11 August 2022

The Giant’s Grave

 


The Giant's Grave (Penrith) (RFW 006.01-006.23)

In several of the earlier articles in this series, I traced the long and convoluted gestation of James Joyce’s final work Finnegans Wake from its conception in Nice in October 1922 to its birth in Paris in August 1923, when Joyce finally started to write it. Between then and the end of the year he drafted in quick succession the three chapters that are sometimes known collectively as the Humphriad. In the published work, these are I.2-4 (Book 1, Chapters 2-4), but it is clear that at the time of drafting, Joyce envisaged them as the opening chapters of the book:

Chapters 2-4, the first part of the Wake to be drafted, make up a self-contained narrative unit that presents the nature and history of the book’s hero, HCE. It served as the beginning of the Wake until 1926, when Joyce drafted what would become chapter 1. (Cripsi & Slote 66)

In December 1923, Joyce began to draft I.5, Mamafesta. In January and February 1924, he drafted I.7, Shem the Pen. (I.6, The Quiz, was a later interpolation, first drafted in the summer of 1927.) Without missing a beat, he then completed the first draft of the Wake’s most famous chapter, I.8, Anna Livia Plurabelle. Like I.6, the four chapters that comprise Book 2 were afterthoughts. As soon as Joyce had completed I.8, he began to draft the four chapters of Book 3, collectively known as The Four Watches of Shaun.

This almost unbroken access of inspiration finally began to run down in March 1924, by which time Joyce had completed initial drafts of III.1-2, originally conceived as a single chapter called Shaun the Post. There then followed a hiatus of about eight months before he began to draft III.3:

His rapid progress was slowed by Dr. Borsch, who in April observed that a secretion was forming in the conjunctiva of Joyce’s left eye, and ordered him to curtail his work severely. An operation would be necessary later, he warned. In May 1924, Joyce succeeded nonetheless in finishing Shaun the Post; then, aware that the only way to rest his eye was to pack up his manuscripts, he did so and stored them with Sylvia Beach. (Ellmann 564)

When Joyce resumed work on the novel in the winter of 1924, the white-hot inspiration of the earlier chapters had cooled and his progress from now on was to be slow and torturous. He drafted III.3 in November and December 1924, but III.4 did not follow until late September or early October 1925. In July 1926 he made an abortive effort to begin the drafting of Book II, but only a small section of II.2, Night Studies, was drafted before his pen dried up:

In May, Joyce found he had overworked on the third book of Finnegans Wake, the section dealing with Shaun; he nevertheless carried it to completion and sent it to Miss Weaver on June 7, 1926, with a rather urgent request for her opinion. Soon after he suffered an attack in his left eye so serious as to necessitate a tenth operation during this same month. After it he made slow progress, unable until July 15 to perceive objects with the operated eye, but he showed himself, with his now famous black patch, in company. By August 11 he went with Nora to another watering place, Ostend. (Ellmann 579)

Joyce with His Famous Black Eye Patch (1926)

Joyce spent the summer with his family in Belgium, where he studied Flemish and toured the site of the Battle of Waterloo. Before he returned to Paris, things took a turn for the worse:

While Joyce was on his holiday he received the disturbing news that Ulysses was being pirated by Samuel Roth ... He returned to Paris in September to confront a series of incidents all of which put Finnegans Wake into question. To begin with, The Dial (New York), to which Joyce had offered the Shaun chapters, at first accepted them, then wanted to cut them, and finally refused them. Joyce was annoyed, but he was more disturbed by a growing resentment of his book. Most of his friends had withheld comment on its first sections, waiting until more of it was available; but as they perceived that it was almost all to be written in calembours, they became puzzled, then irritated, and finally indignant, sad, or mocking. Joyce relayed to Miss Weaver the pained remarks of friends, and such comments by editors as, ‘all Greek to us’ ‘unfortunately I can’t read it’ ‘is it a puzzle?’ ‘has anybody had the courage to ask J. how many misprints are in it?’ ‘those French printers!’ ‘how is your eyesight?’ He betrayed no inclination to relent: ‘What the language will look like when I have finished I don’t know. But having declared war I shall go on “jusqu’au bout” [to the bitter end]. (Ellmann 580-581)

Staying Relevant ... Again

In an earlier article, I described the various ploys Joyce used to insure that the reading public did not ignore or forget about him during the prolonged composition of Finnegans Wake. These involved:

  • Having his friends guess the title of the book, which was then known only as Work in Progress.

