Episode 010: Ballad of Persse O’Reilly (p. 44:7-47:34, End of Ch02)

October 10, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 010 BALLAD OF PERSSE O’REILLY

PAGE 44:07-47:34 | 2024-10-10

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

*“Humpty Dumpty on the wall,” Sir John Tenniel, 1872*

[Music: Richard Harte sings “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” from Finnegans Wake]
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
[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 10, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor — and my good friend and colleague — Richard Harte performing pages 44 to 47, featuring the song, “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” to conclude Chapter 2 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear, and in today’s case, also Richard’s piano accompanist.

I’m sharing the good news that One Little Goat Theatre Company is releasing our film of “Finnegans Wake Chapter 1” online this fall of 2024 and I encourage you to sign up for our mailing list on our website, www.OneLittleGoat.org, so you’re among the first to know when the movie goes live.

Will you be in Toronto on Monday, October 21st? If so, join us at the Fisher Rare Books Library in the University of Toronto for a very special live taping of Chapter 5 of Finnegans Wake, which will also feature a display of rare books related to the novel, including Marshall McLuhan’s heavily annotated first edition of the Wake and Sir Edward Sullivan’s landmark study, The Book of Kells. The event is free. For more details and to reserve a seat, visit our website at www.OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Adam Seelig: Finnegans Wake is a production of One Little Goat Theatre Company. For the next five years, One Little Goat will film and record all 17 chapters (roughly 30 Hours) of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake before live audiences in various locations, screening and releasing them along along the way, with the aim of completing the entire book in time for its 90th birthday, May 4, 2029. One Little Goat Theatre Company is an official charity in Canada and the United States — if you’d like to support our work, please visit us online at www.OneLittleGoat.org to make a charitable donation. And if monetary support is not an option, you can still help this podcast by rating and reviewing it and by spreading the word. To get in touch, you’ll find our email address on the One Little Goat Theatre Company website and we’d love to hear from you.

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: The previous episode of this podcast series (Ep009) introduced us to the scandalmongering busker, Hosty, and left off with Hosty about to sing a slanderous song about protagonist HCEarwicker. This “longawaited Messiagh of roaratorios” (41:28) is titled “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” with Persse O’Reilly playing on the name of Earwicker, since perce-oreille is French for ‘earwig.’ So while Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake opened with Earwicker and the origins of his name, often attesting to his honourable nature, it now closes with both his name and character perversely distorted. “[O]ur good and great and no ordinary Southron Earwicker, that homogenius man, as a pious author called him,” (34:13-14) is now the salacious and sordid stuff of tabloids — or more precisely, the salacious and sordid stuff of Hosty’s caustic ballad.

*Drake (left) vs. Kendrick Lamar, “the toxic feud dominating the world of hip hop.*”

Chapter 2 so far has introduced us to Earwicker, described his encounter with the Cad in Phoenix Park, then followed the rumours about Earwicker that spread from that event, spreading initially across Dublin through the highly lubricated medium of “Irish saliva” (37:25), then throughout the Emerald Isle through the printing of Hosty’s “Ballad of Persse O’Reilly.” As you’ll hear in today’s episode, Chapter 2 climaxes and closes with Hosty’s performance of the ballad for a large, eager crowd. The recent rap battle, in the spring of 2024, between hip hop luminaries Drake and Kendrick Lamar, described in the Toronto Star as “the toxic feud dominating the world of hip hop,” proves that the public has an insatiable appetite for a throwdown, showdown, no-holds-barred evisceration of someone’s character. Hosty’s hostile song with its knack for crowd-pleasing malice may predate the hip hop icons of Toronto and L.A. by a century, but ingenious shit-talking has clearly never gone out of fashion. It’s always handy to have a scapegoat or simply someone to kick around.

Joyce wrote the melody for “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” and included the notation in Finnegans Wake at the bottom of page 44 (which you can also find in the transcript for this podcast episode published on One Little Goat Theatre Company’s website). As Edmund Epstein points out, the melody of the ballad resembles the familiar Italian tune “Carnival of Venice,” popularized by the composer and violinist Niccolò Paganini (we’ll also link on One Little Goat’s website to Paganini’s variations). The Wake’s version, however, bears a significant difference: it starts in A major, like Paganini’s version, but then — in Epstein’s words — “modulates to A minor, and ends up in A modal; that is, the melody slumps downward, mirroring the Fall of Man, and the tone of the ballad turns grim as the hero of the ballad is identified twice as the runaway Cain.” (38)

*Niccolò Paganini by Andrea Cefaly (1827)*

In my co-arrangement of the song with Richard, we begin not in A but in E major for three reasons: (1) the song felt good in that key vis-à-vis Richard’s tenor range (incidentally, Joyce himself was a tenor); (2) this gave us room to modulate upward for a number of verses, creating some variation in what could otherwise be a fairly plodding song, the music ironically rising as Earwicker’s reputation goes down; and (3) this ultimately enabled Richard to end the song on a high C. Now for people like me who keep track of such things, this third reason, the ultimate high-C, is very exciting because the very next chapter of the Wake opens with the exclamatory words, “Chest Cee!” — that is, words praising a “chest C” or high-C sung by old-fashioned tenors (McHugh 48:1).

