Phishlin Phil ‒ Part 2

Phishlin Phil (RFW 041.11-041.31)

Baldness

The mysterious subject of this paragraph is going bald:

with already an incipience ... in the direction of area baldness (RFW 041.21-22)

This adds little to the first draft other than a touch of whimsicality:

with already an inclination to baldness (Hayman 69)

incipience beginning, first stage, initial stages.
area baldness Crown area baldness, or male-pattern hair loss, is a form of alopecia in which a man suffers hair loss on the front or crown of the head, or both. It is characterized by a receding hairline, a bald patch on the top of the head, or a combination of both. As John Gordon points out, in the Circe episode of Ulysses, Dr Mulligan says of Bloom:

He is prematurely bald from selfabuse ... (Ulysses 465)

A Trio of Whackfolthediddlers

This balding individual is accosted by three boys, who ask him to tell them the story of his encounter in the Park:

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 041.23-27)

Compare this to the spare first draft:

who was asked by some boardschool children to tell them the story. (Hayman 69-70)

Clongowes Wood College

free three. Obviously, the three children represent the trio of male characters who regularly feature in HCE’s story: his two sons Shem & Shaun, and the Oedipal Figure who embodies both of them in the one flesh. Why are they free? An early draft described them as broadfaced (Hayman 70).
boardschool boarding-school. Joyce’s first school, Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, is a boarding school.
shirkers Truants. Gordon comments that at Eton—another boarding school—students were obliged to “shirk” (avoid meeting or being seen by) a master or upper-form boy if they were “out of bounds” (OED Def 3b). Perhaps this is why the boys are described as free.
drenched coats More wet weather. A trench coat is a type of waterproof coat originally developed for British Army officers before the First World War. It was worn in the trenches on the Western Front. The fact that this trio are wearing trench coats reminds us that they are essentially the three soldiers who accosted HCE in the Park when he was interfering with the two maidens.
overawall over a wall. HCE’s Original Sin in the Park is often associated with the wall of the Magazine Fort—probably a reference to Humpty Dumpty’s fall from a wall. Overalls are are a species of garment usually worn as protective clothing while working.
Will, Conn and Otto Will, Can and Ought To.

HCE’s Guilt and The Cad with a Pipe

overagait over a gate, over again. Rose & O’Hanlon connect this with an entry—tell once again—in VI.B.14.52(d), which Joyce lifted from Dean Kinane’s biography of Saint Patrick:

The care, the learning, the deeply religious spirit, betrayed in almost every page of your admirable work on “the Life, Virtue, and Labours” of the great Apostle of Ireland, tell once again of the safe and pious hands into which have been entrusted such a mission, such virtues, and such results as you, with such patience and devotedness, so edifyingly and loving record. (Kinane 12)

In Finnegans Wake, the same stories are told over and over again.

Vol, Pov and Dev French: Vouloir, Pouvoir and Devoir, Will, Can and Ought To (infinitives). The three soldiers who accost HCE in the Park are believed to have been inspired by the three soldiers—trois espions bien armés [three well-armed spies]—who spy on Tristan in Joseph Bédier’s French retelling of the story of Tristran and Isolde (see below).
that fishabed ghoatstory that fishy ghost story. In Ulysses, Stephen is urged by a group of boys to tell a ghost story. He later does tell a ghost story—Hamlet—to a group of men in the National Library. The fourth parenthesis (see below) also alludes to this particular ghost story. In Ibsen’s play Ghosts, the title refers to the way in which the younger generation repeat the sins of the former generation, the children becoming in effect their own parents’ ghosts. This is the very theme of Finnegans Wake.

