30 September 2022

A’Hara

A’Hara (RFW 039.23-040.05)

The opening paragraph of the Humphriad II—Book I, Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake—comprises a set of obituaries. These are the death notices of Hosty and a number of his close contacts. In the last article we examined the nine lines of Hosty’s obituary in minute detail. In this article we will devote as much attention to teasing out the eleven lines that make up the obituary of his colleague O’Mara. This individual was introduced to us in Chapter 2 as:

O’Mara, an ex-private 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 icelond, pillowed upon the stone of destiny colder than man’s knee or woman’s breast. (RFW 032.08-11)

First-Draft Version

The first draft of O’Mara’s obituary comprises just a single sentence, written in wide-awake King’s English:

O’Donnell is said to have enlisted at the time of the Crimean war under the name of Buckley. (Hayman 69)

Why is O’Mara identified here as O’Donnell? As we shall see, Joyce changed his name again in later drafts. In Chapter I.4, a character called Hyacinth O’Donnell plays an important role in the trial of Festy King. In Irish history, the best known bearer of this surname was Red Hugh O’Donnell, King of Tyrconnell, who played a prominent role in the Nine Years’ War. His brother and successor Rory O’Donnell was one of the Earls who took part in the Flight of the Earls (see below).

Peter McEnery as Red Hugh O’Donnell (1966)

Adaline Glasheen suggests an allusion to John MacDonald’s Diary of the Parnell Commission, which Joyce used as a source for Finnegans Wake. The Commission was set up by the British Government to investigate allegations of collusion between Parnell and the Invincibles, who murdered the Chief Secretary for Ireland Lord Frederick Cavendish and the Permanent Under-Secretary for Ireland T H Burke in the Phoenix Park on 6 May 1882. This seminal event, which took place just three months after the birth of James Joyce, occupies a prominent place in the tangled web that is Finnegans Wake.

The Irish National Invincibles were founded by the Irish Republican James Carey in 1881. Carey took part in the Phoenix Park Assassinations himself, but during the trial of the alleged conspirators he turned queen’s evidence and betrayed his colleagues, five of whom were hanged on his evidence. A marked man, Carey was given a new identity—James Power—and safe passage to South Africa. Among his fellow passengers was another Irish Republican known as Patrick O’Donnell, who became acquainted with Carey’s true identity during a stopover in Cape Town. On the final leg of the voyage to the Colony of Natal, O’Donnell shot Carey dead. A hero in Ireland’s Nationalist circles, Patrick O’Donnell was executed for murder at Newgate Prison in London on 17 December 1883. (A competing view claims that O’Donnell was actually in the pay of the British and was hired to assassinate Carey. According to this version of history, O’Donnell died in 1905.)

It is curious that Joyce chose to suppress most, if not all, of this in subsequent drafts.

James Carey & Patrick O’Donnell

O’Donnell’s enlisting in the Crimean War under the name Buckley anticipates Chapter II.3, The Scene in the Public. In this lengthy chapter, two epic tales are recounted, the second of which tells How Buckley Shot the Russian General. The Russian General is HCE and Buckley is his eternal enemy, the Oedipal Figure who supplants him—an embodiment of HCE’s two sons, Shem and Shaun. A few other allusions to the Crimean War have already been identified on this page of Finnegans Wake: the French Zouaves (those zouave players), the Battle of Inkerman (Inkermann) and Tennyson (Tuonisonian), whose narrative poem The Charge of the Light Brigade is set during the Crimean War.

By enlisting under an assumed name and leaving Ireland for a foreign land, O’Donnell is treading in the footsteps of James Carey. O’Donnell (Ó Domhnaill) is a Donegal name meaning “grandson of Donald”. MacDonald (Mac Domhnaill) is a Scottish name meaning “son of Donald”.

Ms or Mr O’Mara?

In Finnegans Wake, gender is fluid. Characters sometimes have an annoying tendency to change sex when one least expects it, confusing the reader even more than would otherwise be the case. O’Mara is just such a slippery character. When first introduced to us, O’Mara is given no first name or title. It is only natural to assume that this ex-secretary is a man, like Hosty and his other colleagues. But O’Mara’s nickname, Mildew Lisa, suggests that this particular colleague is in fact a woman. Later she is called Lisa O’Deavis, which seems to confirm this.

