Megaloceros
(RFW 011.36–012.07)
The next paragraph of this section was not part of Joyce’s first draft. Here it is revealed that the first two entries in the annals are antediluvian events, Ante Diluvio: that is, they occurred in the previous Viconian cycle before the Flood, which is described in the concluding pages of Finnegans Wake. The final two entries, however, are Anno Domini: they belong to the present cycle.
The silence between them—[Silent]—is now identified as the ginnandgoe gap. This is a reference to the Old Norse: Ginnungagap, gaping abyss, yawning void. In Norse Mythology, the Ginnungagap was the vast chasm between Niflheim (the realm of ice) and Muspelheim (the realm of fire) before the creation. Where the fire melted the ice it formed the substance eitr, which formed the giant Ymir. It corresponds to the Chaos of ancient Greek mythology. Chaos also means gap, abyss, void.
Temporally, however, this silence seems to represent the moment when one Viconian cycle ends and the next begins. Joyce may be referring to the gap between the end of Finnegans Wake and its rebeginning. The opening section occurs before the Flood (antediluvious), while the book ends with ALP’s final speech (annadominant). The last word of the text, the, would be spelled in Ancient Hebrew by a single letter, daleth (ד) which means door. Hence the reference a few lines below to someone banging upon the bloody door (banged pan the bliddy duran).
The Book of Kells
The bizarre image of the copyist having to flee with his unfinished scroll owes much to a passage in Edward Sullivan’s 1914 edition of the Book of Kells, Ireland’s most famous illustrated manuscript:
The opening words of St. Matthew’s Gospel, “Liber generationis,” one of the most notable instances of illumination in the Manuscript, fill the recto of folio 29 (Plate VI.). The spiral ornamentation and the general colour harmony of this very beautiful page are particularly striking. Note, too, the curious and rarely relied on effect produced by the alteration of the colours in which the ground and the letters of the word “generationis” are depicted. The rudely-drawn figure standing in the lower left-hand corner is said to represent the Evangelist. The smaller and much more naturally drawn figure at the top may also be intended for him. The difference of execution in the two cases would, I suggest, almost justify the conclusion that the larger figure was a later addition in order to fill a space left vacant when the original artist had touched the Manuscript for the last time. I think, too, that we can almost see from the illumination itself the very place where he was hurried from his work. There are many unfinished portions in the whole page; for instance, the small face to the left of the upper limb of the L, the piece of the border of the same limb just above and to the right of the face, and possibly the space into which the right elbow of the upper figure projects. But more noticeable than all these is the unfinished condition of the intertwined letters ER in the circle which forms the lower portion of the antique and curiously formed B. The dark line surrounding the red E is only half completed. The interruption of so very simple a feature of the work seems to tell a tale of perhaps even tragic significance. (Sullivan 11)
The various reasons given for the scribe’s flight—the rising Flood, a charging elk (an antediluvian inhabitant of Ireland), a bolt of lightning, an earthquake, or a Danish Viking knocking on the bloody door—may also have been suggested by Sullivan:
It is, of course, now impossible to guess with anything approaching certainty how some of the illuminations came to be left unfinished—the death of a great artist before his work was done; the turmoils and uncertainty of the age; the necessity for keeping so precious a treasure in concealment when piracy and plunder were always to be feared, will suggest themselves as possible accounting for these strange lacunæ—but none of these explanations is completely satisfactory. (Sullivan 12)
The unfinished nature of the Book of Kells and the later retouchings anticipate the similar way in which Finnegans Wake was being constantly retouched and elaborated. The copyist is both Shem the Penman, who indites ALP’s Letter at her dictation, and Joyce himself, whose writing of Finnegans Wake was being continually interrupted by various unforeseen events and changes of domicile.
Joyce had a copy of Sullivan’s book, which he carried about with him wherever he went. In 1922 he presented a copy to his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver for Christmas. He once revealed to the young art critic Arthur Power what this book meant to him:
In all the places I have been to, Rome, Zurich, Trieste, I have taken it about with me, and have pored over its workmanship for hours. It is the most purely Irish thing we have, and some of the big initial letters which swing right across a page have the essential quality of a chapter of Ulysses. Indeed, you can compare much of my work to the intricate illuminations. I would like it to be possible to pick up any page of my book and know at once what book it is. (Power 67, Ellmann 558-559)
Commerce and Finance
This paragraph also contains a cluster of commercial and financial terms:
billy bill, and Danish: billig, cheap
charged him
in sum
pan (slang) money
fine
covered to cover a debt
six marks a former unit of currency in Germany
ninepince nine pence
metalmen faces of rulers on coins? Also: middlemen
labour’s dross
in our rear in arrears
gynecure sinecure
fine
sum
meddlement middlemen
drawers ones who sign a bill of exchange or a cheque
safe
Taking our lead from Rose & O’Hanlon (JJDA), we find that this passage is a reference to something Joyce read in Stephen Gwynn’s The History of Ireland:
Tradition indicates that this civilising influence of Patrick’s work was appreciated. It is told that King Leary, who would not be a Christian, called in the Christian missionary for help and counsel in a great work. He decided to bring together in a written code the laws of Ireland. A body of nine was appointed ...
This code of laws, known as the Senchus Mor, is preserved, and, though it has no doubt been altered in many respects, there is little reason to doubt that a code was originally framed by these nine men in 439.
