Deavis and Roche Mongan (who had so much incommon, epipsychidically, if the phrase be permitted, hostis et odor insuper petroperfractus) as an understood thing slept their sleep of the swimborne in the one sweet undulant mother of tumblerbunks with Hosty just how the shavers in the shaw, the yokels in the yoats or, well, the wasters in the wilde, and the bustling tweeny dawn-of-all-works (meed of anthems here we pant!) had not been many jiffies furbishing potlids, doorbrasses, scholars’ applecheeks and linkboys’ metals when, ashhopperminded like no fella he go make bakenbeggfuss longa white man, the rejuvenated busker (for after a goodnight’s rave and rumble and a shinkhams topmorning with his coexes he was not the same man) and his broadawake bedroom suite (our boys, as our Byron called them) were up and ashuffle from the hogshome they lovenaned The Barrel, cross Ebblinn’s chilled hamlet (their routes and restings on their then superficies curiously correspondent with those lines and puncta where our tubenny habenny metro maniplumbs below the oberflake underrails and stations at this time of riding) to the thrummings of a crewth fiddle which, cremoaning and cronauning, levey grevey, witty and wevey, appy, leppy and playable, caressed the ears of the subjects of King Saint Finnerty the Festive, who, in brick homes of their own and in their flavory fraiseberry beds, heeding hardly cry of honeyman, sweet lavender or foyneboyne salmon alive, with their priggish mouths all open for the larger appraisiation of this long-awaited Messiagh of roaratorios, were only halfpast alsweeeep, and, after a brisk pause at a pawnbroking establishment for the prothetic purpose of redeeming the songster’s truly admirable false teeth and a prolonged visit to a house of call, fizz, the Old Sots’ Hole at Cujas Place in the parish of Saint Cecily within the liberty of Ceolmore not a thousand or one national leagues, that was, by Griffith’s valuation, from the site of the statue of Primewer Glasstone setting a match to the march of a maker (last of the stewards peutêtre), where, the tale rambles along, the trio of whackfolthediddlers was joined by a further-intentions-apply-tomorrow casual and a decent sort of the hadbeen variety who had just been touching the weekly insult, phew it, and all figblabbers (who saith of noun?) had stimulants in the shape of gee and gees stood by the damn decent sort after which stag luncheon and a few ones more just to celebrate yesterday, flushed with their firestufffostered friendship, the rascals came out of the licensed premises (Browne first, the small p.s. ex-ex-executive capahand in their sad rear like a lady’s postscript: I want money. Pleasend.) wiping their laughleaking lipes on their sleeves, how the bouckaleens shout their roscan generally (seinn fion, seinn fion’s araun!), and the rhymers’ world was with reason the richer for a wouldbe ballad, to the balladeer of which the world of cumannity singing owes a tribute for having placed on the planet’s melomap his lay of the vilest bogeyer but most attractionable avatar the world has ever had to explain for.
This, more krectly, lubeen or fellow-me-lieder was first poured forth where Riau Liviau riots and Colo de Houdo humps, under the shadow of the monument of the shouldhavebeen legislator (Eleutheriodendron! Spare, woodmann, spare!) to an overflow meeting of all the nations in Lenster fullyfilling the visional area and, as a singleminded supercrowd, easily representative, what with masks, whet with faces, of all sections and cross sections (wineshop and cocoahouse poured out to brim up the broaching) of our liffeyside people (to omit mention of the mainland minority and such as had wayfared via Watling, Ernin, Icknild and Stane: in chief a halted cockney car with its quotal of Hardmuth’s hacks, a northern tory, a southern whig, an eastanglian chronicler and a landwester guardian) ranging from slips of young dublinos from Cutpurse Row having nothing better to do than walk about with their hands in their kneepants, sucking airwhackers, weedulicet, jumbobricks, side by side with truant officers, three woollen balls and poplin in search of a croust of pawn to busy professional gentlemen, a brace of palesmen with dundrearies, nooning toward Daly’s, fresh from snipehitting and mallardmissing on Rutland Heath, exchanging cold sneers, massgoing ladies from Hume Street in their chairs, the bearers baited, some wandering hamalags out of the adjacent cloverfields of Mosse’s Gardens, an oblate father from Skinner’s Alley, bricklayers, a fleming in tabinet, fumant, with spouse and dog, an aged hammersmith who had some chisellers by the hand, a bout of cudgel players, not a few sheep with the braxy, two bluecoat scholars, four broke gents out of Simpson’s on the Rocks, a portly and a pert still tassing Turkey coffee and orange shrub in Hickey’s door, Peter Pim and Paul Fry and then Elliot and, O, Atkinson, suffering hell’s delights from the blains of their annuitants’ acorns, not forgetting a deuce of dianas ridy for the hunt, a particularist prebendary pondering on the roman easter, the tonsure question and greek uniates, plunk em, a lace lappet head or two or three or four from a window, and so on down to a few good old souls who, as they were juiced after taking their pledge over at the uncle’s place, were evidently under the spell of liquor from the wake of Tarry the Tailor, a fair girl, a jolly postoboy thinking off three flagons and one, a plumodrole, a halfsir from the weaver’s almshouse who clings and clings and chatchatchat clings to her, a wholedam’s, cloudhued pittycoat as child, as curiolater, as Caoch O’Leary.
The wararrow went round, so it did (a nation wants a gaze), and the ballad, in the felibrine trancoped metre affectioned by Taiocebo in his Casudas de Poulichinello Artahut, stumpstampaded on to a slip of blancovide and headed by an excessively rough and red woodcut, privately printed at the rimepress of Delville, soon fluttered its secret on white highway and brown byway to the rose of the winds and the blew of the gaels, from green archway to gold lattice and from black hand to pink ear, village crying to village, through the five pussyfours of the united states of Scotia Picta—and he who denayes it, may his hairs be rubbed in dirt!