Ulysses
this day morning going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce
believe ’tis so bad, says he. And he had experience of the like brood
beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wool, having been
some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster
that drove his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by Mr
Gavin Low’s yard in Prussia street. I question with you there, says he.
More like ’tis the hoose or the timber tongue. Mr Stephen, a little
moved but very handsomely told him no such matter and that he had
dispatches from the emperor’s chief tailtickler thanking him for the
hospitality, that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the bestquoted
cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of physic to take the
bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. He’ll
find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull that’s
Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr Stephen, and
he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an English chinashop. I
conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was sent to our
island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder of them all, with
an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent cross the
table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper and a
portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns galore, a
coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of his
nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and
rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains.
What for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas
that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who
were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my
cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer’s blessing,
and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and
the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he
taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess
and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the
month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the
nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young
ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his
word: And they dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat
with a tippet and girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his
forelock and rubbed him all over with spermacetic oil and built stables
for him at every turn of the road with a gold manger in each full of
the best hay in the market so that he could doss and dung to his
heart’s content. By this time the father of the faithful (for so they
called him) was grown so heavy that he could scarce walk to pasture. To
remedy which our cozening dames and damsels brought him his fodder in
their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was full he would rear up on
his hind quarters to show their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow
out of him in bulls’ language and they all after him. Ay, says another,
and so pampered was he that he would suffer nought to grow in all the
land but green grass for himself (for that was the only colour to his
mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the
island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord Harry, Green is the
grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got
scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a
husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or
a bag of rapeseed out he’d run amok over half the countryside rooting
up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry’s orders.
There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the
lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and an
old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I’ll meddle in
his matters, says he. I’ll make that animal smell hell, says he, with
the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one evening, says
Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to
dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the
first rule of the course was that the others were to row with
pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and
on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he
found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous
champion bull of the Romans, _Bos Bovum_, which is good bog Latin for
boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his
head into a cow’s drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers
and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with the
water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had
belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls’ language
to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first
personal pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if
ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write
it upon what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or
a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he and the bull of Ireland
were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr
Stephen, and the end was that the men of the island seeing no help was
toward, as the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft,
loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all
masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread
three sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed
anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly Roger, gave three times
three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea
to recover the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr
Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty:
_—Pope Peter’s but a pissabed.
A man’s a man for a’ that._
Our worthy acquaintance Mr Malachi Mulligan now appeared in the doorway
as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend
whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon,
who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a
cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Mulligan was civil
enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a
project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched
on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards
which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell’s bearing a legend
printed in fair italics: _Mr Malachi Mulligan. Fertiliser and
Incubator. Lambay Island_. His project, as he went on to expound, was
to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief
business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and
to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has
been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I
make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. ’Tis as
cheap sitting as standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and,
expatiating upon his design, told his hearers that he had been led into
this thought by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the
inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were
due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as
whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from
proclivities acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the
nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so
many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest
bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial
cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some
unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness,
sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty
fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart
weep. To curb this inconvenient (which he concluded due to a
suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain counsellors of
worth and inspected into this matter, he had resolved to purchase in
fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord
Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour with our
ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising
farm to be named _Omphalos_ with an obelisk hewn and erected after the
fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the
fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever who should there
direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her
natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for
his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of
fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm
persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his
nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet
of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these
latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both
broiled and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum
chillies. After this homily which he delivered with much warmth of
asseveration Mr Mulligan in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief
with which he had shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken
by the rain and for all their mending their pace had taken water, as
might be observed by Mr Mulligan’s smallclothes of a hodden grey which
was now somewhat piebald. His project meanwhile was very favourably
entertained by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr
Dixon of Mary’s excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he
purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Mulligan however made
court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which, as
it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of
his contention: _Talis ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirites, ut
matresfamiliarum nostrae lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici
titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus
centurionum Romanorum magnopere anteponunt_, while for those of ruder
wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more
suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the
farmyard drake and duck.
Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper
man of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with
animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics
while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had
advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a
passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his
nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the table, asked for
whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him
a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional
assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very
heartily, though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he
was come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne’s house, that was
in an interesting condition, poor body, from woman’s woe (and here he
fetched a deep sigh) to know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr
Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Mulligan himself whether
his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an
ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due,
as with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the