06 October 2022

Phishlin Phil ‒ Part 1

Phishlin Phil (RFW 041.11-041.31)

The obituary of the Sodality Director suggested that Father Dan Browne was none other than the Cad with a Pipe encountered by HCE in the Phoenix Park on the Ides-of-April morning. This theme is taken up in the following five pages of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. RFW 041.11-046.16 have been interpreted by some readers as the Cad’s Side of the Story. The composition of this chapter was quite complicated. The various sections were not drafted in the order in which they appear in the final version, though they were all drafted in November 1923. The obituaries began as:

an account of the obscure fates of the ... Rann-makers ... Information about the characters themselves also slips: the narrator ends this part wondering if “the reverend, the sodality director” was in fact “the cad with a pipe encountered by HCE” ... With the first drafts completed ... Joyce copied them, adding to the copy, however, a long addition [RFW 041.11-046.15] to come between the fates of the Rann-makers and the fate of HCE’s reputation ... The long addition takes its cue from the mistaking of the sodality director for the cad (though confronters of and commentators on HCE are always in some sense the cad), and the addition is the cad’s retelling of the original encounter in so different a style that it too exemplifies the decay of information that at first seemed clear. (Crispi & Slote 69)

Bill Cadbury, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Oregon, who wrote this, goes on to say:

And now in the long addition that Joyce places to follow the fates of the Rann-makers in the first section of chapter 3 the cad himself, “although it is no easy matter to identify” him, becomes a tawdrier but still pompous “individual in baggy pants” with Dublin accent but English “headquarters,” speaking patronizingly and self-revealingly to “some broadfaced boardschool children on a wall,” lower in age if not in station ... He gets a “cad encounter” of his own, and the succession of social levels becomes thus a succession of generations, with “boardschool children” becoming types of the next generation, Shem and Shaun’s. Throughout the rest of the book they always look back and up at their father and recapitulate his story while at the same time between themselves emulating the relation between him and them—exactly like HCE with the king, like the cad and then the Rann-makers with HCE, like the children with the clown in baggy pants. (Crispi & Slote 70)

Bill Cadbury

First-Draft Version

Joyce’s first draft of this paragraph is only about four lines long, or one fifth as long as the final version, and is in good King’s English:

It is a well authenticated fact that the average human face changes its shape with the passing of years. Hence it is no easy matter to identify the individual with already an inclination to baldness who was asked by some boardschool children to tell them the story. (Hayman 69-70)

That we are about to hear yet another version of HCE’s Oedipal Encounter is flagged at the very outset by Joyce’s use of the phrase a well authenticated fact. When HCE’s original roadside brush with royalty was recounted, the tale we were spun was introduced to as the best authenticated version (RFW 024.09).

As usual, when Joyce expanded the first draft, he could not resist interrupting himself with a plethora of parentheses. This paragraph has no less than seven of these annoying interpolations.

When reading the following pages, we should always bear in mind that the public reappraisal of HCE’s encounter in the Phoenix Park refashioned it as an unspeakable crime—HCE’s Original Sin in the Garden of Eden—involving a pair of innocent maidens and three soldiers.

Percy French

Percy French

When revising the first draft of this section, Joyce prefaced what he had written with a single sentence that alludes to several songs by Percy French:

When Phishlin Phil wants throws his lip ’tis pholly to be fortuneflouting and whoever’s gone to Mix Hotel by the salt say water there’s nix to nothing we can do for he’s never again to sea. (RFW 041.11-13)

Phistlin’ Phil McHugh and Mick’s Hotel are the principal songs alluded to. Both involve characters who have departed, possibly never to return. In the former, Phil McHugh beguiles Little Mary Ann Mulcahy with his tuneful whistling. She passes the rest of her days standing in the doorway listening for his return. The chorus runs:

Oh, Mary, you’re contrary—

Come in an’ shut the door;

Phil’s a rover, sure ’tis over,

And he’ll not come back, asthore.

But she’s listnin’ for the phistlin’

And she’s waitin’ by the shore,

For that arrum to be warum

Round her waist once more.

In modern editions, French’s Phistlin’ is sometimes emended to Whistlin’, which is what it means (Healy 62).


  • wants throws his lip This phrase does not resemble any of the song’s lyrics. Roland McHugh annotates the first word as once (McHugh 50.33). While this clarifies the syntax, it does not explain why Joyce chose this unusual expression to describe Phil’s whistling. Finnegans Wake Notebook 52 contains the following note: threw his lip (VI.B.42:15c). This phrase, in fact, was borrowed from another of Percy French’s songs: Come Back, Paddy Reilly, to Ballyjamesduff:

The night that we danced by the light of the moon,

Wid Phil to the fore with his flute.

When Phil threw his lip over “Come again soon”

He’d dance the foot out o’ yer boot!

This song is about a man from a town in County Cavan, who has crossed the sea, never to return:

The Garden of Eden has vanished they say,

But I know the lie of it still;

Just turn to the left at the bridge of Finea,

And stop when half-way to Cootehill.