We’re going to start today’s excerpt by repeating the paragraph from the previous episode so we can all enjoy the Wake’s spirited introduction to Hosty’s ballad and then continue into the song uninterrupted. So, as at the end of Episode 9 you’ll hear Hosty’s introduction to and the audience’s anticipation of the ballad; you’ll hear the 100-letter ‘thunderword’ that contains multilingual phonemes conveying clapping and crapping, which perfectly sets up Hosty to sing/talk crap about Earwicker; you’ll then hear my piano introduction to the song (during which, in the film for Chapter 2, from which the podcast audio is taken, I included a montage of various music venues — so wherever you may be listening to this excerpt, be it the US or Canada or Ireland etc., feel free to imagine Hosty taking the stage at your own favourite music venue as the piano intro plays); and finally, we are into the song itself, “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly.”

I’m going to let Hosty’s merciless and highly entertaining evisceration of Earwicker speak/sing for itself. I’d just like to point out that the third verse begins with a stutter, always so important to the Wake as a form of visceral, elemental speech and as a potential sign of guilt (for more on such stuttering, please visit Episode 8 of this podcast series).

Now it’s time to welcome you back to Noonan’s Irish Pub for Richard’s performance of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 44 line 7 to page 47 line 34 for the conclusion of Chapter 2. Richard’s singing is accompanied on the piano by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

Our performance was shot and recorded in Toronto at Noonan’s Irish Pub on June 26th, 2023 with a lovely live audience. The film premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

[Richard Harte reads and sings Finnegans Wake 44:7-47:34.]

[44] And aroud the lawn the rann it rann and this is the rann that
Hosty made. Spoken. Boyles and Cahills, Skerretts and Pritchards,
viersefied 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.

[Adam Seelig plays piano accompaniment for Richard’s singing.]

"The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly."

[45] 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.

[46] 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!

[47] 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.

[End of excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was Richard Harte as Hosty singing “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly” to conclude Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake, pages 44 to 47, recorded with a live audience at Noonan’s Irish Pub in Toronto on June 26th, 2023.

Join us for Episode 11 when Richard begins Chapter 3 of Finnegans Wake. This podcast series is taking a short break between chapters to focus on the film production of future chapters, so please note that the next episode, Episode 11, will release later this fall, exact date to be determined, and we’ll then resume our fortnightly podcast releases every other Thursday. In the meantime, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast so you’re alerted for upcoming episodes. For more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org. And to hear about upcoming performances and screenings, join our mailing list, also at OneLittleGoat.org.

To those of you celebrating the Jewish New Year, Shanah Tovah.

And don’t forget to keep an eye out for our film of “Finnegans Wake Chapter 1” releasing online this fall — again, join One Little Goat’s mailing list to be among the first to know.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the government of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Jobina Sitoh; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

A big thanks to Jane Noonan and the staff at Noonan’s Irish Pub, as well as to our wonderful live audience. Thank you to everyone at the Irish Consulate in Toronto. And to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie.

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a nonprofit, artist-driven, registered charity. To donate or find out more or to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

[End of Ep010]

Mentioned: “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly,” Hosty the scandalmongering busker, ‘perce-oreille’ is ‘earwig’ in French, Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar rap battle, scapegoat, “Carnival of Venice” melody, Paganini, Seelig and Harte new arrangement of “Ballad of PO’R,” stutter, synopsis.

Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 44-47.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Episode 009: : Hosty the Busker (p. 39:14-44:24)

September 26, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 009 HOSTY THE BUSKER

PAGE 39:14-44:24 | 2024-09-26

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 9, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 39 to 44 from Chapter 2 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig:

Barrie Phillip Nichol, better known as bpNichol, a patron saint of Canadian poetry, would have been 80 years old this September 30th, 2024. He was born in Vancouver in 1944 and died in Toronto at far too early an age, just shy of his 44th birthday.

In Episode 2 of this podcast series, we discussed the sounds and meanings emerging from the evocative opening word of Finnegans Wake, “riverrun”, including reverence, a river’s flow, a stream, a stream of consciousness, and a stream of unconsciousness conveying the dream language of Joyce’s night novel, hence “riverrun” as a dream (from rêverons in French) and as a ‘round dream’ (from the French, rêve rond), reminding us that the novel, like Shakespeare’s Tempest, like us, is “such stuff/ As dreams are made on, and our little life/ Is rounded with a sleep.”

In opening bpNichol’s recently published notebook excerpts — beautifully assembled by Coach House Books under the title, Some Lines of Poetry — I was delighted to discover on the first page a poem called “a river” (1980), a mostly visual poem comprised of the letters in the word “river”, which allowed me, for the first time, to see and hear not only the nocturnal dream of the Wake’s opening word, “riverrun,” but the daydream in it, too, its ‘reverie’. ‘Reverie’: the musing unconsciousness of waking hours. And tracing ‘reverie’ to its etymological roots, I found two words, ‘revelry’ and ‘rejoicing’, the latter, ‘re-Joyce-ing’, echoing the author’s name, and the former, ‘revelry’, a reminder that what we have before us is — in the end and from its beginning — lots of fun.

I’ve posted a photo of bp’s poem on One Little Goat’s website, so you can enjoy it in bp’s own handwriting — you’ll find that at www.onelittlegoat.org/podcast, or better yet, pick up a copy of the book from Coach House. It’s a beauty.

riveri veriveriveriver
iveri veriveriveriveri
verive riveriveriveriv
eriveri veriveriverive
riverive riveriveriver
iveriveri veriveriveri
veriveri veriveriveriv
eriveri veriveriverive
riveri veriveriveriver
iveriv eviveriveriveri

bpNichol, *some lines of poetry: from the notebooks of bpNichol*. Coach House Books, Toronto, 2024.

