Now, Be Aisy, Good Mr Finnimore

Now, Be Aisy, Good Mr Finnimore (RFW 019.24–021.12)

In the last article in this series on James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake, we saw how Joyce resumed his dramatization of the ballad Finnegan’s Wake following a lengthy digression, which included two dreamlike interludes, The Museyroom and The Prankquean. In the following long paragraph, he reintroduces the dominant image of this opening chapter, that of HCE as a giant interred in the Dublin landscape. This image—nay the whole of this chapter—was originally inspired by an image of the Giant’s Grave in Penrith, Cumbria, in a pamphlet, A Short Historical Sketch of S Andrew’s Parish Church, Penrith, which his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver sent him in the autumn of 1926.

Giant’s Grave, Penrith (Postcard)

In Joyce’s imagination, the stout landlord of the Mullingar House, Chapelizod, lying in bed beneath a patchwork quilt, with his head sticking up at one end and his feet at the other, not only recalled the image of Tim Finnegan laid out on his “deathbed” for his wake but also resembled a giant buried beneath Dublin. It has become one of the best known images of Finnegans Wake: the mythical Irish giant Finn MacCumhaill interred in the landscape, with his head under the Hill of Howth (Old Norse: hǫfuð, head), his toes sticking up at Castleknock, and his erect penis represented by the Wellington Monument in the Phoenix Park.

The Giant Finn MacCumhaill Interred in the Dublin Landscape

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:

Gulliver in Lilliput

As Geert Lernout of the University of Antwerp notes:

Joyce now wrote a new section ... in which we once more return to HCE buried beneath the Dublin landscape. He is praised, now that he is dead ... (Crispi & Slote 57)

It is traditional not to speak ill of the dead, but in this section HCE’s eulogists are more concerned with keeping him down than singing his praises. And who are these praisers of his past? As they are the guests at Tim Finnegan’s wake, suspicion must fall upon The Twelve. Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson certainly thought so:

Whereupon the twelve gentlemen hasten to hold him down and to soothe him back to sleep. For a new and prosperous world age has been founded on the fact of his demise. It would be nothing short of catastrophic to have the old substratum himself break back into action. (Campbell & Robinson 53)

With those words “hold him down”, we are back to the image of Gulliver being tied down by the Lilliputians—just as Swift felt that his ambitions were being thwarted by petty inferiors.

John Gordon, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Connecticut, also detects the presence of The Twelve in this passage:

The voice here, appropriately, is of the twelve customers, speaking chorus rather like Flann O’Brien’s ‘The Plain People of Ireland’. (Gordon 120)

We have met The Twelve several times before in this opening chapter, but a brief review would not be out of place here. To understand The Twelve and their role in Finnegans Wake, however, we also need to know something about The Four.

Joyce’s Sigla for The Four and The Twelve

The Four and The Twelve

The Four Old Men are the historians or annalists of Finnegans Wake. Their immediate inspiration was the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which Joyce conflated into the character Mamalujo: Matthew Gregory, Mark Lyons, Luke Tarpey and Johnny MacDougal. In an Irish context, however, they are also the Four Masters, a quartet of 17th-century scholars who compiled the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland.

As the historians of Finnegans Wake, the Four Old Men carry much of the book’s narration. Their familiar voices can be heard on almost every page. Each of them has his own particular accent and pet phrases. They are judges as well as historians, and are forever carrying out inquests (Inn Quests), inquiries, and interrogations. They sit in judgment on the other characters in Finnegans Wake. They are forever trying to get to the bottom of things.

The Four Old Men also represent space: the four cardinal directions (North, South, East and West), and the four provinces of Ireland (Ulster, Munster, Leinster and Connacht). Matthew Gregory is from Belfast, Mark Lyons from Cork, Luke Tarpey from Dublin, and Johnny MacDougal from Galway. In the early Middle Ages, there were five provinces in Ireland (the Middle Irish word for province, coiced, means fifth): the fifth province, Meath, is represented by Johnny MacDougal’s donkey, who always accompanies the Four. Like Balaam’s ass in the Bible, Johnny MacDougal’s ass can talk. He is related to the ass that figures in the philosophy of Giordano Bruno. He is also a literary relative of Shakespeare’s Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Apuleius’s Lucius in The Golden Ass, both of whom are transformed into asses.

