02 October 2022

Sordid Sam - Part 1

 

Sordid Sam (RFW 040.10-040.27)

The opening paragraph of the Humphriad II—Book I, Chapter 3 of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake—includes a set of obituaries. These are the death notices of Hosty and a number of his close contacts. In this article we will examine the fourth obituary. The deceased, Sordid Sam, was introduced with his brother in the preceding chapter, where he was described as a tinker and ex-convict:

’Twas two pisonouse Timcoves (the wetter is pest, the renns are overt and come and the voax of the turfur is hurled on our lande) of the name of Treacle Tom, as was just out of pop following the theft of a leg of Kehoe, Donnelly and Pakenham’s Finnish pork ... (RFW 031.16-19)

Tom, you may recall, overheard the story of HCE’s encounter with the Cad with a Pipe at Baldoyle Racecourse. He later revealed the tale when he talked in his sleep in a rooming house in the Liberties within earshot of Hosty, Peter Cloran and O’Mara.

Kehoe, Donnelly & Pakenham were originally three independent firms of bacon curers. In 1891 they amalgamated to form a single business. About ten years later, however, Pakenham broke away (Foley 74-80). This pattern of amalgamation and subsequent dissolution foreshadows Sordid Sam’s multiple-personality disorder.

First-Draft Version

At nearly eighteen lines in The Restored Finnegans Wake, Sordid Sam’s obituary is the longest of the six death notices in this passage, but Joyce’s first draft required just two lines:

Treacle Tom passed away painlessly in a state of nature propelled into the great beyond by footblows of his last bedfellows, 3 Norwegian sailors. (Hayman 69)

Donnelly, Kehoe Letter Header

In the final version, this pair of lines has grown to half a dozen, to which Joyce then added almost a dozen lines of new material. The 3 Norwegian sailors—later emended to 3 Norwegians of the seafaring class—must refer to Hosty, Peter Cloran and O’Mara.

Sordid Sam

Joyce altered the names of most of the characters in this paragraph. Hosty became Osti-Fosti, O’Mara became A’Hara, and Peter Cloran became Paul Horan. But why did Treacle Tom become Sordid Sam? John Gordon, Professor Emeritus of English at Connecticut College, provides a possible answer to this question, though his novelistic approach to Finnegans Wake is not one that I can endorse:

Beginning as ‛Sordid Sam’ (the two S’s are a signature), Sackerson is also prominent. He is introduced as hearing in his sleep the knocking ... at first interpreted as a call from ‛Israfel the Summoner’, which will later come to dominate the narrative. (The source may be the windowboards swinging loose in the breeze.) It is the thunder of divine pleasure ... then kicks, then a bottle falling into a crate, finally the butcher or baker knocking at the door. (Gordon 130)

John Gordon

It cannot be doubted that Sacker Son and Sordid Sam have similar sounds. The double S is also shared by the twins Shem & Shaun. In the last article, I quoted Gordon to the effect that:

The gossipers are for the most part recognisable variants of HCE’s sons, especially Shem; here as elsewhere Sackerson has been the source of the twins. (Gordon 126-127).

Sackerson, or Pore ole Joe, is HCE’s manservant. He can be regarded as a fallen HCE—the former HCE, who has already suffered his encounter with the Oedipal Figure and been replaced by that figure.

As I mentioned in an earlier article—Introduction to the Humphriad II—bad weather is a theme that runs through the Humphriad II. Low visibility is particularly emphasized, but there are also clear allusions to wind, rain, thunder and lightning.

Dear Dirty Dublin

Sordid Sam is described as a dour decent deblaneer, an obvious echo of the phrase Dear Dirty Dublin, which pops up in Finnegans Wake at least three dozen times (FWEET). We first met this phrase in the opening chapter of the book, where it was disguised as teary turty Taubling (RFW 006.12). The expression is generally attributed to the Dublin-born lady of letters Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan). It clearly resonated with Joyce, who quoted it in Dubliners, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.

