men could qualify as householders if their landlord lived on the premises, provided they could prove ‘control’ over their rooms. Chaos ensued. F. D. Acland noted that one latch-key voter had lost his vote ‘simply because he had a parrot, for his landlord had inspected the bird when it shrieked, and this established his right of entry’.

I am still scratching my head at a pair of exclamations. One is “May they fire her for a barren ewe!” (145.04-05). It’s part of a sequence of fatal scenarios: death by disease (“may rot leprous” [145.01-02]), by drowning (“Sink her!” [145.04]), and by fire, but more than that I can’t say. The second is “My diaper has more life to it!” (145.11). In his Dictionary of Word Origins, John Ayto writes that “the notion underlying diaper is of extreme whiteness. It comes ultimately from Byzantine Greek díaspros, which was a compound formed from the intensive prefix dia- and áspros ‘white.’” This notion of whiteness corresponds with “her blanches mainges” (145.01, the reference to leprosy), and the contradictory “pillale with ink” (145.12; pale white, black ink), but, again, there’s surely more to it than what little I’ve found here.

February 4, 2008

More quizzery, with questions six, seven, eight, and nine puzzled over (141.28-143.28).

We discerned much about bees, flowers, and pollenation in the first part of the answer to question six, and “the blackcullen jam for Tomorrha’s big pickneck” (141.25) made me wonder whether “to cull honey” is the sort of expression one hears around the apiary and whether flowers are indeed “picked” by a part known as the “neck.” Sara has confirmed both of my suspicions, the latter by very sensibly going through a roommates’ gardening book. She adds that in the late 1920s, women’s “flower neck” blouses were in vogue. Kyle has become a little obsessed with finding correspondences between the different dozens of jobs, places, “-tion” words, and names in question seven (142.08-29). Here’s an edited sampling from his notes so far:

• the “doorboy” (142.09) is a porter (door opener) for the Roman Catholic Church
• The Lounger (see 142.09-10) was a periodical in 1785-86 which was edited by Henry McKenzie: the periodical did discuss some religious topics
• “the curman” (142.10): Cur Deus Homo, a theological argument about the human incarnation of God, comes from a medieval author, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)
• “the tourabout” (142.11) is the name of Ford’s Model T car, made in 1909

Finally, from the “They killed Kenny” Department: “who let the kilkenny stale the chump” (142.04-05) bothered us. The expression “fight like Kilkenny cats” (new to me) is discussed here. “Chump” is slang for the head, as in the phrase “off his chump,” which Leopold Bloom uses in Ulysses to denote a man gone mad, and Partridge records that to “get one’s chump” is “to earn one’s own living.” McHugh’s reading of “stale the chump” as “steal the chop” is good but “chump” also suggests the French champ, field.

January 28, 2008

Having wearied of the first question of the Quiz, we decided to tackle the second, third, fourth, and fifth (139.15-141.27). In connection with “the tenderbolts of my rivets” in “Delfas” and “the waters of wetted life” (140.15-21), Kyle confirms that the doomed ship the R.M.S. Titanic

was in fact built in Belfast. Construction was started on the 31 of March 1909, and was completed, fittings and all, on March 31 1911. Even though it was built in Ireland, it was a British steam liner and set sail for Cherbourg France on April 10, 1912, and it did make a stop in Ireland in Queenstown. Many of the passengers that were picked up in Queenstown were 3rd class passengers.

A Northern Ireland tourism website exclaims that visitors can take a “Titanic boat tour” aboard a ship named the Joyce Too. (Inquiring minds grimly wish to know: whatever happened to the Joyce One?)

Of “Poor old Joe” we learn that he “putzpolish crotty bottes” (141.14-15). Putz is Yiddish for penis and like many such succinct Yiddish terms has been appropriated for slang purposes: a putz is “a stupid or objectionable person.” The indecorous name for a Polish person is a pole, also slang for the penis. Bernard Share’s wonderful book Slanguage: A Dictionary of Irish Slang suggests that “polish” can mean “speech smacking of insincerity.” So besides being a shoeshine boy who polishes cruddy or grotty boots (and it’s tempting to think of “puts polish” as a hint at blackface makeup, in concord with “Poor old Joe” as a variation of “Old Black Joe”) and a general workman of many trades, Joe seems to cut a notably priapic figure. I wonder whether we can discern in “crotty bottes” the title “The Croppy Boy,” a traditional song heard in Ulysses (you can find the lyrics and an excerpt of a recording here).