On the other hand, these names are usually taken to contain allusions to various historical men, such as the Irish tenor Joseph O’Mara, the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, the Irish nationalist poet Thomas Osborne Davis, and the Biblical characters Lazarus and Dives (Glasheen 211-212, 215). And O’Donnell, who enlists under the name Buckley (Irish: buachaill, boy), is clearly male.

Tristan und Isolde (Liebestod)

On the third hand, Mildew Lisa echoes the opening words (Mild und leise, Softly and gently) of the Liebestod that concludes Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. The words are sung by Isolde, an Irish princess, but they refer to Tristan, a Cornish prince. So Mildew Lisa is both male and female.

In the final draft of this death notice, O’Mara becomes A’Hara. This is a clear echo of the phrase a chara, which is both the vocative case of the Irish: cara, friend and the common way of opening a letter in Irish (Dear Sir, Dear Madam). Both usages apply to men as well as to women. Note, however, that A’Hara is now described as His husband, meaning Hosty’s husband. So is Hosty now female and A’Hara male? In The Scene in the Public, an important character in the other epic tale from that chapter, How Kersse the Tailor Made a Suit of Clothes for the Norwegian Captain, is called the ship’s husband. The identity of that particular husband will give us further pause.

In parenthesis, it is asked whether A’Hara is the same person as Okaroff. This Russian-sounding name is appropriate for someone who enlists to fight in the Crimean War, but it does suggest that, like James Carey, A’Hara has turned his coat, adopted an assumed name, and is now fighting for the Russians against his former colleagues.

Banner of The Shan Van Vocht

And to further confuse matters, A’Hara is qualified with the words poor old. This evokes the Poor Old Woman or Seanbhean Bhocht of Irish literature, a traditional personification of Ireland. In Finnegans Wake, however, male characters are sometimes qualified with these words. For example, Pore ole Joe refers to HCE’s Manservant Sackerson (RFW 112.36). At the top of this page, there was an allusion to the rebel song The Shan Van Vocht, which was first heard in 1797 on the eve of the United Irishmen’s Rebellion. The title was also used for a nationalist journal of 1896-1899.

A’Hara’s Career

In the final draft, A’Hara’s military career is much more complicated than O’Donnell’s:

[He] accepted the (Zassnoch!) ardree’s shilling at the conclusion of the Crimean War and, having flown his wild geese, alohned in crowds to warnder on like Shuley Luney, enlisted in Tyrone’s horse, the Irish whites, and soldiered a bit with Wolsey under the assumed name of Blanco Fusilovna Bucklovitch (spurious) ... (RFW 039.24-28)

To take the king’s shilling means to enlist in the British armed forces. But this takes place at the conclusion of the Crimean War, which seems to confirm that A’Hara fought on the Russian side as Okaroff. His true allegiance, however, remains ambiguous. Zassnoch suggests the Irish: Sasanach, Englishman, whereas ardree refers to the Middle Irish: ardrí, high-king (of Ireland). And, having flown his wild geese (and sown his wild oats), he enlists in Tyrone’s horse. This is clearly an allusion to both the Flight of the Earls in 1607 and the Flight of the Wild Geese in the 1690s. The former comprised Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and his followers, who went into exile at the conclusion of the Nine Years’ War. The Wild Geese were Irish Jacobites led by Patrick Sarsfield, the Earl of Lucan, who went into exile at the conclusion of the Williamite Wars. Both sets of exiles were crestfallen and down at heels, having lost everything in the wars. Many of them took up arms against the English in foreign wars.

Joseph Blanco White

Joseph Blanco White

Like James Carey, A’Hara once again assumes a spurious new identity: Blanco Fusilovna Bucklovitch. Joseph Blanco White was a Spanish priest of Irish extraction—one of the Irish whites. He converted to Anglicanism and was tutor to the children of Richard Whately, the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin (1831­‒1863). After a few years, however, he converted to Unitarianism and moved to Liverpool, where he died in 1841 at the age of 65. Among his writings is Second Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion, which was published in 1834. It was inspired by Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion, a fictional work published by Thomas Moore the previous year.

Blanco White is also remembered for his sonnet Night and Death, which might be relevant to Finnegans Wake (Zassnoch!), though I doubt it:

  • Russian: zasnut’, to fall asleep : noch, night.

  • Czech: zas noc, night again.

  • German: Das noch! You too!

Blanco’s middle name, Fusilovna, raises once again the question of A’Hara’s gender:

  • French: fusil, gun, rifle

  • Russian: -ovna, daughter of

Fusilovna is, therefore, a daughter-of-a-gun rather than a son-of-a-gun. But this gun fires “blanks”, I presume.

