24 July 2022

Rot a Peck of Pa’s Malt

 

The Drunkenness of Noah (Bellini)

In the penultimate clause of the second paragraph of Finnegans Wake, James Joyce once again blends Biblical imagery with Irish history, something he also does in the four preceding clauses. This time, however, the Biblical theme is not obviously present in the first draft:

Not a peck of malt had Shem and Son brewed. (Hayman 46)

But the following drafts remove any doubt:

Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Hem or Sen brewed by arclight. (Hayman 46)

The final version clarified the allusion to the Dublin whiskey distiller John Jameson & Son, while not undermining the Noachic elements.

The Drunkenness of Noah (Michelangelo)

The Drunkenness of Noah

The Biblical passage that informs this clause is the story of the Drunkenness of Noah in the Book of Genesis:

And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread. And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. (Genesis9:18-27)

This is all grist to Joyce’s mill. There are many elements in this brief tale—wine, intoxication, sleep, nakedness, exposure, voyeurism, paternity, servitude, cursing, blessing—that are all part of the matrix of Finnegans Wake. Just don’t ask me to explain what the story of Noah’s Drunkenness means or why it is in the Bible in the first place!

John Jameson

Whiskey and Stout

In Finnegans Wake whiskey and porter are like a couple of rival twins. This pairing of spirit and beer, as we shall see, is made explicit in the popular ballad of Finnegan’s Wake, in which Tim Finnegan is laid out for his wake:

With a gallon of whiskey at his feet

And a barrel of porter at his head.

(Ellmann 544 fn)

Whiskey is distilled, whereas porter is brewed, so the phrase yokes together Dublin’s leading distiller John Jameson (a Scotsman) and Dublin’s leading brewer Arthur Guinness. Perhaps these two men can be identified with the twin sons of HCE and ALP. But which is Shem and which is Shaun?

Willy Brew’d a Peck o’ Maut

In a letter to his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver, Joyce himself glossed this passage briefly:

Willy brewed a peck of maut

Noah planted the vine and was drunk

John Jameson is the greatest Dublin distiller

Arthur Guinness [is the greatest Dublin] brewer

(Letters I 15 November 1926)

The first of these annotations alludes to Robert Burns’ drinking song Willie Brew’d a Peck o’ Maut:

Jesse Ferguson: Willie Brew’d a Peck o’ Maut

Readers familiar with Joyce’s Ulysses will no doubt remember how someone sings a line from the chorus of this song near the end of the Oxen of the Sun:

We are nae fou. We’re nae tha fou. (Ulysses 404)

This might be translated into the King’s English as:

We are not full [drunk]. We’re not that full.

The song, which was written by Burns in 1789 and set to music by his friend Allan Masterton, commemorates an episode in the poet’s life:

The meeting which it celebrates took place between the Poet, William Nicol, of the High School, Edinburgh, and Allan Masterton, another school-master, and musical amateur. Nicol had bought a small farm named Laggan, in the parish of Dunscore, Dumfriesshire, where he spent the autumn vacations. Allan Masterton and the Poet went on a visit to the “illustrious Lord of Laggan’s many hills.” Nicol, as in duty bound, produced his best. Tradition asserts, that day dawned long ere the guests arose to depart. “The air is Masterton’s,” says Burns, “the song is mine ... We had such a joyous meeting, that Mr Masterton and I agreed, each in our own way, to celebrate the business.” (Whitelaw 216)

Around 1800 the song was arranged by Joseph Haydn for the Scottish publisher George Thomson with the title The Happy Topers (Thomson §179). It has also been known as The Happy Trio. In Finnegans Wake, its three protagonists represent, perhaps, the Biblical trio of Shem, Ham and Japheth, who in turn represent the twin sons of HCE, Shem and Shaun, and the Oedipal figure who embodies them both.

Landscape with Noah’s Offering of Thanks

Rainbow’s End

Rot is the German for red, the colour at one end of the rainbow. Violet was alluded to at the beginning of this paragraph (violer d’amores). In the Bible the rainbow is also associated with Noah:

And I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth. (Genesis 9:11-17)

Finnegans Wake ends with a Flood, and as it is a circular novel, it is entirely appropriate for the rainbow to appear on the opening page. The arclight is not only a light in Noah’s Ark but also the rainbow, known in French as arc-en-ciel. The colours are reversed, perhaps, because we are coming back to the beginning.

Rot also refers to HCE’s urine rotting in the chamber pot. In an earlier article I pointed out how this paragraph takes us on a tour around the master bedroom in the Mullingar House in Chapelizod. This clause represents the sixth of seven stations: the commode, a chair which conceals a chamber pot beneath its seat. Noah’s wine has been transformed into HCE’s urine—Pa’s rotten malt. Eventually, this “water” will find its way into Dublin’s public sewer, the Liffey, which will carry it out to Dublin Bay, where it will feed the clouds that sprinkle the raindrops that replenish the Liffey from which fresh water will be taken to brew more porter and distil more whiskey.

And so the Viconian cycle rolls on endlessly, represented here by the familiar water cycle. In Finnegans Wake, there will be another Flood. The Earth will be destroyed and remade again and again, world without end ...

And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.

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