January 21, 2008

The group opted to jump ahead and taste the delight and delirium of another chapter: I.vi, the "Quiz." Somewhat slow going at first (we went from 126.01 to 127.04); slightly out of practice, perhaps. We heard a number of allegations-as-questions about HCE. I've nothing significant to add to our discussion but I expect we'll pick up speed again quickly in the coming weeks.

November 26, 2007

More ornithology, battleground scavenging, and courtly romance were among the themes and subjects of this, our last meeting of 2007 (11.01-12.17). Apologies for the delayed posting of this entry: it's been a hectic past few weeks.

About those "boaston nightgarters" (11.22): the Boston Garter is a brandname for those doohickeys used to hold up men's socks. I found this scintillating series of pictures of 1912 baseball cards: one wonders who exactly would have collected these.  Kyle reports that an October 15, 1906 advertisement in a Boston newspaper claims that "Gentlemen who dress for style, neatness, and comfort wear the Boston Garter, the recognized standard. The name is stamped on every loop." Adds Kyle:

In WWI, men were ordered to carry around an extra pair of socks in a waterproof bag, and everyday they were to wash and oil their feet and put on dry socks for fear of a soldier's feet becoming infected from the many horrible things that lay in the trenches. If a solider can't stand on his own two feet, he can't fight. Apparently, though, many soldiers did not complete this order.

Kyle, who looks to have done the most research this week, found in "a peacefugle, a parody's bird" (11.09) the Danish word for bird, fugl, confirming our ideas about Noah's dove.

The phrase "grand remonstrancers" (12.13-14) is an allusion to the Grand Remonstrances of 1753, the stuff of a political battle between King Louis XV and the French parliament. On a different historical note, I mentioned that "ketch sight" (12.16-17) brought to mind Jack Ketch, the proverbial name of the hangman. (One germane mention of him is in the comic Irish song, "The Night Before Larry Was Stretched": "A chalk on the back of your neck / Is all that Jack Ketch dares to give you." Well, blow me down if Jack was not a real fellow, and an Irishman at that! He was employed by Charles II and apparently was not exactly the most humane customer -- hence the most ominous associations with his name.

Kyle admits to being intrigued by the phrase "flasks of all nations" (011.20), which reminded him "of Tom Sizemore's character Sgt. Mike Horvath in Saving Private Ryan who collected tins of dirt from the various countries he had visited in the war. I tried to find instances of this in WWI but found nothing, but it may be possible that this girl who is picking things of the battlefield(s) may be picking up soldiers dirt they have collected to take home with them."

November 19, 2007

We completed our tour of the museyroom and then set off birdwatching (9.36-10.36).

Some Wellingtoniana: the Iron Duke, never wounded though often at the front lines of battle, died at home, age 83. He was born the same year as Napoleon, whom he outlived by more than thirty years, so we have that warring twins theme resounding in unexpected ways. Kari reports that Wellington is alleged to have declared that “ Napoleon's hat on the battlefield was worth 40,000 men. So that might explain a lot of the business surrounding the hat” (see 10.07-10.11).

We didn't know just what to make of the “hinndoo seeboy” (10.14-15), especially the second word, but we did not think of sepoy (though Kari later did), the term for an Indian soldier in European service, from the Persian sepahi, “horseman, soldier.” Napoleon referred to Wellington as “a general of sepoys,” a fairly accurate assessment since he claimed his stars in the subcontinent, ordering Indians to shoot other Indians. Incidentally, according to Kari, there's a Scottish band known as Hinndoo Seeboy.

Kari, whose researches this week suggest she's glad to be back with the group, tracked down two more items of interest. The first is the origins of our friend, Mr. Dooley (“lipsyg dooley” [10.05]). A fictional Irish-American publican from an 1890s newspaper column, Mr. Dooley lays his opinions thickly upon his friend Mr. Hennessy (“hiena hinnessy” [10.04]), who is spoken to much more than he speaks. Politics, both local and international, is a favourite subject. Here, for example, is Dooley on “war experts” (the war in question here is the Boer War):

