03 September 2022

The Prankquean

 


The Prankquean (RFW 016.40–018.31)

James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is not a dream—would that it were that simple—but it is punctuated by dreamlike interludes. Two of the best known occur in the opening chapter of the book. We have already studied one of them, The Museyroom, which reenacted the Battle of Waterloo. In this article we will take a close look at another, The Prankquean, which reenacts an episode in the life of the 16th-century Irish leader Grace O’Malley.

In several previous articles, I have argued that the opening chapter of Finnegans Wake is introductory in nature and foreshadows many of the later chapters of the book. The second longest chapter in the book, II.3, to which Joyce gave the informal name The Scene in the Public, features two mock-heroic tales:

  • How Kersse the Tailor Made a Suit of Clothes for the Norwegian Captain

  • How Buckley Shot the Russian General

Each of these retells the Oedipal Moment in Finnegans Wake, the event in which the father-figure HCE is overthrown and replaced by a younger man—the Oedipal Figure—who embodies his two sons. The Museyroom episode foreshadows the second of these tales, while The Prankquean foreshadows the first—though there is some overlap between them, and they both foreshadow other events in the book besides these two tales.


Umhaill (Baronies of Burrishoole and Murrisk)

Grace O’Malley

Grace O’Malley—also known as Granuaile, or, in Irish, Gráinne Ní Mháille—was the ruler of the small kingdom of Umhaill in the west of Ireland in the late 16th century:

The O’Malleys are one of the few clans of Ireland celebrated in the native histories as sea-rovers, and Graine’s childhood was spent among the islands of Inisbofin, Inisclerie, Inisturke, Inissearc, Inisdallduff, and Inisdevellan ... She made many expeditions by sea, and was famous as a bold and active leader. (Lee 42:169)

The story of the Prankquean and Jarl van Hoother is based upon an incident which is alleged to have taken place in 1575, involving an encounter between Grace O’Malley and the Earl of Howth Christopher St Lawrence, 8th Baron Howth, 17th Lord of Howth.

In his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, under the heading Howth, Samuel Lewis relates:

In 1575, the celebrated Grana Uile or Granuwail, better known as Grace O’Malley, on her return from a visit to Queen Elizabeth, landed here and proceeded to the castle; but indignant at finding the gates closed, as was the custom of the family during dinner-time, she seized the young heir of St. Laurence, then at nurse near the shore, and carried him prisoner to her own castle in Mayo, whence he was not released till after much negotiation, and only upon condition that when the family went to dinner the castle gates should be thrown open, and a cover laid for any stranger that might arrive; a custom which was scrupulously observed during the lifetime of the late Earl. (Lewis 10)


Howth Castle

Local historian Francis Elrington Ball writes in A History of the County Dublin:

A story of an heir of the house of Howth having been carried off by a Sea Queen to the western shores of Ireland, and of his ransom having been a promise of perpetual hospitality in the halls of Howth Castle, is widely known. In the popular imagination it is the most important event in the history of Howth, and forms a link between the peninsula and the Virgin Queen, in whose reign the Sea Queen flourished.

The Sea Queen, Graina Uaile by name, was a most remarkable woman, who fulfilled the motto of her race, terra marique potens [powerful on land and on sea], and was able to impress not only the Irish Government, but also Elizabeth herself, with a sense of her power. The story tells that about the year 1575, on her return from a visit to Elizabeth, Graina Uaile landed at Howth, and proceeded as far as the Castle gates, which she found closed.

On learning that the gates were closed because it was the dinner hour, she is said to have expressed great indignation at what she considered a dereliction of Irish hospitality, and meeting on her way back to her ship the heir of the house, who was then a child, she retaliated, according to the tradition, by seizing him and carrying him off to her home in the county of Mayo, where he was detained until a promise was given that the gates should never he shut again at dinner-time, and that a place should always be laid at the table for a guest.

Modern research has shown that the date of Graina Uaile’s visit to Elizabeth’s court was 18 years later [ie 1593] than that assigned to it in the story, and the story has been therefore deemed to be unfounded. But without direct evidence to controvert it, tradition should not be lightly set aside, and the possibility that an incident such as the tradition relates may have occurred is beyond dispute.