Garnet Joseph Wolseley

Garnet Joseph Wolseley

Blanco’s surname, Bucklovitch identifies him with Buckley, the Irish sniper who shoots the Russian General in Crimea in II.3. Joyce’s first draft, as we saw above, had Buckley, but the Russian patronymic, -ovich, calls Buckley’s allegiance and gender into question once again. Wolsey, with whom he soldiers a bit, is Garnet Wolseley, 1st Viscount Wolseley, an Anglo-Irish officer, who served as a Captain in the 90th Light Infantry during the Crimean War. In an illustrious career, he continued to rise in the ranks, becoming Commander-in-Chief of the forces in 1895, an office that had been held by Oliver Cromwell and the Duke of Wellington (the similarly named Wellesley) before him. Cardinal Wolsey is probably not relevant here, but the allusions to Henry VIII at the top of the page leave open the possibility.

As a repeat turncoat, Blanco White provides A’Hara with an appropriate identity to assume. Curiously, blanco is Spanish for white, so his name literally means White White. Is this the sign of a guilty conscience overcompensating?

Thomas Moore

James Joyce was a talented singer, with a fine tenor voice and an enduring love of song. His skills were such that, as a young man, he seriously considered a professional career in music. We should not be surprised, then, to learn that about a thousand songs are alluded to in the pages of Finnegans Wake. In the 1950s two scholars, Matthew J C Hodgart of Cambridge University, England, and Mabel P Worthington of Temple University, Philadelphia, catalogued as many songs as they could discover in Joyce’s writings:

Thomas Moore

The first surprise in studying the songs in Finnegans Wake was the discovery of nearly all of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies in the text. To be more exact, we have found all but two of the 124 melodies: the other two are probably hidden in the text somewhere. In every case Joyce quotes them by the title, which is usually part or whole of the first line; if Moore has given the poem a separate title, that is often quoted as well as the first line; and in most cases the air to which Moore indicated the words were to be sung is given. These airs are traditional folk tunes of great beauty, which have survived with various sets of words other than Moore’s (e.g., The Girl I Left Behind Me, Boyne Water, Eileen Aroon, Savourneen Deelish, Cruiskeen Lawn, Garryowen). Joyce is reminding us that Moore set a precedent in putting new words to old tunes, and that to appreciate all the overtones in a quotation we must think of both ...

[Footnote: See Thomas E. Connolly, The Personal Library of James Joyce, a Descriptive Bibliography (Buffalo, 1955). Item no. 207 in the catalogue of Joyce’s personal library is Moore’s Irish Melodies with the Celebrated and Unsurpassed Symphonies and Accompaniments of Sir John Stevenson and Sir Henry Bishop with a Biography of Thomas Moore and an Essay on the Music of Ireland (London: Ward, Lock, Bowen & Co., n.d.). The editorial comment (p. 29) is, “Table of contents heavily marked with crayon of various colors.”]

These allusions to Moore were mostly added after the early transition versions of Finnegans Wake, but some appear in the earliest drafts. It may be asked why Joyce went to such fantastic lengths to work in most or all of the Melodies: the answer is that these songs were entirely suitable to his purpose. First, their use is naturalistic, since every Irish household that could afford it possessed a copy of the Melodies with music, and the songs were on everyone’s lips. Secondly, they provide a complete cycle, covering almost every topic of interest to the Irish and as such prefiguring Finnegans Wake. Some of the melodies are historical (Let Erin remember) or mythological (Song of Fionnuala)—the two categories are never clearly distinguished in Ireland, a fact that led Professor Macalister to comment acidly on Irish archaeological textbooks that used Moore as a source. Others are political (She is far from the land, which is about Robert Emmet), others Bacchic (Come, send round the wine), or romantic (The young May moon is beaming, love). We cannot think of any praise of horseflesh in the Melodies, but otherwise the range of Irish interests is complete. Despite their sentimentality, the songs in the Irish Melodies were a real contribution to national culture and had some political import. Thirdly, Joyce must have admired them as art. Though faintly absurd on the printed page, they come to life when sung, expressing simple feelings with purity and abounding in subtle rhythmical patterns. Apart from Burns, Moore is almost the only writer of true songs since the end of the seventeenth century. Joyce may jeer at Moore’s second-class Romantic Agony by calling the melodies “Tummy Moore’s maladies,” but his inclusion of the whole cycle is a tribute. (Hodgart & Worthington 9-11)