  • Publishing fragments of the book in various journals.

  • Employing friends and colleagues as secretaries, readers, proofers, researchers, etc.

Harriet Shaw Weaver

The first and recurrent victim of these strategies was Harriet Shaw Weaver, the eternally patient editor of The Egoist. Weaver had been supporting Joyce both financially and editorially since 1914, and although she too had serious reservations about the direction Joyce had taken, she remained his loyal and steadfast patron for the rest of his life. It is no exaggeration to say that without her unceasing support, Finnegans Wake would probably have foundered long before it reached the printing press.

In the autumn of 1926, when progress was stalled on Joyce’s Work in Progress, and the author was beset by doubts concerning his continued relevance to the world of modern letters, it was to this infinitely patient woman that he turned for help:

Even Miss Weaver’s references to the book in her letters, while sympathetic, were guarded. Joyce did not wish to lose this adherent, and in various ways sought to make her not only a reader but an accomplice in the perpetration of Finnegans Wake. One of the most curious he introduced in a letter of September 24, 1926: “A rather funny idea struck me that you might ‘order’ a piece and I would do it. The gentlemen of the brush and hammer seem to have worked that way: Dear Sir. I should like to have an oily painting of Mr Tristan carving raw pork for Cornish countrymen or an icebust of Herr Ham contemplating his cold shoulder.” (Ellmann 581-582)

Weaver was on holiday in Penrith, Cumbria, when she received this bizarre request, and she responded in kind:

You have made a curious request indeed! Here then followeth my ‘order’: To Messrs Jacques le Joyeux, Giacomo Jakob, Skeumas Sheehy and whole Company:

Sirs: Kindly supply the undersigned with one full length grave account of his esteemed Highness Rhaggrick O’Hoggnor’s Hogg Tomb as per photos enclosed and oblige

Yours faithfully Henriette Véavère. (Ellmann 582)

More than twenty years later, when Joyce was dead, Weaver recounted the episode for the American scholar Joseph Prescott:

I was staying at the time in the north of England, near Penrith in the Cumberland lake district, and had happened to come across there a pamphlet about what was reputed to be a giant’s grave of prehistoric Britain in the churchyard in Penrith. It occurred to me that Mr Joyce might find this an appropriate subject to work into his book. He did and founded an episode on it which he placed at the beginning of the book—much worked up as the story of Finn McCool. I sent Mr Joyce the only copy I had of the pamphlet and I do not recollect its title ... I came across a reference ... by Mr Joyce to the writer of the pamphlet ... The Very Reverend James Cropper, M.A. (Prescott 1301)

Prescott finally managed to identify the pamphlet as A Short Historical Sketch of S. Andrew’s Parish Church, Penrith, a work that is listed in Joyce’s Paris library, compiled in 1955 by Thomas E Connolly. It transpired, however, that Joyce was only inspired by the image of the Giant’s Grave. Cropper’s accompanying text contributed nothing to the text of Finnegans Wake.

