by James Joyce
— 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 Smirtsch! O Smertz! Wo Hillill! Wa Hallall! Thou Thuoni! 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! Bad 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! Master 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 set there where y’are now, coddlin’ your supernumerary leg, wi’ that bizaar tongue in yur tolkshap, Sorley boy, repeating yurself like a muck in a market with your hindies and shindies, 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, man alive! They’re playing thimbles and bodkins. Clan of the Gael! Hep! Whu’s within?
— Dovegall and finshark they are. Ring to the rescue!
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 hounds hunt horning! Send us 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!
Awe! Cloudy father! Unsure! Nongood!
Zinzin.
Sold! I am sold! My ersther! My sidster! Brinabride, goodbye!
Brinabride! Us! Us!
Pipette dear! I sold! Me! Me!
Fort! Fort! Bayroyt! March!
Me! I’m true. True! Isolde! Pipette, my precious!
Zinzin.
Brinabride, get 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, miss?
True! Iss!
— Tit! What is the ti …?
Act drop. Stand by! Blinders!
SILENCE.
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 childsplay 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 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. Bonafieries! 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, as well, I gather, jesse?
— By sneachtha clocka. The nicest at all. In hilly-and-even zimalayars.
— Did it not blow some gales, westnass or ostscent, rather strongly to less?
— 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 air-sighs and hellstohns and flammballs and vodashouts and thick weather, soon calid, soon frozen, and hice and a boatshaped blanket of bruma and everything to please everybody?
— Hail many fell of greats! Horey morey smother of fog! There was, so plays your Ahrtides. Absolutely boiled. Obsoletely cowled. Cold on warm but moistly dry. All in humours out of turn, jusse as they rose and sprungen. 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?
— Catche catche and couchamed.
— From Miss Somer’s nice dream back to Mad Winthrop’s delugium stramens. One expects that kind of rimy 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 horizon 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 stiller 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 kikkenmidden where the illassorted first couple first met with each other? The place where Ealdarmann 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 Slutsend with Stockens 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 sigheth Woodin Warneung thereof?
— Trickspissers vill be pairsecluded.
— There used to be a tree there 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 maypole 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, barqued by its bark and our lecture is its leave. The crann, the crann, the king of all cranns. 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, udite, udite! Your Ominence, Your Imminence and delicted fraternitree! 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 Tyburn fenians snoring in his quicken bole and crossbones strewing its holy floor and culprinse of Erasmus Smith’s burstall boys with their underhand leadpencils climbing to her crotch for the origin of spices and charlotte darlings with silkblue askmes chattering in dissent to them, gibbonses and gobbenses, guelfing and ghiberring, proferring praydews to their anatolies and blighting fiendblasts on their catastripes and the Killmaimthem pensioners chucking overthrown milestones up to her to fall her cranberries and her pommes annettes for their unnatural refection and handpainted hoydens plucking husbands off 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 pinecones shooting wide on all sides out of him, plantitude outsends of plenty to thousands, after the truants of the utmostfear 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, sinsinsinning 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 excelssiorising?
— 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!
— I’ve got that now, Dr Melomedicus. Finight mens midinfinite 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 looseaffair brimsts of fussforus! And was this treemanangel on his soredbohmend because Knockout, the knickknamer, knacked him in the knecktshaft?
— 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 his conconundrums. He would let us have the three barrels. Such was a bitte too thikke for the Master 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 flatsch down off 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 Jerh? 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 how he became the foerst of our treefellers?
— Yesche, and, in the absence of any soberiquiets, the fairst of our truephalluses, Bapobapo Bomslinger!
— How near do you feel to this capocapo of promontoryism?
— There do be days of dry coldness between us when he does be like a lodging house far far astray and there do be nights of wetwindwhistling 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 on eydge 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 Finolan as his habitat. Consider yourself on the stand now and watch your words, take my advice. Let your motto be: Inter nubila numbum.
— Never you mind about my mother or her hopitout. I consider, if I did, I would feel frightfully ashamed of admired vice.
— He is a man of around fifty, struck on Anna Lynsha’s Pekoe with milk and whisky, who does messages and has more dirt on him than an old dog has fleas, kicking stones and knocking snow off walls. Have you ever heard of this old boy “Thom” or “Thim” of the fishy stare who belongs to Kimmage, a crofting district, and is not all there, and is all the more to himself since he is not so, being most of his time down at the Green Man where he steals, pawns, belches and is a curse, drinking gaily two hours after closing time, with the coat on him skinside out against rapparitions, with his socks outsewed his springsides, clapping his hands in a feeble sort of way and systematically mixing with the public going for groceries, slapping greats and littlegets soundly with his cattegut belts, flapping baresides and waltzywembling about in his accoutrements always in font of the tubbernuckles, like a longarmed lugh, when he would be finished with his tea? Crazy, isn’t that?
— Is it that fellow? As mad as the brambles he is. Touch him. With the lawyers sticking to his trewsershins and the swatmenotting on the basque of his beret. He has kissed me more than once, I am sorry to say, and if I did commit gladrolleries may the loone forgive it! O wait till I tell you!
— We are not going yet.
— And look here! Here’s what he done, as snooks as I am saying so, my dear!
— Get out, you dirt! You’re not! Unhindered and odd times? Mere thumbshow? Lately?
— How do I know? Search my billet. Buy a barrack pass. Ask the horneys. Tell the robbers.
— You are alluding to the picking pockets in Lower O’Connell Street?
— I am illuding to the Pekin packet but I am eluding from Laura Connor’s tre
at.
— A strangely striking pert of speech for the hottest worked word of ur sprogue. Now, just wash and brush up your memoirias a little bit. So I find, referring to the pater of the present man, an erely demented brickthrower, I am wondering to myself in my mind, qua our arc of the covenant, was Toucher, a methodist, whose name, as others say, is not really “Thom”, was this salt son of a century from Boaterstown, Shivering William, the sealiest old forker ever hawked crannock, after his teeth were shaken out of their suckets by the wrang dog, who is always with him at the Big Elm and the Arch, for having 5 pints 73 of none Eryen blood in him, abaft the seam level, the scatterling, was he wearing his cowbeamer and false clothes of a brewer’s grains pattern with back buckons with his motto on, Yule Remember, ostensibly for that occasion only of the Twelfth Day Pax and Quantum wedding, I’m wondering.
— I bet you are. Well, he was wandering, give him his due, in his mind too, you bet, whatever was his matter, for I am sorry to have to tell you, hullo and evoe, they were coming down from off him.
— How culious an epiphany! Hodie casus esobhrakonton?
— It looked very like it.
— Needer knows necess and neither garments. Man is minded of Meagher, what? Woolly Walty?
— Ay, another good button gone wrong.
— Blondman’s blaff! Like a skib leaked lintel the arbour leidend with …?
— Pamelas, peggylees, pollywollies, questuants, quaintaquilties, quick-amerries.
— And, concaving now convexly to the semidemihemispheres, from the female angle, music minnestirring, were the subligate sisters, P and , Clopatrick’s cherierapest, mutatis mutandis, in pretty much the same pickle, the peach of all piedom, the quest of all quicks?