"a river" (May 9, 1980), bpNichol, *from the notebooks of bpNichol*. Coach House Books, Toronto, 2024.

Now as this is a podcast, I’ll at least attempt to sound out the opening two lines of the 10-line poem, “a river”:

riveri veriveriveriver
iveri veriveriveriveri

This sound helped me hear one more element in the Wake’s “riverrun” of words, and that is ‘ever’, its ever-ness, foreverness and, famously, its never-ending-ness, the novel’s last page continuous with the first. The ever-present “riverrun” of Finnegans Wake is always now — it ever-runs.

Thank you bpNichol for that poem, and happy 80th birthday!

At the heart of today’s episode is one of the Wake’s outstanding characters, the scandalmongering balladeer—or in today’s terms, the caustic singer-songwriter—by the name of Hosty. We’ll get to him in a moment.

Jumping back into the stream where we left off last time in Chapter 2 on page 39…

The Brazen Head, The Liberties' landmark pub.

The zigzagging relay of gossip about HCEarwicker from the previous episode (Episode 008) that ended up galloping around at the racetrack now reaches the ears of two down-and-out Dubliners, recently out of jail, the brothers Treacle Tom and Frisky Shorty. Treacle Tom gets seriously drunk in the historically disreputable distillery district known as The Liberties — I love how the text itself becomes positively slurred and alcoholic in Treacle Tom’s section. Treacle Tom then crashes in a rooming-house, and during a bad night’s sleep, talks in his sleep, repeating the rumours about HCE, which are heard by a trio of homeless men, the last of whom is the scandalous street busker, Hosty.

That name, Hosty, aside from being a mononymous musician anticipating the likes of Elvis, Prince and Beyoncé, is another case where the Wake can be suggesting both ‘it and its opposite’. On the one hand, the name “Hosty” can suggest welcoming, as a host would be, while on the other, someone who’s hostile, from the Latin hostis, meaning ‘stranger’ and ‘enemy.’ There’s also a faint echo of our protagonist, “HCE”, in the sound “Hosty” — more on that in the next episode.

That same cold night, Hosty, unlucky in life, considers suicide, but the gossip about Earwicker, having reached his ears, rejuvenates him by morning (41:13) and inspires him to write a new ballad, after some morning drinking with his buddies.

In the last two paragraphs of today’s reading, Hosty, through his scandalous song about Earwicker, spreads the gossip further. We are told that he sings it to “a singleminded supercrowd, easily representative” (42:22) of every social strata in Dublin — and here the Wake describes the full range of this audience/mob with a level of detail comparable to a Bruegel painting of a village packed with people or a busy scene in a Where’s Waldo book. The shocking song then makes its way into print, and before you know it, the wind blows sheets of it from village to village across all of Ireland.

A Village Festival in honour of St. Hubert and St. Anthony. Pieter Brueghel II, 1627.

So in Chapter 2, what started as a seemingly straightforward encounter between Earwicker and the cad in Dublin’s Phoenix Park (Episode 8) has blown up into a nation-wide scandal. As the text puts it, turning the Irish nationalist song, ‘A Nation Once Again,’ into something rubbernecky and salacious, “a nation wants a gaze” (43:21-30).

A large crowd has assembled to hear Hosty sing his widely distributed song, the text gives him a full-throated, bouncing introduction, and the audience breaks out in wild applause. So thunderous is this clapping, and so like a “Glass crash” (44:15-16) that it morphs into one of the Wake’s ‘thunderwords’ containing 100 letters. This particular ‘thunderword’, the third of ten in the novel, is comprised of phonemes and words that mean ‘clapping’ or ‘applause’, with the final syllable, “kot”, intriguingly suggesting ‘shit’— kot in German means ‘feces’. It’s a fitting end for the thunderous applause of this 100-letter ‘thunderword’ in light of the slander-filled shitstorm that Hosty, the ultimate shit-talker, unleashes on Earwicker through his song, “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly”.

We’ll hear Richard Harte, as Hosty, sing that “longawaited Messiagh of roaratorios” (41:28) in the next episode, and we’ll also publish on our website the corresponding shit music, excuse me, sheet music, written by Joyce himself.

Right now, it’s time to welcome you back to Noonan’s Irish Pub for Richard’s reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 39 line 14 to page 44 line 24 for the continuation of Chapter 2.

Richard’s reading was shot and recorded in Toronto at Noonan’s Irish Pub on June 26th, 2023 with a live audience. The film premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 39:14-44:24.]

[39] ‘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 tip-
ster, 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 choic-
est herbage, supplied by the Duck and Doggies, the Galop-
ping Primrose, Brigid Brewster’s, the Cock, the Postboy’s Horn,

[40] the Little Old Man’s and All Swell That Aimswell, the Cup and
the Stirrup, he sought his wellwarmed leababobed in a hous-
ingroom 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 sub-
stance 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 ------- 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 shake-
down, 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

[41] 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 ober-
flake 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 song-
ster’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-être), where, the tale rambles

[42] 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 yester-
day, flushed with their firestufffostered 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 attrac-
tionable 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 legis-
lator (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 mino-
rity 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 chroni-
cler 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 air-
whackers, 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-

[43] 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 fater 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-
tant’s 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 unkle’s place, were evidently under the spell of liquor, from the
wake of Tarry the Tailor a fair girl, a jolly postboy 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 denies it, may his hairs be rubbed
in dirt! To the added strains (so peacifold) of his majesty the
floote, that onecrooned king of inscrewments, Piggots’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

[44] 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 aroud the lawn the rann it rann and this is the rann that
Hosty made. Spoken. Boyles and Cahills, Skerretts and Pritchards,
viersefied 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.