Giant’s Grave, Penrith (Postcard)

The Giant’s Grave is said to be the burial place of an Owen Caesarius, who may have been Owain ap Dyfnwal, the King of Strathclyde from 900 to 937:

In the church-yard of Penrith is preserved a curious antique monument called the Giant’s Grave; the singular character of these remains, and the distant period to which they may beyond doubt refer their erection, are most probably the only authority that could be produced for the name bestowed on them. They consist of two large pillars, bearing resemblance in shape to the spears anciently used, and standing at the distance of fifteen feet from each other; the space between them is partly enclosed on either side with four very large stones, thin in substance, and of a semicircular figure. Near to them stands another pillar, called the Giant’s Thumb; and if this relic be in anywise typical of the member after which it is named, we may fairly conclude that “there were giants in the earth in those days.” Several rude and totally unintelligible figures still exist on some of these stones, which, if we may credit the uncertain voice of “dim tradition,” were raised in pious memory of one Owen Caesarius, an ancient hero, celebrated no less for his mighty achievements than for his colossal stature. (Allom 153)

Other candidates have also been suggested: Owain ap Dyfnwal and Owain Foel, who were possibly the grandson and grandnephew of Owain ap Dyfnwal. Weaver's faulty memory even threw Ossian into the mix:

It seems to me that that might come within the scope of your present book. There is a short monograph inside the church which says that the grave was reputed to be that of a hero king (of Scotland, or Northumbria) whose name I ‘misremember’ but it began with O—Ossian or something in that way, not quite that, I think. Such is my ‘order’ for this book. But what I would really like is to place an order well in advance when another book is under contemplation! But that time is far away. (Ellmann 582)

That Parthian shot against Work in Progress cannot have failed to find its mark, but Joyce chose to ignore it. Weaver’s ‘order’ was just the impetus he needed to get his stalled juggernaut moving again:

Joyce was electrified: here exactly was what he needed to give spin to his work in progress: the notion of HCE as a (sleeping) giant interred in the landscape and, beyond that, of a man assumed dead but sleeping. Even better, he now had the notion of resurrection of the old by the new and cyclicity (Fin, again) ... Everything hung together on the fulcrum of one word: Finn. And with MacCool came the ballad-hall Tim Finnegan with his hod (who now makes his appearance for the first time) and with him, his half-erected wall (by extension the unfinished tower of Babel). With his fall off the wall came the first Fall, Adam and Eve and all their descendants down to Mr and Mrs Porter shagged out in their bed [in III.4]. In a word, Miss Weaver’s fortuitously brilliant idea gave Joyce the notion for a chapter, or prelude, that was destined to become the common picture of Finnegans Wake: a giant dreaming of falls and walls, a babble of tongues, a tale of howes and graves and burrows [barrows?] and biers. (Danis Rose 95-96, quoted by Peter Chrisp)

The Giant’s Grave, St Andrew’s Church (Penrith)

The configuration of the giant’s grave, with vertical stones at head and toe and four horizontal stones between, suggested at once to Joyce the configuration of his hero Earwicker in his topographical aspect, his head at Howth, his toes at Castle Knock in the Phoenix Park, and also suggested the barrel of whiskey at the head and the barrel of Guinness at the feet of Finnegan, whose modern incarnation Earwicker was to be. He decided to put the passage in ‘the place of honour’ at the beginning of the book to set the half-mythological, half-realistic scene. (Ellmann 582)

And that is how Joyce conceived the Overture to Finnegans Wake: I.1, Riverrun. But it is only on page six of The Restored Finnegans Wake (RFW 006.01-23) that we finally get our first glimpse of HCE as a sleeping giant interred in the Dublin landscape.

First-Draft Version

As usual, it is often helpful to take a look at Joyce’s first draft of the paragraph under discussion:

Hurrah, there is but one globe for the owlglobe wheels anew which is testamount to the same thing as who shall see. He, a being so on the flat of his bulk, let wee peep at Hom, plate III. For what we are about to believe. So sigh us! Whose on the gyant dish? Finfaw the Fush. What’s at his head? A loaf of Singpatherick’s bread. And what’s at his tail? A glass of O’Connell’s fam[ous] old Du[blin ale]. But, what do I see. In his reins is planted a 1/2d gaff. Not one but legion. The king of the castle is k.o. The almost rubicund salmon of knowledge is one with the yesterworld of (Hayman 47-48)

At this point Joyce stopped in mid-sentence and probably began a new draft. But the main elements of the final version are all there: the giant interred in the landscape, Tim Finnegan’s Wake, HCE not only as Finn McCool but as the Salmon of Knowledge that Finn catches, and the Sacred Meal and Mastication of the Host.