’Tis there I will find it; I know sure enough.

When fortune has come to me call.

Oh! the grass it is green around Ballyjamesduff.

And the blue sky over it all;

And the tones that are tender, and tones that are gruff

Are whispering over the sea,

“Come back, Paddy Reilly, to Ballyjamesduff,

Come home, Paddy Reilly, to me.”

In this context, the name Paddy Reilly calls to mind that of HCE’s alter ego Persse O’Reilly, which in turn brings us back to Percy French. That Persse O’Reilly echoes the French: perce oreille, earwig is just the icing on the cake. The identification of Ballyjamesduff with the Garden of Eden parallels the pairing of the Phoenix Park with the Garden of Eden.


Another song from Percy French’s Cavan period—a civil engineer by profession, French was the county’s Inspector of Drains from 1881 to 1888—is Phil the Fluther’s Ball, whose eponymous hero is surely the same Phil who throws his lip in Ballyjamesduff. It is said that this song is alluded to more often than any other in Finnegans Wake. This and other facts have even led some scholars to suggest that Percy French is, in some respect, the real hero of Finnegans Wake. See Frank McNally for further discussion.

Joyce’s amendment of Phistlin to Phishlin suggests that Phil is a fisherman.

  • ’tis pholly to be fortuneflouting This is generally seen as an allusion to Thomas Gray’s Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College:

 Where ignorance is bliss

’Tis folly to be wise.

It may also echo some lines from Phistlin’ Phil McHugh:

’Tis wisdom’s golden rule

I do teach her till I tire,

That every girl’s a fool,

Ay, and every man’s a liar.

Mary Ann Mulcahy does flout the fortunes flaunted by a string of wooers—Ten-Acre Thady of the Cows, with his fine new slated house, and Danny Michael Dan, six-feet tall and a very proper man. But the song has a happy ending when Phil returns:

Oh, Mary, you’re contrary—

Come in and bar the door;

What’s that scufflin’? Phil, you ruffian;

Sure I know he’d come, asthore.

She’s been settin’ there and frettin’,

But now her grievin’s o’er

And the singin’ will be ringing

In her heart once more.

In the original edition of 1939, the phrase read: fortune flonting, which seems to include a deliberate conflation of flouting and flaunting. There might even be an allusion hidden there to flautist. However, Joyce’s u and n are notoriously difficult to distinguish, so perhaps Joyce wrote fortune flouting. In The Restored Finnegans Wake, we have fortuneflouting.

Mick’s Hotel

Mick’s Hotel was inspired by an unfortunate sojourn French made in an Irish “Fawlty Towers” somewhere on the west coast of the country—mercifully, its identity remains a mystery.

Has anybody ever been to Mick’s Hotel,

Mick’s Hotel by the salt say water?

None o’ yez ha’ been there?—just as well!

Just as well for ye!—Oh!

If ye were an ostheridge ye might contrive

To get away from the place alive;

They charge you a dollar for a meal you couldn’t swaller,

And it’s down by the silver sea.

Oh yes, I’ve been there,

Yes, I was green there,

Hoping that the waiter might perhaps attend to me.

“What’s in that tureen there?”

“Soup, sir;” it’s been there

Never again for me.

Unlike Phil, Percy will never be returning to this particular establishment.

  • say In some parts of rural Ireland, a not uncommon way of pronouncing sea.

  • nix to nothing next to nothing. Slang: nix, nothing. The Latin: nix, snow, may also be relevant. This passage—indeed, this whole chapter—is replete with references to bad weather, leading to poor visibility.

  • he’s never again to sea This implies that whoever’s gone to Mix Hotel is now blind, never again to see. Poor visibility, indeed.

Rain is Coming over the Bog

Shifting Features

The second sentence in this paragraph expands the opening sentence of the first-draft by adding some meteorological details and an allusion to yet another song:

It is nebuless an autodidact fact of the most commonfaced experience that the shape of the average human cloudyphiz, whereas sallow has long daze faded, frequently altered its ego with the possing of the showers. (RFW 041.13-15)

It is interesting to compare this to the first draft:

It is a well authenticated fact that the average human face changes its shape with the passing of years.

  • nebuless nevertheless and nebulous (cloudy). Latin: nebula, mist, fog, cloud, vapour.

  • autodidact An autodidact is a self-taught individual. Presumably this emendation was suggested by the first draft’s authenticated. But why? How is this fact self-taught? What does that even mean? Self-evident?

  • of the most commonfaced experience The first edition read: of the commonest. A note in VI.B.11 (N06:130d) indicates that Joyce is referring to common knowledge. His second draft of this sentence read of the commonest knowledge (Hayman 69).

Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore

  • cloudy More bad weather, hindering visibility.

  • Colloquial: phiz, physiognomy, face, countenance. Phiz was also the pseudonym of Hablot Knight Browne, the illustrator of several of Charles Dickens’ books, but I don’t think he is relevant here. Glasheen does not record it (Glasheen 233).