Hamlet and His Father’s Ghost

that ... bed ... story It’s a bedtime story, like the one retaled early in bed and later on life (RFW 003.16). In an intermediate draft, Joyce emended the story to that bedtime story (Hayman 70).
A goat story is a tragedy, from the Greek: τραγῳδία [tragōidia], goat song. We do not know how tragedy took its name from the humble goat. Nietzsche (The Birth of Tragedy) assumed that it was named for the goat-like satyrs who made up the chorus. Horace (The Art of Poetry) believed that the ancient tragedians competed for a prize goat. Whatever the truth, the lascivious nature of satyrs is entirely appropriate here, given the sexual overtones of HCE’s Original Sin.
fish Although he did not coin the word ghoti and is not even thought to have ever used it, George Bernard Shaw—an indefatigable champion of English spelling reform—is often associated with it. The word is a whimsical spelling of fish, the gh being pronounced as in enough, the o as in women and the ti as in nation. The ghoti is also invoked in one of Issy’s footnotes in Chapter II.2 (RFW 230.F3-4).

The Ghoti

The final words of this sentence leave us in no doubt that the story the three boys wish to hear is the story of HCE’s Original Sin in the Park.

Earwicker’s original sin, never precisely described, occurred in the Phoenix Park and involved exhibitionism, or voyeurism, with two nursemaids as accomplices, and three soldiers (imported perhaps from the Circe episode of Ulysses) as witnesses, quite possibly themselves involved in the offense through promiscuity with the girls or homosexuality with each other. (Ellmann 555)

The two nursemaids and three soldiers may in fact have been lifted from Joseph Bédier’s retelling of the romance of Tristan and Isolde, Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut, which Joyce is known to have read while he was living in Trieste. The library of books that he left behind when he moved to Paris in June 1920 includes both the original French edition as well as Florence Simmonds’ English translation of 1910:

The varlets kept the fool [Tristan, who has lost his wits] for their amusement on the steps of the hall, like a dog in a kennel. He bore their jests and blows patiently, for sometimes, restored to his own shape and comeliness, he passed from his lair to the Queen’s chamber. But when some days had passed, two of the serving-maids suspected the fraud. They warned Andret, who placed three spies well armed at the door of the women’s chambers. When Tristram would have entered they cried : “Back, fool, return to thy bundle of straw.” “What! fair gentlemen,” said the fool, “must I not go this evening to embrace the Queen? Know you not that she loves me?” Tristram brandished his club. They were afraid, and let him enter. (Simmonds 202-203, Bédier 264-265)

Tristan and Isolde

haardly creditable edventyres hardly credible adventures. An acrostic for HCE. The Danish: haard, hard and eventyr fairy tale draw Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales into the mix.
the Haberdasher, the two Curchies and the three Enkelchums in their Bearskin ghoats HCE, the two maidens (representing his schizophrenic daughter Issy), and the three soldiers (representing his twin sons Shem & Shaun and the Oedipal Figure). Another acrostic for HCE.
Slang: haberdasher, publican. HCE is the landlord of the Mullingar House in Chapelizod.
Scots: curch, kerchief, a square piece of linen formerly worn by women instead of a cap.
Dialect: curchies, curtseys. Curtseys are performed by women.
Danish: enkel, bachelor. The German: Enkel, grandchild might also be relevant, but I do not see how the Dutch: enkel, ankle makes any sense.
chums Elsewhere in Finnegans Wake, chum is associated with British soldiers (RFW 068.01-02 and 164.40-165.01).
Bearskin ghoats As John Gordon comments: given that this is describing the three soldiers of the park encounter, the bearskin hats worn by British Grenadiers (and some other units) are probably in play here—Major Tweedy wears one in Ulysses. Also, bearskin coats were worn by some members of the Russian army. But why does Joyce spell Bearskin with a capital B? In Finnegans Wake, HCE’s Manservant is usually associated with bears—like Sackerson, the bear in Shakespearean London. His real name may be MacMahon, or the like, from the literary Irish: mathúin [maṫġaṁain], bear.

Sackerson Loose

Girls and Boys

The next sentence was added to the first draft:

Girles and jongers, but he has changed alok syne Thorkill’s time! (RFW 041.27-28)

The meaning is transparent: Girls and boys, but he has changed a lot since Thorkel’s time!