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was Richard Harte reading from Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake, pages 39 to 44, recorded with a live audience at Noonan’s Irish Pub in Toronto on June 26th, 2023.

Join us in two weeks for Episode 10 when Richard concludes Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake with Hosty’s scandalous song, “The Ballad of Persse O’Reilly”. To be sure you don’t miss any episodes, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? For more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org. And to hear about upcoming performances and screenings, join our mailing list, also at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the government of Ireland. Thank you for your support! And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Jobina Sitoh; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig. A big thanks to Jane Noonan and the staff at Noonan’s Irish Pub, as well as to our wonderful live audience. Thank you to everyone at the Irish Consulate in Toronto. And to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie. One Little Goat Theatre Company is a nonprofit, artist-driven, registered charity. To donate or find out more or to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]

[End of Ep009]

Mentioned: bpNichol, more glosses on “riverrun”, The Liberties, Hosty the scandalmongering busker, Bruegel, Where’s Waldo, Hosty’s ballad on HCE spreads across Ireland, third ‘thunderword’ in Finnegans Wak, synopsis.

Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 39-44.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.
bpNichol, some lines of poetry: from the notebooks of bpNichol. Edited by Derek Beaulieu and Gregory Betts. Coach House, Toronto, 2024.

Episode 008: Cad confrontation (p. 34:29-39:13)

September 12, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 008 CAD CONFRONTATION

PAGE 34:29-39:13 | 2024-09-12

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 8, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 34 to 39 from Chapter 2 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

[Music fades out]

Adam Seelig: From Emily Dickinson:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies

If Finnegans Wake tells the truth, assuming there’s even any truth in it to be told, then it does so at many slants from many perspectives, often in the dubious form of gossip.

In the previous episode (Episode 7) which opened Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake, we heard about the origins of our protagonist’s name, H. C. Earwicker, and about possible rumours surrounding him. In today’s episode, those rumours will travel further and faster. Humanity is, after all, “an imperfectly warmblooded race” (33:21), and don’t we just love to talk.

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies

The “lies” of Dickinson’s second line offsets—maybe úpsets—the “truth” of the first. In today’s excerpt from Chapter 2, the closest we can come to any definitive truth about Earwicker lies in the ‘circuity’ of gossip, that loved and loathed source of news. Or so-called news. Or ‘fake news’. How much of this gossip, in other words, is information versus “illformation” (137:34)? Should we take what we hear as gospel or “gossiple” (38:23)? Facts can be suspect in a work of fiction, and Finnegans Wake, in addition to being a phantasmagoric poem, is a mammoth work of fiction within which we find many mini fictions, however factual, about HCE. And as these little fictions go through the rumour mill, as they make their successful rounds on the gossip circuit, they gain mass and momentum. It’s no coincidence that today’s reading, which follows a zigzagging relay of HCE-related rumours, ends up at the racetrack, one of the fastest circuits around, where the gossip about Earwicker reaches a veritable gallop.

The main event in today’s reading is Earwicker’s encounter with a guy described as “a cad with a pipe.” (35:11) It takes place in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, or as the text puts it, “the wide expanse of our greatest park”, (35:8) and indeed Phoenix Park is great: at seven square kilometres, it’s twice the size of New York’s Central Park, making it one of the largest urban parks in the world. The scene begins on the “ides-of-April morning”, i.e. on April 13th, which, we are told, happens to be Earwicker’s birthday. We are also told that this event is “ages and ages after the alleged misdemeanour” (35:5-6), a coy reference to the gossip that hounds HCE. Keep in mind that this tale of HCE’s confrontation with the cad is itself the product of rumour, beginning not with an authoritative, ‘Once upon a time’, but with a far less reliable, “They tell the story […]”.

The “ides-of-April” ominously echoes the Ides of March, when Julius Caesar was assassinated, and Earwicker dressed in seven items of clothing — ‘dressed to the sevens’ as we called it in the previous episode — could be foreshadowing a potential confrontation.

Is this meeting of Earwicker and the cad in the park a chance encounter or a spontaneous confrontation? Is it innocent or threatening?

Well, this is what seems to happen on that April morning… The cad with the pipe crosses paths with HCE and asks him, in a Wakean kind of Gaelic, something along the lines of: ‘How do you do? Could you tell me the time, because my watch is running slow?’ Ostensibly, this all sounds pretty innocuous. But as with the earlier encounter of two men, Mutt & Jute, in Chapter 1 (Episode 4), some miscommunication ensues. HCE interprets the cad’s words as a kind of attack and, in a panic, goes on the defensive. At this point the narrative, adhering to Earwicker’s state of mind, adopts the language of a cowboy-like showdown, so that instead of simply taking his watch out of his pocket and telling the cad that it’s twelve o’clock — which appears to be what happens (so much for it being morning) — HCE, we are told, is “quick on the draw” when he pulls his watch out of his “gunpocket” (35:26-27). For all his cowboy heroics, however, Earwicker ends up stuttering out his response to the cad, launching into an unsolicited, cringeworthy self-exoneration: “there is not one tittle of truth, allow me to tell you, in that purest of fibfib fabrications.” (36:34) This stuttering, which might betray HCE’s guilty conscience, is a motif throughout the novel that I’ll discuss in more detail in a minute.