The Giant’s Grave, Penrith (Cumbria)

The Owl Globe Wheels in View

As we saw in the preceding articles, the four paragraphs that precede this one retell the story of the popular Irish-American ballad Finnegan’s Wake in the form of a Viconian Cycle. According to Giambattista Vico’s philosophy of history, human civilization passes through three phases before collapsing into the chaos of uncivilization. But, inevitably, this chaos flows back into the first phase, and the Viconian cycle begins anew:

  • Theocracy, or the Age of Gods

  • Aristocracy, or the Age of Heroes

  • Democratcy, or the Age of Men

  • Collapse into Chaos, and Ricorso, or Reflux

This paragraph, then, represents the beginning of a new cycle, as the Viconian Cycle (the oul’ globe) turns full circle (wheels into view). As this is the Age of Gods, HCE is invoked as a divinity with the very first word: Hurrah.

  • In Han Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The A.B.C. Book, the letter H is represented by the word hurrah. Hence Hurrah = HCE.

  • Hurrah also evokes Allah, the Islamic name for God. In Finnegans Wake, Joyce often uses what is called the L/R Interchange to alter words. That Allah is invoked here is confirmed by the continuation, there is but young glebe, which echoes the central tenet of Islam: there is but one God. Joyce also introduced Islamic elements into the preceding paragraph.

Joyce has skillfully conflated several different motifs into this opening sentence:

globe Vico’s cycle, the World, Shakespeare’s theatre _The Globe_, HCE’s corpulent body, or perhaps his head, which we first glimpse as he rolls over in bed.

young glebe earth, dry land, the virgin soil that first appears as the waters of the Deluge abate.

German: Glaube, belief, faith. Oul’ Glaube also suggests the Old Faith, or Catholicism, in a Shakespearean context. Islam, in contrast, is a young Glaube, and Protestantism an even younger one. But when Joyce adds, which is tautaulogically the same thing, is he implying that all religions are essentially the same?

Why is the globe an owl globe? Is this a reference to the Moon? Is there an allusion here to the Old Moon in the New Moon’s Arms? In an earlier article I pointed out how the opening chapter of Finnegans Wake is like the overture of an opera that rehearses all the main themes from the subsequent drama. Everything that happens in this chapter anticipates in one way or another a salient moment in a later chapter of the book. And in II.1, Twilight Games, there is a celebrated passage describing the rising of the Moon (RFW 192.30 ff). So perhaps this is a foreshadowing of that passage? But Joyce had not yet drafted that passage, so who knows?

Tautaulogically is another of those pregnant terms that can be endlessly explored:

  • In Greek, tautologō [ταυτολογω] means to repeat using different words, which is essentially what the Viconian Cycle does: it repeats the same pattern over and over again, but the repetitions are never identical. Nevertheless, there is but one globe, which is just another way of saying that it is always the same oul’ globe that wheels anew. In the first draft, Joyce wrote which is testamount to the same thing: obviously a play on tantamount to, which describes tautologies. But there is also an allusion to the Old and New Testaments (Glaube as faith, or belief).

  • tau tau is TT in Greek. We have already had several instances of TT: Sir Trisram : tauftauf : tete in a tub : a toll, a toll : Toper’s Thorp : tragoady thuddersday : tramtrees : tournintaxes : Tell-no-Tailors’ Corner : thurum and thurum : trying thirstay mournin : Tee the tootal. I can’t say what precisely it is that Joyce is trying to convey with these variations on a theme. In ancient Greece, tau, τ, was symbol of rebirth or resurrection. That makes sense in the context of the Viconian Cycle starting again. Does rebirth imply duplication? Perhaps Joyce was simply alluding to the two syllables of Tristan, and his counterpart Tantris.

Giambattista Vico

Isis and Osiris

Much older than the ballad of the death and resurrection of Tim Finnegan, older even than the Christian story of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the ancient Egyptian story of the death and resurrection of Osiris.