Moore’s Irish Melodies

Joyce loved lists and catalogues. The inclusion of Moore’s Irish Melodies in Finnegans Wake is but one testament to this penchant:

Joyce has an extraordinary way of putting into his book the names of all kinds of things, and all sorts of people. There are several thousand characters identified in A Census, and at least another thousand may be hidden in the Wake, and for many—probably for most—of them Joyce seems to have been quite satisfied simply to include their names. Many hundreds of books are also named; and there are all kinds of more or less complete sets of different kinds of objects scattered through the book: most of the books of the Bible, about a hundred and eleven suras of the Koran, the titles—and, fantastically enough, the names of the original airs—of all Moore’s Melodies. (Atherton 45)

Thomas Moore was born in Dublin in 1779, and like Joyce showed an early talent for music. He studied at Samuel Whyte’s Academy on Grafton Street, where he was taught Greek and Latin. But he also learned French and Italian from private tutors. This predilection for foreign languages is another trait he shared with Joyce. Thomas Moore was one of the first Catholics to be admitted to Trinity College Dublin, where he studied law from 1795 to 1799. After taking his degree, he moved to London to continue his legal studies at Middle Temple. In London, he began to make a name for himself as a translator of Greek lyric poetry. In 1803 he sailed for Bermuda to take up the post of registrar of the Admiralty Prize Court, but after only three months in the post he appointed a deputy to take his place, while he embarked on an extended tour of North America.

Middle Temple (1830)

In 1806, following his return to London, he published Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems. Francis Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review wrote a scathing critique of the work, calling into question Moore’s morality. Moore challenged him to a duel, but when the police intervened and Jeffrey’s gun was found to be unloaded, the two men became fast friends.

Moore’s most famous work, the ten volumes of his Irish Melodies, appeared between 1808 and 1834. Drawing upon Edward Bunting’s A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music (1797) and other collections of traditional Irish airs, Moore wrote new lyrics to old tunes. The Irish composer John Andrew Stevenson provided the arrangements (symphonies and accompaniments). Irish Melodies was an immediate success and secured Moore’s reputation for all time. In one of his letters he predicted that his Irish Melodies would be “the only work of my pen, as I very sincerely believe, whose fame (thanks to the sweet music in which it is embalmed) may boast a chance of prolonging its existence to a day much beyond our own.” Never in the history of letters did a writer so accurately predict his future standing in the world.

Among Moore’s other works two may be noted. Lalla Rookh, An Oriental Romance (1817) was popular and influential in its day. Several musical adaptations are extant. It is briefly alluded to on a number of occasions in Finnegans Wake. Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of a Religion (1833) is a fictionalized meditation upon the merits and demerits of the Catholic and Protestant religions. The following year, as we have seen, Joseph Blanco White brought out his own “sequel” to Moore’s Travels.

Thomas Moore died at Sloperton Cottage, Wiltshire, on 25 February 1852 (26th according to some sources). He was 72.

Alone in Crowds to Wander On (Shule Aroon)

  • German (colloquial): löhnen, to pay up, to cough up

  • German: warnen, to warn


Alone in Crowds to Wander On was first published in 1834 in the tenth and final volume of Moore’s Irish Melodies. An elegy in A minor, the poem laments the loss of love. The traditional melody to which it is sung is called Shule Aroon, from the Irish: Siúil, a Rún, Walk, My Love. This is an old song, in which a woman laments that her lover has gone to France to fight as one of the Wild Geese. But she accepts her fate with heartfelt resignation. The relevance to A’Hara’s career is obvious. Shuley sounds like Shirley, which again calls A’Hara’s gender into question.

In the Ithaca episode of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus sings this song to Bloom:

What fragment of verse from the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish languages were cited with modulations of voice and translation of texts by guest to host and by host to guest?

By Stephen: suil, suil, suil arun, suil go siocair agus suil go cuin (walk, walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care).

By Bloom: Kifeloch, harimon rakatejch m’baad l’zamatejch (thy temple amid thy hair is as a slice of pomegranate). (Ulysses 640)

(Joyce’s spelling of the Irish is woeful.)

Dove and Raven

After A’Hara has soldiered a bit under Wolsey, we are told:

>the cawer and the marble halls of Pump Court Columbarium, the home of the old seakings, looked upon each other and queth their haven evermore ... (RFW 039.29-040.01)

Let us see if we can dissect this bit of Joycean forcemeat.