Gaping Gill, an innocent bystander, “with infinite tact in the delicate situation seen the touchy nature of its perilous theme”, (37:4-5) politely extricates himself and walks off with his dog.

Now it’s evening, “ere the hour of the twattering of bards in the twitterlitter between Druidia and the Deepsleep Sea” (37:17-18). A wonderful, quiet passage follows, filled with the gentle sounds of letters reduced to their essence: a double F, a double K, a single T, a single I. I love Joyce’s writing, and Richard’s reciting, of these gloaming sounds of our alphabet, somewhere between the language of birds and lovers. (37:20-22)

The cad, home for supper, recounts his Phoenix Park encounter/confrontation with Earwicker, as best he can, to his wife. And from here, the zigzagging relay of gossip runs its course. In light of all this word of mouth, it makes sense that the text alludes, hilariously, to “Irish saliva” (37:25), the main ingredient in Dublin gossip. So the cad, chewing the cud, tells his wife, the wife tells her priest, and the priest tells the science teacher Philly Thurnston at the racetrack where the horses, like the rousing rumour itself, take on a life of their own.

Before we get to Richard’s reading, I want to highlight the stuttering motif that features prominently in Earwicker’s interaction/altercation with the cad.

From the very first page of Finnegans Wake, stuttering plays a part:

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 3:9-10.]

nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to
tauftauf thuartpeatrick

Adam Seelig: And here’s Richard reading a more pronounced example a few lines later, with stuttering built into the novel’s first 100-letter ‘thunderword’:

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 3:15-17.]

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr

Adam Seelig: One page later, we hear of “Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand” (4:18); on page 16, in the prehistoric dialogue of Mutt and Jute, Mutt stammers to Jute that, “I became a stun a stummer” (16:17); and there are many more examples.

So why all the stuttering? As with everything in the Wake, we can read into it endlessly, but for now let’s consider two reasons:

(1) Stuttering as a form of early, elemental, prehistoric speech.
(& 2) Stuttering as a betrayal of guilty feelings; or in the parlance of poker, stuttering as a ‘tell’.

About (1) stuttering as early human speech…

Roland McHugh, in the introduction to his incredible Annotations to Finnegans Wake, details the influence of 18th-century philosopher Giambattista Vico on Joyce’s writing. In The New Science, published in 1725, Vico proposes that the history of nations divides into three ages: divine, heroic, and human — plus a kind of ‘fourth age’ or ‘coda’ during which the human age, number 3, reverts back to number 1, the divine age in a ‘rinse-and-repeat’ cycle, or a ricorso, which helps explain the cyclical structure of Finnegans Wake and adds another complexion to the word “recirculation” on the novel’s first page (and the word “vicus” in that same first sentence, in addition to suggesting Vico Road in Dublin or the Latin word for village, can also point to our Italian philosopher, Vico). As McHugh explains, in the first age, “the age of gods, brutish men are driven by shame and fear into caves to escape the thunder, which is the voice of the sky-god.” (p.x) And as William Tindall explains, in the divine age, prehistoric people, “like so many Mutts and Jutes, communicate by grunts, gestures, [etc.]” (9) including stutters. So, going back to that first thunder word after the fall—

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 3:15-17.]

**Zeus** hurling a thunderbolt, bronze statuette from Dodona, Greece, early 5th century BCE; Staatliche Museen, Berlin.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-
ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur-
nuk!)

Adam Seelig: —we can hear the thunder of the sky-god or Zeus or ‘capital G God’ ‘capital H Himself’ generating language, birthing the first babble/babel, the first “bababada” of an infant humanity.

McHugh mentions that early humanity escapes thunder in “shame and fear”, which brings me to (2) stuttering as a sign of guilt…

In today’s reading, you’ll hear the text stammer when mentioning, “the hakusay accusation againstm” (36:3-4), i.e. the accusation about HCE’s “alleged misdemeanor” or, put simply, his sin. But what is this alleged sin? When Earwicker stutters during his unprovoked self-exoneration in response to the cad, the possible guilt revealed by his stammering is about what? McHugh offers a hint, pointing out that Charles Parnell, the Irish nationalist, and Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland — both men (referenced throughout Finnegans Wake) stuttered. The former, Parnell, committed the sin of adultery, which led to his political downfall, while the latter, Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), photographed children in the nude as a hobby, which, while not a sin, per se, has fueled speculation about Dodgson ever since, leading to rumours about his own “alleged misdemeanor[s]”.

And Earwicker: what’s his sin?

The examples of Parnell and Dodgson suggest that Earwicker, through the dream language of the Wake, experiences inappropriate sexual desires. But don’t we all, especially in our own personal, private dreams? The answer is yes, yes we do. The scandal of Parnell falling for Katherine (or Kitty) O’Shea, then falling from political grace, is an eminently relatable tale because, as the Wake reminds us on virtually every page, humanity, that is, all of us, fell from grace the moment Eve and Adam were swayed by the snake and ate the forbidden fruit. (In today’s reading, incidentally, Eden’s famous apple becomes a far more suggestive fruit: a banana eaten by Eve, whose original Hebrew name is Chava, hence the mention of “Havvah-ban-Annah” (38:30).) HCE, as a necessarily flawed character who contains multitudes, from Biblical Adam to folksy Tim Finnegan to admired Parnell, is ultimately “Here Comes Everybody” (as we heard in the previous episode), he’s all of us, embodying our original and subsequent sins, with his occasional stutter reminding us those sins are always there, however deeply and unconsciously buried.