  • see peegee ought he ought, platterplate, Ш See pg. 88, Plate III

This cryptic reference is to Rois et Dieux d’Égypte [Kings and Gods of Egypt] by the French Egyptologist Alexandre Moret. Opposite page eighty-eight is a photographic plate depicting Isis reviving her brother’s corpse. It is from the Temple of Seti I at Abydos. The photograph is actually Plate X, but Joyce has substituted an uppercase E on its back—similar in appearance to the Cyrillic letter sha—to represent HCE lying prostrate in his bed or grave, these two being essentially the same thing in Finnegans Wake. Note that the Giant’s Grave at Penrith resembles this figure—another of those fortuitous concurrences in which the book abounds.

In an earlier article in this series, I quoted the brief synopsis of the story of Isis and Osiris from the Eleventh Edition of The Encyclopædia Britannica, a copy of which Joyce possessed:

Osiris was a wise and beneficent king, who reclaimed the Egyptians from savagery, gave them laws and taught them handicrafts. The prosperous reign of Osiris was brought to a premature close by the machinations of his wicked brother Seth, who with seventy-two fellow-conspirators invited him to a banquet, induced him to enter a cunningly-wrought coffin made exactly to his measure, then shut down the lid and cast the chest into the Nile. Isis, the faithful wife of Osiris, set forth in search of her dead husband’s body, and after long and adventure-fraught wanderings, succeeded in recovering it and bringing it back to Egypt. Then while she was absent visiting her son Horus in the city of Buto, Seth once more gained possession of the corpse, cut it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them all over Egypt. But Isis collected the fragments, and wherever one was found, buried it with due honour; or, according to a different account, she joined the limbs together by virtue of her magical powers, and the slain Osiris, thus resurrected, henceforth reigned as king of the dead in the nether world. (Chisholm 50)

According to Joycean scholar Mark L Troy, this is not quite how the story ended:

After Isis had recovered the body of Osiris, she carefully concealed it in the marshes of the Nile Delta. Set, however, out hunting boar one evening, came across the hidden corpse of his brother. He furiously tore it into fourteen pieces, which he then proceeded to scatter all over Egypt (or in the sky, as we saw on p. 30). To the ancient Egyptian, believing in the potential immortality of the body, this was as if Osiris had been murdered a second time. Isis was forced to resume her quest, and eventually gathered together thirteen of the pieces. The fourteenth, the phallus of Osiris, had been devoured by a fish or crab, and Isis had to replace it with an artificial member ... (Troy 32)

In the Moret plate, the recumbent Osiris is depicted in an ithyphallic state. Moret’s caption reads: Veillée Funèbre d’Osiris-Ounnefer Mort, or The Wake of the Dead Osiris, the Ever-Perfect. Osiris’s epithet, Un-nefer, is believed to be the origin of the Classical name Onuphrius, which is sometimes Anglicized as Humphrey—HCE’s first name!

Isis Reconstructing the Body of Osiris

Mark L Troy’s doctoral dissertation, Mummeries of Resurrection: The Cycle of Osiris in Finnegans Wake, is the definitive guide to this subject.

The Giant Interred

According to Joyce’s biographer Richard Ellmann, the writer once informed a friend that:

... he conceived of his book as the dream of old Finn, lying in death beside the river Liffey and watching the history of Ireland and the world—past and future—flow through his mind like flotsam on the river of life. (Ellmann 544)

One of the best known images of Finnegans Wake is that of the mythical Irish giant Finn MacCumhaill lying interred in the Dublin landscape, with his head under the Hill of Howth, his toes sticking up at Castleknock, and his erect penis represented by the Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park. This is not a genuine piece of Irish folklore but an original creation of Joyce’s, influenced, no doubt, by both Weaver’s Penrith pamphlet and Jonathan Swift’s depiction of Lemuel Gulliver as a giant lying asleep on the coast of Lilliput:

The Giant Finn MacCumhaill Interred in the Dublin Landscape

The toponym Howth is derived from the Old Norse: hǫfuð, head, making this an appropriate representation of the giant’s head.

