by James Joyce
Yes, the viability of vicinals if invisible is invincible. And we are not trespassing on his corns either. Look at all the plotsch! Flaminian! 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 to O’Connell! Though rainyhidden, 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 goes 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 Brennan’s (now Malpasplace?) pass, versts and versts from true civilisation, not where his dreams top their traums halt (Beneathere! Beneathere!) but where livland yontide meared with the wilde, saltlea with flood, that the attackler, though under medium and between colours, with truly cropatkin pluck engaged the Adversary 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 headandheelless 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 sacré pour un sacreur, femme à barbe ou homme-nourrice), at the same time, so as to pluggwell 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 Nippoluono engaging Wei-Ling-Taon or de Razzkias trying to reconnoistre 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, as stuck as that cat to that mouse in that tube of that christchurch organ (did the imirage of Girl Cloud Pensive float above them, light young charm, in ribbons and pigtail?), and in the course of their tussle the taller 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 ham of the same him) asked in the vermicular with a very oggly chew-chin-grin as if he forgot something:
— Was six victolios fifteen pigeon takee offa you, tell he me, stlongfella, by pickypocky 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 (Secremented Serviour of the Divine Zeal!) where-upon became friendly and, saying not his shirt to tear, to know wanted, joking and knobkerries all aside laying, if his change companion, who stuck still to the invention 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 mohomoment 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 and tropping 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! Whwh at very first wind of gaygay and whiskwy, ’s wick ears pricked up, the starving gunman, strike him pink for a chip off the old flint, became strangely calm and forthright sware by all his lards porsenal that the thorntree of Sheol might ramify up his Sheofon to the lux apointlex but he would go good to him suntime, marx my word fort (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 French hen or the portlifowlium of hastes and leisures, about to continue), 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, funeral fare or fun fain real, atte Adam and Eve’s in Quantity Street by the grace of game Queen Tailte, her will and testament:
— You stunning little southdowner! I’d know you anywhere, Declaney, let me trucefully tell you, in or out of the lexincton 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 bally 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 that the queer mixture exchanged the pax in an 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 schmallkalled the treatyng to cognac, turning his fez menialstrait in the direction of Mosca, he first got rid of a few bitsmillers and hurooshoos and levanted off with tubular jurbulance at a bull’s run over the assback bridge, spitting his teeths on roots, 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 appointment with some rival rialtor 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 occurrence in the best way he could, to the flabbergaze 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 deinderivative, some lotion or fomentation of poppyheads would be jennerously exhibited to the parts, at the nearest watchhouse on Vicar Lane, the white ground of his face all covered with diagonally redcrossed nonfatal mammalian blood as proof positive 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?
Nowthen, leaving clashing ash, brawn and muscle and brassmade to oust earthenborn and rockcrystal to wreck isinglass but wurming along gradually for our savings backtowards motherwaters so
many miles from bank and Dublin stone (olympiading even till the eleventh dynasty to reach that thuddysickend Hamlaugh) and to the question of boney’s unlawfully obtaining a pierced paraflamme and claptrap fireguard, there crops out the still more salient point of the politish leanings and town pursuits of our forebeer, El Don De Dunelli (may his ship thicked stick in the bottol of the river and all his crewsers stock locked in the burral of the seas!), who, when within the black of your toenail, sir, of being mistakenly ambushed by one of the uddahveddahs and as close as made no matter, mam, to being kayoed offhand when the hyougono heckler with the Peter the Painter wanted to hole him, was consistently practising the first of the primary and imprescriptible liberties of the pacific subject by circulating (be British, boys, to your bellybone and chuck a chum a chance!) alongst one of our umphrohibited semitary thrufahrts, open to buggy and bike, to walk, Wellington Park Road, with the curb or quaker’s quacknostrum under his auxter and his alpenstuck in his redhand, a highly commendable exercise, or, number two of our acta legitima plebeia, on the brink (beware to baulk a man at his will!) of taking place upon a public seat, to what, bare by Butt’s, most easterly (but all goes west!) of blackpool bridges, as a public protest and naturlikevice without intent to annoy either, being praisegood thankfully for the wrathbereaved ringdove and the fearstung boaconstrictor and all the more right jollywell pleased, which he was, at having other people’s weather.