Girles Girls. The OED gives girle as an obsolete spelling used from the 14th to the 17th century.
Dutch: jongen, boys.
German: Jünger, disciples, followers.
German: Jungen, boys, youths.
alok alot. Is there an allusion here to the Norse trickster god Loki? If so, it can only be because of the proximity of Thor’s name. Eight lines below, however, there is a much clearer allusion to Loki (lokil calour). Adaline Glasheen records the latter, but not the former (Glasheen 171).
Scots: syne, since.
Thorkill’s This is generally understood to be an allusion to the 9th-century Viking warlord Turgesius, who terrorized Ireland for several years. In 841, he established a Norse settlement on the Liffey, from which the city of Dublin grew. In 845 he was captured by the King of Mide Máel Sechnaill, who drowned him in Lough Owel (Loch Uair in County Westmeath). Turgesius was and is known by many other similar names: Turgeis, Thorkel, Thorgils, Thorgist, Thurgestr, Thorgísl, etc. But Thorkill is Joyce’s murderous coinage.

Turgesius Island (Lough Lene, County Westmeath)

One to Nine

The next passage is a count from one to nine:

Ya, da, tra, gathery, pimp, shesses, shossafat, okodeboko, nine! (RFW 041.28-29)

The counting numbers are easy to glimpse—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine—but Joyce has managed to pack quite a lot into this short list.

Yan Tan Tethera is a traditional sheep tally used by shepherds in northern England to count their sheep. The strange numerals are believed to derive from ancient Celtic numbers, indicating how old this particular tally is. Roland McHugh quotes the Lancashire version thus (McHugh 51):

This does not accord with any of the variants listed in the Wikipedia article. In the very first number of A Wake Newslitter (March 1962), however, Clive Hart wrote:

Some readers may not be familiar with the English “sheep-tally”—the modified Welsh cardinal numbers used by shepherds etc. It exists in many variants. The following version is from Lancashire: Yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, devera, dick.

Hart’s devera is a typo for dovera, which McHugh amended. Hart himself corrected it for A Wake Digest, which was published in 1968:

>Some readers may not be familiar with the English ‘sheep-tally’—the modified Welsh cardinal numbers used by shepherds, etc. It exists in many variants. The following version is from Lancashire: Yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, dovera, dick. (See 51.16) ‘Ya, da, tra, gathery, pimp, shesses, shossafat, okodeboko, nine!’; and 457.12; ‘yan, tyan, tethera, methera, pimp,’. (Hart & Senn 77)

Clive Hart & Fritz Senn

Dialect: ya, yeah, yes.
Irish: dá, two, a pair.
Russian: da, yes.
Irish: ceathair, four. Perhaps an instance of the P/K Split.
Irish: seisear [pronounced shesher], six people. Gordon suggests that shesses echoes yesses, perhaps as spoken by a woman—compare RFW 145.17.
Sanskrit: shash [षष् = ṣáṣ], sapta [सप्त], six, seven.
shossafat This sounds like Jehoshaphat, the seventh ruler in the Davidic succession of Hebrew kings: Saul, David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Asa, Jehoshaphat.

Jehoshaphat and the Royal Succession

Slang: okey-dokey, which was in existence by the 1930s. At least one scholar has tentatively suggested that okodeboko alludes to Aphra Behn’s 1688 novel Oroonoko, but I don’t see the relevance (Broes 192).
Spanish ocho, eight.
German: nein, no. Note how the tally is bookended by the Yes|No Motif, which pops up more than forty times in Finnegans Wake. In the Circe episode of Ulysses, when the Fan asks Bloom, Have you forgotten me? Blooms replies: Nes. Yo. (Ulysses 495)

Kung the Tall’s Issue

What is being counted here? Surely not sheep! The following sentence suggests that it’s the warts and other blemishes on HCE’s face that are being counted, but the preceding sentence suggests that it’s actually HCE’s children—Girles and jongers. Rose & O’Hanlon connect this tally with a note in VI.B.45 (N54:119d) taken from Carl Crow’s biography of Confucius, describing how the first nine children born to Confucius’s father, Kung the Tall, were all girls:

In her way the wife was abundantly fruitful but she produced chaff, not wheat. The sixth baby was a girl! The seventh baby was a girl! Kung the Tall had been very patient ... The eight baby was a girl. One more chance, madam! Give birth to a boy and you will be forgiven the eight daughters! The ninth baby was a girl. This was too much for human endurance! (Crow 27)

The Traditional Birthplace of Confucius on Mount Ni

Rose & O’Hanlon comment:

Note: Kung the Tall’s first wife, to his sadness, produced only female issue. At this zenith, the husband sought a divorce. Shortly before this, he slept with a concubine. She gave birth to the desired male, but he was sickly and crippled. Kung, now seventy years old, was bitterly disappointed, but after some delicate negotiations he took to wife the fifteen-year old daughter of a friend, with better bearing prospects. (J ames J oyce D igital A rchive)

The tenth child was a healthy boy, Confucius. The last two parenthetical passages in this paragraph also allude to Crow’s Master Kung.

The final two sentences in this paragraph—the first of which is interrupted by two parentheses—enumerate the various blemishes that Time has wrought on HCE’s countenance:

Those many warts, those slummy patches, halfsinster wrinkles ...and ... the large fungopark he has grown! Drink! (RFW 041.29-31)

slummy patches Warts and wrinkles are blemishes that may disfigure one’s face over the course of time, but what are slummy patches? Slimy? Is this another instance of the topography of Dublin being equated with the body of HCE? The slummy patches are actually wet patches of ground in the Phoenix Park.

Glen Pond (The Phoenix Park)

halfsinster half-sister. As we have seen, Confucius had nine half-sisters:

The fact that the marriage was occasioned by the desire for a son and the boy was born following the birth of nine half-sisters made the story all the more piquant and gave the sex-control faddists something to think about. (Crow 46)

sin HCE’s Original Sin?
sinister From the Latin: sinister, left : awkward, wrong, perverse : inauspicious, unlucky. The birth of nine daughters in a row was certainly inauspicious for Kung the Tall.
Italian: fungo, fungus, mushroom. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, fungo is an obsolete word for A mushroom or fungus. See below for further discussion.
Mungo Park Mungo Park was an 18th-century Scottish explorer of the Niger and West Africa. He did not sport a beard, so I do not know why McHugh interprets the large fungopark he has grown as (beard). On the other hand, what else could HCE possibly have grown? There is also an allusion to the Phoenix Park, the scene of HCE’s encounter with the Cad.

Mungo Park

Dora Russell

Joyce’s source for this allusion to Mungo Park was Hypatia, or Woman and Knowledge by Dora Russell, the wife of Bertrand Russell. This short feminist tract is primarily a diatribe against the inadequacy of the education then allowed to women. At the bottom of page 22, we find the following footnote:

Mumbo-Jumbo was an idol set up by the men in Nigeria to terrify erring women. The men, but not the women, knew him to be a fake. See Mungo Park’s Travels. (Russell 22 fn)

Hypatia achieved a succès de scandale when it first appeared in 1925, with immediate calls for it to be banned (Henkes & Fuse 6). Joyce read the book and made some notes.

I still don’t understand why we are told that HCE has grown a large fungopark. If this does refer to his beard, why is it associated with a Scottish explorer of West Africa who never sported a beard? Reading an analysis of another passage of Finnegans Wake by Marilyn L Brownstein, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Georgia, I came across the following comment:

The sin in the park, we learn as the passage proceeds, forecloses on the afterlife. This warning leads to a clearing in the park which is also a clearing of the mind of HCE (since, according to the topographical logic of the Wake, the park is also the landscape of the paternal body and the “fungopark” [FW, 51.20], his beard). (Brownstein 254)

Beaver Beards

I finally found the solution to this mystery on Peter Chrisp’s wonderful blog From Swerve of Shore to Bend of Bay:

Beaver Beards (Peter Chrisp)

As Chrisp notes, the same game suggested to Joyce the walrus moustaches sported by the King during his roadside encounter with HCE (RFW 025.04).