Ravens are cawers (they caw), while columba is Latin for dove. In Finnegans Wake, the coupling of the black raven and the white dove is characteristic of Issy with her split personality.

The marble halls brings to mind Arline’s popular aria I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls in The Bohemian Girl, a Romantic opera by the Irish composer Michael William Balfe. The marble halls, where Arline grew up before being abducted by gypsies, were in her father Count Arnheim’s castle on the Danube. As he is the Governor of Pressburg (Bratislava), this may be identified with Pressburg Castle, but the opera’s libretto simply refers to “The Chateau and Grounds of Count Arnheim, on the Danube, near Presburg”.

Pressburg Castle (Bratislava)

Pump Court is an enclosed courtyard in London. It lies about 100 m from Middle Temple, where Thomas Moore studied law intermittently between 1799 and 1803. It is also featured in Charles Dickens’ novel Martin Chuzzlewit. The opening chapter of that novel, in which Dickens traces the ancestry of his hero, was undoubtedly in the back of Joyce’s mind when he began the Humphriad by tracing the genesis of Harold or Humphrey Chimpden’s occupational agnomen (RFW 024.01 ff).

A columbarium is a sepulchre for funerary urns—ravens are omens of death. It is also another name for a dovecote, in which pigeons are bred. But there is no columbarium close to Pump Court. There is a Pigeon House in Dublin—it is now the Poolbeg Generating Station—but it was named for its first caretaker John Pidgeon, who operated a restaurant there in the 1760s. I do not understand why Joyce alludes to Pump Court here. The connection with Thomas Moore seems too slight to justify the allusion. In the previous chapter, the common lodging house where Hosty and his colleagues sleep, Abide with Oneanother, has the address: Block W.W. ... Pump Court, The Liberties. The Liberties is a district in south-central Dublin, in the vicinity of St Patrick’s Cathedral, but there is no Pump Court in Dublin. There are other Pump Courts in London (eg in Vine Yard, Southwark), but none is obviously relevant to this passage.

Pump Court, Temple, London

As the cawer and the marble halls ... looked upon each other, it is reasonable to see in cawer an allusion to the Tower of London, which is famed for its ravens. Where, then, are the marble halls that look upon the Tower? There are no prominent buildings across the Thames from the Tower, and Pump Court lies about 2.5 km away.

The cawer and the marble halls of Pump Court Columbarium are glossed as the home of the old seakings. In the Old Norse Sagas, Viking warlords were generally called Sea-Kings. The early Scandinavian Kings of Dublin were Sea Kings.

The Sea Kings is also the title of an essay by the Young Irelander Thomas Osborne Davis—a review of Samuel Laing’s The Heimskringla: A History of the Norse Kings of 1844. Davis uses the term Sea Kings to refer to all the Scandinavian conquerors of the Early Middle Ages, including those who carved out petty kingdoms for themselves in Ireland:

These Sea Kings were old friends and old foes of Ireland. History does not reach back to the age in which ships passed not between Ireland and Scandinavia. It seems highly probable that the Milesians themselves—that Scotic (or Scythian) race who gave our isle the name of Scotia Major—reached our shore, having sailed from the Baltic. They were old Sea Kings.

So were the Jutes, or Getæ, who came under Hengist and Horsa to England in the fifth century, and received the isle of Thanet as a reward for repelling the Irish invaders; and, not content with this pay, used their saxes (or short swords), from whence we name them Saxons, till all the east of England obeyed them. So, too were the Danes, who conquered that same England over again in the tenth century. So were the Black and White Strangers, who held our coast and ravaged our island till Brien of Thomond trampled their raven at Clontarf on the 23rd of April, 1014. And the Normans themselves, too, were of that self-same blood. (Davis 54)

Thomas Osborne Davis

FWEET glosses cawer as Irish: cathair, city. In Dublin City, the home of the old sea kings was, I suppose, the Viking Longphort, which stood on the future site of Dublin Castle. Several of the castle’s towers are still extant. Could cawer refer to one of these? On Christmas night 1592, Red Hugh O’Donnell famously escaped from one of the towers in Dublin Castle with his cousins Art and Henry O’Neill after spending four years in custody. This event helped to precipitate the Nine Years’ War.

