by James Joyce
— I will. I did. They were. I swear. Like the heavenly militia. So wreek me Ghyllygully! With my tongue through my toecap on the headlong stone of kismet if so ’tis the will of Whose B. Dunn.
— Weeping Lorcans! They must have put in some wonderful work, ecad, on the quiet like, during this arms’ parley, meatierites forces vegatearians. Dost thou not think so?
— Ay.
— The illegal-looking range or fender, alias turfing iron, a product of Hostages and Co, Engineers, changed feet several times as briars revalvered during the weaponswap? Piff?
— Puff! Excuse yourself. It was an ersatz lottheringcan.
— They did not know the war was over and were only berebelling or bereppelling one another by chance or necessity with sham bottles, mere and woiney, like their caractacurs in an Irish Ruman, as betwinst Picturshirts and Scutticules, to sorrowbrate the expeltsion of the Danos? What sayest thou, scusascmerul?
— That’s all. For he was heavily upright man. Limba romena in Bucclis tucsada. Farcing gutterish.
— I mean the Morgans and the Dorans, in finnish.
— I know you don’t. In Feeney’s.
— The mujic of the footure on the barbarihams of the bashed? Co Canniley?
— Da Donnuley.
— In voina viritas, neat wahr?
— O bella! O pia! O pura! Amem.
— Yet this war has meed peace? Ab chaos lex?
— Handwalled amokst us. Thanksbeer to Balbus!
— All the same you sound it ’twould clang howlish like Hull hopen for Christmians?
— But ’twill cling hellish like engels opened to neuropeans, if you’ve sensed whole the sum. So be vigil!
— And this pattern pootsch punnermine of concoon and proprey went on, hog and minne, a whole whake, your night after larry’s night, spittin-spite on Dora O’Huggins, ormonde caught butler, the artillery of the O’Hefferns answering the cavalry of the MacClouds, fortey and more fortey, a thousand and one times, according to your cock and a biddy story? Lludi llongi, for years and years perhaps?
— That’s ri. This is his largos life, this is me timtomtum, and this is her two peekweeny ones. From the last finger on the second foot of the fourth man to the first one on the last one of the first. That’s right.
— Finny. Vary vary finny!
— It may look funny but fere it is.
— Stadyon there! This is not guid enough, Mr Brasslattin. Finging and tonging and winging and ponging! And all your rally and ramp and rant! Didget think I was asleep at the wheel? D’yu mean to tall grand jurors of Thathens of Tharctic on yur oath, me lad, and ask us to believe you, for all you’re enduring long terms, with yur last foot foremouthst, that yur moon was shining on the tors and on the cresties and winblowing night after night, for years and years perhaps, after yu swearing to it a while back before yur Corth examiner, Markwalther, that there was reen in planty all the teem?
— Perhaps so, as you grand duly affirm, Robman Calvinic. I never thought over it, faith. I most certainly think so about it. I hope. Unless it is actionable. It would be a charity for me to think about something which I must on no caste accounts omit, if you ask to me. It was told me as an inspired statement by a friend of myself, Tarpey, in reply to salute after three o’clock mass, with forty ducks indulgent, that some rain was promised to Mrs Lyons, the invalid, of Aunt Tarty Villa, with lots gulp and sousers, and likewise he told me, the recusant, after telling mass, with two hundred genuflexions, at the split hour of blight when bars are keeping so sly, as what’s follows. He is doing a walk, says she, in the feelmick’s park, says he, like a tarrable Turk, says she, letting loose on his nursery and, begalla, he meet himself with Mr Michael Clery of a Tuesday who said Father MacGregor was desperate to the bad place about thassbawls and ejaculating about all the stairrods and the catspew swashing his earwanker and thinconvenience being locked up for months, owing to being putrenised by stragglers abusing the apparatus, and for Tarpey to pull himself into his soup and fish and to push on his borrowsaloaner and to go to the tumple like greased lining and see Father MacGregor and, be Cad, sir, he was to pipe up and saluate that clergyman and to tell his holiness the whole goat’s throat about the three shillings in the confusional and to say how Mrs Lyons, the cuptosser, was the infidel who prophessised to post three shielings Peter’s pelf off her tocher from Paraguais to Mr Martin Clery for Father Mathew to put up a midnight mask on Saints Withins of a Thrushday and albs by the yard for African man and to let Brown child do and to leave he Anlone and for all the nuisances committed by soldats and nonbehavers and missbelovers and for N. D. de l’Ecluse to send more heehaw hell’s flutes, my prodder again! And I never brought my cads in togs blanket! Foueh!