"Adam & Eve, Serpent & Apple," Heinz Seelig.

So it’s thanks to the forked tongue of the serpent and the forked lightning of the gods that our stuttering fall into sin and speech began.

I’m going to close with the poem with which I opened, partly because it contains a flash of lightning and some thematic overlap with today’s episode, but mostly because Emily Dickinson knew how to write a damn good poem. Here it is in full:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant — (1263)

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

Richard Harte’s reading of Finnegans Wake Chapter 2 was shot and recorded in Toronto at Noonan’s Irish Pub on June 26th, 2023 with a live audience. The film premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.

Now it’s time to welcome you to Noonan’s Irish Pub for Richard’s reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 34 line 29 to page 39 line 13 for the continuation of Chapter 2.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 34:29-39:13.]

[34] We can’t do without them. Wives, rush to the restyours! Of-
man 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 and hence it has been received of

[35] 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 crea-
tion, 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 soft-
nosed 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 skirl-
ing of harsh Mother East old Fox Goodman, the bellmaster, over
the wastes to south, at work upon the ten ton tonuant thunder-
ous 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 pre-
sented (though this seems in some cumfusium with the chap-

[36] 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 seve-
ral 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 Ber-
lin gauntlet chopstuck in the hough of his ellboge (by ancientest
signlore his gesture meaning: ℈!) 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, (diag-
nosing through eustacetube that it was to make with a markedly

[37] postpuberal hypertituitary type of Heidelberg mannleich cavern
ethics) lufted his slopingforward, bad Sweatagore good mur-
rough 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 respect-
able 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 pro-
viant the littlebilker hoarsely relished, chaff it, in the snevel season,
being as fain o’t as your rat wi’fennel; and on this celebrating

[38] 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!) ere-
busqued 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, Pome-
ranzia!) 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

[39] 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.

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading from Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake, pages 34 to 39, recorded with a live audience at Noonan’s Irish Pub in Toronto on June 26th, 2023.

Join us in two weeks for Episode 9 when Richard continues Finnegans Wake Chapter 2, in which we meet the scandalous balladeer, Hosty. To be sure you don’t miss any episodes, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? For more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org. And to hear about upcoming performances and screenings, join our mailing list, also at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the government of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Jobina Sitoh; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a nonprofit, artist-driven, registered charity. To donate or find out more or to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out]
[End of Ep008]

Mentioned: Emily Dickinson poem, “Tell all the truth but tell it slant”, HCE rumours, fiction, HCE’s encounter/confrontation with the cad, Dublin’s Phoenix Park, stuttering motif, language of birds and love, gossip relay, stuttering as early speech and signifying guilt, Giambattista Vico, cycle of three eras, first ‘thunderword’, Charles Parnell and Charles Dodgson, Adam and Eve, original sin, synopsis.

Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 34-39.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Episode 007: the genesis of HCE (p. 30:1-34:29, start of Ch02)

August 29, 2024 Adam Seelig

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 007 THE GENESIS OF HCE

PAGE 30:1-34:29 | 2024-08-29

PODCAST AUDIO

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Adam Seelig: Welcome to James Joyce’s divine and delirious comedy, Finnegans Wake. In this episode, number 7, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 30 to 34 to begin Chapter 2 of Joyce’s last novel. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear. [Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

I’m happy to be back after a short break spent on film production for future chapters of Finnegans Wake. If you’re only joining us now, welcome and no worries — Finnegans Wake is a nonlinear novel after all, so beginning at Chapter 2 is as good a place as any. And as I’ve been saying in nearly every episode, feel free to jump ahead to Richard’s reading if you’d rather skip my introduction.

In the previous podcast episode, Richard Harte concluded his reading of Chapter 1, which served as an overture, sounding out the novel’s main themes, especially the theme of humanity’s cyclical, and comical, fall and rise and fall again, our funereal wake at which we awaken like Tim Finnegan of the Irish American folk song, who is both fin and again, a person who ends and begins repeatedly.

Chapter 2 introduces us to the novel’s protagonist, who goes by the initials HCE and the moniker Earwicker, among his many other names and nicknames. The chapter opens with an origin story for Earwicker’s name and a further exploration, and confusion, of his numerous names and identities. That’s because H. C. Earwicker is the furthest thing from a conventional character in a work of fiction, but rather an entity who contains multifarious multitudes. He is at turns Adam, the Hebrew Bible’s original man; Tim Finnegan of folk song fame; the barkeeper at the Mullingar Inn in Chapelizod, Dublin, who goes by the family name Porter; and many other identities. His characterlessness — as I described Mutt and Jute in Episode 4 — enables him to shift into many shapes and morph into many molds.