Sydney Owenson (Lady Morgan)

The attribution to Lady Morgan has been questioned recently. The phrase does not occur in any of her extant writings, though she did once write the following in her diary (1 September 1829):

September 1. — After a most delightful and triumphant visit to France, and residence of three months in Paris; after a most prosperous journey through the Low Countries and Holland, an excellent and agreeable voyage from Ostend to London, and business-like and satisfactory residence in London, and a detestable passage across the Herring Pond, we arrived at our own dear but dirty little home, and a most joyous meeting with our family in Great George’s Street. (Morgan 283)

It is interesting that Lady Morgan whimsically refers to the Irish Sea as the Herring Pond. In Finnegans Wake, Joyce would refer to the Atlantic Ocean as Brendan’s herring pool (RFW 167.36), after St Brendan the Navigator.

Joycean scholar John Simpson has researched this topic thoroughly. The earliest occurrence of the phrase he managed to track down was in the November 1837 issue of the Dublin University Magazine, where it appears in Chapter 9 of Charles Lever’s novel The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, where its placement within inverted commas makes it plain that it is a quotation:

Fortified with these strong documents, and sustained by as sanguine a spirit as consisted with so much delicacy of health, I committed myself and portmanteau to the inside of his majesty’s mail, and early on the following morning found myself once again in “dear dirty Dublin”.

Charles Lever

When Lever’s novel was published in book form in 1839, this passage was omitted, but the familiar expression puts in an appearance on the opening page of Chapter 12, a few lines before Lever invokes Lady Morgan by name:

Dear, dirty Dublin!—Io te salute—how many excellent things might be said of thee, if, unfortunately, it did not happen that the theme is an old one, and has been much better sung than it can ever now be said. (Lever 58)

At the end of his article, Simpson draws the following conclusion:

There are too many references to “dear dirty Dublin” not ascribed to Lady Morgan in the early days of the expression to allow us to claim confidently that she was responsible for its coinage. This was a story that began to take hold after her death, as myth overtook reality, and the force of her popular legacy caused later writers to ascribe to her an expression that in all probability arose within her social class if not within her circle, but not from Lady Morgan herself. (James Joyce Online Notes)

Haunted Always by His Ham

Treacle Tom was briefly imprisoned for stealing a leg of ham—Finnish pork it was actually called in allusion to the Phoenix Park, scene of HCE’s encounter with the Cad. But he is also always accompanied by his brother Frisky Shorty, the Ham who haunts his steps. During the encounter in the Park, the Cad was referred to as a sensible ham (RFW 029.24). There are two possible “etymologies” of this character’s name:

The Drunkenness of Noah

  • Ham One of the three sons of Noah, the brother of Shem and Japhet. When Ham looked upon his drunken father’s nakedness, Noah cursed Ham’s son Canaan and doomed him to serve his father’s brethren (Genesis 9:20-27).

  • Hamish A Scots form of the Irish Séamas (James), Joyce’s own name. This is essentially the same name as Shem. In Chapter I.7, we are told that Shem is short for Shemus (RFW 134.01).

Joyce had some difficulty evolving the character of Shem. In his first draft of I.7, he was unsure whether to call him Shem, Cain, Ham or Esau:

Finnegans Wake: A First-Draft Version (Hayman 108)

The sigla he chose for Shem and Shaun (see diagram below) resemble the letters C and A, which suggests that Cain and Abel were the initial inspiration for the twins—but some Joycean scholars (eg McCreedy 1) regard this hypothesis as an anachronism.

So who is Ham in Finnegans Wake: Shem, Shaun or the Oedipal Figure? Grace Eckley addressed this question in an article from 1975:

When Bernard Benstock wrote that “the sons in the Wake are at various instances unified into a single figure, are themselves as a pair, and are multiplied by Joyce’s ‛inflationary’ process into a trio,” he produced a penetrating analysis of the Wake’s problems without the aid of Clive Hart’s invaluable Concordance (which has blessed subsequent scholarship); he touched a difficulty of Wake identifications—the trios which occur amid the dualities; and he centered the confusion in the Butt and Taff relationship and in that of Saint Patrick and the Archdruid. Part of the mystery can be cleared when one party of a mythological or historical trio is subsumed in one half of the duo; and this is true of the Biblical trio of Ham, Shem, and Japheth, of whom historically “Shem and Japheth’s descendants made common cause against the Canaanites—the sons of Ham.” The Wake’s failure to develop Japheth as a third son, and the concentration on Shem and Ham, help in turn to distinguish Saint Patrick from the Archdruid. Exploration of such topics shows how easily the Wake’s waysides may be mistaken for the proper routes, but in the meantime, such lines as Butt’s “and I ups with my crozzier” (p. 353.19) indicate his affiliation with Patrick through the crosier. (Eckley 475)

Sigla Algebra

Eckley interprets the Biblical Shem and Ham as the Wake’s Shem and Shaun. This contradicts Joyce’s use of Ham as an alternative name for Shem in I.7. It is, however, supported by a later passage of Finnegans Wake, but not unambiguously:

HCE speaks of the twin sons as Shem and Ham: “Ham’s circuitise! Shemites retrace!” (p. 552.8), but also “There’s me shims and here’s me hams, and this is me juppettes” (p. 531.19), and “Heng’s got a bit of Horsa’s nose and Jeff’s got the signs of Ham round his mouth” (p. 143.22-24). Elsewhere, also, Jeff is Shaun (p. 16.12, p. 16.14, p. 168.6, p. 273.18) when Mutt-Taff-Juva are Shem, and Jute-Butt-Muta are Shaun (Mutt and Jute have “swopped hats” for their dialogue [p. 16.8]; otherwise Jute-Taff-Juva would be Shem and Mutt-Butt-Muta would be Shaun). The fine distinctions which place “jeff” among Biblical references (“by Jacohob and Esahur and the all saults or all sallies, what we warn to hear, jeff, is the woods of chirpsies”—p. 359.17-18) also focus on Ham: “You have jest (a ham) beamed listening through (a ham pig)” (p. 359.22). But the “signs of Ham round his mouth” implies more than gluttony; it is a distinct Shaun characteristic. (Eckley 479)

Bernard Benstock, whom Eckley quotes, was another pioneering Wakean scholar who tried to make sense of Joyce’s characters:

The publication of the first volume of Joyce’s letters in 1957 seems to have done more to compound rather than simplify these problems. In discussing the embryonic Wake he refers to his “Shem-Ham-Cain-Egan” [Letters I, 16 January 1924] character; whereas Cain and Ham are obvious prototypes for the accursed Shem, Egan seems to be a startling inclusion. There is no quarreling with the identification in the Census of the “Pierce Egan” who appears at 447.23 of the Wake as the author of “Compost liffe in Dufblin” as a nineteenth-century “English sporting writer, whose works include Real Life in Ireland by a Real Paddy.” That this “sham” writer is a fitting mask for Shem is also obvious, but somehow this single allusion to Egan hardly seems to justify Joyce’s coupling him with Cain and Ham. (Benstock 11)

Joyce’s Egan is still a bit of a mystery:

*Egan—in 1924 Joyce wrote (Letters, I, 208) “a description of Shem-Ham-Cain-Egan ... and his penmanship.” All these, save Egan, are important in FW, but Egan is scarce to be found unless he is present in the many instances of Finnegan ... Mr Epstein suggests Egan should read “Esau” ... It is odd that Joyce should not do more with “egan,” the syllable that is half of Finnegan ... a name not unknown to Ulysses, where Patrick and Kevin Egan represent the futility of the Irish rebel in exile. (Glasheen 82-83)

Bernard Benstock

Benstock continues:

Even more perplexing is Joyce’s reference to “Cain-Shem-Tristan-Patrick” in a letter to Harriet Weaver dated 16 August 1924. Although all critics agree that Shem is Cain, many from Campbell and Robinson on down through the post-Key [ie A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake] years have assumed that it is Shaun who is both Tristan and Patrick. The Key had unequivocably listed Tristan as Shaun, and labeled the St. Patrick of the ricorso as “Shaunish”—judgments which remained fairly standard and were reiterated often ...