Although she did not go to Elizabeth’s court at the time mentioned, “the dark lady of Doona” did come a year later to Dublin to see Elizabeth’s representative, Sir Henry Sidney; and at that time the heir to Howth in the second generation was a child. [Footnote: “History and Archaeology of Clare Island,” p. 41. It will be seen at this reference (note 5) that Duald Mac Firbis, in his “Great Book of Genealogies,” assigns the incident to the 15th century, and says that it was Richard Cuairsci, or Richard of the Bent Shield, who, between 1469 and 1479, “took the Lord of Benn Etar [Howth] and brought him to Tyrawley.”] For many generations a picture in Howth Castle was believed to represent the abduction of the heir, but it is now said to represent the flight of the Israelites from Egypt. It shows a group of men and women in the midst of cattle, sheep, and dogs, and has as its principal subject a woman mounted on a white horse, who is receiving an infant into her arms, while above them the sky opens, and a figure appears in the clouds. (Ball 68-69)


Grace O’Malley’s Castle on Clare Island

Finally, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, we have the following colourful description of St Lawrence, Christopher, the Earl of Howth who allegedly offended Grace—a description that could very well be applied to HCE himself (his entry in the original edition of the Dictionary of National Biography is much kinder to his character):

Christopher St Lawrence had defective eyesight and was known as “The Blind Lord”. He was one of the compilers of the Book of Howth, a chronicle of medieval Ireland. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Plunket of Beaulieu, County Louth, in 1546; they had fourteen children, of whom only six survived to adulthood: Nicholas his successor, Thomas (d. 1600), Leonard (d. 1608), Richard, Mary (married Sir Patrick Barnewall of Turvey) and Margaret (d. 1620). The death of another daughter, thirteen-year-old Jane, was caused by the baron’s own hand. In a case before the court of castle chamber in Dublin on 22 May 1579, Lord Howth was charged with having beaten her so cruelly that she died within two days, and also with severely maltreating his wife, Elizabeth (who was confined to bed for two weeks with her injuries), and his butler, who attempted to comfort her. Having heard evidence of the assaults and of the baron’s “filthy conversation” and dissolute life with “strange women”, the court imposed a fine of £1000. Three years later the court reduced the fine to £500, having heard the baron’s plea that he had already been punished to his “intolerable charge and hindrance” by having spent nineteen weeks in prison. Elizabeth Plunket left her husband about 1579, and (probably in the following year) he married Cecily, daughter of Alderman Henry Cusack of Dublin, who, on the baron’s demise, wedded first John Barnwell of Monkton, co. Meath, and second, John Finglas of Westpalston, co. Dublin. Lord Howth died on 24 October 1589 and was buried in Howth Abbey. (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)

It seems, then, that if there is any truth to the legend, the abducted child was Christopher, the future 10th Baron Howth, whose grandfather Christopher, 8th Baron Howth, was the reigning earl at the time of the abduction. Nicholas, the future 9th Baron Howth, was a grown man in 1575. The legend is not mentioned in the Book of Howth, but this was compiled by the 8th Baron Howth in the 1570s and breaks off in the year 1554.


Statue of Grace O’Malley at Westport House

First-Draft Version

The first draft of this episode is considerably shorter than the published version. Parallels with The Museyroom episode are already obvious, and many of the details Joyce added to later drafts only enhance the close connection between the two interludes:

It was one night at a long time ago when Sir Howther had his head up in his lamphouse. And his two little jimminies were kicking on the oil cloth, Tristopher & Hilary. With their dummy. And who come to the keep of his inn but the prankwench. And spoke she to the dour: I want a cup of porter. But the dour handworded her: Shut. So she snapped up Tristopher and she ran, ran, ran. And Sir Howther warlissed after her: Come back to my Earin. But she sware at him: Unlikely. Then the prankwench went for a hundred years and she washed the scabs off the jimmy and taught him his tickles and brought him back to Sir Howther another night at another time. And Sir Howther had his heels down in his cellarmalt and his little jimmy, Hilary and his dummy were on the watercloth, kissing & spitting. And the prankwench said to the wicked: I want 2 cupsa porterpeace. But the wicked handworded: Shut. Then the prankwench put down Tristopher & picked up Hilary and she ran, ran, ran. And Sir Howther bleethered atter her: Come back with my Earing. But she swareadid to him: Am liking it. Then the prankwench went for a hundred years war and she punched holes in him & taught him his tears & then she went for another hundred years walk & brought [him] back to Sir Howther. Sir Howther had his hand up to his pantrybox and his little jimmy Tristopher & the dummy were belord on the tarssheet, kissing & spitting. And the prankswench said to the gate[:] Why am do I like 3 cupsa porterpease[?] And Sir Howther came out of the gate as far as he could. And this was the first peace of porter. The prankwench was to get the dummy & the jiminies was to keep their peace & the Howther was to get the wind up. (Hayman 58-59)

  • jiminies Latin: gemini, twins. This obviously refers to the twins Shem and Shaun. But it also echoes the jinnies of the Museyroom episode, which refers to Issy.

