part of the landscape, an elm tree and a stone on the river bank. Toward the end of the dialogue they ask to hear a tale of Shem and Shaun (the two sons of HCE and ALP), and this question points the way to book 2, which opens with the boys (metamorphosed for the moment into Glugg and Chuff) playing in front of the tavern in the evening.
A complete annotation of even this brief passage is, of course, a physical impossibility in this anthology. The notes that are provided are intended to indicate the nature of what Joyce does with language and to enable the reader to see some of what is going on. But all sorts of suggestions built up in the language are not referred to in the notes; all readers will find some for themselves.
From Finnegans Wake
From Anna Livia Plurabelle * * * Well, you know or don't you kennet1 or haven't I told you every telling has a taling and that's the he and the she of it. Look, look, the dusk is growing! My branches lofty are taking root. And my cold cher's gone ashley.2 Fieluhr?
7. Anxious to avoid Boylan, Bloom pretends to admire the architecture of the Museum and National Library building and then pretends to be looking for something in his pockets, where he finds the 'Agendath Netaim' leaflet. He continues to search desperately in his pockets to avoid looking up and seeing Boylan, discovers the potato he carries as a remedy against rheumatism and a cake of soap he had bought that morning (the soap reminds him that he must call at the chemist's to collect a face lotion he had ordered for Molly). At last he goes through the National Library gate and feels safe. 1. Ken it ('know it') + Kennet (river in England). Rivers in Finnegans Wake symbolize the flow of life, and thousands of river names are suggested throughout the book in allusive pun combinations, as here.
2. 'Cold cher': cold cheer (i.e., cold comfort) + cold chair + (perhaps) culture. 'Gone ashley': gone to ashes. Going to ashes suggests the fiery death and rebirth of the mythical bird called the phoenix: from the ashes of the dead phoenix rises a new one. Modern culture, which can provide only cold cheer, is in the state of decay, the 'going to ashes,' which precedes the stage of rebirth into a new cultural cycle (according to Giambattista Vico's cyclical theory of history, which is important to Finnegans Wake). 'Gone ashley' also means 'turned into an ash tree' (i.e., it is so cold that the speaker feels herself turning into a tree).
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224 0 / JAMES JOYCE
Filou!3 What age is at? It saon4 is late. Tis endless now senne5 eye or erewone6 last saw Waterhouse's clogh.7 They took it asunder, I hurd thum sigh. When will they reassemble it? O, my back, my back, my bach!8 I'd want to go to Aches-les-Pains.9 Pingpong! There's the Belle for Sexaloitez!1()And Concepta de Send-us-pray! Pang! Wring out the Clothes! Wring in the dew!11 Godavari,12 vert the showers!13 And grant thaya grace! Aman. Will we spread them here now? Ay, we will. Flip! Spread on your bank and I'll spread mine on mine. Flep! It's what I'm doing. Spread! It's churning chill. Der went14 is rising. I'll lay a few stones on the hostel sheets. A man and his bride embraced between them. Else I'd have sprinkled and folded them only. And I'll tie my butcher's apron here. It's suety yet. The strollers will pass it by. Six shifts, ten kerchiefs, nine to hold to the fire and this for the code,15 the convent napkins, twelve, one baby's shawl. Good mother Jossiph16 knows, she said. Whose head? Mutter snores? Deataceas!17 Wharnow are alle her childer, say? In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to them farther? Allalivial, allalluvial!18 Some here, more no more, more again lost alia stranger.19 I've heard tell that same brooch of the Shannons20 was married into a family in Spain. And all the Dunders de Dunnes21 in Markland's22 Vineland beyond the Brendan's herring pool23 takes number nine in yangsee's24 hats. And one of Biddy's25 beads went bobbing till she rounded up lost histereve26 with a marigold and a cobbler's candle in a side strain of a main drain of a manzinahurries27 off Bachelor's Walk. But all that's left to the last of the Meaghers28 in the loup29 of the years prefixed and between is one kneebuckle and two hooks in the front. Do you tell me that now? I do in troth. Orara por Orbe and poor Las Animals!30 Ussa, Ulla, we're