It logically then follows that the sons in the Wake are at various instances unified into a single figure, are themselves as a pair, and are multiplied by Joyce’s “inflationary” process into a trio. In the last group they are most often the Three Soldiers, therefore Tom, Dick, and Harry ... Shem, Ham, and Japhet ... the Roman triumvirate ... the three "musketeers ... the brothers in Swift’s Tale of a Tub ... perhaps Pegger Festy, Festy King, and the Wet Pinter; or just A.B.C. ... As two they are the well-defined pair of hostile opposites, too long considered to be always in opposition, whereas there are many instances in which they are not in conflict necessarily, nor even distinguishable from each other ... On the individual level, they unify harmoniously for a joint purpose (usually the same one that creates three out of two: to plague the father) as Buckley, Tristram, St. Patrick, St. Kevin, Hosty, and the Cad. A single-minded view of Shem and Shaun exclusively as antagonists, therefore, dismisses various important layers of significance in Joyce’s scheme in the Wake, two of which are probably as significant as the Bruno theme: the overthrow of the father figure and the cyclical evolution of historical patterns. (Benstock 11 ... 19-21)

Joseph Campbell & Henry Robinson’s pioneering work A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake was first published in 1944. It is now considered dated and of limited use in explicating Joyce’s text, though the still work scintillates with nuggets of pure gold. Benstock published his Joyce-again’s Wake: An Analysis of Finnegans Wake in 1975. The very next year, Roland McHugh’s The Sigla of Finnegans Wake came out, which went some way to dispelling much of the nebulosity encountered by Glasheen and Benstock . McHugh pointed out how Joyce used different sigla, or signs, in his manuscripts to distinguish the different characters:

The Sigla of Finnegans Wake (McHugh 7)

As time went on, Joyce refined this system. He created several new sigla, but some of these were later dropped as their roles were subsumed by others. Among these new sigla was one which looked like a conflation of the Shem and Shaun sigla, and which replaced the Tristan siglum. This is the siglum I usually refer to as the Oedipal Figure:

The Sigla of Finnegans Wake (McHugh 9)

But McHugh goes on to make an important distinction between Joyce’s sigla and his characters. The following long passage is worth studying. Note, particularly, the last three lines:

The Sigla of Finnegans Wake (McHugh 92-93)

Ham, therefore, is one of the components of the Oedipal siglum. But his brothers, Shem and Japhet, are part of that matrix as well. And just as the Biblical Ham (or, rather, his son Canaan) is condemned to serve his brethren, so HCE’s Manservant Sackerson may be also involved. And as the Oedipal Figure overthrows HCE and becomes the new HCE, the latter too must be another component.

Don’t ask me whether any of this clears things up. Sordid Sam (Treacle Tom) and Frisky Shorty (Langley) are both the Oedipal Figure, I think, but this does not necessarily mean that they are not also Shem and Shaun, or Sackerson and Shem. Or even HCE.

Welcome to the confusing world of Finnegans Wake, where everyone is everyone else—some of the time, at least.

Israfel the Summoner

In Islamic tradition, Israfel is the angel of music who will blow the Last Trump to announce the Day of Judgment. He is not actually mentioned in the Koran, though he may have been conjured up by the allusion to the similarly named Kloran in the preceding obituary. Here, however, he summons Sordid Sam to the afterlife. Curiously, the angel of death in Islamic tradition, Azrael, is mentioned later in Finnegans Wake at the close of the children’s game in The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies (RFW 203.38). Azrael is the Islamic Grim Reaper, so why is it Israfel who summons Sordid Sam to the afterlife?

Azrael and Israfel

Joyce may have borrowed the allusion from Stanley Lane-Poole’s The Speeches and Table-Talk of the Prophet Mohammad, a source he is known to have used while writing Finnegans Wake:

The Summoner: the archangel Isrāfīl (Lane-Poole 187)

In one of his Finnegans Wake notebooks, N42 (VI.B.31): 61(e), Joyce spelt the name Israfil, before emending it to Israfel. This is a common variant, which Joyce probably preferred because it suggested that Israfel fell—ie he was a fallen angel (see below).