  • whereas sallow has long daze faded Has Sorrow Thy Young Days Shaded. This is one of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies, a lament for the passing of youth. The lyrics compare the loss of youth to the effects of bad weather. The song is set to the traditional air known as Sly Patrick, which is alluded to six lines below, in the third parenthesis.

  • sallow, daze, faded These words all carry overtones of murkiness, dimness, poor visibility, etc.

  • alter ego In Finnegans Wake, characters often turn out to be alter egos of other characters.

  • Hiberno-English (Anglo-Irish): possing wet, saturated.

  • showers Bloody weather, again!

HasSorrow Thy Young Days Shaded

HCE's Laundry List

The next sentence in this paragraph elaborates the second sentence in the first draft:

Whence it is a slipperish matter, given the wet and low visibility ... to idendifine the individuone in scratch wig, squarecuts, stock, lavaleer, regattable oxeter, baggy pants and shufflers ... with already an incipience ... in the direction of area baldness ... who was asked by free boardschool shirkers in drenched coats overawall, Will, Conn and Otto, to tell them overagait, Vol, Pov and Dev, that fishabed ghoatstory of the haardly creditable edventyres of the Haberdasher, the two Curchies and the three Enkelchums in their Bearskin ghoats! (RFW 041.16-27)

Not only does Joyce expand a couple of lines fourfold, he also interpolates four parentheses. The first draft, you may recall, reads:

Hence it is no easy matter to identify the individual with already an inclination to baldness who was asked by some boardschool children to tell them the story.

Every element of this simple sentence has acquired an incrustation of adventitious details.

  • slipperish A rare but genuine word, meaning somewhat slippery. The first edition had slopperish, which is not a real word, though the Oxford English Dictionary defines sloppery as sloppy matter. The original meaning of sloppy was very wet and splashy.

  • to idendifine the individuone to identify the individual, as in the first draft.

  • idendifine Joyce’s emendation of identify introduces both the English: end and the Italian: fine, end. But why? Perhaps this is just fortuitous and idendifine is actually a conflation of identify and define.

  • individuone The unusual ending, -duone, may be a conflation of Latin: duo, two and English: one. Are the Sodality Director and the Cad two people or one and the same person? And what of HCE and the Cad? Two or one?

William G Fay

The next element in this sentence is a list of items of clothing:

scratch wig, squarecuts, stock, lavaleer, regattable oxeter, baggy pants and shufflers

Twenty times in the course of Finnegans Wake, HCE is identified by the enumeration of the seven items of his clothing. This usually occurs during a retelling of the Oedipal Event. For example, four of the five previous occurrences were:

  • The Museyroom Episode (RFW 007.14-16)

  • The Prankquean Episode (RFW 018.16-19)

  • HCE’s Roadside Encounter with the King (RFW 024.20-21)

  • HCE’s Encounter in the Park with the Cad with a Pipe (RFW 028.06-08)

Sometimes this laundry list is associated with the seven colours of the rainbow. In Finnegans Wake, as in Genesis, the rainbow is a symbol of resurrection following a fall, redemption after sin—an assurance that Giambattista Vico’s cycle of history will continue to turn.

In the first edition, there was no comma between stock and lavaleer, with the result that the list had only six items. Rose & O’Hanlon have restored Joyce’s original comma, which was inadvertently dropped at a late stage in the composition.

Joyce borrowed some of these items of clothing from William George Fay’s A Short Glossary of Theatrical Terms, which also provided a few terms that appeared in the prologue to Hosty’s Rann (Glass crash and Music cue at 044.16 and 044.22). Fay was one of the co-founders of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin.

Two-Tailed Wig, Scratch Wig, and Macaroni Wig

  • scratch wig “Scratch Wigs.— Rough, untidy, short-haired wigs used for comedy parts” (Fay 26). A scratch wig is a short wig that only covers part of the head.

  • squarecuts “Square Cuts.— The skirted coats used by men in plays of the eighteenth century” (Fay 27).

  • stock “A kind of stiff, close-fitting neckcloth, formerly worn by men generally, now only in the army” (OED Def 44). Samuel Johnson defined it thus: “Something made of linen; a cravat; a close neckcloth” (Johnson 788)

  • lavaleer French: lavallière, a necktie or cravat secured with a large knot.

  • regattable oxeter Regatta, regrettable. Hiberno-English (Anglo-Irish): oxter, armpit. How do these elements combine to create an item of clothing? Uttoxeter is a town in Staffordshire, England, famous for its racecourse. See the next entry in the list.

  • baggy pants The succession oxeter, baggy suggests Oxford bags, a type of trousers wide at the ankles.

  • shufflers To shuffle is :“To move the feet along the ground without lifting them, so as to make a scraping noise” (OED Def 1). I presume shufflers could, then, refer to a pair of slippers ideal for shuffling, though no such meaning is listed in the dictionary.

Squarecuts

Let’s take a break here and continue this in Phishlin Phil - Part 2.

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

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