Drink! Is this a command? Who drinks? The Cad? HCE? The next paragraph refers to recently emptied stout bottles. Perhaps the Cad needs a drink to loosen his tongue.

First Parenthesis

The first of this paragraph’s seven parenthetical passages follows the remark about the alteration of one’s face with the passing of years:

(Not original!) (RFW 041.16)

This sounds like a critical remark scrawled by a teacher on a student’s exercise. Many of the parenthetical remarks in Finnegans Wake are of this nature. They resemble the marginalia and glosses that medieval scribes inserted into the manuscripts they were copying, thereby insinuating themselves into the texts. But why is this particular fact singled out for criticism, which could be levelled at almost every line of Finnegans Wake? Perhaps the subtext is that this is not the Cad’s original face.

Second Parenthesis

The second parenthesis is a gloss on the wet and low visibility:

(since in this scherzarade of one’s thousand one nightinesses that sword of certainty which would indentifide the body never falls) (RFW 041.17-19)

Scheherazade und Sultan Schariar

scherzarade of one’s thousand one nightinesses Scheherazade of the One Thousand and One Nights. We met Shahrazad, the narrator of the Arabian tales known as the One Thousand and One Nights, during HCE’s roadside encounter with the King. In the frame story of this famous collection of folktales, Scheherazade relates the tales to her sister Dunyazad, while her husband King Shahryar lies awake listening to her. The king, convinced of the faithlessness of all women, has vowed to execute each of his wives after only one night of pleasure. Scheherazade, however, thwarts his plans by breaking off each tale at dawn. The king repeatedly spares her life in order to hear the rest of the unfinished tale.
Italian: scherzo, joke and German: Scherz, joke. In classical music, a scherzo is a short humorous movement, usually forming part of a larger piece of music, such as a symphony or sonata.
scherzarade charade.
nightinesses naughtinesses, mightinesses.
the sword of certainty ... never falls This was copied from VI.B.31 (N42:234d), where it is associated with Work in Progress (ie Finnegans Wake) and 1001. There is possibly an allusion to the Sword of Damocles, but the principal allusion is to the fact that Shahryar never goes through with his plan to execute Shahrazad.
indentifide the body identify the body (VI.B.42.51d), divide, indemnify, indent, end. I can’t say that I understand the secondary allusions.
...fide ... body bonafide?

Lad Lane, Dublin

Third Parenthesis

The third parenthesis follows the enumeration of HCE’s seven items of clothing:

(he is often alluded to as Slypatrick, the llad in the llane) (RFW 041.20-21)

Slypatrick As we saw in the last article, Sly Patrick is the name of the traditional air to which Thomas Moore’s Has Sorrow Thy Young Days Shaded is sung. There is probably also an allusion to Saint Patrick, who is a common avatar of both HCE and the Oedipal Figure in Finnegans Wake.
llad in the llane Lad Lane is a side street in Dublin. It is briefly mentioned in Ulysses:

That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. (Ulysses 415)

Stomach cramps are a traditional sign of bad luck. Lost cattle refers to illegally slaughtered beef, or to inferior meat that has been substituted for beef—hence bad meat. Bloom seems to be suggesting that stomach cramps are like the Mark of the Beast, a brand borne by the Antichrist’s minions in the Book of Revelation. He is also punning on beast as cattle, the cramps being a mark of the spoiled meat he ate. Whether any of this is relevant to the mention of Lad Lane in Finnegans Wake is anybody’s guess.