The Death of Sordid Sam

The manner of Sordid Sam’s death is described in precise detail:

[He] passed away painlessly after life’s upsomdowns one hallowe’en night, ebbrous and in the state of nature, propelled from the unwashed Behind into the unwished Beyond by footblows coulinclouted upon his oyster and atlas on behanged and behooved and behicked and behulked of his last fishandblood bedscrappers, a Northwegian and his mate of the sheawolving class. (RFW 040.11-16)

There is a lot to unpack here. It is often tempting to “translate” a piece of Wakean language back into wide-awake English, especially when the first draft of the piece was already close to good English, as was the case here:

Irish-Bred Spion Kop Wins the Epsom Derby in 1920

[He] passed away painlessly after life’s ups and downs one hallowe’en night inebriated and naked, propelled into the great beyond by footblows—clouted upon his oxter and atlas—on behalf of his last flesh-and-blood bedfellows, a Norwegian and his mate of the seafaring class.

In the journey from first to final draft, 3 Norwegian sailors became a Northwegian and his mate of the sheawolving class, but otherwise the final draft retains the gist of the first draft. The three Norwegians are obviously Hosty (Osti-Fosti), Peter Cloran (A’Hara) and O’Mara (Langley). The Northwegian and his mate are, I believe, HCE and Issy. Joyce has switched from one trio involving the Oedipal siglum to another.

In the former, Oedipus is the middle term in a triad with rivals Shem and Shaun, and represents the embodiment of the two brothers. In the latter, Oedipus and HCE are rivals for the love of Issy, who is the middle term in this triad (actually a love triangle). McHugh again:

The Sigla of Finnegans Wake (McHugh 88)

In the epic tale How Kersse the Tailor Made a Suit of Clothes for the Norwegian Captain (RFW 239.27-256.32), HCE is the Norwegian Captain, Kerrse is his Oedipal rival, and the tailor’s daughter is Issy.

  • upsomdowns Epsom Downs is the racecourse in Surrey, England, where the Epsom Derby is run. Remember that Treacle Tom (ie Sordid Sam) first overheard the story of HCE’s encounter with the Cad when he was at Baldoyle Racecourse.

  • one hallowe’en night Why does Sordid Sam die on Hallowe’en? In ancient Ireland, Hallowe’en was the New Year’s Festival celebrated by the pagan Druids. Its Celtic name was Samhain. This is pronounced /ˈsaʊ.wɛn/ (almost rhymes with clown). Note that Samhain begins with Sam. This, I believe, is why Joyce sets Sam’s death on this particular day.

  • ebbrous Italian: ebbro, drunk, inebriated, intoxicated. In the last chapter, we were told that Treacle Tom was on racenight, blotto after divers tots of hell fire, red biddy, bull dog, blue ruin and creeping jenny (on racenight, drunk after several shots of whiskey, fortified wine, bad gin and rosehip wine).

  • in the state of nature In the last chapter we were told that Treacle Tom slept in a nude state, which is probably the primary meaning here. In theology, state of nature refers to a natural moral state as opposed to a state of grace, a state in which one is free of mortal sin. In philosophy, state of nature refers to the hypothetical stage of human innocence before the establishment of civilized society. It is a common belief that through intoxication one can regress to this state of nature. At the very least, a proverb common to many cultures asserts that drunkenness robs a man of his wits.

Edmund Spenser and Kilcolman Castle

Colin Clout

Colin Clout was a pseudonym adopted by the English poet Edmund Spenser in his pastoral poems The Shepheardes Calendar (1579) and Colin Clouts Come Home Again (1595). Spenser borrowed the name from John Skelton’s political and clerical satire Colyn Cloute (1522), one of three poems Skelton wrote against the growing political power of Cardinal Wolsey. Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor was alluded to on the preceding page of Finnegans Wake.