  • oil cloth This is a synonym of linoleum, which echoes the Lipoleum [Napoleon] of the Museyroom episode. Presumably, Tristopher, Hilary and the oil cloth are the three lipoleums. The twins are on the oil cloth, so it contains them, just as the Oedipal Figure embodies both Shem and Shaun.

The identities of the dramatis personae are possibly:




Howth Castle (1740)

John Gordon, Professor Emeritus of English at Connecticut University, identifies the dummy with Sackerson or Ole Joe, HCE’s manservant, while Issy is the prankquean and also—as a Scheherezadian uncontrollable nighttalker (Gordon 77)—the narrator of the tale:

As ‘duppy’/‘dummy’ Sackerson as usual gets kicked around here, not only by twins and father (in addition to being the twins the ‘jiminies’ are, like the ‘jinnies’ of Waterloo, feet) but by the prankquean, who as a mischievous piratess is identified with the figure most frequently called the ‘Welsher’ ... from his habit of asking the barkeeper to tote up his drinks on the slate—the ‘p’ and ‘q’ of ‘prankquean’ traces to the tally of pints and quarts on that slate—and never paying for them. (See [RFW 302.37-303.11] for one example of how the story of welsher and prankquean can merge.) The prankquean, as outlaw the natural enemy of Sackerson in his constabulary bouncer/till-watcher/account-keeper role, shows up three times asking for a pint of porter, in each case running away without paying and, adding insult to injury, ‘converting’ each ill-gotten pint into urine. (In earlier drafts this part of the story is clearer: the prankquean says, ‘I want a cup/2 cupsa/3 cups of porterpease’.) (Gordon 118-119)

Recently, Gordon has had second thoughts concerning the dummy:


John Gordon

21.12: “dummy:” many theories of the identity; I would suggest that, among other things, he/it is the shadowy “tertium quid” [ie the Oedipal Figure] generated between the twins ... If, as I hereby suggest, the Grimm Brothers’ story “Our Lady’s Child” is a major component, then that story’s central figure’s refusal either to speak or to speak the truth—to remain dumb—echoes the Jarl’s refusal to answer the prankquean’s riddling questions. (“Our Lady’s Child:” see William Hansen, Ariadne’s Thread: A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature (Ithaca: Cornell UP), 2002, pp. 316-27.) The major divergence, I think, is that in the Grimms’ story the (non)answerer at the door is a man, not a woman. Also, and as always, again, among other things, that at 23.5 he/it is ordered to shut up shop and put the shutters up argues for some connection to Sackerson, the Mullingar’s manservant and, as “Watsy Lyke” (245.33), my candidate for FW’s least determinable principal. (Gordon)


The Prankquean and Jarl van Hoother

Analysis

As usual, we can read this passage on several different levels. One of the commonest interpretations sees in the threefold structure of the tale a reflection of the Viconian structure of Finnegans Wake as a whole:


Giambattista Vico

Prominent in the Prankquean episode is the philosophy of Giambattista Vico, who postulated that the history of man could be divided into three ages: the divine, the heroic, and the civil. Joyce revamped the theory, adding his own fourth age of chaos, but Vico’s idea is reflected here in the combination of threes which occur throughout the Prankquean’s adventure. She asks her riddle three times, van Hoother has three children, each significant phrase is stated three different ways (“be dermot,” “be redtom,” “be dom ter,” etc.), and, most important, the Prankquean makes three trips to van Hoother’s castle. It is these three forays which clearly point to Vico, for each occurs in one of the Viconian ages. She first appears in the divine age, “when Adam was delvin and his madameen spinning watersilts ... and everybilly lived alove with everybiddy else” (21). She returns in the heroic age, as evidenced by the allusions to such heroes of the past as Finn MacCool (“finegale’ recalls “Fingal,” Macpherson’s name for Finn in the “Ossian” poems), Brodhar, the Danish [sorcerer] who slew Brian Boru after the Battle of Clontarf, and even Shakespeare’s mighty Henry V (recalled by the reference to Doll “tearsheet”). Finally, the Prankquean’s raids end in the human or civil age, since they result in a formal peace treaty, “the first peace of illiterative porthery” (23), as, concurrently, history is recorded in verse. The concluding lines of the episode parody the motto of the city of Dublin, placing emphasis on society rather than on the individual. The Prankquean passes through the three phases of civilization, and she will blend with the figure of ALP as Joyce outlines his fourth age of death and regeneration. (Begnal 14)