In the Gaelic Athletic Association, the traditional crest of County Dublin features a raven atop a ford of hurdles. The bird represents the raven banner of the Viking founders of Dublin, while the ford of hurdles represents the ancient Irish village of Áth Cliath [Hurdlesford], from which Dublin takes it modern Irish name (Baile Átha Cliath):

GAA Crest of County Dublin

Having looked upon each other, the cawer and the Columbarium queth their haven evermore. The obvious allusion here is to Edgar Allen Poe’s narrative poem The Raven, which includes the refrain:

Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

Like Moore’s Alone in Crowds to Wander On and the traditional air Siúil, a Rún, The Raven laments the poet’s lost love.

The raven and dove have also quit their heaven for evermore. As FWEET suggests, this may allude to the closing lines of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which Adam and Eve quit Paradise for ever:

Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;

The world was all before them, where to choose

Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.

They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,

Through Eden took their solitary way.

This is an obituary, so quitting paradise is a metaphor here for dying.

Edgar Allen Poe

A’Hara’s Death

The final lines of this section describe the circumstances of A’Hara’s death:

for it transpires that on the other side of the water it came about that on the field of Vasileff’s Cornix inauspiciously with his unit he perished, saying, This papal leafless to old chap give, rawl chawclates for mouther-in-louth. (RFW 040.02-04)

John Gordon, Professor Emeritus of English at Connecticut College, comments:

49.12: “on the other side of the water:” a code phrase among Jacobites; as McHugh notes the Wild Geese (.5) were Irish Jacobites. (Gordon)

In the 18th century, Bonny Prince Charlie, the Jacobite Pretender to the throne of Great Britain, was known to his supporters as the King o’er the Water. He was born in Rome and spent most of his life on the continent.

Vasileff is another Russian-sounding name: Vasily [Василий] is the Russian form of the Greek: Βασίλειος, Basil, which means kingly or royal. The form Vasiliev is a common Russian surname. The other element is Latin: cornix, crow.

Magpie Augury

FWEET’s gloss on the word inauspiciously is:

auspice: an omen (usually a good one), originally based on divination by the observation of birds (from Latin avis: bird + Latin specere: to observe; discussed by Vico)

In Chapter V of A Portrait of a the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus tries to interpret a flight of birds above the National Library, wondering whether it is “an augury of good or evil”. He later recalls this episode in Ulysses. In the Proteus episode, he refers to his ashplant as “his augur’s rod of ash”.

Obviously, the field of Vasileff’s Cornix refers to the battlefield on which A’Hara perishes with his unit—but which battlefield? There is a Vasili Beach near Balaclava, the site of the famous battle during the Crimean War, but Joyce is unlikely to have heard of it. During the battle, the Russians deployed crow’s feet, or caltrops, to prevent enemy troops from approaching the Russian defences.

Crow’s Feet (Caltrops) from the Battle of Balaclava

A’Hara’s dying words are equally mysterious:

This papal leafless to old chap give, rawl chawclates for mouther-in-louth. (RFW 040.04)

In the context of Buckley and the Russian General—Buckley shoots the Russian General when the latter, having defecated on the battlefield, wipes his arse with a sod of turf—it is tempting to interpret papal as paper (ie toilet paper) and chawclates (chocolates) as excrement. Buckley is the Oedipal Figure, who embodies both the brothers Shem and Shaun. In his role as Shaun the Post, who delivers ALP’s Letter to HCE, it is fitting that the dying Buckley leave a letter (paper leaflet) for his aul’ boy (old chap), or father. In his role as Shem the Pen, who indites the Letter, it is fitting that he give ALP excrement. In Chapter I.7 (Shem the Pen), Shem manufactures indelible ink out of his own dung (RFW 146.19-29).

Shem’s mother, ALP, dictates the letter to him. That explains why mother becomes mouther. But why is she called A’Hara’s mother-in-law? Is it because A’Hara was introduced to us as His husband (ie Hosty’s husband)? And why does law become louth? County Louth is the smallest county in Ireland. The Treaty of Mellifont, which brought the Nine Years’ War to an end and precipitated the Flight of the Earls, was signed at Mellifont Abbey in Louth. The Abbey also served as the headquarters of William III of Orange during the Battle of the Boyne, which was fought on the Louth-Meath border. Ireland’s national epic, Táin Bó Cúailgne (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), is partly set on the Cooley Peninsula in County Louth. Are any of these allusions relevant?

Mellifont Abbey

There are many other allusions here that are open to debate:

  • papal belonging to papa?