Colinus Cloutus is the Latin form of the name used by Skelton. Colin was traditionally used to describe country bumpkins, being derived from Latin: colonus, farmer, husbandman, tiller of the soil. This word was used particularly to describe a tenant farmer or sharecropper, rather than a landowner. Colin’s surname Clout is simply an archaic word for a rag or cloth—indicative of Colin’s poverty—but clout also means a blow with the hand, or a cuff. To clout someone is to hit them, especially with the hand—though Sam is explicitly propelled into the afterlife by footblows on either his unwashed Behind or his oyster and atlas.

Spenser’s choice of Colin Clout as the supposed author of the twelve eclogues in The Shepheardes Calendar makes sense. Despite the pastoral setting, some of these poems deal with the abuses of the church (May, July and September). Colin Clouts Come Home Again is also given a pastoral setting, but the subject here is Edmund Spenser’s visit to his native London in 1591. It was written after his return to Kilcolman Castle in Ireland later the same year.

Colin Clout (The Shepheardes Calendar)

So much for Skelton and Spenser. But what has Colin Clout got to do with Sordid Sam? Little, as far as I can see, though Spenser’s exile in Ireland is relevant. Joyce’s emendation of clouted to colinclouted has probably more to do with his quotation a few lines later of one of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies (see below):

The first surprise in studying the songs in Finnegans Wake was the discovery of nearly all of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies in the text. To be more exact, we have found all but two of the 124 melodies: the other two are probably hidden in the text somewhere. In every case Joyce quotes them by the title, which is usually part or whole of the first line; if Moore has given the poem a separate title, that is often quoted as well as the first line; and in most cases the air to which Moore indicated the words were to be sung is given. (Hodgart & Worthington 9)

In this case, as we shall shortly see, the traditional air is The Coolin (or Coulin). Early drafts of this passage have the spellings Coolinclouted and Coulinclouted.

The footblows that propel Sam into the afterlife strike him upon his oyster and atlas. The term oxter is still commonly used in Ireland to refer to one’s armpit. The atlas is the first of the cervical vertebrae, named for the Greek god Atlas. Atlas supported the heavens, but he is often erroneously depicted supporting the terrestrial globe, just as the first cervical vertebra supports the human head.

Atlas Supporting the Terrestrial and Celestial Globes

On the very opening page of The Restored Finnegans Wake we had the phrase oystrygods gaggin fishygods! This alluded to the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths, who fought on opposite sides at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields. Here, we have oyster and fishandblood in close proximity. Is there a connection?

The footblows clout Sordid Sam on behanged and behooved and behicked and behulked of his last fishandblood bedscrappers—that is, on behalf of his flesh-and-blood bedfellows.

If behanged means hanged—suggested, perhaps, by the mention of Sam’s atlas—then behooved could mean hooved. That is, trampled by horses’ hooves. This could be an occupational hazard of the professional tipster, who earns his living passing on horseracing tips to punters.

To hick is to hiccup, a common symptom of drunkenness. Hence, behicked.

Prison Hulk Essex in Kingstown

We were told in the last chapter that Treacle Tom’s blood and milk brother Frisky Shorty was a tipster come off the hulks—that is, recently released from an offshore prison ship. That could account for both behulked and the cluster of fishy terms (oyster ... fishandblood). Between 1824 and 1834, the former USS Essex served as a prison ship in Kingstown Harbour (now Dún Laoghaire), Dublin.

The word bedscrappers might be parsed as beds crappers—people who crap their beds?—rather than bed scrappers, which means nothing to my mind.

One last point. A note in one of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake notebooks suggests that Treacle Tom was poisoned:

passed away [into] the Beyond / by means of poison (N04 (VI.B.25): 149(j))

This mode of dying did not make it into any of the drafts of this passage. In passing, however, it might be noted that the word treacle was once used to denote theriac, a common antidote against poisons, snakebites, etc:

Treacle (Skeat 662)

Why is the Northwegian’s mate—Issy—referred to as being of the sheawolving class? The obvious allusion here is to Kitty O’Shea, the married woman with whom Charles Stewart Parnell had an affair. The scandal that ensued when her husband Captain William O’Shea filed for divorce led to Parnell’s downfall. In 1912, Joyce wrote an essay about Parnell in Italian for Il Piccola della Sera, Trieste’s leading newspaper. L’Ombra di Parnell [The Shade of Parnell] concludes with the following words:

Parnell’s fall came in the midst of these events like lightning from a clear sky. He fell hopelessly in love with a married woman, and when her husband, Captain O’Shea, asked for a divorce, the ministers Gladstone and Morley openly refused to legislate in favour of Ireland if the sinner remained as head of the Nationalist Party. Parnell did not appear at the hearings to defend himself. He denied the right of a minister to exercise a veto over the political affairs of Ireland, and refused to resign. He was deposed in obedience to Gladstone’s orders. Of his 83 representatives only 8 remained faithful to him. The high and low clergy entered the lists to finish him off. The Irish press emptied on him and the woman he loved the vials of their envy. The citizens of Castlecomer threw quicklime in his eyes. He went from county to county, from city to city, ‘like a hunted deer’, a spectral figure with the signs of death on his forehead. Within a year he died of a broken heart at the age of forty-five.

Charles Stewart Parnell & Kitty O’Shea

The ghost of the ‘uncrowned king’ will weigh on the hearts of those who remember him when the new Ireland in the near future enters into the palace fimbriis aureis circumamicta varietatibus; but it will not be a vindictive ghost. The melancholy which invaded his mind was perhaps the profound conviction that, in his hour of need, one of the disciples who dipped his hand in the same bowl with him would betray him. That he fought to the very end with this desolate certainty in mind is his greatest claim to nobility.

In his final desperate appeal to his countrymen, he begged them not to throw him as a sop to the English wolves howling around them. It redounds to their honour that they did not fail this appeal. They did not throw him to the English wolves; they tore him to pieces themselves. (Joyce 2013:61%)

In her doctoral dissertation The Structural and Thematic Use of Irish History in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, Riana O’Dwyer makes some interesting points about the relationship between HCE and Issy:

The love affair which led to this personal disaster for Parnell is woven into the texture of Finnegans Wake, especially into those passages where women appear as temptresses. Katherine O’Shea’s name is easily associated with the Irish word for fairy, sídhe, anglicized Shee, who were often represented in folktales as luring men to their doom. In Finnegans Wake she is “his mate of the Sheawolving class” (FW 049.28-29) with a “wild wishwish of her sheeshea” (FW 092.31 [RFW 074.01]) ... Parnell, the great leader and popular hero, who also has a guilty secret and is publicly pilloried for it, is an important role for HCE, but Katherine is not associated with ALP to any great extent, since hers was a love that destroyed, whereas Anna’s is the love that recreates out of destruction. (O’Dwyer 278-279)

A sea-wolf is an archaic name for a pirate, but the term has also been applied to the Vikings for centuries.

Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies

As we have seen, the second obituary, that of A’Hara, included an allusion to one of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies: Alone in Crowds to Wander On, which is sung to the traditional air Shule Aroon. Sordid Sam’s obituary also contains an allusion to one of Moore’s Irish Melodies:

Though the last straw glimt his baring ...

This refers to Tho’ the Last Glimpse of Erin with Sorrow I See, which is sung, as we have seen, to the traditional air known as The Coolin.

  • the last straw The straw that breaks the camel’s back. This phrase is said to derive from an Arab proverb (cf Israfel the Summoner). In the English language, early occurrences have horse’s back, which is more appropriate in this context. Joyce’s original draft of this sentence was much simpler: as the last straw struck he / is said to have said as if the / thot had fell intill his head / like a bass dropt neck / fust intill a beer crate (N26 (VI.B.18): 19(b)).

  • glimt Danish: glimt, glint, gleam. John Gordon suggests that this passages reads as though it should be: Through the last stray glimpse ...

  • his baring Sordid Sam is naked when he dies.

