Finnegans Wake: Episode 2

Now (to forebare for ever solittle of Iris Trees and Lili O’Rangans), concerning the genesis of Harold or Humphrey Chimp — den’s occupational agnomen (we are back in the presurnames prodromarith period, of course just when enos chalked halltraps) and discarding once for all those theories from older sources which would link him back with such pivotal ancestors as the Glues, the Gravys, the Northeasts, the Ankers and the Earwickers of Sidlesham in the Hundred of Manhood or proclaim him offsprout of vikings who had founded wapentake and seddled hem in Herrick or Eric, the best authenticated version, the Dumlat, read the Reading of Hofed-ben-Edar, has it that it was this way. We are told how in the beginning it came to pass that like cabbaging Cincinnatus the grand old gardener was saving daylight under his redwoodtree one sultry sabbath afternoon, Hag Chivychas Eve, in prefall paradise peace by following his plough for rootles in the rere garden of mobhouse, ye olde marine hotel, when royalty was announced by runner to have been pleased to have halted itself on the highroad along which a leisureloving dogfox had cast followed, also at walking pace, by a lady pack of cocker spaniels. For — getful of all save his vassal’s plain fealty to the ethnarch Humphrey or Harold stayed not to yoke or saddle but stumbled out hotface as he was (his sweatful bandanna loose from his pocketcoat) hasting to the forecourts of his public in topee, surcingle, solascarf and plaid, plus fours, puttees and bulldog boots ruddled cinnabar with flagrant marl, jingling his turnpike keys and bearing aloft amid the fixed pikes of the hunting party a high perch atop of which a flowerpot was fixed earthside hoist with care. On his majesty, who was, or often feigned to be, noticeably longsighted from green youth and had been meaning to inquire what, in effect, had caused yon causeway to be thus potholed, asking substitutionally to be put wise as to whether paternoster and silver doctors were not now more fancied bait for lobstertrapping honest blunt Haromphreyld answered in no uncertain tones very similarly with a fear — less forehead: Naw, yer maggers, aw war jist a cotchin on thon bluggy earwuggers. Our sailor king, who was draining a gugglet of obvious adamale, gift both and gorban, upon this, ceasing to swallow, smiled most heartily beneath his walrus moustaches and indulging that none too genial humour which William the Conk on the spindle side had inherited with the hereditary whitelock and some shortfingeredness from his greataunt Sophy, turned towards two of his retinue of gallowglasses, Michael, etheling lord of Leix and Offaly and the jubilee mayor of Drogheda, Elcock, (the two scatterguns being Michael M. Manning, protosyndic of Waterford and an Italian excellency named Giubilei according to a later version cited by the learned scholarch Canavan of Canmakenoise), in either case a triptychal religious family symbolising puritas of doctrina, business per usuals and the purchypatch of hamlock where the paddish preties grow and remarked dilsydulsily: Holybones of Saint Hubert how our red brother of Pour — ingrainia would audibly fume did he know that we have for sur — trusty bailiwick a turnpiker who is by turns a pikebailer no sel — domer than an earwigger For he kinned Jom Pill with his court so gray and his haunts in his house in the mourning. (One still hears that pebble crusted laughta, japijap cheerycherrily, among the roadside tree the lady Holmpatrick planted and still one feels the amossive silence of the cladstone allegibelling: Ive mies outs ide Bourn.) Comes the question are these the facts of his nominigentilisation as recorded and accolated in both or either of the collateral andrewpaulmurphyc narratives. Are those their fata which we read in sibylline between the fas and its nefas? No dung on the road?And shall Nohomiah be our place like? Yea, Mulachy our kingable khan? We shall perhaps not so soon see. Pinck poncks that bail for seeks alicence where cumsceptres with scentaurs stay. Bear in mind, son of Hokmah, if so be you have me — theg in your midness, this man is mountain and unto changeth doth one ascend. Heave we aside the fallacy, as punical as finikin, that it was not the king kingself but his inseparable sisters, uncontrollable nighttalkers, Skertsiraizde with Donyahzade, who afterwards, when the robberers shot up the socialights, came down into the world as amusers and were staged by Madame Sudlow as Rosa and Lily Miskinguette in the pantalime that two pitts paythronosed, Miliodorus and Galathee. The great fact emerges that after that historic date all holographs so far exhumed initialled by Haromphrey bear the sigla H.C.E. and while he was only and long and always good Dook Umphrey for the hungerlean spalpeens of Lucalizod and Chimbers to his cronies it was equally certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him as sense of those normative letters the nickname Here Comes Everybody. An imposing everybody he always indeed looked, constantly the same as and equal to himself and magnificently well worthy of any and all such universalisation, every time he continually surveyed, amid vociferatings from in front of Accept these few nutties! and Take off that white hat!, relieved with Stop his Grog and Put It in the Log and Loots in his (bassvoco) Boots, from good start to happy finish the truly catholic assemblage gathered together in that king’s treat house of satin alustrelike above floats and footlights from their assbawlveldts and oxgangs unanimously to clap — plaud (the inspiration of his lifetime and the hits of their careers) Mr Wallenstein Washington Semperkelly’s immergreen tourers in a command performance by special request with the courteous permission for pious purposes the homedromed and enliventh performance of problem passion play of the millentury, running strong since creation, A Royal Divorce, then near the approach towards the summit of its climax, with ambitious interval band selections from The Bo’ Girl and The Lily on all horserie show command nights from his viceregal booth (his bossaloner is ceilinged there a cuckoospit less eminent than the redritualhoods of Maccabe and Cullen) where, a veritable Napoleon the Nth, our worldstage’s practical jokepiece and retired cecelticocommediant in his own wise, this folksforefather all of the time sat, having the entirety of his house about him, with the invariable broadstretched kerchief cooling his whole neck, nape and shoulderblades and in a wardrobe panelled tuxedo completely thrown back from a shirt well entitled a swallowall, on every point far outstarching the laundered clawhammers and marbletopped highboys of the pit stalls and early amphitheatre. The piece was this: look at the lamps. The cast was thus: see under the clock. Ladies circle: cloaks may be left. Pit, prommer and parterre, standing room only. Habituels conspicuously emergent.