“A war expert,” said Mr. Dooley, “is a man ye niver heerd iv befure. If ye can think iv annywan whose face is onfamilyar to ye an' ye don't raymimber his name, an' he's got a job on a pa-aper ye didn't know was published, he's a war expert. ‘Tis a har-rd office to fill. Whin a war begins th' timptation is sthrong f'r ivry man to grab hold iv a gun an go to th' fr-ront. But th' war expert has to subjoo his cravin' f'r blood. He says to himsilf ‘Lave others seek th' luxuries iv life in camp,' he says. ‘F'r thim th' boat races acrost th' Tugela, th' romp over the kopje, an' th' game iv laager, laager who's got th' laager?” he says. ‘I will stand be me counthry,' he says, ‘close,' he says. ‘If it falls,' he says, ‘it will fall on me,' he says. An' he buys himsilf a map made be a fortune teller in a dhream, a box iv pencils an' a field glass, an' goes an' looks f'r a job as a war expert. Says th' editor iv th' pa-aper: ‘I don't know ye. Ye must be a war expert,' he says. ‘I am,' says th' la-ad. ‘Was ye iver in a war?' says th' editor. ‘I've been in nawthin' else,' says th' la-ad. ‘Durin' th' Spanish-American War, I held a good job as a dhramatic critic in Dedham, Matsachoosets,' he says. ‘Whin th' bullets flew thickest in th' Soodan I was spoortin' editor iv th' Christyan Advocate,' he says. ‘I passed through th' Franco-Prooshan War an' held me place, an' whin th' Turks an' Rooshans was at each other's throats, I used to lay out th' campaign ivry day on a checker board,' he says. ‘War,' he says, has no turrors f'r me,' he says. ‘Ye're th man f'r th' money,' says th' editor. An' he gets th' job.”

Dooley's creator was Finley Peter Dunne; these writings were collected and published as Mr. Dooley's Philosophy in 1900 (you can find the text online at the Gutenberg Project). I mentioned that Joyce had written a satirical poem, “Dooleysprudence” (not included in the so-called collected poems), during the first world war. Here's the last verse:

                        Who is the tranquil gentleman who won't salute the State
                        Or serve Nebuchadnezzar or proletariat
                        But thinks that every son of man has quite enough to do
                        To paddle down the stream of life his personal canoe?
                                    It's Mr Dooley,
                                    Mr Dooley,
                                    The wisest wight our country ever knew
                                    ‘Poor Europe ambles
                                    Like sheep to shambles'
                                    Sighs Mr Dooley-ooley-ooley-oo. 

Then there's “the lamp of Jig-a-Lanthern” (10.27). Kari reports that “ according to legend, the jack o'lantern comes from the Irish. Apparently there was an old man called Stingy Jack who was miserable and a drunk. He played tricks on people and pulled one on the devil. He tricked the devil into climbing an apple tree and then put crosses around the bottom so he couldn't get out. So he made the devil promise that he wouldn't take his soul when he died. The devil made the promise. When Jack died, heaven wouldn't let him in on account of being so mean... and the devil kept his promise and wouldn't let him in hell. So Jack ended up wandering around Earth. He complained about the darkness and the devil gave him an ember which he placed in a turnip and carried it around. So then the Irish placed out carved turnips to keep away evil spirits and Stingy Jack.”

The tickle in my memory felt at “I spy four more” (10.31) hasn't come to anything more, but the tickle is still there. As for the song, “There were three ravens,” that I mentioned in connection with “Downadown, High Downadown” (10.28), check out the log entry for November 2, 2005 (in the archives).

November 12, 2007

This day we crossed many battlefields and discussed the proper storage of Guinness (9.09-9.36).

Kris consulted Jorge Luis Borges's The Book of Imaginary Beings for more on the salamander (cf. “Salamangra!” [9.13]): “Salamandra is spanish for salamander, so given the similarities I ran with salamander and found it to be slang for a solder who purposely exposes himself to enemy fire (neat reference eh).” Very neat.

Even neater, though, is the story of Harriette Wilson (1786-1845), the Heidi Fleiss of her day, and Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, which Kris happily happened upon. When Wilson's heyday as a courtesan (and her dalliance with the Iron Duke) was over, she wrote her Memoirs (1825), a book guaranteed to shock. The year before its publication, her publisher wrote to each of her past lovers and offered to omit their names and love letters from the book for a mere two hundred pounds (an enormous sum at the time). Wellington is said to have replied, “Publish and be damned!” (see “Cherry jinnies . . . Voutre. Willingdone” [9.12-13]). McHugh mentions this connection and says that Wellington addressed his former belle, “Dear Jenny.”

Following a hunch on “Figtreeyou!” (9.13), Kyle has confirmed that Judas Iscariot hanged himself from a fig tree: “also, figs are eaten on palm sunday because Zaccheus climbed an elder/fig tree to see Jesus better. Zaccheus was a tax collector who lived in Jericho. If ‘Figtreeyou' is an insult it may be an insult about what betrayers do, and if we go to the Arthur myth that has been seen in the past two pages we have it may be a reference to Arthur and Lancelot.” I should add that the matter of Judas's death is something of a theological debate, since there are two different scriptural accounts of it (Matthew 27:5 and Acts 1:18). According to the first, he hanged himself, but the second says that “falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.” Either way, we can say he fell, the way all men fall (and rise again) in Finnegans Wake.