Note that Finn’s phallus, like that of Osiris, is artificial and Egyptian—the 62-metre tall obelisk in the Phoenix Park, which was erected to the memory of the Dublin-born Duke of Wellington. HCE will shortly appear in the guise of the Duke, who figures prominently throughout Finnegans Wake.

The Wellington Monument

On Finn’s two feet, Roland McHugh once commented:

[HCE’s] head is the Hill of Howth in the east, his feet the two hills of Castleknock at the west end of Phoenix Park. [Footnote: In the time of D’Alton (The History of the County of Dublin (Dublin, Hodges and Smith 1838), 641) these were prominent, one crowned with a tower, the other with a castle.] (McHugh 13)

... and towards the west, the two beautiful hills of Castleknock, one especially crowned with its ivy-mantled castle, and the other with a rounded tower, which, in the distance, assumes an aspect more imposing than that of a roofless pigeon-house, which in truth it is. (D’Alton 641)

The principal hill John D’Alton is referring to is Castleknock Hill, on which the ruins of the Norman castle can still be seen. The other hill could be Windmill Hill (now Mount Hybla) on the other side of College Road, but his description of a rounded tower suggests that he is actually referring to another hill about 200 m east of the castle. On old maps this is marked Tower and there is still a squat rounded tower on it:

Castleknock and Environs

Finn’s two extremities are identified with places in the local landscape:

  • West: Shopalist Chapelizod, the village in the west of Dublin where Finnegans Wake is set.

  • East: Bailywick Bailey Lighthouse, on Howth Head.

  • West: ashtun Ashtown, a village (now a suburb) in the north-west of Dublin.

  • East: baronoath Irish: barr an, the top of the, and Howth.

  • West: Buythebanks Buttevant Tower, a tower in the old walls of Dublin

  • East: Roundthehead Howth Head

  • West: foot of the bill foot of the hill at Castleknock (knock comes from the Irish word for hill, cnoc) in the west of Dublin.

  • East: ireglint’s eye Ireland’s Eye, a small island off Howth.

Why does Joyce give us four pairs of West-East locations? According to Raphael Slepon’s FWEET, the preceding line is glossed thus:

(four directions of [HCE]) ... (similar to Snellen’s optometric table where rows of rotated E’s of decreasing sizes are used for eye tests)

Snellen’s Optometric Table and E Chart

Herman Snellen was a Dutch ophthalmologist who designed the optometric chart that became the global standard for a century. His E Chart does look like HCE’s siglum in various orientations. Joyce’s eye troubles cast a dark pall over the composition of Finnegans Wake. As he worked on the book, his eyesight gradually deteriorated, necessitating several operations. Joyce was certainly very familiar with Snellen’s E Chart.

HCE’s Siglum

Real World

Overlying the dreamworld of Finnegans Wake is a real world, in which the entire book describes nothing more nor less than one night in the life of an old man. This man is the seventy-year-old widowed landlord of the Mullingar House in Chapelizod. He spends the night sleeping in his four-poster bed on the first floor of the inn. In a later chapter of the book, III.4, The Fourth Watch of Shaun, this bedroom is described in some detail—though the description is possibly about twenty years out of date. In The Restored Finnegans Wake this description is on page 435, where we read:

Bed with bedding. Spare. Flagpatch quilt. Yverdown design. (RFW 435.15-16)

The landlord, like his dream avatar HCE, is a corpulent individual. Lying prostrate in bed, with the flagpatch quilt covering his fat belly, he actually resembles the Irish landscape, with its gently rolling hills and patchwork of small fields:

A Typical Irish Rural Landscape

From Fjord to Fjell

This passage has been compared to a brief passage in James Macpherson’s Carric-Thura, one of his Ossianic verses:

