Ulysses
—Barney mavourneen’s be it, says I. Anything strange or wonderful, Joe?
—Not a word, says Joe. I was up at that meeting in the City Arms.
—What was that, Joe? says I.
—Cattle traders, says Joe, about the foot and mouth disease. I want to
give the citizen the hard word about it.
So we went around by the Linenhall barracks and the back of the
courthouse talking of one thing or another. Decent fellow Joe when he
has it but sure like that he never has it. Jesus, I couldn’t get over
that bloody foxy Geraghty, the daylight robber. For trading without a
licence, says he.
In Inisfail the fair there lies a land, the land of holy Michan. There
rises a watchtower beheld of men afar. There sleep the mighty dead as
in life they slept, warriors and princes of high renown. A pleasant
land it is in sooth of murmuring waters, fishful streams where sport
the gurnard, the plaice, the roach, the halibut, the gibbed haddock,
the grilse, the dab, the brill, the flounder, the pollock, the mixed
coarse fish generally and other denizens of the aqueous kingdom too
numerous to be enumerated. In the mild breezes of the west and of the
east the lofty trees wave in different directions their firstclass
foliage, the wafty sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted
planetree, the eugenic eucalyptus and other ornaments of the arboreal
world with which that region is thoroughly well supplied. Lovely
maidens sit in close proximity to the roots of the lovely trees singing
the most lovely songs while they play with all kinds of lovely objects
as for example golden ingots, silvery fishes, crans of herrings, drafts
of eels, codlings, creels of fingerlings, purple seagems and playful
insects. And heroes voyage from afar to woo them, from Eblana to
Slievemargy, the peerless princes of unfettered Munster and of Connacht
the just and of smooth sleek Leinster and of Cruachan’s land and of
Armagh the splendid and of the noble district of Boyle, princes, the
sons of kings.
And there rises a shining palace whose crystal glittering roof is seen
by mariners who traverse the extensive sea in barks built expressly for
that purpose, and thither come all herds and fatlings and firstfruits
of that land for O’Connell Fitzsimon takes toll of them, a chieftain
descended from chieftains. Thither the extremely large wains bring
foison of the fields, flaskets of cauliflowers, floats of spinach,
pineapple chunks, Rangoon beans, strikes of tomatoes, drums of figs,
drills of Swedes, spherical potatoes and tallies of iridescent kale,
York and Savoy, and trays of onions, pearls of the earth, and punnets
of mushrooms and custard marrows and fat vetches and bere and rape and
red green yellow brown russet sweet big bitter ripe pomellated apples
and chips of strawberries and sieves of gooseberries, pulpy and
pelurious, and strawberries fit for princes and raspberries from their
canes.
I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him. Come out here, Geraghty, you
notorious bloody hill and dale robber!
And by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers and flushed
ewes and shearling rams and lambs and stubble geese and medium steers
and roaring mares and polled calves and longwools and storesheep and
Cuffe’s prime springers and culls and sowpigs and baconhogs and the
various different varieties of highly distinguished swine and Angus
heifers and polly bullocks of immaculate pedigree together with prime
premiated milchcows and beeves: and there is ever heard a trampling,
cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling, grunting,
champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from
pasturelands of Lusk and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy
vales of Thomond, from the M’Gillicuddy’s reeks the inaccessible and
lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the
place of the race of Kiar, their udders distended with superabundance
of milk and butts of butter and rennets of cheese and farmer’s firkins
and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great
hundreds, various in size, the agate with this dun.
So we turned into Barney Kiernan’s and there, sure enough, was the
citizen up in the corner having a great confab with himself and that
bloody mangy mongrel, Garryowen, and he waiting for what the sky would
drop in the way of drink.
—There he is, says I, in his gloryhole, with his cruiskeen lawn and his
load of papers, working for the cause.
The bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would give you the creeps.
Be a corporal work of mercy if someone would take the life of that
bloody dog. I’m told for a fact he ate a good part of the breeches off
a constabulary man in Santry that came round one time with a blue paper
about a licence.
—Stand and deliver, says he.
—That’s all right, citizen, says Joe. Friends here.
—Pass, friends, says he.
Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he:
—What’s your opinion of the times?