Jeffrey provides the wonderful proper name for the “pope's nose” (“popynose” [9.20]), that part of the turkey I mentioned is referred to in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

        Mr Dedalus rooted with the carvers at the end of the dish and said:
        –There's a tasty bit here we call the pope's nose. If any lady or gentleman...
        He held a piece of fowl up on the prong of the carvingfork. Nobody spoke. He put it on his own plate, saying:
        –Well, you can't say but you were asked. I think I had better eat it myself because I'm not well in my health lately.

A pygostyle is, in the words of the OED, “the triangular plate, formed of the fused caudal vertebrae, which supports the tail feathers in most birds.” With its usual flair for not fully citing sources, Wikipedia reports that the terms “pope's nose” and (perhaps the earlier version) “parson's nose” comes from the conception of the man of the cloth as one with “his nose in the air” in the same way that a chicken keeps its tail high, and adds that the expression “may have originated as a derogatory term meant to demean Catholics in England during the late 17th century.” Partridge's Dictionary of Historical Slang cites an 1844 usage of pygostyle to denote a waistcoat or “‘M. B. coat.'” An entry on “m. b. coat” explains: “a long coat and/or a cassock waistcoat worn by some clergymen: clerical: from ca 1840, but not recorded until 1853, in Dean Conybeare; [obsolete]. Ex ‘mark of the beast' in reference to Popery.”

Both Kris and Jeffrey spotted “his hundred days' indulgence” (9.20) as an allusion to the time between Napoleon's 1815 escape from exile in Elba (the inspiration for the famous palindrome “able was I ere I saw Elba”) and King Louis XVIII's return to Paris. There's also the Hundred Days Offensive (1918), the final Allied offensive on the Western Front during WWI, the “Hundred Days” that constituted the first wave of reforms of Roosevelt's New Deal (1933), the “Hundred Days Men” of the American Civil War (Union volunteer regiments whose purpose was to free veteran units from routine duty to allow them to go to the front lines), and the failed “Hundred Days Reform” in China (1898). “Indulgence,” Jeffrey adds, has a specific meaning in Catholic doctrine: “a remission of the punishment which is still due to sin after sacramental absolution, this remission being valid in the court of conscience and before God, and being made by an application of the treasure of the Church on the part of a lawful superior” (OED).

Kyle dutifully looked up cork pop-guns (“Cork, order fire” [9.23]): “Cork guns were a line of toys produced by a company called Little Daisy Guns. The cork gun was released in 1925-1926 and would shoot corks or rubber balls.”

McHugh informed us that “Goat strip Finnlambs!” (9.27-28) resembled the German Gott strafe England (“God punish England”), and we noticed the goat-lamb combination, but we were left wondering about the Finland connection. I knew approximately nothing about Finnish history and now that I've had a preliminary peek into the subject and find it unexpectedly fascinating, the urge to investigate it further has become pronounced. (Summertime reading, how I await thee. If anyone reading this Log has any suggestions as to what particular books or authors on the subject are best to read, I'd be pleased to receive them.) For our purposes in this bellicose passage of the Wake, what's noteworthy is that, after losing the Finnish War of the early nineteenth century to Alexander I,  Finland became part of the Russian Empire (it was known as a Grand Duchy). The way in which nationalism gradually surged in reaction as independence became a popular mandate is strikingly comparable to similar, fairly contemporary phenomena in Ireland – in fact, the historical parallels are almost eerie. The Finnish language was revived as part of the Fennoman movement (see “funnyman's functions” [FW 590.29]); in Ireland Gaelic was promoted by the Fenian movement. Finland suffered a terrible famine in the late 1860s, in which 15% of the population died; Ireland had its own just two decades before. Finland declared independence in 1917, the year after the Easter Rising in Ireland, but civil war broke out in 1918. Finland's first president, Kaarlo Juho St Dhlberg, was elected in 1919.

It's strange that McHugh missed this one, but the phrase “the jinnies they left behind them” (9.33) echoes an old folksong, probably Irish in origin, that has been adapted for various uses in England and America, including as a military march. “The Girl I Left Behind Me” has gone under different names and been sung with different lyrics, but you can hear and sing along with a couple of versions here.  It appears in Thackeray's novel Vanity Fair and serves as the title of a chapter.

Finally, can “Sophy-Key-Po” (9.34-35) be read as Japanese (besides the French sauve qui peut)? Kyle considers: “Ki (sounds like key; in Japanese the “i” is pronounced as the English long “e”) and Po are sound effects in Japanese: Ki = glare, glint of dagger, could be again talk of Willingdone's member, but now something smaller than Sexcaliber (8.36), and po = flame, light, can also be blushing, could be metaphor for getting an erection.”