But to return to the Atlantic and Phenitia Proper. As if that were not to be enough for anyone but little headway, if any, was made in solving the wasnottobe crime conundrum when a child of Maam, Festy King, of a family long and honourably associated with the tar and feather industries, who gave an address in old plomausch Mayo of the Saxons in the heart of a foulfamed potheen district, was subsequently haled up at the Old Bailey on the calends of Mars under an incompatibly framed indictment of both the counts (from each equinoxious points of view, the one fellow’s fetch being the other follow’s person), that is to see, flying cushats out of his ouveralls and making fesses immodst his forces on the field. Oyeh! Oyeh! When the prisoner, soaked in methylated, appeared in dry dock, appatently ambrosiaurealised like Kersse’s Korduroy Karikature, wearing (besides stains, rents and patches) his fight shirt, straw braces, souwester and a policeman’s corkscrew trowswers all out of the true (as he had purposely torn up all his cymtrymanx bespokes in the mamertime), deposing for his exution with all the fluors of sparse in the royal Irish vocabularly how the whole padderjagmartin tripiezite suet and all the sulfeit of copperas had fallen off him quatz unaccountably like the chrystalisations of Alum on Even while he was trying for to stick fire to himcell (in feacht he was dripping as he found upon stripping for a pipkin of malt as he feared the coold raine), it was attempted by the crown (P.C. Robort) to show that King, elois Crowbar, once known as Meleky, impersonating a climbing boy, rubbed some pixes of any luvial peatsmoor o’er his face, plucks and pussas, with a clanetourf as the best means of disguising himself and was at the middlewhite fair in Mudford of a Thoorsday, feishts of Peeler and Pole, under the illassumed names of Tykingfest and Rabworc picked by him and Anthony out of a tellafun book, ellegedly with a pedigrue pig (unlicensed) and a hyacinth. They were on that sea by the plain of Ir nine hundred and ninetynine years and they never cried crack or ceased from regular paddlewicking till that they landed their two and a trifling selves, amadst camel and ass, greybeard and suckling, priest and pauper, marmatron and merrymeg, into the meddle of the mudstorm. The gathering, convened by the Irish Angricultural and Prepostoral Ouraganisations to help the Irish muck to look his brother dane in the face, and attended, thanks to Larry, by large numbers of christies and jews’ totems, tospite of the deluge, was distinctly of a scattery kind when the bally-bricken he could get no good of, after cockofthewalking through a few fancyfought mains, ate some of the doorweg, the pikey later selling the gentleman ratepayer because she, Francie’s sister, that is to say, ate a whole side of her (the animal’s) sty, Qui Sta Troia, in order to pay off, hiss or lick, six doubloons fifteen arrears of his, the villain’s not the rumbler’s, rent.