  • Papal Legate An ambassador from the Pope. Cardinal Wolsey was a Papal Legate.

  • Russian: papirosy, cigarettes.

  • tobacco leaves.

  • chap the jaw

  • chaw a plug or quid of chewing tobacco : the jaw

Rudyard Kipling

It has been suggested by Finn Fordham of the University of Nottingham that Joyce’s A’Hara owes something to Kimball “Kim” O’Hara, the orphan son of an Irish soldier, and the protagonist of Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim—and also to Kim’s father, Kimball O’Hara Sr, who had been a colour-sergeant in the Mavericks, an Irish regiment serving in British India:

Rudyard Kipling

Kipling’s rapid sketch here of an Irish soldier’s life disappearing down the plug hole, resembles the rapid sketch that Joyce provided for the Balladeer ‛A’Hara’ (that is O’Donnell→O’Mara→O’Hara), who had also been a soldier in an Irish regiment. (Fordham 191)

In addition to Kim’s father, another Irish soldier called O’Hara appears in Kipling’s writings:

Kim’s father, O’Hara, had fought for the Mavericks, who had—like Joyce’s ‛A’Hara’—fought in the Crimean War. The other O’Hara fought for the Tyrone Regiment—like Joyce’s ‛A’Hara’ who enlisted in “Tyrone’s horse”. In his story “Black Jack”, O’Hara has a prominent role as the Colour Sergeant for the Tyrones, a regiment described in terms that say a great deal about Kipling’s Unionist sympathies. (Fordham 192)

The narrator of “Black Jack” describes mutinous members of the Tyrones as Black Oirish:

These “Black Oirish” in the Tyrone regiment receive a nod in the passage from Finnegans Wake quoted above with the mention of “Tyrone’s horse, the Irish Whites”. (Fordham 192)

Finally, Fordham points out how the Russian context of the A’Hara passage is also appropriate:

It is also worth mentioning the Russian context which Joyce weaves into ‛A’Hara’s’ story, as at least coinciding with the world of Kipling’s O’Hara, especially the son ... The story of Kim plays out against a conflict on the North-West frontier of India (present day Afghanistan) between Britain and Russia, known during the 19th century as ‛The Great Game’ ... Like Kipling’s O’Hara fils, Kim, ‛A’Hara’ is an Irish military spy involved in the conflict between the Empires of Britain and Russia. Unlike Kipling’s O’Hara-hero, it is far from clear whose side Joyce’s A’Hara-hero is on. (Fordham 192-193)

Finn Fordham in Trieste

He Was

The six death notices in this passage end with the expression He was in six different languages. A’Hara’s is in Russian: Byl [был], He was. This is appropriate for someone who took part in the Crimean War, especially someone who may have fought on the Russian side under the assumed name Okaroff.

Why does Joyce spell был Booil and not Byl? Is there a hint here of bull, as in Papal bull? In Finnegans Wake, the Papal bull known as Laudabiliter, in which the English Pope Adrian IV (Nicholas Breakspear) is alleged to have granted Ireland to Henry II as a Papal fief, makes several appearances. This possibility casts further light on the papal leafless in the previous line.

Final Thoughts

John Gordon has suggested that A’Hara’s military career is in reality O’Mara’s dream:

the ‛O’Mara’ of 40.16-20 was ‛an exprivate secretary of no fixed abode’ seen sleeping on a step of the Bank of Ireland, former seat of the Irish Parliament and thus a reminder of stolen nationhood, dreaming that the icy step was the stone on which of old the Irish kings had once been crowned. At 49,03-15 he returns as ‛A’Hara’, now one of Ireland’s wild geese, still with ‛no fixed abode’ but taking revenge on those who robbed him of his home, seeking refuge in ‛the home of the old seakings’; his final gesture, handing on a letter, is the act of a private secretary. We may, I think, take his second incarnation as the dream of his first. (Gordon 130)

In A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson have offered a curious interpretation of the phrase with his unit he perished:

O’Hara [i.e., O’Mara] ... soldiered a bit with Wolseley ... after which, on the other side of the water, inauspiciously, with his daughter, he perished. (Campbell & Robinson 64)

They never explain how they get with his daughter out of Joyce’s with his unit.

The Bank of Ireland (Irish Parliament Building)

In these few lines, we’ve had gaggles of geese and murders of crows to contend with. In the next article, we shall be occupied with a bird of an entirely different feather—a jailbird, who is incarcerated in a lunatic asylum.

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

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