November 5, 2007

We ventured very slightly ahead and began a tour of the “Willingdone Museyroom,” where we saw several beguiling artifacts on display (8.09-9.09). Reading “Looted” as a distortion of “Limited” (Ltd) was a new one on me (9.02).

Marisa sheds some valuable light on “a davy, stooping” (8.23-24). First of all, she points out that “stooping” is a hunter's technical term for “putting [hounds'] noses to the ground. A hound is said to stoop to a scent when he has once taken to speaking to it” (OED). If we understand the preceding “inimyskilling inglis” and “scotcher grey” (8.23) to represent rider and horse, respectively, then the added hound makes the trio a full hunting party.

We also speculated that “davy” represented the Welsh or Wales, following as it does “inglis” and “scotcher.” Marisa reports that The Dictionary of Welsh Biography tells of one Daffyd Gam, a pugnacious-sounding Lancastrian who met his end at Agincourt (1415; see “agincourting” [9.07]). Legend purports that he was knighted on the field the day of his death, though that has the ring of the wishful thinking of Sir Davy's descendants, and it reminds one of Shakespeare's account of the battle in Henry V:

                        KING HENRY. Then call we this the field of Agincourt,
                                    Fought on the Day of Crispin Crispianus.

FLUELLEN. Your grandfather of famous memory, an't please your majesty, and your great-uncle Edward the Plack Prince of Wales, as I have read in the chronicles, fought a most prave pattle here in France.

                        KING HENRY. They did, Fluellen.

FLUELLEN. Your majesty says very true: if your majesties is remembered of it, the Welshmen did good service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps, which your majesty know to this hour is an honourable badge of the service: and I do believe your majesty takes no scorn to wear the leek upon Saint Tavy's day.

                        KING HENRY. I wear it for a memorable honour:
                                    For I am Welsh, you know, good countryman. (4.7.92-108)

So of course is Fluellen, he of the delightful speech impediment and ostentatiously Welsh name, and he sets to praising Welshness effusively, the king's in particular. In the very next scene, the king reads out the names of the fallen, the last of whom is “Davy Gam, esquire” (4.8.104).

Now I'm curious about “Saint Tavy.” (Any takers?...) Later in the Wake we find “darling Dave” recognized for the smell of “garlic leek” (462.29-30), and he becomes TAFF in II.iii.

Jeffrey discovered an interesting “mining theme” in this same paragraph. “Tip” (8.08 and elsewhere) has more definitions than we discussed: it can denote “place or erection where wagons or trucks of coal, etc. are tipped and their contents discharged into the hold of a vessel, or into a cart, etc.” or “a wagon or truck from which coal, etc. is tipped” (OED). A “tip” is also a dumping-ground for earth or waste (“rubbish tip”), which might make us re-examine the “monts” (8.28-29). The salient connection comes in with the other repeated word, “jinnies” (008.31 and elsewhere). In miners' parlance, a jinny is “a stationary engine used to let down or draw up trucks on an inclined plane” or “a self-acting incline where the full tubs of coal pull the empty ones up” (OED again). There was a Wellington Mining Company in North America incorporated in 1866: my use of the past tense here is uncertain, because it might well still exist in some form.

There might also be an Arabian Nights connection with “jinnies,” since the word is readily reminiscent of jinnee or genie or djinn, all names of supernatural beings (of varying Arabic and Hebrew origins).

You might want to check out the log entry for October 26, 2005 (see the log archive) for more thoughts on today's passage.

October 31, 2007

Halloween coincided with this year's first meeting, and to get the ball rolling and to introduce everyone to the way the Wake works, we rumbled through the very first page (the idea of a “first” page, or indeed a “first” anything, is of course a delusion in this book, but never mind that now).

As he promised to do, Jeffrey went looking for information about peat, spurred on (or should I say “ignited?”) by “thuartpeatrick” (003.10). “Peat” is not only the name a soil-like fuel, found in bogs and often used in whiskey production, but also means “a girl, a young woman.” Jeffrey points out that it's “interesting to note that peat forms in wetlands: water (female) and land (male)” and adds that “esthers” (“sosie sesthers” [003.12]) are “a leading group of chemicals found in whiskey.”

On the theme of opposing twins, permit me to mention that Isaac (“bland old isaac” [003.11]), from the Hebrew Yizhaq, literally means “he who laughs.” His name is directly antonymous to that of “Tristram” (“born of sadness”: [003.04]).