The Coolin

Stage Drunkard

The opening pages of this chapter contain several allusions to the stage. In the first nine lines, there are references to Blackfriars Theatre in London, where some of Shakespeare’s plays received their premières, and to the Zouave Theatre at Inkerman in the Crimea. There are also quotations from Levey & O’Rorke’s Annals of the Theatre Royal, Dublin, Samuel Carlyle Hughes’ The Pre-Victorian Drama in Dublin, and from the Souvenir of the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Opening of the Gaiety Theatre: 27th November 1871. Hosty and Peter Cloran are commemorated as Osti-Fosti and Orani, an operatic tenor and an acting troupe’s utility man.

So it should come as no surprise to find Sordid Sam being described as a stage drunkard. And like a drunk man taking a fall, his landing in the afterlife is a hard one: Thunk!

  • pitfallen The orchestra pit lies in front of the stage. Are the pitfallen members of the audience who have fallen into the pit? Or drunk actors who have fallen off the stage into the pit? The pit is another name for Hell, so the pitfallen are also the damned. The unwished Beyond into which Sam has been propelled can hardly be Heaven. Is there an allusion here to Satan and his minions being cast out of Heaven? In Classical mythology, Hephaestus (Vulcan) has a hard landing when he is cast out of Heaven, which leaves him lame.

  • gagged him Roland McHugh glosses this as dubbed him, while FWEET has (nicknamed him). A gag is a joke, but to gag someone is to prevent him from speaking. But Sam is said ... to have solemnly said ... Is there an echo of oystrygods gaggin fishygods?

  • promptboxer In old theatres, the prompt box was a box that protruded from the floor of the stage near the orchestra pit. The prompter could use this box to remind performers of their lines without the audience seeing or hearing him.

The Prompt Box at the Grand Théâtre de Limoges

Another quotation from Levey & O’Rorke is also included in this allusion:

... principal second violin, Mr. Robert Barton ... Robert Barton held for years the post of repetiteur or deputy-leader at the Theatre Royal ... “Bob,” as he was familiarly called by the gods, was very popular. In addition to music he cultivated what was then entitled the “noble art of self-defence” ... He therefore obtained the sobriquet of “Boxing Bob,” by which title he was frequently greeted when he made his appearance in the orchestra. (Levey & O’Rorke 83-84)

The reference to the gods, the audience members who sit upstairs in the gallery of a theatre, further supports the allusion to the expulsion from Heaven.

Joyce’s first draft of the following clause reads:

as if the / thot had fell intill his head / like a bass dropt neck / fust intill a beer crate

  • thot This word is actually recorded as a Scots variant of thought. I assumed that Joyce spelt the word this way because it is a brief thought and therefore requires a brief spelling, but the original draft did not include the word brief. In fact, Joyce probably added this word when he realized that thot was a brief spelling of thought. But why did he choose thot in the first place? Is there an allusion to German: tot, dead? Perhaps there is also an allusion to the Egyptian god Thoth. In Egyptian mythology Thoth was a psychopomp, a supernatural being who conducts the souls of the dead to the afterlife—a role he shared with Anubis.

The Fall of Hephaestus and Satan Expelled from Heaven

  • a bass dropped neck fust in till a bung crate (cogged!) John Gordon suggests that this represents the sound of a bottle (of Bass ale) falling (or thrust) neck first into a beer crate (Gordon 130). A double-bass also has a neck, but I don’t see how that could be relevant here. Another possible element is bankrupt. Taking up the stage allusions, could there be a reference to George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, who is famously murdered in Shakespeare’s Richard III by being drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine (ie a barrel of Madeira)? Clarence was born in Dublin Castle in 1449.

  • cogged is a slang term, meaning fraudulent. To cog in means to obtrude or thrust in, by falsehood or deception, to palm off. In Dublin, however, to cog primarily means to copy from someone else—“to crib from another’s book, as schoolboys often do” (OED). The implication is that the editor of this passage is accusing Sam of plagiarizing his dying words from someone else.

But Sam’s obituary has outgrown this article, so let’s take a break here.

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

References

Image Credits

Video Credits

  • The Coolin: Dulahan Ireland, Adele Greene (fiddle), Joe Greene (guitar), © Dulahan Irish Music Holidays, Fair Use

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