If this be so, it means that Leary accepted the fact that Ireland was becoming Christian, and was wise enough to see that the laws must be brought into conformity with the new creed; and also that Patrick, in order to get the authority of native law and custom on his side, agreed to admit certain principles that differed from the general law of the Roman Empire and from the interpretation of most Christian states. This was especially true of the law which laid down that killing should be atoned for by a fine, legally fixed—as was the usage in Ireland as long as the native law lasted. This principle has been common to many countries. It was followed by all Scandinavia through the Middle Ages; and though it has been described as barbarous, it is less so than the excessive use of capital punishment characteristic of the English law, under which even in the nineteenth century pocket-picking or sheep-stealing was punishable by death. (Gwynn 24-25)
Sibling Rivalry
Note how the concluding sentence of this paragraph comprises two parallel clauses separated by a third clause:
A scribicide then and there is led off under old’s code with some fine covered by six marks or ninepins in metalmen for the sake of his labour’s dross
while it will be only now and again in our rear of o’er era, as an upshoot of military and civil engagements, that
a gynecure was let on to the scuffold for taking that same fine sum covertly by meddlement with the drawers of his neighbour’s safe.
Do these military and civil engagements allude to the sibling rivalry between Shem the Pen and Shaun the Post, which is such a prominent feature of Finnegans Wake? As the inditer of ALP’s Letter, Shem is certainly a scribe, so killing him would make Shaun a scribicide. But why would Shem be a gynecure? Campbell & Robinson interpret this word to mean a lady’s man, from the Greek: γυνή [gunē], woman, and Latin: cura, care (Campbell & Robinson 46). A sinecure was originally an ecclesiastical benefice in which the clergyman has no souls to care for.
The final phrase hints at the sexual element of their rivalry—the draws of Thy Neighbour’s Wife. According to Rose & O’Hanlon, Thy Neighbour’s Wife refers to the 1923 novel of that name by Liam O’Flaherty.
Loose Ends
There are also a few references in this paragraph to another Irish novel, The Collegians by Gerald Griffin. Dannaman echoes Danny Mann, the novel’s sinister hunchback, while metalmen and meddlement remind us that Kyrle Daly’s father was a middleman. In his Paris-Pola Commonplace Book, a notebook he compiled around 1903-04 in Paris and Pola, Joyce drew up a list of writers of fiction—presumably ones he intended to read. Gerald Griffin’s name appears second on this list. His most popular work was adapted for the stage as The Colleen Bawn by Dion Boucicault and for the opera-house as The Lily of Killarney by Julius Benedict.
It should be remembered that when we emerged from the water closet (museyroom) at the end of the Battle of Waterloo sequence, our attention was drawn to the hen, Biddy Doran, who was scavenging on the kitchen midden in the backyard of HCE’s tavern, the Mullingar House. In Finnegans Wake, this midden represents the buried past. Its archaeological strata are like the leaves of a book that may be read by the enlightened. HCE’s story is just one of those buried in the midden. Thus the midden is merely another form of □, the square-shaped siglum Joyce used in his notes to designate any container of HCE (eg Finnegans Wake itself, ALP’s letter, the coffin in which HCE is later buried, Dublin, the bed in the master bedroom, and ultimately the flagpatch quilt under which the landlord of the tavern is sleeping).
This paragraph contains a few fleeting reminders of this scene:
bliddy duran Biddy Doran, the hen
gallous Latin: gallus, a cock, dunghill cock
elk charged him ECH, HCE’s initials reversed
The Romans had a saying:
Every man is cock of his own dunghill. (Lewis & Short 801)
And that’s as good a place as any to beach the bark of our tale.
References
Julius Benedict (composer), Dion Boucicault, John Oxenford (librettists), The Lily of Killarney, Boosey & Co, London (1862)
Dion Boucicault, The Colleen Bawn, or, The Brides of Garryowen, The Laura Keene’s Theater, French’s Standard Drama, Volume 46, Number 366, Samuel French, New York (1860)
Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York (1944)
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, New and Revised Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1982)
Gerald Griffin, The Collegians: A Tale of Garryowen, D & J Sadlier & Co, New York (1843)
Stephen Gwynn, The History of Ireland, The Macmillan Company, New York (1923)
James Joyce, Joyce’s Paris-Pola Commonplace Book, National Library of Ireland, The Joyce Papers 2002, c.1903-1928, MS 36,639/2/A, Dublin (2002)
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Faber & Faber Limited, London (1939, 1949)
James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
Charlton T Lewis, Charles Short, A New Latin Dictionary, Harper & Brothers, New York (1891)
Liam O’Flaherty, Thy Neighbour’s Wife, Jonathan Cape, London (1923)
Arthur Power, From the Old Waterford House, Carthage Press, Waterford (1940)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
Edward Sullivan, The Book of Kells: Described by Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart., and Illustrated with Twenty-Four Plates in Colour, Third Edition, “The Studio” Limited, London (1927)
Giambattista Vico, Goddard Bergin (translator), Max Harold Fisch (translator), The New Science of Giambattista Vico, Third Edition (1744), Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY (1948)
Image Credits
Megaloceros: Charles Robert Knight (artist), Public Domain
The Book of Kells: Book of Kells, IE TCD MS 58, Folio 29r, Matthew 1:1, © The Board of Trinity College Dublin, Fair Use
The Metal Man, Sligo: © Ireland Family Vacations, Fair Use
Cain and Abel: Titian (artist), Santa Maria della Salute, Venice, Public Domain
Gerald Griffin: Capewell & Kimmel (engravers), Daniel Griffin, The Life of Gerald Griffin, D & J Sadlier & Company, New York (1843), Public Domain
Useful Resources
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