The Number of the Beast is 666

Welsh: llan, church. Joyce found this in the article on Wales in the Eleventh Edition of The Encyclopædia Britannica:

Welsh Place-Names ... An historical origin is frequently commemorated, notably in the many foundations of the Celtic missionaries of the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries, wherein the word llan (church) precedes a proper name; thus every Llanddewi recalls the early labours of Dewi Sant (St David); every Llandeilo, those of St Teilo; and such names as Llandudno, Llanafan, Llanbadarn and the like commemorate SS. Tudno, Afan, Padarn, &c. (Chisholm 259)

Spanish: llana, page (of a book).
llad in the llane the little lad who lives down the lane. Is there an allusion here to the nursery rhyme Baa, Baa, Black Sheep? There are different versions of this rhyme, but one version includes a little lad who lives down the lane.

“Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,

Have you any wool?”

“Yes, sir, yes, sir,

Three bags full:

One for the master,

One for the dame,

And one for the little lad

Who lives down the lane.”

Perhaps this anticipates the “Welsh” sheep tally seven lines below.

Black Sheep

Fourth Parenthesis

The fourth parenthesis is the shortest, consisting of just a single word:

(lust!) (RFW 041.22)

In the context of the ghost story, this is clearly an allusion to the ghost of Hamlet’s father, who addresses his son in Act I, Scene 5 thus (emphasis added):

I am thy Fathers Spirit,

Doom’d for a certaine terme to walke the night ...
... But this eternall blason must not be

To eares of flesh and bloud; list Hamlet, oh list,

If thou didst euer thy deare Father loue.

This passage is also alluded to several times in Ulysses, first in connection with a ghost story:

—He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said for Mr Best’s behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh creep.

List! List! O list!

(Ulysses 180)

The Concupiscence of Adam and Eve

This parenthesis occurs immediately after the word incipience. I presume it is the similarity of this word to concupiscence that brings up the idea of lust. In Paradise Lost, concupiscence is the Original Sin:

And in our Faces evident the signes

Of foul concupiscence.

(Paradise Lost 9:1078-79)

Fifth Parenthesis

The fifth parenthesis seems to be a comment on HCE’s altered appearance, and comes immediately after the mention of his baldness:

(one is continually firstmeeting with odd sorts of others at all sorts of ages!) (RFW 041.22-23)

Spiral Staircase (Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, Paris)

continually firstmeeting meeting for the first time over and over again—another metaphor for the endless cycling of Viconian history, in which events continually recur.
odd sorts of all sorts of, as well as the literal odd sorts.
at all sorts of ages Refers to both the various ages of the people one meets for the first time as well as the various times when one meets such people.

Sixth Parenthesis

The sixth parenthesis contains a siglum of sorts:

(what has come over the face on wholebroader E?) (RFW 041.30)

An earlier version read:

(what has come over the face of E?) (transition 3)

In the first edition of 1939, the character following wholebroader was represented by an uppercase E. In The Restored Finnegans Wake of 2010, the character is HCE’s siglum—the one that looks like a capital M, for the book’s male protagonist—on its side, so that it resembles an E for Earwicker. When an earlier draft of this chapter appeared in Eugene Jolas’s literary magazine transition (June 1927), it was obvious that the character was not actually an E.

You can see this siglum in its original form in Footnote 4 at the bottom of page 230:

The Doodles Family (RFW 230.F1-8)

whole brother As contrasted with half-brother. There is another allusion here to Carl Crow’s biography of Confucius:

There was no need to hide this baby under the bed-clothes, as the concubine had done with his crippled half-brother a few years earlier. (Crow 49)

our brother An example of the L/R Interchange.
Brodir Bróðir was a Viking warlord who is traditionally identified as the assassin of the High King of Ireland Brian Ború at the Battle of Clontarf.
Slang: broad, woman.

transition (Number 3, Pages 33-34)

Seventh Parenthesis

The final parenthesis in this paragraph continues the Chinese allusions:

(shrine of Mount Mu save us!) (RFW 041.31)

Once again, Joyce’s source is Carl Crow’s biography of Confucius:

Although the ceremony of praying at shrines and offering sacrifices to ensure the birth of a son had invariably been the affair of women, who were more directly responsible in the matter, Kung the Tall decided to leave nothing to chance on this occasion and attended to this important matter himself ... He at length selected a shrine of sound reputation on a hill which was known as Mount Mu and went there to pray with the young wife, adding his supplications to hers. (Crow 30)

The identity of this sacred mountain is unknown.