The Four Old Men embody senility and old age. The immortal struldbrugs of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels provided Joyce with the model:

A Bust of Jonathan Swift in the Long Room of Trinity College Library

[The struldbrugs] had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. (Swift 221)

In Irish mythology there is an antediluvian character called Fintan mac Bóchra, who is saved from the waters of the Universal Flood that he might become a lasting witness to the history of Ireland and the Western regions of the world. Fintan had three partners, who were charged with recording the histories of the East, the North, and the South (Jubainville 80-81).

In many respects, The Twelve are adjuncts of The Four:

The Twelve sometimes function as a Greek chorus, which comments on the action of the novel. They are the twelve good citizens, regular patrons of HCE’s tavern, the Mullingar House, in Chapelizod. If The Four are space, then The Twelve are time. Their siglum is simply a watch dial. The twelve Roman numerals that were once found on old watch dials represents the Twelve Tables of Roman Law—The Twelve are also twelve jurymen.

Waterbury Pocket Watch (1890)

Like The four, The Twelve have their own peculiar way of talking. In Finnegans Wake, they are usually announced by a concatenation of sesquipedalian words of Latinate origin:

prostrated in their consternation and their duodisimally profusive plethora of ululation.

Now, the long paragraph we are currently studying is not characterized by this unmistakeable sign of The Twelve. Does this mean that they are not, after all, the narrators of this section? Could The Four Old Men, who carry much of the narrative of Finnegans Wake, be the actual narrators of this paragraph?

First-Draft Version

The first draft of this long paragraph only comprised five relatively short sentences, or less than half-a-dozen lines of text:

Now be aisy, good Mr Finnimore, sir! And take your laysure and don’t be walking abroad, sir. The menhere’s always talking of you. The grand old Gunne, they do be saying, that was a planter for you! He’s duddandgunne now but peace to his great limbs with the long rest of him! (Hayman 60)

Could these five sentences have once represented The Four Old Men and the Ass? In the published version, the reference to four roads (the North Umbrian and the Fivs Barrow and Waddlings Raid and the Bower Moore) followed by the Cottericks’ donkey would certainly seem to support this interpretation.

Although Joyce first drafted this whole section in November 1926, the earliest surviving draft of this particular paragraph was only added to the third draft in December:

The following is the first available version of the Finnegan passage [now RFW 019.18–023.02]. This version was added late to the third draft of the chapter. It may conceivably be a second rather than a first draft. The first word of this passage follows “earsend” without a break. (Hayman 60 fn 57)

When Joyce was making a fair copy of this section, he began to elaborate this paragraph:

The fair copy and the first typescript date from the early weeks of December ... At the end of the fair copy Joyce’s emendations became so extensive that he was forced to redraft several pages. Some of the additions were extensive: the voices with strong Irish accents that admonish Finnegan not to rise again were all added at this stage. Some of the elements were taken from extensive notes on pages 176 and 177 of [Finnegans Wake notebook] VI.B.15, in their turn most probably taken from some Hiberno-English source. (Crispi & Slote 60)

In previous articles, I have been at pains to point out how the opening chapter of Finnegans Wake is introductory in nature and foreshadows many of the later chapters of the book. This section is possibly a foreshadowing of I.4, Humphriad III, in which HCE dies and is buried.

Isis Reconstructing the Body of Osiris

The Burial of the Dead

In elaborating this paragraph, Joyce added elements drawn from Egyptian mythology and ancient Egyptian rituals of the dead. He also incorporated allusions to The Sisters, the first short story in his collection Dubliners.

Joycean scholar Mark L Troy wrote his doctoral dissertation on the Cycle of Osiris in Finnegans Wake. In an earlier article in this series, I referred to Troy’s work as the definitive guide to this subject. He begins his study with the following summary:

Osiris, god-king of Egypt, was treacherously murdered by his brother Set, a generally hostile character who tricked him into entering a coffer, sealed it and set it afloat in the Nile. Isis, sister-wife of Osiris and their sister Nephthys mourned the dead god. Isis appeared in the form of the dog-star Sirius or Sothis when she mourned. Her tears, dropping into the Nile cause the Nile inundation, which fertilizes the Nile valley yearly. Osiris’ coffin was borne on the flood, either to the Delta swamp or to Byblos in Phoenicia. At the place where it landed a large tree or shrub grew up, usually considered to be an erica or heather. It enclosed the body of the god. The tree was cut down and formed into a rooftree, still containing Osiris. After a long and arduous quest, Isis was able to recover the body of Osiris, which she concealed in the Delta marches. Their hostile brother Set, however, discovered it and in a fierce rage tore Osiris into fourteen pieces which he scattered all over Egypt, though some accounts say the pieces were scattered through the stars. In effect, Osiris had died twice: he was the drowned god, and also the rent god. Isis, in the form of a bird and still accompanied by her shadowy sister Nephthys continued to search, once again, until they had recovered all of the pieces but the phallus, which had been consumed by a denizen of the Nile. Isis and Nephthys carefully reconstructed the body, reciting powerful prayers which Thoth had given them, and forming the pieces of Osiris into the prototypal mummy. Isis then, according to Plutarch’s version of the narrative, which is the best known, fashioned Osiris an artificial phallus and aroused the god, so that Horus was conceived. With this same act Osiris was reborn, and his heart being found pure at the Weighing of the Heart, he either sailed off or climbed up a ladder to his throne in the spirit kingdom of the West. His heir on earth, Horus, became known for his warlike righteousness: he was the avenger of his father, defeating Set and succeeding to the throne of Egypt. The prime symbol of Osiris in his majesty, and of his rebirth is, when it is ceremonially erected, the red Tet pillar.

The rituals performed on behalf of the dead Egyptian were intended to reenact the resurrection of Osiris. The body was first mummified as Osiris’ had been. The deceased was then placed in the tomb-chamber and surrounded by charms intended to protect and assist him on his journey to the Otherworld and make him comfortable there. Especially significant was a small shaped mold outlined to resemble Osiris and planted with grain. As the grain sprouted, it was supposed, through a form of sympathetic magic, to help the body undergo a similar germination or rebirth. In the tomb, the various aspects of the soul dissociated themselves from the body. The tomb and the dead were watched over by four genii. The most important item in the tomb was The Book of the Dead for it was the map or passport which would lead the deceased from darkness and the grave into the light, as Osiris had been reborn, and as the sun was renewed each day. The Book of the Dead supplied him with the necessary words of power, and the identities of the obstacles in his path. By knowing their names, he gained mastery over them. Before he was able to arise and utter the words, it was necessary that the deceased be “given a mouth” that his jaw be freed and he be provided with the means of utterance. The metaphysic of the journey to the Otherworld filled the life of the ancient Egyptian. Perhaps due to the pictorial nature of his writing, many etymological puns grew up to express the concept of heavenly ascension, so that words formed from pictures of commonly seen animals grew to signify moving into the day of immortal life. The solar cycle was identified with the voyage of Osiris; it was on a bark that the deceased was transported into the Otherworld, which was an idealized version of an Egyptian home and farm. (Troy 23)

Later, Troy comments on the Osirian allusions in the section of Finnegans Wake that we are currently studying:

In this scene, Finnegan suddenly (as in the ballad) springs to life, after having been sprinkled with a few drops of whiskey. He exclaims: “will you whoop for my deading is a? Wake? Usqueadbaugham!” (24.14). That “deading is a” gives an Egyptian cast to the wakening, as it includes “dead in Giza”, which is the site of the most famous pyramid (treated in detail below). This is, as can be expected, a signal that the Egyptian parallel will be found here, and we see that the mourners are acting more like conspirators than mourners. They are less than happy to see Finnegan spring to life. In fact, they want him to lie back in his coffin like an inert god: “Now be aisy, good Mr. Finnimore, sir. And take your laysure like a god on pension and don't be walking abroad. Sure you’d only lose yourself in Healiopolis now.” (24.16). Mr. Atherton has shown that the Egypt-Ireland connection is firmly established with “Healiopolis”, for it ties Heliopolis, the name of the ancient Egyptian city of the sun to Dublin, where T. M. Healy was once installed as Governor General, as well as the Dublin suburb of Chapelizod, where Healy lived for a number of years [Atherton 125]. Now, Healy is known as the man who, as Mrs. Glasheen succinctly puts it “ratted on Parnell” (“Healy”, Second Census, p. 113). Thus, the name “Healiopolis” serves not only to strengthen the Egypt-Ireland link, it also reinforces the suggestion of betrayal. Those present at the Irish wake are trying to seal Finnegan—still alive—into his coffin, along the lines of the ancient myth: “Aisy now, you decent man, with your knees and lie quiet and repose your honour’s lordship!” (27.22). They are prepared to use force to keep him there: “Hold him here, Ezekiel Irons, and may God strengthen you!” (27.23). They want him to remain inert, asleep: “O sleepy! So be yet!” (27.29).