— Angly as arrows, but you have right, my celtslinger! Nils, Mugn and Cannut. Should brothers be for awe, then?
— So let use off be octo while oil bike the bil and wheel whang till wabblin befoul you but mere and mire trullopes will knaver mate agame on the bibby bobby burns of.
— Quatsch! What hill are yu fluking about, ye lamelookond fyats? I’ll discipline ye! Will yu swear or affirm the day to yur second sight noo and recant that all yu affirmed and swore to and profetised at first sight for his southerly accent was all paddyflaherty? Will ye, ay or nay?
— Ay say aye. I affirmly swear to it that it roolly and coolly boolyhooly was with my holyhagionous lips continuously poised upon the rubricated Annuals of Saint Ulstar!
— That’s very guid of ye, R.C! Maybe yu wouldn’t mind talling us, my labbrose lad, how very much bright cabbage or papermint comfirts d’yu draw for all yur swearin? The spanglers, kiddy?
— Rootha prootha. There you have me! Vurry nothing, O potators, I call it, for I might as well tell Yous Essexelcy, and I am not swallowing my air, the Golden Bridge’s truth. It amounts to nada in pounds or pence. Not a glass of Lucan nor as much as the costprice of a highlandman’s trousertree or the three crowns round your draphole (isn’t it dram disgusting?) for the whole dumb plodding thing!
— Come on now, johnny! We weren’t born yesterday. Pro tanto quid retribuamus? I ask you to say on your scotty pictail you were promised fines times with some staggerjuice or deadhorse on strip or in larges at the Raven and Sugarloaf, either Jones’s lame or Jamesy’s gait, anyhow?
— Bushmillah! Do you think for a moment? Yes, by the way. How very necessarily true! Give me fair play. When?
— At the Dove and Raven tavern, no, ah? To wit your wizzend?
— Water, water, darty water! Up Jubilee sod! Beet peat wheat treat!
— What harm wants but demands it! How would yu like to hear yur right name now, Ghazi Power, my tristy minstrel, if yur not freckened of frank comment?
— Not afrightened of Frank Annybody’s gaspower or illconditioned ulcers neither.
— Your uncles?
— Your gullet!
— Will you repeat that to me outside, leinconnmuns?
— After you’ve shouted a few? I will when it suits me, hulstler.
— Guid! We make fight! Three to one! Raddy?
— But no, from exemple, Emania! Raffaroo! What do you have? What mean you, august one? Fairplay for Finnians! I will have my humours. Sure, you would not do the cowardly thing and moll me roon? Tell Queen’s Road I am seilling. Farewell, but whenever! Buy!
— Ef I chuse to put a bullet like yu through the grill for heckling, what business is that of yours, yu bullock?
— I don’t know, sir. Don’t ask me, your honour!
— Gently, gently, Northern Ire! Glove that red hand! Let me once more. There are sordidly tales within tales, you clearly understand that? Now my other point. Did you know, whether by melanodactylism or purely libationally, that one of these two Crimeans with the fender, the taller man, was accused of a certain offence or of a choice of two serious charges, as skirts were divided on the subject, if you like it better that way? You did, you rogue, you?
— You hear things. Besides (and serially now) bushes have eyes, don�
�t forget. Hah!
— Which moral turpitude would you select of the two, for choice, if you had your way? Playing bull before shebears or the hindlegs off a clotheshorse? Did any orangepeelers or greengoaters appear periodically up your sylvan family tree?