All the night long she cries, and all the day, “O Connal, my love, and my friend!” With grief the sad mourner dies! Earth here encloses the loveliest pair on the hill. The grass grows between the stones of the tomb: I often sit in the mournful shade. The wind sighs through the grass; their memory rushes on my mind. Undisturbed you now sleep together; in the tomb of the mountain you rest alone! (Macpherson 220)

The Ossianic verses were supposedly translations of genuine Gaelic poems attributed to Oisín (Ossian), the son of Finn MacCumhaill. They were immensely popular in their day and had a huge influence on the Romantic movement. Macpherson’s works are also prominent in Finnegans Wake, not only because of their Irish element but also on account of the controversy over their true authorship. Joyce was very interested in the relationship between creator, narrator and reader. He explored this theme in Ulysses, with its multiple narrators, many of them highly unreliable, and he continues to explore it in Finnegans Wake.

The cluster of musical instruments in this passage—horn, winds, oboes, bells, flute, ocarina—also anticipates that as yet unwritten chapter III.4, where the tired lovemaking of HCE and ALP will be presented in a quasi-operatic style.

But HCE is hard of hearing and often deaf to his wife’s music. This is alluded to later by the phrase teary turty Taubling. German: Taub, deaf. That phrase, of course, has many other meanings packed into it:

  • Dear dirty Dublin an expression attributed—probably erroneously—to Dublin-born lady of letters Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan).

  • Turtle dove German: Taube, dove. The diminutive Täublein is a common term of endearment.

  • German: Täufling, one who is about to be baptized.

  • German: Täubling, the brittlegill mushroom. This is probably just a coincidence!

A Tale of a Tub

A Tale of a Tub

The image of HCE as the giant Finn MacCumhaill lying on the coast of Ireland is reminiscent of Jonathan Swift’ depiction of Gulliver asleep on the shore of Lilliput, so we should not be surprised to find a direct allusion to Swift in this paragraph. It is not his most famous work, however, that is referenced but the less well-known A Tale of a Tub:

With her issavan essavans and her patterjackmartins about all them inns and ouses. Tilling a teel of a tum, telling a toll of a teary turty Taubling.

A Tale of a Tub is another key work for Finnegans Wake, as James Atherton noted:

Swift’s works are continually mentioned and are amongst the most noticeable features of the background of Finnegans Wake. Perhaps A Tale of a Tub is named most often. The allusion to it which was the first to be written is in the Anna Livia chapter ... So it is possible that when it is named in other sections of the Wake the reference may be to the conversation of Joyce’s washerwomen as well as to Swift’s book ... later there is: ‘Tilling a teel of a tum’, following ‘issavan essavans and her patterjackmartins’ which brings in the two Esthers and Peter, Jack and Martin, the three brothers who represent the Roman, Anglican and Lutheran religions in A Tale of a Tub. (Atherton 118-119)

A few lines before, Joyce seemed to imply that the different religions of the world were all essentially the same. Although Swift wrote his Tale to defend Anglicanism from Catholicism and various flavours of Protestantism, the work was widely seen in its day as an attack on all religion. Like Finnegans Wake, A Tale of a Tub is also famously digressive, the digressions eventually swamping or eclipsing the main narrative.

The Sacred Meal and the Mastication of the Host

The following five or six lines describe the sleeping giant as the host—Latin: hostia—or sacrificial victim of the sacred meal. Grace before Meals is said and then HCE is described as the catch of the day with a cluster of fishy terms—in early Christian iconography, Christ was symbolized by a fish. At his head is a loaf of bread from Kennedy’s (124-131 Parnell Street), baked in Saint Patrick’s Bakery (15-17 Patrick Street), and at his feet a glass of O’Connell Ale from the Phoenix Brewery in Chapelizod. These, of course, represent the bread and wine of this strange Mass.

But before we can sink our teeth into his flour-white body, or quaff his frothy blood, he fades from our view and melts into the landscape. His head becomes the Hill of Howth, his feet become the two hills of Castleknock, and his ithyphallus becomes the Wellington Monument.

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

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