Fungi in Finnegans Wake

I can’t leave this passage without taking a look at the essay Cryptogrammic Cryptogams: Fungi in Finnegans Wake by David W Rose, archivist of the Connecticut-Westchester Mycological Association (COMA). Rose is a Wakean enthusiast as well as a mycologist:

Phoenix Park was once a royal deer park; to Joyce it was a large fungopark where a shrine of Mount Mu (51.19-20) marked the spot at which the tumptytumtoes (3.21) of the giant Finnegan protruded like Ptychogaster from the roots of a Tumtum tree. The telltale fungi of Finnegans Wake indeed crop up at the very beginning of the book, and they are, significantly, related to fermentation and decay: rot a peck of pa’s malt (3.12). Rotting and fermentation, two economically important processes associated with fungi, appear together in this, the third sentence of the Wake. (David Rose 24)

Ptychogaster fuliginoides

Having pointed out that the fermentation of malt is mentioned on the opening page of Finnegans Wake, and plays an undeniably important role in a book that takes its name from a ballad about a drunken navvy, Rose turns to the Humphriad:

The Wake’s “language of mushrooms” is deeply rooted in [Joyce’s] botanical vision, but like any slightly regarded ort in the Wake a twoodstool twinkling in the margins might suddenly occupy centrality of station, as in Book 1, chapter 3 where we find our disreputable hero Earwicker implicated in a dubious and unspecified “crime in the park” ... (David Rose 25)

Rose offers the following mycological analysis of the final three lines of the paragraph we are currently studying (Those many warts ... the large fungopark he has grown! Drink!):

Fungo is an obsolete term for mushroom or fungus; fungopark must then be any park where mushrooms grow, but in this case it is specifically Phoenix Park. There was no systematic survey of flowering plants (or the cryptogamic ones) of Phoenix Park until 1988, though the early Dublin botanists Caleb Threkeld (1672-1768), John Rutty (1697-1775), and Walter Wade (1770-1825) were the first to publish findings that included some of the Phoenix Park flora [Footnote: F. C. Hassell, “The Early Irish Mycologists, 1726-1900”, Irish Naturalists Journal (1957), 12: 116-120.]. Joyce implicitly recognized this lack of attention to the park by Irish botany, yet alludes to stranger flora yet: namely, Amanita. Carefully subverting the commonly known characteristics of Amanita—warts, slummy (slimy) patches, and wrinkles—he then adds ritual elements: supplication at the shrine of Mount Mu[shroom] and the imperative Drink!, adumbrating the shamanic use of Amanita muscaria in Siberian cultures where the urine of a person under mushroom intoxication is recycled by the acolyte to perpetuate its intoxicating effects. This is later recapitulated in Mount of Mish (131.01 [RFW 103.37-38]) and sacred sponge (516.25 [RFW 401.26]). (David Rose 25)

He’s the expert, so who am I to disagree!