It is hard to disagree with any of this. And if Giambattista Vico provided Joyce with the chassis of Finnegans Wake, it was another Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno, who provided him with the engine:

The thought of Vico is complemented here by the thought of Giordano Bruno ... who also believed that reality is circular and decay the beginning of regeneration. Further, Bruno stated that everything can come to a knowledge of itself only through contrast with its opposite, and this notion lies at the bottom of the Prankquean’s tale. Nothing appears in this section without its opposite: “oil cloth” is followed by “water cloth,”, fire is contrasted with water, heat with cold. Joyce often demonstrates this fusion of like and unlike in a single word: “belove” synthesizes “above” and “below,” and “dovesgall” suggests both love and hate. This same technique is evident in Joyce’s treatment of his characters, since the five main personages in the episode (The Prankquean, van Hoother, Tristopher, Hilary, and the dummy) have multiple identifications and often blend into one another ... Joyce’s link with Bruno is established beyond the shadow of a doubt when the names of the twins, Tristopher and Hilary, are connected with Bruno’s motto; “Hilaris in tristitia, tristis in hilaritate” [Cheerful in the midst of sadness, sad in the midst of cheerfulness]. (Begnal 14-15)


Castel Cicala, Nola, Birthplace of Giordano Bruno

Begnal’s deeper analysis of the Prankquean’s adventures centres around two Irish-born English writers, whose influence on Finnegans Wake was as important as that of Vico and Bruno:


Laurence Sterne

The further identification of Tristopher with Laurence Sterne and Hilary with Jonathan Swift sheds a great deal of light on the question why Joyce connects these two Irish satirists throughout the bulk of Finnegans Wake. On the Prankquean’s first visit to van Hoother she kidnaps Tristopher (Sterne) and carries him off into the “shandy westerness,” washes [baptizes?] “the lovespots” or the memory of the tragic love of Dermot and Grania off him (“dermot” is Gaelic for “lovespots”) with “soap sulliver suddles” (the inspiration of the comic muse of Gulliver’s Travels), and teaches him “his tickles,” or the meaning of happiness and contentment, converting him to a “luderman,” [Lutheran] or playboy (21). The end product is the true Laurence Sterne, an Anglican clergyman who carried on several affairs with his female parishioners and a man who could write the comic masterpiece Tristram Shandy while knowing he was dying of tuberculosis ... Hilary, the second twin, is Jonathan Swift, and he undergoes the same transformation as did Tristopher, though this time in reverse. The Prankquean spirits him away along “the lilipath ways to Woeman’s Land” (the land of sadness), where she punches “the curses of cromcruwell” (the memory of Cromwell’s ravaging of Ireland which brought the country firmly under English control) into him with “the nail of a top,” or “A Tale of a Tub”, Swift’s not so funny satire dealing mainly with the disgraceful state of church affairs. This indoctrination teaches him his tears, the meaning of sadness, so that Hilary becomes the “tristian” that Swift was in real life (22). (Begnal 15-16)

Begnal also believes that the Prankquean episode draws on biographical details from the lives of these two Irishmen:


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

Strangely enough, the parallels between Sterne and Swift and the Prankquean’s tale are strengthened by biographical fact. Swift, like Hilary, was in fact kidnapped as a child, and Swift’s affair with Esther Johnson, which prompted the Journal to Stella, is matched by Sterne’s affair with Eliza Draper (!), which prompted his Journal to Eliza. During Sterne’s courtship of Elizabeth Lumley in 1741 he referred to her lodgings as “D’Estella,” and his long affair with Catherine Fourmantelle bears strong resemblances to Swift’s dalliances with Vanessa. The more one probes into the histories of the two men, the more truth eerily becomes stranger than fiction. (Begnal 16)

Begnal’s article only runs to five pages, but it is very enlightening.