Another Joycean scholar, Susan Swartzlander of Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, has investigated the links between this and other passages of Finnegans Wake and Joyce’s short story The Sisters. Her article, however, is hidden behind a paywall:

Old Cotter, puffing away on his pipe (a detail repeated [in The Sisters] four times in little more than a page of text), spitting “rudely into the grate,” and fixing the boy with “his little beady black eyes,” talks appropriately of “faints and worms.” In an interesting bit of wordplay, Old Cotter becomes the “old cutter” responsible for having Osiris hacked to pieces ... “The Sisters” of Joyce’s story, Nannie and Eliza [reenacting the roles of Isis and Nephthys], do not carry water in cracked jugs from the Nile (nor from the Liffey for that matter), but they do carry associations of libations and lamentation. As Eliza discusses the “beautiful corpse” of their deceased brother [Osiris], Nannie presses sherry and cream crackers on the guest mourners in a ritualistic presentation. (Swartzlander 298 ... 296)

Old Cotter is surely echoed in this paragraph by the Cottericks’ donkey.

In addition to the references to ancient Egyptian religion, this paragraph also contains allusions to Buddhism, Christianity, and Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn—but I leave the curious reader to explore these connections for himself.

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

References

James S Atherton, The Books at the Wake: A Study of the Literary Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, The Viking Press, New York (1960)
John Bishop, Joyce’s Book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin (1986)
Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York (1944)
Luca Crispi & Sam Slote (editors), How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake: A Chapter-by-Chapter Genetic Guide, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin (2007)
James Cropper, A Short Historical Sketch of S Andrew’s Parish Church, Penrith, H L Sweeten, Penrith (1905)
Adaline Glasheen, A Second Census of Finnegans Wake, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois (1963)
Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of Finnegans Wake, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1977)
John Gordon, Finnegans Wake: A Plot Summary, Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York (1986)
David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Faber & Faber Limited, London (1939, 1949)
James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
Marie Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville, Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais et La Mythologie Celtique, Cours de Littérature Celtique, Volume 2, Ernest Thorin, Paris (1884)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
Alexandre Moret, Rois et Dieux d’Égypte, Librairie Armand Colin, Paris (1911)
Nuccio Ordine, Giordano Bruno and the Philosophy of the Ass [La cabala dell’asino], Translated by Henryk Barański & Arielle Saiber, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut (1996)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
Susan Swartzlander, James Joyce’s “The Sisters”: Chalices and Umbrellas, Ptolemaic Memphis and Victorian Dublin, Studies in Short Fiction, Volume 32, Number 3, Pages 295-301, Newberry College, Newberry, South Carolina (1995)
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D D, Volume 8, Edited by G Ravenscroft Dennis, George Bell & Sons, London (1905)
Mark L Troy, Mummeries of Resurrection: The Cycle of Osiris in Finnegans Wake, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Uppsala, Uppsala (1976)
Giambattista Vico, Goddard Bergin (translator), Max Harold Fisch (translator), The New Science of Giambattista Vico, Third Edition (1744), Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York (1948)

Image Credits

Giant’s Grave, Penrith (Postcard): Origin Unknown, Public Domain
The Giant Finn MacCumhaill Interred in the Dublin Landscape: After Relief Map B, John Bishop, Joyce’s Book of the Dark, Pages 34-35, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin (1986), © John Bishop, Fair Use
Gulliver in Lilliput: Thomas Morten (engraver), Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels into Several Remote Regions of the World, Edited by Thomas Minard Balliet, D C Heath & Co, Boston (1901), Public Domain
A Bust of Jonathan Swift in the Long Room of Trinity College Library: Louis Francois Roubiliac (sculptor), © Rob Hurson (photographer), Creative Commons License
Isis Reconstruct ing the Body of Osiris: Alexandre Moret, Rois et Dieux d’Égypte, Plate X, Public Domain

Finnegans Wake - A Prescriptive Guide

05 September 2022