A baser meaning has been read into these characters the literal sense of which decency can safely scarcely hint. It has been blurtingly bruited by certain wisecrackers (the stinks of Mohorat are in the nightplots of the morning), that he suffered from a vile disease. Athma, unmanner them! To such a suggestion the one selfrespecting answer is to affirm that there are certain statements which ought not to be, and one should like to hope to be able to add, ought not to be allowed to be made. Nor have his detractors, who, an imperfectly warmblooded race, apparently conceive him as a great white caterpillar capable of any and every enormity in the calendar recorded to the discredit of the Juke and Kellikek families, mended their case by insinuating that, alternately, he lay at one time under the ludicrous imputation of annoying Welsh fusiliers in the people’s park. Hay, hay, hay! Hoq, hoq, hoq! Faun and Flora on the lea love that little old joq. To anyone who knew and loved the christlikeness of the big cleanminded giant H. C. Earwicker throughout his excellency long vicefreegal existence the mere suggestion of him as a lustsleuth nosing for trou — ble in a boobytrap rings particularly preposterous. Truth, beard on prophet, compels one to add that there is said to have been quondam (pfuit! pfuit!) some case of the kind implicating, it is interdum believed, a quidam (if he did not exist it would be necessary quoniam to invent him) abhout that time stambuling ha — round Dumbaling in leaky sneakers with his tarrk record who has remained topantically anonymos but (let us hue him Abdullah Gamellaxarksky) was, it is stated, posted at Mallon’s at the instance of watch warriors of the vigilance committee and years afterwards, cries one even greater, Ibid, a commender of the frightful, seemingly, unto such as were sulhan sated, tropped head (pfiat! pfiat!) waiting his first of the month froods turn for thatt chopp pah kabbakks alicubi on the old house for the chargehard, Roche Haddocks off Hawkins Street. Lowe, you blondy liar, Gob scene you in the narked place and she what’s edith ar home defileth these boyles! There’s a cabful of bash indeed in the homeur of that meal. Slander, let it lie its flattest, has never been able to convict our good and great and no ordinary Southron Earwicker, that homogenius man, as a pious author called him, of any graver impropriety than that, advanced by some woodwards or regarders, who did not dare deny, the shomers, that they had, chin Ted, chin Tam, chinchin Taffyd, that day consumed their soul of the corn, of having behaved with ongentilmensky immodus opposite a pair of dainty maidservants in the swoolth of the rushy hollow whither, or so the two gown and pinners pleaded, dame nature in all innocency had spontaneously and about the same hour of the eventide sent them both but whose published combinations of silkinlaine testimonies are, where not dubiously pure, visibly divergent, as wapt from wept, on minor points touch-which was admittedly an incautious but, at its wildest, a partial ex — ing the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison posure with such attenuating circumstances (garthen gaddeth green hwere sokeman brideth girling) as an abnormal Saint Swithin’s summer and, (Jesses Rosasharon!) a ripe occasion to provoke it.

We can’t do without them. Wives, rush to the restyours! Ofman will toman while led is the lol. Zessid’s our kadem, villa — pleach, vollapluck. Fikup, for flesh nelly, el mundo nov, zole flen! If she’s a lilyth, pull early! Pauline, allow! And malers abushed, keep black, keep black! Guiltless of much laid to him he was clearly for once at least he clearly expressed himself as being with still a trace of his erstwhile burr sod hence it has been received of us that it is true. They tell the story (an amalgam as absorbing as calzium chloereydes and hydrophobe sponges could make it) how one happygogusty Ides-of-April morning (the anniversary, as it fell out, of his first assumption of his mirthday suit and rights in appurtenance to the confusioning of human races) ages and ages after the alleged misdemeanour when the tried friend of all creation, tigerwood roadstaff to his stay, was billowing across the wide expanse of our greatest park in his caoutchouc kepi and great belt and hideinsacks and his blaufunx fustian and ironsides jackboots and Bhagafat gaiters and his rubberised inverness, he met a cad with a pipe. The latter, the luciferant not the oriuolate (who, the odds are, is still berting dagabout in the same straw bamer, carryin his overgoat under his schulder, sheepside out, so as to look more like a coumfry gentleman and signing the pledge as gaily as you please) hardily accosted him with: Guinness thaw tool in jew me dinner ouzel fin? (a nice how-do-you-do in Pool-black at the time as some of our olddaisers may still tremblingly recall) to ask could he tell him how much a clock it was that the clock struck had he any idea by cock’s luck as his watch was bradys. Hesitency was clearly to be evitated. Execration as cleverly to be honnisoid. The Earwicker of that spurring instant, realising on fundamental liberal principles the supreme importance, nexally and noxally, of physical life (the nearest help relay being pingping K. O. Sempatrick’s Day and the fenian rising) and unwishful as he felt of being hurled into eternity right then, plugged by a softnosed bullet from the sap, halted, quick on the draw, and reply — in that he was feelin tipstaff, cue, prodooced from his gunpocket his Jurgensen’s shrapnel waterbury, ours by communionism, his by usucapture, but, on the same stroke, hearing above the skirling of harsh Mother East old Fox Goodman, the bellmaster, over the wastes to south, at work upon the ten ton tonuant thunderous tenor toller in the speckled church (Couhounin’s call!) told the inquiring kidder, by Jehova, it was twelve of em sidereal and tankard time, adding, buttall, as he bended deeply with smoked sardinish breath to give more pondus to the copperstick he presented (though this seems in some cumfusium with the chap — stuck ginger which, as being of sours, acids, salts, sweets and bitters compompounded, we know him to have used as chaw-chaw for bone, muscle, blood, flesh and vimvital,) that where — as the hakusay accusation againstm had been made, what was known in high quarters as was stood stated in Morganspost, by a creature in youman form who was quite beneath parr and several degrees lower than yore triplehydrad snake. In greater sup — port of his word (it, quaint ‘anticipation of a famous phrase, has been reconstricted out of oral style into the verbal for all time with ritual rhythmics, in quiritary quietude, and toosammen-stucked from successive accounts by Noah Webster in the re — daction known as the Sayings Attributive of H. C. Earwicker, prize on schillings, postlots free), the flaxen Gygas tapped his chronometrum drumdrum and, now standing full erect, above the ambijacent floodplain, scene of its happening, with one Berlin gauntlet chopstuck in the hough of his ellboge (by ancientest signlore his gesture meaning: E pointed at an angle of thirty-two degrees towards his duc de Fer’s overgrown milestone as fellow to his gage and after a rendypresent pause averred with solemn emotion’s fire: Shsh shake, co-comeraid! Me only, them five ones, he is equal combat. I have won straight. Hence my nonation wide hotel and creamery establishments which for the honours of our mewmew mutual daughters, credit me, I am woo-woo willing to take my stand, sir, upon the monument, that sign of our ruru redemption, any hygienic day to this hour and to make my hoath to my sinnfinners, even if I get life for it, upon the Open Bible and before the Great Taskmaster’s (I lift my hat!) and in the presence of the Deity Itself andwell of Bishop and Mrs Michan of High Church of England as of all such of said my immediate withdwellers and of every living sohole in every corner wheresoever of this globe in general which useth of my British to my backbone tongue and commutative justice that there is not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest of fibfib fabrications.

Gaping Gill, swift to mate errthors, stern to checkself, (diagnosing through eustacetube that it was to make with a markedly postpuberal hypertituitary type of Heidelberg mannleich 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 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 snorler and his permanent reflection, verbigracious; I have met with you, bird, too late, or if not, too worm and early: and with tag for ildiot repeated 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 softongue’s pawkytalk mude unswer u sufter poghyogh, 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 please, (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 proviant 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, this regional platter, benjamin of bouillis, with a spolish olive to middlepoint its zaynith, was marrying itself (porkograso!) erebusqued very deluxiously with a bottle of Phenice–Bruerie ‘98, followed for second nuptials by a Piessporter, Grand Cur, 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 manfolker!) the next night nudge one as was Hegesippus over a 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 lawrie promises (mighshe never have Esnekerry pudden come Hunanov for her pecklapitschens!) that the gossiple so delivered in his epistolear, buried teatoastally in their Irish stew would go no further than his jesuit’s cloth, yet (in vinars venitas! volatiles valetotum!) it was this overspoiled priest Mr Browne, disguised as a vincentian, who, when seized of the facts, was overheard, in his secondary personality as a Nolan and underreared, poul soul, by accident — if, that is, the incident it 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 Crookedribs confidentials, (what Mere 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 aurellum 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 cald) easily capable of rememberance by all pickers-up 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 never-rip mud and purpular cap was surely leagues unlike any other phantomweight that ever toppitt our timber maggies.

’Twas two pisononse 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 Packenham’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 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, Eglandine’s choicest herbage, supplied by the Duck and Doggies, the Galop — ping 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 rusinur — bean (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 fossil-years, he having beham with katya when lavinias had her mens lease to sea in a psumpship 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 executive, Peter Cloran (discharged), O’Mara, an exprivate 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 iceland, 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 melancholia 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 baltitude 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 Gristle for upwards of eighteen calanders to get out of Sir Patrick Dun’s, through Sir Humphrey Jervis’s and into the Saint Kevin’s bed in the Adelaide’s hosspittles (from these incurable welleslays among those uncarable wellasdays through Sant Iago by his cocklehat, goot 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 linkboy’s 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 (thrie routes and restings on their then superficies curiously correspondant with those linea and puncta where our tubenny habenny metro maniplumbs below the oberflake underrails and stations at this time of riding) to the thrum — mings 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, soed lavender or foyneboyne salmon alive, with their priggish mouths all open for the larger appraisiatiOn of this longawaited Messiagh of roaratorios, were only halfpast atsweeeep 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 at Cujas Place, fizz, the Old Sots’ Hole 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 peut-ˆtre), 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, phewit, 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 firestufffortered friendship, the rascals came out of the licensed premises, (Browne’s 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 balledder 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 col de Houdo humps, under the shadow of the monument of the shouldhavebeen legislator (Eleutheriodendron! Spare, woodmann, spare!) to an over — flow 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 to 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, mass-going 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, brick-layers, 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 tickeyes door, Peter Pim and Paul Fry and then Elliot and, O, Atkinson, suffering hell’s delights from the blains of their annui-tants’ acorns not forgetting a deuce of dianas ridy for the hunt, a particularist prebendary pondering on the roman easter, the ton-sure 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 half sir 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, stump-stampaded 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 archway to lattice and from black hand to pink ear, village crying to village, through the five pussyfours green of the united states of Scotia Picta — and he who denays it, may his hairs be rubbed in dirt! To the added strains (so peacifold) of his majesty the flute, that onecrooned king of inscrewments, Piggott’s purest, ciello alsoliuto, which Mr Delaney (Mr Delacey?), horn, anticipating a perfect downpour of plaudits among the rapsods, piped out of his decentsoort hat, looking still more like his purseyful namesake as men of Gaul noted, but before of to sputabout, the snowycrested curl amoist the leader’s wild and moulting hair, ‘Ductor’ Hitchcock hoisted his fezzy fuzz at bludgeon’s height signum to his companions of the chalice for the Loud Fellow, boys’ and silentium in curia! (our maypole once more where he rose of old) and the canto was chantied there chorussed and christened where by the old tollgate, Saint Annona’s Street and Church.