Remarkable evidence was given, anon, by an eye, ear, nose and throat witness, whom Wesleyan chapelgoers suspected of being a plainclothes priest, W— P—, situate at Nullnull, Medical Square, who, upon letting down his rice and peacegreen coverdisk and having been sullenly cautioned against yawning while being grilled, smiled (he had had a onebumper at parting from Mrs Molroe in the morning) and stated to his eliciter under his morse mustaccents (gobbless!) that he slept with a bonafides and that he would be doorbringing there that night and how he was pleased to remember the filth of November, hatinaring, rowdy O, which, with the jiboulees of Juno and the dates of ould lanxiety, was going, please the Rainmaker, to decembs within the ephemerides of profane history, all one with Tournay, Yetstoslay and Temorah, and that one thing which would pigstickularly strike a person of such sorely tried observational powers as Sam, him and Moffatt, though theirs not to reason why, the striking thing about it was that he was patrified to see, hear, taste and smell on Struggle Street as his time of night how Hyacinth O’Donnell, B.A., described in the calendar as a mixer and wordpainter, with part of a sivispacem (Gaeltact for dungfork) on the fair green at the hour of twentyfour o’clock sought (the bullycassidy of the friedhoffer!) to sack, sock, stab and slaughter singlehanded another two of the old kings, Gash MacGale and Roaring O’Crian, Jr, both changelings, unlucalised, of no address and in non-communicables, between him and whom ever since wallops before the Mise of Lewes bad blood existed on the ground of the boer’s trespass on the bull or because he firstparted his polarbeeber hair in twoways or because they were creepfoxed andt grousuppers over a nippy in a noveletta or because they could not say meace (mute and daft!), meathe. The lifigants, he said, local congsmen and donalds, kings of the arans and the dalkeys, kings of mud and tory, even the goat king of Killorglin, were egged on by their supporters in the shape of bitterwomen with bowstrung hair of Carrothagenuine ruddiness waving crimson petties and screaming like stuck kruegers from Isod’s towertop.
There were cries from the thicksets in court and from the macdublins on the bohernabreena of: Mind Messer, the ban from Banagher, Mick, sir! Prodooce O’Donner. A Bu! Exhibit his relics! Use the tongue mor! Give lip less!
But it oozed out in Deadman’s Dark Scenery Court through crossexanimation of the casehardened testis that when and where that knife of knifes the threepartied ambush was laid (roughly spouting around half hours ’twixt dusk in dawn, by Waterhose’s, Meddle Europeic Time, near Stop and Think, high chief evervirens and only abfalltree in auld the land) there was not as much light from the widowed moon as would dim a child’s altar. The mixer, accordingly, was bluntly broached, and in the best basel to boot, as to whether he was one of those lucky cocks for whom the audible-visible-gnosible-edible world existed. That he was only too cognitively conatively cogitabundantly sure of it because, living, loving, breathing and sleeping morphomelosophopancreates, as he most significantly did, whenevery he thought he heard he saw he felt he made a bell clipperclipperclipperclipper. Whether he was practically sure too of his lugs and truies in this king and blousyman business? That he was pediculously so. Certified? As cad could be. Be lying? Be the lonee I will. It was Morbus O’Somebody? A’quite. Szerday’s son? A satyr in weddens. And how did the greeneyed mister arrive at the B.A.? That it was like his poll. A crossgrained trapper with murty odd oogs, awlforated ares, inquiline nase and a twitcherous mouph? He would be. Who could bit you att to a tenyerdfuul when aastalled? Ballera jobbera. Some majar bore too? Iguines. And with a stopper head, bottle shoulders, a barrel bauck and tumblerous legs, redipnominated Helmingham Erchenwyne Rutter Egbert Crumwall Odin Maximus Esme Saxon Esa Vercingetorix Ethelwulf Rupprecht Ydwallo Bentley Osmund Dysart Yggdrasselmann? Holy Saint Eiffel, the very phoenix! It was Chudley Magnall once more between the deffodates and the dumb scene? The two childspies was preesing him auza de Vologne but the renting of his rock was from the three wicked Vunco
uverers. Forests bent down awhits, arthou sure? Yubete, Cumhilum comes! One of the oxmen’s thingabossers, hvad? Wirrgeling and boeuffickly bucephull. And had he been refresqued by the founts of bounty playing there—is—a—grain—aleland in Long’s gourgling barral? A loss of lordedward and a lack of sirphilip a surgeoned showeradown could suck more gargling bubbles out of the five lamps in Portterand’s praise. Wheataured, however, and with fallen mammaries? As whouse wouldn’t, laving his leaftime in Blackpool. Bott, of course, he could call himself Tem too if he had time to? You butt he could anytom. When he pleased? Win and place. A stoker temptated by evesdripping against the driver who was a witness as well? Sacred avatar, how the devil did they guess it! Two dreamyums in one dromium? Yes and no error. And both as like as a duel of lentils? Peacisely. So he was pelted out of the coram populo, was he? Be the powers that be, that he was. The prince in principel should not expose his person? Macchevuole! Rooskayman, kamerad? Sooner Gallwegian he would say. Not unintoxicated, fair witness? Drunk as a fishup. Askt to whether she minded whither he smuked? Not if he barkst into phlegms. Anent his ajacciulations to his Crosscann Lorne, cossa? It was corso in cursu on coarser again. The gracious miss was we not doubt sensible how yellowatty on the forx was altered? That she esually was, O’Dowd me nut! As to his religion, if any? It was the see-you-Sunday sort. Exactly what he, Sour Harry, meant by a pederast prig? Bejacob’s goat, just a gent who prayed his lent. And if this middleclassed portavorous was a useful beast? Bynight as useful as a vomit to a shorn man. If he had ragnarised dtheir gcourts marsheyls? Dthat nday in ndays he had. Lindendelly, coke or skillies, spell me gart without a gate? Harlyadrope. The grazing rights (Mrs Magistra Martinette) expired with the expiry of the goat’s sire, if they were not mistaken? That he exactly could not tell the worshipfuls but his mother-in-waders had the recipis for the price of the coffin and that he was there to tell them that herself was the velocipede that could tell them kitcat. A maundarin tongue in a pounderin jowl? Father ourder about the mathers of prenanciation. Distributary endings? And we recommends. Quare hircum? No answer. Unde gentium fe …? No ah. Are you not danzzling on the age of a vulcano? Siar, I am deed. And how olld of him? He was intendant to study pulu. Which was meant in a shirt of two shifts macoghamade or up Finn’s threehatted ladder? That a head in thighs under a bush at the sunface would bait a serpent to a millrace through the heather. Arm bird colour defdum ethnic fort perhaps? Sure and glomsk handy jotalpheson as well. Hokey jasons, then, in a pigeegeeses? On a pontiff’s order as ture as there’s an ital on atac. As a gololy bit to joss? Leally and tululy. But why this hankowchaff and whence this second tone, son-yet-sun? He had the cowtaw in his buxers, flay of face. So this that Solasistras, setting odds evens at defiance, took the laud from Labouriter? What displaced Tob, Dilke and Halley, not been greatly in love with the game. And, changing the venders from the king’s head to the republican’s arms, as to the pugnaxities evinxed from flagfall to antepost during the effrays round fatherthyme’s beckside and the regents in the plantsown raining, with the skiddystars and the morkernwindup, how they appealed to him then? That it was wildfires night on all the bettygallaghers, Mickmichael’s soords shrieking shrecks through the wilkinses and Neckanicholas’ toastingforks pricking prongs up the tunnybladders. Let there be fight? And there was. Foght. On the site of the Angel’s, you said? Guiney’s Gap, he said, between what they said and the pussykitties. In the middle of the garth, then? That they mustn’t touch it. The devoted couple was or were only two disappainted solicitresses on the job of the unfortunate class on Saturn’s mountain fort? That was about it, jah! And Camellus then said to Gemellus: I should know you? Parfaitly. And Gemellus then said to Camellus: Yes, your brother? Obsolutely. And if it was all about that, egregious sir? About that and the other. If he was not alluding to the whole in the wall? That he was when he was not eluding from the whole of the woman. Briefly, how such beginall finally struck him now? Like the crack that bruck the benk in Multifarnham. Whether he fell in with what they meant? That he suppoxed he did. Thos Thoris, Thomar’s Thom? The rudacist rotter in Roebuckdom. Surtopical? And subhuman. If it was, in yappanoise language, ach bad clap? Oo! Caught offal mist? Shocking! Bladyughfoulmoecklenburgwhurawhorascortastrumpapornanennykocksapastippatappatupperstrippuckputtanach, eh? Ah! Such as turly pearced our really’s? That he might, that he might never, that he might never that night, treely and rurally! Augs and ohrs with Rhian O’Kehley, to put it tertianly, we wrong? You have it alright.