— Buggered if I know! It all depends on how much family silver you want for a nass-and-pair. Hah!
— What do you mean, sir, behind your hah? You don’t hah to do thah, you know, snapograph.
— Nothing, sir. Only a bone moving into place. Blotogaff. Hahah!
— Whahat?
— Are you to have all the pleasure quizzing on me? I didn’t say it aloud, sir. It was something inside of me talking to myself.
— You’re a nice third-degree witness, faith! But this is no laughing matter. Do you think we are tonedeafs in our noses to boot? Can you not distinguish the sense, prain, from the sound, bray? You have homosexual cathexis of empathy between narcissism of the exvert and steatopygic invertedness. Get yourself psychoanalysed!
— O, begor, I want no expert nurse’s symaphy from yours broons quadroons and I can psoako-onaloose myself any time I want (the fog follow you all!) without your interferences or any other pigeonstealer.
— ’Sample! ’Sample!
— Have you evew weflected, wepowtew, that the evil, what though it was willed, might nevewtheless lead somehow on to good towawd the genewality?
— A pwopwo of haster meets waster and talking of plebiscites by a show of hands, whether declaratory or effective, in all seriousness, has it become to dawn in you yet that the deponent, the man from Saint Yves, may have been (one is reluctant to use the passive voiced), may be been as much sinned against as sinning, for if we look at it verbally perhaps there is no true noun in active nature where every bally being (please read this mufto) is becoming in its owntown eyeballs? Now, the long form and the strong form and reform alltogether!
— Hotchkiss Culthur’s Everready, own brother to Neverreached, well over countless hands, sieur of many winners and losers, groomed by S. Samson and Son, bred by Dilalahs, will stand at Bay (Dublin) from nún till dán and vites inversion and at Miss or Mrs MacMannigan’s Yard.
— Perhaps you can explain, sagobean? The Mod needs a rebus.
— Pro general continuation and in particular explication to your singular interrogation our asseveralation. Ladiesgent, pals will smile but me and Frisky Shorty, my inmate friend, as is uncommon struck on poplar poetry, and a few fleabesides round at West Pauper Bosquet was having a wee chatty with our hosty in his comfy estably, glad to be back again with the chaps and just arguing friendlylike at the Doddercan Easehouse over the old party and his moral turps, meaning flu, pock, pox and mizzles, grip, gripe, gleet and sprue, caries, rabies, mumps and dumps. What me and Frisky in our concensus and the whole double gigscrew of subscribers, not to say the burman, having successfully concluded our tour of bibel, wants to know is thisahere. Supposing, for an ethical fict, him, which the findings showed, to have taken his epscene licence before the Norsect’s divisional respectively as regards them male Middlesex privates and or concomitantly with all common or neuter respects to them public Exsess females, whereas allbeit really sweet fillies, as was very properly held by the metropolitan in connection with this regrettable nuisance, touching arbitrary conduct, being in strict contravention of schedule in board of forests and works bylaws regulationing sparkers’ and succers’ amusements section of our beloved naturepark in pursuance of which police agence me and Shorty have approached a reverend gentleman of the name of Mr Coppinger with reference to a piece of fire fittings as was most obliging, ’pon my sam, in this matter of his explanations, affirmative, negative and limitative, given to me and Shorty, touching what the good book says of toooldaisymen, concerning the merits of early bisectualism, besides him citing from approved lectionary example given by a valued friend of the name of Mr J. P. Cockshott, reticent of England, as owns a pretty maisonette, Quis ut Deus, fronting on to the Soussex Bluffs as was telling us categoric how Mr Cockshott, as he had his assignation with, present holder by deedpoll and indenture of the swearing belt, he tells him hypothetic, the reverend Mr Coppinger, as how he reckons himself disjunctively with his windward eye up to a dozen miles of a cunifarm school of herring passing themselves supernatantly by the Bloater Naze from twelve and them mayriding him by the silent hour. Butting, charging, bracing, backing, springing, shrinking, swaying, darting, shooting, bucking and sprinkling their dossies sodouscheock with the twinx of their taylz. And, reverend, he says, summat problematical, by yon socialist sun, gut me, but them errings was as gladful as Wissixy kippers could well be considering, flipping their little coppingers, pot em, the fresh little flirties, the dirty little gillybrighteners, pickle their spratties, the little smolty gallockers, and, reverend, says he, more assertitoff, zwelf me Zeus, says he, lettin olfac be the extench of the supperfishies, lamme the curves of their scaligerance and pesk the everurge flossity of their pectoralium, them little salty populators, says he, most apodictic, as sure as my briam eggs is on cockshot under noose, all them little upanddowndippies they was all of a libidous pickpuckperty and raid on a wriggolo finsky doodah in testimonials to their early bisectualism. Such, he says, is how the reverend Coppinger visualises the hidebound homelies of creed crux ethics. Watsch yourself tillicately every morkning in your bracksullied twilette. The use of cold water, testificates Dr Rutty, may be warmly recommended for the sugjugation of cungunitals loosed. Tolloll, schools!