So for Chapter 2 to pursue the genesis of HCE’s name, to ask essentially, “Who is Earwicker?” is a lot like asking, “Who was Homer?” the Ancient Greek bard about whom we know little by way of concrete biographical facts and whose epic poems, The Odyssey and The Iliad, influenced the contours and contents of Joyce’s two epics, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. When Emily Wilson, in her introduction to her brilliant new translation of The Iliad, describes the conjecture surrounding Homer’s identity, I’m reminded of the Wake’s search for Earwicker’s. Here’s Wilson on Homer:

How, where, when exactly, and by whom the poems [The Iliad and The Odyssey] were made, we do not know. Maybe an oral poet, or several such poets, became literate. Maybe an illiterate or semiliterate poet, or group of poets, collaborated with one or more scribes, perhaps using dictation. Perhaps one great composer was named Homer (a name that was associated in antiquity with the word for “hostage,” homeros, although various other speculative etymologies were also posited). The composer may have been “a blind man who came from Rocky Chios,” as the narrator of the Hymn to Delian Apollo asserts — although this was only one of numerous rival local legends about this most elusive of poets. Every statement about the historical person or people who composed The Iliad must be hedged with maybes. Ancient “lives” of Homer are set in the cloudy lands of biographical myth. (p.xix)

Chapter 2 of Finnegans Wake begins in such a land of biographical myth, where every statement about Earwicker must be hedged with maybes.

The myth in this case is that HCE — or Harold or Humphrey or whatever his name may be — was out gardening one Sabbath afternoon when royalty approached on horseback. His Majesty wants to know what caused all the potholes in the road, but through a misunderstood exchange, the nervous, subservient HCE, who is merely a vassal, tells His Highness that he was catching some earwigs. As a result, the name of Earwigger or Earwicker has stuck to the man ever since.

As with every word in the Wake, “Earwicker” can connote many things, including a character whose ears are particularly receptive, ‘wicking up’ his auditory surroundings; or an entomological character like his near namesake, the earwig; and if there is something insect-like about him, perhaps there’s also something ‘insectuous,’ or, as novelist Anthony Burgess has suggested with the swap of two letters, something ‘incestuous’ within this character; or given his many identities, HCE, as you’ll soon hear in Chapter 2, could stand for “Here Comes Everybody” (32:18), with Earwicker representing humanity, all of us; or if we hear ‘earwigging’ as older English slang for ‘eavesdropping’ (and the expression is still, if rarely, used today), then Earwicker’s name itself presents the main subject of Chapter 2, and that is: gossip, slander.

On page 32, after suggesting that HCE could signify “Here Comes Everybody”, the Wake’s wonderfully associative dream language riffs and runs (rifferuns?!) on theatrical, hyped-up language full of play and dramatics, with all the world, for a moment, a stage, or “worldstage” (33:3).

And then, on page 33, the ‘earwigging,’ i.e. gossiping and slander, associated with the name and character of “Earwicker” begins to emerge. As the text puts it, “A baser meaning has been read into” HCE’s name (33:14). And what’s all this gossip, you may want to know, or ‘Spill the tea,’ as my kids like to say. It may be hazy, as rumours tend to be, but it seems to involve three Welsh soldiers, two girls peeing in the rushes of Dublin’s Phoenix Park, and a threatening cad, whom we’ll meet later in this chapter. It’s worth noting that these three elements, comprised of the three soldiers, two girls and one cad, will become a recurring motif throughout Finnegans Wake, represented by the numbers 3, 2 and 1. At the suggestion of this gossip on page 33, the text seems to grow defensive on behalf of Earwicker: “the mere suggestion of [H. C. Earwicker] as a lustsleuth nosing for trouble in a boobytrap rings particularly preposterous.” (33:31). Perhaps the text here protests too much. And by page 34, it denounces all this hearsay even more forcefully as “Slander” (34:12). But of course, the juicier the details, and the more emphatically they’re denied, the more they pique our interest. And indeed, there’s more gossip to come in Chapter 2 — this is just the beginning.

Before we get to Richard’s reading, I want to point out another motif that figures throughout the novel, which you’ll hear on the opening page of Chapter 2, and that’s the motif of characters getting dressed in seven items of clothing. It’s always seven. In this chapter, it happens when Earwicker dresses hurriedly — though arguably horridly — in order to see His Majesty, who has arrived nearby on horseback. In Chapter 1, this motif of ‘dressing to the sevens,’ so to speak, occurs near the climax of the prankquean fable (Episode 5 of our podcast series) when Jarl von Hoother girds up his loins to put an end, he hopes, to the prankquean’s disruptive antics. The seven items may sound strange in the dream language of the Wake, but a close listening/reading will reveal the Jarl’s seven items, beginning with his “broadginger hat” and ending with his “furframed panuncular cumbottes,” which I hear as gumboots. Here's an excerpt of Richard reading that moment:

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 22:30-23:3.]

For like the campbells acoming with a fork lance of lightning, Jarl von Hoother Boanerges himself, the old terror of the dames, came hip hop handihap out through the pikeopened arkway of his three shuttoned castles, in his broadginger hat and his civic chollar and his allabuff hemmed and his bullbraggin soxangloves and his ladbroke breeks and his cattegut bandolair and his fur framed panuncular cumbottes like a rudd yellan gruebleen orangeman in his violet indigonation, to the whole longth of the strongth of his bowman's bill.

Adam Seelig: And here’s another example from earlier in Chapter 1 in the “museyroom” (Episode 3 of our podcast) when Kate describes the Duke of Wellington on horseback — Kate calls him “Willingdone” in this Wakean war museum — listing seven items on his person, from his golden spurs to his “wartrews” or war trousers. This is Richard reading that moment:

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 8:17-22.]

This is the Willingdone on his same white harse, the Cokenhape. This is the big Sraughter Willingdone, grand and magentic in his goldtin spurs and his ironed dux and his quarterbrass woodyshoes and his magnate's gharters and his bangkok's best and goliar's goloshes and his pulluponeasyan wartrews. This is his big wide harse. Tip.