3. Pickpocket; thief (French). 'Fieluhr': Viel Uhr? (What's the timer; German). From an old anecdote of a German soldier and a French soldier shouting at each other across the Rhine. They mishear each other as the washerwomen will later. 4. Soon + Saone (river in France). 5. Since + Senne (river in Belgium). 6. E'er a one -I- Erewhon (novel by Samuel But- ler?an anagram for Nowhere). 7. Waterhouse's clock, a well-known clock on Dame Street, Dublin. 8. 'Brook' (German) + 'dear' (Welsh). 9. Cf. Aix-les-Bains, France. 10. 'Sachseliite,' a Zurich fertility rite (literally, the ringing of six o'clock), which celebrates the burial of winter. 11. Tennyson, In Memoriam: 'Ring out the old, ring in the new.' 12. God of Eire + the name of a river in India. 13. 'Vert': avert + vert (green; French), for 'the showers' make grass green. 14. Der Wind (the wind; German) + Derwent (river in England). 15. Cold + code (i.e., the code in which the book is written). The numbers in this sentence have special meanings indicated in other episodes. 16. Joseph 4-joss (God; pidgin English) + gossip (which derives from 'god-sib,' Middle English, 'godparent'). 17. A play on Deo gratias ('thanks be to God') and on Dea Tacita ('silent-goddess'), a name from Roman mythology. 18. Multiple punning?Anna Livia + all alive + la lluvia (rain; Spanish) + alluvial?suggesting the mother-river-fertility associations of ALP. At least two other meanings are also present: All alive O! (street cry of shellfish vendors) + Alleluia (Vulgate Latin form of Hallelujah). 19. Cf. a I'etranger (abroad; French). 20. Same ornament and branch of the Shannons (family and river).
21. The form of the name suggests an aristocratic Anglo-Norman family. 'Dunder' suggests thunder. Dun is an Irish word meaning 'hill,' 'fort on a hill.' 22. Borderland + land of the mark (i.e., land of money, or America; Markland's Vineland was one of Leif Eriksson's names for America). Both King Mark of Cornwall (a character in the Tristan and Iseult story) and Mark of the Gospels are primary symbolic characters in Finnegans Wake. 23. The Atlantic Ocean. St. Brendan was an Irish monk who sailed out into the Atlantic to find the terrestrial paradise. 24. Yankees' + Yangtze (river in China). The de Dunnes have swollen heads now that they have emigrated to America. 25. Diminutive form of the name Bridget. St. Brigid (or Bridget) is a patron saint of Ireland. 'Biddy' is also a term for an Irish maidservant. 26. Yester eve (last night) + eve of history. The sentence may be paraphrased: 'Irish history got lost when she went off in a side branch of the main Roman Catholic Church, and Biddy (i.e., Ireland) landed herself in the dirt.' Also, hysteria + eve. 27. A urinal + Manzanares (river in Spain). Also, man's in a hurry. 28. Thomas Francis Meagher, Irish patriot and revolutionary, who was transported to Van Die- men's Land in 1849 and escaped to America in 1852. 29. Loop + loup ('wolf' and also 'solitary man'; French). Cf. Wolfe Tone, the ill-fated Irish revolutionist. 30. Souls (Spanish) + the name of a river in Colorado. Ora pro nobis (pray for us; Latin) + Orara (river in New South Wales) + pro orbe (for the world; Latin) + Orbe (river in France). The entire sentence may be read: 'Pray for us and for all souls.'
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FINNEGANS WAKE / 2241
umbas31 all! Mezha, didn't you hear it a deluge of times, ufer32 and ufer, respund to spond?33 You deed, you deed! I need, I need! It's that irrawaddyng34 I've stoke in my aars. It all but husheth the lethest zswound. Oronoko!35 What's your trouble? Is that the great Finnleader36 himself in his joakimono37 on his statue riding the high horse there forehengist?38 Father of Otters,39 it is himself! Yonne there! Isset that? On Fallareen Common? You're thinking of Astley's Amphitheayter where the bobby restrained you making sugarstuck pouts to the ghostwhite horse of the Peppers.40 Throw the cobwebs from your eyes, woman, and spread your washing proper! It's well I know your sort of slop. Flap! Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.41 Lord help you, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me! Your prayers. I sonht zo!42 Madammangut! Were you lifting your elbow, tell us, glazy cheeks, in Conway's Carrigacurra canteen? Was I what, hobbledyhips?43 Flop! Your rere gait's creakorheuman bitts your butts