— Tallhell and Barbados wi’ ye and yer Errian coprulation! Pelagiarist! Remonstrant Montgomeryite! Short lives to your relatives! Y’are obsexed, so y’are, with macroglosia and mickroocyphyllicks!
— Lalia Lelia Lilia Lulia and lively lovely Lola Montez.
— Wait now, Leixlip! I scent eggoarchicism. I will take you to task. I don’t follow you that far in your otherwise accurate account. Was it esox lucius now or salmo ferax? You are taxing us into the driven future, are you not, with this ruttymaid fishery?
— Gubbernathor! That they say is a fenian on the secret. Named Parasol Irelly. Spawning ova and fry like a marrye monach all amanygoround his seven parish churches! And peopling the ribald baronies with dans, oges and conals!
— Lift it now, Hosty! Hump’s your mark! For a runnymede landing! A dondhering vesh vish, Magnam Carpam, es hit neat zoo?
— There’s an old psalmsobbing lax salmoner fogeyboren Herrin Plundehowse
Who went floundering with his boatloads of spermin spunk about
Leaping freck after every long tom and wet lizzy between Howth and Humbermouth.
Our Human Conger Eel!
— Hep! I can see him in the fishnoo! Up wi’ yer whippy! Hold that lad! Play him, Markandeya! Bullhead!
— Pull you, sir! Olive quill does it. Longeel of Malin, he’ll cry before he’s flayed. And his tear make newisland. Did a rise? Way, lungfush! The great fin may cumule! Three threeth o’er the wild! Manu ware!
— He missed her mouth and stood into Dee, Romunculus Remus, plying the rape, so as now any bompriss’s bound to get up her if he pool her leg and bunk on her butt?
— No, he skid like a skate and berthed on her byrnie and never a fear but they’ll land him yet, Slitheryscales on liffeybank, times and times and a half a time with a pillow of sand to polster him.
— Do you say they will?
— I bet you they will.
— Among the shivering sedges so? Weedywaving.
— Or tulipbeds of Rush below.
— Where you take your mugs to wash after dark?
— To my lead, Toomey lout, Tommy lad.
— Beside the bubblye waters of, babblyebubblye waters of?
— Right.
— Grenadiers. And tell me now. Were these anglers or angelers coexistent and compresent with or without their tertium quid?
— Three in one, one and three,
Shem and Shaun and the shame that sunders em,
Wisdom’s son, folly’s brother.
— God bless your g
inger, wigglewaggle! That’s three slots and no burners. You’re forgetting the jinnyjos for the fayboys. What, Walker Johnny Referent? Play us your patmost! And unpackyoulloups!
— Naif Cruachan! Woe on woe, says Warden Daly. Woman will water the wild world over.