Adam Seelig: I opened with Emily Wilson’s comments on The Iliad, and I’m going to close with an excerpt from her translation because this ‘dressed to the sevens’ motif of Finnegans Wake is very much in the epic tradition of Homer (whoever that may have been). Just listen to how closely this epic description of Agamemnon dressing for battle, composed nearly 3,000 years ago, establishes the template, and even partly the tone in its fastidious specificity, for Joyce’s comic spin on the clothing and gear his characters would wear:

Then Agamemnon,
the son of Atreus, addressed the Greeks,
shouting that all of them must arm themselves.
And he himself put on his shining bronze.
He strapped fine greaves around his lower legs,
fitted with silver shin-guards. Next, he fastened
onto his chest the corselet that Cinyres
had given him to seal their bond of friendship
when the important news had come to Cyprus—
that Greeks were sailing in their ships to Troy.
Cinyres gave this gift to Agamemnon,
the leader, in the hope of winning favor.
It had ten stripes of dark blue-black enamel,
and twelve of gold and twenty made of tin.
And three dark snakes coiled up towards the neck
on either side, like rainbows, which the son
of Cronus sets in clouds as signs for humans.
Across his shoulders, Agamemnon strapped
his sword, all shimmering with golden studs,
held in a silver scabbard, which was set
with golden rings. Then he picked up his shield,
a splendid, deadly shield, strong on both sides,
adorned with many splendid decorations.
Around it ran ten circles made of bronze,
and it had ten white bosses made of tin,
and one of blue enamel at the center.
The middle garland was a glaring Gorgon,
whose gaze was terrifying, and around her,
Panic and Fear. The strap was made of silver,
and round it coiled a blue snake with three faces,
each turning different ways, grown from one neck.
Then Agamemnon put onto his head
his leather helmet, which had two bronze plates,
four bosses, and a horsehair crest. The plume
nodded ferociously right at the top.
Last, he picked up two warlike sharp spears, tipped
with bronze, whose gleam shone far into the sky.
(p.234-44, Book 11 lines 19-55 [14-45 in the original Greek])

I know it’s not a competition, but Homer may have out-epic’ed Joyce on this one.

Now it’s time to welcome you to Noonan’s Irish Pub for Richard’s reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 30 line 1 to page 34 line 29 for the beginning of Chapter 2.

[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 30:1-34:29.]

[p30] Now (to forebare for ever solittle of Iris Trees and Lili O’Ran-
gans), 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 Sidles-
ham 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 fol-
lowed, 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) hast-
ing to the forecourts of his public in topee, surcingle, solascarf and
plaid, plus fours, puttees and bulldog boots ruddled cinnabar with

[31] 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 Harom-
phreyld 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 to-
wards 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 Can-
makenoise), 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 dilsydul-
sily: 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 nom-
inigentilisation 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

[32]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 scen-
taurs 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, un-
controllable 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 ini-
tialled by Haromphrey bear the sigla H.C.E. and while he was
only and long and always good Dook Umphrey for the hunger-
lean 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 con-
tinually 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 foot-
lights 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 ceil-

[33] inged 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 blur-
tingly 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 exis-
tence 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 ne-
cessary quoniam to invent him) abhout that time stambuling ha-

[34] round Dumbaling in leaky sneakers with his tarrk record who
has remained topantically anonymos but (let us hue him Abdul-
lah 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 charge-
hard, 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 im-
modus opposite a pair of dainty maidservants in the swoolth of
the rushy hollow whither, or so the two gown and pinners plead-
ed, 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-
ing the intimate nature of this, a first offence in vert or venison
which was admittedly an incautious but, at its wildest, a partial ex-
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.

[End of reading excerpt]

Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading the opening of Chapter 2 from Finnegans Wake, pages 30 to 34, recorded with a live audience at Noonan’s Irish Pub in Toronto on June 26th, 2023.

Join us in two weeks for Episode 8 when Richard continues Finnegans Wake Chapter 2, in which H. C. Earwicker encounters the cad in Phoenix Park. To be sure you don’t miss any episodes, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? For more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including transcripts of this podcast and trailers for the films, visit our website at OneLittleGoat.org. And to hear about upcoming performances and screenings, join our mailing list, also at OneLittleGoat.org.

[Music: Adam Seelig plays piano]

Finnegans Wake is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the government of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

And thank you to the artists for this episode: Richard Harte; Sound by William Bembridge; Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen; Stage Management by Jobina Sitoh; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.

One Little Goat Theatre Company is a nonprofit, artist-driven, registered charity. To donate or find out more or to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org

Thank you for listening!

[Music fades out] [End of Ep007]

Mentioned: origin of HCE/Earwicker’s name, “Here Comes Everybody”, characterlessness, Homer, ‘who was Homer?’, Ancient Greek epic poetry, The Iliad, translator Emily Wilson, meanings of “Earwicker”, earwigging as eavesdropping, gossip and slander, 3 soldiers 2 girls 1 cad (motif), ‘dressed to the sevens’ (motif) with examples from the prankquean and museyroom fables, ancient example of Agamemnon girding up his loins in The Iliad, synopsis.

Resources: Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 30-34.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
James Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.
William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.
John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.
Emily Wilson’s translation of Homer, The Iliad. Norton, New York, 2023.
Anthony Burgess introduces Finnegans Wake (1973), YouTube.

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ONE LITTLE GOAT THEATRE COMPANY IS A REGISTERED CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 010 BALLAD OF PERSSE O’REILLY

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