Doing the rapparee and Rory of the hill. But, begob, Joe was equal to
the occasion.
—I think the markets are on a rise, says he, sliding his hand down his
fork.
So begob the citizen claps his paw on his knee and he says:
—Foreign wars is the cause of it.
And says Joe, sticking his thumb in his pocket:
—It’s the Russians wish to tyrannise.
—Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Joe, says I. I’ve a thirst on me
I wouldn’t sell for half a crown.
—Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.
—Wine of the country, says he.
—What’s yours? says Joe.
—Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.
—Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how’s the old heart, citizen? says
he.
—Never better, _a chara_, says he. What Garry? Are we going to win? Eh?
And with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck
and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.
The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was
that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired
freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded
deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed
hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and his
rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of
his body wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair
in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse (_Ulex Europeus_).
The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue
projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous
obscurity the fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in
which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the
dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful current of warm
breath issued at regular intervals from the profound cavity of his
mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations
of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the
summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to
vibrate and tremble.
He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide reaching to
the knees in a loose kilt and this was bound about his middle by a
girdle of plaited straw and rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of
deerskin, roughly stitched with gut. His nether extremities were
encased in high Balbriggan buskins dyed in lichen purple, the feet
being shod with brogues of salted cowhide laced with the windpipe of
the same beast. From his girdle hung a row of seastones which jangled
at every movement of his portentous frame and on these were graven with
rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and
heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine
hostages, Brian of Kincora, the ardri Malachi, Art MacMurragh, Shane
O’Neill, Father John Murphy, Owen Roe, Patrick Sarsfield, Red Hugh
O’Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O’Growney, Michael
Dwyer, Francy Higgins, Henry Joy M’Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley,
Thomas Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain
Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S.
Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone,
the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of
Castile, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte
Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn’t, Benjamin Franklin,
Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish,
Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton, William Tell,
Michelangelo Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the
Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Patrick W. Shakespeare, Brian
Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan
and Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold
Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen
Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Ben
Howth, Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss
Croker, Herodotus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva,
The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky
Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Don
Philip O’Sullivan Beare. A couched spear of acuminated granite rested
by him while at his feet reposed a savage animal of the canine tribe
whose stertorous gasps announced that he was sunk in uneasy slumber, a
supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which
his master repressed from time to time by tranquilising blows of a
mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic stone.
So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing and begob the
sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid. O, as true as
I’m telling you. A goodlooking sovereign.
—And there’s more where that came from, says he.
—Were you robbing the poorbox, Joe? says I.
—Sweat of my brow, says Joe. ’Twas the prudent member gave me the
wheeze.
—I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill lane and
Greek street with his cod’s eye counting up all the guts of the fish.
Who comes through Michan’s land, bedight in sable armour? O’Bloom, the
son of Rory: it is he. Impervious to fear is Rory’s son: he of the
prudent soul.
—For the old woman of Prince’s street, says the citizen, the subsidised
organ. The pledgebound party on the floor of the house. And look at
this blasted rag, says he. Look at this, says he. _The Irish
Independent,_ if you please, founded by Parnell to be the workingman’s
friend. Listen to the births and deaths in the _Irish all for Ireland
Independent,_ and I’ll thank you and the marriages.
And he starts reading them out:
—Gordon, Barnfield crescent, Exeter; Redmayne of Iffley, Saint Anne’s
on Sea: the wife of William T Redmayne of a son. How’s that, eh? Wright
and Flint, Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion daughter of Rosa and the
late George Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham road, Stockwell, Playwood and
Ridsdale at Saint Jude’s, Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest,
dean of Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London:
Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart disease: Cockburn, at the
Moat house, Chepstow...
—I know that fellow, says Joe, from bitter experience.
—Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of David Dimsey, late of the admiralty: Miller,
Tottenham, aged eightyfive: Welsh, June 12, at 35 Canning street,
Liverpool, Isabella Helen. How’s that for a national press, eh, my
brown son! How’s that for Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber?
—Ah, well, says Joe, handing round the boose. Thanks be to God they had
the start of us. Drink that, citizen.
—I will, says he, honourable person.
—Health, Joe, says I. And all down the form.
Ah! Ow! Don’t be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint.