JAMES JOYCE’S FINNEGANS WAKE
Episode 003
THE MUSEYROOM
PAGE 8:9-13:19 | 2024-05-30
PODCAST AUDIO
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
[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 3, we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor—and my good friend and colleague—Richard Harte reading pages 8 to 13 of Joyce’s last novel, which will include the famous “museyroom” scene. I’m Adam Seelig, the director of the reading you’ll soon hear.
[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]
Finnegans Wake, in Joyce’s own words, “is all so simple. If anyone doesn’t understand a passage, all [they] need do is read it aloud” (Ellmann, 590). True, sound and sense converge in this miraculously lyrical book such that sound is sense; and true, we have actor Richard Harte reading it aloud for us with tonguetwisting virtuosity; but I’m not so sure it’s “all so simple” as the author once claimed. So I’m going to highlight a few elements in today’s reading before we hear Richard read the text itself, beginning on page 8 with “the museyroom” episode. And again, as I mentioned in the previous episode, if you prefer to hear Richard’s reading only without any preamble, please skip ahead and enjoy!
We ended Episode 2 in this podcast of Finnegans Wake at the top of page 8 in Dublin’s Phoenix Park at the entrance to a war museum, where Kate is about to give us a tour. One of the novel’s recurring characters, Kate is the museum’s custodian described here as a “janitrix,” combining ‘janitor’ with ‘genetrix’ (an old term for a ‘female ancestor’). She leads us into the “museyroom”, as she calls the museum, and advises us to mind our hats going in; two pages later, when the tour concludes, she’ll flip this advice into, “Mind your boots goan out”, suggesting that this tour may actually contain the entire arc of human life, from our entrance at birth, head first, to our exit at death, feet first.
The action-packed, battle-heavy life we read and experience in the “museyroom”, like everything in life and in Joyce, can be read and experienced on multiple levels. Or in musical terms, since Finnegans Wake is a massive literary fugue, the “museyroom” allows us to hear multiple motifs simultaneously. In this case it’s mostly a fugue of feuds, including the ultimate feud of war, the Oedipal conflict of father and sons, the tension between the novel’s male protagonist, HCE and his bugaboos (which we’ll discover in more detail in the next chapter, including the Cad, the two girls who are possibly peeing in the bushes and three soldiers). And also, because this is Joyce after all, there’s the motif of bodily needs and functions, which allows us to hear the “museyroom” as (I’ll quote Brendan Ward) “a description of HCE urinating, defecating and masturbating in the outhouse behind his pub, The Mullingar House, in Chapelizod” (to which I’d like to add three things about the Mullingar House, which still exists today in the Chapelizod area of Dublin: (1) it was established in 1694; (2) it sits right at the edge of Phoenix Park, it backs onto it, so HCE’s fictional outhouse would likely have been in the park itself; and (3), most importantly, as of my most recent visit to Dublin in June of 2023, a big banner hangs over the Mullingar’s main bar claiming the following: “The Mullingar House, Chapelizod, Ireland’s Best Chicken Wings”).
Plaque on the Mullingar House: “Home of all the characters and elements in James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake”
While the “museyroom” maintains all of these motifs and more, making it a central fable in the novel, I’m only going tease out the first and most literal one: the museyroom as a war museum, specifically as a museum commemorating the Battle of Waterloo, June 18th, 1815 when the Duke of Wellington and his coalition defeated Napoleon, ending 23 years of war in Europe. Kate, our janitor-cum-tour-guide, will draw our attention to various historical objects from the battle, including guns, bullets, flags, the 3-pointed hat of Napoleon and a depiction of Wellington’s favourite white horse named Copenhagen. In the Wake-speak of Kate, we’ll hear Napoleon as “Lipoleum,” Wellington as “Willingdone,” and his horse Copenhagen as his “white harse, the Cokenhape.” Does this turn Napoleon into a linoleum floor on which victorious Wellington walks all over with his wellies? Some readers think so, although Wellington is defeated in Kate’s bonkers version of the battle. Allowing for a victorious Wellington might have been too much for Joyce to stomach, given the English commander’s antipathy for Ireland, despite being born in Dublin. As Joyce scholar John Gordon writes, “Wellington once remarked that he was an Irishman only if a man born in a stable was a horse, a nasty crack for which Joyce pays him back by making him a ‘harse’” (113) and indeed in the “museyroom” it’s virtually impossible to distinguish between this man and his equine when what we see repeatedly is his ‘big white harse.’
The “museyroom” episode is also a breakneck viewing of the most prominent structure in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, and that is the Wellington Monument, a granite obelisk whose four sides are etched with the names of Britain’s many military victories and topped with four self-congratulatory bronze friezes depicting the Empire’s global conquests. Erected by the British in the mid-19th century and standing at a height of over 60 metres (or 200 feet), the Wellington Monument is a veritable erection if ever there was, a phallic monstrosity of which Finnegans Wake makes good use by personifying HCE—among the many things he is—as the city of Dublin, with his head in Howth, feet in Chapelizod, and ‘monumental’ penis in Phoenix Park.
The Wellington Monument, Phoenix Park, Dublin
If you’re lucky enough to be visiting Phoenix Park one day, read the “museyroom” (or listen to Richard’s reading from this podcast) by the Wellington Monument — you’ll be amazed by how much of the bronze battle scenes and how many of the etched battle names appear in the writing. It’s almost as if Kate the janitor is taking us on a tour of this war memorial by riffing on what she sees in front of her, improvising all kinds of wacky, pseudo historical details. Sometimes I get the feeling that Kate is simply making it up on the spot. For all the painstaking details Joyce stuffed into this scene, and for all the conceptual planning he invested in writing it, I’m always amazed by how in-the-moment and extemporaneous the language feels. No matter how many times I read it or hear it, the “museyroom” always offers up something new. Then again, that could easily be said of any page in Finnegans Wake.
Battle of Waterloo, frieze on the Wellington Monument. (Did I say “topped” with bronze friezes? They’re actually closer to the base.)
Before we leave the “museyroom”, I’ll mention one tiny word that peppers Kate’s speech: “tip”. T - I - P. Tip: is Kate angling for a few coins in gratuity from us, her tourists? Tip: is she alluding to a heap of junk or mound of crap if we use the British-English or Irish-English definition for “tip” as a ‘garbage dump’? Maybe she’s suggesting that the many wars of France, England and Europe, including the Battle of Waterloo, amount to one big historical dump — if so, she’s putting the ‘loo’ back in Waterloo. Tip: is this pointed word Kate’s way of pointing things out? Is everything she’s saying off the tip of her tongue? Tip: is this the tapered top of the gargantuan boner that is the Wellington Monument?
For those who want to read more on the “museyroom”—and there’s so much more to say—I’ll link to some articles and resources in the show notes.
We leave the “museyroom” at the bottom of page 10 and find ourselves on the post-battle battlefield, where the Duke is unhorsed and by the sounds of it, upside down: “Skud ontorsed” is how the text now describes the centaur-like Wellington, “Skud” being “Duke’s” backwards. Among the post-war detritus, we’ll hear some crows and pigeons, and we’ll see early intimations of another recurring character, ‘the hen,’ here introduced as an early bird, or as the text puts it, “gnarlybird”, gathering various items “into her nabsack”. The war may be over, but this post-war paragraph pays its remembrance with a somber, single-word sentence: “Slain.”
Emerging from ‘the hen’ are early contours of our female protagonist, HCE’s spouse, Anna Livia Plurabelle or ALP, here described at the bottom of page 11 as “bootifull and how truetowife” (11:29). And then this paragraph takes on a more resigned or philosophical or (this being Joyce) horny view of humanity’s skirmishes: “Gricks may rise and Troysirs fall” (11:35) — combining ‘Greeks may rise and Trojans fall’ with ‘pricks may rise and trousers fall’ — but “that's what makes life-work leaving” (12:1-2); and yes, as we read on, Humptys may fall off walls, but hey, there’ll still be eggs for breakfast (12).
The following few paragraphs, beginning in the middle of page 12, provide us with a zoomed out view of Dublin, a vantage from which we can say (and I’ll paraphrase): ‘So this is Dublin.’ I’m not sure if we should hear that as a dis or a compliment — I have the feeling Joyce is always happy for us to hear it more ways than one.
Richard Harte’s reading of Finnegans Wake Chapter 1 was shot and recorded in 2022 in my home in Toronto with a small audience. It premiered at the Toronto Irish Film Festival, European Union Film Festival, and Bloomsday Film Festival at the James Joyce Centre in Dublin.
And now it’s time to welcome you all back into my home for Richard’s continued reading of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, page 8 line 9 to page 13 line 19 in Chapter 1.
[Richard Harte reads Finnegans Wake 8:9-13:19.]
This the way to the museyroom. Mind your hats goan in!
Now yiz are in the Willingdone Museyroom. This is a Prooshi-
ous gunn. This is a ffrinch. Tip. This is the flag of the Prooshi-
ous, the Cap and Soracer. This is the bullet that byng the flag of
the Prooshious. This is the ffrinch that fire on the Bull that bang
the flag of the Prooshious. Saloos the Crossgunn! Up with your
pike and fork! Tip. (Bullsfoot! Fine!) This is the triplewon hat of
Lipoleum. Tip. Lipoleumhat. This is the Willingdone on his
same white harse, the Cokenhape. This is the big Sraughter Wil-
lingdone, 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 pullupon-
easyan wartrews. This is his big wide harse. Tip. This is the three
lipoleum boyne grouching down in the living detch. This is an
inimyskilling inglis, this is a scotcher grey, this is a davy, stoop-
ing. This is the bog lipoleum mordering the lipoleum beg. A
Gallawghurs argaumunt. This is the petty lipoleum boy that
was nayther bag nor bug. Assaye, assaye! Touchole Fitz Tuo-
mush. Dirty MacDyke. And Hairy O'Hurry. All of them
arminus-varminus. This is Delian alps. This is Mont Tivel,
this is Mont Tipsey, this is the Grand Mons Injun. This is the
crimealine of the alps hooping to sheltershock the three lipoleums.
This is the jinnies with their legahorns feinting to read in their
handmade's book of stralegy while making their war undisides
the Willingdone. The jinnies is a cooin her hand and the jinnies is
a ravin her hair and the Willingdone git the band up. This is big
Willingdone mormorial tallowscoop Wounderworker obscides
on the flanks of the jinnies. Sexcaliber hrosspower. Tip. This
[p9] is me Belchum sneaking his phillippy out of his most Awful
Grimmest Sunshat Cromwelly. Looted. This is the jinnies' hast-
ings dispatch for to irrigate the Willingdone. Dispatch in thin
red lines cross the shortfront of me Belchum. Yaw, yaw, yaw!
Leaper Orthor. Fear siecken! Fieldgaze thy tiny frow. Hugact-
ing. Nap. That was the tictacs of the jinnies for to fontannoy the
Willingdone. Shee, shee, shee! The jinnies is jillous agincourting
all the lipoleums. And the lipoleums is gonn boycottoncrezy onto
the one Willingdone. And the Willingdone git the band up. This
is bode Belchum, bonnet to busby, breaking his secred word with a
ball up his ear to the Willingdone. This is the Willingdone's hur-
old dispitchback. Dispitch desployed on the regions rare of me
Belchum. Salamangra! Ayi, ayi, ayi! Cherry jinnies. Figtreeyou!
Damn fairy ann, Voutre. Willingdone. That was the first joke of
Willingdone, tic for tac. Hee, hee, hee! This is me Belchum in
his twelvemile cowchooks, weet, tweet and stampforth foremost,
footing the camp for the jinnies. Drink a sip, drankasup, for he's
as sooner buy a guinness than he'd stale store stout. This is Roo-
shious balls. This is a ttrinch. This is mistletropes. This is Canon
Futter with the popynose. After his hundred days' indulgence.
This is the blessed. Tarra's widdars! This is jinnies in the bonny
bawn blooches. This is lipoleums in the rowdy howses. This is the
Willingdone, by the splinters of Cork, order fire. Tonnerre!
(Bullsear! Play!) This is camelry, this is floodens, this is the
solphereens in action, this is their mobbily, this is panickburns.
Almeidagad! Arthiz too loose! This is Willingdone cry. Brum!
Brum! Cumbrum! This is jinnies cry. Underwetter! Goat
strip Finnlambs! This is jinnies rinning away to their ouster-
lists dowan a bunkersheels. With a nip nippy nip and a trip trip-
py trip so airy. For their heart's right there. Tip. This is me Bel-
chum's tinkyou tankyou silvoor plate for citchin the crapes in
the cool of his canister. Poor the pay! This is the bissmark of the
marathon merry of the jinnies they left behind them. This is the
Willingdone branlish his same marmorial tallowscoop Sophy-
Key-Po for his royal divorsion on the rinnaway jinnies. Gam-
bariste della porca! Dalaveras fimmieras! This is the pettiest
[p10] of the lipoleums, Toffeethief, that spy on the Willingdone from
his big white harse, the Capeinhope. Stonewall Willingdone
is an old maxy montrumeny. Lipoleums is nice hung bushel-
lors. This is hiena hinnessy laughing alout at the Willing-
done. This is lipsyg dooley krieging the funk from the hinnessy.
This is the hinndoo Shimar Shin between the dooley boy and the
hinnessy. Tip. This is the wixy old Willingdone picket up the
half of the threefoiled hat of lipoleums fromoud of the bluddle
filth. This is the hinndoo waxing ranjymad for a bombshoob.
This is the Willingdone hanking the half of the hat of lipoleums
up the tail on the buckside of his big white harse. Tip. That was
the last joke of Willingdone. Hit, hit, hit! This is the same white
harse of the Willingdone, Culpenhelp, waggling his tailoscrupp
with the half of a hat of lipoleums to insoult on the hinndoo see-
boy. Hney, hney, hney! (Bullsrag! Foul!) This is the seeboy,
madrashattaras, upjump and pumpim, cry to the Willingdone:
Ap Pukkaru! Pukka Yurap! This is the Willingdone, bornstable
ghentleman, tinders his maxbotch to the cursigan Shimar Shin.
Basucker youstead! This is the dooforhim seeboy blow the whole
of the half of the hat of lipoleums off of the top of the tail on the
back of his big wide harse. Tip (Bullseye! Game!) How Copen-
hagen ended. This way the museyroom. Mind your boots goan
out.
Phew!
What a warm time we were in there but how keling is here the
airabouts! We nowhere she lives but you mussna tell annaone for
the lamp of Jig-a-Lanthern! It's a candlelittle houthse of a month
and one windies. Downadown, High Downadown. And num-
mered quaintlymine. And such reasonable weather too! The wa-
grant wind's awalt'zaround the piltdowns and on every blasted
knollyrock (if you can spot fifty I spy four more) there's that
gnarlybird ygathering, a runalittle, doalittle, preealittle, pouralittle,
wipealittle, kicksalittle, severalittle, eatalittle, whinealittle, kenalittle,
helfalittle, pelfalittle gnarlybird. A verytableland of bleakbardfields!
Under his seven wrothschields lies one, Lumproar. His glav toside
him. Skud ontorsed. Our pigeons pair are flewn for northcliffs.
[p11] The three of crows have flapped it southenly, kraaking of de
baccle to the kvarters of that sky whence triboos answer; Wail,
'tis well! She niver comes out when Thon's on shower or when
Thon's flash with his Nixy girls or when Thon's blowing toom-
cracks down the gaels of Thon. No nubo no! Neblas on you liv!
Her would be too moochy afreet. Of Burymeleg and Bindme-
rollingeyes and all the deed in the woe. Fe fo fom! She jist does
hopes till byes will be byes. Here, and it goes on to appear now,
she comes, a peacefugle, a parody's bird, a peri potmother,
a pringlpik in the ilandiskippy, with peewee and powwows
in beggybaggy on her bickybacky and a flick flask fleckflinging
its pixylighting pacts' huemeramybows, picking here, pecking
there, pussypussy plunderpussy. But it's the armitides toonigh,
militopucos, and toomourn we wish for a muddy kissmans to the
minutia workers and there's to be a gorgeups truce for happinest
childher everwere. Come nebo me and suso sing the day we
sallybright. She's burrowed the coacher's headlight the better to
pry (who goes cute goes siocur and shoos aroun) and all spoiled
goods go into her nabsack: curtrages and rattlin buttins, nappy
spattees and flasks of all nations, clavicures and scampulars, maps,
keys and woodpiles of haypennies and moonled brooches with
bloodstaned breeks in em, boaston nightgarters and masses of
shoesets and nickelly nacks and foder allmicheal and a lugly parson
of cates and howitzer muchears and midgers and maggets, ills and
ells with loffs of toffs and pleures of bells and the last sigh that
come fro the hart (bucklied!) and the fairest sin the sunsaw
(that's cearc!). With Kiss. Kiss Criss. Cross Criss. Kiss Cross.
Undo lives 'end. Slain.
How bootifull and how truetowife of her, when strengly fore-
bidden, to steal our historic presents from the past postpropheti-
cals so as to will make us all lordyheirs and ladymaidesses of a
pretty nice kettle of fruit. She is livving in our midst of debt and
laffing through all plores for us (her birth is uncontrollable), with
a naperon for her mask and her sabboes kickin arias (so sair! so
solly!) if yous ask me and I saack you. Hou! Hou! Gricks may
rise and Troysirs fall (there being two sights for ever a picture)
[p12] for in the byways of high improvidence that's what makes life-
work leaving and the world's a cell for citters to cit in. Let young
wimman run away with the story and let young min talk smooth
behind the butteler's back. She knows her knight's duty while
Luntum sleeps. Did ye save any tin? says he. Did I what? with
a grin says she. And we all like a marriedann because she is mer-
cenary. Though the length of the land lies under liquidation
(floote!) and there's nare a hairbrow nor an eyebush on this glau-
brous phace of Herrschuft Whatarwelter she'll loan a vesta and
hire some peat and sarch the shores her cockles to heat and she'll
do all a turfwoman can to piff the business on. Paff. To puff the
blaziness on. Poffpoff. And even if Humpty shell fall frumpty
times as awkward again in the beardsboosoloom of all our grand
remonstrancers there'll be iggs for the brekkers come to mourn-
him, sunny side up with care. So true is it that therewhere's a
turnover the tay is wet too and when you think you ketch sight
of a hind make sure but you're cocked by a hin.
Then as she is on her behaviourite job of quainance bandy,
fruting for firstlings and taking her tithe, we may take our review
of the two mounds to see nothing of the himples here as at else-
where, by sixes and sevens, like so many heegills and collines,
sitton aroont, scentbreeched ant somepotreek, in their swisha-
wish satins and their taffetaffe tights, playing Wharton's Folly,
at a treepurty on the planko in the purk. Stand up, mickos!
Make strake for minnas! By order, Nicholas Proud. We may see
and hear nothing if we choose of the shortlegged bergins off
Corkhill or the bergamoors of Arbourhill or the bergagambols
of Summerhill or the bergincellies of Miseryhill or the country-
bossed bergones of Constitutionhill though every crowd has its
several tones and every trade has its clever mechanics and each
harmonical has a point of its own, Olaf's on the rise and Ivor's
on the lift and Sitric's place's between them. But all they are all
there scraping along to sneeze out a likelihood that will solve
and salve life's robulous rebus, hopping round his middle like
kippers on a griddle, O, as he lays dormont from the macroborg
of Holdhard to the microbirg of Pied de Poudre. Behove this
[p13] sound of Irish sense. Really? Here English might be seen.
Royally? One sovereign punned to petery pence. Regally? The
silence speaks the scene. Fake!
So This Is Dyoublong?
Hush! Caution! Echoland!
How charmingly exquisite! It reminds you of the outwashed
engravure that we used to be blurring on the blotchwall of his
innkempt house. Used they? (I am sure that tiring chabelshovel-
ler with the mujikal chocolat box, Miry Mitchel, is listening) I
say, the remains of the outworn gravemure where used to be
blurried the Ptollmens of the Incabus. Used we? (He is only pre-
tendant to be stugging at the jubalee harp from a second existed
lishener, Fiery Farrelly.) It is well known. Lokk for himself and
see the old butte new. Dbln. W. K. O. O. Hear? By the mauso-
lime wall. Fimfim fimfim. With a grand funferall. Fumfum fum-
fum. 'Tis optophone which ontophanes. List! Wheatstone's
magic lyer. They will be tuggling foriver. They will be lichening
for allof. They will be pretumbling forover. The harpsdischord
shall be theirs for ollaves.
[End of reading excerpt]
Adam Seelig: That was my friend and colleague Richard Harte reading from Finnegans Wake, Chapter 1, pages 8-13, recorded live in Toronto on August 31st, 2022.
Join us for Episode 4 in a fortnight when Richard continues with the next five pages of Finnegans Wake, including the dialogue of Mutt and Jute. To be sure you don’t miss the episode, why not follow or subscribe to this podcast? And for more on One Little Goat’s Finnegans Wake project, including liner notes and trailers for the films, visit our website 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 gov’t 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 Laura Lakatosh; Rehearsal Stage Management by Sandi Becker; Directed by yours truly, Adam Seelig.
Thanks to our live audience of Pip Dwyer, Kevin Kennedy, Cathy Murphy, Nomi Rotbard, Arlo Rotbard-Seelig. And thanks to our rehearsal audience of Jackie Chau, Jordy Koffman, Andrew Moodie & Shai Rotbard-Seelig. Thank you to the Embassy of Ireland in Ottawa and the Irish Consulate in Toronto. And to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie.
One Little Goat Theatre Company is a not-for-profit, artist-driven, registered charity. To find out more and to join our mailing list please visit www.OneLittleGoat.org
Thank you for listening!
[Music fades out]
Mentioned: “the museyroom”, character Kate, Phoenix Park, Brendan Ward, Dublin, Mullingar House pub, Chapelizod, character HCE (Earwicker), Battle of Waterloo, Duke of Wellington, Napoleon, John Gordon, Wellington Monument, British Empire, “tip,” character ‘the hen,’ character ALP (Anna Livia Plurabelle), synopsis.
Resources:
Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 8-13.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.com
Brendan Ward’s excellent article, “In the Museyroom” (13 August 2022), in his blog, Finnegans Wake - A Prescriptive Guide.
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 Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary. Syracuse University Press, 1986. And Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.
Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.