And around the lawn the rann it rann and this is the rann that Hosty made. Spoken. Boyles and Cahills, Skerretts and Pritchards, viersified and piersified may the treeth we tale of live in stoney. Here line the refrains of. Some vote him Vike, some mote him Mike, some dub him Llyn and Phin while others hail him Lug Bug Dan Lop, Lex, Lax, Gunne or Guinn. Some apt him Arth, some bapt him Barth, Coll, Noll, Soll, Will, Weel, Wall but I parse him Persse O’Reilly else he’s called no name at all. To-gether. Arrah, leave it to Hosty, frosty Hosty, leave it to Hosty for he’s the mann to rhyme the rann, the rann, the rann, the king of all ranns. Have you here? (Some ha) Have we where? (Some hant) Have you hered? (Others do) Have we whered? (Others dont) It’s cumming, it’s brumming! The clip, the clop! (All cla) Glass crash. The (klikkaklakkaklaskaklopatzklatschabattacreppycrotty-graddaghsemmihsammihnouithappluddyappladdypkonpkot!).

Ardite, arditi!

Music cue

“The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly

Have you heard of one Humpty Dumpty

How he fell with a roll and a rumble

And curled up like Lord Olofa Crumple

By the butt of the Magazine Wall,

(Chorus) Of the Magazine Wall,

Hump, helmet and all?

He was one time our King of the Castle

Now he’s kicked about like a rotten old parsnip.

And from Green street he’ll be sent by order of His Worship

To the penal jail of Mountjoy

(Chorus) To the jail of Mountjoy!

Jail him and joy.

He was fafafather of all schemes for to bother us

Slow coaches and immaculate contraceptives for the populace,

Mare’s milk for the sick, seven dry Sundays a week,

Openair love and religion’s reform,

(Chorus) And religious reform,

Hideous in form.

Arrah, why, says you, couldn’t he manage it?

I’ll go bail, my fine dairyman darling,

Like the bumping bull of the Cassidys

All your butter is in your horns.

(Chorus) His butter is in his horns.

Butter his horns!

(Repeat) Hurrah there, Hosty, frosty Hosty, change that shirt on ye,

Rhyme the rann, the king of all ranns!

Balbaccio, balbuccio!

We had chaw chaw chops, chairs, chewing gum, the chicken-pox and china chambers

Universally provided by this soffsoaping salesman.

Small wonder He’ll Cheat E’erawan our local lads nicknamed him

When Chimpden first took the floor

(Chorus) With his bucketshop store

Down Bargainweg, Lower.

So snug he was in his hotel premises sumptuous

But soon we’ll bonfire all his trash, tricks and trumpery

And’tis short till sheriff Clancy’ll be winding up his unlimited company

With the bailiff’s bom at the door,

(Chorus) Bimbam at the door.

Then he’ll bum no more.

Sweet bad luck on the waves washed to our island

The hooker of that hammerfast viking

And Gall’s curse on the day when Eblana bay

Saw his black and tan man-o’-war.

(Chorus) Saw his man-o’-war.

On the harbour bar.

Where from? roars Poolbeg. Cookingha’pence, he bawls Donnez-moi scampitle, wick an wipin’fampiny

Fingal Mac Oscar Onesine Bargearse Boniface

Thok’s min gammelhole Norveegickers moniker

Og as ay are at gammelhore Norveegickers cod.

(Chorus) A Norwegian camel old cod.

He is, begod.

Lift it, Hosty, lift it, ye devil ye! up with the rann, the rhyming rann!

It was during some fresh water garden pumping

Or, according to the Nursing Mirror, while admiring the mon keys

That our heavyweight heathen Humpharey

Made bold a maid to woo

(Chorus) Woohoo, what’ll she doo!

The general lost her maidenloo!

He ought to blush for himself, the old hayheaded philosopher,

For to go and shove himself that way on top of her.

Begob, he’s the crux of the catalogue

Of our antediluvial zoo,

(Chorus) Messrs. Billing and Coo.

Noah’s larks, good as noo.

He was joulting by Wellinton’s monument

Our rotorious hippopopotamuns

When some bugger let down the backtrap of the omnibus

And he caught his death of fusiliers,

(Chorus) With his rent in his rears.

Give him six years.

’Tis sore pity for his innocent poor children

But look out for his missus legitimate!

When that frew gets a grip of old Earwicker

Won’t there be earwigs on the green?

(Chorus) Big earwigs on the green,

The largest ever you seen.

Suffoclose! Shikespower! Seudodanto! Anonymoses!

Then we’ll have a free trade Gaels’ band and mass meeting

For to sod the brave son of Scandiknavery.

And we’ll bury him down in Oxmanstown

Along with the devil and Danes,

(Chorus) With the deaf and dumb Danes,

And all their remains.

And not all the king’s men nor his horses

Will resurrect his corpus

For there’s no true spell in Connacht or hell

(bis) That’s able to raise a Cain.