John Gordon takes an altogether different approach to the prankquean episode:

... the memory of the ‘welsher’ ... or ‘aleconner’ ... who repeatedly finagles free drinks from the bartending manservant, which story, as I have argued, is one of the main determinants of the ‘prankquean’ fairytale of I/1 ... Over this simple memory of trust-breaking are overlaid a dizzying number of other tales, all involving analogous violations, all traceable to that story of the returning exile ... seeking entry to the country he once spurned, that was established with the opening sight of Tristram, coming from Armorica ... I have earlier [p 86] noted that the story incorporates an account of the daughter’s birth, suspected by the father of being illegitimate (Gordon 197 ... 119)

Elsewhere in the same book, Gordon characterizes the Prankquean episode as describing the daughter’s arrival and her disruptive effect. Here, the Prankquean is Issy, not ALP:

As ‘lausafire’ she is the principle of foreign, forbidden knowledge, occasionally a forbidden book, spoiling the happy family that was frolicking away when she showed up: she teaches happiness to Tristopher and sorrow to Hilary, and forces Jarl out of his castle by asking him a question he cannot answer; her door-opening expedition recalls Isis (‘The Opener of the Ways’), Ishtar (‘the knocker at the door’ who threatens the ‘porter of the underworld’ that she will ‘smite’ and ‘shatter’ his door), and Janus, opening his doors for war. (Gordon 86)

In A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, Joseph Campbell & Henry Morton Robinson don’t seem to know what to make of the Prankquean episode. They simply transcribe a simplified version of it, with only a few footnotes by way of elucidation:

In the present version the events are recounted thrice with modifications, after the manner of the fairy tale, and under the influence of the family pattern of HCE. There is also a play on three historical attempts to reshape the beliefs and institutions of Ireland: the Elizabethan Anglican, the Cromwellian Puritan, the modern socialist ... The prankquean is ALP as seductress. The point is, that this folk tale, selected at random, discloses, as does everything else in the world, the traits of our guilty hero and his fall. All conforms to the family pattern of HCE, ALP, their daughter, and the twins. (Campbell & Robinson 51 fn ... 52 fn)

Kersse the Tailor

That this episodes foreshadows How Kersse the Tailor Made a Suit of Clothes for the Norwegian Captain is made clear by the explicit reference to the title of this epic tale near the end of the Prankquean episode:

How kirssy the tiler made a sweet unclose to the Narwhealian captol.

As we shall see, this tale also has a three-part structure and revolves around a confrontation between two characters, one of whom must meet a succession of challenges. In the Prankquean episode, the role of Kersse is played by the Prankquean herself. The blending of male and female characters is another confusing aspect of Finnegans Wake.

The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies

The Prankquean episode foreshadows not only the story of How Kersse the Tailor Made a Suit of Clothes for the Norwegian Captain in II.3 but also the game the children play in II.2 (Twilight Games). Both episodes share the same three-part structure and both involve a riddle. In the game—Colours, or Angels and Devils—it is Shem (Glugg) rather than ALP or Issy who comes three times, and each time he tries to answer rather than ask a riddle. The Prankquean (ALP|Issy) is confronted by HCE, while Shem is confronted by Shaun (Chuff), Issy (Izod) and the Maggies (The Floras, Issy’s twenty-eight schoolmates, who are really only a manifestation of Issy’s multiple personalities).

The Ondt and the Gracehoper

Another episode in Finnegans Wake that is foreshadowed by the Prankquean episode is the Aesopian fable of The Ondt and the Gracehoper, which Shaun relates in III.1 (The First Watch of Shaun, or Shaun the Post).

Tristan und Isolde

Prankquean echoes Brangwen, a character in Welsh mythology, and the German Brangäne, the name of Isolde’s motherly maidservant in Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde. The story of Tristram and Iseult is essentially the same as that of the Irish legend of Dermot and Grania, Tóraíocht Dhiarmada agus Ghráinne, (The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Gráinne), to which there are several allusions in the Prankquean episode.

Thunderword

Joyce scattered ten thunderwords throughout the text of Finnegans Wake. The first nine have 100 letters each, while the tenth has 101 letters, making a Scheherazadian total of 1001. These represent the voice of God calling man to order at the end of one Viconian cycle and the beginning of the next. The first of these thunderwords occurs, quite fittingly, on the opening page of the novel, where it glosses the fall of man. That thunderword is comprised of the word for thunder in several different languages.

The second thunderword occurs near the end of the Prankquean episode. Like the first thunderword, this one too is made up of the word for thunder in several different languages (perhaps Joyce originally intended to continue this pattern for all ten thunderwords):



Curiously, there is no thunderword in the Museyroom episode.

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

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