— And the maid of the folley will go where glory. Trothed today, trenned tomorrow. Sure I thought it was larking in the trefoll of the furry glans with two stripping baremaids, Stilla Underwood and Moth MacGarry, he was, hand to dagger, that time. And their mother a rawknees pudsfrowse, I was given to understand, with superflowvius heirs, begum. There was that one that was always mad gone on him, her first king of cloves and the most broadcussed man in Corrack-on-Sharon, County Rosecarmon. Sure she was near drowned in pondest coldstreams of admiration for herself, as bad as my Tarpeyan cousin, Vesta Tully, making faces at her bachspilled lakest likeness in the brook and cooling herself in the element after, she pleasing it, she praising it, with salices and weidowywehls, all tossed as she was, the playactrix, Lough Shieling’s love!
— O, add shielsome bridelittle! All of her own! Nircississies are as the doaters of inversion. Secilas through their laughing classes becombing poolermates in laker life.
— It seems to same with Iscappellas. Ys? Gotellus! A tickey for tie taughts!
— Listenest, meme mearest! They were harrowd, those finweeds! Come, rest in this bosom! Am so sorry you lost him, poor lamb! Of course I know you are a viry vikid girl to go in the dreemplace and at that time of the draym. And it was a very wrong thing to do, even under the dark blush of night, dare all grandpassia! He’s gone on his bombashaw. Through geesing and so pleasing at Strip Teasy up the stairs. The boys on the corner were talking too. And your soreful miseries first come on you. Still, to forgive it’s divine, my lickle wiffey, and everyboy knows you do look lovely in your invinsibles, Eulogia, a perfect apposition with the coldcream, Assoluta from Boileau’s, I always use in the wards after I am burned a rich egg and derive the greatest benefit, sign of the cause! My, you do! Simply adorable! Could I but pass my hands some, my hands through, thine hair! So vickyvicky veritiny! O Fronces, say howdyedo, Dotty! Chic hands. The way they curve there! Winning in a way, only my arms are whiter, dear, under new charmeen cuffs. I am more divine like that when I’ve two of everything up to boyproof knicks. Blanchemain, idler. Fairhair, frail one. Listen, meme sweety! O be joyfold! Mirror do justice, taper of ivory, heart of the conavent, hoops of gold! My veil will save it undyeing from his ethernal fire! It’s meemly us two, meme idoll. Of course it was downright verry vicked of him, reelly, meeting me disguised, Bortolo mio, in his storm collar, with my dovebirds, my colombinas. Even Netta and Linda, our seeyu tities, said their sinsitives shrinked, and they’ve sin sumtim, tankus! My rillies were liebeneaus, my aftscents embre. Peerfectly appealling, D.V. How me adores eatsother simply (Mon Ishebeau! Ma Reinebelle!) as I leaned yestreen from his muskished blesbless labs. Even my little pom got excited when I turned his head on his same manly bust and kissed him more. Only he might speak to a person, lord, so picious, taking up my worths ill wrong! May I introduce? This is my futuous loveliast. Lips and looks lovely. Still, me with you, you poor chilled, will make it up in the moontime with Mother Concepcion and a glorious lie between us, sweetness, so as not a novene in all the loretos, not my littlest one of all, for mercy’s sake, need ever know what’s past our lips. Yes, sir, we’ll will! Clothe a wind! Fee O Fie! Covey us niced! Bansh the dread! Alitten’s looking. Low him lovly! Make me feel good! It will all take bloss as oranged by my historiennes at Saint Audien’s rosan chocolate chapelry with my diamants blickfeast after at minne owned hos for all the cat club to go cryzy and Father Blesius Mindelsinn will give us his beminding haaand. Kyrielle elation! Crystal elation! Kyrielle elation! Elation immanse! Sing to us! Sing to us! Sing to us! Amam! So, meme mearest, languished hister, be free to me! (I’m fading!) And, listen, youyou beauty, esster, I’ll be clue to who knows you, pray Magda, Marthe with Luz and Joan, while I lie with warm lisp on the Tolka. (I’m fay!)