Amanita muscaria

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

References

Joseph Bédier, Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut, H Piazza et Compagnie, Paris (1902)
Arthur T Broes, More Books at the Wake, James Joyce Quarterly, Volume 9, Number 2, Pages 189-217, The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, Oklahoma (1972)
Marilyn L Brownstein, The Preservation of Tenderness: A Confusion of Tongues in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, Susan Stanford Friedman (editor), Joyce: The Return of the Repressed, Pages 225-256, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York (2018)
Hugh Chisholm (editor), The Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Volume 28, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1911)
Luca Crispi & Sam Slote (editors), How Joyce Wrote Finnegans Wake: A Chapter-by-Chapter Genetic Guide, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin (2007)
Carl Crow, Master Kung: The Story of Confucius, Tudor Publishing Company, New York (1937)
Marion W Cumpiano, The Multifarious Cad in “Finnegans Wake”: Recurrent Elements in His Encounter With HCE, Studies in the Novel, Volume 16, Number 1, Pages 101-110, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland (1984)
Richard Ellmann, James Joyce, New and Revised Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford (1982)
William George Fay, A Short Glossary of Theatrical Terms, Samuel French, New York (1929)
Percy French, Mick’s Hotel, Pigott & Co Ltd, Dublin (1912)
Adaline Glasheen, Third Census of Finnegans Wake, University of California Press, Berkeley, California (1977)
Clive Hart & Fritz Senn (editors), A Wake Digest, Sydney University Press, Sydney (1968)
David Hayman, A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas (1963)
James N Healy, Percy French and His Songs, Mercier Press, Dublin (1974)
Robbert-Jan Henkes & Mikio Fuse, Inside D1, Genetic Joyce Studies, Issue 12, Centre for Manuscript Genetics, University of Antwerp, Antwerp (2012)
Horace, Christopher Smart (translator), Theodore Alois Buckley (editor), The Art of Poetry, Harper & Brothers, New York (1855)
James Joyce, Ulysses, Shakespeare and Company, Paris (1922)
James Joyce, Finnegans Wake, Faber & Faber Limited, London (1939, 1949)
James Joyce, James Joyce: The Complete Works, Pynch (editor), Online (2013)
Dean Kinane, St Patrick: His Life, His Heroic Virtues, His Labours, and the Fruits of His Labours, Burns Oates & Washbourne, London (1920)
Bernadette Lowry, Sounds of Manymirth on the Night’s Ear Ringing: Percy French (1854-1920): His Jarvey years and Joyce’s Haunted Inkbottle, Carmen Eblana, Dublin (2021)
Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake, Third Edition, The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Maryland (2006)
Friedrich Nietzsche, William A Haussmann (translator), The Birth of Tragedy, or Hellenism and Pessimism, George Allen & Unwin Ltd, London (1909)
David W Rose, Cryptogrammic Cryptogams: Fungi in Finnegans Wake, Fungi, Volume 4, Number 1, Pages 23-27, Fungi Magazine, Batavia, Illinois (2011)
Danis Rose, John O’Hanlon, The Restored Finnegans Wake, Penguin Classics, London (2012)
Dora Russell, Hypatia, or Woman and Knowledge, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co Ltd, London (1925)
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

Bogland River Landscape with Gorse Bushes: Percy French (artist), Private Collection, Public Domain
Hamlet and the Ghost: Frederic James Shields (artist), Manchester Art Gallery, Public Domain
Confucius: Wu Daozi (artist), Public Domain
Hamlet and His Father’s Ghost: Henry Fuseli (artist), Kunsthaus Zürich, Public Domain
Tristan and Isolde: Rogelio de Egusquiza (artist), Bilbao Fine arts Museum, Public Domain
Sackerson Loose: Robert William Buss (etcher), Charles Knight, The Pictorial Edition of the Works of Shakspere, Volume 1, Page 160, Virtue & Co, London (1867), Public Domain
Clive Hart: University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, Fair Use
Jehoshaphat and the Royal Succession: Guillaume Rouillé, Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum, Public Domain
Mungo Park: Eduard Schauenburg, Reisen in Central-Afrika von Mungo Park bis auf Dr H Barth und Dr Ed Vogel, Volume 1, Facing page 80, M Schauenburg & Co, Lahr (1859), Public Domain
Scheherazade und Sultan Schariar: Ferdinand Keller (artist), Private Collection, Public Domain
The Number of the Beast Is 666: William Blake (artist), Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia, Public Domain
The Concupiscence of Adam and Eve: Michelangelo (artist), The Sistine Chapel, Ceiling, 4th Bay, Vatican City, Public Domain
transition (Number 3, Pages 33-34): Eugene Jolas & Elliot Paul (editors), transition, Number 3, Shakespeare and Co, Paris, (1927), Public Domain

Finnegans Wake - A Prescriptive Guide

07 October 2022